People are dying all around me. I'm dying too. There's not a thing I can do about it, just wait for it to happen and try not to think about Hell too much. Momma always likes to say that her Irene was born free, but I know what she means is that I was born for free at the W.W. Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah. She was born free too, and she almost died of it.
My grandmother Lula is Pentecostal Holiness and Cherokee stubborn; try to talk sense into that combination. Momma could have been born properly, at the Indian Hospital like a regular heathen, but Lula—and now Momma too—believes God's will is that his saints trust in him for everything, not doctors. So my momma was born at Sister Emma Jean's house. The Lord's will seems funny to me. God gave us the sense to make medicine, but not sense enough to use it, not the people I know at least. I know faith heals. So does partridgeberry and brain surgery. It's these kinds of thoughts that make me a sinner.
Anyway, Momma came out with a black head, and I'm not talking about her hair. I mean her whole head was black as a musket ball from lack of oxygen. She was breach and the cord wrapped around her neck. The midwives like to of never got her out. But Lula wouldn't have a doctor one on the scene, even in her desperate, baby having state. Hell, what do I know? Momma seems to be fine, although she's a little crazy. Before Lula got sick and Momma went back to church, it's been told that Momma would sometimes drive around town with no top on when she was really hitting the bottle. I heard talk that she was a hit at the Dairy Dip. But then again, I don't know that that's so very unusual for Marble City.
I came out of Momma exactly fifteen years and eleven months, to the day, after her black head left Lula's inner domicile. Momma doesn't do much of anything half way, least of all backsliding. First a bastard baby, then doctors!
If I changed my ways, I might be a perfect Sunday school lesson for "The Lord Worketh in Mysterious Ways." Instead, I'm the "Straight is the Gate and Narrow is the Path" warning. I am what happens to teenage girls when they don't listen to their mother, or to Jesus: you end up having your own potty mouthed teenage girl who's disrespectful and bound for trouble (according to one particular church deacon). Heaven forbid somebody try to think for themself around here.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think doctors are perfect. I've read about scalpels left in patients after they were sewed up, over prescribing antibiotics, and Ritalin, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I might be from Marble City, but I'm not dumb. I read. In fact, I'm going to Northeastern up in Tahlequah next year where I can go for free just for being 3/8 Indian and half-way not stupid.
I was born free, educated for free, and raised on commodity cheese and black and white labeled cans with pictures of corn cobs and pigs on them: the Indian way. I'm wondering if there's a way for me to die free, but my great-grandmother died a few years back, and even though she was a full-blood, Lula and my mom and aunts had to scrounge up the money to buy the casket. For years Granny had been putting away for the plot beside her Irish husband, who I didn't know. Don't be confused. Indian Territory does not include cemeteries or caskets. You got to pay for those.
Anyway, I was telling you about the state of medicine around here. Granny died at home. Me and her slept together for years. I had to stop when the tumor in her breast started to bleed. She kept a Kleenex taped over it, and sometimes the tissue'd fall off in the night. I guess it was real, real painful. But she was old. So maybe the doctors couldn't of done anything anyway. I don't know. She didn't talk to me about it, even though I was her favorite, but I've heard Momma and them talk about how much pain she was in. It's real sad. I try not to think about that, really.
She laughed a lot, and my granny would sit and play with me for hours when I was little. We played church when Lula and Momma wasn't home, which she wasn't a lot back then. I guess I suffered from poor imagination and didn't know to play nothing else. I'd be Uncle Jack up front banging on a hymnal and stomping my feet, and Granny'd always be Sister Mays on the piano where she'd crack her knuckles and frown into the keyboard Sister Mays did. Lula would have called it blasphemy and yelled at Granny and threatened me with a belt.
Granny had this big, round belly, and she almost always wore an apron over it. She'd come out of the kitchen with wet handprints on her apron and the smell of squaw bread and fried bologna all over her, and I'd talk her into filling me up on it before we sat down at the table. I've heard girls at school talking about how they can't wait to meet their soul mate and get married. I've thought a lot about that, and you know, I guess I'd like to get married someday; I'm not quite sure. But I'm pretty sure Granny was my soul mate, so I guess a cute boy with half a damn brain will have to do.
I want to think she would have gone to the doctor. I heard Momma say that Granny was scared. Maybe she was afraid she laughed too much or played church one too many times. Maybe she was scared God would send her to Hell after all those years of good living for going to the hospital before she died, because her faith really didn't move mountains. Like her whole life had been pretend and really she preferred living here on Earth with me to dying and going to heaven for her white robe and husband. I've thought a lot about this. You sit in church four nights and one day a week for seventeen years and see how you feel.
I check my breasts every morning. They are growing, you know, and I'm afraid they might be growing abnormally. I can't get these people to take me to the doctor. They feel sort of lumpy just before I get my period. Momma says that's normal. She says the saints will pray for my mind. I've got a box of Kleenexes and a roll of tape by my bed for when it happens. I don't want to die at home. Momma has started calling me a hypochondriac. I get these headaches. She says the headaches come from reading late at night with bad light. They checked my eyes at school just last year. My eyes are fine; it's my body that's dying.
People get sick everywhere, I know. But not like the holyrollers around here. I think there must be something in the pipes at church. Lula had her first spell a few years back. When she fell, she hit her head on the piano bench at home. All I really know is I walked in and she's laying there, seized up, jerking, in a puddle of blood. I thought she was dying right there next to the piano, on the living room floor. She was bleeding from her mouth too because she'd bit the tip of her tongue off. We didn't have a phone so the first thing I do is run next door and call 911. Well, okay. First I called Uncle Jack. He's our pastor and Lula's brother. He called the saints to start praying, and he headed over to the house. But as soon as I get off the phone with him, I call 911. Marble City doesn't have a hospital so Uncle Jack got there first. By then, Lula wasn't jerking so much. Just making this sound I'd never heard before. It didn't sound like it could come out of her. It's a real low moan, and God, how it hurts all the way through just to hear it. I've heard it so many times now that I don't think I'll ever be able to get it out of my heart or head, or wherever it's wedged itself.
Uncle Jack kneeled down and took a bottle of olive oil out of his back pocket. He said a quick prayer over it, like I've seen him and the deacons at church do a million times. Then he opened the bottle and poured some into his palm and laid his hands on her head, right where the blood was. He began to pray. His prayer was strong and simple: "I command thee, sickness, in the name of our father and savior, Jesus Christ, leave Sister Lu's body right now." A lock of his black hair had fallen into his eyes, and I remember thinking maybe he should use some of the blessed olive oil on his hair. I was huddled in the corner, watching from behind the recliner by then, crying. I was trying to pray, but all that would come out was, "Please God. Don't."
By the time the ambulance showed up, the sound she was making was different. She was blowing air out of her lips, and they were flapping, like she was playing with a little kid, making the sound a car makes. I didn't know it then, but that means she's about to come to. The men loaded her up on a stretcher, and Uncle Jack didn't even say anything about it. He just hugged me, and I cried some more. Then he went to the hospital to sit with her. I stayed home to clean up the blood. Lula came home that night with a brain tumor and six months to live. That was a few years ago.
Now she has spells a lot; some weeks it seems like every day. It's real scary when it happens because Momma's always working, and I'm usually the only one there. She gets real quiet and starts concentrating on something real hard, like smoothing her skirt over and over. You can be talking to her, and it's like she just goes away. Then I get this real funny feeling inside, and I know I'm a horrible person because I get mad at her and scared at the same time, and I just want to run out the door and never come back, just leave her there. I told you, I'm a sinner. But I don't run away. I try to guide her to the sofa. I go and get a wooden spoon-we keep them all over the house now. And try to get it between her teeth when she falls, try to keep my fingers out of the way. I try not to hear the noises she makes. I talk to her, tell her about school, smooth her hair and tell her how pretty she is and that it'll be alright. I dab the slobber from the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex, pull her skirt down if it rides up. And I always call the saints to pray. Sometimes it takes her a whole day or two to recover. She refused surgery, of course. So she just has the damned seizures.
She had a spell one day at the Piggly Wiggly over in Sallisaw. And by now, most folks around these parts know Sister Lula and know not to call the hospital. They'll just give her a ride home when she comes to. (Me or Momma had to take the wheel one too many times when she had a spell driving, and they took her license.) But this one time at the Piggly Wiggly, there wasn't anybody around who knew her, and the manager called the hospital. They took her in before she came to. And she was even groggy enough to let them do tests on her before she demanded to be released. Well, it's a miracle. The doctor even called it that, according to Lula. The tumor was gone. All that's left of it is scar tissue on her brain. You know it's not that I don't believe—I do—but she still has seizures. She won't even take the medicine.
This girl Mary Ellen got a blood disease last year. She was my best friend. All summer and into fall, we watched her get paler and weaker. She was already pale, but you could almost see through her after she got sick. She wasn't much older than me, but she didn't want to go to the doctor. I don't understand it. I think her family even said she could if she wanted to, but she just laid there on her bed, amongst the pillows and quilts, smiled and shook her head no. That's what her momma testified at church after she died anyway. I miss her. Her momma said that when Mary Ellen left, she said, "I'm going home, Ma," and closed her eyes. I'm afraid I hate this church sometimes.
Me and Mary Ellen used to talk about boys a lot before she got sanctified with the Holy Ghost and died. Not the dumb church boys, with patches in their britches and their shirts buttoned all the way to the top. But the boys in town who drive the fast little cars with the neon lights on the bottom. We always sat in the back of church and passed notes, trying not to giggle out loud. Then next thing I know, she sits in the front one night, and there's my Uncle Jack doing altar call, looking right at her. Maybe it was her time, and God was calling her, but I don't know why she had to listen. She walked right up to the front crying. I started crying too. I guess the Spirit was really moving that night. Brother Marshall, that one particular deacon, came back and asked me to pray with him. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and shook my head. He kneeled down and put his hand on my shoulder and started praying. I stopped crying right then and jutted my jaw out and gritted my teeth. I might not be all Cherokee, but I got stubborn down. Mary Ellen, though, all the rest of the deacons gathered around her until all I could see of her kneeling down was her little feet making a "v" pointing toward each other, sticking out of the bottom of her jean skirt. Brother Marshall is praying hard, moaning, shaking my shoulder and I just stare straight ahead, steely eyed. And he's crying and wailing, and then he stands up and sits next to me, and he's got snot dangling from his nose. I hand him a Kleenex and then go back to looking at Mary Ellen's feet. We were going to go to Northeastern together.
"Jesus has a place for you, Irene. A wonderful place full of saints and little children."
I don't say nothing.
"Hell is a horrible place full of wretchedness and the gnashing of teeth. It's time for you to decide. You're not a girl anymore."
He waits for me to acknowledge, to break down and get on my knees and start begging for forgiveness. But I can't. I want to go to college, not sit here praying my life away and having muskethead babies in Sister Eijean's spare bedroom. God forgive me but I don't. I don't tell Brother Marshall any of this. He'll just come back with some scripture that I already know by heart and make me feel bad. I already feel like I'm dying. And up in the front with Mary Ellen, the praying's getting louder. Brother Tim is up and shouting. If you've never seen holyrollers shout, you can't imagine what happens. Everybody has their own style of dancing with the Holy Ghost, and there ain't much rhythm involved, not at Marble City Free Holiness Church at least. Brother Tim's head starts jerking backwards and down in these little controlled motions, like his neck wants to swallow his head. And he's crying, and his shoulders are moving with his head, but he doesn't move his legs very much, just stays in one place, and he's mumbling the secret code of the Holy Spirit. Some people are interpreters, but we usually don't have one at our church. Every few months this one lady stops in, and she just stands at the front, saying word for word what the Holy Ghost is saying through those around her. It's a little unsettling, I tell you. Some things you just don't want to know. And Brother Marshall has snot coming out of his nose again. I look over at him, and his eyes are squeezed shut, but tears are escaping through the corners. I think of my homework; my English reader is sitting beside me.
"Irene," he says, "God only gives you so many chances. God's here now with an open door. We don't know how long we have."
And I know he believes everything he's saying with his full-heart. I don't know that I believe anything that much, except that I'm dying and so is he and so is everyone in this service, in this puny town, and in the whole-wide world. I didn't know how soon Mary Ellen was going, though. I guess it was her plan, to go get saved, really saved, that night so she could die in peace.
"You or I could walk out that door tonight, and we might not make it home. We could die in a wreck, like my boy Bobby Earl."
Bobby Earl was out drinking with his buddies. He was much cuter than most of the other church boys. He was a little older than us, but he called Mary Ellen sometimes. He'd backslid and had been going wild all year, wild like only holyroller kids can. They had a wreck, and he laid there in the ditch all night. By the time they found him, he barely had a pulse, and doctors couldn't save him.
"I pray to God for his soul, that he made peace with Jesus through the night, that that's why he held on so long, because his heart was talking to the angels sitting with him, and he was asking for forgiveness. But you or I can't know. That's between him and our Heavenly Father."
I'd heard all this before, and it scared me, but now little pale Mary Ellen, my Mary Ellen, was up. There was yelling and praising coming from the circle of men, and almost all of them were talking in tongues. And so was Mary Ellen. She was talking, real quiet at first, but she wasn't talking a language I could understand anymore. Lula and Momma are up at the front singing. Lula's voice is beautiful and strong, and her little gray head is gazing toward the ceiling at something I can't see. I start to tear up again. And that makes me mad because I know Brother Marshall will think it's because he's helping me to see the evil of my ways and that'll keep him talking about Bobby Earl. And because I get mad, I tear up even more. And then I saw her hair. I knew when Mary Ellen's hair began to fall from her bun-hers was always much tighter and neater than mine-that I was going to Northeastern alone, if I lived that long. Her mumbling had become louder. And her hands were skyward, and she jumped, both feet in unison, in little short bursts, over and over again. So this was how she shouted. I only saw it one more time before she died.
"We know not when our Master returneth, Irene. I love you. Your Momma loves you. But you'll never know love until you take Jesus Christ as your Loving Savior. Irene, all you have to do is ask. He's waiting on you, Irene. God loves you more than anything in this world. Right now, you have a chance, and you may not have another."
I looked at Mary Ellen at the front of the church one more time. Then I gathered my books up and left Brother Marshall sitting there on the wooden pew. I could hear the piano and Lula's voice as I walked down the dark hallway, out the back door, and into the night. I wasn't feeling good.