Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore

his mind in a day or two,” Martha Ann said with a strange mix of regret and hope in her voice. “But I promise I won't go to the Dairy Queen without you. It just wouldn't be right.”
    “I hate this place, Martha Ann,” I said softly, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes again. “It's never gonna feel right, and finding the Lord in some lake hasn't changed that one little bit.”
    Maybe my exodus needed to be now, not when I'm eighteen, I thought to myself, knowing good and well Martha Ann would start crying too if she heard me talking like this. I could go to Willacoochee and find my mama's family. None of them had ever been to Ringgold, not even when Mama died. But I had gotten a card from Mama's sister on my birthday for as long as I can remember; so had Martha Ann. I could live with her. I bet she'd be happy to have me. But Martha Ann would want to come along and traveling with a child might slow me down.
    I spent the next two days holed up in my room figuring out what to do with the rest of my life, or at least the rest of the summer. I was still mad at my daddy, and I had decided that part of my plan was not talking to him. No good-night kisses, no warm morning exchanges, nope, nothing.
    On the third day, I decided I was doing a better job of punishing myself than my daddy and decided to come out of my room long enough to visit Gloria Jean. I hadn't had a chance to tell her about the baptism yet. Gloria Jean had never cared too much for Roberta Huckstep, especially after she told Ida Belle that Gloria Jean was nothing more than a modern-day Jezebel. I figured she'd enjoy hearing that precious, darling Emma Sue had had an ill-timed swim in the lake.
    Besides, Gloria Jean would agree with me that life was treating Catherine Grace Cline just plain rotten. She'd understand. She always did. She never called my dreaming foolishness, not once. She believed me when I said I was leaving town, and she always said she would help me figure out how to do it when the time came. She said she understood what it felt like to land in a place where you didn't belong. I always figured she was talking about Ring-gold and yet she had lived here since before I was born, since she married her fifth husband, Darrell Hixson. Sometimes I wondered if Daddy really knew how supportive Gloria Jean had been if he'd have let me spend so much time with her.
    Gloria Jean listened patiently to my sad story. She tried not to laugh thinking of Emma Sue's bow floating on the surface of Nottely Lake, and then she turned to me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Honey, if you want to get out of here as bad as you say you do, then you're going to need some money, a little
do re me,
if you know what I mean,” Gloria Jean said very matter-of-factly. “So why don't you put your energy into making some change instead of sitting around moping all summer long. Dreams don't just happen, baby, you got to go after ’em.”
    Then Gloria Jean started talking about my granddaddy's vegetables. I wasn't really sure where she was going with this, but I knew it would be someplace good. She explained that she had been over to Floyd Marshall's garden just the other day to help Ida Belle pick some corn. Even all these years after my granddaddy had passed on, Ida Belle still insisted on planting the corn and green beans for Wednesday-night suppers on the church grounds. She said it pleased the Lord that she fed His flock with vegetables grown on such blessed land.
    “Anyway, I hadn't been back there in a year or more, and I was surprised to see that the strawberry plants have taken over half the plot. I thought about picking those berries myself and making me some homemade strawberry jam, but you girls could do that. You know your mama used to make some of the best blackberry jam I've ever tasted, and I bet you two could do something just as special with those strawberries.”
    I was practically jumping off her sofa with excitement. I was going to make my dream come