Daddys Caliban | Page 3

old wimple, I concentrated on the Seven Secondary Virtues -- evenhandedness, punctuality, orderliness, patriotism, thrift, industry and cleanliness. Their first letters made a little word that helped me remember them in order. "I am epoptic," I whispered, as Mother Arleigh's dry old lips smothered me with kisses and she wept like I was her own baby lost.
*
Later, we had services. Daddy wasn't there, and of course Cameron never came, but Mommy smiled up at me in the men's gallery from her seat in the front row.
Sometimes, at services, and once in a while at home, I would catch her in the corner of my eye and see someone else. It was like Mommy was bigger than she was, something huge and substantial that had set a fingertip down into this world.
Then she'd laugh, or roll her eyes at some monkey-clowning of mine, and she was just Mommy again.
That day at church, she was big every time I looked away from her. It was like having an invisible mammoth in the room, huge and hairy and warm, with tusks longer that an automobile and breath like a dying swamp, but you never could quite see it, even when you had to step around it.
Maybe it was Mother Arleigh's homily. She had her vestments on now, white robes trimmed with gold, her silver athame and her golden sickle dangling from her belt. Her pinched little face glowed with the light of the Lady as she talked about the Lands of Promise and the fate of the Lady's people.
"When we left the Garden Beneath, we were wrong." Her voice was sweet and smooth, like honey on bone china at solstice feast. She paused, staring out over the women of the congregation on their crowded benches, all dressed in their Saturday best, then up at us in the men's gallery.
Though 'us' was just the few boys from Saturday School and a pair of truckers in from their long-haul sheep run looking for their Saturday prayers. Local men didn't like the services much. There weren't enough local boys for me to get away with skipping.
"Not many are left of us who can recall the Bright Days, let alone the Garden Beneath. There are few enough who have even heard the stories first hand. Our people did only one thing right." She banged her fist against the pulpit, which boomed like a drum.
"We asked the Lady for a promise. In Her wisdom, She heeded our prayers. Even though..." Another round of staring. "Even though we were fools!"
"Fools!" shouted some of the women below. Mommy just wore her little smile.
Mother Arleigh raised her hands in burgeoning ecstasy. "Who remembers the brilliant banners, the horses running like wind before a storm?"
"I do," called old Mrs. Grimsby, who most days couldn't remember to wear her underthings on the inside of her clothes.
"Who remembers the days of our power, when the swords of our men and the words of our women were the writ unto the uttermost corners of the sea?"
"Yes!" screamed one of the women. "I do! I have dreamed on it!"
I didn't know her, but I was fascinated when she jumped up out of her pew and began rolling in the aisle.
"We were there. We were all there. Na ba lo ka ti ko na! Hai ba la ba ko na!" She commenced to shrieking and crying.
"Miss Blackthorn has been touched by the spirit of the Lady," said Mother Arleigh, settling her hands back to the pulpit. Her voice was almost normal. I realized she didn't want to compete. I'd never considered services that way before, and it made me uncomfortable.
We all watched Miss Blackthorn writhe around shouting for a while. She slipped almost out of her clothes, which I thought was the most interesting part, then two of the other ladies finally led her away.
Mother Arleigh looked around. Her fingers drummed on her pulpit like a death march. Mommy still had her little smile though most of the women were downcast now. I kept seeing my mother's flickering hugeness in the corner of my eye. Was it the homily? Or was something wrong with me?
"We all know the promise. We all know what was given to us, to our ancestors, to you, Mrs. Grimsby."
"Praise the Lady!" shouted Mrs. Grimsby.
"Praise the Lady," echoed Mother Arleigh. "We were given what?"
"The Lands of Promise," all the women shouted, even Mommy. Some of the boys around me started giggling, but not me. This was the best kind of service, on those rare weeks when they really got going like this.
"When was it given to us?" Mother Arleigh called.
"When the end began!" they responded.
"When will we receive it?"
"When we have earned it!"
"And have we earned it yet?"
The women burst into such a lot of howling and cursing that it was fit to