“Why?”
“Because religion is another kind of drug,” Stelle said, “especially those Holy Roller religions, where you dance around and speak in tongues and get baptized in the spirit. You can get higher doing that than I’ve ever been able to get on crack. I can remember one time getting so out of it at a meeting that I walked on the top of a space heater in my bare feet and didn’t feel a thing. The next morning I woke up and found out I couldn’t walk. The soles of my feet were blistered raw. I had to go to the hospital and get fixed up. But I never felt a thing at the time, and when I think back on it, the only thing that comes to mind is that it was all great, I was the happiest I’ve ever been. I’d do it again in a second.”
“And have you done it again?” Gregor asked. “Are you still part of a—what did you call it?—Holy Roller religion?”
“Nope.” Stelle shook her head. “I liked the way it felt, you understand, but when I was down I’d start thinking, and the more I thought the more ridiculous it all got. People rising from the dead. Pie in the sky when you die. Do you believe any of that stuff?”
“I don’t think about it, most of the time,” Gregor said. “What about you? If you’re not taking drugs, and you’re not involved in Holy Roller religion, what are you involved in?”
“Oh, these days I worship the Goddess.” Stelle sounded more cynical than ever. “The Goddess of wisdom and nature, the Great Mother of us all. It’s the hip thing, especially here. Religion without patriarchy.”
“It’s much better than all those things you were doing before,” Zhondra said. “It gives you an arena to express your spirituality and it gives you a political analysis of your condition at the same time. That way you don’t start turning it all on yourself, telling yourself it was your fault. That’s what the patriarchy is hoping you will do.”
“Actually,” Stelle said drily, “I was partial to the idea of original sin myself. We’re all born wanting things we can’t have and craving things that aren’t good for us. Too many white people want to feel superior to somebody, and black people are handy. I’d really rather get high than do anything about my life, and the stuff I need to get high with is handy, too:”
“I hope you don’t think we go around here looking for somebody to be superior to,” Zhondra Meyer said. “We understand that racism is systemic. Every woman in this house struggles with her own racism every day.”
“Right,” Stelle said. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Demarkian? I thought you were looking into the death of that baby.”
“I am,” Gregor said. “Would you mind my asking you a few things about the day of the hurricane?”
“Ask away.”
“Let’s start with the ceremony the three of you were going to do,” Gregor said. “Carol Littleton was late.”
“That’s right.” Stelle nodded. “She’d gone into town to buy a christening present for her granddaughter. She bought it in that silly store that sells all the religious things, angel statues, stuff like that. The one in the Victorian house. Although, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t understand why she was doing it. It wasn’t like she was going to be invited to the christening. She hadn’t even seen the baby.”
“Carol Littleton didn’t get along with her children?”
“She got along with her son all right,” Stelle said. “It was her daughter that was the problem. Shelley, I think her name was, but I’m not really sure. Anyway, Shelley really hated the idea of Carol being up here. She really hated it. And then, of course, there was Carol’s ex-husband.”
“What about him?”
“He took this whole business of Carol’s becoming a lesbian as a personal insult. Men take it that way sometimes. Sometimes I think men are all born a little cracked.”
Gregor considered Carol Littleton’s daughter and her ex-husband. Then he said, “So, when Carol finally showed up it was—what? In the middle of the storm? Close to the start of it?”
Stelle hooted. “If any one of us had known anything about hurricanes, we would have gotten ourselves inside and stayed there. Instead of that, we were standing around in that clearing, Dinah and me, and it was drizzling on our heads. And then Carol came running out from the house.”
“You couldn’t see her from the clearing, could you? The trees would have prevented that.”
“I’d gone down to the end of the path to see if I could find out where she was. She came running out of the house just as I got there. She was all worked up, nearly crying.”