Indigo looked at the roses and then at her friend, Mary Louise Murray, who must have been around roses too long. Her face shone like petals with veins glowing, like the opals she wore in her ears. One big plait lay smack in the middle of her head, wound round and round; serpents in the garden. Pale green eyes rushed from her face whenever the Holy Spirit took her, if her bushes were dewy and the sun just coming up. Indigo had a reluctant soul, to Sister Mary’s mind. Not that Indigo was a bad child, only she’d been exposed to so many heathenish folks, pagans out there on those islands.

“Christian girls don’t do nothing but bake bread?” Indigo peered into the oven. The heat beat her face till she frowned. “Not ready yet,” she said, and carefully let the oven door fit back in its latch. Sister Mary Louise was tickled.

“No. Indigo, we don’t just bake bread. We tend after beauty in the world. The flowers and the children.” For all her Godfearing ways, Sister Mary Murray had been known to get the spirit outside of Church. Sometimes, when she was walking to the fish market or delivering breads, she’d be singing “I Ain’t Got Weary Yet,” or “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel,” and she would just get happy in the street. This was not exemplary behavior for a Deaconess. At many a sermon she would be called forth to testify about how the Devil seized her in broad daylight, taking on the movements of the Holy Spirit, tempting the sinner in her. Other folks believed that being without children is what drove Sister Mary to have these fits in public. It only happened when some young boy from the country was within ten feet of her, broad shouldered and raw. Other folks figured that Sister Mary Louise sipped a little bit, and got to feeling so good she couldn’t stand it. Indigo knew that Sister Mary Louise was in fact a Christian woman. Sister didn’t allow any dolls that could talk in her house.

“No haints coming in my house. What do you imagine the Lord God Jesus Christ would think, if I set my table for haints?” That’s what she’d said to Indigo.

Now Indigo was angry. The bread wasn’t ready. Sister’s saying little girls make bread and take care of beauty. Indigo thought her stomach was going to jump out of her mouth and knock over all the flowers, stomp the breads, and let hell aloose in Sister Mary’s big white kitchen, where Jesus looked down from every wall. The Last Supper. The Annunciation. From way up on Mt. Calvary, there he was waiting for “his sons to shepherd.” Indigo was so mad she felt lightheaded; hot all over.

“Sister Mary Louise, when I talked to Miranda she didn’t want to bake nothing.”