Louisiana Lament

first time and she wanted to do it again.
    What she saw when he opened the door made her smile. It was the same something she’d seen before—the Reverend Mr. Scruggs wearing only pants, an undershirt, and a very distressed look at being caught half-dressed. He’d lost weight she thought. “Why, Sandra Wallis.” He called her by her childhood name. “I’m happy to see you, child. Happy indeed. You come in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back; let me just go see to Ella.” She knew he was going to put a shirt on.
    He returned in a fresh white one, hair spruced up as well.
    “How is she, Reverend Scruggs?”
    His face, animated before, showed briefly a flash of trouble and sadness, then tucked itself into a mask of stoicism. “The end is very near, I fear. That is, I fear for me, for I will miss her most fervently. But I rejoice for her, as she will soon be with the God she loves so much.”
    Talba remembered how much she enjoyed his nineteenth-century phrasing; what she’d forgotten, more or less, was the frightening figure of her childhood. No one could have told him when he was forty, or even fifty, she thought, that he’d end up a meek old man in public housing, and proud of it—proud of learning what he called “the way” from his wife.
    She touched his knee. “You’re one of my heroes, Reverend.”
    He looked away. “‘Brother’ is fine, Sandra. You know that.”
    “I’m sorry about Ella.”
    “Do not be. She is beloved of God.”
    “I wish I’d known her. She must have been extraordinary.”
    “She still is, Sandra. She still is. With only a strand of her memory left, with barely a spark of strength, she still is.”
    “I brought you some pot roast.” She had put the whole thing, vegetables and all, in a disposable aluminum pan. “Half an hour in the oven at three-fifty.”
    “Why, I thank you. I will surely enjoy it.”
Surely.
It was a use of the word that had almost passed from the language. Somebody really should do an oral history with the guy, she thought. “Perhaps Ella will even be tempted.” The sadness flicked onto his face again and lit there. He shook his head from side to side. “She will very rarely eat anymore.”
    Talba’s eyes filled up, not so much at his sorrow but at the thought that this would happen to Miz Clara one day, and to her as well, and even to Darryl.
We should really have a better way of dealing with death,
she thought, and then went back to pretending it didn’t exist.
    “Reverend, I need to ask you a question.”
    “I thought you would one day. Is it about your father, by any chance?”
    “How did you know that?”
    “You need to tie up loose ends. I understand that.”
    “Can you help me?”
    “Perhaps.” He nodded several times. “Perhaps. But not the way you think. I know what you think you need to know because of the kind of work you do, and I beseech you, do not pursue that course.”
    Beseech,
she thought. “Why, Reverend, I don’t know that I’ve ever been beseeched before.”
    “Don’t make fun of an old man.” He spoke so sharply she caught a backward glimpse of the man he had been.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
    “Never mind, daughter. I know my speech is strange and stilted. It comes of reading the Bible several hours a day and having few people to talk to.” Indeed, there was no television on the premises.
    “I love the way you talk.”
    He put his hand on hers. “Listen to me. This is the important thing. You’ve got a baby sister out there somewhere.”
    Talba felt as if someone had poked her in the solar plexus, not an unpleasant sensation, and one she’d had before. It happened when she heard something so true, so unexpected, it was like having the breath knocked out of her.

Chapter Four
    She knew about the baby. The one her father had had with the woman he lived with after the family broke up. Perhaps because Miz Clara had so deliberately distanced her children from her former spouse, it had simply never occurred to Talba that this child was her sibling.
    “My God,” she said, unable to stop herself. Reverend Scruggs would probably call this “taking the name of the Lord in vain.” She glanced at him to see if he was offended, but saw only concern. And eagerness, perhaps.
He’s ministering,
she realized.
This is making him happy.
    “Reverend Scruggs, you’re right. That
is
the important thing. I mean, if I do have a sister. I never even knew if the baby was a boy or a