Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

“My, don’t you three look spiffy,” Sister Myra said, opening the screen door for them. She was a plump, smiley-faced woman with a frizz of sand-colored curls. “What’s that you got with you, sweetheart?” she asked Daphne.

“This here is my lawn mower.”

“Well, bring it on in where it’s cool.”

It wasn’t just cool; it was cold. Sister Myra’s house was air-conditioned. Thomas thought air-conditioning was wonderful, even if it did mean they tended to stay inside as much as possible. Today, for instance, no one at all was playing in the brownish backyard around the swimming pool. Everybody was down in the basement rec room, which felt like a huge refrigerator. Dermott Kyle and Jason were lining up dinky plastic Bible figures in two rows across the indoor-outdoor carpet, making believe one row was ranchers and the other was cattle rustlers. Three girls were dressing dolls in a corner, and the Nielsen twins were helping Sister Myra’s daughter Beth put today’s memory verse on the flannelboard: As the hart … and then a word that Thomas couldn’t figure out. He hoped the verse was a short one. Dermott Kyle had asked yesterday for Jesus wept , and it made the other campers laugh till Sister Myra pointed out how sad He must have been for our sins.

“We have three more people to wait for,” Sister Myra said. “Mindy and the Larsons. Then we can begin. You all stay here with Sister Audrey while I go up and watch for the others.”

Sister Audrey was sitting on a child’s stool way too small for her. She was a big, soft, pale teenager in tight cutoffs and a tank top that showed her bra straps. When she heard her name she smiled around the room and hugged her potato-looking bare knees, but nobody smiled back. They were scared to death of Sister Audrey. She was helping out at Bible camp because she’d had a baby when she wasn’t married and put it in a Dempster Dumpster and now she was atoning for her sin. They weren’t supposed to know that, but they did. They discussed the details amongst themselves in whispers: how the baby had been wrapped in a towel (or Dermott said a grocery bag), how a janitor heard it peeping, how a police car took it where somebody grown could adopt it. Sister Audrey smiled at them hopefully while they clustered in the doll corner and rehashed this information. “Doesn’t anybody want me to read them a story?” she called, but they weren’t about to get that close to her; no, sirree.

Sister Myra came back downstairs with Mindy and one of the Larsons, Johnny. Kenny was home with the earache, she said. “Something for us to mention in our prayers,” she told them, and she clapped her hands. “All right, campers! Gather round! Everybody pull up a chair!”

Some of the chairs were little wooden ones, painted in nursery-school colors. Others were regular folding chairs, and all the boys fought for those so they wouldn’t look sissy. Especially Thomas. He couldn’t bear to have Dermott Kyle mistake him for one of the babies.

“Our Lord in Heaven,” Sister Myra said, “we thank You for another beautiful day. We thank You for these innocent, unsullied souls gathered in Your name, and we ask for Kenny Larson’s recovery if it be Thy will. Now we’re going to offer up our sentence prayers as we do every morning at this time.”

That last part was spoken more to the campers than to God, Thomas felt. Surely God knew by now they offered up sentence prayers every morning. He must know what they were going to say, even, since most of them just repeated what they’d said on other mornings. The girls said thank-yous—“Thank You for the trees and flowers,” and such. (With Agatha, it was, “Thanks for the family,” in a mumbling, furry tone of voice.) The boys were more likely to make requests. “Let the Orioles win tonight” was commonest. (“If it be Thy will,” Sister Myra always added in a hurry.) The only exception was Dermott Kyle, who said, “Thank You for air-conditioning.” That always got a laugh. Thomas usually asked for good swimming weather, but today he prayed for Kenny Larson’s earache to go away. For one thing, Kenny was his best friend. Also Thomas liked to come up with some different sentence now and then, and this one made Sister Myra nod approvingly.

Sister Audrey offered the closing sentence. “Dear God,” she said, “look down upon us and understand us, we humbly beg in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Some of the boys nudged each other at that, because she probably meant He should understand about the Dempster Dumpster. But then they caught Sister Myra’s frown and so they put on their blankest faces and started gazing around the room and humming.

After Devotions came Sharing Hour. In school they called it Show and Tell. You didn’t have to bring anything to Sharing Hour if you didn’t want to, and most of the boys didn’t. Also what you brought didn’t have to be religious, although of course it was always nice if it was. It could be just some belonging you’d been blessed with that you wanted others to share the joy of. Sister Myra’s daughter Beth, for instance, brought a beautiful silver whistle that used to be her cousin Rob’s from Boy Scout camp. But when it came time to let others share the joy of it, she refused. She said she didn’t want people blowing it and passing on their germs. “Well, honestly, Beth,” Sister Myra said, looking cross, but Beth said, “I got a right! I don’t have to put up with all and sundry’s summer colds!” She was a skinny stick of a girl who never seemed that healthy anyway. Her nose was always red, and her braids were the pale, pinkish color of transparent eyeglass frames. Sister Myra sighed and said, “Anybody else?”

Daphne stood up so hard that her chair fell over backward. (You were supposed to raise your hand.) “Well, I have this,” she announced, and she held the toy lawn mower over her head. All the girls said, “Aw!” They thought she was cute. Then the boys, Dermott and the nine-year-olds, said, “Awww,” making fun of the girls, but you could tell they didn’t mean any harm. They were smiling, and Daphne smiled back at them. Then she showed how the colored balls popped up when she pushed the lawn mower across the carpet. She was cute, Thomas realized. She was darling, with her springy black curls as thick as the wig on a doll and her face very small and lively. He felt suddenly proud of her, and also, for some reason, a little bit sad.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Sister Myra said. “Any other sharers?”

Agatha raised her hand. Thomas looked over at her; she hadn’t mentioned she was bringing something. She stood up and rooted through her front pocket, knotting her mouth because she was kind of fat for her shorts and it was hard to get her fist around whatever it was. Finally she pulled out something round and clear. “A mustard seed,” she said.

Sister Myra said, “A what, hon?”

“A mustard seed in a plastic ball, like what Reverend Emmett talked about yesterday at Juice Time.”

“Oh, yes: ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard …’ ” Sister Myra said. She held out her hand, and Agatha let the object drop into her palm. “Why, I remember these! We wore them on chains back in high school. We bought them at Woolworth’s jewelry counter.”

“It used to be my mother’s,” Agatha said.

Thomas’s mouth fell open.

“My mother’s dead now, and I don’t know what church she belonged to. But when Reverend Emmett showed us those mustard seeds at Juice Time I thought, ‘ That’s what that is! That round ball in my mother’s box.’ ”

Their mother’s jewelry box, she meant, the cloth-covered box Agatha kept her barrettes in; and she was evil, evil to show other people something from the mysterious bottom drawer. Hadn’t she made Thomas cross his heart and hope to die if he told anyone their mother’s things were hidden there? She wouldn’t even let him tell Daphne, because Daphne might tell the grownups and then the grownups would go through their mother’s papers and figure out a way to ship Thomas and Agatha off to strangers, keeping Daphne for themselves since Daphne was the only true Bedloe. Agatha had warned him a dozen times, and now look: here she was, speaking of “my” mother, of how “I” don’t know what church she belonged to, while their mother’s private mustard seed traveled from hand to hand like something ordinary. From Sister Myra’s cushiony palm to Beth’s wiry, freckled claw to Dermott Kyle’s not-very-clean fist, and by the time it reached Thomas he believed he caught the smell of sweat. He held it up by its tiny gold ring and studied it at eye level. (He was no more familiar with it than the others were, since Agatha guarded that box so jealously.) Had the plastic been this scratched and clouded even before the others handled it? If so, then it was because of his mother’s touch; her actual fingers had rubbed off the shine. Her actual eyes had looked upon that white glint of a seed.