Water

The Long Saturday

Chapter 59: Water

By October, Clara has opinions about bath temperature, sermon length, and the moral urgency of being held by whichever adult is currently trying to drink coffee.

She is rounder now.

Heavier.

Capable of smiling with enough force to rearrange a room.

Also capable of screaming in the narthex with such conviction that Mrs. Pacheco says, "Good lungs," like a woman evaluating produce.

Today Grace Community is doing baptisms.

Plural.

Three teenagers from the youth group.

One retired man from the pantry ministry whose testimony is mostly about stubbornness.

And Clara.

Jude's theology has always had room in it for more water than the church budget likes to acknowledge.

"We're Method-ish when necessary," he says in his office the week before. "Besides, if anyone complains about infant baptism after three youth baptisms and a pantry saint, they deserve their own confusion."

So now we are here.

Sunday morning.

Clara in a cream dress Mom found at a consignment shop and then pretended not to have cried over in the parking lot.

Norah beside me in blue.

My hand flat against Clara's back while she tries to eat the collar of my shirt with deep sacramental focus.

The baptismal bowl sits on a stand near the front.

Stone.

Simple.

Filled this morning by Jude from the church kitchen sink because he distrusts pageantry disconnected from plumbing.

The service moves in ordinary order.

Song.

Prayer.

Scripture.

The teenagers go first, all wet hair and trembling seriousness.

Luke comes up from the water looking stunned in the excellent way.

Maria cries without permission and then dares anyone to mention it.

Then Jude looks toward us and nods once.

"Bring me the troublemaker," he says.

The room laughs.

Norah and I go to the front.

Clara notices the congregation and immediately becomes grave, as if encountering a licensing board.

Jude looks at the two of us.

"Do you promise," he says, "to tell her the truth about God and the truth about people, and not to confuse either one with your own fear."

"We do," Norah says.

"By grace," I add.

"You'll need it," he says.

He smiles then, just enough to keep the room from becoming reverent in a brittle way.

"What name is given this child."

Norah looks at me once.

I can feel Clara's warm weight against my forearm.

"Clara Ruth Whiting," I say.

Jude dips his fingers into the bowl.

The water is ordinary church water.

Tap-cold.

Clear.

Nothing in it but itself and what we are about to ask it to mean.

Still, when his wet hand lifts toward my daughter's forehead, some old animal part of me rises without permission.

Not thought.

Body.

Memory below speech.

Norah feels it because she reaches for my wrist without looking away from Clara.

Just once.

Just enough.

Stay here.

Jude traces the cross.

Water shines on Clara's brow.

She startles.

Blinks.

Sneezes directly at him.

The congregation breaks into relieved laughter.

"Strong instincts," Jude says, wiping his cheek with the side of his stole.

Then his voice changes.

Not grander.

Plainer.

"Clara Ruth Whiting, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Water again.

One small spill of it onto the crown of her head.

Clara lets out one offended squawk and then, apparently deciding the matter beneath her dignity, settles her cheek against my shoulder.

Jude lays one dry hand on top of her damp hair.

"May you learn early," he says, "that love is not the same as control, and that mercy can hold more truth than fear ever will."

The sanctuary is completely still.

No coughs.

No shifting bulletins. Only the old wood, the wet crown of my daughter's head, and my own body learning it does not have to separate blessing from memory.

When we turn back toward the pews, Mom is crying into a handkerchief she would call "perfectly ordinary" if cross-examined.

Maria is beaming without shame.

Luke looks personally proud of Clara for surviving her own baptism.

Mrs. Pacheco nods once with the solemn approval of a woman who has always favored public ritual over private sincerity.

After the benediction, the fellowship hall fills with sheet cake and weak coffee because sanctification, in Mercer, is always partly starch.

Jude finds me by the percolators while Clara sleeps against Norah in a state of post-sacramental milk collapse.

"You did all right," he says.

"That sounds like a grading scale."

"Everything is a grading scale if enough Baptists get involved."

"We are not Baptist."

"Only in joy and dessert."

Fair.

He glances toward Clara, then back at me.

"How are you?"

"Tender," I say.

Jude nods as if that is a complete and respectable condition.

"Good."

Later, at home, after the dress is changed and the cake container is in the fridge and Clara is asleep in the crib with one damp curl still refusing obedience, I stand in the doorway of the spare room and listen to her breathing.

The rocker by the window.

The pale walls.

The lamp low.

One small baptized child asleep in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

Behind me the house goes on being itself.

Plates in the sink.

Norah laughing once at something Mom says in the kitchen.

The route card by the back door.

Daniel's photo on the shelf.

The whole layered company of our life.

Water dried now from Clara's forehead.

Not gone.

Just taken up into skin.