Phoebe Kate Foster
Goo Cares
Like everything else in her life, Gracie found the Tongues of Fire Tabernacle by accident. The members of the church were positive the Holy Ghost Himself had personally put her there, of course, but it was really her no-good, worthless, son-of-a-bitch boyfriend, Hoyle Gossett, and Gracie wasn't planning to tell them that.
On that particular Sunday evening, Gracie and Hoyle were driving back from the county fairgrounds where Hoyle had insisted they go for the tractor pull and monster truck events. Gracie hated them and had wanted to see a movie instead, but Hoyle wouldn't hear of it. On the way home, they started to argue, which was nothing new, because all they did was fuck and fight, in about equal measure. This argument, though, would be their last. When Gracie remarked that she'd seen bigger and better penises than his on baby boys, Hoyle pulled up to the curb and opened the car door.
"Out!" he hollered, and pointed at a clapboard church with a faded sign that said Tongues of Fire Tabernacle. "Get them goddamn holy rollers to shout all those demons out of you. I've had it with you, bitch!" Then he punched her in the face, pushed her out the door, and roared off.
"Go to hell!" Gracie screamed as Hoyle's rust-splotched Delta 88 -- with her purse and money in it -- turned the corner and disappeared. She scanned the empty street for a house hospitable enough to let her use the phone to call a friend for a ride home. However, she'd grown up in a similar neighborhood, and knew no help would be found in bungalows with broken windows curtained with Confederate flags and weedy yards full of snarling pit bulls.
Gracie frowned at the church with the clutter of old cars and pickup trucks parked on its ill-kempt lot. She didn't care for born-agains and tongue-talkers, but she knew they were do-gooders who'd be thrilled to give her a lift home so they could try to save her soul.
As she walked in the door, she collided with an enormous man in a shiny black suit who was stalking around the tiny church, shaking a Bible as he preached. He glared at Gracie, his eyes little dark specks like poppy seeds in his doughy face, and bellowed, "Glory to God! Enter and receive your new life, sister!" Throwing his arms into the air, he danced away down the aisle, shouting, "Shaka-mee-o-my-o! Conda-cara-may-o!"
This was a shitty idea, Gracie thought, reaching for the door handle. I'll thumb a ride instead. Before she could escape, a young redheaded woman as shapeless as an overstuffed rag doll in a dowdy dress bustled over to her.
"You come right on in, shug. I'm Sarah Jane Paxton," she bubbled, grabbing Gracie's arm and steering into a pew where a hulking, hard-faced man sat. "And that's my husband Brett." She plopped down next to Gracie. "This is so exciting! God told Pastor Billy that someone would come in tonight needin' Jesus and here you are!"
In the pulpit, the Holy Ghost was shaking Pastor Billy so violently that the wattles of fat around his face shimmied like congealed salad. "Today is the day!" he proclaimed, pointing a finger as big and thick as a Bratwurst at Gracie. "To get on that glory train! To reserve your mansion in the heavenly city! To stake your claim in the Promised Land!"
"Preach it, brother!" the congregation called.
"Today," he boomed, beads of sweat popping out on his brow, "is the day! To give the devil his walking papers! To kick the demons out of your life and be washed in the Blood of the Lamb!"
The congregation clapped and stomped. Gracie glanced around nervously. The atmosphere in the room was ominous, like before a storm. Sarah Jane whispered, "You feel it, don't you? The Spirit of the Lord is mighty in this place!"
"Today," Pastor Billy roared, "is the day! To let the life-changin', mountain-movin', soul-savin', devil-scarin', earth-shakin' power of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords come into your heart!" He lifted his arms and face heavenward. "Yes, Jesus! Yes, Jesus! Oh, Lamb of God, I come, I come!"
The organist caught the cue and coaxed the opening notes of "Just As I Am" from the wheezy Wurlitzer. Sarah Jane gripped Gracie's hand and dragged her up to the altar rail.
Pastor Billy planted his huge hands on Gracie's head and squeezed as if checking a melon for ripeness. Then he shouted, "Jesus is all over you!" -- which Gracie thought made God sound horny, not holy -- and gave her a mighty push that toppled her backward.
Dazed, Gracie lay on the floor as the congregation gathered around her. Their faces looming over her made her dizzy, so she closed her eyes. If that fat-assed preacher's given me a concussion, I'm gonna sue the fuckin' pants off him. Then she remembered that this was the second time that day some son-of-a-bitch had knocked her around. "Oh, shit!" she started to say, but stopped in time. If I use bad words, they won't give me a lift home. All that emerged was a wavery "Ohhhshiyiiiii."
"She's receivin' the baptism of the Holy Ghost!" Pastor Billy cried.
The organist launched into another hymn. "Oh, there's power, power, wonder-workin' power in the precious blood of the Lamb," the congregation sang lustily. The old floorboards shuddered as they danced around her. Just my luck to get trampled by over-excited Pentecostals…
"Hey, shug." Gracie opened her eyes. Sarah Jane knelt beside her, her pale moonlike face puckered with concern. She gently touched the bruise blossoming on Gracie's cheek and murmured, "You poor little thing. You need a friend. I promise I'll always be there for you."
Sarah Jane was as good as her word. Like God, she was omnipresent, and like a force of nature, she was unstoppable, carrying Gracie off to holiness like a riptide of righteousness.
Every morning, she phoned Gracie to plan their day. There was always something going on at the church -- services, Bible studies, prayer meetings, potluck suppers, Jump-for-Jesus aerobics classes. She finessed a job for Gracie at the Bible bookstore so she could quit tending bar at the Slap Happy Saloon. Next, she insisted on going through Gracie's apartment to throw out the R-rated movies, Marlboros and Jim Beam. "You don't need nothin' temptin' you to backslide," Sarah Jane told her. When she found Gracie's address book, she thumbed through it before tossing it in the trash. "Jesus is all you need now," Sarah Jane said firmly, then added, "I can't believe you know all them men…" blinking in amazement.
Sarah Jane was fascinated by Gracie's former life, and pried the details out of her like she was shucking an oyster: everything from a stint in juvenile hall at ten for shoplifting to the abortion last month, her fifth or maybe her sixth, Gracie had lost count. "My own mama sent me packin' when I was fifteen because her men all had the hots for me," Gracie told her. "Women don't like me because their guys want to jump my bones."
"Ooo, how sad!" Sarah Jane wailed. "No mama, no friends, no Jesus, and all them horny men pawin' on you!" She squeezed Gracie's hand and gazed at her like she was the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the Down Home Diner. It reminded Gracie of how guys acted around her, when they caught her scent and laid that longing, hungry look on her, making her shiver and sweat and forget that they were just more worthless redneck males who'd give her a bad time.
But this is real love, Gracie thought, studying Sarah Jane's guileless face, not a quickie at the Paradise Motor Court with some scumbag who collects pussy instead of NASCAR souvenirs.
At first, Gracie figured she was just getting religion; she didn't realize a husband was part of the package, too. Pastor Billy and Sarah Jane were actually the ones responsible for her marrying Dwayne Slocum, though they both swore that it was God doing the matchmaking.
Dwayne tumbled through the door of Tongues of Fire one Sunday morning, a disheveled stranger with wild eyes. "Help me!" he wailed and raced up to the altar like his pants were on fire. As Pastor Billy prayed for him, Dwayne suddenly stared up at the ceiling and cried, "I see His hand! It's shining! And it's reaching down! For me! Oh! Oh!" Then he burst into tears and fell in a heap on the floor.
"Never in all my born days have I seen a person wantin' salvation as bad as that boy," Pastor Billy remarked, with conspicuous satisfaction.
Gracie knew better, though. One evening after Bible study, Dwayne asked Gracie out for coffee and confessed what really had happened. A night of Wild Turkey and acid had left him in bad shape -- so bad, in fact, he'd become convinced the pavement was sucking him in, like quicksand, as he staggered home. He ducked in the first open door he saw, hoping the church floor wouldn't go funny on him, too.
"Then I had that beautiful vision…" Dwayne's eyes misted over. "That's when God saved my soul and Jesus became my drug of choice."
When Sarah Jane and Pastor Billy learned the church's two new converts had gone out together, they hustled them to the altar. "God instituted the state of holy matrimony, not 'The Dating Game,'" Pastor Billy admonished Dwayne, and Sarah Jane told Gracie, "We don't want you two shackin' up and bringin' shame on Jesus."
Before she knew it, Gracie found herself wed to a virtual stranger whose only recommendation, apparently, was that he'd seen the hand of God.
Gracie decided that married life wasn't so bad, really. Dwayne was easier to live with than the other men she'd known. He didn't watch sports or get drunk and hit her. Instead, he spent his free time in the spare room, reading his Bible and "waiting for the Spirit to move," as everyone at church called it, which made Gracie envision Casper the Friendly Ghost in a U-Haul truck.
The Spirit was always moving at Tongues of Fire, particularly at the women's weekly prayer group held in Sarah Jane's mobile home. The staid matrons with their tight hair-buns and floppy old-fashioned dresses would start talking to God and turn into wild women, babbling gibberish and staggering around like drunks.
Wildest of all was Sarah Jane, who'd go into a kind of trance, groaning loudly and writhing as if fire ants were crawling on her. Then she'd hunker on the floor, clutching her gut like she'd eaten a batch of bad clams, and rock back and forth faster and faster until she finally toppled over, gasping endearments to Jesus into the sea-foam green pile.
"It's the Holy Ghost filling me up with joy unspeakable," Sarah Jane explained to a baffled Gracie.
Watching a rumpled, radiant Sarah Jane pick herself up off the rug and pat her disheveled hair back into place, Gracie thought: You can say it's the Holy Ghost, but it sure looks and sounds like sex to me.
The morning that Dwayne packed his suitcase instead of his sack lunch, Gracie immediately called Sarah Jane. "Dwayne don't want to live with me no more!"
In minutes, Sarah Jane arrived and stuffed Gracie's things into Kmart shopping bags. "You shouldn't be alone at a time like this," she announced. "You'll stay with us until Jesus saves your marriage."
In the dingy kitchen of her singlewide, Sarah Jane fixed them eggs and grits. "You gotta keep up your strength, shug," she said, her arm draped over Gracie while they ate.
"Don't reckon you remembered to make your husband breakfast." Brett stomped into the room, wearing his work Dickies and a withering scowl. He looked at the bags of Gracie's things, and then at Gracie. "Go home. I ain't shelterin' no woman who flees her husband's authority."
"I didn't leave Dwayne. He left me."
"Found out you was cheatin' on him, huh?"
"Brett!" Sarah Jane said sharply. "'Judge not, lest...'"
He slammed his huge, ham-like fist on the table, upsetting the juice glasses. "Don't you go usin' scripture to hush me up, woman. I'm head of this house, and don't you forget it."
Sarah Jane silently studied the Tropicana trickling onto the linoleum. Brett turned to Gracie. "Okay, so Dwayne's moved out. That means you ain't homeless. Go home."
"Can't you see the poor child's beside herself?" Sarah Jane pleaded.
"Poor child?" Brett bellowed. "She looks full-growed to me, and a roundheel if ever I seen one. There'll be a different man's boots under her bed every night."
Sarah Jane jumped to her feet. "Now you have gone too far, mister—"
Brett swung around, fist cocked, ready to land a good one on Sarah Jane's wide, white target of face, but Gracie stepped between them. "Don't get in a fight over me. I guess I better tell you what happened."
"I bet the whole neighborhood heard that set-to." Brett looked triumphant.
"No. We didn't have a fuss. Me and Dwayne got along good -- least up until this morning, when he says something crazy about how he can't love us both and walks out."
Brett squinted. "Dwayne left you for another woman?"
Gracie shook her head.
"Dwayne said he was leavin' you for another man?" Sarah Jane gasped.
"No," Gracie muttered. "My husband said he was leavin' me for Jesus."
Dwayne vanished without a trace. Only Pastor Billy knew his whereabouts. "Our brother is in the blast furnace of the Almighty," he solemnly proclaimed to the congregation one Sunday. "He'll return a mighty man of God."
Meanwhile, the sisters at Tongues of Fire faithfully prayed and wept over Gracie's marriage. They were always weeping at something -- a sunset or a sermon or a special scripture. "The Bible says God saves all our tears in a bottle," Sarah Jane told her, her eyes getting juicy at the very idea.
He needs a jug for yours, but mine wouldn't fill a shot glass, Gracie thought.
The last time she'd cried was when she was twelve and her mother's boyfriend Cody ran over her cat. She'd threatened to tell the police what he did to her when her mother worked graveyard. The next day, when he came over, he said, "I reckon that cat of yours ain't feelin' so good," and laughed. In the driveway, Muffin Man was a heap of gray fur and guts under the wheels of his pickup.
"No point in lovin' anything in this shitty world," Gracie had told everyone ever since. "And I sure as hell don't cry over nothin', either." But she hid her tearlessness from the women of the church like a secret sin as they helped her bear up during Dwayne's absence.
"Have faith and Jesus will bring your husband back," Sarah Jane reassured her. "And do what St. Paul says in the epistles, 'Put on the whole armor of God.' Don't want Old Slewfoot attacking you with doubt and disbelief."
With God playing the part of The Other Woman, Gracie thought, it ain't armor I need, but the spiritual version of Victoria's Secret.
Gracie loved staying at Sarah Jane's. Every morning, the two of them sat giggling at the breakfast table while Brett glowered into his grits. Every night, Sarah Jane joined Gracie in the spare bedroom, curling up with her under a homemade afghan with cups of hot chocolate and talking until Brett broke up their slumber party.
"This thing with Dwayne sure beats me," Gracie told her one evening. "Why would a man leave a flesh-and-blood woman for something with, well, no body?"
"Well," Sarah Jane sighed, gazing dreamily off into space, "there's that old hymn about Jesus bein' the lover of our soul…"
Gracie frowned. The way Dwayne talked about that vision of his had always made her uncomfortable. "You don't know how it feels to be...touched by God," he'd kept insisting, eyes shining strangely, like he was still on drugs.
"Don't be sad, shug," Sarah Jane said, hugging her, "the Lord loves you, and so do I," and then she kissed Gracie on the lips.
Grace recoiled. "What are you doin'?"
"Don't you know the Bible talks about the brethren givin' each other holy kisses?" Sarah Jane asked, looking wounded.
From the master bedroom, Brett hollered, "Sarah Jane! It's almost ten."
Sarah Jane groaned, "Time to go do 'my wifely duty.'" She made a face. "He always does it the exact same way, you know. On top. We don't even take off our nightclothes. And it's over in one minute flat. I've timed him." Her eyes glinted wildly, like fool's gold in a rock. "Why don't you go? Bet you could teach that man of mine a thing or two about lovin'."
The very idea of sex with Brett made Gracie queasy, and she'd always drawn the line at screwing married men. She didn't need vengeful wives pulling her hair out in the supermarket or using her for target practice with a handgun newly-bought from the pawnshop.
"Well," she replied, "why don't you just whip off your nightgown, hop on top of him and say you're gonna ride that ol' buckin' bronco tonight?"
Sarah Jane cackled gleefully. "He'll try to cast a demon out of me for sure."
"Sarah Jane!" roared Brett.
"Got to get." Sarah Jane wiggled her butt as she walked out the door. "Ride 'em, cowgirl!"
When Gracie heard the headboard banging on the wall between the two bedrooms, she glanced at the clock. 10:05. At 10:06, the noise abruptly ceased. At 10:07, Brett was snoring loudly. At 10:08, Sarah Jane popped back into the room and jumped into bed with Gracie.
"Brett didn't go for the rodeo idea," she giggled. "But you should have seen his face when I jumped on him, nekkid and all, and said, 'Giddy-up'! Hey, next time, I'll get down on all fours and tell him I want to do it like the doggies do. Woof!"
Though Sarah Jane knew it was God who told Gracie to go back to her apartment, it was really the fight Gracie overheard one night.
"I won't abide that piece of trash bein' under my roof one more day," Brett shouted.
"I see how you watch her all the time," Sarah Jane screamed. "You want to stick that thing of yours in her."
"It's you crawlin' all over her like you got hot pants for her. Not me."
"You goddamn liar--"
Gracie heard a scuffle and the sound of swiftly delivered blows, followed by the rhythmic whump-whump-whump of the headboard against the wall and Sarah Jane's moaning -- whether from pain or pleasure or both, Gracie didn't care to know. She shoved her belongings in the Kmart shopping bags and slipped out of the trailer.
On a Sunday morning in October, Dwayne returned. Gracie was dressing for church when she heard the front door open and close, and familiar footsteps coming down the hall. Dwayne strode into the bedroom, and without a word, shoved her down on the bed. He yanked at her robe and fumbled with his fly.
"Dwayne! You're hurtin' me--" she cried, as he rammed himself into her. He reeked of whiskey, weed and sweat, a week's worth of beard stippled his chin, and his hands were caked with filth, as if he'd spent the night in a drainage ditch. Gracie started to struggle, but stopped when she recalled how Sarah Jane was always reminding her that the Bible said women were to submit to their husbands. "And God means in everything," Sarah Jane would repeat emphatically. Gracie lay still, considering the extent of everything, as Dwayne's bony hips banged against her pelvis. Then, as sudden as a cloudburst on a summer day, it was all over. He stood up, adjusted his clothes, grabbed her wallet off the bureau, and slammed back out of the apartment.
"Where are you goin'?" Gracie shouted, pulling her robe around her and running after him. When she tried to drag him out of his pickup, he hit her, knocking her to the pavement, and drove off.
Like a lanced boil, the moment was drained of heat and pain. Gracie felt curiously detached and wondered if she was having an out-of-body experience. She saw herself sprawled in the street, blood from a split lip trickling down her chin, pedestrians staring at her and shaking their heads. She struggled to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster -- which wasn't much, with a naked breast hanging out of the gaping robe.
How many times has this sort of thing happened to me? she thought, as she stumbled back into the apartment complex. Too goddamn many.
Gracie applied an icepack to her swelling face and phoned Sarah Jane. "Well, your prayers are answered," she muttered. "My dear husband came back."
"You don't sound very happy." Sarah Jane groaned. "Oh, no. What's happened now?"
"He raped me, slugged me, and left again."
"What?" Sarah Jane shrieked. "Hang on a moment." Gracie could hear muffled conversation between her and Brett.
"Dwayne couldn't rape you. He's your husband," Sarah Jane snapped a few moments later. "What did you do to make him leave you this time?"
Brett was shouting, "He found another man in his bed—"
Wearily, Gracie hung up. For a long time, she sat there, wondering why her life was so screwed up. When she heard the doorbell ring and Sarah Jane's voice outside calling to her, she buried her face in her hands. Please, God, help me. Make her go away.
"It's me and Pastor Billy, shug. Please let us in," Sarah Jane pleaded. "We love you."
"Sister, you need us," Pastor Billy echoed. "We're your family in the Lord."
"We know you're in there. Open up!" Gracie jumped at the sound of Brett's booming voice.
"We want to help you get right with God," Pastor Billy said.
"I ain't done nothin' wrong!" Gracie screamed. "Go find that son-of-a-bitch you made me marry and tell him to repent for abusin' his wife."
"Full of demons," Brett loudly announced. "While she stayed with us, not a day passed that she didn't try to seduce me."
"She even tried to seduce me!" Sarah Jane cried. "Makin' me listen to all the dirty things she done, and touchin' me and kissin' me in a way that's...unnatural, you know."
"Gracie, this is your last chance," Pastor Billy solemnly intoned. "Quit playin' footsie with Satan before it's too late."
"Hers was a false conversion," Brett said. "I knew it all along."
"So did I," Pastor Billy agreed. "The Lord revealed me to me that He'd allowed a handmaiden of Satan to come into our midst to test our holiness."
"And we've passed the test!" Sarah Jane squealed.
"Hallelujah!" they all said, and walked down the stairs and out of Gracie's life forever.
Well, that's that, I guess.
Instead of relief, though, Gracie felt bereft, and that made her furious. She grabbed a garbage bag and slammed into it the books from Sarah Jane and Pastor Billy about leading a holy life, and the framed prints from the Bible bookstore of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount and raising Lazarus from the dead. Then she went into the spare bedroom to clean it out, too. Dwayne's Bible was on the recliner. When she picked it up, out fell several little plastic packets. They were empty, except for a slight residue of white powder. Waves of nameless and discordant emotions washed over her, unsettling her like a bad bout of nausea.
You poor dumb-as-dog-shit bastard, sitting in here all the time, beggin' God to touch you again and give you another holy high -- or another holy hard-on. And when He didn't...
Gracie threw the Bible across the room, flushed the packets down the toilet, then went out to take a walk until noon, when the bars opened on Sunday.
It was one of those rare fall mornings in the South, when the air was as crisp as an apple and smelled like one, too, even in a city nowhere near an orchard. Gracie didn't notice, though, as she wandered aimlessly, killing time until she could get her hands on a few shots of Cuervo Gold. She passed a junkyard littered with broken furniture and old toilets so vile-looking she was seized by a violent urge to scour them. A white plastic sign on wheels with removable black letters read: DODD AND DANDRIDGE'S ODDS AND ENDS, and the sentence: GOO CARES.
Gracie blinked. Goo? It took her a moment to realize that whoever had lettered the sign either had poor eyesight or run out of "D's" and used an "O" instead.
Poor old Goo, You get fucked over by folks, too, don't You?
The longer she looked at the sentence, the more hilarious it seemed. She began laughing and couldn't stop. Her knees buckled, she doubled over and had to sit down on the lid of a metal garbage can by the curb. White trash on the trash heap! She burst into fresh shrieks of laughter that made her sides ache.
As she sat there, gasping for breath, she noticed a small cat studying her with perfect feline inscrutability. "Hey there," she wheezed, and it padded over to her. When she bent down to pat it, she felt painfully full and thought she was going to throw up, but instead began to cry. Water poured uncontrollably from her eyes and great huge gulping sobs shook her. A passerby hesitantly asked, "You okay, ma'am?"
"Never been finer, thank you," Gracie choked.
When she was all cried out, Gracie dried her face on her sleeve and sighed. Sure wish that crazy Sarah Jane hadn't thrown out my address book. I need some company to take my mind off things. She thought about it and shook her head. Like hell I do.
Curiously content, Gracie watched the cat groom its fluffy gray fur. Its simple dignity and purposeful pleasure in performing the ordinary acts that comprised its brief lifetime made Gracie smile, as for the first time she considered many things -- like how lovely the morning was, and which streets she'd take to go home, and what would be good to eat for lunch, and how best to spend the rest of that day, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
©2003 by Phoebe Kate Foster
