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not have moved her an inch.
    We’d had an early picnic supper on the screened porch—pimiento cheese sandwiches and stuffed eggs and young lettuce salad—and we were sitting out there rocking and enjoying a heavenly breeze, when Miss Ida asked Coleman if she went to church.
    “Yes, ma’am. I’m a Methodist,” she said, sounding as proud as if she’d won a medal at the state fair.
    “You are ? My goodness, we’re Presbyterian,” Dinah said.
    “But you’ll go to the Presbyterian Church now that you’re living with us, won’t you, dear?” Ida said.
    “No, ma’am, I cain’t do that,” Coleman said, raising her chin and looking Miss Ida straight in the eye. “I’m a member of the Methodist Church, and that’s where I have to go.”
    “Not cain’t , can’t,” I said automatically. I could see Ida was as puzzled as I was: how had this tiny child, who’d been living with a heathen—surely child-stealer Gloria didn’t claim to be a Christian—become a member of a church? And why Methodist? There’s nothing wrong with the Methodist Church, but I’d like to know how she found them, or they found her.
    “I have seen the ways of the sinners who drink alcohol,” Coleman said, solemn as a preacher. “I have took the pledge. I have sworn never to touch the ‘demon drink.’ Us Methodists stand firm on drink.” She stuck out her chin, and her cheeks were flushed. I could see this would not be easy to resolve.
    I tried to think what to say to her. It is true that some churches persuade children to sign a pledge never to drink (even when they’re too young to write their names and have to sign with an X ). I don’t see any harm in it, although it is not our way. But the Slocumbs and the Greenes and the Fairgroves—all Coleman’s kin—have always been Presbyterian. What will people think if she goes to the Methodist Church?
    Well, Dinah talked to her, and Ida talked to her, and I did, too. When we couldn’t move her, we asked Mr. Guthrie, the Presbyterian minister, to come over and reason with her. He’s good with children, and he was patient with Coleman.
    “Child, the Ten Commandments don’t tell us not to drink alcohol. Why are you so concerned about it?” he said.
    “Mr. Guthrie, the Ten Commandments don’t say ‘Suffer the little children,’ either. But we know it’s the Lord’s will that people take care of children, because Jesus told us so. People who partake of the demon drink cain’t even remember they have children,” she said.
    Someone had been teaching her the Bible, and we couldn’t argue with the word of God. And we knew she’d come by how the “demon drink” affected parents from personal experience. We were sorry she had to learn such a hard lesson so early. We decided to let her be; she was a Methodist, and a Methodist she would remain. (Truth to tell, I don’t think we could have budged her, no matter what we said or did.) What’s important is that the child worships the Lord and goes to church.
    On Sunday morning, she looked pretty as a picture in a yellow dress I’d made her—I wanted her to have at least one new church dress—and we walked her to the Methodist Church on our way to the Presbyterian Church (in our town, the churches are lined up in a row on Church Street), and picked her up on the way home. She looked so alone and little when we left her, and even smaller when we walked towards her where she waited for us after church; my heart bled for her. But it was what she wanted, and that’s the way it remained. It was not the last discussion we had with Coleman about religion.
Dinah
    Coleman doesn’t talk much about her life before she came to live with us, but she remembers Jenny Byrd, the nurse her granny sent to Richmond. She said she cried and cried when Miss Jenny left. But she said cryin’ didn’t make her feel better, and it didn’t bring Miss Jenny back, and she made up her mind to quit cryin’ and do what needed to be done to get along—she