Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

Driving through Cobb though, it was rare to see buildings that had been erected prior to 1975.

Restaurants consisted mainly of the usual suspects: McDonald’s, Chuck E. Cheese, Steak n’ Shake. The stores were links in multinational chains and were housed in sterile strip malls. If someone blindfolded me and dropped me in the middle of Cobb County, Lily thought, there would be no way I could figure out where the hell I was. The area had no distinguishing characteristics.

Calvary Baptist Church, the church where Charlotte’s family were having their little denial-fest of a memorial service, was the biggest, ugliest Protestant church on a street lined with big, ugly Protestant churches. Calvary was especially aesthetically offensive because of its puke-yellow brick and cream-colored, plantation-style columns. The plantation image was appropriate for the church, though, since the only black person ever seen on the premises was the janitor.

“Damn,” Lily muttered when she saw that according to the church clock, she was five minutes late. According to her battered Timex, she was two minutes early, but apparently her watch didn’t run on Cobb County time. She scooped Mimi up out of her car seat. “Okay, kid, you’ve never been to one of these before, and hopefully you’ll never have to go to one again. It’s called a church service.”

Once inside, Lily followed the sound of the maudlin organ music and slipped into a back pew in the sanctuary. An old lady in a wig that was slightly askew pounded on the pipe organ — one of those droning songs from the Baptist Hymnal. Was it “Rock of Ages” or “Blessed Assurance”? Lily could never keep those oldies-but-oldies straight, and her memory wasn’t aided by the fact that the goal of most WASP church musicians seemed to be to make all the songs sound as much alike as possible.

The stark white sanctuary was huge, but fewer than twenty people sat in the pews: Charlotte’s parents, recognizable because of Ida Maycomb’s helmet of rigidly coiffed brown hair and Charles Maycomb’s shiny bald pate; Charlotte’s brother Mike, there with his wife and two kids; and a few of Charlotte’s aunts and uncles. Lily figured that the other people in attendance were the types who waited around for the church doors to be unlocked so they could dart in and warm a pew. If this had been a real memorial service, instead of Ida and Charles Maycomb’s half-assed attempt to mark the passing of the daughter they never approved of, the turnout would have been pathetic.

After the pipe organ breathed its last, a puffy man whose gray hair matched his gray three-piece suit took his place behind the podium. “We gather here today,” he said, his voice dripping with mock solemnity, “to mourn the passing of the daughter of two of our congregation’s most beloved members, Ida and Charles Maycomb.”

Lily saw where this was going. Charlotte wasn’t even going to get top billing at her own memorial service.

“As Scripture has shown us,” the reverend continued, “there are few experiences more painful than the death of a child. When God tests Job, he takes his children from him. And just as Job wept for his lost children, today we join Ida and Charles Maycomb in weeping for their lost child, Charlotte Maycomb.”

Lily shifted Mimi’s weight on her lap. Lost child? Charlotte had been thirty-eight years old.

“And as always, Charlotte’s passing gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves: Are we really living our lives in a way that would make Jesus proud?” The rev was curiously puffy — not fat, exactly, but bloated, as though someone had given him an enema with the air from a bicycle pump. “Or when our time comes and we stand before Saint Peter at the pearly gates, are we going to have some explaining to do?

Today, as we observe Charlotte’s passing, I urge you all to think: If Jesus took you today, where would you spend eternity?”

Lily heard Ida’s sobs. No doubt she was contemplating her sinful lesbian daughter frying extra-crispy in the fires of hell. Lily had no doubt that Charlotte’s sinfulness was the not-so-subtle subtext of the rev’s little sermon. What made it all the more irritating was his delivery. For some reason, Lily didn’t object to the loud-mouthed hellfire-and-brimstone preachers as much as preachers like Mr. Calvary Baptist here. While the ideas he expressed were the same old damnation-and-judgment mambo, he spoke in sweet, subdued tones with a simper on his face that Lily longed to slap off. The only thing worse than regular hellfire and brimstone, Lily decided, was candy-coated hellfire and brimstone.

Lily spaced out for a few comparatively pleasant minutes, but when her attention returned to the gray three-piece suit behind the podium, he said, “And now, we’re going to hear from somebody who holds our dearly departed in a very special place in his heart. I ask you: What can be more tender, more protective and sweet than a big brother’s love for his little sister? Michael Charles Maycomb, won’t you come up and say a few words?”

Mike? Lily nearly dropped the baby off her lap in shock. According to Charlotte, Mike had been intent on making Charlotte’s life as unpleasant as possible from the moment she was born. When Charlotte was an infant, her baby skin was covered with bruises from where Mike used to pinch her when nobody was looking. When she was a little girl, Mike took the axe from the toolshed and chopped her new red wagon into splinters. When, as a young adolescent, Charlotte began to develop at a rapid rate, Mike insisted on calling her “Jugs.” And this was only the stuff Charlotte had told Lily about. No matter what Mike did when they were growing up, Charlotte told Lily, her parents dismissed it with clichés like,

“Boys will be boys.”

Now Mike was president of the Cobb County chapter of the Lord’s Lieutenants, an all-male Christian paramilitary organization devoted to preserving traditional Christian values, particularly as they pertain to the submission of women. Prior to her death, Charlotte only saw Mike at unavoidable family occasions. Once, Charlotte had told Lily, Mike had cornered her and told her how being the liberal she was, she should appreciate the Lord’s Lieutenants because they happily accepted black, Latino, and Asian men into their ranks. Charlotte had replied, “How beautiful ... all races, creeds, and colors united in the spirit of misogyny.”

Charlotte told Lily afterward that she was sure this comment would have really pissed Mike off, if he had known what the word misogyny meant.

And so it was Mike whom the Maycombs had decided would memorialize Charlotte. It was fitting, in a perverse way. They never understood her while she was alive. Why should they understand her now that she was dead?

Mike stood at the lectern in his gray three-piece suit (What is it with the gray three-piece suits in this church? Lily wondered), his ash-blond hair combed over his bald spot. “Charlotte always did love reading literature and stuff like that,” he began, “so I’ve composed a poem in her honor.”

Dear god, no, Lily thought.

He cleared his throat and began. “It’s called, ‘My Sister’.” He began reading in the sing-song rhythm that the marginally literate feel is integral to poetry: