The Bible I Bought Twice

I sat on the ninth pew on the aisle in the good blue dress. Warren sat three rows ahead of me with his hand on the back of the pew.

Heidi sat beside him with her purse in her lap and her eyes on her hymnal. She had come. I will give her that.

Lowell and Sherry had driven home Monday, but Sherry had called me Tuesday night to say, in her careful way, that she thought Micah had the best Bible in Alabama.

She did not say more. She did not have to.

After the first hymn, Brother Wayne stepped to the pulpit and said, “This morning’s opening scripture will be read by one of our newest members.”

Micah came down the aisle in his white shirt and his clip-on tie, with his hair slicked flat. He was holding the black Bible in both hands, the way you carry something that might spill.

He climbed the two steps up beside the pulpit. Brother Wayne set a little stool behind him so he could reach the microphone.

He opened the Bible to the ribbon. I could see the gold on the cover catch the window light from the ninth pew.

“This is Psalm one hundred nineteen, verse one hundred five,” Micah said. His voice shook a little on the first word and then it steadied.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

He closed the book. He held it against his chest.

Then, before he stepped down, he looked straight out at me and gave a small, serious nod, the way his father does when a job is done right.

The church said amen. I do not know how long I sat there.

Warren had turned in his pew. He was looking back at me, and he did not smile, but he did not look away either.

In front of him, Heidi sat very straight, and she did not turn around.

I folded my hands in my lap. I looked at the boy walking back up the aisle with his own name in gold under his arm.

I am a woman with no polish. I have never been anything else.

I stood in a lunch line for thirty-one years, and I wrapped my gifts in the funny papers, and I bring my casseroles in Pyrex with masking tape on the lid.

But I kept my word to a nine-year-old on a Thursday, and I did it in the open, in the house of the Lord, with my own two hands.

That is all the polish I ever wanted.

Micah carries that Bible everywhere now. It rides in his backpack with a pencil case and a half-eaten pack of crackers.

Last week I found a smear of biscuit jelly on page forty-one, right in the Psalms, and I did not wipe it off.

A Bible is meant to be used. His name is on the front in gold, and that name does not come off.