The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

held on and said I love you, instead of waving to him from the door and saying I’ll see you tonight. Save your tears for private. In public, smile and carry on.

      There would be no smiling and carrying on today.

      “Come to what?” Cassie struggled to keep her voice low. Somewhere in the house was a dignified old woman who deserved better than a quarrel in her living room.

      “What?” Betty Jewel’s silence ripped through Cassie, as damning as the worst nightmare she could imagine. “For God’s sake! Tell me.”

      “Something happened a long time ago, before Billie was born, something with consequences that reached far beyond what I’d ever dreamed.”

      Betty Jewel’s voice sounded like distant music, a smoky blues song that could haunt a person forever. Cassie fought to hold back terror so fierce it would consume her.

      “I never meant to hurt you, and I certainly never meant for it to come to this.”

      “You and Joe?” The question tore from Cassie’s gut, deep where the fearsome truth dwells. “Tell me this is not what I think it is.”

      “I’m sorry, Cassie.” If Cassie could go deaf on the spot, she would. “Joe is Billie’s father.”

      Look for disaster long enough and you’re sure to find it.

      Nine

      LORD GOD, CASSIE WAS sitting there looking as though somebody had poked a hole in her heart and drained out all her blood. Betty Jewel regretted telling her flat-out that Joe was Billie’s father.

      “Cassie?”

      She jerked as if she’d been electrocuted, then bolted. Betty Jewel struggled from her chair, calling after her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

      But she was already out the door, tearing off in her fancy red car. Betty Jewel hung on to the door frame, whispering, “I’m sorry.” Now she was the bloodless one. She slid down the door frame and rested on the floor, still apologizing to the woman who was no longer there.

      Queen came out of the kitchen with soapy water glistening on her hands. She looked so normal that for a moment Betty Jewel could pretend none of this had happened. She could pretend she’d decided to simply make sure Sudie would help Queen raise Billie and not mess around trying to fix the past.

      “You done tole her?”

      “Oh, God, Mama.”

      Queen bent down and tried to help her up, but Betty Jewel pushed her arm away. “Don’t. No sense in you falling down, too.”

      “It’s gone be all right, baby. I been prayin’ ‘bout this.”

      Queen didn’t merely pray: she battered the gates of Heaven with her petitions till God got so weary He’d say, All right, Miss Queen, have it your way.

      Betty Jewel tried hard to conjure up her mama’s faith, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think of anything except how she’d destroyed another woman’s life. Not once, but twice.

      Not only that, but she’d probably destroyed her daughter.

      “Where’s Billie?”

      Queen patted her hand. “She didn’ hear nothin’. She done gone outside to that ole bus.”

      “Thank you, Jesus.”

      “Amen.”

      The prospect of her daughter spending another night on top of the bus paled in comparison to the tragedy of finding out the man she idolized was not her daddy.

      “Mama, do you think Billie’s ever going to accept this cancer?”

      “Give her time.”

      “I don’t have time.”

      When Queen put her hand on Betty Jewel’s head, she was humming “In the Garden,” probably without even being aware of it.

      “Baby, when the good Lord takes you on home, thas gone be the sweetest hallelujah.”

      “No, Mama. The sweetest hallelujah will be when Billie can walk in the front door of any place she pleases, and nobody will tell her she doesn’t belong.”

      Resuming her hymn, Queen smoothed back Betty Jewel’s falling-out hair. They stayed that way a long time, both finding solace in the ordinary. Finally, Queen ceased her humming.

      “Baby, what you needs is a little perk me up.”

      “You got any Jack Daniel’s, Mama?”

      “I might. Just for medismal ‘mergencies and such.”

      “I think this qualifies as a medicinal emergency.”

      Queen’s slippers dragged along the floor, slower than yesterday Betty Jewel was thinking. While her mama was gone, she got off the floor, but it took her a while. By the time she was upright, Queen was back with two glasses full of amber anesthesia.

      “I fixed myself a little snort. For my rheumatiz.”

      Lord, if anybody deserved a little snort, it was her saint of a mama. Betty Jewel tipped her glass. The first swallow went down smoothly, but the next one set everything from her shoe soles to her breastbone in turmoil. She didn’t even have the luxury of drowning in her sorrows.

      Queen held her head while she heaved over the toilet.

       Lord, this price is too much to pay for loving another woman’s husband.

      Cassie didn’t know how she got home. She didn’t remember driving. She didn’t remember the road. She didn’t remember anything except the damning words, Joe is Billie’s father.

      Cassie wanted to kill him. She wanted to break him into a million pieces the way Betty Jewel had broken her.

      With one arm wrapped around herself to hold the shattered parts together, she picked up her blue stone pitcher and hurled it against the wall. She and Joe had bought it on their first anniversary trip to Mountain City, Tennessee. Got it at Laurel Bloomery. Got a whole set of dishes to match because Joe said the blue reminded him of her eyes.

      Cassie plowed through the shards without even cutting herself. That’s how mad she was, so furious she was superhuman, made of broken glass and still able to heft a whole stack of pottery plates off the cabinet shelves and smash them onto the floor.

       “Damnyoudamnyoudamnyou!”

      A piece of pottery the size of a baseball flew up and cut Cassie’s leg.

       I’m bleeding. I’m perishing.

      “Oh, God.” She searched the ceiling for help but all she found was a cobweb that needed raking out of the corner.

      With her own blood sticky on her leg, she moved to another cabinet. One sweep sent her wedding glasses airborne. Sun caught the Baccarat crystal as it arced through the air. For a moment there was a rainbow on the wall.

      After a rain when the sun was shining just right, Joe used to race inside to get her so they could watch the sky light up together. He would tell her I want to give you rainbows.

      But he’d given Betty Jewel Hughes a child.

      There was an awful sound coming from somewhere far away, the high-pitched wailing of a woman grieving, a woman who had lost everything. Her husband, her memories, her marriage, her trust, her pride.

      Cassie cleaned out the cabinets one by one, raking and hurling until there was not a dish left. Not even a salt-and-pepper shaker.

      Her kitchen was Berlin, bombed. Her left leg was cut in two places, both arms were scratched, and her linen dress was speckled with blood. She looked like a woman gone crazy. She sank into a kitchen chair and didn’t know how long she sat there, paralyzed.

      Her