I considered telling her that we hung our gods from trees, but thought better of it.

"Well, you will. Lord, once you hear that man, you'll be saved on the spot."

Carolee lit a Marlboro, lowered the back window. "That phony-ass con. How can you swallow such shit."

"He who believeth in me, though he was dead, yet he will live, and don't you forget it, missy," Starr said. She never called us by our names, not even her own children, only "mister" or "missy."

She was taking us to the Clothestime in the next town, Sunland, she wanted to get me a few things for my new life. I'd never been into a store like that. My mother and I got our clothes on the boardwalk in Venice. Inside the Clothestime, colors assaulted us from every side. Magenta! they screamed. Turquoise! Battery acid! under the nicker of fluorescent lighting. Starr filled my arms with clothes to try on, herded me into a dressing room with her, so we could continue our chat.

In the cubicle, she wriggled into a tiny striped minidress and smoothed it over her ribs, turning to the side to see what it looked like in profile. The stripes widened and tapered over her breasts and bottom like op art. I tried not to stare, but how could you not be astounded. I wondered what Reverend Thomas would think of her in a dress like that.

She frowned, pulled the dress over her head, and hung it back up. It still was stretched to fit her figure. Her body in the small dressing room was almost too much to bear. I could only look at her in the mirror, her breasts falling out of the top of her under-wired brassiere, the cross hiding between them like a snake in a rock.

"Sin's a virus, that's what Reverend Thomas says. Infecting the whole country, like the clap," she told me. "They've got clap now you can't get rid of. Sin's just exactly the same. We've got every excuse in the book. Like what difference does it make if I shovel coke up my nose or not? What's wrong with wanting to feel good all the time? Who does it hurt?"

She opened her eyes wide, I could see the glue on her false eyelashes. "It hurts us and it hurts Jesus. Because it's wrong." She said it soft and sweet, like a nursery school teacher. I tried to imagine what it was like working in a gentleman's club. Walking naked into a room full of men.

She tried on a pink stretchy dress, rolling it down over her hips. "It's a virus that eats you up from the inside out, you infect everything around you. Oh, wait till you hear Reverend Thomas." She frowned at the dress in the mirror, the way it looked in the back, it was so tight it rose up between her legs. "This would look better on you."

She stripped it off and handed it to me. It smelled of her heavy perfume. Obsession. When I took off my clothes, she looked at my body closely, like she was trying to decide if she wanted to buy it or not. My underwear was torn. "You'd better start wearing a bra, missy. Thirteen years old, I should say. I had my first bra in the fourth grade. You don't want 'em hanging to your knees when you're thirty, do you?"

Thirteen? The shock of it made me drop a stack of clothes off the hook. I thought back through the past year. My mother's trial, all the sessions and questions, medication and caseworkers, Sometime in there I'd turned thirteen. I had crossed a frontier in my sleep, and nobody had woken me to stamp my passport. Thirteen. The idea so stunned me I didn't even argue when Starr insisted on buying me the pink dress to wear to church, and two bras so they wouldn't hang down to my knees when I was thirty, and a package of panties, some other things.

We went next door to Payless for shoes. Starr took a sample red high heel down from the display and put it on without a sock, stood on it, smoothed her shorts over her hips, cocked her head to one side, made a face, and put it back on the stand. "I mean, I really thought like that. Who cares if I stick my tits in some stranger's face? It's nobody's business but mine."

Carolee whispered, "Mother, please shut up. People are staring."

Starr handed me a pair of pink high heels that would match my dress. I tried them on. They made my feet look like Daisy Duck's, but Starr loved them and pressed them on me.

"She could really use some goddamn sneakers or something," Carolee said. "All she's got are those thongs."

I decided on a pair of hiking boots, hoping they weren't too expensive. Starr looked pained when I showed them to her. "They're not very . .. flattering."

But snakes rarely struck above the ankle.

ON SUNDAY MORNING, Carolee was up early. I was surprised. On Saturday she'd slept until noon. But here she was, up at eight, dressed, her little backpack on her back. "Where are you going?"

She brushed her sandy hair. "Are you kidding? I'm not going to spend my day listening to Reverend Creephead talk about the Blood of the Lamb." She put her brush down and rushed out of the room. "Sayonara." I heard the screen door slam.

I took the hint from Carolee and pretended I was sick. Starr looked at me hard, and said, "Next week, missy." She wore a short white skirt and a peach blouse and four-inch spike heels. I could smell a big waft of Obsession. "No excuses."

It was only when I heard Starr's Torino heave itself onto the road that I dared dress and come out, make myself some breakfast. It was nice being alone, the boys hiding somewhere down in the wash, the distant whine of dirt bikes. I was just eating when Starr's hippie boyfriend came out of the bedroom, barefoot in jeans, pulled a T-shirt over his head. His chest was lean and hairy, sandy threaded with gray, his shaggy hair out of its usual ponytail. He staggered down the hall. I could hear the sound of his piss, the water coming on. Splashing, flushing. He came into the main room and found a cigarette in a pack on the table, lit it. The hand that held the cigarette was missing one ringer and the fingertip of the next.

He smiled when he saw me looking at it. "You ever see a carpenter get a table in a restaurant? Table for three, please." He held up his damaged hand.

At least he wasn't sensitive about it. I kind of liked him, though it embarrassed me that he was the one causing the "Christ almighties" through the wall. He was a plain man, lean-faced, sad-eyed, long graying hair. We were supposed to call him Uncle Ray. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a beer. Shhhhht, it sighed when he popped the top.

"You're missing the Jesus show." He didn't drink his beer so much as pour it down his throat.

"So are you," I said.

"I'd rather be shot," he said. "Here's my theory. If there's a God, he's so fucked up he doesn't deserve to be prayed to." He belched loudly and smiled.

I'd never thought much about God. We had the Twilight of the Gods, we had the world tree. We had Olympus and its scandals, Ariadne and Bacchus, the rape of Danae. I knew about Shiva and Parvati and Kali, and Pele the volcano goddess, but my mother had banned the least mention of Christ. She wouldn t even come to the Christmas pageant at school. She made me beg a ride off some other kid.