Like A Charm

THE BLESSING OF BROKENNESS by Karin Slaughter

Mary Lou Dixon sat in the front pew of the church, her eyes raised as she watched the cross over the pulpit being slowly lowered to the floor. She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist as the cross, which had seemed so small hanging a few inches from the ceiling, began to grow larger as it descended in front of her like a broken bird.

'Hold up,' the foreman said, and the three men working the pulleys stopped. The cross shook in the air, its broken right arm dangling by a few slivers of wood as it tapped ominously against the side. The noise reminded Mary Lou of a clock, ticking away time.

'Easy, now,' the foreman instructed, using his hands to illustrate. He was the only English speaking person in the four-man crew and the Mexicans were slow to understand his orders. They finally seemed to comprehend, though, because the cross began its journey to the floor once again, finally coming to a gentle resting point on the carpet.

The Mexicans genuflected, and Mary Lou wondered if that was entirely appropriate in the Christ Holiness Baptist Church of Elawa, Georgia. The cross was a simple wooden affair, lacking a Jesus, but with a fine polish that shone in the morning sun. It was hardly the ornamental icon most Catholics were used to exalting, if that was what Catholics did – Mary Lou had no idea. She had been Christ Holiness for the last twenty years and before that Lord and Saviour, which was two steps below Primitive and one above snake handling.

Although plenty of contractors attended the church, none had volunteered their time to repair the ailing cross. Bob Harper, who had been a deacon for the last ten years, owned his own construction company, but he was still over five hundred dollars more expensive than the black man and his crew. The job was too small to make it worth his time, he had said. Mary Lou had commented she was glad Jesus had not felt the same way about dying for Bob's sins, but the deacon had not been swayed by her remark.

So, here Mary Lou was with a black foreman and his Catholic Mexicans, trying to get the cross repaired before Easter Sunday – at considerable expense – with no help whatsoever from the more capable men of the congregation. This sort of thing was typical of the church lately. Long gone were the times when people happily volunteered to do routine maintenance or send out mailers to collect donations for foreign missionaries. No one visited the sick in the hospital anymore. No one wanted to go on bible retreats unless they were assured there would be a pool and twenty-four-hour room service. The last two anti-abortion rallies down to Atlanta had been cancelled because the weather report had predicted rain, and Lord knew no one wanted to stand out in the rain.

'Mrs Dixon?' the black man asked. His name was Jasper Goode, she knew. He was a dark-skinned older man with a bald head that showed a significant amount of perspiration despite the air-conditioning in the church. Mary Lou did not trust this show of over-perspiration, as if it somehow made him shifty. He had done nothing but stand and direct the crew all morning, yet he was sweating as if he had been running a marathon.

'Ma'am?' he prompted.

'Yes?' Mary Lou answered, shifting in the hard pew. She put her hand to her stomach to calm it.

Jasper walked towards her, down the stairs that lined the stage. He kept walking until he was about three feet away, looming over her.

Mary Lou squared her shoulders, willing herself not to fidget. He was a tall man and knew it. She could not help but glance down at the floor before bracing herself to look back up at him.

'Sorry,' he said, smiling as he kneeled down on one knee in front of her.

'What is it?' she snapped, aware she had no reason to. The truth was she did not like him standing so close to her. The sight of him was almost too much to bear.

The man had been badly burned, and up close his face was a synthetic looking mess, his skin stretched unnaturally tight in places, the pigment a patchwork quilt of varying skin tones around his cheeks so that from afar he looked as if someone had stitched his face together from borrowed flesh. He had no eyebrows or eyelashes, giving his eyes a perpetually startled look. His hands, too, were scarred, and the skin that bunched around his wrists resembled a slouching sock. Even in this heat, he wore his sleeves long, tightly buttoned at the wrists, hiding what Mary Lou imagined was an even more horrific sight.

He said something to his crew, and she tried not to watch him speak. The most startling thing about the man's appearance was his lips – an unnatural shade of pink, like the bright pinkness of a mouse's nose, and delicate looking, more suited for a maiden than an old black man with no facial hair to speak of. The lips had a constant sheen, as if they had been made for him only recently. Mary Lou had seen on television where a child's ear had been grown from scratch on the back of a living mouse. She wondered if the man's lips had been grown under similar circumstances.

The burns were not the kind of thing that could go unremarked upon. The first time they had met, the black man had explained to Mary Lou without her asking that he had been in an automobile accident. The car had exploded, burning alive his wife and child. He had barely escaped with his own life, and subsequent surgeries had healed his body if not his heart; he said the memories of that night still haunted him, and the part he played in the death of both his wife and child was something he could not forgive himself for, let alone forget. Drunk, Mary Lou suspected, but did not say.

Jasper Goode told her, 'We'll leave it here, then take it into the parking lot after lunch.' Mary Lou made a point of looking at her watch, and he added, 'They work better on a full belly'

'I'm sure they do,' Mary Lou answered, hoping her tone conveyed her displeasure.

'She don't look as bad as I thought she would,' the black man offered, as if the cross were a ship and not a symbol of Jesus's sacrifice.

'Well, good,' she returned, wondering if this meant they would charge less. She doubted it.

As if sensing her thoughts, he added, 'She'll still take a while.'

'You promised it would be ready for Sunday,' Mary Lou reminded him, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She didn't think Jasper Goode was the type who went to church on Sundays, and if the decision had been left to Mary Lou, she would have hired Bob Harper instead. Five hundred dollars was a small price to pay to employ someone who was invested in his own salvation.

Jasper stared at her. 'I wants to thank you, ma'am, for giving me this job. It's kind of hard to get work for me now, and I appreciate it.'

She nodded, slightly taken aback by his admission.

Jasper held her gaze. 'You feelin' all right, ma'am?'

'I'll feel better when the cross is fixed,' she told him.

His mouth grimaced into what might be a smile. 'We'll have it on time,' Jasper assured her. He took out a white handkerchief to wipe at his sweating, bald head. He said something Mexican to the crew, and they scampered off, showing more hustle than they had shown thus far on the job.

Mary Lou shifted in the pew again, trying to find a comfortable position. Her office was over the old chapel, which was now the gymnasium, and the air conditioner there left much to be desired. If not for the fact that she could not afford to miss another day of work, she would have just stayed home today.

She let out a heavy sigh, staring at the pulpit. The blank space where the cross had been made the chapel feel hollow, as if the heart had been removed from its chest. It was a mystery how the cross had become damaged. A parishioner had mentioned something about the cross looking 'off one Sunday, and Mary Lou and Pastor Stephen had come in after the service, both staring up until their necks kinked. There had been a definite tilt to the side, but from the ground they had not been able to tell why.

A week later, Mary Lou was in the church office stuffing envelopes when Randall, the church custodian, burst into her office, mumbling something about a sign from God. This was not the first time that Randall, whose own mother admitted that he was slightly touched in the head, had claimed such a vision, but Mary Lou had followed him into the chapel to stretch her legs. They found the cross tilting almost sideways, the thick cables that anchored it to the ceiling vibrating as if under great pressure. As Mary Lou and Randall stood there, a great cracking sound filled the room, followed by a terrible, low moan, as if Jesus Himself was on the cross, His arm being ripped from His body. She could still see it play in her mind in slow motion: the arm of the cross snapping, the cables twisting and bending as the weight shifted. Sometimes at night, she could hear that awful low moan of the wood breaking, and she would begin to sweat uncontrollably, knowing that the breaking cross had something to do with her.

As a girl, her Uncle Buell had been what was called a lay minister, which meant he had received no special ordination from Christ, yet still chose to teach the Bible. His following had dwindled as Mary Lou got older, but there was always a core group of people who listened to his teachings. They worshipped Buell as they worshipped the Lord Himself.

Every Sunday and Wednesday, the basement of Buell's ranch-style house would be filled with ten to twenty people, all come to hear Buell speak on the Word. His favourite theme was what he called the insidiousness of sin. Sin was a heavy burden, Buell said, and it would eventually break you one way or another. A good man might beat his wife. A good woman might lie to her husband. These were simple ways that sin could break you in two. This split gave easy entry to more sin, more evil, into your heart. It was up to the sinner to seek out Jesus, to ask for redemption, to seek His help in becoming whole again. God never gave a sinner more than he could carry, Buell insisted. That was His gift to man: He would never break you beyond repair. In every aspect of man's life, even at the end of it, there existed God's opportunity for redemption.

'Only Jesus can put you back together once you've been broken by sin,' Buell had preached. 'And that part of you that is broken becomes all the stronger for it.' He called this strengthening the blessing of brokenness. Even on his hospital bed, dying of bone cancer, he had refused treatment, insisting God had broken his bones only to heal them and make Buell stronger. In the end, the morphine had convinced him there were angels in the room. Or maybe not. Buell was known to see angels without the benefit of drugs, too.

Mary Lou turned in the pew as she heard footsteps in the foyer. Pastor Stephen entered the chapel, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his hands tucked into his pockets. Stephen Riddle was the exact opposite of her Uncle Buell. His sermons were not about working for redemption, but being blessed with it. There was no burden Jesus would not take from you, no problem He would not solve. Stephen's favourite admonition was that it was a sin to worry, whereas Buell's charge at the end of every service was to go home and worry, to pick through your life and find out what you were doing wrong and pray to Jesus that He would help you correct it.

Of course, Buell never lacked volunteers for even the smallest task. Such was the devotion of his flock that when his truck broke down, a mechanic appeared to fix it. When his house needed a new roof, the men of the congregation banded together and installed a new one over the weekend. Stephen Riddle would watch the church crumble to the ground around him before the thought even entered his mind to ask his parishioners to carry their proper load.

'Hot day,' Stephen said, then gave her a sideways glance. 'You doing OK?'

Mary Lou nodded, feeling a bead of sweat on her upper lip. She suddenly wanted to go home and lie down in bed so badly that she could almost feel the sheets across her body. Her sick days were used up, though. She could not afford to lose the money. While she accepted that Stephen was genuinely concerned about her health, she also knew that he would dock her pay if she left a minute before she was supposed to. After what had happened between them, Mary Lou should have had power over the preacher. She should have been able to exert this power any way she chose. For some unknown reason, she could not.

'How's our project going?' he asked, gesturing to the empty space above the pulpit. 'Do you feel good about this contractor?'

She knew what he was getting at. Mary Lou had not been in her office all day. 'I thought it best to keep an eye on them.'

'You look like you've lost a little weight,' he said, offering her a polite smile.

'I have,' she said, not pointing out that it was not just some, but a considerable amount. Food did not agree with her lately. Everything she ate sat in her stomach like a piece of coal, waiting to burn her from inside.

Stephen nodded, tucking his chin into his chest as he raised his eyebrows. He did this when there was more to say, but he could not find words. The trick was a good one, and it made him seem thoughtful and introspective when the truth was that he was simply incapable of expressing himself. 'A man of words,' Buell would have said, 'though none of them good.'

'Well,' she said, meaning to move Stephen along, but she could see his lips twisted to the side, his eyes focused on her wrist. The bracelet suddenly felt like an albatross.

He looked up quickly, offering a pained smile. The smile was familiar, too. He was a man well-versed in gestures that brought him compassion under the guise of giving it.

Mary Lou watched him as he walked over to the cross, laying his hand on it with some sort of reverence. His fingers gently glided along the wood, softer than they had ever been on her. She thought of Anne Riddle, his wife, and hated her with a bright searing hate that burned her up inside. Anne was serene and beautiful, her hips jutting out into the air, her skin the finest porcelain. She was the perfect preacher's wife: reverent, righteous, reserved.

'Cleaned up nice,' Stephen mumbled.

Mary Lou did not tell him that the cross had not yet been cleaned. Instead, she nodded, and tried to smile when he looked up at her.

He asked, 'How's Pud doing?'

'Still in school,' she answered, her voice as quiet as his.

'You get that roof fixed yet?'

She frowned, thinking about the money it would take to fix her roof. Nothing short of the lottery would bail her out of the hole she found herself in.

'Think we'll get those fliers mailed out today?' he asked, meaning the anti-abortion leaflets, the church's bread and butter. Their mailing list was one of the largest in the nation, and people from as far away as Michigan contributed money to the cause. This was what had brought Mary Lou to the chapel this morning, the thought that she could not stuff one more colour copy into one more envelope without wanting to slit her wrists. Her stomach rolled when she thought about the photograph on the flyers, the foetus ripped in two, the head caved in by some sharp, foul instrument, the headline above beseeching, 'Why did you let my mommy kill me?'

'Mary Lou?'

She shook her head and tears came to her eyes.

'Mary Lou,' Stephen repeated, but she waved him off, the ridiculous charm bracelet jingling against her wrist. 'Why are you still wearing that?' he asked, obviously resigned to what her answer would be.

'A memento,' she said, sliding the bracelet around her wrist.

'They're supposed to be lucky,' he said, glancing back at the cross, stroking the soft wood again.

'Supposedly,' she said. The worst news of her life had come on the day she had been given the trinket, and Mary Lou could not help but shiver at the evil that discharged from the thing like poisonous gas.

Stephen stared at his hand on the cross, his displeasure evident. The bracelet, like so many things between them, was a secret. Stephen had told the church he was taking a sabbatical to minister to the poor in the Blue Ridge Mountains when in fact he had joined his brother in Las Vegas for a convention of the Greater West Coast Waste Management Association.

That his brother was a garbage man was not something that Stephen liked to brag about – by different accounts the brother was a neurosurgeon, a banker, a missionary – but Mary Lou had been pleased enough when Stephen had brought back the charm bracelet for her. He'd said that he had used all his blackjack winnings to buy it especially for Mary Lou. The bracelet had been displayed in one of the shop windows at the Venetian and he had passed by and instantly thought of her. It was only later that she had noticed the flaws: at some point, the bracelet had been broken and inexpertly welded back together; some of the charms had sharp points that tore her clothes. The snake got caught on her sleeve all the time and the tiny cross's Jesus was horrible to witness, His pain so evident in his features that Mary Lou could not stand to look at it.

Despite all of this, she had taken to wearing it at night and her dreams when she managed to sleep were filled with horrible visions: a bear traversing the darkness in search of human prey; a grown man slit stem to stern; severed hands reaching out as if to strangle her in her sleep. Even when she woke screaming, the skeleton key caught in her hair as if to unlock some horrible secret in her brain, Mary Lou had refused to remove the bracelet.

As if knowing all of this, Stephen suggested, 'Maybe you shouldn't wear it.'

'Why?' she asked, knowing he would not have an answer. It was a reminder; her own Scarlet Letter.

Stephen stood there uncertain, then finally left her with a slight bow, as if he was conceding this round. She listened as his footsteps receded, first a dull thud against the carpeted aisle, then a sharp clicking on the tiles in the foyer, and he was gone. Stephen was better at exiting than most men.

Brian, Mary Lou's ex-husband, had stuck around about ten years too long. She had known for some time that he was cheating on her, but her Uncle Buell's words about a divorced woman still hung heavy on her shoulders. So, she had left it to Brian to do the leaving, and Brian had hated her for that, as had their son. Both men had come to see Mary Lou as weak, a punching bag who would take any amount of abuse but still hang in there, waiting for more.

Pud was worse. Not that she thought of her teenage son as 'Pud'. She had named him William when he was born, and insisted most of his life that it not be shortened to anything crude like Willy or Bill. Pud was the name William had given himself two years ago, around the time puberty had hit and he had started listening to rap music and wearing his pants so that the crack of his ass showed when he bent over. She had watched her darling son change into an unknown creature, a pseudo piccaninny with his blond hair tightly braided in corn rows and his clothes hanging off his body like a wet paper bag on a stick. His language changed, so that she could not understand a word he said, and he sang along to that awful music, saying 'nigga' this and 'nigga' that, a word Mary Lou had never used round him and was ashamed to hear coming from his mouth. At the same time, William could not stand black people, and went out of his way to make derogatory comments about them, even when Mary Lou had people from the church over.

Though she loved her son, the smile William had given Mary Lou when he told her that from now on he would only answer to 'Pud' made her want to slap him for the first time in her life. That mischievous set to his lips as he said the word, as if Mary Lou was an idiot and did not know that 'pulling your pud' was slang for male masturbation. She had been a substitute teacher for the first few years of William's life. She had heard worse than pud in the teacher's lounge.

Her biggest problem with William was his anger, though she had no idea what he had to be angry about. Brian spoiled him, even as he refused to be seen in public with the boy. Anything his son wanted, he got. Two-hundred-dollar tennis shoes and an eighty-dollar skateboard (no helmet) that William had tried once and never again were just a few of the things Brian used to justify paying less child support to Mary Lou. They were constantly arguing over this, with Brian screaming and Mary Lou crying because her anger was such a tight knot inside her that it could only squeeze out tears. Child support was not the only thing Brian was supposed to pay. By court order, he was responsible for half of the upkeep of the house. Still the roof leaked when it rained and there were not enough buckets in the world to catch the water. No matter how much Mary Lou cleaned, mildew grew on the cabinets in the kitchen and walking into the house was like walking across a loaf of moulded bread. Thank God Pud had his two-hundred-dollar tennis shoes to keep his feet from having to touch the ground.

The sound of hammering came from outside the chapel, and Mary Lou slowly moved to the edge of the pew so that she could stand. The bracelet clunked against the armrest, and she glanced around before grinding the edge of the praying angel into the soft wood until it bit out a small gouge. Cramps seized her belly as she tried to rise, and Mary Lou thought for the first time about going to the doctor. A quick calculation of the remaining money in her chequebook convinced her that was not a possibility, even if she sent William to his father's to eat.

She gritted her teeth as she pushed herself up, groaning from the movement. Sweat dripped down her back, and she tried to think about something cool to counteract the sensation. What came to mind was the church retreat she went on last Christmas, and how her life had been unalterably damaged by what had happened there.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, was about as close as the South came to having a ski resort, even if they still had to blow fake snow on to the mountains most days just so people could slide down on their skis. Brian had agreed to take William for a week, a miracle in itself, and Mary Lou had managed to get the church to help pay some of the cost in exchange for extra help with the youth group.

She had gone to Gatlinburg with no illusions that she would ski. Mary Lou had never been athletic. She was a large woman who did not embrace the outdoors unless it was on a beach somewhere with a pina colada close by and a trashy book. What she had envisioned for herself was sitting in front of a roaring fire, her feet propped up as she read a romance where the women were strong and the men were worshipful. In the evenings, there would be dinners with various members of the congregation, then some socializing. The event was billed as a religious retreat for singles. As a recent single, Mary Lou qualified for this, but she had not gone with the intention of meeting anyone. There were far too many complications in her life without putting another person in the picture.

Of course, Pastor Stephen Riddle was not a new person in her life, and despite the strictures of their employer-employee relationship, she had long thought of him as a trusted counsellor if not a friend. Anne, his wife, was also an acquaintance, and Mary Lou had helped out at birthday parties for their children and even volunteered to clean the house when Anne's father had passed away. That Mary Lou and Stephen had ended up going back to her room the third night of the retreat still surprised her. Ostensibly, they had gone upstairs to talk away from the crowd. Mary Lou knew that her ex-husband had not taken William without strings attached, and that this latest kindness would mean less child support at the end of the month. She had wanted to broach the subject of an advance with the pastor. She had been hoping Stephen would see her plight and volunteer a raise.

When Stephen had moved closer to her, Mary Lou had invited the comfort. When his gentle touching had turned more insistent, and she had felt him stiffen against her, Mary Lou had proceeded as if she was in a fog. Sex with Brian had always been something to endure, and though she had read enough about orgasms in her women's magazines, Mary Lou had considered them much as she considered the recipes and craft suggestions: interesting, but nothing she would ever have time to do. Stephen had not delivered in that area, either, but it felt so good to be held, to have the solid weight of him on top of her, to watch his face contort in pleasure, that she had found herself crying out, biting her lip so that she would not scream.

Stephen had mistaken this for ardour, and though he had slinked out the door a few minutes later, making excuses about being in his room in case Anne or one of the children called, the next evening he had knocked at her door again. She had let him in, somewhat thrilled with the wrongness of what they were doing. Mary Lou had never done anything bad. Her life was spent being as good as she could manage for fear of some greater retribution in the afterlife. To her surprise, there was a certain pleasure to be had from breaking a cardinal rule: not just sex, but sex with a married man. Not just a married man, but her pastor.

The ensuing nights, when Stephen had suggested things he wanted to do, positions he wanted to try, she had encouraged him. In fact, she had begged him, the thought that he had never tried these things with Anne making her almost giddy with power. Even as she leaned on her elbows, her hind end high in the air like a dog on heat, she had encouraged him, thinking in some perverse way that she deserved this degradation.

After the retreat, Stephen had pretended as if nothing had happened, his polite demeanour a slap in her face. Twice she had tried to talk to him, but it was not until he had returned from Las Vegas, holding the charm bracelet in his hand as if he held the world for her, that she had got the message. To put a finer point on it, he had told her, 'I cannot do this. I am a man of God.'

When she had cried, he had held her, then shushed her with his kisses, more gentle than any she had known their few times together. This had made her cry even harder; not for the loss of him but for the loss of the gentleness she could have had. Big, racking sobs took hold, and she had started to hate Anne, because she understood that Stephen's gentleness belonged to Anne, and Mary Lou had been nothing but his whore.

'Ma'am?' a voice interrupted her thoughts.

Mary Lou startled, aware that tears were threatening to fall.

'Yes?' she managed, wiping her eyes as she turned to see the black man standing behind her. He was patting the top of his head again with the now not so white handkerchief. She could see the Mexicans behind him, waiting for orders.

'We just about ready to start,' he said.

She nodded, her hand on the back of the pew, trying to remember what he was talking about. The cross. Of course, the cross.

Mary Lou looked at her watch, as if she had something important scheduled. 'How much longer?'

"Bout ten minutes, I s'pose.' He nodded to the Mexicans. 'Take us that long to get'er set up.'

'You're in the north parking lot?' she queried, though she had seen his beaten-up old truck and tools set up there, and knew they would do as she instructed for fear of being discharged.

'Yes'm,' he told her, then again nodded to the men.

They all proceeded down the aisle as if for a wedding, their footsteps slow and deliberate. Mary Lou watched the Mexicans lift the broken cross, which seemed heavier than she had thought, or maybe they were putting on a show. There was much straining and groaning before the thing was high enough to be carried away, and Mary Lou wondered if Jesus had made as much of a commotion carrying the damn thing up the mountain.

"Bout ten minutes,' Jasper repeated.

After they left, Mary Lou thought about sitting back down again, but she knew if she did she would have an even harder time standing up again. Instead, she walked over to the window and leaned against the glass as she watched the men carrying the cross to the back parking lot. It was just as she had thought: they moved much more quickly when they thought that she was not looking.

There were six sawhorses already set up in an approximate pattern of the cross, and Jasper moved them into position as the cross was lowered on to them. He held the broken right arm in one hand as he did this, pushing the sawhorses with his feet, tugging them with his free hand. The chapel window was higher than the parking lot, and Mary Lou was afforded an aerial view of the proceedings. The cross seemed smaller again now that it was further away. Distance could do that to things, make them seem smaller. Time could do the same. When Mary Lou thought about Gatlinburg, for instance, it seemed like a smaller event in her life. What had ensued of course loomed larger, because it had yet to come to any sort of conclusion.

Uncle Buell was fond of saying that a woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down, but he had failed to point out that when both of them finally stopped trying to run, it was the woman who could not escape the consequences. Stephen Riddle, Mary Lou was sure, had prayed to the Lord for forgiveness and been granted it. Mary Lou had prayed for redemption and been given a child.

Her periods had always been erratic. Working at the church so closely with Stephen, going to the school twice a week to beg them not to expel William, had taken all of her energy, so that when months had gone by without any blood in the toilet, Mary Lou had not noticed. She was a large woman on top of this, and when her stomach began to swell, she had attributed this to too much fast food and late nights eating chips in front of the television. It might be menopause, she had found herself reasoning. She had even welcomed the Change as one less thing she would have to worry about.

Still, part of her must have known, because when she had finally managed to go to the doctor, she did not go to Dr Patterson, who had delivered William, but to a doctor in Ormewood, two towns over, who was just setting up his practice.

'Congratulations,' the doctor had said when Mary Lou had called for the results. He had then given a long list of instructions on diet and exercise, and offered the name of a good midwife as well as the hospital he preferred for the delivery.

Mary Lou had written all this down on a stack of bills by the phone in the church office, all the while praying that no one would walk in. For a panicked few seconds, she had wondered if the phone was tapped, but then realized the church would be too cheap to pay for such a thing. They were more likely to tell Randall to stand at the door and listen. As far as Mary Lou could tell, no one was outside lurking.

The doctor had asked, 'Do you have any questions?'

'What about,' Mary Lou had begun, her voice lowered, still afraid of an unseen listener. 'What about other options?'

Even as she had asked the question, Mary Lou had known exactly what she meant. She had been stuffing envelopes all day, putting the same colour photocopy of that twisted child into a crisp, white envelope, sticking on a label from their national mailing list, then running it through the postage meter so that the letter would get there as soon as possible.

'Mrs Riddle,' the doctor had said, using the name Mary Lou had given him. 'I don't think you understand. You're in your third trimester.'

'Yes,' she had said, wondering what the problem was.

The doctor had got haughty. 'Third trimester abortions are illegal in the state of Georgia, Mrs Riddle.' Then, he had gone on to tell Mary Lou that he did not think he would have time to see her as a regular patient and suggested someone else across town.

She had kept her hand on the receiver long after putting it down, dumbstruck by the doctor's words. Third trimester abortions were routinely performed all over America. She had over ten thousand pamphlets on her desk talking about cases around the nation where viable foetuses – infants, children, really – had been aborted in the womb, their skulls punctured so they could collapse, their brains sucked out through little vacuum hoses so their parts could be sold to medical researchers. Partial-birth abortions were the scourge of the United States. They were as common as night and day.

After a moment's thought, Mary Lou had locked her office door and sat on the floor behind her desk with the Atlanta phone book. Routinely, the church organized protests where they all piled into the church van and, barring unexpected rain, picketed in front of different abortionaries in Atlanta. They carried signs that said, 'MURDERERS!' and 'STOP KILLING BABIES!'. The doctors who worked at the clinics were so ashamed they could not look at the church members. They kept their heads down, their ears covered as the chanting began. 'Save the babies! Kill the doctors!'

Mary Lou had called these places first. When they had all explained to her the same thing that the doctor had earlier said, she had moved on to the yellow pages, trying all the gynaecologists whose names looked like they might be open to helping her out. She had started with the Jewish doctors, followed by a couple of Polish-sounding ones, then a Hispanic doctor's office where the woman answering the phone barely spoke English, yet managed to convey to Mary Lou that not only was what Mary Lou was asking illegal, it was against God's law.

Those names exhausted, Mary Lou had called the obvious places, the clinics with the word 'women' in their names, then the 'feminist' centres. She had searched the Internet and found numbers for places relatively close by in Tennessee and Alabama, but all of them, down to the last, had told her in no uncertain terms that such a procedure could not be performed. One woman who sounded sympathetic had told her that there were a handful of states that did allow abortions this late in the term, but there had to be clear evidence that the mother's life was in danger.

Mary Lou had considered the phrase, finally coming to the conclusion that her life was in danger. She could not continue working at the church as an unwed mother. There was barely enough money to feed William and herself, let alone a child. What's more, babies were always sick, always needing medicine and office visits and God; the thought of it made her feel as if she had swallowed glass. The church was exempt from the law that would have required them to give her health insurance and the private plan she had looked into years ago was six hundred dollars a month. After paying the mortgage and car insurance so she could drive to work, Mary Lou barely had six hundred dollars left over from her pay cheque. The visit to the doctor across town had meant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for two weeks.

The last phone call she had made to a clinic nearly sent her over the edge. The woman on the other end of the line had actually preached to her, said there were good Christian organizations that would help her through this difficult time. Mary Lou had bitten her tongue to keep from screaming that she was part of that Christian organization, and she would be out on the street if they found out.

Instead, she had slammed down the phone, furious. She was not a crack addict, for God's sake. She was not like those women who used abortion for birth control. She wasn't some career minded whore who did not have time for a child. She loved children. She volunteered at the church nursery the last Sunday of every month. She was a mother.

Tears sprang into her eyes, and she found herself putting her wrist to her mouth, sucking it as she had done as a child. The charms on the bracelet chattered against her teeth, and the metallic taste burned her throat. She worked each charm into her mouth, sucking it as if to draw some sort of power. She had always seen the thing as evil, a nasty reminder of her sin, but now she found herself counting off the charms – the locket, the ballet slippers, the lighthouse, the cross – like a rosary.

Mary Lou had been teasing the cross with the tip of her tongue when it had occurred to her that of course these places would refuse to say anything incriminating over the phone. She could be anyone, after all. A state regulator, a detective, a pro-life activist trying to trap them into saying something while the phone call was secretly being recorded. Mary Lou would have to go in and meet them face-to-face. She had no doubt that they would help her then. They would see she was not someone out to trick them, but someone who genuinely needed their help.

Stephen had seemed surprised when Mary Lou had asked for a day off. She was given a certain number of sick days every quarter, but at that point in time she had taken no more than a handful of them over the course of her ten years at the church. Still, he had given her a look that said, 'Don't make a habit of this.'

She could have said something about the affair then, something that would have given her the upper hand, but they both knew she would not do it. The church was all that she had left. It was literally her life. She worked here and worshipped here and what few remaining friendships she had were through the church. Mary Lou spent more hours in this place than she did in her own home. If the affair got out, it would not be Stephen they blamed. They would all point the finger at her. Even when Brian had left her, cheating on her in such an obvious way that his own mother had called him worthless, people had still blamed Mary Lou. What had she done to make her husband stray? Was she not a good wife? Surely the fault could not lie with Brian. He was a good man who always provided well for his family, right up until the day he left them.

Much the same logic would come to the defence of Stephen. Not only was he a married man with two adorable children, neither of them insisting they be called Pud, he was a man of God, a learned man. Stephen Riddle had attended Seminary in Atlanta. He had a doctorate in biblical studies. He was not the type to be hurt by this kind of exposure. Knowing the congregation, Mary Lou suspected they would love him even more for having been through such a trial while still remaining loyal to his family. She could even imagine the sermon he would get out of it. 'God tested me, and I failed,' he would say, spreading the blame even as he waited for his sins to be washed away.

Regret bit into her every time she thought about the way Stephen had treated her as she stood in his office, asking for what was rightly hers. The groundwork giving him all the power had been laid that very moment, and unsurprisingly he had been a much more skilful engineer. When he had challenged her with a curt, 'Is that all?' Mary Lou had been unable to do anything but nod. He had then looked down at his desk, at his open bible, dismissing her with the top of his head.

The clinic in Atlanta was tucked out of the way, but Mary Lou had known how to find it. She had driven there several times, actually, with anywhere from twenty to fifty people, most of them women, holding small coolers or sandwiches or thermoses of coffee, as if they were going on a field trip instead of going to prevent what amounted to murder.

It was murder, after all. There was no way around that. Mary Lou had avoided this basic truth as she drove to Atlanta, a considerable distance. As it had so many times the last few months, her mind had wandered back to her childhood. She had imagined herself sitting in the basement of her Uncle BuelPs house, listening to the gospel. How simple things had seemed back then, how black and white everything had been. There was nothing that hard work and prayer could not eventually overcome. There was nothing the spirit could not embrace. God never gave you more than you could bear, and even if you broke from the stress, he would build you back and make you stronger. That was his blessing. That was his gift.

Having never been inside the abortion clinic, Mary Lou had been shocked to find how welcoming everyone was. From the outside, the building had seemed gloomy and forbidding, like the death chamber it was. The bars on the windows and the guard at the door certainly lent to this air, as if the women passing through the heavy wooden door were prisoners on death row. Inside, there were cheerful posters of children and animals covering the brightly painted walls. Most surprisingly, there were pamphlets on fertility treatments, adoption and post-natal care. She had never realized that the clinic was also a gynaecological office, where women got routine pap smears and received counselling. Most shocking of all, there were pictures of children on a crowded bulletin board by the door, living children delivered by doctors who worked at the clinic.

Looking at the pictures of children, with sudden clarity, Mary Lou had realized she could not go through with this. Her stomach had pitched, but not with morning sickness. Instead, what she had felt was fear so intense that her bowels seized as if they had been clamped into a vice.

When the nurse called for 'Mrs Riddle', Mary Lou had bolted out the door, gasping for air as she had walked across the street to her car. Still mindful that she was in Atlanta, Mary Lou had kept her keys in her fist, the sharpest one pointed out in case she was attacked. She was not attacked, but there was a man leaning against her car when she had got to it.

He had said, 'Good morning, sister,' looking her up and down the way a farmer might appraise a cow he was thinking of buying. He was filthy-looking, obviously homeless. His arms were crossed over his chest the way her father's used to be when Mary Lou had done something to displease him.

'Please move,' she had said, though there was no threat in her voice. She was exhausted, emotionally spent and incapable of articulating anything but defeat.

'You come from that place,' he had said, indicating the clinic. 'I seen you leaving.'

'No,' she had lied, trying to breathe through her mouth as the wind shifted and she smelled him. 'Please move aside or I'll be forced to call the police.'

He had given her that look again, the same look she had been getting all of her life: you're worthless. You won't stand up to me because you know you deserve this. William looked at her this way and Brian before him and now Stephen Riddle. She was suddenly fed up, and decided then and there that she would not take it from a seedy stranger. Anger had welled up inside her, and without thinking, Mary Lou had lunged at the homeless man, scratching wildly with the key, a startlingly primal yell coming from her mouth as she gouged his face, his neck, his hands as he held them up in an attempt to protect himself.

The attack was still fresh in her mind as she had driven home to Elawa. She had actually drawn blood. Mary Lou had jumped on the disgusting homeless man with more vengeance than she had ever known, anger washing over her like a flood, eroding her better judgement, leaving nothing in its wake but a loose silt of hatred that would not come clean. Part of her had wanted to kill the man. Most surprisingly, part of her had been capable of killing him. Mary Lou had never even thought it possible for her to have the strength to defend herself, let alone to be the kind of person someone should have to defend themselves against.

When she had looked into the rear-view mirror, she had been surprised to see blood on her cheek. This wasn't from the homeless man, she knew. The blood was her own. Mary Lou had scratched herself with the charm bracelet as she drew back the key and aimed for his eyes. Had he not turned away his head in that split second, she would have blinded him. Had he not managed to crawl under the closest car when she had raised her foot to kick him, Mary Lou had no doubt that she would have strangled him with her own hands.

How had that happened, she wondered. What had gotten into her? The poor man had probably wanted nothing more than money, a few dollars for a cup of coffee or whatever rotgut had made him homeless in the first place. What had turned inside her that made Mary Lou Dixon capable of murder?

She had put her wrist to her mouth as she drove, her mind reeling with possibilities. She could taste her blood on the charms, and she had suckled them like a child. There was something bad inside of her, something that was turning her into a monster. She had nearly slammed into an eighteen-wheeler in the next lane when she had realized what it was. Mary Lou had dropped her hand, shifting the gears and pulling on to the shoulder of the highway to a cacophony of car horns.

The bad thing inside of her was Stephen's child. The child was her sin, working against her, trying to break her. The solution was simple: the only way to rid herself of her sin was to dispel the child.

Prayer had come to her like salvation. Around the time William was born, she had lost her connection to God. Being a mother had become the focus of her life and she had found herself bowing her head only during the difficult times. Chest rattling coughs from William's room in the middle of the night. High fevers that would not go away. Inexplicable scrapes and bruises. Meningitis at the neighbouring playschool.

When Stephen called for silence in the chapel, Mary Lou merely went through the motions, bowing her head and waiting, the possibility of actually convening with God far from her mind as she glanced at her watch, took note of who was wearing what and sitting with whom. Working for the church as she did made everything more about the business than the church, so that when she was sitting in church, all she could think was that the upholstery on the deacon's chairs needed mending, or that Randall needed to be reminded to dust the baseboard around the stage.

After her sexual encounters with Stephen, even the thought of prayer had seemed blasphemous. Buell had set it in her mind early on that the preacher was the conduit through which God could be reached. Mary Lou could not see Stephen as a conduit. As a matter of fact, whenever she imagined him, all she could see was the time he was behind her, moaning in pleasure, and she had opened her eyes to see what all the excitement was about, only to glimpse her breasts hanging down like the udders of a cow that had not been milked in some time.

Sitting in her car on the highway outside Atlanta, Mary Lou had felt lifted up by the possibility of salvation. She had kept the bracelet in her mouth, nestling the tiny cross on her tongue, praying to God to release her from her sins. As the car shook from passing traffic, she had squeezed her eyes tightly shut and begged Him to break her no more. It had to be possible that God would forgive her without completely ripping her in two. She had prayed for His understanding of her situation and when prayer failed, she had prayed for the strength to do what she knew she had to do.

With sudden clarity, she had understood what she needed to do. The only way to redeem herself was death. As she had merged back on to the highway, Mary Lou had justified the act, knowing William would be happier living with his father. Brian certainly would be ecstatic to be rid of her and Stephen was desperately looking for a way to get Mary Lou out of the church office and out of his life. She was to them a constant reminder of their disappointments. She was not a good wife, a good mother, or even a particularly good lover.

What she had prayed for as she drove was wisdom in the act. Her hands had begun to sweat as she had considered driving off one of the many bridges between Atlanta and Elawa, and she had reasoned that ramming her car into another vehicle would have been incredibly selfish.

Over the course of the next few days, she had read up on suicide, considering her options the same way she consulted Consumer's Digest back in the fall to see which was the better refrigerator to buy. The best course of action, she had decided, would be to use a gun, but she did not have enough money to buy one, and besides, buying a gun in Elawa was almost as difficult as getting an abortion. They wanted fingerprints. There was a waiting period. There were so many obstacles, as a matter of fact, that Mary Lou had begun to wonder if the people writing all these pamphlets about America going to hell in a handbasket were aware that the things they were warning about were actually harder to do than you'd think.

Pills were an obvious means to her end, but she did not know where to get the right kind, and was afraid that if she asked William he would know, maybe even give her some of his own. Even if she did know where to get pills, surely illegal drugs cost a lot of money, and after two doctor's visits – the clinic had demanded payment up front – Mary Lou had none. She had Valium from the time when Brian divorced her, but there were only ten left, hardly enough to accomplish the act. There was no garage to her house or she would have left the car running, letting the exhaust do the trick. Passing away in her sleep seemed like the easiest way out, but perhaps that was why it was the hardest to actually accomplish.

Cutting her wrists seemed like a good idea for about an hour's time, but then she had thought about William finding her, and the blood he would see. It wasn't so much that she had worried he would be emotionally scarred from finding his mother dead in a pool of her own blood, but that he might like it, and that by killing herself in such a way, she was creating the next Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.

Again Mary Lou had suckled the cross on the bracelet and again she had prayed to God that He would show her how to kill herself. Oddly enough, His sign had come in the form of a flyer. Exactly seven days had passed since she had nearly killed the homeless man, and Mary Lou was not yet back to herself. Normally, she threw out junk mail, but for some reason she had started reading everything that came through the church's post office box as if her life depended on it.

She had scanned the offers from Reader's Digest and American Clearinghouse from start to finish, and entered the youth minister in a sweepstakes for a million dollar prize (even knowing that should he win, the church would never see a penny of it). Then, she had come across a bright pink flyer folded in on itself. The colour should have alerted Mary Lou, but she was beyond alerts since returning from Atlanta. Absently, she opened the folded sheet of paper, her eyes immediately going to the image of an unwound clothes hanger, the tip blackened with little sparks of lines around it because of course these pro-abortion organizations could not afford full colour copies like the church could. The headline asked, 'Do you want women to go back to back-alley abortions?'

Mary Lou had opened her mouth, the charm dropping out and slapping wetly against her chin. She knew His answer. She knew what had to be done.

The startling part of the whole procedure was the pain. Something had made Mary Lou think that she was beyond pain, but such was the intensity that she had passed out during the middle of it. How long she was out, she had no idea. It was dark outside when she had finally come to, and Mary Lou did not think to look at the clock. Like a splinter, it was more painful taking out the clothes hanger than when she had jammed it in. There was blood, but not as much as Mary Lou had anticipated. It was dark and viscous, not at all like the blood on television and therefore not as real.

She had cramped the whole night, but still did not pass the child. What she wanted above all was sleep, and though it had occurred to her that perhaps she had succeeded in killing herself now that God wanted her to live, Mary Lou was fine with this. All she wanted in the world, all she needed in the world, was sleep. She needed peace.

A week had passed, and her sick days were up. If William noticed his mother was unwell, he said nothing. She had heard him come and go by the music being played at full decibel in his room. For all she knew, the stereo was on a timer. There was no telling what her son was up to.

She had gone back to the church because she had to, not because she could. There was a lesson in doing things out of duty, she knew, but the first day back had been so difficult that Mary Lou had actually considered her suicide plans again. She had felt an infection burning in her like a smouldering fire. She had not bled enough. She had not seen fingers or toes in the toilet. There should have been something by now, and if there wasn't, that could only mean that it was still up there, still festering inside of her.

What could she do? A physician at the hospital would know instantly what had happened. She could not go to her regular doctor because he was a deacon at the church. The only thing she could think to do was to call his office and tell them she had a sinus infection but did not have time to come in for an appointment. Thankfully, the nurse had called in some antibiotics without asking any more questions. Mary Lou was not certain that the pills were working, though. Antibiotics were tricky. There were certain kinds for certain infections. Was a sinus infection the same as the infection that boiled in her lower regions? Was this slow, rotting sickness the thing that would finally kill her? Had she gone through all of this, dishonoured her family, her God, coveted her neighbour, committed mortal sins, all for nothing?

She had longed to pray, to talk to God and ask again for His guidance, but she could not bring her mind to do it. Even when she had taken the bracelet into her mouth as a sacrament, thoughts refused to form. She had contemplated speaking aloud to the Lord, confessing her predicament, but what if someone heard? What if Stephen Riddle overheard her confession and renounced her from the pulpit? What if the entire church found out what she had done and cast her out? She would lose what friends she had, and William would be taken away from her. She would have nothing left, nothing, not even a place of worship.

Slowly, she had felt herself begin to fade from the life she had known. After years of unsuccessful dieting, she had suddenly lost weight. Food did not appeal. She no longer read, no longer watched television. When the school suspended William, she had hardly had the strength to shrug. When Brian had told her he would not be able to pay his half of the mortgage, she had simply hung up the phone without another word.

'Ma'am?' Jasper called from the doorway, and Mary Lou realized she had let herself begin to fade yet again. She turned away from the window, her fingers going to the charm bracelet as she looked at the black man. He stood at the edge of the chapel, and if he'd had a hat, it would have been in his mauled hands. She wondered if he was uncomfortable being in a church. He certainly seemed like it, his toes just at the edge of the carpet, not quite crossing back into the room.

'Coming,' she said, clasping the bracelet as she walked towards him. He looked like he might offer her his hand when she reached the foyer, but Mary Lou crossed her arms over her chest making it clear she did not need help. She could tell from the expression on his contorted face that she did not look well. She had chills despite the heat in the foyer, and the back of her legs felt prickly, like a thousand needles stinging into her skin at the same time.

They crossed the parking lot, the heat enveloping them like a blanket. The sun was so intense that it appeared to be black against the blue afternoon sky. Mary Lou kept her eyes on the sawhorses, unable to make out the pattern of the cross. She stumbled, grabbing on to Jasper so she would not fall. His skin was warm under the long sleeves, and she could feel the sinew of his damaged arm, the muscles contracting as he tried to support her. She fell to her knees anyway, her arms flailing out beside her, grasping at the dry air. The pain in her belly was too much now, and she pitched forward, the hot asphalt slapping her face, penetrating her clothes like hellfire.

A racking pain overcame her, as if something was living inside her belly, clawing its way out. She grasped her stomach, screaming in agony, closing her eyes against the black hole that was the sun as her bowels seized and her womb contracted, expelling her sin on to the asphalt. The blood that she had not bled before seeped out between her legs like honey, and she could feel the heavy liquid and tissue dripping down her thighs like great chunks of wet clay.

Mary Lou rolled on to her back and the Mexicans stepped back quickly, as if acid had been poured at their feet. The hand she put over her mouth was covered in her own blood and something else she could not name. The ground was rich with it, a slick black oil. She looked to find the sun in the sky, to stare at the black dot until the image was forever burned into her eyes, but her vision was blocked by the enormous arm of the cross. They had fixed it, a small seam showing where the cross had been rejoined. The point of fracture had been healed like a fresh wound, the scar toughening the wood, making it stronger.

'Holy Mother,' one of the Mexicans said, and she felt more liquid explode between her legs.

Pain shot through Mary Lou again, a knife cutting from the inside. The throbbing between her legs seized her, and she screamed so loud that her throat ached as if she were being choked. Inch by inch, she felt her flesh ripping apart, being clawed open from the inside.

'Steady,' Jasper said, his ugly hands reaching between her legs. She was bared to them all, her dress up above her waist, wet panties around her knees. She could see a figure standing in the window of the chapel. Was it Stephen? Was he watching this, waiting to see what happened? She called out to him, but the figure moved away.

'It's OK,' Jasper soothed, his mauled hands inside her now, trying to pull something out. She felt a final rip, then just as suddenly, a dull ache replaced the pain, blood flowing freely with the obstruction removed.

'Lord, Jesus,' the Mexicans prayed, speaking English as if for her benefit. They took off their hats and bowed their heads.

Jasper held up a tiny bundle of legs and arms, all attached to a torso that moved up and down in rapid beats as the child screamed at the top of his lungs. His cries were an accusation, a condemnation to the whore who had brought him into this world.

One of the Mexicans kneeled beside Mary Lou, holding out a dirty towel for the baby. He gently cradled the baby boy in his arms, cooing.

Jasper stayed beside her, rummaging through his tool box. She saw him take out an old, beaten up pocketknife, and he used this to cut through the cord that attached Mary Lou to the child. One of the Mexicans caught the cord, tying it with a piece of twine. Jasper did not bother with the end that was connected to Mary Lou. She could tell from the look in his eyes that there was nothing that could stop the flow. Her spirit was being drawn out from between her legs, and anything that made to slow it down would only be postponing the inevitable.

Jasper's big black hand grasped hers, his lips moving almost imperceptibly. The skin on his face was tighter than she had ever noticed, and the discoloration more prominent than before. Her eyes were again drawn to his unnaturally coloured lips as he closed his eyes and began to whisper. She strained to hear what he was saying, and was so surprised by his words that for just a moment she forgot the pain. A sudden lightness filled her chest, and she felt the power of Jasper's words flow through her like a cleansing balm. The drumbeat of her blood pounding in her ears began to recede. As she drew breath, she drew in the man's words, holding them in her lungs until they felt full enough to carry her away.

'Lord God,' Jasper said through his beautiful, pink lips. 'Please welcome this woman into Your house. Shine Your light down upon her to lead the way. Help her see Your power and glory'

Mary Lou tried to thank him even as she felt herself slip away. She wanted to let Jasper know that his words had brought her peace. The child continued to scream, and she reached her hand out to him, the gold bracelet on her wrist scraping across the asphalt. The sun caught the chain, illuminating where the link had been broken and mended like new.

'For him,' she said. She was broken so the child could be strong.

'For him,' Jasper repeated, his bloody hands working the clasp of the bracelet.

'No,' she said, but her voice was gone now, the word only spoken in her head.

Jasper removed the bracelet and placed it in the blanket beside the boy, telling Mary Lou, 'He'll remember his mother. He'll always have this.'

'No,' she tried again, then she looked into her son's face, and it did not matter. Nothing mattered but the fact that her son had lived. He had fought for his life, challenged the will of his mother to honour the will of God.

Yes, she thought. He would be strong because the bracelet would teach him the lessons that had broken those before him. The many charms would forever tell their stories: the key to vanity, the gluttony of the monkey, the greed of the dollar sign, the envious ballerina, the angry goblin, the lustful tiger and even the cross, which Mary Lou suddenly understood represented her own indolence.

As her fingers slipped from Jasper Goode's hand, Mary Lou felt herself smile. She looked up at the heavens, at the black sun. The child would be good. Like Jesus, he would wash away her sins. He would be strong where his mother was not. He would realize the gift of her death, that only through Mary Lou's sacrifice could he be born, and born again. He would be strong because of her weakness. One day, he would look at the bracelet and know her story.

One day, he would understand the blessing of brokenness.