“Are you wearing that?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. Roxanne stood at the door in a blue suede miniskirt, black fishnet hose, and a tight red sweater.

“It’s the closest thing I have to church clothes,” she said. “Do I look like a stained-glass window?”

“Not exactly. At least not one at our church.”

“Jesse, you are so-o-o serious. I’ve got my coat in the car, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

It didn’t matter to her one bit that those fake furs went out of style years ago or that hers was almost two sizes too big. She said the feeling she got when she wore it was the important thing.

When we got to the church, Roxanne stood in the parking lot bundling up, wrapping her coat around herself real good.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“You look pwetty,” Roy Dean told her.

I said she looked fine even though in March nobody needs a real heavy coat.

“I’m so nervous,” Roxanne whispered as we walked across the parking lot. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a church;”

A few people said hello to us and stared at Roxanne as we got nearer the doors.

Roxanne stopped. “I changed my mind,” she said.

“Okay,” I told her. “Let’s go on to the hospital.”

We turned back toward the car and she stopped again. “No, we’re staying. We’re here, now.” Roxanne tiptoed toward the church steps trying to keep her heels from sticking in the gravel.

Once we got inside the entryway of the sanctuary, we could hear the piano already playing. Roxanne stopped to look at the missionary pictures pinned on the bulletin board. She was squeezing her arms real tight in front of her like she was freezing.

“Are you sick or something?” I asked.

She thought a few seconds. “I’m all right. Let’s go sit down.”

Mrs. Cordell had already started playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” for the choir to march in. Suddenly Jimmy dug his heels into the linoleum and Roy Dean sat down on the floor.

“You two get up this instant,” I hissed. Just at that moment the Harrises walked in.

I was about to suggest we leave, but before I had a chance to say anything, Roxanne’d scooted behind the artificial palm that stands next to the sanctuary doors.

“We’re running late,” Dr. Harris mumbled.

“Yeah, us too,” I said, glancing at Roxanne, who was kind of crouching behind some leaves. She looked like she was scared to death, but as the Harrises started down the aisle of the church to find a seat, she stepped out.

“What in the world is wrong with you?” I asked her. “Are we going in or not?” Roxanne stared right through me.

“It’s him,” she said, her eyes watering up.

“Who?” I asked.

“It’s him … you know …,” she repeated.

Then it dawned on me. “The baby?” I whispered, not believing what I was hearing.

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“You’re … Frankenstein’s mother?” My mouth suddenly went dry, and my stomach took a dive just like it did when I thought I’d killed Doris Ray.

“Come on,” she said. Roxanne held her head high and marched into church. I followed her with the boys. The Harrises were sitting near the front in an empty pew and Roxanne went right toward them. About a hundred eyes drilled into us, mostly into Roxanne in her coat and skinny fishnet ankles and silver spike heels.

She went straight to where the Harrises sat and sank down right next to Frankenstein, practically touching him. I followed next, then the boys. And when the music ended, Roxanne looked at me and smiled.

“Good morning, folks-s-s … and visitors-s-s.” Pastor Cordell looked straight at Roxanne. Running his hand over the bald strip on the middle of his head, he announced, “I’m sure glad to see Jess-see sitting up here with her brother-s-s and her guest this morning.” I looked at Roxanne, but she was a million miles away.

“We got a call last night about our little angel Do-ris Ra-ay who is in the hos-spit-al on this Lord’s day.” Pastor Cordell can make one word last as long as a sentence.

“She fell out of a tree-ee last evening and well all want to re-mem-ber her in our pray-ers.” Mrs. Cordell took that as her cue and began playing “Amazing Grace.”

Roxanne was busy staring at Frankenstein’s hand resting on the seat beside her. During the prayer, which was partly for Doris Ray’s broken leg and partly for Mrs. Caruthers’s kidney stone, I glanced at her again. She had her head down and she was smiling. I looked at Frankenstein, and my insides felt like Jell-O.

For the whole sermon Roxanne hardly moved except to breathe, and every once in a while to dab at the sweat on her forehead. Her furry shoulder was only about two inches from Frankenstein’; her fingers almost touched his.

Right near the end of the service, Roxanne stood up. Tears streamed down her face, which was all red from the heat. People all around craned their necks to watch as she inched her way past me and the boys. When she got to the end of the pew, she stopped a second and looked toward Frankenstein, then she ran down the aisle—not toward the front where Pastor Cordell held out his arms like Jesus, but straight toward the clock in the back and on out the doors.

A few minutes later, when the service was over, Dr. Harris leaned toward me and asked, “Is your friend all right?”

I nodded. “She’s just missing her family, I think. They live somewhere else.”

“At the zoo?” Frankenstein said.

His mother frowned. “That’s not nice, Franklin. Now, you go on outside.” She touched my arm. “I’m sorry, Jesse. Franklin doesn’t always say the right thing.”

I wanted to say, “No joke,” but instead I just nodded. “Excuse me, but we’ve got to go. We’re on our way to the hospital to see Doris Ray.”

“Give her our love,” Mrs. Harris said. I told her I would and hurried outside. Jimmy and Roy Dean were wrestling on the grass in front of the church. Frankenstein was out there with them.

“Y’all get up,” I yelled. The boys were getting filthy and Roy Dean had already torn a little hole in one knee of his good Sunday pants.

He pointed at Frankenstein. “He pulled me awound,” he said, giggling.

“Can’t you see they have their good clothes on?” I fired at Frankenstein.

“You mean had their good clothes on,” he said, grinning.

“Where’s Roxanne?” I asked Jimmy.

I looked toward the parking lot. The car was gone. Now what, I thought. It wouldn’t be that easy to walk home with the boys, and I’d have to call the hospital and tell Mama we couldn’t come. She’d think she was right about Roxanne all along—and maybe she was.

We’d only walked a few feet when she pulled up, honking long and loud like she was at a drive-in restaurant or something. I frowned at her, but she was smiling real big and tapped the horn again just before she bent across the seat and pushed open the front door for me.

“Why are you honking?” Tasked. People were watching us like we were crazy or something.

“Get in,” she said, grinning, “Let’s hit the road!” The boys climbed into the backseat where Roxanne’s mouton coat was piled in a heap, and I got in the front.

“There’s nothing like leaving town!” Roxanne said as we headed down the highway. “You boys ready to go see an angel?” She sounded bubbly and excited, like it was someone else bawling her eyes out just fifteen minutes before.

“We gonna see a angel?” Jimmy asked.

“You bet your booties, we are. A real live angel, a genuine fallen angel.” Roxanne said “genuine,” like it was a kind of fancy wine. She winked at me and said to loosen up.

“Where’d you go?” She’d run out of church embarrassing me to death, she’d given me the shock of my life before that, and to make matters worse, she almost left us.

“Oh, I just ran down to the convenience store. Got some ginger ale and moon pies to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” I grumbled.

“Know what song I’m playing?” she said, ignoring me.

“None, Your radio’s broken.”

“Wrong!” she answered. “It’s Oh, what a beautiful morning; oh, what a beautiful day …,’” she sang as she tapped the rhythm on the steering wheel with her long nails.

“Jesse, if you’ll quit biting your nails and let ’em grow so you can tap out a song on the dashboard, I’ll give you … my mouton coat!”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, tucking my short, ragged nails into my fists. “Like you’d really part with your Snow Queen outfit.”

She tilted her head back and laughed.

“Why are you in such a good mood, anyway? You couldn’t wait to get out of church.”

“I bet everybody in that place thought I was going to go up and repent my sinful life. And I was just going to get moon pies!”

I halfway smiled, but I was still aggravated about everything, especially about Frankenstein.

“How could that creep be your you-know-what? And how can you be so happy about it?” Even though the boys were too young to understand, I didn’t want them to know what I was talking about.

“It was wonderful, Jesse. He’s really cute.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”

“The thing is, his hands are exactly like Johnny’. That plaster hand in my bedroom could be his. The fingers are long and kind of squared at the tips.”

I knew the hand she was talking about. I’d looked at it plenty of times, but I’d never thought about it looking like Frankenstein’.

“It just about killed me at church that I couldn’t reach out and touch those fingers,” she said.

“Oh, brother. I can’t believe my ears,” I said. “You’re going to have to help me, Jesse. Remember what I told you? I still need to hug my baby. We’ve got to figure out a way.” Roxanne’s happy mood had suddenly turned.

“Why don’t you just have some more kids? Get your mind off the one you lost.”

The air felt heavy like it does before one of those big gully-washer rains. Roxanne just shook her head.

We drove on and neither one of us said a word for a long time. Even the boys, who usually never shut up on a trip, were quiet, looking out the windows at all the oil pumps in the bare fields. Sometimes you see them moving up and down like iron teeter-totters, but that day they were mostly dead still. I was glad when we finally saw the buildings of the city.