If You Want Me to Stay by Michael Parker Page A

didn’t even need to go to church.
    There were only six or seven people in the pews, more than that up on the crude plywood stage. A preacher sweated in the corner. Every one of them looked long at me when we entered the room. A dirty stringy white boy holding hands with their Miss Whoever she was, I never did catch her name. Well, he look like he in need of some salvation, that’s for sure. Ain’t no way he don’t need God’s love. The band was just bubbling, all instrumental, I could feel a chorus coming on, but they were waiting on the water to boil, which directly right after we sat and my tired-ass toes started to tap, the water surely did. The chorus broke, the two women singers beat the ever-loving hell out of their tambourines and broke right up into something high and soaring, a single phrase sung over and over until it made, each time, more and more and finally the most ever sense: light in this world, light in this world, light in this world.
    Everyone knew the words and lifted their voices up to the dropped ceiling of the storefront.
    God in Heaven I felt lifted myself. The ants went away, I was a handsome sapsucker not wearing a work shirt bearing the name of Mario which I outright stole, my little brothers were fine, my mama was back home in the kitchen cooking and listening to Aretha build with her very breath a bridge over some deeply troubled water, girls wanted me, no pimples, nobody pointing to my exposed shins in the hallway of the high school and hollering, Where the flood at? And the only
off
my daddy was? Off to work of a morning.
    For some the world they walk through is more thanenough. They know to make their way through it, know exactly
how
to. For me it was always like that showroom in the back of Dusselbach’s: someone else’s furniture, phony living rooms, stiff and new-smelling, uncomfortable and unfamiliar. If I inherited anything at all from my daddy it was a desire for music to make me to feel at home in this world. Sam and Otis and Curtis and Sly, Rufus and Carla and Aretha and Isaac, the brothers Isley and the siblings Staples—they let me in my own house. See, I’d get locked out a lot. And I’d have to call them up and listen to them unlock the door and let me back in.
    When the singing stopped, the ants came tunneling back. I felt real white. Some small children who had come during the singing were staring at me in a way only small children can stare. Tank, please forgive me. Did she even have enough sense to make his ass go to bed at a decent time? If not she’d pay for it tomorrow as he would be crosser than hell. I had a sudden flash of the living room where my sister and her surfer boyfriend were hanging out. A low, sprung-seat couch upon which sat Angie, surfer Glenn, and a whole other couple. Tank sprawled out beneath them on the beer-stained carpet. The television was on but the sound was turned down. Back and forth goes the bong. Someone, Glenn I guess, has given him a Game Boy to play with. He’s thumbing that cheap piece of green plastic and my sister is playing the bygod radio, not even the oldies station which even Tank knows is the only station worth listening to. Some station called Beach 95 which is mostly ads for car dealerships andtanning booths and occasionally some Top 40 trash of the most useless sort.
    I felt my lifted spirit plummet, thinking of Tank and that cheesy music and him the only one in the room half-listening to it as the others were too caught up in their stoner dialogue which in my sister’s case consisted largely of upper-case obscenities. Carter, you only went along to get along. I could tell you were faking it. You would sing with us but the words were only coming out of your mouth, not your very being. Carter, I’m sorry, it’s no reason not to love somebody. It’s just, why did you have to climb out of that truck?
    â€œIt’s not my fault,” I said aloud in the quiet of the