Chapter Five
Dust rose behind us in pale brown ghosts as I turned my hatchback off the main road and onto the long dirt drive that led through a corn field to Holy Trinity Baptist Church. Fine grit floated through the cracked windows and settled on my bare thighs and the sticky shine of my lip gloss.
At the mouth of the drive stood the church sign, warped with age and leaning slightly left as if repentance itself had grown tired.
PRAY FOR US SINNERS
The paint had peeled so badly that the second S was nearly gone.
PRAY FOR US INNERS.
“Slow down,” my father repeated from the passenger seat, one hand braced against the dashboard as though I were driving us toward a cliff instead of salvation.
“I’m going fifteen.”
“You were going twenty.”
My stepmother, Denise, dabbed the sweat on her throat in the backseat and said, “Jeff, let the girl drive.” I slowed another mile per hour just to please him.
Cornstalks rose high on either side of the path, thick green walls whispering against themselves in the breeze. We couldn’t see the church from the main road, only the white steeple needling above the stalks.
The road narrowed and curved until the church emerged: old white boards gone green with age, windows clouded by years of weather, the steeple eager as a finger pointed at heaven, accusatory of the god that abandoned it.
Several cars already crowded the dirt lot. I parked between a truck with a fish symbol sticker and Mrs. O’Kinzy’s sedan, which had one hubcap missing and rosary beads hanging from the mirror despite the fact that no Baptist I knew approved of Catholic’s showmanship.
My father sneezed twice, violent enough to make his shoulders jerk as we stepped out of the vehicle.
“Bless you,” Denise said automatically. He waved her off.
I looked down at my shoes. Black faux-leather Mary Janes, polished enough to reflect sunlight, now wearing a powdering of dirt that had already settled against my white stockings in a neat brown ring around the ankle straps.
Perfect.
I’d made my white dress from thrifted tablecloths, the lace corners now a delicate neckline. The cotton—soft from a hundred wash cycles—skimmed mid-thigh if I stood still and climbed scandalously if I moved too freely.
But white bought forgiveness. White meant pure, bridal, innocent, surrendered. If I wore white and braided my hair, my father could look directly at my thighs and somehow not see them.
Inside, the church smelled like old wood, sweat, and mildew. The kind of smell old buildings grew when too many people begged inside them.
While the majority of the regular crowd was made up of dark complexions draped in pastel clothing, Holy Trinity Baptist had only three white families in its congregation.
Mine, the Sinleys.
The Spires family— Andy, his prodigal father:Pastor Spires, and his elegant mother: Catherine.
And then there was the O’Kinzys, though depending on who was gossiping, they were Irish first and white second.
Amy O’Kinzy was already in her pew, compact and delicate in a floral blouse and leggings, hands folded like she was waiting to be buried.
Beside her sat Shannon, a boy two grades below me who suffered the misfortune of having a girl’s name and the face of a boy perpetually recovering from one.
Apparently Shannon was common in Ireland.
So was famine. That didn’t make it appealing.
His older brother never came to church. Rumor said their father had left when the boys were young. Rumor also said the eldest O’kinzy boy sold weed behind the abandoned factory by the power plant and once gave himself a tattoo with a sewing needle. In Woodland, both rumors counted as tragedy.
Sometimes Shannon brought a redheaded girl with him to service. Cousin, girlfriend, hostage—I never knew. But the eight of us were the only consistent pale faces in the congregation.
Adults greeted each other in the aisle before service, voices lifting and overlapping. Women in pastel dresses and structured hats; men in pressed shirts; children scrubbed shiny and restless. Handshakes, hugs, testimonies disguised as small talk.
My father cornered Smiley. Everyone called him Smiley, though I doubted that had ever been the name on his birth certificate.
He owned The Grill, our tiny convenience store-slash-short-order kitchen in town.
You could buy cigarettes, white bread, motor oil, and a fried bologna sandwich all under one roof.
“Jeff Sinley,” Smiley boomed, gripping my father’s hand. “You still pretending to be young?”
“Trying every day,” my father said.
Smiley laughed, deep and rich as engine noise.
I stood beside them smiling politely, the expression fixed so long my cheeks ached, until Andy finally found me.
He moved through people the way some men moved through water—naturally buoyed by it. Tall, broad, golden haired in that all-American way that looked engineered in a lab. His tie loosened just enough to imply his lingering youth.
“Morning, sir,” he said to my father, extending his hand. My father beamed as if Andy himself were an accomplishment.
“Andy, son. Hell of a game Friday.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Smiley clapped him on the shoulder. “Boy caught that pass like the Lord guided it.”
Andy laughed modestly. “I think our quarterback deserves more credit than divine intervention.” Even his humility had posture. He rested one hand lightly between my shoulder blades, warm against the exposed skin there.
He would make a wonderful doctor someday. Everyone said so because he was handsome, disciplined, and good at apologizing when necessary. Next year he was headed to college to study sports medicine.
“My daughter married a doctor. A preacher’s son.” I could feel the brag ripening within my father as time went on.
We took our seats in a pew with bubbling varnish. At the front stood Pastor Spires behind a wooden podium. His beige sweater was threadbare at the cuffs, elbows thinning to near transparency. A humble little garment. A costume.
Mrs. Spires had inherited money from her father, who’d invented something boring and lucrative.
The family lived comfortably, played golf in Charlotte, vacationed in places people here mispronounced.
Pastor Spires donated his church salary back into the community, which everyone treated like sainthood instead of accounting theater.
My father praised it constantly. I thought it was suspicious anytime generosity required an audience.
No one questioned Pastor Spires. Not when he thundered about sin. Not when he wept over the poor. Not when Andy came in some Sundays with a split lip or bruising under one eye and claimed football practice had gotten rough.
I knew the look of a hit that came from indoors, even when Andy used to make excuses for it with me.
He stopped doing that last year when he sprained his wrist in the off season.
I had been on my period and told him I wasn’t really in the mood to be lied to.
After that, when Andy showed up to school or church with a new bruise, he didn’t bother giving me an excuse, and I didn’t ask him for one. We both knew the truth.
I think his father knew I knew it too, cause sometimes he’d look at me like he wanted to drown me, and just couldn’t figure out how to get away with it yet. The feeling was mutual.
Pastor Spires opened his Bible, clearing his throat. “James 1:15,” he said the place starter softly, not a command but a forewarning. We all sat up straight, chins raised in obedience. Pages fluttered like trapped birds.
He began preaching on temptation. The devil at the door! The flesh at war with the spirit! The danger of appetites! I stopped listening almost immediately.
Around me, the congregation answered in bursts.
“Amen!”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Hallelujah!”
Hands rose, palms opened. A woman three pews ahead began to cry quietly before anything particularly moving had even been said.
Sometimes I joined in. If the room swelled enough, if emotion moved through it like a storm, I could catch it and wear it.
I could make tears gather on cue. Let one fall at the right lyric, or mention of grace and the adults would eat it up.
My father especially. Afterward he’d squeeze my shoulder and tell people the Spirit was strong in me.
The church always felt alive with something. Some presence I couldn’t name though I was sure it wasn’t God.
Heat gathered under my collarbones. Sweat trickled down the center of my back. The fan above us only rearranged the warm September air.
Andy sang beside me during the hymns, low and pleasant. He knew all the words by heart, and I mouthed along on most occasions.
The piano wheezed from the corner, slightly out of tune, weaponized voices of the choir layering over it.
If I closed my eyes I could picture a war scene, nearly cinematic in my mind’s eye.
I wondered what we must look like to a God, gathered in this sorry excuse for a building, shouting at him to save us from ourselves.
I looked at the stained ceiling and wondered how many prayers had gone up and stuck there.
Pastor Spires closed in prayer at last. Heads bowed.
I kept my eyes open, a small rebellion just for myself.
I liked to look at people while they prayed.
You could tell by the set of their faces who was letting the pastor guide them, and who was really desperate for the lord to hear their own pleas.
It felt intimate in a way that I didn’t have to participate in the vulnerability of.
But when I glanced across the aisle, I found Shannon O’Kinzy doing the same, a small smirk turning up the corner of his mouth behind the curtain of his long brown hair. I grimaced, and stared down at my feet immediately. I didn’t like when strangers felt like they knew me.
When the amen came, the room broke apart into chatter and scraping pews. Outside, sunlight hit hard enough to feel punitive. The dust had warmed and now smelled baked and mineral.
People clustered in little knots beneath the magnolia tree growing just beside the porch. Smiley approached us again, thumbs hooked in his suspenders.“Y’all coming by The Grill for lunch?”
The thought of his greasy burgers and real air-conditioning nearly made me emotional. But my father said, “Can’t today, need to run to Salisbury for groceries.”
Woodland didn’t have a real grocery store. Just Smiley’s shelves of milk, bread, canned goods, and whatever else could survive neglect. For real food you’d have to drive forty minutes to Salisbury for the nearest Wal-mart.
“Need produce Denise can trust,” my father added, not unkindly.
My step mother had adopted a mediterranean diet that summer in the hopes of ‘finally thinning down’.
She’d explained it all to me through quick breaths as she attempted to keep pace with me on one of my morning jogs one Saturday morning, but I hadn’t paid that much attention to the logistics.
I was, however, thrilled to have real food in our cabinets for once—even if it was mostly canned tuna and grapes.
“I’d be happy to take Lola to lunch,” Andy said from beside me like an offering. “If you and Mrs. Sinley would like a few hours to yourselves.”
My father’s whole face softened. “That’s thoughtful, son.”
Denise touched Andy’s arm. “Always such manners.”
I wondered if they heard themselves. Or if adulthood was just losing the ability to hear your own obviousness.
Andy glanced at me, eyes bright. “You hungry?”
I could hear the real question he was asking: “Want to hook up while your parents are out?”
“Sure,” I said, smiling.
There was something almost tender in being loved by someone everyone approved of. It made life easier. It made doors open for you.
It also made every room I stepped into feel owned by somebody else.