Homefires (20 page)

“’Cause when I raise my hand to answer the things I
do
know, they ignore me. They
never
call on me in class.” Her wounded gaze tore at my heart.

At the next PTA meeting, Kirk and I had made a point of talking with each teacher to relay Krissie’s insecurities. Each expressed concern, but I’d not yet seen a dramatic turnaround in my daughter’s self-image. The bruising left her feeling unlovable.

“You’re a bright little girl, honey,” I reassured her afterward.

Krissie, being Krissie, never talked back. She was too kind and respectful to overtly disagree, but I could see it in the deep blue lagoons: she didn’t believe me.

Hopewell Methodist Church sported many musicians, which pleased me immensely because, finally, I could be a regular church person. Well, almost
.
Thanks to those of the latest flock, I now knew I would never, in ecclesiastia, be just a
person
. Here, as in other churches, I perceived that many regarded me as an
appendage
of my dear husband, Kirk.

Hopewell’s personality – oh yes, churches
do
have personalities – differed from Possum Creek’s in that while the latter kept Kirk humble at first, making him earn their respect, Hopewell cheered him in with something like a hero’s welcome, leaving me behind in a puff of perfume-bouquet, reverting back to the invisible fly on the ceiling.

I felt distinctly jerked around. No Ma McKonna lurked on the sidelines here, waiting it out to see if I was genuine. Nobody seemed to care one way or another when it came to the pastor’s wife. Their set-in-motion lives easily accommodated the new pastor, who fit neatly into the recently vacated puzzle space. I suspected that to squeeze me in would somehow throw their smooth life flow off course.

Not so different from me, BP – before the pastorate.

I learned another connotation term – PK. Preacher’s Kids. Nobody had a problem with Krissie. Sweet little Krissie with open face and innocence, whose gentleness and reaching-outness touched anybody with a pulse, had no problems. Heather, too, with a new maturity and talent and just plain brilliance, had little difficulty beyond feeling stereotyped as that
nice preacher’s daughter,
which, she admitted later, made her want to do something publicly obscene at times, something so outrageous and scandalous that the flock would see
her
, really
see
her.

Now Toby, he was another matter. Precious little Toby – with his shocking tow-thatch of hair, perpetually nosy gray-blue orbs,
busy-busy
hands and feet – had a rare propensity to rattle nerves.

“Let me take him home for
one
week,”
teased
Brother Holmes, an old retired minister who’d settled in at Hopewell Methodist, “and I’d straighten him out for you.” The white haired geyser’s jaw-splitting grin was undermined by a purely malevolent gleam behind watery, mud-colored eyes.

Yeah, right!
I resurrected my Pastor-wife’s smile. While Toby was, I conceded, perpetual motion and racket, he was a good boy. Like Krissie, his affliction was not of choice but of genetics, his being boundless effervescence, like Kirk’s – Krissie’s being a gentle vulnerability, from her mother’s pool. Trouble was, few of the flock took the time or trouble to get past Toby’s liveliness to glimpse the generous little fellow who was unerringly polite and helpful in all things.

Until Jessica Montgomery burst on the scene. My one regret is that we had but one year with this stoical woman whose affliction – a lovely brain-damaged daughter named Deborah – redefined
blessing
to me. A widower, Jessica had decided to retire from teaching in Hopewell to be near her ailing ninety-year-old mother, who was now deceased.

The church service had just begun when a commotion commenced outside in the foyer. A loud raucous voice boomed,
“No way! Shut up,
Mama! You
stupid.”

Kirk didn’t miss a beat in his commentary, but I saw puzzlement brush his features.

“Reading from Matthew nineteen, verses thirteen and fourteen: ‘Then were there brought unto him little children,
that he should put his hands on them and pray: and the disciples rebuked him….’”

Cr-rash.
The sanctuary doors burst open and in a flash, a young woman appeared halfway up the aisle, where she rooted, twisting the bangs of her shorn pecan-brown hair, gazing curiously about her at the sea of strange faces. “
Ma-Ma-a-a!”
she bellowed at the top of her lungs in a voice not unlike a hoarse, low-pitched trumpet.

Crrraa-ash
burst the doors again, ushering in a handsome middle-aged woman who, though hastening, carried herself with queenly dignity. “Deborah, come with me,” she commanded in a gentle yet firm tone. Deborah, spiraling her twig and peering about, didn’t resist when the woman took her hand and tugged her toward a back pew. There, amid the still, shocked silence, the two women settled on a seat.

At least, the older woman settled. Deborah began to mumble and fidget.

Kirk, master of denial, quickly resumed his message, his mellow voice riding shotgun over the corncob rough bellowing, “
Stop, Mama. No way.”

“Deborah,” came the even, genteel reply, “we’re in church now. Let’s sit quietly.”

“I’m
hungry,”
was Deborah’s final roar. The mumbling ebbed away.

Kirk, unruffled, lifted his hand, “’But Jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Jessica and Deborah had entered our lives.

Hopewell Community College presented me a bright new frontier. It also filled hours made lonely by Kirk’s duty-absences and the children’s schooling. With Toby in kindergarten, my nest sat unoccupied until mid-afternoon. Second semester had me on campus until five, thus throwing me into a tailspin over what to do with my rambunctious lad.

Jessica Montgomery approached me in the vestibule between Sunday School and Worship Service. “I’ll be most happy to watch after Toby while you’re in school, Janeece,” she informed me.

I shifted my feet on the burgundy vestibule carpet and stared at her, puzzled. “How – ?”

“I overheard the Pastor discussing it with Mr. Hardy, the Lay Leader. Am I correct in assuming you need someone to care for Toby between the hours of twelve and five?”

“Ahh – yes. But you have your hands full with – ”

“Quite full, but I believe I can rout out space for a small tyke.” She waited for my response with a dignity unparalleled in my pastor’s wife experience, maintaining a fidget-free silence.

I blinked and cleared my throat, unfamiliar with such up-frontness in the South’s heartland, where genteel beatingaround-the-bush prevails. “I won’t be able to pay much but – ”

“Pay? I would not require payment to mind Toby, Janeece. Shall I begin Tuesday? I have to take Deborah in for a checkup with her doctor that morning. After that, I’ll be free to pick him up at his school.”

“Actually, Mrs. Montgomery – ”

“Please call me Jessica.”

“Jessica – the girls get home about three thirty to see after him.”

She looked at me down her well-shaped nose and I glimpsed the beauty of her prime. Seventyish, she still cut a striking figure with her full, short-cropped salt and pepper waves, olive complexion and clear whiskey colored eyes. “Are you saying you want me to pick him up and then drop him off at your house after the girls get home?”

“Well – uh, if you’re sure it’s not too much – ”

“All right. I’ll pick Toby up Tuesday at twelve o’clock if you’ll just write down directions to his school.”

Her succinct decisiveness, I learned, was what gave Jessica the edge on life. She was not a shoot-from-the-hip person, merely intuitive, seasoned with a wisdom that astounded me. Deborah’s affliction, I’d learned by now, resulted from the undiagnosed RH blood factor during her birth. By the time it was discovered and transfusions administered, the infant’s brain was severely damage. Jessica did not bear more children because her husband died in an accident when Deborah was only two.

Fortunately, Jessica’s widowed mother helped with her granddaughter during those years, enabling Jessica to teach until her retirement some years back. Deborah’s favorite activities
were watching cartoons, drawing and coloring pictures. Her least favorite things were crying babies, rowdy youngsters and arguments of any kind.

“Deborah reacts emotionally to things we only
want
to react to,” Jessica once explained. “Her colorful language, she picks up from her comrades at Flatland Skills, with whom she works three days a week. Since she has no inhibitions, she just simply has a go at it. She does okay if things move smoothly, but if anything unexpected happens, she
reacts.
” She chuckled, leaving the
reacts
open-ended.

After she departed with directions in hand, I had second thoughts. Toby and Deborah?

Deborah’s tolerance for noise is non-existent.
I rolled my eyes upward, then squeezed them shut. And Toby is
clamor
seeking opportunity. Oh, well, I squared my shoulders and took my front pew seat, Jessica seemed confident things would work out so I would simply release them into her capable hands. Then breathe a fervent prayer.

During our Hopewell Church days, the phone rang incessantly and Kirk’s motto was to ‘be instant in season and out of season” with emphasis on
instant.
He vanished with sleight-ofhand ease to serve the flock. At times, I felt the old stirring of placelessness but attributed it to my being so busy and constantly en route from one study to another. The busy-ness, I think, kept me from dwelling on the notion that Kirk was distancing more from me. Bottom line: his springy step said he was reaching a pinnacle that I, alone, could not give him.

I convinced myself I had a choice, that I could
demand
Kirk’s time and attention should I need it. I think on some level, I feared delving too deeply. On occasion, Kirk acknowledged that he placed his ministry before family.

“I don’t mean to, Neecy,” he said on one rare night at home, after the children were in bed. “It’s just that – if I’m not there when someone needs me, I will have let them down.”

“True,” I admitted, “folks don’t usually call unless there’s a real need.”

So, I sent him on his way with blessings and took care of the homefront, warmly content that he was a true man of God.
And though I hungered for more of him, I knew that in the final crush, if ever – God forbid – it came down to a choice, Kirk would choose me.