Chapter Five

      When Doll turned fifteen years old, Ann baked a three-layer lemon cake to celebrate the occasion. The family sang happy birthday, then Doll blew out the candles and received as a gift her first pair of nylons. Three days later, Ann and August celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary. At the church, an excited Ann joined her husband at the pulpit with a folded square of paper clutched in her hand. The words on the paper were filled with love and exaltations— words that any husband would have been proud to hear his wife recite.

      August was taken off guard.

      “A speech?” he squawked in surprise. Ann nudged him gently aside and positioned herself squarely behind the podium.

      Her eyes sailed over the black and brown faces that looked back at her before settling on the encouraging smiles of Doll and Vesta who were seated in the front pew with their hands folded daintily in their laps.

      Ann cleared her throat, unfolded the paper, and began: “My husband and I have been married for ten wonderful years … When I was a child, I prayed that the Lord would send me a God-fearing man, a gentle and kind man, who would make a good husband and a good father …”

      Ann stalled. She’d come across a word that she couldn’t quite make out and so apologized for the interruption and raised the paper eye-level to try to figure out what she’d written. The paper slipped from her hand and floated down to the floor. Ann giggled with embarrassment and both she and August stooped to retrieve it—that’s when Doll coughed.

      It was a loud and boisterous cough that drew the attention of not only her surrogate parents, but quite a few church members as well. The husband and wife turned their heads in the girl’s direction and Ann saw the thing she was not supposed to see.

      Her eyes bulged and her smile stretched into a hard line. When she turned to August, his lips were forming the words: Ann, please, please.

      Ann shot straight up.

      The congregation shifted uncomfortably in their pews. Something had happened—was happening—but they didn’t know what. Ann backed away from August and his pleading eyes. When he reached for her, she looked down at his hand with such horror and disdain that one would have thought it belonged to the devil himself.

      “No!” Ann screamed as she viciously slashed the air with the slip of paper.

      Fear and confusion rippled through the church, people jumped to their feet, and in a moment, twenty concerned congregants, including Vesta, surrounded Ann.

      “No, no, no!” Ann continued to bellow.

      Doll remained in her pew, calmly watching Ann unravel.

      Gloria Hardy was a beefy woman who had raised seven boys alone. She had been mother and father, protector and punisher, to those children. Her rise through the church ranks to become a deaconess was an accomplishment she was especially proud of.

      It was Gloria who smashed through the circle of parishioners and grabbed Ann by the shoulders. Her intention was to force Ann down into a pew, before she tripped over her own feet and seriously hurt herself. But Ann, out of her mind with what she had seen, sunk her teeth into Gloria’s aiding hand and Gloria forgot where she was and who she was and hauled off and punched Ann square in the nose.

      By the time Gloria realized what she’d done, Ann’s limp body was splayed out on the floor like a rag doll.

      Back at the house, Ann was in bed, propped up on two pillows. Gloria had dressed Ann’s swollen nose in gauze, lain a cool cloth over her head, and offered a thousand apologies before August was finally able to send her home.

      When Ann finally regained consciousness, August was seated in a chair, which he had dragged in from the kitchen and set across the room against the wall.

      Ann’s eyes fluttered open. The room appeared to be draped in tissue and August looked like an apparition.

      “Ann?”

      She gently touched her bandaged nose and winced. She was grateful for the pain, the pain allowed her to know that she was not dead.

      August stood and crept across the room. “Ann?” he called again, this time from the foot of the bed. Their eyes locked and Ann’s stomach turned over. She thought she would be sick.

      “August,” she began in a surprisingly even tone, “she didn’t have any bloomers on.”

      August winced at her words.

      “Don’t tell me you didn’t … notice.”

      He looked off to the window and muttered, “I didn’t.”

      Ann smirked. “You’ve been my husband for ten years; you think I don’t know when you’re lying to me?”

      “I’m not lying.”

      “Look at me.”

      August’s gaze swept quickly across Ann’s face and settled on the bare wall behind the bed.

      “Are you fucking her?”

      August gasped. She had never used that type of language, ever.

      “Ann!”

      He wasn’t fucking Doll, but he had, in all fairness to you, dear reader, dreamed about fucking her.

      You see, four months earlier, on Easter Sunday morning, August had seen Doll primping in the looking glass that hung on the wall in the bedroom she shared with Vesta. He happened to be walking by and the door was ajar, open just enough for him to glimpse Doll standing before the mirror straightening the bow in her hair and smoothing her hands down the pleats of her skirt. The girl pursed her lips and demurely batted her eyes at the vision that looked back at her, and August couldn’t help but chuckle.

      Doll went stiff, and August thought she sensed him standing there. But the moment seemed to come and go. Doll brushed a speck of lint from her collar and then brought her hand to her neck and started to stroke it.

      August watched, mesmerized, until Ann called the family for breakfast.

      In the church that day, on the pulpit, August made eye contact with everyone except Doll. Only when he uttered the first lines that would close the day’s service did he chance a glance in her direction and was stunned to find the girl was not just looking at him—she was glowering.

      An Easter egg hunt followed Sunday service. On the front lawn, the elders sat at picnic benches and younger members spread blankets. Children squealed with delight as they dashed from one discovery to the next, gathering dyed eggs. Doll was too old to participate in the hunt, but was more than happy to shadow Vesta in her pursuit.

      The beautiful afternoon faded into a spectacular evening. The North Star was the first of its clan to make an appearance. Loons struck up a serenade and scores of fireflies pulsated through the night air. One by one, people gathered themselves to leave.

       Good night, Reverend.

       Happy Easter, Reverend.

      August and Ann were seated at one of the picnic tables, holding hands and gazing up at the night sky.

      “It was good day, wasn’t it?” Ann said as she rested her head on her husband’s shoulder.

      “It was a glorious day.”

      Ann grinned.

      “Where are the girls?”

      Ann straightened up and looked around. “They’re around here somewhere,” she said. “I just saw them