Cat's eye

On Sunday I put on the clothes my mother and I have picked out, a dress of dark-blue and green wool plaid, white ribbed stockings that attach with garters onto my stiff white cotton waist. I have more dresses than I once had, but I don’t go shopping with my mother to help pick them out, the way Carol does. My mother hates shopping, nor does she sew. My girls’ clothes are secondhand, donated by a distant friend of my mother’s who has a larger daughter. None of these dresses fits me very well; the hems droop, or the sleeves bunch up under my arms. I think this is the norm, for dresses. The white stockings are new though, and even itchier than the brown ones I wear to school. I take my blue cat’s eye marble out of my red plastic purse and leave it in my bureau drawer, and put the nickel my mother’s given me for the collection plate into my purse instead. I walk along the rutted streets toward Grace’s house, in my shoes; it isn’t time for boots yet. Grace opens her front door when I ring. She must have been waiting for me. She has a dress on too and white stockings, and navy-blue bows at the ends of her braids. She looks me over. “She doesn’t have a hat,” she says. Mrs. Smeath, standing in the hallway, considers me as if I’m an orphan left on her doorstep. She sends Grace upstairs to search for another hat, and Grace comes back down with an old one of dark-blue velvet with an elastic under the chin. It’s too small for me but Mrs. Smeath says it will do for now. “We don’t go into our church with our heads uncovered,” she says. She emphasizes oar, as if there are other, inferior, bareheaded churches.

Mrs. Smeath has a sister, who is going with us to church. Her name is Aunt Mildred. She’s older and has been a missionary in China. She has the same knuckly red hands, the same metal-rimmed glasses, the same hair crown as Mrs. Smeath, only hers is all gray, and the hairs on her face are gray too and more numerous. Both of them have hats that look like packages of felt carelessly done up, with several ends sticking into the air. I’ve seen such hats in the Eaton’s Catalogues of several years back, worn by models with sleeked-back hair and high cheekbones and dark-red, glossy mouths. On Mrs. Smeath and her sister they don’t have the same effect.

When all of the Smeaths have their coats and hats on we climb into their car: Mrs. Smeath and Aunt Mildred in the front, me and Grace and her two little sisters in the back. Although I still worship Grace, this worship is not at all physical, and being squashed into the back seat of her car, so close to her, embarrasses me. Right in front of my face Mr. Smeath is driving. He is short and bald and hardly ever seen. It’s the same with Carol’s father, with Cordelia’s: in the daily life of houses, fathers are largely invisible.

We drive through the nearly empty Sunday streets, following the streetcar tracks west. The air inside the car fills with the used breath of the Smeaths, a stale smell like dried saliva. The church is large and made of brick; on the top of it, instead of a cross, there’s a thing that looks like an onion and goes around. I ask about this onion, which may mean something religious for all I know, but Grace says it’s a ventilator. Mr. Smeath parks the car and we get out of it and go inside. We sit in a row, on a long bench made of dark shiny wood, which Grace says is a pew. This is the first time I’ve ever been inside a church. There’s a high ceiling, with lights shaped like morning glories hanging down on chains, and a plain gold cross up at the front with a vase of white flowers. Behind that there are three stained-glass windows. The biggest, middle one has Jesus in white, with his hands held out sideways and a white bird hovering over his head. Underneath it says in thick black Bible-type letters with dots in between the words: THE•

KINGDOM•OF•GOD•IS•WITHIN•YOU. On the left side is Jesus sitting down, sideways in pinky-red, with two children leaning on his knees. It says: SUFFER•THE•LITTLE•CHILDREN. Both of the Jesuses have halos. On the other side is a woman in blue, with no halo and a white kerchief partly covering her face. She’s carrying a basket and reaching down one hand. There’s a man sitting down at her feet, with what looks like a bandage wound around his head. It says: THE•GREATEST•OF•THESE•IS•CHARITY. Around all these windows are borders, with vines twining around and bunches of grapes, and different flowers. The windows have light coming in behind them, which illuminates them. I can hardly take my eyes off them.