A-Minor

by Tawnysha Greene

In July, my cousin goes to Vacation Bible School at church, and every night, she comes to our house, brings things she made during the day. She gives us each salvation bracelets strung with different colored beads that show our sin, Christ’s blood, our bodies clean again. I wear mine when Momma keeps us at home, tells us we’ll do our own Bible studies, ones we do as we thumb through a book Momma buys, a hardback with a glossy cover of all the women of the Bible.

We start with Eve, work our way to Leah and Rachel, Ruth and Naomi. We spend most of our time on Sarah, Hannah, Elisabeth, the women of longsuffering, who give their sons up to God, and Momma tells us of the son brought as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the son left at the temple in Shiloh, and the son who lived his life for God, who lost his head at the command of a king.

I keep the book when the lessons are done, go through the pages Momma skipped over, and I like these stories best, of Deborah who led an army to Mount Tabor on the plain of Esdraelon, Rahab who hid two spies on her roof, led them down the walls of Jericho before the city fell, and Jael who led Sisera into her tent, gave him milk to drink, covered him as he slept, then with a stake, drove his head through.

Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in storySouth.