In my closet, a straight row of school uniforms hung in silent judgement, but I just shut the door. I had to make a careful choice. From my drawer I chose my favourite pair of bright yellow shorts and a silky blue tank top that had thin straps. I ran back into the bathroom and checked myself out in the full-length mirror. And I didn't look so bad at all.

I took off the charm bracelet and threw it into the pink trashcan. I'd memorized its message. I didn't need it anymore.

I was so calm. That was the oddest thing. Calm and happy. I was ready. I was. Sometimes you just know what to do.

I walked down the stairs and the house looked different somehow. Down in the hall, I felt blessed. Then I walked back into the kitchen. There, on the counter, was my mother's keyring. She must have come home a little early.

There on the floor lay my dead, dead, dead mother. She looked really beautiful, lying there like that, but her hair was a real mess.

The kitchen clock read 3.55. My mom needed her pick-me-up earlier every day. I had noticed that. I wasn't so dumb. I wasn't.

I picked up my sketchpad and walked over to the mirror in the hall. I didn't look different at all. Not at all. Same lumpy body. Same geeky braces. And I started to draw my self-portrait.

THE BLESSING OF BROKENNESS by Karin Slaughter

Mary Lou Dixon sat in the front pew of the church, her eyes raised as she watched the cross over the pulpit being slowly lowered to the floor. She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist as the cross, which had seemed so small hanging a few inches from the ceiling, began to grow larger as it descended in front of her like a broken bird.

'Hold up,' the foreman said, and the three men working the pulleys stopped. The cross shook in the air, its broken right arm dangling by a few slivers of wood as it tapped ominously against the side. The noise reminded Mary Lou of a clock, ticking away time.

'Easy, now,' the foreman instructed, using his hands to illustrate. He was the only English speaking person in the four-man crew and the Mexicans were slow to understand his orders. They finally seemed to comprehend, though, because the cross began its journey to the floor once again, finally coming to a gentle resting point on the carpet.

The Mexicans genuflected, and Mary Lou wondered if that was entirely appropriate in the Christ Holiness Baptist Church of Elawa, Georgia. The cross was a simple wooden affair, lacking a Jesus, but with a fine polish that shone in the morning sun. It was hardly the ornamental icon most Catholics were used to exalting, if that was what Catholics did – Mary Lou had no idea. She had been Christ Holiness for the last twenty years and before that Lord and Saviour, which was two steps below Primitive and one above snake handling.

Although plenty of contractors attended the church, none had volunteered their time to repair the ailing cross. Bob Harper, who had been a deacon for the last ten years, owned his own construction company, but he was still over five hundred dollars more expensive than the black man and his crew. The job was too small to make it worth his time, he had said. Mary Lou had commented she was glad Jesus had not felt the same way about dying for Bob's sins, but the deacon had not been swayed by her remark.

So, here Mary Lou was with a black foreman and his Catholic Mexicans, trying to get the cross repaired before Easter Sunday – at considerable expense – with no help whatsoever from the more capable men of the congregation. This sort of thing was typical of the church lately. Long gone were the times when people happily volunteered to do routine maintenance or send out mailers to collect donations for foreign missionaries. No one visited the sick in the hospital anymore. No one wanted to go on bible retreats unless they were assured there would be a pool and twenty-four-hour room service. The last two anti-abortion rallies down to Atlanta had been cancelled because the weather report had predicted rain, and Lord knew no one wanted to stand out in the rain.

'Mrs Dixon?' the black man asked. His name was Jasper Goode, she knew. He was a dark-skinned older man with a bald head that showed a significant amount of perspiration despite the air-conditioning in the church. Mary Lou did not trust this show of over-perspiration, as if it somehow made him shifty. He had done nothing but stand and direct the crew all morning, yet he was sweating as if he had been running a marathon.

'Ma'am?' he prompted.

'Yes?' Mary Lou answered, shifting in the hard pew. She put her hand to her stomach to calm it.

Jasper walked towards her, down the stairs that lined the stage. He kept walking until he was about three feet away, looming over her.

Mary Lou squared her shoulders, willing herself not to fidget. He was a tall man and knew it. She could not help but glance down at the floor before bracing herself to look back up at him.

'Sorry,' he said, smiling as he kneeled down on one knee in front of her.

'What is it?' she snapped, aware she had no reason to. The truth was she did not like him standing so close to her. The sight of him was almost too much to bear.

The man had been badly burned, and up close his face was a synthetic looking mess, his skin stretched unnaturally tight in places, the pigment a patchwork quilt of varying skin tones around his cheeks so that from afar he looked as if someone had stitched his face together from borrowed flesh. He had no eyebrows or eyelashes, giving his eyes a perpetually startled look. His hands, too, were scarred, and the skin that bunched around his wrists resembled a slouching sock. Even in this heat, he wore his sleeves long, tightly buttoned at the wrists, hiding what Mary Lou imagined was an even more horrific sight.

He said something to his crew, and she tried not to watch him speak. The most startling thing about the man's appearance was his lips – an unnatural shade of pink, like the bright pinkness of a mouse's nose, and delicate looking, more suited for a maiden than an old black man with no facial hair to speak of. The lips had a constant sheen, as if they had been made for him only recently. Mary Lou had seen on television where a child's ear had been grown from scratch on the back of a living mouse. She wondered if the man's lips had been grown under similar circumstances.

The burns were not the kind of thing that could go unremarked upon. The first time they had met, the black man had explained to Mary Lou without her asking that he had been in an automobile accident. The car had exploded, burning alive his wife and child. He had barely escaped with his own life, and subsequent surgeries had healed his body if not his heart; he said the memories of that night still haunted him, and the part he played in the death of both his wife and child was something he could not forgive himself for, let alone forget. Drunk, Mary Lou suspected, but did not say.

Jasper Goode told her, 'We'll leave it here, then take it into the parking lot after lunch.' Mary Lou made a point of looking at her watch, and he added, 'They work better on a full belly'

'I'm sure they do,' Mary Lou answered, hoping her tone conveyed her displeasure.

'She don't look as bad as I thought she would,' the black man offered, as if the cross were a ship and not a symbol of Jesus's sacrifice.

'Well, good,' she returned, wondering if this meant they would charge less. She doubted it.

As if sensing her thoughts, he added, 'She'll still take a while.'

'You promised it would be ready for Sunday,' Mary Lou reminded him, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She didn't think Jasper Goode was the type who went to church on Sundays, and if the decision had been left to Mary Lou, she would have hired Bob Harper instead. Five hundred dollars was a small price to pay to employ someone who was invested in his own salvation.