Seed Money

For only seventy-seven dollars, the TV preacher promises God will grant me a miracle. He clasps his hands in prayer, gold rings glinting, while I clasp the telephone, punching the numbers from the TV screen that casts the room in a greenish glow.

“There, there,” the woman in the phone says, shushing me, and already I feel the miracle of Mama refilling my cracks.

The woman waits while I tiptoe through our dark trailer, careful not to step on the stain, careful not to disturb the steady rasp of Daddy’s sleep-breathing or his one arm hanging off the bed. I find his jeans in the empty dent on Mama’s mattress side and slide the V-I-S-A card from his torn leather wallet.

Stretching the phone to the dawn-lit window, I whisper the bumpy numbers, which the woman makes me do twice, asking how old I am (7), asking if I have any pets (yes, a dog: Roy), asking if I ever planted seeds at school (not at school, with Mama), and did I know seeds grow miracles and more seed money helps God save the world?

I sink down against the wall, burying my fingers into the knotted fur along Roy’s ridges where the fat ticks hide, while the woman calls me honey and God’s little angel and tells me all about which money-seeds we can plant for different kinds of miracles.

Her voice hums, like bees waking in springtime or when the neighbor’s cat Carlo catches a mouse, and I can almost feel Mama kneeling there next to me, fingernails heavy with dark dirt. Only this time, Daddy’s not shouting, and Roy and me aren’t whimpering. It’s just the woman’s voice filling my belly with dollar amounts and seed names—Resurrection, Recovery, New Beginning—so soft and sure they feel like an already answered prayer.

Originally published in Reflex Fiction.