fiction by deanna whitlow

Judge Tenderly of Me

Ruth timed it so that when she arrived home Sunday morning, the streets would be nearly empty. The sky was blanketed by a thin layer of clouds that turned the ocean gray. Everything—the weathered buildings, sandy sidewalks, the few stray people still scurrying to service—looked half-dead in the overcast. Despite this, Ruth knew the town was very much alive. Echoing beneath the ever-present crashing of waves, she could hear the chorus of churchgoers and picture them swaying happily, clapping their hands. It wasn’t long ago that she was one of them, curled up in the pews, singing, praying, and repenting. 

 The town was like a well-practiced symphony in the sense that it knew its rhythm and hardly strayed. Everyone had their place, knew their place, and liked it that way. Weekdays were for the sea. Brigades of fishermen set off before dawn, their sailboats interrupting the steady vastness of the dark blue water. 

For an east coast town so deeply entrenched in its colonial roots, Antioch had the convictions of the deep South. No matter what, storms, floods, tragedies, or celebrations, Sundays belonged to the church. Literally, the church, as there was only one. A nameless structure located at the far end of town that was small and stark and barely discernible as a holy place. Ruth’s father, Joseph, was the pastor. 

To avoid showing up mid-service, Ruth decided to take the long way across town. She started at the right edge of the beach and walked along the shoreline. Joseph walked a similar route every Sunday morning at dawn, during which he would practice the sermon he would give that day. Ruth could imagine him with his straight, lingering gait, walking with his hands clasped behind himself, muttering scripture to the early tide.

Ruth liked the beach for different reasons. For her, it was because she did not have to tread lightly. The flux of the tides continuously erased any sign of her, dissolving her imprint before it even had a chance to settle. The way the beach was situated, trailing the periphery of Antioch, felt like the edge of the Earth.

As she looked over her left shoulder, she watched the town slink into vision. The pastel-painted hues of old colonial houses transformed into cafes and townhomes and shops revealed themselves through the limbs of trees still bare from the passing winter. 

The town was a time capsule of sorts. Somehow, the unrelenting forces of technology and information, and connectedness were blocked like smoke against glass. The town was beautiful like a lightning storm is beautiful—only when viewed from shelter.

Barely anything had changed in the past fifty years so, you were more likely to find a radio than a television. It was this preserved image of the past that attracted and charmed flocks of tourists in the warmer months. Ruth could never understand their eagerness to regress. She supposed it was her history that would not allow her to be a romantic, but really, it was just a fact of her nature.

Ruth was lost in images rather than thought. In her haze, she did not notice that the sand had faded from granules to pebbles to stones until she was approaching the jagged cliff that marked the end of the beach. Past this harsh edge, the beginning of a dock, and a small stretch of bare land, was the church. Ruth glanced at her wristwatch out of habit even though it stopped working as soon as she left Antioch a few months ago. The waves were gentle, in a state of active peace indicative of late mornings, so she guessed it was a little past ten o’clock. Joseph was probably just taking the pulpit. 

While part of her wanted to avoid being preached to, another part of her, perhaps the truest part of her, felt desperate to reconnect with the unrelenting belief that used to hold her up. Ruth had the afflictions of a burned-out child prodigy who, after realizing that the thing they sacrificed their entire adolescence was not as it seemed, was left hollow, untethered, and formless. Who was she without the strenuous performance of righteousness? A woman, a body, a ghost. She sped her pace hoping to catch the end of the sermon. 

It would have been a straight shot from where she was, maybe a quarter of a mile, if she had not been interrupted by the little group of people who were always sitting at the dock. She had forgotten they would be there but recognized their raspy, nicotine-thickened voices immediately. It used to be a group of four, Ruth remembered, but there were only three left.

They had the same social standing as, say, the town drunk. However, in the Puritanical constraints of Antioch, their vice was not alcohol, but blasphemy. They were the only people in the entire town who did not attend church. Instead, on Sunday mornings they would set up lawn chairs at the base of the dock, watch the water, smoke, and jeer at any passing churchgoers. The town referred to them as The Heretics. 

They had always been old, Ruth thought. They were equally as old as they were when Ruth was a child. She supposed that at some point, the years must just stop showing up.

Ruth tucked her chin and tried to speed by them, but she was not Antioch’s ghost, not really, and The Heretics recognized her immediately. 

“Who’s that?” the first Heretic asked. She fiddled with a bulky green stone dangling from her neck. It looked neon against the depth of her skin.

Through a cloud of exhaled smoke, another one chimed in. “Is that Ruth?” 

“Is it?” 

“Yeah, it sure is.” 

The second Heretic finally spoke. “I’d know that nappy head anywhere!” 

They erupted into satisfied laughter that devolved into strained coughing. Ruth brushed her hand across her shapeless curls that were barely held back by a headband. She had never learned how to do her hair. She was trying to imitate pictures of her mother with her dense curls parted down the center, but the halves did not frame Ruth’s features like they had her mother’s. Ruth had Joseph’s poised, gaunt cheekbones and not the heart-shaped face of her mother. The softness of the hairstyle did not suit her. Like Joseph, Ruth was mainly edges. The only mark of her mother was in the roundedness of her eyes. They made her look like she was always on the verge of tears.

“How you doing, girl?” 

“Yea, where’ve you been?” 

“We thought you'd passed on or something. Hadn’t seen ya in a few months.” 

“Or you finally got away from that crazy ass, uppity Joe.” 

They laughed again, louder than ever, dramatically slapping their knees and rocking back and forth. Their screeches harmonized with the seagulls. 

Her father, Joseph, was a quietly cruel man whose sharpness and severity were only slightly tempered by his religiosity. While everyone else in such a sleepy, seaside community dressed in fisherman sweaters and scuffed rain boots, Joseph would not be caught in anything other than a three-piece suit, complete with an impeccably knotted crimson tie, and a mini bible tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket. Standing before a hundred or so townspeople every Sunday preaching sermons about the evils of the world, he had the conviction of someone who had never sinned. If he had not devoted his life to being such an honorable man of God, he might have made an excellent politician or a mediocre defense attorney. Naturally, he was especially apathetic towards the Heretics.

He had continued the line of succession, following in his father’s footsteps when he took over as pastor. His great-great-grandfather, Solomon, founded the church in the late 1800s as a place of worship for newly freed slaves. Stories of his prophecies, visions, and ability to heal through "the laying of hands” circulated like mist.

People swore they watched old scars from lashings dissolve with the simple brush of his palm or heard retellings of visions that later came true. No one had heard of a black man with such gifts. The novelty of it drew crowds; even white people found themselves trying to get a glimpse of Solomon in action. Before anyone knew it, by accident or divinity, his church became the main place of worship for the entire town. Centuries later, after new people stopped coming, old people stopped leaving, and the subsequent sons of Solomon had no propensity for healing, the church remained as it was.

“You gonna tell us where you’ve been?” the second Heretic asked.

Ruth paused to look at them, really look at them. They wore old fleeces and sweaters that were fraying at the sleeves. They looked forsaken, Ruth thought. Her anger made way for self-referential pity. She always wondered if they knew what they were to Antioch; if they knew they were godless.

Ruth thought of the year that passed. It was not a secret where she had been, but she still did not know how to answer them. There was nothing to it, really, she’d just gone away. She had to go away. Her late mother had left a moderate sum of money behind that she used for a trip. It was only supposed to be a couple of days, but as time went on, days turned to weeks turned to months and by month four, she was almost out of money.

Their probing was beginning to irritate Ruth. Who did they think they were? It was always this way with the natives of the town. It was like Ruth’s family passed ghostliness like a family heirloom, being hypervisible on account of their status as religious leaders yet invisible because of their otherness. Even in her absence, Ruth could not shake this version of herself and had stepped right back into it when the first grain of Antioch sand stuck to her skin.

“Just away for a while,” she said.

“What the hell does that mean?” 

They murmured and scoffed in shared frustration. 

Ruth dodged their question with a question of her own. “What happened to the other one of you?”

The Heretic with the necklace sucked her teeth. The second one took a long drag from his cigarette while the third one looked down at his hands. Heretic one broke the silence.

“We dunno, girl. Ya know, he used to be the lighthouse keeper. One day he went to work and just didn’t come back.”

“Supposin’ he drowned or something,” said Heretic two through a cloud of smoke.

“No one in the town bothered to look for ‘em. And there ain’t nothin’ much we can do.”

“Such a shame.”

“Poor Phillip.”

They shook their heads in that passively mournful way that people do when they can’t muster up any clarity of emotion.

The Heretics felt that they had outlived the necessity of sentimentality. You could not blame them for their bitterness, though. It was only natural in a place that constantly confirmed their inhumanity. They felt sorry for people like Ruth whose softness was always on display.

“Anyways. Where are you headed now?”

Ruth turned her gaze forward. The spire of the church was now in her eye line. “Home, I guess.” She walked on.

*

The sand leveled until it had turned into asphalt and the sounds of her boots crunching leftover granules rang like static. The church revealed itself over the incline. Despite centuries of protective prayers and anointings, the elements had been equally as unkind to the building as they would have been to any run-of-the-mill, agnostic place. The original wood had been covered with a layer of white concrete that blended into the graininess of nearby sand. A black cross at the top of the spire stretched towards the heavens but was always obstructed by layers and layers of low-hanging clouds. It appeared like a calcified sandcastle in the way the church blended into its surroundings. She climbed the splintery wooden steps two at a time.

In the wake of the almost grim monochromatic of the building, Ruth noticed that the door barely grasping at the hinges had been painted a deep shade of red. Trailing the palm of her hand along it, she could tell that the paint was fresh, still glossy, and untouched by storms and wind. Strange, she thought and she’d always known her father to detest change of any form. That was only true to an extent. Maintaining sameness was Joseph’s way of delineating the real and unreal. 

She paused as she wrapped her hand around the doorknob and pressed her ear against the red swatch. It was silent except for a faint pull of a few organ chords. They were in the middle of prayer at the altar, Ruth understood.

The stillness was disconcerting and when the current of dread that shot through Ruth’s entire body reached her hand, she was already beginning to twist open the door.

Deanna Whitlow writes fiction that explores identity, isolation, and nature. She holds a BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago and is currently pursuing her MFA in the same subject. She has worked on Allium: A Journal of Poetry and Prose as a production assistant and a nonfiction reader. She founded the literary magazine, Same Faces Collective, in 2019 and continues to serve as Curator and Editor-in-Chief. Her work can be found in Hair Trigger and Affinity Magazine.