"You're a liar! An evil, wretched, devil liar! My daddy would never keep me from my mama," I screamed so loudly even the crowd next door surely heard me.

"I know. You're right. I'm sorry. All I meant was that he had a hard time letting go. . . . I mean, when Martha Ann came along . . . I just . . . I just didn't know what else to do." She stumbled, and it looked like talking and standing might yet prove too much for her frail body.

"What have you done to Martha Ann?" I screamed, tears streaming down my face.

"Nothing. I haven't seen Martha Ann. I promise. I came to the church earlier thinking I might be able to see you girls, but I got scared and left. I haven't seen her. I promise. I know this is hard. I do. But the minute I heard that Marshall had pa.s.sed, I knew this was my chance to finally see you. I have missed you girls so much. I guess I should have given you more time," she said.

"Time! More time! What about the last twelve years of my life?" I sobbed, somehow knowing and yet refusing to believe that this woman was my mama. "My mama drowned when I was six. My mama loved me."

"I still love you, Catherine. I have never stopped loving you."

"No! No, no! My mama wouldn't have run away from home like some stupid little kid."

"Dear G.o.d, I'm so sorry," the woman said, her voice shaking and full of tears. "I was a stupid kid, Catherine Grace. I was so young, and I just figured you girls would forget about me after a while. Marshall said you would."

"Forget? You are out of your mind!" Everything she said was terrifying me. I had memorized every detail of my mama's beautiful face, her brown eyes, her delicate nose, her kind smile. The woman in the photograph sitting on my dresser would never believe that her babies could simply forget that they're the only ones who didn't have a mama to bake them a birthday cake, or make them clothes for their Barbie dolls, or iron their Sunday dresses.

"I am so sorry," the woman repeated, like this time it might have some meaning. She just kept babbling about being so young, too young to be a good mother and having dreams and I don't know what all. All I knew was that there was nothing she could say that was going to make me accept that she was my mother.

"Get out! Just get out! " I shouted, starting to feel light-headed.

"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry," the woman whispered as much to herself as to me. And without even the courage to look me in the eyes, she made one last declaration. "I have loved you every day of your life. You need to know that."

I turned to Gloria Jean and begged her to make this woman leave.

But Gloria Jean just stood there, motionless.

"Gloria Jean," I pleaded, "please."

"I can't, honey."

"Why not?" I asked, feeling the room spinning around me.

"Because she is your mother."

CHAPTER NINE.

Standing at the Pearly Gates Begging for Forgiveness Martha Ann was pressing a cold washcloth on my forehead. A drop of water trickled down the side of my face and settled in my ear. Gloria Jean was gently slapping my hand. "Catherine Grace, wake up, honey. You need to open your eyes."

I found myself lying in my own bed, hoping for that first innocent moment of wakefulness that the woman claiming to be my mother had been nothing but a bad dream.

"Gloria Jean," I asked, "that woman, who came to see you, she's gone, right?"

But Gloria Jean took a deep breath, her body's way of telling me that she wasn't particularly comfortable with what she had to say. So I closed my eyes again, longing to drift back into that world of never-ending darkness. Lena Mae, she said, was still in Ringgold. Apparently, after Dr. Bowden gave me some pills to make me sleep, she decided to stay the night and was now sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, talking to Miss Mabie. She was real worried about me.

"When you fainted, you need to know that it was your mama who helped me get you into your bed, well, your mama and Flora. She just wants to make sure you're okay before she leaves town. She knows you're not ready for anything more right now."

I looked at Gloria Jean and couldn't help but laugh out loud. The woman who left me crying myself to sleep when I was six years old was suddenly worried about me.

Propping myself up on my elbows, and speaking slowly and deliberately so no one would misunderstand what I was saying, I told Gloria Jean to get the woman with the long brown hair, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, worrying about the little girl she abandoned, out of my house.

Martha Ann took the cloth off my forehead and knelt down beside me so we were staring at each other eye to eye. She hadn't said much since I had come home, but now her face was full of words.

"Catherine Grace, Mama coming here is a gift from G.o.d, and she is not leaving," Martha Ann announced in an abrupt, firm tone. "Yesterday, we were not much better off than two little orphans, and today we've got a mama. Maybe I should be mad. Maybe I will be mad. But right now, today, I am so happy to have a mother, even one that's left and come back."

And then, putting her hand over mine, Martha Ann spoke in a softer voice, "You need to hear her out, Catherine Grace, and then if you want to be mad at somebody, fine, but maybe you need to consider being mad at Daddy, too."

"Daddy didn't leave us!"

"No, but maybe he didn't give Mama much of a choice. You need to talk to her."

I just stared at my little sister. I couldn't make sense of anything anybody was saying anymore, but somehow I knew I was going to have to come face-to-face with the woman sitting at the kitchen table. But be mad at Daddy? No. I just couldn't believe that my own daddy had known all these years that Mama was alive. What kind of daddy, what kind of man of G.o.d, would let his babies suffer like that? My head was spinning. I kept closing my eyes, hoping it would make the confusion go away. But it didn't help.

"Listen, honey," Gloria Jean repeated, "your mama loves you, and she has had to live with what she has done every single day since she left you girls. Your daddy was a good man, n.o.body's denying that, but he had a hard time accepting that somebody could love him and still want something more. I'm just not sure she really thought she had much of a choice. She just didn't have the courage that you do."

"What kind of monster do you think Daddy was?" I yelled, surprising myself.

"He wasn't a monster, honey. He was human. And I just think you need to understand this about your daddy. He could see marriage working only one way. I'm not sure he could admit to himself, let alone to anybody else in this town, that his young, beautiful wife was dreaming of something even bigger than the great Reverend Cline. She had a gift, Catherine, you know that. But you know all this already. You know what it means to love somebody but still want something more. And you know your daddy."

"You knew," I said, again surprising myself with the sharp tone of my voice. "You knew all these years that my mama was alive but didn't say anything. What? You just thought you'd keep this little secret to yourself? Is that it? You couldn't have any children of your own, Gloria Jean, so you kept your mouth shut so you could step right in and be our mama," I shouted, attacking the one woman who had never abandoned me.

Before I could even look for the hurt in her eyes, I started begging for forgiveness. "I'm sorry, Gloria Jean. I am so sorry. I didn't mean it." I didn't mean it, but I desperately wanted somebody to hurt as much as I did.

Gloria Jean took me into her arms like she had done so many times before. "Baby, I didn't know she was alive. I had always thought something wasn't right. I had hoped. But I didn't know, and I certainly couldn't say anything to you without knowing for sure," she said, patting my back in a familiar rhythm. "And you're not the only one who's feeling hurt right now. She was my best friend. Oh h.e.l.l, honey, she was nothing more than a child, a child with little babies of her own."

I sat in my bed with my eyes wide open and wondered what this woman sitting at the kitchen table could say to me that would undo all the damage that had been done. I could already smell the bacon frying on the stove, and I knew that before long Flora was going to start chirping her morning trill about me keeping up my strength. But I wasn't stepping foot in that kitchen until I made sure my daddy was dead.

I jumped out of bed and started searching for my brown penny loafers.

"Honey, where are you going?" Gloria Jean asked.

"To church," I said.

"Now?"

"Yes, now. I have to see my daddy. I have to make sure that my daddy is lying in that casket. I have to make sure he's dead, dead, dead and that n.o.body is playing another cruel joke on me." I had to make sure he hadn't decided to go and make a better life for himself in Little Rock or Knoxville. Maybe he was already there waiting for Miss Raines to join him. Nope, I wasn't taking any chances, not this time.

Gloria Jean and Martha Ann both stood by my bedroom door, unable to think of the words to stop me. Maybe, Gloria Jean suggested, it would be better if I waited until she was certain that the funeral home had delivered Daddy, and she had a chance to make sure he was properly situated and all.

I told her I didn't care if he was situated or not. I would sit on the steps of that church and wait for him if I had to. I never saw my mama's face after she died, and I wasn't going to make that mistake again.

After grabbing my coat from the hall closet, I stopped at the kitchen door just long enough to catch a glimpse of Lena Mae Cline. She looked up at me as I hesitated in the hallway. She had so much hope in her eyes-hope that I'd say something, anything. But I turned away, making it clear I wasn't ready to listen to her sad story.

I pushed the storm door open and let it slam behind me. I jumped off the porch and headed for Cedar Grove. But before I got there, I could hear the sound of cars in the distance churning up the gravel on the road. I looked up to see a black car pull into the church parking lot with a black hea.r.s.e following close behind. Hidden within the cloud of dust that was hovering above the road, I could see a group of men, all dressed in dark suits and dark overcoats, step out of the car and move toward the back of the hea.r.s.e.

One man, wearing a black hat, opened the back door and then directed the others to stand in two lines facing each other. They all bowed their heads, as if they were saying a prayer, and then the man in the hat directed the others to pull the brown, wooden casket out of the hea.r.s.e. Running toward the church, I began yelling at the men in the dark suits.

"Hey, stop right there," I cried. "Stop! Stop right there!"

All seven of them looked up at once, shocked, scanning the parking lot for the person they could only hear. The man with the hat yelled back, telling me that whoever I was, I needed to leave, that this was a solemn moment.

"Don't tell me what this is or isn't," I shouted back, now standing clearly in the parking lot next to the men holding my daddy's casket. "That is my daddy in there, and you're going to open that box right now and let me get a good look at his face," I continued with a harsh determination. The men looked shocked and confused. I could tell they were waiting for some concerned relative to appear and carry me away. But n.o.body came. Finally, the man in charge cleared his throat.

"Miss, we are real sorry for your loss," he said as the others stood silently, bearing the weight of the casket. "You are obviously upset, and I understand your wanting to see your daddy, but the parking lot is not the appropriate place for a viewing. You need to go on home like I said and come back later, with your mama."

I didn't have a mama, I told him, and at that very moment, I wasn't really concerned with what was or was not the proper etiquette of the dead. So I walked toward the men, and without waiting for an invitation, squeezed my body between them. And right then and there, in the parking lot of Cedar Grove Baptist Church, I lifted the lid of my daddy's casket.

Resting his head on a white satin pillow, my daddy was just lying there, quiet and peaceful, far away from all the trouble and sadness he left behind. He was so still. He didn't look like the man who used to carry me in his arms. There was makeup on his face, and it made him look like one of those mannequins in the men's department at Davison's. I touched his hand, but it was cold and hard. I yanked my hand away and tried to catch my breath. My daddy was dead, that's for sure, but I didn't have any tears to offer him. I wanted answers. I wanted an explanation, and Daddy wasn't speaking up.

"Everybody seems to think that you had something to do with Mama's leaving," I told him. "I missed her so much. n.o.body knew that any better than you. And now I think I might be needing to hate you, but you've gone and up and died and I can't even do that. What kind of man runs away, Daddy? Huh? Tell me that."

"Miss," the man interrupted, "I'm not so sure you should be yelling at the dead out here in the parking lot. I understand you've got some things you need to say, but I'd feel better about it if we could at least get your daddy in the church safe and sound."

"Fine," I replied. "Take him on into the house of the Lord. He'll know what to do." I couldn't help but wonder if the minute he arrived at those Pearly Gates, he hadn't gotten down on his knees before Peter himself and started begging for forgiveness.

I closed the lid and politely told the strange men in the black suits that I appreciated their time, and then I started my walk back home. I'd barely gotten one foot in front of the other when I looked up and saw Miss Raines standing at the end of the driveway.

"Well, h.e.l.lo," I said abruptly, "I guess you heard all of that."

"Yes, Catherine Grace. But I didn't mean to," she said, casting those pretty eyes of hers to the side so she wouldn't have to look me in the face.

"So I hear you're expecting," I said, hardly waiting for her response.

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"How about that! What a wonderful surprise. You must be thrilled," I replied with a big, sarcastic smile stretching clean across my face. "Listen here, Miss Raines, nothing really is as it should be right now, and I don't have the patience or energy to beat around the bush. Is my daddy the daddy of your baby? Tell me. Yes or no?"

A long silence said what Miss Raines could not.

"Well, how about that! Apparently my daddy did whatever the h.e.l.l he felt like doing, all in the name of the Lord."

"Catherine Grace, n.o.body needs to know."

"It's a little late for that, Miss Raines, or did you forget you are living in Ringgold, Georgia. I bet the entire Cedar Grove congregation knew you were having that baby before you did."

"It doesn't really matter what they think, I guess. I'm leaving town just as soon as I can. n.o.body is going to want me here reminding them that Reverend Cline has . . . has . . ." She couldn't bring herself to say it, has gone and knocked up the Sunday-school teacher. That's right, my daddy, the great man of G.o.d, has gone and fornicated the Sunday school teacher. Adulterous fornication, that's it. Wonder how Martha Ann would like the sound of that-adulterous fornication. I knew Roberta Huckstep would love to let those words slide off her tongue.

"Listen, Catherine Grace, I promise I won't cause any problems for you or Martha Ann. Your daddy was a good man. He even arranged for me to stay with a wonderful family down in Summerville," Miss Raines tried to explain.

"Oh good. Because it's so comforting for me to know that Daddy arranged to hide you away with some good Christian family. That does make it so much better, don't you think, Miss Raines?"

"Catherine Grace, he was only thinking about my reputation, and yours and Martha Ann's. He couldn't marry me and . . ." She started muttering.

"Excuse me. He couldn't what? He couldn't marry you?" My voice was loud and shrill and I could see Miss Raines started to tremble right there in front of me. "You knew, didn't you? You knew he was still married to my mama?"

"No. I mean yes. I mean, he only told me after I found out I was expecting, Catherine," she said, as if that made good sense.

I stared at Miss Raines, and then at the men carrying my daddy's casket through the front doors of the church. I knew that was my daddy inside that box, I saw him with my own eyes. But it sure didn't seem like the same man who had taught me about football and pot roast and eternal salvation. And I wasn't so sure I was going to hang around town and act like he was the great man of G.o.d he had led me, and everybody else, to believe he was. I wasn't sure I had the strength for that.

CHAPTER TEN.

Bearing the Sins of My Mama and Daddy I left Miss Raines crying in the parking lot and headed back to my house under a sky that felt dark and dreary even though the sun had finally found its way from behind the clouds. My mama and daddy had certainly left me a mess to sort out, and I couldn't think of a single verse of scripture that was going to comfort me as I came to terms with an adulterating daddy, a resurrected mama, and an expectant mistress with an imaginary fiance.

One thing was for certain, I was going to pack my blue vinyl suitcases, and then I was heading back to Atlanta, whether Miss Mabie and Flora took me or not. And as much as those two seemed to be enjoying the gracious hospitality here in Ringgold, I thought I might very well be traveling alone. But I didn't care, my head hadn't stopped spinning since I'd come home, and I needed to get back to the city where I could think straight.

As I walked past Ruthie Morgan's house, something red caught my eye. And there, in the dead of winter, I looked up to see three terra-cotta pots sitting on the front porch, each one filled with a large, blooming geranium. I knew they were made of plastic, nothing could be that perfect, not even at Ruthie Morgan's house. I wondered if she was out with Hank, snuggled up close to his body in the front seat of his red truck. Maybe I needed some plastic plants on my front porch so I could pretend, at least for a day or two, that everything was perfect.

Instead, my house was looking pretty pitiful, smoke pouring out of its single brick chimney, a dead poinsettia left sitting by the front door-an appropriate welcome to the Cline house.

Everyone was probably still sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and rea.s.suring Lena Mae that her oldest daughter would find it in her heart to forgive her. Not yet. No, I wasn't ready to start forgiving anybody. I walked right past my house and into town. I walked past the Shop Rite and the Dollar General Store, where I could see Mr. Tucker stacking jars of Vaseline on the end of aisle eight. I kept my head down, hoping he wouldn't notice me and want to stop and speak. I walked past the high school, where a couple of boys were bundled up in jackets running around the field, tossing a football. I walked past the Dairy Queen and could see Eddie Franklin's red hair popping up behind the ice cream machine. I imagine he practiced making chocolate-dipped cones all winter long just to keep his form at its best.

I walked past the Old Mill, and then turned right, and headed straight for Lolly Dempsey's house. When I lived here, I rarely went to Lolly's house, and yet today I was desperate to get there. I was desperate to find something normal, even if it was a house full of anger and stale cigarette smoke. A tattered paper sign taped to the Dempsey's doorbell said it was broken. That bell had been broken for years, ever since Lolly and I accidentally tripped on some wires up in the attic.

We were playing with a Ouija board we had bought at the Dollar General Store, both of us too afraid to admit that we had it, for fear that my daddy or her mama would think we were playing some game with the devil. Mr. Dempsey decided that a rat ate through the wire, and we never had the nerve to tell him any different.

I pounded my fist on the door and then waited a moment for Mrs. Demspey to start yelling, just like she always did. "Lolly! Lolly! Get the d.a.m.n door, I'm watching my programs."

Lolly acted like she never heard her mother screaming across their tiny, two-bedroom house. It was Lolly's one little act of defiance, one that always seemed lost on her mother. I waited a minute more, then Mrs. Dempsey cracked the door just enough for me to see her standing there in her bathrobe, a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth. It was good to see her.

"Lord, Catherine Grace, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" she asked, opening the door all the way into the living room. I didn't even bother trying to explain because I knew Mrs. Dempsey wasn't really interested in anything I had to say. "Sorry to hear about your daddy. Tough break," she added, making that the most she'd ever said to me. I guess dying really does bring out the best in people.

Lolly suddenly appeared behind her mother, almost pushing her aside to make room for herself. "Catherine Grace," she shouted, grabbing my hand and practically dragging me inside the house. "I was so afraid I wasn't going to get to see you," she said as she hugged me tight around the neck, again. "Come on, let's go to my room and talk. You want a Coca-Cola or something, some hot Dr Pepper?"

"No thanks, I'm good. I just wanted to see how you were doing, before I headed back to Atlanta."

"So you're going back right after the funeral? I was kind of hoping you were going to stay for awhile."

"No, I'm leaving tonight."

"Catherine Grace, are you kidding me? Tonight? The funeral is not till tomorrow. What's going on?"

I told her straight-out that my mother was still alive, and I said it with such a matter-of-fact calmness that I think it took Lolly a minute to comprehend what I had said. "Yep, looks like she ran away from home," I repeated, just to be certain that she had heard me right.