Chapter 32
Tara is all out of sorts because she hasn’t landed a role in a while, so she throws herself into this theater audition. It’s
a play about the first female African American pastor. Jarena Lee was her name, back in the eighteenth century.
“Jarena preached during a time called the Second Great Awakening,” Tara tells me one night when we’re ambling around Bushwick
together, wearing the stringy and saucy remnants of our Tony’s pizza dinner on our chins like matching tattoos. “It sounds
like a predecessor to the Redstockings’ liberation movement, doesn’t it?” Tara’s all spunky in that way she only is when a
fresh audition is coming up, when there’s still hope that everything might turn out bright gold. “Apparently Jarena was a
tortured soul, suicidal before she found God.”
Tara wants the Jarena part more than I’ve seen her want anything in a while, but she’s worried the casting director will be
able to tell that she’s got no religious background whatsoever.
“Will you come to church with me? Just for a method acting exercise,” she says, seeing my scrunched-nose veto. “I found one
in Harlem that’s the same denomination as the one Jarena converted to. I’ve got to study up and I don’t want to go alone.
I’d feel so awkward.”
Usually I’d shoot it down right away, but I’m glad to feel needed by Tara and agree to tag along, just once.
“What’re you bringing a pillow for?” Tara asks that Sunday as we make to leave the Inn. It’s the earliest I’ve woken up in who knows how long.
“To sleep, obviously,” I say. “The one good thing about church is how it cures insomnia. I’ll be in REM within seconds.”
Tara shoots me a disapproving scowl, but there’s no time to argue so we get on our way, taking the L train to the 2, getting
off at 125th Street. Harlem is my favorite neighborhood in Manhattan by a long shot. There’s this levity to it that you don’t
find anywhere else in the borough, like the residents have seen enough heavy shit not to let the little things sag their shoulders
or their spunk. It’s hardly even springtime but they’re celebrating like it’s the solstice. Barbecues and picnic blankets
packed into slivers of grass that pop up between the concrete, high schoolers playing basketball on hoops without nets. No
one seems to mind; they’re too busy winning to notice the holes.
Tara walks fast, hating to be late, steering me up to Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. “Everyone just calls
it Mother Zion,” Tara says. “Isn’t that a perfect name?”
“It’s not bad,” I admit, lagging a few paces behind. I thought my church days were safely behind me, and my senses are rejecting
the prospect of regressing now.
“Mother Zion is the oldest African American church in the city,” Tara prattles on, suddenly a tour guide. “Another name for
it is the Freedom Church because it was an Underground Railroad refuge. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were actually
members back in the day. How amazing is that?”
Church insanity aside, it’s good to see Tara getting more in touch with her Black roots. She got screwed over being raised
by white foster parents who thought themselves very charitable for taking in a Black kid, teaching her their ways.
I can’t help Tara much with that stuff since my skin insulates me from a whole world of hate. I wish it weren’t the case, but I know on some level I like my protection. It’s human instinct, I guess, but it tastes gross, worse than boiled veggie dogs slathered in hairy pickles.
Mother Zion looks all traditional and formal from the outside, gothic stone spires and ornate stained glass. That old shame
pricks, telling me I’m too blemished to enter. Maybe Tara can feel me clenching up because she links her arm through mine
and leads us inside.
The music has already started, swelling to a volume and vibration higher than anything I’ve heard in church before. No pianos,
thankfully, just a brass band. Everyone’s singing along, belting and hollering, those carrying the tune outnumbered by those
dropping the tune. Hands are thrown up in the air, lots of them, like they’re reaching for something that’s suspended just
a few feet above.
I’ve never seen anything like this in church. It’s like everyone’s on mushrooms or MDMA, but there’s this undercurrent of
reverence that I try to scoff at but just watch in shock, nearly resentful. Even if it’s not real, I want to feel whatever
these people are feeling. They look high out of their minds, completely unshackled.
Tara and I try to be discreet as we slide into the back pew, but everyone around us reaches over and wrings our hands like
they’ve been waiting for us, praying for us.
Members of the congregation start standing up at random, calling up to Jesus to heal their mother’s cancer, to make whole
their hearts, to forgive their porn addiction, their affair, their suicide attempt. I’m embarrassed for them, how they’re
spilling it all, but they don’t seem embarrassed at all. They’re over the fucking moon.
None of it adds up. I like the mathematical incongruence of it all even if I know the beliefs are nonsense.
Then the pastor gets up front, roams all around, not rigid behind a pulpit.
He gives this bellowing sermon about how church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, and that every single one of us has ugly parts of our past. Every single one of us is broken, but God and only God can put us back together again.
He says that if we let the Holy Spirit guide us, we’ll finally stop being at war with other people and at war with ourselves.
I get this eerie feeling that the pastor knows me, but then I remind myself that he’s just trained to emotionally manipulate
the crowd so we’ll drop money in the donation basket.
People are cheering and hooting the whole time. The place is buzzing with this energy like no one cares what anyone else thinks
of them because they already know they’re immortal or at least they believe they are, and what’s the difference really? Either
way, they’re having a rave and leaving me behind.
I don’t rest my head on my pillow at all. I just clutch it with my hands, and the flimsy pillowcase is drenched with sweat
by the time Tara and I bolt out of there at the end of the service.
“You said church was boring,” Tara says, rounding on me. She’s got an incredulous look on her face, probably similar to mine.
“That wasn’t church,” I say, trying to process it. “That was something else.”
It feels impossible, offensive even, that the outside world could possibly be carrying on with all its mundanities, but carry
on it does. The subway rattling into the station as clumsily as usual. Passengers being sucked into their phone screens with
the same zombie-eyed stares and glares.
“How am I possibly supposed to play a convincing pastor?” Tara says as we subway-surf back downtown, keeping our balance without
holding on to the poles. We tip a few times, legs jittery. “I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can,” I say. “You’ll just have to go back for a few more weeks until the energy seeps into your bones and sticks.
Maybe I’ll go with you again, if you want.”
I act like I’m doing her some grand favor, but really I’m looking forward to it the whole week. It’s like a new mystery I’m
trying to solve.
The next service is just as electric as the one before.
It turns out I hadn’t imagined the current in the air.
When everyone is standing up and yelling things out during prayer time, asking for healing and forgiveness, I’ve got this weird desire to speak up and confess some stuff too.
But I don’t believe in confessing my sins because that would mean admitting my sins, and I don’t ascribe to the idea of labeling things as right or wrong, even if some things really do feel foul inside.
So I stay quiet, but I list a few things in my head, just to experiment.