Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson Page A

all the girls who came to the eighth-grade lock-in at Possett First Baptist Church. Clarice and I were there. In the story there was this beautiful young Baptist virgin, and she was engaged to a Baptist boy. The boy pressured her all the time to have sex, even though he knew it was wrong. He couldn’t help but ask, because he was a boy and therefore ruled by his genitalia and not responsible for his actions.
    So she, like any good Baptist girl, decided to be responsible for both their actions and steadfastly said no and kept his hands below her knees or above her shoulders, as all good Baptist girls are taught to do from birth on.
    The night before their wedding, they went out together to lie on a hill and look up at the stars, and he started pressuring her again. “Well,” she thought, “the wedding is tomorrow.” And she gave in. The next day her father walked her down the aisle, but there was no groom waiting at the end of it. Instead the best man read a note to her, aloud, in front of everyone. It said, “I can’t marry a whore who would have sex outside the bonds of marriage. I thought you were a better person than that.” The girl fainted and her life was ruined, the end.

    The story made a huge impression on me at the time. I kept running it over and over in my head, the betrayal, the public humiliation. “Never, never,” vowed the girl who would later fuck her entire sophomore class, “no, never, will I have premarital sex.”
    Which of course was the youth minister’s wife’s whole freakin’ point.
    The next night, as Clarice and I lay in our twin beds at home, I couldn’t get the story out of my head and go to sleep. I couldn’t stop seeing myself as the bride, standing there alone in my white dress, hearing that note read aloud to the entire town of Possett.
    I saw myself trying to stagger away, back up the aisle of Possett First Baptist. Then the congregation would rise as one and stone me to death.
    “I can’t imagine how horrible it would be,” I whispered to Clarice, but that was a lie. In actuality, I was imagining it over and over, with me in the starring role.
    “That girl was lucky,” said Clarice.
    “Lucky?” I said.
    “Oh my Lordy, yes, so lucky. What if she hadn’t done it with him? What if she’d actually married him and only found out way, way later when they had kids and she was totally stuck?”
    “Found out what?” I said, not getting it.
    “Found out that he was the kind of person who could do something so mean to someone he was supposed to love,” Clarice said.
    I told the story to Burr, but by the end he was barely listening.
    He was smelling my hair and his hands were roving and I lost the thread of it. I caught his hands in my own, between us, and we were very close together. “Back, devil,” I said.

    Burr growled like a bear. Then he took one of his hands out of mine and pointed emphatically at my room. But I did not move.
    My body, pressed close to his, was tired and limp and easy. I felt as malleable as warm wax. I thought, “Why not now, here, at a moment of my choosing.” If I chose it from this place, so quiet and still, it seemed possible that it could be nothing more than love and sin.
    Burr was right when he said I had other reasons for going home. He was getting what he wanted, but it was incidental to my own agenda. I was on the way back to Possett, and once there, I planned to lie, so my deal with God was as good as broken. I let go of his hand and wound my arms around him and kissed him, pressing myself bonelessly into him, quiescent and pliable.
    He said my name into my mouth, maybe as a warning, but I broke the kiss and said, “Do you really want to question this? Do you really want to have some sort of talk right now?”
    He kissed me again and I took that for no. I let my hands run over his body and wound my legs around him. Something broke in him then, and he slid one arm under me, around my waist, pressing me up and into him. He was moving