Truth or Happiness?

if you desire peace of soul and happiness, then believe;
if you would be a disciple of truth, then inquire
--- Nietzsche

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We packed up all our wardrobes in Kentucky and put them on the bus to come stay with Mama’s mama here across the great Mississippi. It seemed so pathetic little what we tucked into our suitcases. We lived a good simple life. We lived as good examples of modest virtue and wholesome humility. We witnessed Christ in every act and every possession. Our family didn’t have trappings of greed to weigh down our spiritual journey here on earth like folks around all distracted by the evil of money. But just the same, once we tucked everything inside our cases I swear I oughtn’t to have had more than I did – simple righteousness or not.

We didn’t pack anything of our daddy’s with us, though. Not one thing of his did we touch. His worldly goods would be there – we wouldn’t dare take what might be missed. Somehow, between his claims of our sins and mama’s fortitude for our journey, we couldn’t believe then we took instead the only things he would ever miss. How could he miss sinners like us who plagued him so? If he came back that night, we didn’t know. We locked the door, slid the key under the step, and knocked the mud off our shoes as we crawled into our neighbor’s waiting Buick.

It was a month since he called the devil out of Mama. Now, I got the gift of tongues by the age of eleven, so I wasn’t too frightened seeing someone not quite themselves, really. The difference of course is that one is the spirit and the other is the devil. I certainly don’t mind letting the spirit into my soul, but I would be dead frightened, if I suppose I could be frightened, if I had a devil in me. I’d seen the devil cast out of folks at church before. But I’d never seen mama with the devil in her like that, fighting so much. I knew if anyone could save her from a demon, it was daddy.

It happened just before dinner. Mama had food all made and put it in the oven to keep warm like she did sometimes. I remember it was a little late, it was dark anyway, when he came in the kitchen door. He went straight up to mama and planted a big kiss on her cheek. I know because I was right there in the kitchen, and she looked right back at him this big deep gaze. I knew for certain they were the two people most blessed in love before God in the whole world.

We sat to dinner soon and we bowed our heads for grace. That’s when the devil took mama. She started sort of moaning and cussing real low. Daddy was quiet. Sis slipped out and said, “Mama,” kind of half question, half admonishment as if to say, “we’re saying grace now – what could be so wrong?” Then it really started up. Clearly possessed, she was screaming down curses, mostly on daddy, and some against Jesus, and half of it I couldn’t really understand just for the thickness of the racket being sent up. Everything in that noise got blurry.

Daddy grabbed us girls. I couldn’t tell you which was his hand and what was my own feeling of terror. He nearly lifted us by the shoulders clear off the ground and pushed us out of the room. “Go outside,” he said. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, so we moved towards the door, but we didn’t quite move fast enough. He had turned back to mama and was getting his big preaching voice up so she could hear over herself. But then he looked to check on us and saw we weren’t gone. We moved quick to disappear.

Really we slipped out and went around the back. We sat and listened on the porch, waiting to hear when it was calm, so we would know the devil was driven away and when it was safer for us to come back in. It wasn’t a cold evening, there was no chill left to the air. Spring was breaking out and the day had been warm. Lightning bugs would be flashing soon, down where the dead end street backed up on an old hedgerow copse. The trees ran the length of a ditch edging in the back of our neighborhood and the back of a tobacco field. I wanted to go down there now, to look for their little glowworms. I wasn’t listening to the world anymore, so I stood up, to go walk down through the ditch. Sis tood up too and opened the door to go back inside.

As she went in I saw Mama with her head slumped down, chin on her chest, and Daddy stooped down holding her shoulders. My brain turned back to where I was on the porch, it was quiet again, and so I moved on following sis. Daddy looked up and told us to eat before dinner was too cold. To Mama he said I’ll let you alone. He went to the front room, took out his jacket, and went easy out the front door. Mama just sat at the table. Her eyes were open. They were glazed and full of tears and I don’t think she saw anything in front of her. Sis went over put her hands on her lap and leaned into her gaze. That was like turning a switch, or waking up a dog. She stretched a smile on her lips, reached her hand on sis’s head, and looked at me. Her hands dropped to her lap and she swayed like a white cotton sheet in the breeze. She closed her eyes then and didn’t say a word.