changed her diaper and brushed through her unruly baby hair — more out of habit than because it did anygood.
Lily sighed and wished for a drink, a joint, an excuse. But there was no time for the first two, andher mind was too clouded by grief to think up an excuse. She grabbed her car keys and Mimi’s diaperbag.
It was time to go to church.
CHAPTER 2
Lily felt empty and unsettled as she drove out of downtown Atlanta and into Cobb County. Sheimagined it was much the same feeling native New Yorkers got when they crossed the line into NewJersey: the feeling of being among “them” instead of “us.”
Downtown Atlanta had character, history, and the tolerant do-what-you-want quality of the city.
Hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurants sat next door to gay leather bars. You could see the church oncepastored by Martin Luther King, the Margaret Mitchell House, or (if your tastes ran to the morbid thestreet corner where Ms. Mitchell was fatally hit by a taxi. The junk-food establishments even hadcharacter and history: the Varsity, where comedian Nipsy Russell had once worked as a carhop, and theMajestic, the seedy all-night diner where Jack Kerouac used to kill time.
Driving through Cobb though, it was rare to see buildings that had been erected prior to 1975.
Restaurants consisted mainly of the usual suspects: McDonald’s, Chuck E. Cheese, Steak n’ Shake. Thestores were links in multinational chains and were housed in sterile strip malls. If someone blindfoldedme and dropped me in the middle of Cobb County, Lily thought, there would be no way I could figure outwhere the hell I was. The area had no distinguishing characteristics.
Calvary Baptist Church, the church where Charlotte’s family were having their little denial-fest ofa memorial service, was the biggest, ugliest Protestant church on a street lined with big, ugly Protestantchurches. Calvary was especially aesthetically offensive because of its puke-yellow brick and cream-colored, plantation-style columns. The plantation image was appropriate for the church, though, since theonly black person ever seen on the premises was the janitor.
“Damn,” Lily muttered when she saw that according to the church clock, she was five minuteslate. According to her battered Timex, she was two minutes early, but apparently her watch didn’t run onCobb County time. She scooped Mimi up out of her car seat. “Okay, kid, you’ve never been to one ofthese before, and hopefully you’ll never have to go to one again. It’s called a church service.”
Once inside, Lily followed the sound of the maudlin organ music and slipped into a back pew in