“It’s true!” I yell. “God could never be a slob! He’s perfect!”
“What’s interesting to me,” Nana Pete says, “is that your idea of perfect seems so off-kilter.”
I blink twice. “No, it’s not.”
“But it is,” Nana Pete says gently. “If God was perfect in every way, as you say he is, then that must mean that he is all loving and forgiving, right?” I nod carefully. “So how could he send people to hell for listening to music?” she asks. “Wouldn’t that go against everything that love and forgiveness are all about?”
I open my mouth and then shut it. “He’s not gonna send the people who listen to good music to hell,” I finally reply.
“And what’s good music?” Nana Pete asks. I don’t answer. “Tell me, Mouse.”
“Stuff that, you know, gives glory to him. Like the music Emmanuel plays on the piano.”
Honey groans and bangs her head off the seat. “Agnes. If the only music people were allowed to listen to in this world is that boring, horrible stuff he plays, people would go nuts!”
“People who are writing stuff about God being a slob are already nuts,” I retort.
“And doomed, I guess,” Honey says, rolling her eyes.
“Yes. They’re definitely doomed.”
No one says anything for a minute. Then Honey turns around, as if someone has flipped a switch in her back. “Do you really want to go through the rest of your life thinking like a robot?”
I turn my head. “No,” I say calmly. “I want to go through the rest of my life thinking like a saint.”
“But you’re not a saint!” Honey roars. “Even the saints, when they were alive, busy leading their lives, weren’t saints, you moron! And you have to be dead for at least a hundred years before you can even be a saint! Is that what you want, Agnes? You want to live a life full of restrictions and punishments and whippings so that when you die—a hundred years after you die—someone will call you a saint?”
I stare at the cuticles on Benny’s good fingers, white and curved like small crescent moons. “If that’s what God requires of us, I do.” My voice is shaky. “It’s not up to us to question his ways.”
Honey’s face, bright with perspiration, deflates like a pink balloon. “Man, you sound just like Emmanuel,” she says, turning back around slowly.
I stare at the back of her neck. “Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Well, then you’re an idiot. It was meant to be an insult.”
My mouth feels cold. “I don’t even remember asking for your opinion.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t be offering it anymore.”
Just outside of Emmitsburg, Maryland, Nana Pete pulls into a wide parking lot and parks the car in front of a building that says WAL-MART.
“What’re we doing?” Honey asks. Nana Pete opens the door and stretches.
“Y’all are going to need a few necessities for the rest of the trip. And there ain’t nothin’ you can’t find in a Wal-Mart.”
Wal-Mart is so big inside that for a moment when we step through yet another set of automatic doors, I wonder if it is an actual city disguised as a store. The smell of stale popcorn hangs in the air and people are everywhere, pushing carts filled with blue jeans and coffee and sneakers across the shiny white floor. We arrange Benny in the back of one of the carts, piled on top of his blankets, and push him through the aisles.
“This place is awesome!” Honey says.
Nana Pete leads us down an aisle filled with backpacks and chooses three of them in different colors. “Fill ’em up,” she says, handing me a dark blue one edged in silver. “Toothpaste, soap, hairbrushes, whatever. Throw in anything you see that you think you might need in the next few days or so.” She points to a larger section of the store behind the backpacks, filled with shoes. “I’m going to go look at some sneakers. Right over there. Come over when you’re done.”
I push Benny down the large aisle across from the backpacks while Honey walks in front of us. One side is filled with hundreds of different types of toothpaste; the other is a sea of multicolored toothbrushes.
“I guess we’ll need toothpaste,” I say quietly.
Honey scans the shelves quickly and grabs a box of Orange Mango Anticavity Fluoride paste. She grabs a neon-yellow toothbrush and tosses it carelessly in her bag. “I’ll be in the next aisle,” she says over her shoulder. “We need shampoo.”
I take my time, deliberating for a while between two toothpastes called Vanilla Mint, and Superwhitening. The Vanilla Mint is bound to taste better, but will the Superwhitening make my teeth look better? Are my teeth not white enough? I can’t decide. Finally, I hold them both up in front of Benny. “Which one, Benny?”
Benny points to the Vanilla Mint with a shaky finger.