Ciara Jobes' relatives clasped each other as if at any moment their grief might carry them away.

Her grandmother, Iva Cruse, stood near her white casket on the altar of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church and embraced a steady stream of mourners. They hugged and rocked and whispered into each other's ears.

In the pews behind Iva Cruse, who buried Ciara's mother from this church in July, and before that another grandchild, sat sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, neighbors, friends and her fellow church members.

They comforted each other with their hands. They pulled the heads of children to their breasts. They ran their hands across the shoulders of grown men as those shoulders shook with sobs. Each clasped a neighbor's hand as they prayed. And they put their hands together in applause at the mention of Jesus' name.

They were there to bury a 15-year-old girl who died while in the guardianship of a family friend. Ciara Jobes was found starved and beaten to death in the home of Satrina Roberts, who had taken custody of the child three years ago when Ciara's mother, Jackie Cruse, had begun to fail with AIDS and cancer.

Ciara weighed 73 pounds when she was found. She was judged too emaciated to have been able to stand on her own. Her body was covered with cuts and bruises. Roberts is now in custody facing charges of first-degree murder.

Social workers lost touch with Ciara after a judge granted custody to Roberts. No one in her family had seen Ciara in months, and their phone calls went unanswered. She had not been to school or church or been seen outside the home by her neighbors since at least last summer. Perfunctory attempts by school officials to contact her were unsuccessful.

Police found evidence that she had been locked in a room without heat, light, a bed or toilet facilities and forced to go to the bathroom in a hole in the drywall. Roberts reportedly told police that when Ciara soiled a comforter, she beat her with a leather belt until the child vomited and died, and then waited several hours before calling paramedics.

The funeral for this young girl was compounded by all these horrible details, and the family and parishioners of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church were beyond consolation. Four church nurses, dressed in crisp white uniforms and wearing old-fashioned caps, stood close with water, tissues and, always, comforting hands.

On the altar, Crystal Allen and Antoinette Barnes sang solos, holding microphones in fists clenched with the emotional power of the hymns. In the church, mourners extended their arms and opened their hands, as if willing themselves to touch the lyrics that promised that God would take the pain away.

A series of preachers gestured from the pulpit with well-worn Bibles in their outstretched hands, telling Ciara's family again and again that "God does all things right and well." There was meaning in Ciara's death, they promised Iva Cruse, as she, in turn, quaked and sobbed and thrashed in the arms of her sister.

The grief seemed to come over the grandmother in waves, and during a moment of its lowest ebb, she walked carefully to Ciara's casket and placed her hands on its lid, rubbing it tenderly with both hands.

Everywhere in the church, hands raised tissues to dab weeping eyes.

Pastor Tony McDonald, of Mount Pleasant Baptist, asked God to "keep us in the palm of your hand until the storm has passed."

Bishop Clifford Johnson used his powerful hands to reinforce his message with pointed fingers and snapping fingers and clenched fists, as if he were trying to drive the words of the scripture into the heads in front of him.

"Ciara is with God now," he said, waving his hands triumphantly. "She is more alive than she has ever been."

At that moment, Mount Pleasant Baptist Church was not somber with grief, but alive with all those hands: praying, praising, comforting, clutching, clasping, stroking, embracing, loving hands.

How could Ciara Jobes have slipped through the grasp of all those hands?