Cynthia Bond - Ruby

She sat on the bed, her heart knocking against her sternum, growing more enraged as she recounted her weeks upon years of service.

Saturday was upkeep and preparation. Cutting and chopping for Sunday supper. Making sweet potato pies and 7UP cake. Keeping the stove wood dry then lighting the fire. Ephram had bought her a Sears gas model ten years before but it added a funny aftertaste to her pies and she wouldn’t stand for it. Loading the washing machine. Then rewashing what the machine didn’t catch on her scrub board, using liberal amounts of bleach. Hanging everything out to dry on the line then taking it all in. Heating the iron on the stove and pressing the sheets, the pillowcases, then Ephram’s work and Sunday clothes. Only then would Celia attend to her own church attire. Take her hair out of the kerchief. Wash it. Oil it. Then pin it up again so that it would stay snug under the wig of choice. Once in bed she would read Deuteronomy, her favorite book of the Bible, until she fell quickly to sleep.

Sunday was Celia’s only day. Celia gnawed more rapidly at her left inner cheek. She bit down on the soft flesh until she tasted blood and she clutched at the quilt on Ephram’s bed. He must, must remember. He couldn’t forget that today was her day to share counsel with the most Holy. To teach others by example: by demeanor, testimony, by speaking in tongues, and certainly by her attire. What better way, Celia and Ephram had agreed, to glorify God than to wear a mantle worthy of him? They always wore matching colors to service. As a pair, thought Celia, they had always been exemplary. Today’s navy outfit had cost Ephram $55.68 of his tips, without the wig. But it was worth it. Her standard Sunday best would not have sufficed on this special day.

Celia stood in rage. For today —Celia ripped the quilt off the bed. Was the day —She ran to the cupboard and grabbed a handful of baking soda then dashed it on his sheets as a calling prayer. Celia Jennings would be voted in as Church Mother .

The white powder made a small cloud above the bed. Celia crossed herself and spat over it for luck. Ran back to the kitchen. 9:25. Then back to his bed. She spread her face and arms over his sheets. Holding the bed she began praying her boy home.

Celia had dreamed of holding her rightful position as Church Mother since she was a little girl. After her mother was taken to Dearing Mental, and the Reverend was lynched, she’d held on to the picture of herself seated in the Church Mother’s place, the corner pew with the white ribbon. Not the pews that faced the preacher where the general mass of the congregation sat, but one of the special two flanking the pulpit on either side like an open ended square. The ones people had to look past to see the minister, and the Church Mother’s seat was the most visible.

Celia stood from her prayer bristling. Baking powder on her cheek, neck, arms and breast. She picked up Ephram’s suit and walked into the kitchen. 9:40. The election was to be held after service so … If Ephram came home, if they made it to church before the end of service, if she won the election, she would be given the brilliant white sash to wear each Sunday with the words “Church Mother” written in silver glittering cursive.

Celia folded Ephram’s suit carefully, and put it in a Piggly Wiggly sack. She went into her bathroom and wiped the soda from her sturdy face, her body. She slipped off her housedress and wetted and soaped the washcloth in the sink and just like that she knew Ephram was not coming home this morning. Celia began to cry as she washed between her legs. She sat on the toilet and wondered if it was God’s will that she let this cup pass from her lips. Perhaps He was trying to spare her the responsibility and sacrifice that being Church Mother entailed.

But then hadn’t He helped her all along to win the post?

Hadn’t He started two years ago when it became apparent that Mercy Polk, Mother Mercy she was called, would soon be unable to fulfill her Church Mother duties due to old age and incontinence? At God’s heeding, Celia had secretly campaigned, had made special entreaties to the Pastor’s wife, May, and others of influence on the board. However, the rules of removal had been more stringent than those of Supreme Court justice. Once in office, a Mother simply could not be supplanted. Even after Mother Mercy passed away, her seat had remained empty for six whole months. Four was the usual protocol of respect shown to each Mother. Mother Mercy’s tenure had been such that she had been given two additional months for the congregation’s mourning.

There had been no doubt that Celia would win the election. The competition was weak. Supra Rankin and Mother Mercy’s granddaughter Righteous were lackluster at best. All of Mother Mercy’s heathen grandchildren had been given Holiness names at birth. It hadn’t helped. Praise B., the middle boy, had spent the last five years in Burkeville Federal Corrections for stealing stamps from the post office. Salvation was rumored to be dating secretly Pastor Joshua right under his wife’s nose. The twin girls, Milk and Honey, had each gotten pregnant, out of wedlock, by the same itinerant preacher. Their baby boys, born within two weeks of one another, were both cousins and brothers at the same time. Then that horrible thing had happened to Honey after she left her child, moved down to Beaumont and was said to have gotten mixed up with a lesbian homosexual and a life of drugs. The fruit, thought Celia, never falls far from the tree.

There was also the fact that none of the other nominees for Church Mother had committed Genesis through Nehemiah to memory. Not to mention Psalms, Proverbs and Lamentations. Forget that she knew Matthew through John. Corinthians one and two. And of course Revelation. Who else could say that? Supra Rankin’s tongues were a joke, painted-on things to impress the multitudes. Righteous Polk had only her grandmother’s glory to push her into a nomination. None of them had her following. The women who gathered about her after Bible study to ask questions. Leaning into her every word. Not one had her pious nature. Her humility, the years of missionary work in Kountze County, Beaumont City and Nacogdoches. Who else had traveled to the convention in Hardin County in ’55 or Galveston in ’57? Taken their own child’s money and spread the word from little Liberty Township? Who had put their small church on the map at the ’59 convention in Raleigh by being voted chair of the Preparatory Basket Committee? Who else had had a vision of Jonah and angelic visitations from the twelve Apostles or the gift of prophecy? Certainly not Righteous Polk with her hanging slips and scuffed shoes. Did the woman not a have a mirror to look into before going to church on a Sunday morning?

Who else had not married and remained God’s holy vessel? No. It was His will. It was God’s will that Celia Jennings take her rightful place among all of the other women whose pictures hung on the ladies’ lavatory wall. The lobby was for past preachers, but when the lavatory was moved indoors in 1945, the In-His-Name Liberty Township chapter of the Holiness Church’s Women’s Auxiliary had decorated it with pink and beige rose wallpaper. Hung chintz curtains and two framed pictures of past church mothers over the sink.

Celia thought to go to church alone to claim her prize but stopped. For what would she have said to their questions?

“I hope Brother Jennings isn’t feeling poorly,” Supra Rankin would have said slyly. And what if she had lied, “Yes, he is a bit under the weather today,” then Ephram had shown up? Or walked by the church from his night of sin? Still smelling of — her. That Bell woman. It was unspeakable. The shame she would feel as the assembly discovered the truth, that her child, her good boy, had fallen as surely as Adam fell, as surely as Samson. Fallen like fruit, not far from her tree.