Last Tuesday
I don’t know why I decided to walk the route that took me past the church last week. Malaise is probably as accurate as anything. The door was unlocked which I appreciated. Too many churches these days are more concerned about preserving their trinkets than providing refuge, but I had to admit this congregation was still trying to be Samaritan. I took a few deep breaths to get into the spirit then looked up and spoke to the silent figure hanging on the wall. “Bet you're surprised to see me on a Tuesday." I said it a little more loudly than I'd meant and I hunched my shoulders and looked around to see if anyone was there to hear me.
The church was empty, though, with no apparent crisis in anyone else's life requiring a midweek morning visit to the shrine, so I sat halfway back, well back from where mom had made us sit as kids. Back then, We all had wondered if everyone could smell the wine or liquor or whatever else she had on her breath on those Sunday mornings. No one ever called her out in front of us though, but we did often get rides home from an increasingly insistent group of deacons who had been designated by the pastor to watch over us and act as our drivers while he encouraged mom to come to bible study after the service in order to force coffee and cake upon her until her eyes lost their redness.
Smell is a funny thing in how it can reach deep into our minds and make us recall events from decades ago: things we had forgotten without trying or things we were desperate to purge. The scent of the church brought a strong sense of nostalgia to me without warning. Is that the right word, nostalgia? Or is that just for happy memories? Not everything had been terrible in that building. If it had been, I would never go back. There is definitely something in there for me and the smell that hit me as soon as I walked in brought back the same flood of memories it always did. Maybe that’s why I still went, even bad memories remind you that you’ve existed and that it’s not a dream that resets every time you wake.
The velvet on the pew cushions must soak up and hold the scent of decades of parishioner aroma, then releases it like a nerve gas. I wonder how it hits other people. Does it numb their uncertainty and lack of faith and imbue them with a sense of purpose or does it dredge up memories that don’t need to be recalled and make you feel foolish for thinking that place could hold any peace? It was Tuesday and it smelled like every Sunday I’d ever been in, but the chapel was cooler without the crush of Sabbath bodies putting off heat and the silence was absolute other than the gentle whooshing of the air from the ducts above.
I hadn't been in often since my sister Donna's wedding my senior year at college, usually every other month or so just to say hello to those who I knew wouldn’t ask me where I’d been. Before that, I hadn't been in at all since leaving for college except for Mom's funeral my second year away, where I’d been expected to give the eulogy as the “sentimental” one in the family. I almost made it through without lying, but couldn't quite finish with the truth. Instead, I said something that made everyone cry and come up to me after the service to tell me what a good son I had been to her. The truth would’ve set everybody talking, but not to me and that would’ve suited me better, but I took something she always said to heart about not speaking ill of the dead. Of course, listening to her talk about her father for twenty years without ever hearing a kind word helped clue me in to Mom not practicing what she preached.
On the other hand, Donna had continued to go unapologetically. "Hey, they'll give me free child care for at least a few hours a week," she said. "Plus, where else can you drink wine at ten a.m. without getting funny looks?"
“That was Mom’s line,” I told her.
“I know. That’s why it’s funny,” she’d smirk.
“Too soon, sis,” delivered with a smile. Even fifteen years on, the same jokes between siblings.
She’s a lay minister now and organizes support group meetings and encourages younger members to get involved. She always downplays what she does. “I don’t even know if I believe this shit,” she tells me, but she shows up every Sunday and always a few other days a week. She’s good at showing up and missed the disappearing gene in the family.
In the last few years, she’d gotten more involved with the youth, ever since I first noticed her oldest had grown into a diffident teen and started to hang with what the elder members politely called a “non-traditional” group of friends. Her hair turned purple, then pink, and she started to antagonize Donna over things we wouldn't dare have talked to our mom about. Things that would’ve been met with the old standbys such as “Life is tough” and “You have it a lot better than I did when I was your age.” To Donna’s credit, I never heard her respond in anger or use one of those mom phrases from our childhood. She seemed to understand the turmoil within her child as she tried to accept and redirect them back from teen angst to productive conversation. It was a struggle for both of them and I was the benevolent Uncle in-between, telling them they both were doing a great job.
When I show up on Sundays, I can see her scoping the crowd, searching for those hanging out in the corners with their eyes flitting back and forth, trying not to make a connection with anyone else’s. A lot of them have too many piercings to suit some of the crowd and they all seem to have tattoos crawling out from under their sleeves which they try to hide by running their hands over their arms which only draws more attention to them.
Donna identifies these recalcitrant lambs and sidles up to them, directing them to a seat in the back where they can be comfortable out of view of the masses. She’ll sit with them, whether it’s one or five, demure, which isn’t an easy look for her, not singing too loudly or reciting the lord’s prayer with too much vigor. Then, she walks them to the after-service coffee and cookie social and makes sure they aren't overwhelmed by the overly enthusiastic, running interference by deflecting the well meaning, but intrusive, members towards long-standing, but willing, targets of their zeal. I feel like one of those eye averters now, but she respects my halo after a quick hug and kiss on my cheek every time I come.
At her wedding, I had sat and stared at the figure hanging on the wall and felt guilty for deigning to re-enter after all the words I had said in tipsy, philosophical discussions with my evangelical suite-mates who worried so desperately about my soul as we all sat around swilling Bud Lights and watching Seinfeld reruns in the dorms. We talked about eternity and I tried to get a straight answer out of them about the justice of someone in a part of the world who’d never been exposed to their particular set of rules facing eternal torment, but that answer always came back to “God’s will,” which didn’t do much to put my mind at ease for all those poor souls who were going to be surprised on their judgment day when they found out who Jesus was for the first time, so we’d drink more cheap beer and I’d resist their entreaties to hit up Wednesday night bible study until I found out Lori Minshew, the cute, dark haired girl from Spanish class I’d been working up to talk to went to it every week.
I ended up going to her hometown church an hour from campus more than my childhood one over the next six months until she went home for the summer and reconnected with a boy from her high school who’d stayed in town and was in the process of taking over his daddy’s auto-repair shop. To be fair, his prospects looked a lot better than mine at that point, so I wrote her some sad poems and burned a CD of songs before realizing I liked having my Wednesday nights free again which led to me meeting my next girlfriend who liked doing things Lori wasn’t sure were ok with God and I realized, surely the lord does work in some mysterious, wonderful ways.
I didn’t know what answer I needed last Tuesday and the right question wasn’t coming, so I sat and wondered about everything. I looked back up to the eyes of the figure on the wall and found no truth within. That didn't bother me. The version up there is an idol, a western European construct, itself a myth even if its subject wasn't. If I am going to be around religion, I like as much provable truth as possible, and a buff, Nordic-looking Jesus doesn’t fall within any parameters containing facts. “We have created God in our image,” I said out loud. “Man, we're egotistical assholes.” That, I said loud on purpose.
I closed his eyes and the smells continued to seep in, taking my thoughts back to a Sunday when I was ten. Mom had tied one on Saturday that was working its way into a nice bow by Sunday morning, but she had gotten moving and got us all to the church, somehow careening through the lot without hitting any vehicles. She told us to get out and go in and she’d be along shortly, but she ended up passing out in the car. We dutifully filed into our Sunday school classes and then the main service without her assistance. It was an easy path that we had traced by ourselves many times as the three of us, me, Donna, and Jake, had been self-regulating for a number of years already by then.
After the service, Mrs. Corley, our three-doors-down neighbor, corralled us and escorted us from the cookies to her car and then her home, where we spent the rest of the day and night before she got us on the school bus in the morning after we’d bathed, dressed, and eaten frozen waffles and fresh strawberries at her house.
She had walked up the block after we’d been put to bed to talk to mom and collect fresh clothes for us for the next day and I had heard her leave quietly and return because I couldn’t go to sleep. It’s a habit I still have of lying in the dark, trying to make my mind go still while the thoughts go racing through. That night though, I’d been praying almost non-stop since Mrs. Corley had turned out the light. I’d heard mom's car drive past and turn into our driveway along with the familiar crunch of the bumper hitting the metal trash cans. “Cheap sons-a-bitches,” she would say when she had to replace them every few months due to the damage, pretending as though she hadn’t caused it.
Her voice had carried down the block once Mrs. Corley arrived. I couldn’t hear her say a word, but mom's response had been loud and clear. “You sanctimonious bitch! If you're not going to bring them back to their mother, you damn sure better get them to the bus on time or I'll call DSS on you!”
I had sat in the service that morning, flanked by my brother and sister, my eyes closed and breathing in the same air I’d inhaled last week. Back then, it held a whiff of hope and promise still. I stayed as still as I could and prayed, wondering why God couldn't fix mom if he was all powerful. My eyes shut tighter and tighter as I kept on, praying silently for God to fix her, to make her love Donna and Jake enough to stop drinking, to stop cursing and yelling, to stop … just to stop. I prayed for God to make us better kids so she wouldn't be so mad at us, to change us into children she loved. I opened my eyes and looked at Swedish Jesus, but he didn’t give me the answer I knew was coming because I was praying exactly as I’d been taught, asking for something to help someone else and not for my own sake. Of course, nothing changed and, after that day and night, I didn’t ask for anything in a prayer ever again..
On Tuesday, my eyes never shut and I didn't look for any signs. The air had no hope and no promise, but smelled merely of people I had shared that room with over the years and reminded me of something I couldn't tell if I even cared to remember. For a moment, I thought bad for even being there, but then I remembered what Donna always says when she hugs me on my visits, “At least you showed up.”
