All around the church, penitents would be wringing their hands and crying, hollering out “Amen.” My daddy, Liston Huff, would be on the shells of his knees, leaning his head against the pew and whispering loudly his private prayer to God and whoever else couldn’t help hearing. My mamma, Maree Huff, would be sitting or standing beside him, her scoured hands held high in the air, her face turned up to the paneled ceiling, tears falling so hard she’d have to sit her shoes in the sun for the whole afternoon just to dry them out.
Beside them would be my brothers David and Everett, and later their wives Laura and Wanda, perfectly mimicking my parents. David was known for holding his bible against his forehead, banging his skin into the cover until he worked himself into a holy trance.
And at the other end of the pew, my oldest sister, Bethany, who was married before I was even born, sat with her husband Olin and their children Pammy and Mustard and her husband’s oldest son James, who was just a year older than me.
But I sat with Nanna, in the pew behind them all. She’d give me a pencil and let me draw in her Sunday school quarterly once everybody’d got the spirit. I couldn’t draw in my own because if Mamma saw the marks, she’d spank me good. Nanna’d give me rolls of Smarties, the little candy pills that stacked up in their plastic wrapper, green then yellow then pink then white, and it’d take me two hymns and one altar call just to get the wrapper open without making any noise. I always wondered where she got the candy but feared she’d stop supplying it if I asked.
Every two or three Sundays, Grandpa’d step out from behind his podium, his bible in one hand held up in the sky, his other hand over his heart.
“Here he goes again,” Nanna’d whisper. “One of these days, he’s going to fall over and die right in the middle of that story.”
And I’d look up in time to hear him talk about liars and forgiveness.
“We’ve all sinned in the eyes of God. All of us,” he’d say. “My own wife Leila, who you all know, my own wife turned her back on God. Turned her sinful eyes away from God and lied. Lied. Lied to the courts of this land, lied to the very people who were trying to bring a murderous whore to justice. But more sinful than any of that, she lied to her Heavenly Father, to her King.”
“Yes, Lord,” the people would call.
“Just a child. Just a wee child but old enough to know the difference in right and wrong. She saw her own mother engaging in sins of the flesh and did not tell. She did not tell her father. She did not tell God. She allowed it to happen.”
“Allowed it to happen,” my mamma would yell out.
“And on the day that her own mother pulled out a rifle and shot her father through the back so she could live in sin with a boy young enough to be her son, what did Leila do? Did she call out to God?”
“No, Lord,” my brother Everett would answer.
“No. No, she did not call out to God,” Grandpa Herman would continue, the tears sliding down his rough cheeks.
I’d look over at Nanna, who’d roll her eyes at me and then sneak me a wink.
“She did not call out to God. She crawled right in the bed next to her murderous mother and slept there. And when her mother handed her a little speech to say to the judge, she studied it, memorized it, memorized that lie.”
“Help her, Jesus,” somebody cried, as if the things that had happened sixty years before were happening again.
“And she told that judge that her own pappa, the man who loved her more than any other earthly thing, had been beating her. She told that judge that her God-fearing pappa had pulled his belt from his pants and was striking her body when her mother pulled out that gun.” Grandpa Herman grew quiet and sad, and a hush fell over the congregation as well.
“And why’d she do it, people? Why’d she lie before the greatest judge of them all?”
“To protect her mamma,” Bethany hollered.
“To protect a murderer, ” Grandpa Herman corrected. “To protect a whore, a wicked, evil woman.” Then he fell silent to give his words a chance to settle over the crowd.
“But God is good,” Grandpa continued. “God will forgive. He’ll baptize a sinner in his very blood and pull them out white as snow. We’ve got sinners among us, sinners who need God’s blessing, God’s forgiveness. Won’t you come? Won’t you pray to him now, say ‘God, I’ve been a liar, a murderer, a whore.’ Confess your sins to the one who will make you clean.”
Then he’d pause and add, “Sister Imogene, play us a hymn,” and Great-Aunt Imogene would hobble over to the piano that must have been older than she was.
Sunday after Sunday, we’d sing, we’d bow our heads, and I’d hold Nanna’s hand while around me people were praying aloud, their voices competing for God’s attention, growing louder and louder until I could talk to Nanna and nobody would know.
“Don’t go up there,” I’d beg her. “Stay here with me.”
“I’ve got to go in a minute,” she’d explain. “Lord knows, if I don’t get on my knees after this kind of sermon, I won’t never be welcome in my own house again.”
“What do you do up there?” I’d ask her.
“Just bow my head and thank the Lord for you, and then I sing a little song or something. Don’t matter what you do. Long as you go up there.”
“I don’t want you to leave me here,” I’d say.
“Well, come on up with me. God knows, the whole congregation will be up there anyway before Herman lets us out.”
So during the altar call, Nanna approached the altar, and whoops went up all over the church, and people cried, and I heard my own mamma hollering out “Thank you, Jesus.” I went up there with her, and I could hear Grandpa proclaiming, “Lord, we thank you for the youth of this church, for the children who understand sin, understand their own hearts, the children with so much love inside them that they can offer it back to their own elders, who are sinners. Lord, I thank you for my sweet Ninah.”
And I smiled to myself, thinking, “I ain’t his sweet nothing, ” and then I nudged Nanna and kept saying my ABCs, imagining them first upper case, then lower, thinking that periodic trips to the altar made a good impression. My whole family would appreciate me more, at least for the rest of that week.
I don’t think anybody knows exactly how Grandpa Herman came up with his brand of Christianity. The church began years and years back, before my mamma was even born, when the church Nanna and Grandpa had been attending split into little pieces.
I used to imagine the building breaking apart, wondering how they decided who would get the back pews, who would get the front ones, who would get the altar. All I know is that Mossy Swamp Primitive Baptist Church broke into two other pieces so that when it was over, Mossy Swamp had a third of the congregation and two new churches developed: Mossy Swamp Pentecostal Holiness and The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind. Grandpa Herman built Fire and Brimstone himself, in one of his own tobacco fields near the house. At the time, the congregation of Fire and Brimstone was basically his family, his parents and brothers and sisters and cousins, and Nanna’s aunt and uncle, who she was sent to live with after her mamma went to prison, and all their children. But through the years, people joined up from marrying into the family and bringing their relatives, and by the time I was born, Fire and Brimstone already had eighty members. It was like having a big family reunion every Sunday, with Grandpa Herman leading it.
I guess you could say the church doctrine came from Grandpa Herman’s own sensibilities. He used the Bible, of course, but only the parts he liked. He had a habit of altering the verses just a little to make them match his own beliefs. He had a good dose of Baptist in him, so we sang soulful hymns and got saved on a regular basis and baptized in the pond at the far edge of the property. But the Pentecostal part of him wouldn’t allow us to watch TV or cut our hair, and he was always one to encourage speaking in tongues.
But there were other elements to Fire and Brimstone. I don’t know if Grandpa got a copy of the laws from so
me other religion or if he just made them up, but he’d walk around saying things like, “He who invades another man’s nets or fish traps or takes fish from another man’s fishing preserve shall pay fifty dollars as compensation. Half to the man from whom they were stolen and half to The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind. Amen.” On Fridays, Grandpa was a judge, and any disagreements in the community were brought before him, where he’d make his decision, lead the arguing parties in prayer, and then make sure they were hugging when they left the church.
And the children were required to go to night classes where we memorized Grandpa Herman’s laws. We’d sit in the tiny classroom with others about our same age, and a teacher would drill us again and again. “He who rapes a grapevine by taking more than his share of the fruit shall pay ten dollars in compensation, half to the man from whom the grapes were stolen and half to The Church of Fire and Brimstone.”
“He who romps through another man’s field and tramples the plants of his labor shall reseed and keep those plants until they bring forth the equal value and shall pay fifty dollars to The Church of Fire and Brimstone as penance.
“He who goes unto another man’s wife and takes her for his own shall come before the church and confess such evils and shall pay five hundred dollars, half to the man from whom he’s stolen and half to The Church of Fire and Brimstone. And if it happens more than once, he shall be cast out of his own community. But if he has left a wife and family, they may remain among the congregation.”
The laws were written in thick booklets that only church-teachers and Grandpa Herman himself were allowed to read. The booklets were old and yellowed, and the pages looked as used as elbows.
There were other things about The Church of Fire and Brimstone that didn’t show up in the religions of the children in my classes at school. We didn’t believe in doctors—because they took the healing power of Christ into their own hands and used it to perpetuate the sinfulness of humanity—or so Grandpa Herman said. When schools first required that children be immunized, the church began teaching their children themselves until the state intervened and Grandpa Herman had to make the exception for vaccinations against measles and diphtheria.
As a child it all seemed so normal. My friends were my own cousins who wore dark dresses made for us by our mammas and nannas. We didn’t associate much with other children in school because we had each other, and we’d been taught that regular Baptists or Methodists lived in sin, that any little girl with britches on her legs was going straight to Hell for trying to be a man, and that those children who learned their numbers off of television shows—even television shows especially made to help children learn—were being damned eternally, would be cast one day into the Great Lake of Fire for worshipping technology instead of the Blessed Redeemer. We didn’t want to be friends with them anyway.
So during recess, I caught up with the other girls whose hair hung down their backs uneven, like horse tails, with the boys who wore dark pants all year around. And in the lunchroom, I could pick out other Fire and Brimstone children just by looking at the table, seeking out the paper bags in which we carried our food—because lunch boxes featured television characters, and we never ate school food since nobody could be sure who grew it.
Even the Holiness children, who also wore dresses, didn’t cut their hair, and carried their lunches, were a threat to our salvation since the year that they’d held a Hallelujah-ween carnival for their children and invited our congregation to attend. Even though nobody was dressing up, Grandpa Herman rebuked them from the pulpit for condoning Satanic holidays, and after that, we cut off all association with the Holiness.
When I was a child, I saw our community as a special place where God’s special children could be safe from the influence of the wicked world. Later, when I was older, I saw our community differently. I saw us like an island. Like an island sinking from the weight of fearful hearts.
Ninah.” Mamma shook me. “Ninah!”
I couldn’t wake up. In the summers, we worked in the fields all day, worked from daylight until dusk, walking miles and miles along narrow tobacco rows, popping the flowers off the tops of the plants with our fingers, popping the suckers that grew at the bottom of the stalk away with our toes, so that big leaves could grow bigger and the flower wouldn’t suck out all the life. By the time supper came, we were so weary that even breathing felt like work. And that night, in spite of the muscles in my legs twitching and shaking, I had fallen asleep at the table. A piece of my hair had coiled into the gravy over my rice.
I jerked up straight, stretched open my eyes to see everyone looking at me. The table I was seated at held twenty, and there were three others just like it in the room. We all ate together, the entire extended family, and at that moment, all I knew was that a lot of eyes were watching mine. I didn’t blink.
My brother David, who was just eight years older, reached out under the table with his foot and tapped at mine comfortingly.
“She’s just tired, Maree,” my daddy said. “Don’t come down too hard on her.”
“Did you say your prayers, young lady?” Mamma asked me. “Before you fell asleep?”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I answered.
“Don’t talk back,” Mamma warned, not harshly but firm. Mamma had great sunken eyes, and when she was angry, she squinted them so that the lines around them looked like just-plowed fields. I peered into the bowl of potatoes, still too groggy to be clear about what was going on. “And look at me when I’m talking to you,” Mamma added.
I forced my head up.
“Maree,” Nanna said. “This child didn’t mean to doze off.” She shook her head back and forth.
“And I’m not punishing her for sleeping,” Mamma interjected. “I’m punishing her for not saying her prayers. At twelve years old, you’d think she’d have better sense. Did you say your prayers, Ninah?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered.
“Then get up,” she said. “And start cleaning the kitchen.”
So while the rest of them ate, I scraped pots, heaping the leftovers onto a big plate for the dogs. By the time I’d finished washing the pots and draining the dirty water, the women were cleaning off the table, bringing me glasses and plates. They were chattering and singing, but in the background, I could hear Grandpa Herman talking to Daddy.
“Maree’s right,” he told him. “She’s just keeping that girl in line. You got to toughen up, Liston. Loving your child and punishing your child ain’t separate things. You know that.”
And then I turned the water back on, running it clean and drowning out their voices.
About midway through the dishwashing, Nanna dipped her hands into the dishwater too, and our fingers kept hitting each other underwater, and we had to take turns rinsing off the forks and saucers. Whenever I wasn’t careful, Nanna’d steal my dishcloth, yanking it right out of my hands, and I’d splash her a little. Pretty soon, she had me laughing, and then we were both singing along, reminiscing about the old rugged cross with everybody else.
That night before I went to bed, I kissed Daddy goodnight, and he said, “We just love you so much, Baby.”
Then Mamma led me to bed, and when she pulled back my covers, there were cockleburrs and sandspurs scattered all over my sheets, scattered everywhere. I knew there would be.
Mamma got down beside me and we said our prayers together, and she asked God to help me remember him, to help me have the strength to get through hard days and to show respect to my elders.
She helped me settle down on top of all those prickly nettles and when I made a face, she laughed, leaned over me, and kissed me on the forehead. “You know how much I love you, don’t you?” she asked, and because I didn’t want her to leave me yet, because I wanted to keep feeling her hair on my cheek, I said, “Tell me how much.”
So she stayed awhile, beside my bed. She told me the story again of how I was an unexpected gift from God, a child she and Daddy hadn’t plan
ned and didn’t know was coming. Then she said that maybe tomorrow I would get a special blessing for my night of discomfort and wouldn’t feel so tired after working in the fields. And she left.
I couldn’t sleep for a long time. The prickles were sticking in my back, and every time I moved, I got stuck in a new place. I knew I was supposed to remember the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head, how much that must have hurt him. But I just kept thinking about suckering tobacco, about popping off baby leaves so they wouldn’t take away the strength from the bigger ones. I imagined that when I woke up, I’d find little dots of blood on my gown and sheets. But of course, I didn’t.
Maybe it was a blessing from God, but the next day wasn’t so hard. I got assigned to a row in a particularly long field next to James, the son of Olin, my brother-in-law, and the stepson of Bethany, my oldest sister. His natural mother had died in childbirth, which happened sometimes since we didn’t use doctors. All day long we stayed together. When he’d get behind, I’d slow down and wait for him, and when I hung back to pop flowers from the tops of very high plants, he’d wait for me—or else he’d step over and bend the stalk so that I could reach it.
The hired man on the other side who wasn’t Fire and Brimstone moved very quickly, but then he’d been suckering and topping for years. We didn’t mind that he stayed ahead because it was easier for us to talk that way.