And it wasn’t an easy one.
2.
They Shall Speak With New Tongues
Outstretched across the floor just in front of the first row of pews in her father’s church, Emma’s feet pointed toward the altar. Her bluish green eyes, when they periodically blinked open, pointed to the church’s white, clapboard ceiling which folded neatly at the seams, save a few spots where water had seeped through causing buckles.
Emma is wearing a pale yellow cotton dress made by the hands of both she and her mother that cropped close to the neck, and covered lace undergarments also made by she and her mother. Her father believed lace material was created to adorn the angels. So she and her mother made it and wore it liberally, displaying both in view and out, as collars, socks, brassieres, skirts, and panties, according to his command. On this day, that's a good thing, since on the floor her knees are spread apart and her panties on flashing those gathered around her.
Emma’s golden, mid-shoulder locks are tucked neatly, as always, behind her well placed ears to rest rested gently on the floor. Her light, sun-kissed skin glistens in the misty sweat beading on her forehead and cheeks. Emma’s right knee is cocked, placing the sole of her foot flat on the ground and the bottom hem of her dress pointing upward.
A soft evening breeze scented with a dash of honeysuckle is blowing through the church’s open front and side doors, cooling her over-heating body just enough for pondering clarity and solution amid the decision at hand.
The time she has to make it ticks down like a game show clock in sync with her heart beat -- five, four, three...
An only child, Emma knows her parents would not handle her departure from the Earth well, despite their faith, which promises to soothe such angst. So leaving the world by her selfishness through a choice made now wasn’t as easy, then, as it might have seemed. Neither, though, was she interested in repenting for the sin that she was now paying such a dear price for. She wasn’t even sure in the dire moment if she could give more than lip service to repentance even if she tried.
God would know her true heart wasn’t truly sorry.
If she wasn't.
No, she had not known sin before, beyond doing her thing in the bed several nights a week and thinking about it the others. If that really was sin. She did not think so. But in the past week, she had gotten well acquainted with what might be real sin, according to her father's interpretation. That, more than anything else, is why she wanted to live beyond the moment.
Nothing had ever felt so right, and she wanted more of that wrong.
If not for the snake, Emma might have managed just fine, with no problems at all. She supposed that’s why her father loved snaking handling so – for how it could reveal one's digressions. Throughout the week leading up to the bite, she had effectively hid her consumptive thoughts so well that nobody else seemed to notice anything different with her.
The sun came up, and she was there, doing her chores. The sun went down, and she was there, cleaning up as the last crumbs of the day.
Nobody knew that a mighty fire was broiling inside of her.
But then came Sunday evening, and the moment at the church service that her father announced time for the children and women with small children to leave the sanctuary; the moment her father instructs church deacons to fetch the half-dozen rattlesnakes kept in a wooden box out back and bring them into the sanctuary; the moment her father shouts scripture from the book of Mark to the remaining members of the congregation who have migrated from the back pews to the area around the pulpit at the front of the church.
“And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
When Emma saw the deacons walk through the open side sanctuary door with agitated snakes in hands, escorting them toward the outstretched hands of her scripture-reading father, she knew she was in trouble by the sweat that erupted in her palms, and the tension that balled up in her groin.
“Uhh,” she gasped to herself with a quiet exhale.
The other dozen or so times that Emma had handled snakes, her palms did not sweat at all as they were brought in, and she was not moved to mutter in tongues, as the others did, when grasping the serpents. If anything, Emma had felt more sorry for the snakes than for herself before, thinking that God and most everybody else might be more pleased if they were set free rather than clutched in her hands.
She had not feared for her own life, as she did on this night when she saw them. Emma wanted to cry out, turn and run out the back church door when the deacons walked the snakes into the sanctuary. But all she could do was watch, and wait, quietly and patiently, like a lamb awaiting the slaughterer’s blade since she knew the bite was coming.