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“I hope so. I want to get married, too! Get me a mansion and a Muuu-say-deess, Mrs. DeeeeLong,” she teased.
“You’re so funny.” I laughed.
“So, I guess I won’t see you until Sunday, then,” Billie sighed, walking out of the classroom behind me.
“You know Evan has all these plans.”
“Dang, I thought I’d at least get some time for girls’ day at the mall. We need to get you some new clothes.”
“New clothes? What’s wrong with my clothes? I look fine.” I looked down at my tan suit.
“Girl, it’s time to step away from those two-piece sales at Belk,” she said, eyeing me. “You look like you’re going to church everywhere we go. Work—suit ... picnic—suit ... I think you wore a suit last week when we met up for dinner.”
“I like my suits,” I declared, laughing at her little list. “And I can’t fit the itty-bitty teenager clothes you wear. I’m too big for that.”
“First, you’re not that big. And second, haven’t you seen one Ashley Stewart?” she asked. “Thick girls are dressing divas now, too.”
“I know, but I’m not trying on that stuff. I’ll look silly.”
“Don’t knock it til you tried it!” She sucked her teeth slyly.
“Well, I’ll have to ‘try it’ some other time. Because, like I said, this weekend, I’ll be wearing my suit to hang out with my husband.”
“Evan. Evan. Evan.”
“Hater.” I laughed. “I’ll see you Sunday. We’re having dinner at my parents’ house after church, so you can come celebrate with me there.”
“Will do, Ms. Journey. Will do. Ohh ... What do you think Evan got you this year? I know it’s something amazing. Evan knows how to give a gift.” She rubbed her hands together in anticipation.
“I already got my gift.”
“What?”
“My Juliet,” I replied. “Last week, Evan finally had a contractor come out to the house to cut the Juliet balcony into the side wall of the bedroom. Now I can look out into the sky as I fall asleep. See the moon. It’s like I’m sleeping outside. You know I always wanted to do that.”
“Now that’s good living, ain’t it?” she said as we both imagined the Alabamian star show I’d been enjoying beside my bed each night.
“It is. It sure is.”
As I walked around the track, sweating fiercely beneath the lunchtime sun with the track team and a gym class running what seemed like light speeds ahead of me, I thought of what Billie had said about me not being excited about my birthday. I hadn’t realized how passive I was being. She was right. I wasn’t exactly running toward it—not the way I’d raced with cuddly kitten-clad calendars tacked up on my bedroom wall like posters for my thirteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and even twenty-first birthdays. Then, I was unable to be contained, felt free by the turn in time. My hips spread and swayed, my stance and step became more confident and in my heart, I believed the next year would be better, simply because I was older.
But the older I got, the more I learned that being older only meant less freedom, less spread and sway, and more of an acceptance that things were probably not going to change. It was flat-out hard to be excited about that. I supposed Billie and I were trying to avoid this feeling by making our resolutions to slow things down a bit, but so far, little was happening. On an impulse, I’d applied for my passport and carried it with me everywhere I went, just hoping that having it with me would help me plan my trip to anywhere sometime. But Evan was too busy with work and I couldn’t go alone, so the thing just collected dust at the bottom of my purse. And it had company there, too—right next to the passport was the empty pad I’d bought to write all of my new songs in ... whenever or wherever I was inspired by something. So far, I hadn’t been inspired and, therefore, I hadn’t written a single word beyond “Please Return To” and “Journey.” The only thing I had going for me on that resolution list was my weight loss. I lost a few pounds over the months and if I wanted to keep them off, I had to keep on walking. Lunch could wait.
Chapter Three
Exodus 13:17. That’s what Sunday is like for me at my father’s brainchild of a church, Greater Prophet House. In the Bible, that’s when God leads Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt through a desert road that leads to the mouth of the Red Sea. The Egyptians are coming up behind, and then old Moses lifts his staff and the entire sea cooperates, opening up a pathway for the fearful people to pass through safely.
In magnitude and magnificence, “The House,” as everyone calls it, couldn’t sit in the shadows of the Red Sea, but it was certainly getting there. The church my father, the Reverend Dr. Jethro Cash, started with just four members (my mother, older brother Jethro Jr, me, and my Nana Jessie) was now ministering to 20,000. Over thirty-one years, I watched from the front pew in my Sunday clothes and patent leather Mary Janes as my father’s beard grayed and the choir loft grew from my mother holding a microphone with her gloved hands to a competition-ready chorus of 1,600 singers in seventeen choirs. Behind me, the pews bustled and busted out of control as we outgrew three sanctuaries, the second of which we marked with the birth of my rambunctious baby brother, Justin, and finally ended up in “The Big House”—a huge dome of pews that seemed to stretch out to the sky. It had seating for 25,000 and always filled up—even the overflow auditorium had additional overflow space. While the expected logistical chaos and traffic nightmare that was required to get worshippers into the sanctuary to hear the sermon was despised by everyone in the city from the mayor to my own mother, my father said he wouldn’t stop adding on to the House until he had enough seats to make Bryant-Denny Stadium’s 92,138 seats look like a pigpen—only instead of the Crimson Tide, we’d be “cheering for the Lord.” And that was a big calling, because in our town, people christened their own babies in the name of the Tide.
Now as many screaming babies, casket-sharp men, and women in sun-shading church hats and nylons as there were in the House, when Evan and I got there, the bulging sea of people seemed to subside as we made our way to wherever my parents’ orders were taking me. The people didn’t turn their backs or walk in silence in another direction. Instead, they smiled and waved in the familial, responsible way people tend to look at preachers’ kids they’ve watched grow up.
By the time we made our way to our seats, my cheeks were red from countless sweet kisses from church mothers and deaconesses. Evan’s arms were weighed down with shiny gift bags, and his hands were filled with cards. Against Billie’s wishes, I was wearing a teal and black pantsuit that hid the curves I didn’t want to be seen and Evan complemented me in a black suit with a teal bowtie and handkerchief. I always told him we didn’t need to match quite so much, but he loved doing it on special occasions. He said it looked better in pictures.
Around us, the church was coming alive with preparation. There were teleprompters and flatscreen TVs. A section for the hearing impaired and blind. The quiet room with the long windows toward the back where they took the women with the white prayer hats who’d gotten the Holy Ghost and needed to be rested. Dressed in their long red and black robes, the choir assembled on the bleachers, the band was in the pit, and the noble deacons and immaculate ushers were lining up and organizing the maze of rows like the officers had done to the cars outside. From where I was sitting, the House looked like it was preparing a crowd for the kickoff at a championship football game. While I’d known or brushed shoulders with most of the people inside, in the rows in front of me, their faces bled into a crowd of expectant onlookers. Worshippers who came to see something happen.
“Hallelujah,” I heard my father’s voice boom through the sound system before he walked onto the altar. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
While I’d heard that voice and even those same words a million times before, I smiled at the familiarity and like everyone else, I stood up as my mother and father walked into the sanctuary, flanked by the assistant pastor Jack Newsome, a random circle
