Home Free by Sharon Jennings

Sharon. I like it that Mrs. McMillan explained this, but baptisms aren’t as fun anymore, now that we can’t tease Sharon. Well, it’s still fun if the baby cries lots when the minister drops the water on its head.
    I wondered about all of this water stuff so I looked up
baptism
in the dictionary. It means “to immerse in water.” Some churches make you get right into the water, but not as a baby. When you’re older. Not everybody wants to go for a swim in church so our church just puts drops of water on your head. I like this better because I wouldn’t want strangers seeing me in my bathing suit. And besides, it seems inappropriate to be almost bare-naked in church. Mrs. McMillan explained that the drops of water were a symbol of getting right in the water and that getting right in the water was a symbol that you were being cleansed or purified. Without soap. Mrs. McMillan said it was a rebirth.But
rebirth
doesn’t mean coming out of your mother’s tummy again. I think it means your personality changes. Maybe you become a better person.
    â€œI can think of lots of people who should be reborn,” I said to Mrs. McMillan. But she said that was inappropriate of me. I was getting tired of finding out I was inappropriate.
    So baptisms are fun and as soon as they’re over we get to go back to Sunday School. Usually there’s a tea after church and the new parents bring in lots of cake and cookies.
    One day when all of us were eating second and third helpings of everything, I heard the new mother say to Mrs. Kirkstone that her child would certainly never be a little pig like all of us. Ha! How presumptuous of her! Just wait until her little Elizabeth Victoria Margaret is our age and has to sit through sermons without moving. It makes you ravenous, let me tell you! (I looked up
ravenous
and it means the same as
rapacious
, which means that you are “accustomed to plundering,” which means “seizing violent possession of something that isn’t yours.” Sometimes the boys plunder the cookies at these teas, so maybe the new mother is right.)
    Sometimes we have a special church service. The thing I hate most about a special church service is we have to sit in our pews for the whole time. We don’t get to leave and goto Sunday School with Mrs. McMillan. I have to sit very still for the whole hour and twenty minutes or my mother jabs her elbow into me. I have learned how to sit very still. I make up stories while the minister is talking. Once I made up a story that I was Lot’s wife, turned to stone and unable to move, just like in the Bible. I did such a good job that I fell asleep and my mother jabbed me to wake me up. I had to go to my room when I got home. I don’t think this was fair because I was thinking about the Bible the whole time.
    Our pew is almost at the back of the church. I don’t know why ours is at the back, but we have to sit there every Sunday or someone might glare at us. We all have to sit in our own pews. Once a new family sat down in Mrs. Kirkstone’s pew. Mrs. Kirkstone stood there staring at this family until they figured out they had done something wrong and squeezed over. The next Sunday they sat behind Mrs. Kirkstone and they were stared at by the fox’s eyes in the fox stole Mrs. Kirkstone wears around her neck. I think she arranged the fox head on purpose to make sure the eyes were on the new family. The Sunday after that, they moved to the other side of the church where the fox couldn’t see them.
    On the Sunday after Cassandra moved in, I told Mrs. McMillan all about how Anne of Green Gables liked going to Sunday School just like I do now with Mrs. McMillanto teach us. Mrs. McMillan said she had a surprise for me. After church was let out, she led me up to the Sanctuary part. Everyone was outside talking and we were alone. She showed me the glass case at the back. I had seen it lots of times but I never looked at