Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1988-89 37 grandma at a revival meeting. She clasped her hands together. “Preacher, you shouldn’t talk like that. ‘Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.’ Luke six, thirty-seven.” The woman pointed a pillow at Opal. “Are you quoting scripture to me?” “Yes, ma’am.” The preacher threw back her head and paced the length of the room. “ Oh, boy, that’s great,, that’s really great...just great.” She slung the pillow, knocking over a lamp. Opal rubbed the backs of her hands, one after another, and felt sick to her stomach. “Preacher, remember the Bible says ‘But love ye your enemies and do good.” he woman raised a hand to stop her. “I know, Luke again and don’t call me preacher.” She wiped her face as if she’d stumbled into a spider web. “I feel like killing him.” She paused. “If he were here, I’d kill him.” Opal nodded and looked away, rubbing her chest to keep her heart from pressing against her lungs. She knew what it was to feel like killing a man. She took a deep breath to block out the woman’s words. There was work to be done. “He hurt me.” The woman dropped down on the sofa and covered her face with her hands, crying silently. “You have no idea. I feel so stupid.” Opal didn’t want to talk, but the woman wouldn’t stop crying. We ought to pray, she thought, but she said, “I know how it is.” The woman looked up. “I know,” Opal said again. “It’s like he done stabbed you all over with a rusty, twisting knife and then broke off the handle, leaving the blade inside to fester and rot. It’s like he don’t see nothing but his own face in a mirror. Man wants the tight feel of money in his pocket and the tight ass of some new woman and...” Opal caught herself and snatched the dust cloth from her lap. She stood up, pushing her hand against her chest, and began to polish an end table. “Are you married, Opal?” “Was.” She finished dusting the table. “Henry—that’s his name- walks in the kitchen one Saturday morning, early—I’m washing the breakfast dishes—he’s holding the baby. He hand the child to me and say he going to Florida. Say he can’t breathe in my house.” “I can’t stand it.” The woman threw another pillow across the room. “Max said the same thing—no air to breathe.” She addressed the floor. “He says that because of what’s her name, he can work. That an artist has to have inspiration and he can’t get it here.” She dropped her voice in imitation of her husband. “‘You’re too serious. Lighten up. We never should have gotten married in the first place.’” The woman looked at Opal. “We’ve been married fifteen years and he says it was all a mistake. He says that marriage doesn’t mean anything—that I took it all too seriously.” Opal could see the back of Henry’s head in the shine of the table she was polishing. He had said marriage was a joke and took a highbreasted girl to Florida with him. The woman was crying again. “I’m supposed to know how to handle this. I’m a minister, damn it. What am I going to do? I feel so ugly.” he wiped her eyes and got out a little laugh. “‘Vanity of vanities, sayeth the preacher, all is vanity.’ Did you know that even a forty-year-old woman wants her husband to think she’s cute?” She wrinkled her nose to adjust her glasses. Her eyes were red and her face was pale as an early moon. “How can I compete with a woman half my age?” Opal dusted the table in slow circles, watching her own scaly hand with the split fingernails bitten to the quick. She remembered the way she used to file those nails long and sharp and paint them Raven Red. Henry once said she had the sexiest hands in four states. “Do you want to pray, Ma’am?” The woman looked startled. “Oh, no, not now.” She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the front of her sweat shirt. “Just not right now. I’m sorry, Opal. I have to think.” “Thinking don’t help. That make it worse, to try to make sense out of it,” said Opal. “I asked Henry what I done wrong and he said nothing...! done nothing at all. He just say he tired of my face and left. I felt like some old pair of boots kicked in the corner. He used me up and left.” She polished the same spot over and over. The woman watched her work. “How long ago?” “Five years.” Opal stopped polishing. “I cook his dinner, iron his clean shirt, sleep in his bed every night, and then he left me.” The woman went to the kitchen and brought back a box of tissues. “When Max and I were first married,”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz