The Painted Table(25)
“Oh.” Saffee pauses. “But still, I don’t think I’ll ever go to a sewing club.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TREE OF LIFE,
TREE OF EVIL
1951
Miss Eilert, a cherubic-faced pillar of the First Methodist Church, sits facing the row of three girls and two boys in the basement Sunday school room. The chilly stone walls suggest a cave unsuccessfully disguised with yellow paint. A labyrinth of ancient, patched pipes and heating ducts crisscross overhead. The children, all eight or nine years old, wear coats dusted by snow during their short walk from school.
To Saffee’s relief, a navy blue cape with silver buttons at each shoulder disguises Miss Eilert’s prodigiousness. Barrel-bosomed women always embarrass her. But worse, Joann’s insistence that Saffee attend this class meant she had to give up her usual after-school ice-skating on the Blue River. Saffee had put up a fuss to no avail, and now she sits hunched in a straight wooden chair, scowling.
“I’m sorry it’s chilly,” Miss Eilert says. “They don’t turn on the furnace during the week.”
Hearing her pleasant voice, Saffee’s impression of Miss Eilert softens. The woman seems intent, yet kind. The children fidget but show respect.
Miss Eilert begins by holding up a paper cutout from a pile on her lap. “When God created the world,” she says, “He placed the first man and the first woman in a beautiful garden called Eden.” She presses the cutout of Adam and Eve, discreetly standing behind a bush, onto a flannel-covered easel. Saffee’s face flushes pink. She’s glad no one in the room knows that her full name is Sapphire Eve, not after this obviously naked Eve, but after an evening sky.
“This is the Tree of Life,” Miss Eilert continues. “God planted it in the middle of the garden.” Up goes the tree onto the easel.
“And God put another tree in the garden. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Up goes the second tree.
Saffee wonders if there might be a stick of Doublemint in her coat pocket. She fishes. All she feels are wet mittens.
“God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But they disobeyed.” Miss Eilert covers the cutout figures with a large black circle.
“This black spot represents sin. When we do something God has instructed us not to do, that is sin. Ever since Adam and Eve, every person born, except One, has sinned. We are not allowed to carry that sin to heaven. We can’t live with God unless that sin is washed away while we still live on earth.”
The five children wiggle but are still attentive.
Miss Eilert smiles at them. It is a pretty smile. “God has a loving plan to take away sin and make us clean.” She removes the black circle and says, “God sent His Son, Jesus, to live as a perfect man on earth.”
Saffee listens to the familiar story of the birth of Baby Jesus. She was part of a speaking chorus in the church Christmas program last month. Although she diligently practiced her short solo line, she almost fainted with fright when the moment came to speak it.
As Miss Eilert displays more flannel-backed images, Saffee is able to disregard the unpleasant smell of her wet wool coat. She is startled by the picture of Jesus nailed to a wooden cross and wearing a crown of thorns, His body blood-streaked.
“Jesus allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross to die because He loves us.” Miss Eilert’s voice is slow, as if to let her words sink in. “The sins of the whole world, even yours and mine, were put on Jesus when He hung on the cross . . .”
Saffee perspires inside her heavy coat.
“Jesus was willing to be punished for our sins, even though He never sinned. Then . . . three days later . . .” Miss Eilert’s smile widens as she presses a picture of an empty tomb onto the board. “He rose to life again . . . and He lives today.”
After a brief pause, Miss Eilert and her cape stand up. “Children,” she says, “we’re going upstairs now. Please follow me.” What is this?
The sanctuary feels even colder than the basement. Late afternoon light hardly penetrates the stained glass windows. Miss Eilert indicates that the children are to kneel along the curved altar rail.
Before them, lining the back of the altar, vertical brass pipes of the organ stand as if sentinels in the Sabbath-like stillness. Saffee considers the organ to be magnificent. She loves its complex sounds and routinely counts pipes during long Sunday sermons. Now, in the dusk, rising high above her, they create a mysterious holiness.
Miss Eilert whispers, “I’ve told you about Jesus. I’ve told you that He died on the cross because He loves us. When we trust our lives to Him, He forgives our sins and His Spirit comes to live inside us. Then God sees us as completely clean. Pure like Jesus. Pure enough to someday live with Him in heaven.”