Miss Ida did not even look up from the yellow church cookbook in her lap. Then you wont mind showing us the building fund deposits, she said. And Pastor Whitfield went red, because Ida had kept the church books for forty years, and she had one more paper in her bag.
It was the love offering the church took up for my husband Hollis after his stroke. Three thousand one hundred dollars. Money I never received. And when Ida laid it next to the cookbook sales, everyone in that Homecoming line finally saw where it had gone.
The love offering for my dying husband and the money from stolen cookbook sales had both gone into a personal account the pastor and his wife controlled, not into the Lords house at all.
Celeste Whitfield had built her whole shiny cookbook, Celestes Kitchen, Heavenly Recipes, twenty-five dollars apiece for the building fund, out of recipes she did not write. The yellow book Hollis saved for twenty-nine years was our real church cookbook, Supper on the Grounds, printed in 1994, every recipe under the name of the woman who gave it. Page 41, Lorraines Wednesday Chicken Casserole, right down to my note, Hollis likes extra crackers. Celestes page 12, My Heavenly Chicken Casserole, word for word.
Ruby Tates pound cake. Mae Pickenss squash casserole. Idas own chess pie. Thirty-some recipes, most of those ladies resting in the cemetery out back, every one with Celestes name slapped on it and sold for twenty-five dollars for the Lords house.
Except the Lords house never saw the money. Ida, who kept the books for forty years, had been quietly watching the building fund, and the cookbook sales were not landing in it. Neither was Holliss love offering. Both were flowing into an account the pastor and Celeste used for themselves, a new truck, a cruise, Celestes signing-table theatrics.
I am Lorraine. I am seventy-two, a member of that little Baptist church in Florence since 1971, and for thirty-one years I cooked the Wednesday night suppers, two hundred plates a week, never took a dime. Then Hollis had a stroke and his right side quit, and I was the only one caring for him, days and nights, and I did not have time to fry chicken, so I brought a box from Publix to the fall potluck. Celeste held it up with two fingers and said, some of us still cook for the Lord, Lorraine, and the pastor patted my shoulder and said she did not mean anything by it.
I went home and fed my husband with a spoon. Hollis passed that winter, and cleaning out the hall closet I found the yellow cookbook in a Folgers can, saved twenty-nine years. I put it in my purse and told no one, and in May, at the 150th Homecoming, I gave it to Miss Ida.
Stealing recipes from dead women and selling them is shameful, but it is diverting the churchs money, the cookbook sales and a dying mans love offering, into a private account that is the crime. Ida, who kept every ledger for forty years, had the deposits that should have existed and did not, and a church treasurers records are very hard to argue with.
The pastor and Celeste faced the law and the denomination, not my anger. Embezzling from a church, however shiny the cookbook, is theft, and a forty-year secretary with the books is exactly the witness a congregation needs.
The three thousand one hundred dollars raised for Hollis came to me at last, where it was always meant to go. And the real cookbook, Supper on the Grounds, was reprinted for the Homecoming, with every recipe back under the name of the woman who made it, Ruby and Mae and Ida and me, the living and the dead both honored at last.
Some of us still cook for the Lord, Celeste told me, holding up my Publix chicken. I cooked for the Lord and that church for thirty-one years and never took a dime, and when I finally could not, because I was spoon-feeding my husband, she tried to shame me for it. Page 41 had my name on it the whole time. It still does. And the love offering for Hollis bought his headstone, which is exactly the kind of thing that church was built to do.