The delivery was so prim and cheerful that it took several seconds for the words she’d said to register. Deacon Lester choked. He stifled himself, trying to asphyxiate quietly in the dawning shocked silence. Anna Gentry spilled her icy sweet tea down her blouse and didn’t so much as squeak. Jeannie Anne Darian paused with her bite of fish halfway to her lips, her eyes bugging in her pretty, pug-dog face.
It didn’t seem possible that Emily Birch Briggs would say the word “penis” or acknowledge the existence of such a thing. Had a six-foot penis gone running across the church lawn on legs, everyone would have expected Miss Birchie to go completely blind in a six-foot-penis-shaped blotch, right at the center of her field of vision. Lovely sunset, she might remark, peering through it to God’s glorious vistas. But now she had acknowledged the existence of genitalia in the fellowship hall; worse, she’d said out loud that associate Pastor Campbell had a set. She’d described it in such great detail that it seemed likely she had met the member in question, which was purely, purely unthinkable. Sweat popped on Pastor Rick’s forehead, and all the deacons were gaping. Pastor Campbell, hearing his essential self so maligned, opened and shut his mouth several times, with no words or even breath coming out.
Wattie, the only unshocked person in the room, stood up and said, “Birchie, we need to go home. Now.”
Miss Birchie poked disdainfully at the fish with her plastic fork, saying, “Well, but it does, Wattie! Ask Jeannie Anne. She’s seen that penis much, much closer. Hardly the assigned use for the choir-robe room, though I suppose that’s not for me to say.”
The air, already shocked and sparking, became fully live with electricity. The whole room went so quiet that folks nearby could hear Wattie fierce-whispering to Birchie, “Get up! Get up! We need to go!”
As if a current were running around the room, the congregation came to understand, one by one, what Birchie was matter-of-factly describing, and they stared at my grandmother in shocked horror. Birchie knew every sin in town, after all, but she heard gossip the way a queen heard supplicants. She never discussed what the town called “news” with anyone but Wattie, instead going directly and privately to First Baptist sinners like the apostle Paul, except with homemade soup. Her stern encouragements to put away wrath, tithe properly, or stop the coveting of other people’s wives were done behind closed doors. Birchie was the scion of decency, and these words from her were as shocking as the idea of the adultery itself. All the horror was focused on my grandmother, right up until Jeannie Anne blushed.
Not a delicate blush either, the sort any lady might have touch her cheek when such vivid language landed at the lunch table. This was a crimson shame wash that started at the forehead and didn’t end even at her throat. Her chest reddened in the V of her light knit top. Her skin became a scarlet backdrop for the glistening pink and pepper-freckled bite of fish still held at the portal of her glossy lips.
She saw it then, how she had that morsel an inch away from ingestion, and threw it violently away. The fork landed with a sad plastic clatter, followed by an unfortunate plopping as the fish hit the table. Whispers started at the closest tables to Birchie’s center one, spreading outward like a rustling tide.
Frank Darian was the last to come to understanding. It wasn’t until his wife shoved her chair back and stood up from the table that his expression changed from shocked to something awful. A disbelief. A pre-pain wondering.
“Jeannie Anne?” he said, and she walked away. “Jeannie Anne?”
She didn’t turn or falter but kept twisting through the tables as whispers built and roiled around her.
Birchie watched her go, eyes overbright and an incongruous smile on her face, watching her verbal wrecking ball smash two key church marriages. Wattie stood helpless beside her, no longer whispering; her urgency was gone. She seemed oddly resigned, patting at the silver-white zigzags of her short hair as if putting them in order were her main concern.
“How could you?” Associate Pastor Campbell rasped at Birchie. He stood up, his chair scraping back, and slapped his hands down hard against the table. He leaned in toward her, threatening almost, and raged again, “How could you!”
“How could you?” his wife whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
“Birchie,” Wattie said, calm and firm, “I need your help,” but Birchie was scraping her own chair away, rising to her full five feet to glare right back at Campbell.
“Don’t you raise your voice to me, you humping goat. I will turn you over my knee and paddle your saggy ass,” Birchie said. The tone was right, frosty and imperious. But the words! These were not words that Emily Birch Briggs would ever, ever say, and they were followed by a high-pitched, crazy titter.
Pastor Campbell stepped back, away from the confusing sound, his face registering equal parts rage and disbelief. Then he seemed to notice his wife, crying in the chair next to him.
Wattie waited it out, standing beside Birchie until her awful cackle stopped. Then Wattie touched Birchie’s arm, and Birchie turned to her as if she had just discovered her there.
“Did you see his saggy ass, Wattie? Did you see it?” Birchie said, and then mimed humping at the table.
Three hundred of the faithful sat frozen, watching Emily Birch Briggs having a mental breakdown, and only Wattie spoke.
“I surely did, but, Birchie, Mercy Lester is slicing up peppers by the hush-puppy batter,” she said.
Birchie’s avid face clouded into confusion, and she stopped her obscene rocking. A few years back, Mercy Lester had put the Fry on the high road to apostasy when she’d tried to add cheese and jalape?os to the hush-puppy batter. Birchie had spotted her before they got mixed in. While Miss Wattie scooped the offending ingredients off the top, Birchie had put a forgiving arm around Mercy’s shaking shoulders, like Jesus sheltering the woman caught in adultery. Instead of asking for a sinless someone to cast the first stone, Birchie had reminded the outraged congregation that Mercy had been raised a Presbyterian before marrying Davey Lester; could anyone expect her to know better?
To bring it up now was such a non sequitur that it looked as if Wattie were losing her mind right along with Birchie, but Birchie said, “Lord, that girl! Let’s go and stop her,” as though Mercy and Davey hadn’t moved to Montgomery three years ago.
Her face stony and unreadable, Wattie began guiding her out.
“Well, now. Now. Well. Now.” Pastor Rick floundered.