11.

“We are dying.”

Father Mothers III anxiously cleared his throat in front of what had become his congregation, and started over. “We are dying, one after the other, in pools of our own tainted blood, each morning, because in God’s eyes we’re behaving no differently than mice. We are the mice of the earth. And like mice, we scurry around beneath the feet of our enemies because we are begging to be stepped on. And then, because we have begged for it, all of our days, we are stepped on. We only serve ourselves. We take take take, and we make make make what we touch filthy. Are you a filthy mouse?” The gaze of Mothers fell upon Enid Pine, who happened to be sitting in the front row next to Nana Pine. Enid wasn’t sure if she should answer his question. When she didn’t, Mothers doubled the volume of his voice. “Are you a filthy little mouse?!”

“No?” Enid said, barely audibly.

Mothers’ red eyes got bigger, and then he asked the same question again to the whole congregation. No one answered. He asked the question a fourth time, about whether or not you’re a filthy mouse, while looking at The Butcher. “Do you want to die like a filthy mouse? Do you want to die beneath the vengeful and justified foot of the Lord?”

The Butcher stood up to give his answer. “It’s God’s Finger, Mothers, not his foot!”

“We’re being poked, not stepped on,” added The Baker.

“Oh, yes, of course!” Mothers apologized. “Do you want to be poked in the chest like a filthy mouse?” Mothers had been rehearsing his first homily all week in a mirror, but now his mouse metaphor was rapidly falling apart in front of him. He developed a style of speaking through his oversized teeth, with lots of crackles and pops, to hide his subtle lisp. He had a voice that sizzled as it got louder. He cut his hair very short, so it looked like a red velvet sheet cake. His priest’s robe belonged to his father, so it didn’t fit him quite right. It pulled and tugged at his chest and hips as he walked.

Most of Pie Time’s believers were impressed with the confidence and tenacity of the new Father Mothers. Getting a few things incorrect in the first homily had been expected. They had expected to see the new priest stumble through the entire service. What the people of Pie Time admired most is that, despite his advanced age, Mothers had the energy of a young priest. They were panicked by all the deaths at the hands of God’s Finger, and they needed a priest’s heightened homilies to match their growing anxiety.

The questions about whether or not anyone was a filthy mouse, or if they wanted to die like one, lingered in the air while Mothers struggled to roll back his tight sleeves.

“Didn’t your father die from God’s Finger just last week?” shouted The Baker. “My Mary found him on the...”

Mothers interrupted him. “Ok! And now on to the baptismal ceremonies.”

Mothers gestured to his new assistant, Lil’ Jorge, just as they had rehearsed. Lil’ Jorge was a very big boy who looked like a teenager on account of all of his fat, but was in fact likely no older than eight. No one really knew Lil’ Jorge’s age under all of his chubbiness, but it was true that he couldn’t count past the number eight, so it was very unlikely that anyone wouldn’t be capable of at least counting up to their own age. So, everyone just assumed that he was eight years old. His arms and legs were big like tree trunks, but they were also short. Lil’ Jorge dragged a plastic pool of milky holy water onto the stage. He waddled as he dragged it.

Inez Roar, who was wearing a white cotton robe, and holding naked Baby Zuzu, followed Lil’ Jorge and the tub out to the front of the sanctuary. She lowered her lower half into the water, clutching her baby to her chest like a piglet. She was afraid that the slippery baby would squirm from her tight wet grip as Mothers, who was standing just outside the pool, held Inez above the blue plastic rim. The pool was decorated with images of about twenty yellow mermaids swimming around.

“Mermaids don’t exist,” whispered Lil’ Jorge earnestly to Mothers.

“Thank you, Lil’ Jorge,” said Mothers as he politely pushed Lil’ Jorge to the side of the ceremony so that everyone could see around his chubbiness. Mothers bent at the knees next to the pool.

That’s when everyone in the church heard Mano’s horrible scream. It came from somewhere outside the church. Some heads turned to try to stare through the windows that transformed the bright white sky into a blocky color puzzle of Jesus Christ on his knees cleaning someone’s feet, and another blocky color puzzle of a figure that looked like maybe Jesus Christ with a shepherd’s crook. In actuality, it looked more like someone walking on three stilts.

“What was that?” shouted a concerned June Good.

“Maybe an injured animal?” asked The Banker.

“No. No animal can make a noise like that,” said Vera Good.

“It was a person!” shouted Nana Pine.

“Who could it have been?”

Everyone but Pepe looked through the windows in an attempt to deduce whose scream it could have been, but Pepe knew exactly whose scream it was.

“Let us carry on with the baptism,” pleaded Mothers.

Everyone shuffled back into their seats and tried to concentrate, but even Mothers was distracted. He looked out of the windows as he lowered Inez backwards into the pool. As he considered the scream, he held Inez underwater longer than what was routine, long enough that she got scared and scuffled with his grip on her shoulders. She came up coughing for a breath, and in the scuffle, she let Baby Zuzu slip. The baby drifted down below the cloudy holy water, down between her kicking legs.

“My baby!”

Mothers reached all the way into the water from his knees, his head and shoulders beneath the surface as if he was bobbing for apples.

“My poor baby’s down there!” she screamed.

His hands were fumbling between Inez’s legs. Everyone forgot about Mano’s scream in that moment, and they focused instead on Inez’s. They stood up to get a better look into the pool. Inez’s arms were high in the air as if she’d somehow find her drowning baby above her.

The upper torso of the soaked priest finally emerged from the murk, a baby in his clutches, his eyes like a crazed eagle’s. He stood up, gloriously, and held the rescued baby high above his head.

Remarkably, as is the legend of Baby Zuzu, she was not crying.

The whole church sighed, and then awwwed. The ones who had yet to stand up, stood up. All of them applauded.

“I present to you, Zuzu Roar, now a child of God!” Mothers was out of breath. It was his first triumph as the new priest. Inez was still on her knees, crying and holding tight to Mothers’ left leg. She was looking upward, her soaked cotton dress like a thin pink skin hugging her whole body. The congregation clapped wildly, hooted and cheered. They stared at the deepest pink parts of Inez’s body between the backs of her wet thighs. They stared at the dark and fertile valley there, and they stared at her hard brown nipples.

They kept clapping and cheering.

Only Pepe wasn’t clapping or cheering. He escaped underneath all of the clapping and cheering.

“Where are you going?” yelled The Butcher. He broke his gaze on Inez’s wet body, but was still clapping. Pepe was already out of sight.

Before the last few claps fizzled out, Mothers made his final announcement for the day. Near Lady Blood’s front door, in an open coffin, was the shirtless dead body of his father, Father Mothers II, with a hammer still in his clutches.

“Thank you, thank you. Please, sit down. Have a seat.” Mothers was relishing his moment. “As many of you may know, my father passed last week. He was taken too soon.” Mothers lowered his head and paused for dramatic effect, hoping his silence wouldn’t be broken with shouts of “God’s Finger” from the congregation. But everyone else followed suit and lowered their own heads.

Then Mothers raised his head with a burst, and continued. “We are trying to raise enough money to build a bigger cross for the top of Lady Blood. It was my father’s dying wish. As you know, there can be no cross built without enough money with which to build it upon. On your way out, as my father lay there in front of you, please be so kind as to put any coins you can spare into my father’s death hole. Our goal is to fill it all the way up to his nipples.”

And fill it all the way up they did.