The Almost Sisters(105)
Dark Horse went crazy for that opener. They loved my antiheroine seeking redemption in a blighted version of America. It was chock-full of monsters and lost children, race wars and superbeings, and I had plans for some individual humans with mutations, too. Supervillains that could challenge Vi and Digby for years to come. They traded the prequel for a series, and I signed on for a longer, more extensive contract.
If it did well, then down the line some other team would run it. They might write Vi’s origin story, and I might be part of that or not. For now it was enough to begin, letting her go on to what was next in the shadowland version of Birchville.
I had to set it there; Birchville was the place where I had come to clearly see the monsters plaguing my homeland’s real landscape. They all had their avatars in Vi and Digby’s world. The artist in me wanted to explore the Second South in large terms, but I wasn’t above putting in a Mack Monster at some point. I’d rename her, of course, but she’d for sure have those iron-gray witch scraggles and a lip-lifted donkey’s mouth. I might put in Tackrey—though our dealings with her had mercifully closed after Birchie made her grand and almost honest confession.
That day, when we got home from Regina Tackrey’s office, we saw that the Franklins were already standing on our porch. Wattie’s son Sam opened the door for them. Sam and his wife and their middle daughter had all arrived two days earlier. Wattie had finally come clean with both her sons.
Sam stepped out and waited with the Franklins on the porch when they saw my car pull up. Esme was holding a casserole dish that I knew contained her famous corn pudding. I couldn’t imagine how she’d had time to make it. When we reached the top of the stairs, she thrust it into my arms so that she could hug Wattie, and her dish bit me with cold.
She’d pulled it from her freezer, premade as testimony to the human condition. Trouble and hunger always came, and most of Birchville kept an emergency casserole at the ready. Esme had grabbed hers and run to us, not waiting to thaw or bake it. Even cold, this was funeral food, rich in butter and comfort, and Esme and Grady were wearing black. They had come to mourn.
While Esme and Wattie were still clasped, a blue Honda pulled up and parked on our curb. Grayle Peck, another Redemption deacon, got out, and I saw that Wattie’s cousin, ’Genia Price, was in the passenger seat. He’d checked ’Genia out of her nursing home and brought her over so Wattie would have more family here; Stephen couldn’t fly down until next week.
Birchie opened the front door, letting Esme and Grady inside to preheat the oven. Sam led the way, but the three of us waited on the porch. As ’Genia began her slow creep up the walk on Grayle’s arm, another car was pulling up, and then another. Two more turned onto the square. All the cars were packed full of folks I recognized from Wattie’s church. They wore dark clothes and carried food. Redemption was coming, and in force.
Birchie and Wattie formed an impromptu receiving line at the top of the long staircase, greeting Wattie’s gathering church. I stepped back out of the way and watched them.
Arm in arm, Birchie and Wattie were a living hinge. They were the place where the South met itself, and I thought that it was good, even though their very sisterhood had called forth a mourning party. It was ugly, but it was where we were. This was where history had brought us, and inside me the baby I would not name Digby spun like a small promise of better things. He belonged to me and to both of them. He was the future that Birchie and Wattie had risked everything to preserve.
I walked to the far end of the porch, out of earshot. I sat down on the swing, got out my phone, and called Polly Fincher.
“Oh, honey,” she said instead of hello. She must have seen my name on the caller ID.
“You heard?” I asked, though I knew the answer. In fact, I didn’t wait for it. “Then come. Please come.”
A hesitation, and then Polly said, “We weren’t sure Birchie would want . . . We weren’t sure.”
“We need you,” I said. “And we need Alston, too, and the Partridges, and Frank Darian. Anyone else that you can think of. Birchie needs her church.”
“All right. Let me start the phone tree, then I’m on the way,” she said, staunch, and I closed the connection.
Not everyone who heard the call would come. Some of the First Baptist members who did hurry toward us would turn back when they saw the house already full of Redemption. In the same way, when First Baptist began arriving, some of the Redemption folks would cool, and some would leave. But not all.
In the intersection of who would come and who would stay was a church that did not exist. Not yet. But I had glimpsed this congregation eating gingersnaps and drinking lemonade in Martina Mack’s yard. I would re-form it now, on purpose.
Together we would comfort Wattie. We would offer Birchie absolution. I could feel it as a nascent presence that might move and grow inside Birchville the way my son moved and grew in me. Something possible. A promise. An intersection where my son belonged.
The first wave of Redemption folks had all been offered greetings and entry, but I caught Birchie and Wattie before they could follow their guests inside.
“I’m staying,” I told them, and I meant it. For as long as Birchie needed me, for sure. Perhaps after, for Wattie, because why should she have to move? Sel had been open to it, and if he could be happy here, I might even stay longer. After all, I was a Birch, and so was my son. This was our town. It would become what we made it. “I’m staying here with you, in Birchville.”