Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth (4 page)

"Bible talks about beasts," I say.

"Well, yes," says Brother Lucas. "It does." He takes a breath, heaves it out. "You go ahead and put them in," he says to Jed.

I start thinking about trilobites, too, but since they was in the water, I know we don't got to worry about them.

So Jed Bean puts two
Tyrannosaurus rexes
behind the elephants. Me and Chester color them in, but we're running out of time, so Brother Lucas says we'll have to finish next week.

We put the Magic Markers away. But I start thinking about bugs and insects. "Where are we going to put them insects?" I ask Brother Lucas. I'm following him up the stairs to the main hall with Granny's guitar.

"Why are you so worried about insects?"

"Lord made insects, too," I say. "They got a whole building full at the zoo."

Brother Lucas sighs again. "Mary Mae, you read Genesis. Bible says the ark is three hundred cubits long."

"What's a cubit?"

"Cubit's a
forearm.
" He says it like it's something any dumb-dumb would know. "Point is, the ark was one and a half football fields long. Now that's a pretty big ship. Noah for sure would have had enough room for insects."

"But insects don't stay where you put them," I say. "They crawl around. Or fly. And insects eat other insects. How are we going to keep all them insects separate?"

"Maybe they was in little tiny cages."

I'm wondering what them cages was made of, but you can tell Brother Lucas don't want to talk no more. "Mary Mae," he says, "the Lord performs miracles. You got to remember this is a holy expedition." And he goes up the aisle and sets with his wife.

I just want to know things. It seems to me the Bible ain't giving the whole story. How was all them animals fed? That's what I'd like to know. Most all of them eats something different, and there wouldn't hardly be room enough to hold all their food. I done been to the library at school. Couldn't find nothing. Just pretty picture books with Noah a-standing there and all them animals marching in. Nobody goes inside and tells how they done it. So I'm thinking maybe the Lord was dropping food down onto the ark hisself. Like he give free food to the children of Israel.

***

Granny and I sing "Devil's Got Your Number," only this time I play guitar and she plays fiddle.

Sister Coates asks who would like to give thanks.

"I'm grateful I got a dollar per hour raise," says Chester Morley's mama.

"I'm glad I don't have to move to Tampa," says Billy Grover.

"My gardenias is coming into full bloom," says Wanda Brierly. "Laundry room smells like a perfumery, and I got six new buds."

"Praise Jesus," says Sister Coates.

***

She preaches on the third commandment, Exodus 20:7: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." I can tell Mama's real pleased that Granny's getting this lesson. She's saying "Amen" and "Oh yes" to everything Sister Coates is a-saying. But after benediction Granny can't find her glasses and cusses up a storm.

"Granny!" says Mama.

"Sweet Jesus," says Granny, "I apologize!"

***

Before we leave, I got to talk to Sister Coates. "How can you count each generation twenty years when some of them Bible people didn't have kids till they was ninety years old?"

"Mary Mae, all I can say is, you got to trust the Bible scholars. They been adding up them numbers longer than we have."

"But I like to add them up myself."

Sister Coates nods, like she understands, but her eyebrows is a-going up at the same time, like she wishes I would quit.

"I got another question," I say. "Who wrote the Bible?"

Sister Coates takes a deep breath and looks at her watch. "Bible was wrote by God, but he was dictating to a lot of folks," she says. "They wrote on scrolls and stored them in pots."

"Do you think things was left out when they was copying?" I ask.

"Oh, they was pretty careful," says Sister Coates.

But I ain't so sure.

"Mary Mae, sit down here," says Mama.

It's Sunday afternoon. She points to the seat on the other side of the table. I know something's coming on.

"I been meaning to talk to you." She takes a sip of her soda. "Sister Coates says you've been asking a lot of questions."

"She likes questions," I say. "She says if we got any, just ask."

"There are things you should not question." Mama slides her glass to the side, sets her elbow on the table, and talks with her pointer finger. "You do not question the Lord's plan. You do not question the Lord's grace. You do not question the Lord's word."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, why not?" Mama looks around the room like she can't believe I'm questioning her. "Mary Mae, Satan has come and had a heyday in your head."

Right away I'm thinking of Jed Bean's Devil puppet, how it's setting right under my forehead. "I just like to know things, that all."

"All you need to know is right on that sticker we put up, John 3:16. You do not need to know about generations. You do not need to know
why
the Lord done anything. He has his reasons. If you're learning things at school that don't mesh with the Bible, you got to tell your teacher you ain't allowed to hear it. She'll have to give you another assignment."

"I don't want no other assignments. I want to do what everybody else does."

"I'm warning you, Mary Mae, if you're learning things that ain't in line with what we believe, I'll have to take you out of school."

"You can't do that."

"Yes I can. I'll teach you at home."

"But it ain't legal."

"Oh yes it is. I read about it in
Christian Testament.
"

Mama goes and gets her magazine. It's opened up to a picture of a mama and two kids setting at a table. Mama starts reading. "'I just did not like what was being taught in the schools,' says Mrs. DeVries, 'and I discovered it is my right as a parent to educate my children at home.'"

"Hmmph," I say. "I don't want to stay at home. All I'd get is Bible and spelling."

"That's all you need," says Mama. "That and a little bit of numbers. Now I don't want to do that. Lord knows, I got enough to do down at Harbin Plumbing. But I got to be certain you're being brought up Bible. Why can't you be my sweet little Mary Mae? It's all so easy if you just believe what the Bible says and don't go asking no questions. Mary Mae, you got to be a witness for others. Like what we done last Saturday, spreading the message of the Lord."

"I do want to spread the message," I say. "I want everybody to go to Heaven. But I want to know things, too. Like how come the ground's all set down in stripes? And how come there's all them little animals in the rocks around here?"

Mama goes over to the refrigerator for more ice. "What little animals?"

"They's seashells around here because this used to be an ocean. One kid even found a trilobite." I don't tell her who.

"What's that?" says Mama.

"It's a little animal used to live a long time ago."

"Is it mentioned in the Bible?"

"I don't think so."

"Well if it ain't in the Bible it ain't a real animal."

"But lots of things ain't in the Bible."

"If you ask me," says Mama, taking a sip of soda, "the Lord put all them shells in the ground just to trick us."

"Trick us?"

"Folks that don't believe in the Bible think the world's older than six thousand years. It's the Lord's test."

But if Mama's right, the Lord had to mix up a whole lot of dirt all different colors and drop them shells in like nuts in cookie batter. And why would he want to do that? Why would the Lord that loves us want to play tricks?

So I ask Miss Sizemore next day before school, "Do you think the Lord put all them shells in the rocks just to make us
think
the world's old?" I feel a little silly asking, because it makes the Lord sound like a cardsharp.

"The world is old," says Miss Sizemore. "What you see on the chart is only the life of the earth. The universe goes back billions of years."

A loud whoosh goes through my head when I hear the word billions. "How do they know?" I ask.

"By measuring the light from the stars. Scientists have determined that the stars are moving away from us."

"But how do they know that?"

"They measure something called a red shift. Even on earth, light moving away from us creates a red shift. Measuring this, they can calculate speed and count backwards."

"How far back?" I say.

"Fifteen billion years."

I gulp. "But what was the beginning? What was it like at the beginning?"

"One particle. That's what scientists believe. That it exploded, and just kept expanding."

"Sort of like something from nothing?"

"That's right," says Miss Sizemore.

Sounds like Creation to me. I walk over to my seat. One minute I picture the Lord popping out of that particle like a genie. The next minute I picture him holding the particle.

***

I tell Granny about the world being billions and billions of years old. "So how come the Bible says Creation took six days?" I say.

"Maybe days was longer back then," she says. "Maybe a day was billions of years."

"But I'm a-wondering when Noah's ark was," I say.

"Don't seem to me it matters," says Granny. "Time ain't something we can pin down that good."

***

Me and Herschel go out one more day after school. It's the last chance we got, since they's coming back to do the foundation. I find some brachiopods and a spiny snail.

"Think you could come with me and hunt for fossils next Saturday?" says Herschel.

"I don't think so," I say. "I ain't even supposed to be here."

"Why not?"

"Mama thinks digging's bad. She wants me to get other assignments."

"You mean like Shirley Whirly?"

I nod. "Says if I don't, she's taking me out of school."

***

Later I'm setting in my room at my dressing table studying my collection, got my fossils lined up in front of Mrs. Noah. I'm a-cleaning them up with a toothbrush and don't hear Mama come up the stairs.

"Mary Mae, you can't have rocks up here."

"These ain't rocks," I tell her.

"What are they?" She picks up a coral, turns it around.

I'm thinking of making something up, but instead I just come out with it. "Fossils."

"Fossils? Well you get them things out of here. I'm warning you you're headed for homeschooling." Mama drops the coral into my cigar box. "You get them things out to the trash."

I put the other fossils back in my cigar box. I start to follow Mama downstairs, but instead I open up the arms to my dressing table and hide my cigar box in the back of my drawer.

Miss Sizemore says she wants us to write a report—two pages on one of the fossils we've been studying. We're skipping dinosaurs, she says, since southern Ohio don't have no dinosaur fossils. They come after the Ordovician age, and all them layers was wore off.

Shirley Whirly raises her hand and reminds Miss Sizemore she ain't allowed to write on fossils. Miss Sizemore says she can write on Ohio Valley weather instead. "Is there anyone else whose parents do not want them to report on fossils?" she asks.

Herschel looks at me. I don't raise my hand. I want to learn as much about trilobites as I can. I ask Miss Sizemore if I can do a report on them like an interview. Good idea, she says. So I do some reading, and this is what I write:

MM: Tell us how you spend your day, Mr. Trilobite.
T: Well, I mostly nose around in the bottom and eat.

MM: What do you eat?
T: I have worms sometimes. I walk along until I find a worm trail. Then I just wait for them.

MM: Then what do you do?
T: I sit around in the mud some more. Then I do some swimming. Sometimes I molt.

MM: What does that mean, Mr. Trilobite?
T: Means my shell comes off and I go around unprotected until I grow a new one. That's how I get bigger. I bust out of my old suit and grow me a new one.

MM: How big can you get?
T: I got a cousin that's eight inches. Me, I'm only an inch and a half.

MM: Mr. Trilobite, do you have any enemies?
T: Yes, I do.

MM: Tell us who they are.
T: Cephalopods.

MM: What are cephalopods, Mr. Trilobite?
T: Squids.

MM: Are you able to defend yourself?
T: I got a few things I can do, like roll into a ball. A squid can still eat me, but I'm not as tasty that way. I can swim into a cave, too. And I can sit with a lot of other trilobites.

Then I got a lot of other questions I ain't got the answers to, but I put them down to find out later.

Do trilobites have families?
Do trilobites have houses, like a hole in the sand?
Do trilobites ever fight with each other?
Do trilobites ever sleep?

I take this home and read it to Granny. Then me and her make up some more verses to our trilobite song.

Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,
Who's his mom and who's his dad?
Eats up worms, then rolls in a ball
Hides from the squid with the big eyeball.

Trilobite crab, trilobite crab.
Rolls in the mud and likes to gab.
Cracks his suit, that's how he grows.
Molts his shell from head to toes.

We put them all together with the verses we made up last week, and we sing away.

***

Tonight Mama and Granny are setting down at the kitchen table, and Mama gets to talking about our boarder Lucinda that went back to Clarksville, Indiana. She don't come right out and say it, but I know what she's a-coming around to. Lucinda, that never had no boyfriends, up and got pregnant, and went back home to have her baby, only Mama don't want me to know.

So now, today, she says, "Mary Mae, I don't think this is for your ears. You better get yourself upstairs."

"I don't want to go upstairs," I say. "I'm old enough."

"No, you ain't, and you better do what I say. You got homework to do."