Pastor Minstrel had built the Pentecostal Church of Our Lord exactly so that at 8:17 in the morning—or, as he called it, 7:77—the shadow of the cross atop the pointed steeple would fall across the squat grey jail next door.

“They will hear us sing!” he’d shouted that day five years ago, as he cut the ribbon stretched across the new church door. He wielded the scissors like a sword. “They will hear us praise Him! Oh del hoo laloay mala koole hale!” His tongues rattled the speakers and startled sleeping moths from the eaves along the western side of the exterior walls, bathing the jailhouse with his voice. A halo of dust had risen in the fields, concussed by a tide of sound waves.

***

“Life is sacred,” Pastor Minstrel said to the crowd assembled in the small yard between the church and the jail. Miranda’s baby girl slept, limp and tiny, cradled in the crook of the pastor’s arm. “New life is a gift from God.”

The sun beat down on the pastor’s silver-yellow hair, and onto the baby’s pink face.

Did they put sunscreen on her? Miranda shuffled her feet. The shackles around her ankles dragged like a chain plough in the dry grass.

“Here, in the sight of God, we name this child. What is her name?”

“Rebecc—” Miranda started.

“Tiffany! Her name is Tiffany.” Mrs. Datlan stepped forward. Her fists were clenched in front of her holey Tweety Bird t-shirt, her lips orange and twisted into a grimace.

Miranda dropped her head. Her vision spun, the edges of her sight darkening and brightening in waves that threatened to buckle her knees, wash her down to the dirt.

“Tiffany!” the pastor shouted. The speakers rattled, and the baby’s name echoed off the jailhouse wall behind Miranda’s back. “We will raise this child in the light of God. We will guide her soul away from her mother’s sin.” Pastor Minstrel paced. The microphone cord slithered through the grass like a snake.

Miranda tilted her head back and rested it against the rough grey cinderblocks of the jailhouse wall. Tears dripped off her jaw. She squinted down her nose at the crowd. Mrs. Datlan wove through the congregation, pausing at each member, dropping a bulging Walmart bag at their feet.

“This young lady has brought the wrathful eye of God to our town. She has invited Satan into our community. Do you know that she wanted to end the life of this child? To shut out the spark of God’s life—a gift granted to her in her darkest hour, and she shunned it.” He stalked in front of his audience, driving his feet into the dry powder of the earth. Baby Tiffany’s head bobbed, unsupported. Open your eyes little angel. Just once, so I can see.