about the meeting, Lloyd,” Hazel Marie told him, patting his hand. “We’re just being careful so, if you have to miss it, I’m sure Mrs. Ledbetter’ll understand.”
“I hope so,” he said, not at all convinced. “She said she expected me to be there, come what may. Come what may, that’s what she said right in front of the whole class.”
“It’ll be all right,” I said, smoothing down the cowlick that was standing straight up at the back of his head. He needed to be sleeping in a stocking to tame the thing. “I’ll call and tell her that today’s not a good day. Besides, I think your stomach’s feeling a little uneasy.”
I didn’t mention the fact that when Emma Sue Ledbetter got on her high horse, she put my stomach in the same state of contention. Emma Sue and I had never seen eye to eye on a number of matters. For instance, if she was in charge of aWomen of the Church meeting, as she usually was, she never failed to call on me to offer the prayer. I just hated to pray in public and she knew it, since I’d told her time out of mind not to call on me.
“Julia,” she’d once told me, a note of exasperation in her voice at having to instruct me again. “As Christians, we should always be ready to pray, preach or die.”
“You may be ready, Emma Sue,” I’d said, “but I’d just as soon wait on all three. Call on somebody else from now on.”
But from then on, she’d been concerned about my prayer life, giving me books and tracts to read, offering to have one-on-one prayer with me, wanting to be my prayer partner and warning me that prayer was the way to sanctification which, if I didn’t watch out, I’d never reach.
Don’t you just hate to be given spiritual advice from somebody who needs a bigger dose of it than you?
Chapter 6
“My word,” I said as I looked over the invitation list Coleman had given me. “They haven’t given any thought to this at all. I’ll just have to add some names to it; I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head who should be here.
“Now, Hazel Marie, and you, too, Lillian, help me with what else we have to do today. Florist, for one thing. I’ll call The Watering Can, and get them lined up. Who else?”
“Photographer?” Hazel Marie said.
“Oh, goodness, yes. I’ll give that job to you, Hazel Marie. Call around until you find one, although with all the weddings scheduled for next weekend, it may take you a while. But stay on it until you do; we have to have pictures. What else?”
“You call that catering lady?” Lillian asked.
“She’s on my list to call this morning. And I’d better put down Emma Sue Ledbetter and tell her to cancel that meeting. Saturday afternoon,” I grumbled, jotting down her name. “Who ever heard of having a church meeting on Saturday? The church takes up enough time as it is.”
“What you want me to cook for tonight? An’ how many people you havin’?”
“Well, let’s see. Coleman and Binkie, of course. Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens. That’s four, and I make five. Five, Lillian.”
“You not gonna ast Mr. Sam? That way the table be even out. Man, woman, man, woman, man, woman.”
That stopped me because I had to think about it. Coleman and Binkie both thought the world of Sam, and ordinarily I wouldn’t think twice about inviting him. But it’d been ten days since I’d heard from him, and two could play that game. So I said, “I hadn’t planned on it. Besides, Little Lloyd can even out the table if that’s all you’re worried about.”
“Don’t make no difference to me. But you gonna get yo’ nose stuck so high up in the air, you won’t see what right in front of yo’ face, you don’t watch out.”
Continuing to grumble under her breath, she banged a pan on the stove, and Hazel Marie and I left to start making our phone calls. For the first time I saw the sense in Hazel Marie having her own line, when all the time before I’d thought it was an unnecessary expense just