A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
Next door the old man wandered out and, Jesus!—Clara saw his pants were unbuttoned, she hoped to hell he wouldn't piss right in front of them but the ladies were trying not to look. The one with the tortoiseshell glasses adjusted them, and peered at Clara with her hopeful smile, and said maybe yes they could step inside, just for a minute.
So Clara held the screen door open for Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Wylie, who brushed past her seeming to be holding their breaths, into the “unit,” and Clara saw with dismay how messy the kitchen was, dishes soaking in the sink, damp towels and clothes hanging on the backs of chairs, Nancy's flypaper twist hanging down from the light fixture above the table covered in flies and moths. Some of these were dead, and some were still living. “We only just moved in,” Clara said, as if the flypaper twist wasn't their fault. She was noting a discrepancy between the ladies' pink-lipstick mouths that were smiling, and their eyes that looked frightened and quivery. “Here is Esther Jean,” Clara said proudly, picking up the baby, such a hot little bundle in her arms she had to smile, “ain't she cute?”
“She isn't—is?—no, she isn't—”
“—isn't her baby, Catherine. Really!”
The ladies were murmuring together. Clara laughed at what they were saying. “She's my stepma's. I ain't married—I don't have any baby.” The ladies appeared embarrassed.
“Dear, the purpose of our little visit is to inquire whether … anyone in your family would like to accept an invitation to visit our church.” Mrs. Foster spoke in a rush of words, twining her white-gloved fingers around one another. “We of the First Methodist Church of Florence wish to extend to you a warm welcome from the Reverend Bargman and we hope—we hope that you will accept.”
An invitation. Clara smiled at the word, it had a sound she liked. “Oh, I'm real interested in church!” she said. “I just never been, much.”
“Your family isn't aligned with any particular church, then? But you are Christian, yes?”
“Oh, yes. Christian. But not—not particular about it.”
Clara shook her head solemnly. All eyes she'd gone in that moment, as certain of her girlfriends teased her when guys hung around her and tugged at her hair sometimes; Clara wasn't conscious of behaving any differently, only just her gaze seemed to soften and melt and she lifted her face like a flower to whoever was talking to her. It always seemed to have some effect, as now the ladies smiled at her startled and pleased.
“We are having a prayer meeting tonight, in fact,” Mrs. Foster said quickly. “At seven. A lovely child like yourself, you would be so very welcome. And of course your—stepmother, you said? And your father, and—anyone else. All of you are welcome.”
They all smiled at one another, as if a difficult hurdle had been overcome. The ladies examined the walls decorated with pictures of snowcapped mountains and southern plantation houses and careful cutouts of yellow oilcloth in the shapes of flowers; Clara was wishing she'd taped up a picture of Jesus Christ, like some people did, because the ladies would be happy to see it and like her better.
Clara walked with Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Wylie back to their car, that was parked at the front of the camp. She was deeply ashamed of the units they were passing, where laundry was hanging out, and all kinds of junk lay in the lane; little kids everywhere, fat little dark-skinned boys with no pants, and their peckers bobbing. Just like animals Clara knew the ladies were thinking. Clara kept up a bright stream of chatter in the way of Nancy when she'd been drinking and trying to deflect Carleton out of a bad mood.
Almost they'd made it to the ladies' car, where a beefy boy of about twenty was sitting behind the wheel listening to a loud radio, when some kids from the camp came running by, splashing mud and shouting what sounded like cocksucker! fucker! and laughing like hyenas. Mrs. Foster gave a little shriek, and Mrs. Wylie clutched at her purse as if fearful it would be snatched from her. Clara saw to her mortification that that damn asshole Rodwell was running with the gang, they'd done it to embarrass her.
“Never mind them,” Clara said hotly. “They're just animals.”
At the ladies' car it was decided that Clara should wait at this spot after supper, and she would be picked up and driven to the church. The boy behind the wheel, who'd had to turn the radio down at Mrs. Foster's murmured request, was staring at Clara without as much as a smile.
They drove off. Clara waved goodbye. “Don't forget me!” she called after.
There wasn't any supper that night except what Clara put together for herself. Luckily Nancy came back to get Esther Jean, to take her to a friend's place (where they'd be drinking real late, Clara knew) so Clara could wash her hair in the sink, and comb it out to dry, and put her favorite little blue barrettes in it. She wore a blue dress, too; a castoff somebody had given her. And flat black shoes called “ballerina” shoes and were only a little scuffed. “I'm going to church tonight in town. A special invitation.” She spoke to herself in a friendly way like somebody bearing good news.
By six-thirty Clara was out on the road waiting. Seeing cars she knew didn't belong to Mrs. Foster, she scrambled through a ditch to hide behind some bushes. At about five minutes to seven the stocky boy arrived, in a swirl of dust. He stared at her. “You all that's coming?”
Clara said apologetically she guessed so. Her father and stepmother couldn't come.
“O.K., Blondie. Jump in.”
He was smoking a cigar as he drove and it smelled bad. Clara tried to make herself like it, as if it were the sign of church, of a new world. She kept glancing at him nervously and when he looked at her she smiled. He said nothing. Clara thought he drove sort of fast.
“Is it hard to drive a car?” she said.
He shifted the cigar around in his mouth and took a while to answer. “Depends on how smart you are.”
“How old do you need to be?”
“You ain't old enough.”
He said no more. Clara was staring out at the houses they passed, at people who had nothing else to do but sit on their front porches and watch traffic go by. She felt something ache in her that was mixed up with the heavy sweet smell of lilacs from the big bushes by everyone's front porch.
At the church—not as big as Clara had hoped, but clean and white—the boy said to Clara, “When you get sick of that crap in there, come out. I'm gonna be over there.” He pointed down the street to a gas station.
Mrs. Foster was waiting inside for her. She held a book pressed up against her chest, and when Clara came in she seemed almost ready to embrace her. “Ah, yes, yes,” she said, smiling sadly, “so wonderful that you could—such an opportunity for you—”
Clara looked around, smiling in her confusion. The church reminded her of a schoolhouse. There were maybe eight people there, sitting in pews right up at the front.
Mrs. Foster kept talking about the “opportunity” Clara had. She walked with her up the aisle, whispering and nodding sadly. Mrs. Wylie was sitting by herself in one of the pews, her head bowed, whispering to herself. Clara noticed that the other people—three men and four women and a crippled boy with a crutch propped up near him—were also whispering to themselves. The men's voices occasionally turned into murmurs.
Mrs. Foster had her sit on the side. She felt cold and shaky. At the front of the church was a raised platform, and on that was a podium for the minister. Off to one side was an organ. She waited, glancing over now and then at the praying people, who seemed very serious and unaware of anything except their prayers. After a while there was a bustle in the back and Clara saw an enormously fat woman in a dark silk dress come in. She smiled at Mrs. Foster, who was back at the door waiting for people to come in, and her eyes were fast and bouncy like a girl's. Clara saw that her dress was stuck to her legs and looked funny. Then another man came in, tall and thin and stoop-shouldered. He whispered to Mrs. Foster and they both looked over toward Clara. She began to smile at them, but they did not quite see her—not exactly her. Then the man came over to her and put out his hand for her to shake. Cla
“My dear, I am Reverend Bargman. Mrs. Foster has told me about you. Let me say we are all so happy you came tonight.”
Clara smiled. He was a tall, earnest, gawky man, with a smile that cut the lower part of his face in two. “You may be entering the threshold of a new life. A new life,” he whispered. Clara nodded eagerly. He went on for a minute or two, using the words “threshold” and “opportunity.” Then he excused himself, stood for a while near the wall with his hands behind him, staring at the floor, and finally shook his head as if to wake himself. He strode to the front of the church, scratching the back of his hand.
He began:
“My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us give thanks for our being here this evening—for our church, our wonderful new building— And let us begin by singing hymn number 114. All together—let us rise and sing all together—”
They moved slowly. He seemed to be pulling and nudging them with his hands and little prodding movements of his body; everyone stood. Clara stood. She had found a hymnbook on the pew beside her and leafed through it. They had already begun singing, without any music behind them, before she found the hymn in the book. They made a thin, discordant mixture of voices that kept trying to waver apart. Clara stared hard at the music in the book. She had never seen music before. And the words were big words. She felt perspiration break out on her and she wondered if everyone was waiting for her to sing her part— Just ahead of her the fat woman sang, raising and lowering her head with a deliberate meekness. She was a warm, energetic partridge of a woman, with damp spots on her dress that looked like wings folded back.
Clara had thought the song was ending but it began again. The back of her neck was damp. She raised the book closer to her face and tried to read the words. Then she noticed that the minister was crying! He sang words that Clara could not even make out and these words were so sad that he was crying. He shook his head sadly. Clara waited tensely, wondering what there could be in words to make a person cry. She only cried when something real came along. But she never did find out what the words meant. After the song ended a few people cleared their throats, as if self-conscious at the silence. The minister closed his hymnbook and everyone else did the same. They sat.
“I see,” he said, with a special little smile, “that I have not worked hard enough this week. I have not worked hard enough.”
There was an intake of a breath or two. Clara did not understand. “Only this child is new to us,” the minister said, looking kindly at her. “I have not worked hard enough this week. I have not brought people to our worship of Christ.”
Mrs. Foster sighed.
“No, I have not worked hard enough. Just this child … And it is through the efforts of Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Wylie that … No, I have not worked hard enough.” He did not wipe his eyes or even his nose, Clara saw. He let the tears run down as if he were proud of them, and when he smiled she could see tears glistening around his mouth. He bowed his head and clasped his hands before him, out before him as if he were going to help pull someone up there with him, and prayed aloud. Clara stared at the top of his head. It was thick with dark hair in some places but thin in others; she wanted to laugh at it. Everything made her so nervous that she wanted to laugh. He prayed in a loud, demanding voice that got more and more angry as it went on, about Christ and blood and redemption and little children and sin and the world and money and city life and the federal government and the Sunday collection and Pontius Pilate … and his voice was angry and hard as any man's, not about to cry at all, and he began to pace tightly around on the little platform as his voice rose higher in a sudden upward swerve, as if something had caught hold of it and jerked it right up toward heaven. “God is watching! God is listening! You people in sin, how can you think God isn't with you all the time? Right now, tomorrow, yesterday, next year—always—God is always with you—”
Just when his voice was hardest, though, it collapsed down into a sob. He could not get his breath for a moment. Clara pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from smiling. In the center section women were crying freely, their heads bowed; the men stared down at the minister's shoes. Only the crippled boy was looking around the way Clara was. Their eyes met and he seemed not to see her; he had lines on his forehead and around his mouth like a man getting old.
Someone had once told Clara that God was watching her, or maybe Christ, someone was with her all the time and watching her. She hadn't bothered with it because it didn't make sense. It might or might not have been true, like many complicated things, but since it didn't make sense she forgot about it. But tonight when the minister said the same thing, it struck Clara that if God was watching anyone, it was not the people here. He was probably watching other people who were more interesting. Clara knew that God would never bother with her and she thought this was a good idea.
The minister was clearing his throat and Clara cleared her throat involuntarily, in sympathy with him. She felt the way she felt when her father or Nancy was acting silly, wanting to help but a little impatient. Then something extraordinary happened: The fat lady with the damp dress lumbered out of the pew and headed for the platform. Clara wondered if she was going to hit the minister or do something violent—maybe she was his wife. She could see the woman's thick, pale, doughlike arms, the flesh swinging free just beneath the sleeves, and her legs in brown stockings round and thick as tree limbs, working her up to the front. There she knelt, heavily, and buried her face in her hands. She was sobbing too and the minister bent over her and let his eyes streak across the pews as if drawing everyone else up to him. A pouchy-eyed spider he was, drawing the buzzing flies to him. “To Jesus! To Jesus!” he whispered loudly.
A man in a bulky drab-yellow suit coat and brown trousers gave a little sob—“Amen! Jesus!” He pushed clumsily—desperately— over knees and legs to get out into the aisle. He was panting and his face was oily-slick with happiness. “Amen! Oh Jesus, have mercy!” Clara had to pinch herself not to laugh aloud, was everybody in this place crazy? This man hurried to Reverend Bargman, too, and knelt so hard you could feel the vibrations. There came an older man, with a face like something rotted, and there was a nice-looking lady who might've been Mrs. Wylie's sister, they looked so much alike. And a chunky teenaged girl with bad skin, leaking tears behind her hands. It was so strange! What did it mean! Clara was scared something would draw her forward, too; like a magnet; she could feel invisible things in the air, like waves; like the beating of birds' wings; or maybe they were spirits, nudging and bumping against her. Why was everybody so happy, and why was everybody sobbing? Why would you sob if you weren't hurt—except out of a fear of being hurt in the future? Was it to stop God from wanting to hurt you? To show how weak you are? Clara was smiling so hard her cheeks felt like bursting. If she could fix her gaze on God she'd have gone all eyes and make Him like her but—where was God? Where was Jesus?
Crock of shit Carleton said of religion. Clara hoped if there was a God, He wouldn't blame her for her pa's opinions.
But here was her chance, Clara saw. Her opportunity. She slipped onto her knees onto the hard floor. She hid her face in her hands like God seemed to want, and made herself weak and placating praying for Rosalie. Clara had no prayer for herself, she would take care of herself, but Rosalie needed her help, maybe. After her father was taken away the rest of the family disappeared overnight and the rumor was they'd been given bus tickets back to Texas. Clara prayed Jesus let Rosalie into Heaven. Jesus let Rosalie's baby that died into Heaven. And Rosalie's pa. Jesus have mercy.
That was enough. Either it would work, or it would not.
Clara was out in the aisle. On her feet, and in the aisle. She wasn't going to be drawn to Reverend Bargman though she could see he was waiting for her, his pouchy eyes greedy upon her. He'd seen her praying, on her knees. He'd seen, and he was waiting. But Clara just laughed at him, ugly old spider, turned and ran ou
Outside, she discovered the damn old hymnbook in her hand, she tossed it down on the top step where they'd be sure to find it.
9
First they went to a little restaurant near some railroad tracks. There were several trucks parked outside, and inside were men who shouted and laughed in one another's faces. Their fists and elbows struck the tables accidentally and made them wobble. Clara, who had never been in a restaurant before, said right out to the young waitress: “I'm hungry, I want some hamburgers. I want a Coke.”
The boy was older than Clara had thought. He had a blotched, heavy face with eyes sunk back into his skull. He kept joking and interrupting himself and laughing nervously; he played with his car keys for a while. In his shirt pocket were five cigars wrapped in cellophane. Clara smiled at him and showed her teeth and kept pushing her hair back out of her eyes. With the table between them and other people around, what did she care? “You got out of there faster'n I did,” he said. His name was LeRoy. He was Mrs. Foster's only son and he was going to join the Navy and get out of Florence forever, as soon as he had some operation he had to have before they'd let him in. “My old bastard of a father that's dead now, he had me carry anvils and junk all around the barn. That's what done it,” he said sourly, smiling and twisting the cap on the ketchup bottle. He got ketchup on his fingers and wiped them underneath the table.