by Christine Roland
Every Sunday when I was in grade school, Mom stuffed me into pilled tights and a bib collar dress, pinned my hair in a headache-inducing bun, and brought me with her to the 10 a.m. service. Just me. We hardly saw my older sister, who was aging out of high school, and Dad was sleeping. It was Sabbath, after all. Though he was raised ruler-to-knuckles Catholic, I never saw that man enter a church. So, it was just Mom and me on our end of the pew.
I have a handful of vivid memories from these services. Most smear together as a collective experience from my short-lived “church days,” but one singular sermon remains permanently snagged in my synapses. After we all shook hands, Pastor John took the altar. Being touched by strangers was my least favorite part of church. John was to preach another faith-affirming story in that gentle southern drawl that all reverends seem to possess, and it began the way all sermons seem to begin.
God is good, he said.
All the time, the congregation replied.
And all the time? he lilted in mocked question.
God is good, we confirmed.
We chanted this in chorus like it was a hymn entirely unique to our sect. Like it wasn’t the holy motto of every white-washed Baptist chapel south of the Mason-Dixon.
Head down, hands gripping a leather Bible softened from use behind his back, he paced the altar. This was how he begged our silence. An old man’s phlegmy hack strummed the tense threads of anticipation between us.
This was about when I’d start ripping the service programs into strips to make origami frogs. After I’d spent all the paper, I’d ogle at the iron-spiked light fixtures dangling from questionable chains below the apexed ceiling. Determine who’d get impaled if one were to suddenly come crashing down. Occasionally, my attention would catch at fragile Bible papers shuffling in unison, alerting me that Pastor John was about to say something important. Something Mom would quiz me on later.
I’d shuffle through the pages of one of the Bibles kept in the back shelf on the pew in front of me. We never brought our own. Unfamiliar with the ordering, I could never find the gospel or letter or psalm he was referencing before he’d start reciting. I’d give up and ask Mom if I could play Snake on her Nokia, but the answer was always no.
When Pastor John deemed us sufficiently titillated, he detailed another instance in which the Lord spoke directly to him. Before this day I remember thinking he was something special. God never spoke to me. Not that I wanted God to speak to me. How terrifying it must be to have his booming voice infiltrating your thoughts—your will. But the Lord once again called upon Pastor John to do His work.
The way John told it, he walked past a house with a squalling new baby inside, day after day, for about a week. He vaguely described the house for pandering purposes, and I immediately recognized it as the one on the corner of Sandridge and State Route 209. One day he suddenly felt the urge to enter a corner store, purchase a gallon of milk, and bring it to said house with the squalling baby. The story ended with the mother expressing her undying gratitude to Pastor John, and through John’s actions, the Lord’s doing. This left the congregation with a newfound admiration for not only Pastor John’s magnanimity, but also his remarkable fellowship with God.
Now, I may have only been about ten years old, but I was old enough to understand that babies don’t drink two percent. My colic-ridden little cousin taught me that infants require specialized baby formula, and even then, they still might project sickly-sweet, potato-scented vomit directly into your mouth. I left church that day with more questions in my moldable heart than a modest little Baptist girl should have.
We didn’t stay for potluck. Instead, we drove home via the two-lane highway lined with cow fields. As I pulled off my tights and scratched at the creases pressed into my damp skin, I asked my mother why Pastor John would give a baby milk.
She looked at me, foundation-caked forehead beading with sweat, and asked if I had been paying attention. It was not the baby’s time to die. So, God stepped in and chose Pastor John to help.
But babies can’t drink milk, I insisted.
You’re missing the point, she snapped. To her, the answer was obvious. It was a story to teach us about altruism. About giving to others who have less than us.
I leaned my head back on the seat, dizzy from the heat. From the heady scent of cow patties wafting through the car. From trying and failing to match the puzzle pieces together.
And to reaffirm our faith in God, she tacked on, almost forgetting.
At the finality of her tone, I craned my neck out the window, still a little too small to see out. How John managed to glance through solid walls and understand that the baby was crying from starvation, God only knows. It was the word of the Lord that told him the baby was hungry. Not the dilapidated house, or the yard littered with trash and rusty broken cars. Nor was it the mother’s tattered clothes, or the baby’s father, rarely present. No. It was God who told him to go shopping for milk.
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by Carolyn EJ Watson
Christine Roland is an undergraduate at the University of North Florida, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. She recently debuted in Five on the Fifth, particularly enjoys coming-of-age tales with themes surrounding self-agency, and is the nonfiction coeditor for the Talon Review, a student-based literary journal.
Carolyn EJ Watson is an interdisciplinary artist who is drawn to the useless and unusual. She takes what she can find to tell a story using a mixture of unconventional materials. Through her art, Watson strives to advocate and educate, particularly focusing on concepts such as identity, trauma, abstraction, chaos, and conservation.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 