Tabby is waiting when I arrive at my mother’s house. The door is unlocked but the house is empty. I place Coco’s present in the refrigerator and hurry back out. We arrive at the small wooden building just as the organ music begins.
First Christian Church of Oceanside Village is a one-room building with a back door that leads straight into the sanctuary. The door creaks so loudly it echoes when we enter, and a few people turn to scowl at us. I smile at Betty Pepper, who clutches her hymnal to her chest and gives me a thumbs-up, mouthing, It was delicious.
Right next to her is Stinky Bucky, and he gives me a lecherous grin. I blink away fast, feeling sick that I’m trapped into going out with him on Friday. I’ve got to stop being so nice.
Tabby pulls me into a pew two rows behind Chad.
“I don’t think he saw you,” I sing in tune, holding the red hymnal open to the wrong page.
Tabby isn’t looking forward, though. She’s glancing over her shoulder, scanning the room. I do likewise, but it’s all the same thirty or so faces we see every week.
“Who are you looking for?” I’m right at her ear, and she jumps.
“Nobody! Why would I be looking for anybody?”
That’s suspicious. “Good question. I thought you were here for Chad.”
“I am!” Her voice is too loud, and we get a glare from one of the old biddies in front of us.
I join in at the chorus,
which is the only part I know. “Crown him with many crowns…”
Tabs continues in tune with the melody. “I don’t see him back there…”
Nodding, I give her an elbow, but she only briefly glances at Oceanside’s lone deputy sheriff two rows in front of us. She’s still surveying the place like it’s the wondrous cross—the hymn we’ve moved onto.
“You can say hello after church,” I sing.
Song service ended, we sit and get comfortable as Tabby’s uncle takes the two steps up the lectern and gazes down on us with a disgusted frown.
“Idolatry!” he shouts, and an old man nodding in front of us snorts awake. “Sex and idolatry are the workings of the flesh, and in the last days they will grow stronger and stronger amongst the children of men…”
He continues blasting about how lustful and depraved we all are. Then he moves on to the Ten Commandments and putting God first in all things.
I spot my mother in the front with her chin lifted. So pious. Her hair is a perfect blonde helmet, and the faintest hint of a smile is on her face. Occasionally she nods when he says something particularly loud. My nose automatically scrunches.
Scanning the other faces in the room, I observe how they respond. Some shift in their seats, while others look at their hands or study their Bibles.
Two years ago, when I was searching for an email from Coco’s preschool teacher, I found an email conversation between my mother and Pastor Green.
I was snooping, I know I’m going to hell, but he thanked her for her insightful notes on the text. He wrote that he looked forward to incorporating them into Sunday’s message.
Curiosity piqued, I glanced down her folders on the side of the screen and saw one labeled “Sunday sermons.” Clicking it open, I found all his sermons going back years, since I’d rejoined the congregation after having Coco and briefly moving back home.
When I was a little girl, I’d seen the movie Pollyanna. I didn’t understand the part about “nobody owns a church” until that moment. My grandfather had been one of the richest men in Oceanside Village before he died. He was the first city council president. My mother was an only child, and when her parents died, she inherited their big house in the middle of town and their legacy of leadership.
After my father was killed in the car wreck that also took Minnie, she kind of lost it. For weeks she stayed in her bedroom with the door closed, and I stayed at Tabby’s house.
When she finally emerged, she was different. It was like she decided their deaths were God’s way of punishing her for not doing more to keep everyone on the straight and narrow.
Now all I see are my mother’s eyes judging all our shortcomings and delivering instructions on how to address them via Pastor Green each week.
I haven’t cared for Bob Green’s sermons ever since.
“…and you shall be saved,” he ends ominously. “Let us pray and beg the Father to expose our hidden sins and save us from ourselves.”
“That’s what I call church,” Tabby says, leaning forward. “Anxiety and upset stomach for the rest of the day.”