Chapter Fifteen
“You have your Bible?”
“Yes,” I mumble, pushing my damp but conditioned curls out of my face.
“And a notebook?” Dad asks, his voice too chipper for six thirty in the morning.
“Yeah,” I say, though it comes out in a deep and deliciously satisfying yawn… the kind of yawn that would perfectly compliment lying back down on my pillow where I belong.
On the far side of the church’s campus, the sun is just starting to come up. The sky is streaked in gentle orange hues and the dewdrops on the campus grounds’ rolling hills glitter. If I wasn’t on my way to face Mrs. Patricia alone for the first time since camp, I might appreciate the serenity.
“A pen?” Thankfully, Dad’s checklist keeps me from descending into a full spiral.
“I’m not the one who’s supposed to be learning,” I remind him. “I’m the one teaching. The kids are taking notes.”
“And what if one needs a pen?” Dad asks, smiling.
“Do you have a pen?” I ask, regretting that I didn’t get up fifteen minutes earlier to make coffee.
Dad pulls his trusty Paper Mate pen out of his chest pocket. He wags it in my face, and I quickly snatch it, smiling back at him before pushing the passenger door open.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Ha ha, you’re soooo funny,” he says, his voice monotone. “See you here at eight.”
“See you,” I say, backing away from the car.
I stall, watching from the stone steps of the youth ministry building as Dad’s car lazes up the rest of the gravel driveway past the main church to the parking lot.
I’ve been in this building a million times, starting from when I was a Sunshine Saint. This is where I met Jameson and Yasmin, where I learned about God and forgiveness and the idea of unrequited, unending love. I was eight when I walked up to Mrs. Patricia and told her I was ready to be baptized.
I knock on the door and admire the fresh coat of paint on the frame.
I used to peel the chipping paint with my fingernails while waiting for Mrs. Patricia to let me in whenever I was dropped off early—which was almost always, since Dad’s definition of on time is between ten and fifteen minutes ahead.
This place used to be so familiar to me that it fell somewhere between home and school.
Now, however, the dryness in my throat and twisting in my stomach tell me that I don’t belong here.
The Bible says I don’t belong here. As a counselor, and certainly as a Sunday school teaching assistant, I’m supposed to set an example, and everyone at camp made sure I knew that my behavior was not exemplary. So, why am I here?
Maybe instead of letting the Incident die, Mrs. Patricia requested that I be here so that she can teach me, along with all the kids, what’s right and wrong.
Maybe she decided that I need to be reminded of the lessons that were supposed to shape me and my relationship with God, since God clearly wasn’t the one I was getting close to this summer.
What’s worse is that even though Hannah and I were both outed at camp this summer, I’m the only one who had a reckoning.
The counselors weren’t as friendly with her, but they didn’t push her away.
They didn’t try to strip her of her recreational duties, not like they did with me.
And I know it’s different. She hasn’t been going to this church since she was five, and Hannah was very forthcoming about Camp Refuge being a summer job for her.
For me, though, I’m supposed to be a black Baptist girl.
I know God. God knows me. But I didn’t realize everyone had their own idea of what my relationship with God is supposed to look like, that Black Baptist Girl includes straight somewhere in the title, just written in invisible ink.
And I have no idea what to do with that now.
The inner door whines open, then the latch on the one in front of me grates as it scrapes to release. Dread wraps around my throat as I wonder if the intervention I was so afraid of is what’s on the other side.
“Clarity Jones,” Mrs. Patricia says in a singsong voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Patricia,” I say, shifting past her as she holds the door open for me.
I step through the second door into the foyer, relieved to find it dark and empty, drizzled in yellow sunshine from the skylight overhead.
My shoes click against the tile, and I follow as Mrs. Patricia leads the way up the wraparound staircase to the third floor.
The staircase is made of a marble-like stone and is one of the last remaining original structures in the building.
When I was a Sunshine Saint, I always savored the click-clack of my church shoes, feeling like my mom when she’d get all dressed up.
The stairwell opens onto each floor, offering a way out of the spiral unless you need to keep going.
I follow Mrs. Patricia into the dimly lit third-floor hallway, the familiarity of the stained linoleum tile—sad in comparison to the grand staircase—and the stale scent of old Bibles mixed with disinfectant returning to me like everything else about the building.
“As you might remember,” she says, piercing my thoughts, “the craft room is here.” She gestures to the first room on the left. “The gymnasium and auditorium are up those steps.” She gestures to the shadowy annex on her right. “And the classrooms are down here.”
“I remember,” I say, though it comes out small and quiet. I’m not sure she hears me.
Just like in the foyer, light spills through the doorways of each east-facing classroom, illuminating the hallway in a comically angelic glow.
I follow Mrs. Patricia to the room where she teaches Sunshine Saints.
The other rooms don’t get used until the youth services, which take place during the main one in the middle of the day.
The same red and yellow chairs are neatly pushed in at wooden tables.
The tables that once rose to my chest now stop just below my knee.
By a whiteboard at the front of the classroom, there’s a carpet laid out, facing a wing-backed chair where Mrs. Patricia would read Bible board books to us.
The image of tiny me sitting between a tiny Jameson and a tiny Yasmin burns at the center of my mind. I turn and look out the window.
“Hasn’t changed much.” Mrs. Patricia says what I’m thinking.
“There’s something charming about that,” I reply. The distance between what this place used to be for me and what it is now creates an emptiness inside my chest.
“What can I do?” I ask. I need something to focus on.
Thankfully, that’s all it takes to snap Mrs. Patricia into teacher mode.
She directs me on what supplies to gather from the craft room and where to find a closet with cleaning supplies we can use to wipe dust off the tables.
When I return, I find her hanging up posters of animals in nature with biblical quotes underneath.
“It’s hard to believe that nearly two weeks ago we were watching the sun rise over the lake at Camp Refuge,” Mrs. Patricia muses.
She passes me, leaving the fragrance of her citrus-and-lavender perfume in the air as she crosses the room to hang another poster.
“Beautiful, wasn’t it? That’s one of my favorite things about heading into the country in the summers. ”
“It was beautiful,” I say, remembering the sunrises—though mine weren’t always over the lake.
They were usually through the trees on whatever hill Hannah and I had climbed that night.
We’d be making our way back down to camp or to her car.
We’d wait until the sky turned pink and watch the clouds clear and the sun bleed before we rushed back to our cabins, spurred by some second wind that always kicked in even when we’d hardly slept.
Then we’d sneak into bed and pretend we were waking up with everyone else.
“How has school been?” Mrs. Patricia’s voice pulls me from the hillside, away from Hannah, back into reality.
“Good.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
I stop wiping the last table and look up, worried that I’ve done something wrong. I find Mrs. Patricia shaking her head, her curls bouncing.
“What?”
“Give me a one-word answer like you’re some angsty teenager I haven’t known since before you were even born. Plus you’re about to be an adult and adults answer in sentences.”
Right…
“Well, um, school has been good—I mean, it’s my senior year, so—” I scramble, falling over my words and trying to cling to some coherent answer.
I sigh, laughing a little when Mrs. Patricia smiles at me.
It’s a warm smile, one I’d forgotten the effect of.
“I’m the president of the festival committee this year, so I’ve been working on planning our Squash the Pumpkin Festival. ”
“So, it was saved after all?” she asks, surprising me. I forgot that I told her about my dilemma back at the beginning of camp.
“It was,” I say, leaving out Hannah’s role in all of it.
“That’s a blessing,” she says, smiling as she heads to where I set up supplies on the table. She starts sorting through the crayon-and-marker bin, gathering a rainbow set for each seat. “You were worried.”
“Yeah, but it all worked out. Now I’m trying to put together a schedule. I’m excited.”
We fall silent, so I use the pause to excuse myself and put the cleaning supplies away.
“You and Hannah go to the same school,” she says when I return.
I flinch, only for a second. I look up, and Mrs. Patricia is focused on gathering Bibles from the bookshelf, so hopefully she didn’t notice.
“Yes,” I say, though it didn’t sound like a question she wanted answered so much as a statement of fact.
As if reading my mind, she explains, “I noticed when I was processing paperwork at the end of camp. It stood out to me since most of the campers and counselors go to different schools and what brings them together is church.”
“Oh,” I say, keeping it short, not wanting to make any assumptions about where she’s going with this and say something that doesn’t need to be said.
“How is she?”
I realize I’ve been walking across a minefield and for the first time, an explosive might be right underfoot.
If I answer in a way that indicates I know how Hannah is doing, then that’ll insinuate that we still see each other.
And insinuating that will leave Mrs. Patricia to assume all the apologizing and repenting I did at the end of camp was either a lie or a failure.
And if I’m now living in sin, she might feel like she needs to intervene.
“I guess she’s good,” I say slowly. “I mean, we see each other in the hallway sometimes, but we don’t really talk.”
Mrs. Patricia frowns. “You were so close at camp, that seems hard to believe.”
I try to control my facial expression, stopping myself from shifting into my own confused look. I mean, she has to be kidding. Right?
“Uh, we… we don’t run in the same circles, and we don’t have classes together. We aren’t really friends—”
“Why not?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out; barely enough oxygen gets inside. I’m not sure what kind of game this is, but I think I’m losing.
Mrs. Patricia raises her eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
“I—we—I—we just—”
“Hello?”
I snap around, almost having forgotten where I am. In the doorway is a woman holding the hand of a small boy. He slowly reaches under his glasses to rub his eyes, a long yawn taking over his entire face.
“Well, good morning,” Mrs. Patricia chirps, her whole demeanor shifting from inquisitor to cheery teacher.
“Is this Sunshine Saints?” a man’s voice asks from behind the woman and her son.
“Yep, right this way,” Mrs. Patricia says, gesturing for everyone to start filing into the room.
I step aside, more than relieved to slip into the background, hopefully for the rest of the morning.