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Like Sweet Potato Pie (Southern Fried Sushi)

By Jennifer Rogers Spinola

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Chapter 1

Saturday afternoon, and I could hardly wait to hang up my stained apron and flee Barnes & Noble. The long day of shelving books and pinch-hitting in the Starbucks café with two baristas out sick left my feet screaming for mercy. I liked drinking coffee, not steaming it. Ugh. Even my hair smelled like espresso.

But there was no time to complain about my aching back or the foaming milk roaring in my ears. I needed to get to my friend Becky—and fast. She was part of my plot. My lips twisted into a smug little smile.

I pulled up to her cozy brick house and honked the horn, hanging my head out the window. “Hurry up! We can’t be late!”

“Hold yer horses, Shiloh P. Jacobs! I done got ev’rything!” Becky ran out hauling two heavy plastic bags and a cardboard Mason jar box.

I lowered my sunglasses—pricey Dolce & Gabbanas, from the days when I actually had money—and gave her an exaggerated wink. “Just put the goods in the trunk.”
Becky looked great. Ever since arriving in this little Virginia town from my reporter’s post in Tokyo, I’d vigorously attacked her wardrobe. “The Fashion Nazi,” she called me.

Still, Becky had thrown away a lot of her bulky plaid stuff and the oversized black clothes that tended to wash her out. Ditto with sloppy NASCAR and Future Farmers of America sweatshirts and the like. I’d convinced her to make charcoal gray and brown her new black and to add in softer tones like aqua and lemon yellow that made her blond hair shine.

“Fashion Nazi” is a bit over the top. I’m just a New York Yankee who knows that nobody looks good in a faded 1990 Ricky Rudd T-shirt that could fit Uncle Cletus.

Today Becky impressed even me—a frilly, sea-green eyelet top with cap sleeves that matched her eyes, plus a pair of crisp white capris. New sandals from Payless. Artsy emerald-green earrings I’d convinced her to buy at JCPenney’s.
Wait a second. I squinted and leaned in closer. Did I see nail polish? On Becky Donaldson?

“Becky?” I blinked. “Who are you? Where’s Becky?”

She stared at me like I’d burst into flames then put her hands on her
hips. “You started this whole shindig, Miss Fashion Plate, so don’t gimme no lip!”

I feigned confusion. “Aren’t you always calling me Miss Independent? Which is it?”

“Yer gonna be Miss Flattened if you don’t open up yer trunk this minute!”
She grinned, and I noticed the happy color in her cheeks. Nodded in satisfaction. Becky’s heart was healing.

She’d suffered through a few tough weeks after her surprise pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, which followed four painful years of infertility. But nothing kept Becky Donaldson down for long.

“What’s in the box?” I glanced over at the giant cardboard square that she cradled like eggs.

“Stuff,” she sniffed, slamming the car door shut and buckling up. “You’ll see soon enough.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“G’won!” She pushed my head forward. “Get out that lead foot a yers or we’ll be late!”

The afternoon dazzled, sun shining on the last of the season’s bright yellow goldenrod blooming along the end of Becky’s driveway. During my few months in Virginia, I’d learned a few things. After goldenrod comes that crisp, smoke-scented air, like a ripe apple, that warns of fall. The deep blue early October sky. Frost on the grass.

And goldenrod never lies. Splashes of pumpkin orange and dusky yellow had already rippled through the woods, whispering of chilly mornings and scattering leaves. Summer had gone without a word, leaving me only a few wild-flung days of surprising warmth.

Like today. I peeled off my jacket and tossed it in the backseat, backing out of the driveway.

“That thing you hung on yer rearview mirror’s gone,” said Becky abruptly, flipping down the visor to check her. . .

Lipstick? Becky considered ChapStick high-maintenance stuff. Aliens had abducted Becky. Or maybe she’d actually started listening to me.

“What’d ya do with it?” She flipped the visor shut.

“The omamori?”

“Yeah. That red dangly thing that said who-knows-what in Jap’nese.”

“Right. A charm. You know, for good luck. I. . .well. . .decided I don’t need it anymore.” I smirked. “Unless you’re driving, and then I need all the good luck I can get.”

“Har-har,” Becky snarked. “I ken drive! Jest put me on Daytona Speedway an’ watch me go!”

“Exactly.”

She grinned. “Well, good fer you. Good luck ain’t worth a hoot anyway.”

I kept my eyes on the road, trying to think of some way to break the news to Becky. She had to know. But I couldn’t blast her to kingdom come either.

I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ve been thinking, Becky.” I kept my tone conversational, turning down a winding country road. “I really like root beer now. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.”

“Root beer? Naw, don’t reckon so. The first time ya told me it tasted like cheap NyQuil.” She glared at me.

I flinched. Back then, yeah, I probably did say something like that. “Sorry. People change though. I really like it now.”

“Well good! You’re finally startin’ to get some sense in that globe-trottin’ head a yers. Livin’ in Japan all them years an’ eatin’. . .?”

“I love sushi. Don’t you dare.” I waved a finger at her.

I couldn’t find sushi in Staunton. Not even a measly little piece of salmon.

Know what futility feels like? Try hunting for pickled ginger slices in a grocery store stocked with lard and cornmeal.

“Raw fish? Shucks, Shah-loh,” she said, drawling out my name in her own distinctive Becky style. “I’d take a root beer an’ sweet potater pie over some piece a raw dead fish any day!”

“Jesus ate fish,” I sniffed.

“Yeah, and He cooked it, too! That outta tell ya somethin’!”

Actually, He did.

She had that eyebrow up. Fixed an odd expression on me.

“What?” I glanced over.

“How’d you know Jesus ate fish?” Becky’s eyes narrowed. “You ain’t set foot in a church since they started buildin’ Talladega.”

“Talla-what?”

“The racetrack.”

I ignored her, but color flared in my cheeks. “Anyway, sushi’s paradise.” We came around a bend where cows lolled on green fields, oblivious to the fate of summer. “Gourmet paradise. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.”

“Over my dead redneck body.” Becky’d spent all her twenty-five years living in rural Staunton, and it morphed into her veins.

“Even deep-fried? What about all the fried dill pickles and MoonPies in the South?” I was teasing. Now. A few months ago. . .well, let’s just say things were different. And so was I.

“You smack a piece a deep-fried sushi on my plate and see what happens!”

I choked back a laugh, remembering how I’d arrived in the summer, arrogant and judgmental and so full of hurt I fairly spewed. I probably said a lot of things to hurt Becky. And Adam. And. . .well, other people, too. I just thanked heaven they were pretty good forgivers.

“I reckon ya changed a lotta things, Shah-loh. It’s the good ol’ Virginia air workin’ wonders on yer taste buds. Next you’ll start tearin’ open bags a pork rinds and goin’ hog wild!”

I laughed at her unintended pun. “Over my dead Yankee body.”

But I didn’t want to talk about death. Not anymore. Mom’s untimely passing had given me my fill of funeral flowers, cemetery visits, and regrets. And living in her house, even painted and spruced up, still took some getting used to. I hadn’t been close to Mom for years—if I ever had—but it shook me nonetheless.
You’re stalling. Just tell her, Shiloh P. Jacobs!

I took a deep breath and tried awkwardly to segue. “There’s something else that’s changed in my life besides root beer.”

“You got another job?”

I winced. As if getting fired from the Associated Press’s coveted Tokyo bureau for plagiarism at age twenty-four didn’t stink sufficiently, now I worked two low totem-pole jobs to pay off my bills. Debts. Loans. For eternity or until I sold Mom’s house. Whichever came first.

“No. Better.”

“Better ’n that?”

“Lots better.” I tried to keep my cheeks from smiling so much, but today I couldn’t manage a poker face.

Becky stared at me with that narrow-eye look again, and her mouth slowly wobbled. “Shah-loh,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me ya believe in Jesus!”

I swerved.

Becky screamed. I jerked the car back into my lane, jaw dropping in surprise. “How did you. . .?”

But Becky hadn’t heard me. She straightened the box on her lap and glanced
inside then closed her eyes in relief. The contents remained in one piece. Or however many pieces they were supposed to.

“Well, yer gonna meet Him real soon if ya don’t watch where you’re goin’!”

“Sorry. You just. . .surprised me. How did you know?” My decision had been private. Personal, real, and life changing, but private. I hadn’t spilled the news to a soul.

Becky’s lip quivered, the radiant color in her face turning to blotches. “I don’t know, Shah-loh! There’s somethin’ different about you today, like ya won the lotto or somethin’. You’re sorta shinin’ from the inside! You got stars in your eyes! You’re. . .well, ya jest look beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever seen ya.” She mopped her face with her hand.

“Wow,” I said, tearing up myself. “It’s really that obvious?”

“All over yer face,” Becky sobbed.

“I just realized I needed Jesus to pay for my sins.” I kept my eyes on the curvy country road, hardly believing my own words. “I saw the change in Mom’s life, and then I met you and our friends, and God kept showing me something missing. That I couldn’t forgive until God forgave me. And that Jesus gave His life for me. I started reading 1 John like Adam said, and—”

“Adam?” Becky grinned. “I shoulda known!”

“Wipe that smirk off your face!” I ordered, trying to laugh and cry and drive at the same time. Everyone knew Adam Carter, landscaper, had a good heart—although a bit of a stuffy, straitlaced one, too. I’d written him off as a religious nut for a while.

But that’s not why I said yes to God.

“I couldn’t get out of mind what I read—‘The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.’ It’s what Mom discovered before she died, and it changed her whole life.”

I trembled, remembering the force of my decision, the strength and joy and forgiveness rushing in, breaking up the hardened anger that had closed up my heart for years.

“I found Mom’s journals, how she wrote about Jesus changing her life after getting tangled in all those cults for years. And then I met Adam’s brother, who’s got an amazing story of forgiveness, and. . .” I glanced over in annoyance. “Are you listening?”

“Shiloh Pearl Jacobs!” Becky sat up straight, coming back to her senses. “Pull over right this minute!”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Jest do it! Now!”

“Where? Here?” I gestured to a long, dusty gravel driveway and swerved into it. As soon as I shifted into PARK, Becky attacked me with a hug. She laughed and shouted, “Praise the Lord!”—then stuck her head out the window and whooped and hollered and waved her arms.

“Shah-loh’s a Christian!” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I been prayin’ for her a long time!”

A shiny green Chevy pickup zoomed by and honked in reply. I put my arm out the window and waved and honked back. Not that long ago I would’ve slumped down in the seat and tried to disappear, but not now. I felt like I did at the top of Mount Fuji: light-headed, sun dazzling my eyes, lungs bursting with joy.

“So how’s bein’ a Christian?” Becky stuck her head back in the window.

“New. Different. Amazing.” My hands trembled as I reached to punch on the hazard lights. “And also a little scary.”

“Scary? How come?”

“A lot of reasons.” I pulled off my sunglasses to wipe my eyes. “I’ve. . .well, changed, Becky. I don’t know who I am anymore, or how I’m supposed to act, or—”

“Act? Act like a woman who loves Jesus, Shah-loh! Ain’t nothin’ to it!”

“Sure, but it’s all strange to me. I’m totally ignorant about the Bible except what I’ve read on my own and heard on some of Mom’s old sermon CDs. I’ve never gone to church.”

“Never?” Becky blinked.

“Nope.” I played with a strand of brown hair that hung down from its ponytail, sticky with something—milk? caramel syrup? “I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell people either. I promise you, not everybody’s going to be as happy about this as you are.”

“Ya reckon?”

“Are you kidding? My family will just think I’m weirder than ever. . . . Not that we really act anything like family. Dad and I don’t speak, you know, and my older sister just calls when she wants something.” I looked out over the rolling green hillsides, rippling wheat-colored grasses lining the pasture fence. “Half sister. We’re only related by Dad.”

I checked the clock and pushed on the gas. “And then there’s my good friend Kyoko back in Japan, who ranks Christianity up there with suicide cults. If she finds out, she’ll think I’m loony. She’ll. . .well, I don’t know what she’ll do. You get it?”

“Ya ain’t told her?”

“Not exactly.” I played with Mom’s Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind keychain, a remnant from her life as a special-education teacher. “She knows something’s up, but not the whole story.”

“I reckon you’ll jest have ta show her. An’ ev’rybody else.” Becky adjusted one of the box flaps.

I sighed. “And love, Becky? I mean, your squeaky-clean kind of God-love? I don’t know anything about that.”

“What’s there ta know? Ya jest let Him change ya, day by day.”

“Right.” I turned the steering wheel slightly over a gentle rise. “But it’s more complicated than that. If I’m going to marry a Christian person, well, I’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t want to fight like Mom and Dad and end up with divorce and mental breakdowns, or hop from relationship to relationship like my old Cornell friends. I want something different. Something lasting. Something. . . What?”

Becky teared up again.

“God’s gonna teach ya all ya need to know, my friend!” She slung an arm around my shoulders. “He’ll give ya the strength to tell your friends the truth. Ain’t He done showed ya ev’rything else, right on schedule? Ya won’t know it all right off, but shucks—none a us do! He’s a good Daddy, Shah-loh. He won’t let ya down.”

I wiped my eyes, still somewhat surprised at the sensation of tears. I hadn’t cried in years. Literally. Almost twenty, ever since my dad walked away one winter night. Only here in this peaceful Virginia valley, with God’s love pushing and prodding my shut-up heart into the sunlight, had I learned to feel again.

“I have another confession to make,” I whispered. “My middle name’s not Pearl.”

“But you said. . .”

“I lied. I’m sorry.” I let out my breath. “But I’m not going to lie anymore. I promise, Becky. We’re talking about a new Shiloh now.”

“I believe ya.” Her eyes were rimmed with red.

“Just don’t ask me my middle name. Please. I hate it.”

“I don’t care if yer middle name’s Possum!” Becky shouted. “You love Jesus, an’ that’s all that matters!” She reached over and honked my horn, shouting out in wild excitement. I joined in, looking more like a redneck gone mad than the refined New York-Tokyo transplant I claimed to be.

Becky suddenly grabbed the box. “Uh-oh,” she said, shushing me.

“What? What’s uh-oh? And what’s in that box?”

She tried to wrestle it away from me, but I grabbed one of the cardboard flaps and jerked it back. Let out a gasp.

“It’s a serprise!” Becky cried, grabbing the box back. “Yer not s’posed to see it yet!”

“Becky Donaldson!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”

#

It took me the entire drive home, out of Staunton (pronounced STAN-ton, not STAWN-ton, for my fellow Yankees) and into the rural outskirts of tiny Churchville to come to grips with Becky’s gift. Which now yapped and whined inside the box. A cute little German shepherd puppy, all smoky black and brindle. Enormous liquid black eyes and pricked ears, staring at me.
She yipped and whined, poking tiny paws over the rim of the box.

“Becky! We’ve got Faye coming over in twenty minutes, not knowing a thing, and what am I going to do with a dog?” I cried, grabbing my head in both hands.

“Hiya, cutie! Ain’t ya gonna sleep some more?” Becky ignored me, massaging the puppy’s velvety fur behind the ears.

“A dog?” I repeated stupidly. “You got me a dog? I’m leaving this town, Becky, as soon as I can find somebody to buy my house!” I waved my arms in the air. “I’m not a small-town girl! All I want to do is go back to Japan, and what am I going to do with a dog? I wouldn’t stay in Staunton forever if somebody paid me!”

I shook my head and turned into Crawford Manor, Mom’s little redneck subdivision. Passing a horse and a double-wide trailer on one side and a house with six hounds on the other.

“No offense, Becky. I love you and Tim and everybody, but I’m not settling down here. I’ve already stayed way longer than I planned.”

“What, a couple a months?” Becky tried to cover a laugh but didn’t do a very good job.

“June. July. I don’t know. Whenever I came.” I gestured with my free arm. “For. . .the funeral.”

“Shucks. I jest thought ya might be lonely livin’ by yourself, Shah-loh.”

“Lonely? Give it to Faye! After all, she’s the one we’re trying to. . .” I clicked on my turn signal, forcing my eyes away from the box. Because if I peeked, I’d be a sucker. Hooked. Quivery wimp that I was deep down. “Besides, what if Earl doesn’t like dogs? And then if he and Faye. . .”

Becky glanced up at me. “Huh? Yer blabberin’, Shah-loh. An’ anyway, it ain’t a good idea for ya ta live out there all by yerself, ya know.”

“My real-estate agent said I can’t have any pets. They leave hair and stuff that turns off potential buyers.”

“Well, Lowell Schmole ain’t here, is he? He gonna tell ya what ta eat fer breakfast, too?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

I drove down the country road lined with starter homes just like mine, with cute mailboxes and front porches decorated with American flags, dry summer geraniums, butter-yellow football mums. I crunched across gravel and parked in front of a wooden deck, flanked by fading rose bushes. Then I reluctantly pulled down the cardboard flap on the box.

“Here.” Becky shoved the whole box into my hands. “You don’t hafta keep her, but think about it, okay? I just happened ta see her at the SPCA, sorta. . .by accident. . .and couldn’t pass her up.”

“What were you doing at the SPCA?” I cried.

“Lookin’ for a dog fer you.” Good old, honest Becky. She got out and shut the door, leaving me there with the box.

Two glistening velvet-black eyes peeked up at me, framed by little fawn-colored spots like puffy eyebrows. Tiny trembling whiskers.

Something melted inside. Like sweet brown tonkatsu sauce poured over Japanese fried pork.

“I can’t keep her, Becky! She’ll pee on my carpets!” I got out, trying not to jostle the puppy or drop the box. “She’ll ruin everything for Faye, after we got all this nice food ready, and. . .” I tried not to look inside the box again but couldn’t help myself.

“Aw, quit whinin’, woman! Faye’ll love her! An’ hey, maybe it’ll give her some conversation with Earl, right?” Becky winked. “She don’t know he’s comin’ yet, does she?”

“She’d better not! That’s the whole point!”

Becky grinned as the puppy licked her chin, whining. Tail batting the sides of the box. “They said this’n’s pretty close ta housebroken. Probably had a family before. An’ German shepherds learn real quick!”

“She’ll chew furniture! She’ll cry all night!”

A quivery black nose appeared over the side of the box, followed by a curious ear.

“She’ll be jest fine.”

“It’s a she?”

“Yep. You’ll thank me later.” She reached in to scratch her ears. “I got ya some toys jest in case.”

“In case what?”

“You decide to keep her.”

I stared down in the box, not liking that tonkatsu-sauce feeling. Oozing out all over and turning my will of iron into mush. “Becky, I’m not even home during the day! You know that. I work all the time.”

“You’re home more’n the SPCA volunteers.” Her voice held a sorrowful tone. “I’m shore she’d be grateful for any attention ya gave her. An’. . .well, ya know when they cain’t find homes for ’em, they. . .”

I shoved the box back at Becky then stomped out to the mailbox, trying not to think of the colorful adjectives Lowell would use when he saw that puppy. And then I spotted the fat envelope with my name in harsh block letters.

I pulled it out of the mailbox, reading and rereading the return address with a sinking lurch.

And I doubled over as if punched in the stomach.

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