Malcolm was nervous. Renata could see it in his eyes. They darted from side to side, person to person, as if he were watching Venus and Serena in a doubles tournament at Wimbledon. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was his first time in a church. Or, if it wasn’t, he was such a bad seed that he was afraid he would be touched by holy water or that he might spontaneously combust by being inside the sanctuary. If he were any more nervous and fidgety, she thought he’d pass out or throw up.
They hadn’t gotten through the doorway and Renata could feel the nerves stirring inside him. She couldn’t believe that the wild cocky kid, daring enough to run after thugs and get her stolen purse back now looked like the one who needed rescuing.
“Calm down, Malcolm,” Renata admonished. “If there was ever a time when you could be completely relaxed about anything and anyone, it’s now. These people are harmless.”
“Me?” he responded. “Look at you!”
Renata blew out a breath. Malcolm was right. Renata had a strong urge to run out of the church before something…happened. She just wasn’t quite sure what.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, trying to divert the attention from her own unease. “If you get too uncomfortable, all you have to do is say a few ‘praise Gods’ and ‘amens.’ They’ll think you’re one of them.”
No sooner had she said those words than she saw Devin standing in an adjacent hallway. There wasn’t a need to wonder if he’d overheard. The expression on his face told her all she needed to know.
So much for her booty-call fantasy.
“Devin—”
He held up a hand and turned a more buoyant expression to Malcolm. “Are you ready to meet some people?”
Malcolm glanced at Renata before answering, “I guess.”
“You guess?” Devin repeated. “That’s not an answer.” He placed his arm around the young man. “You better be sure, because you’ll spend a great deal of your waking life working for a living. So if you’re not sure, you shouldn’t do it, son.”
Malcolm blinked and shook his head in understanding.
“So,” Devin continued, looking sexy in a silk fitted shirt and cocoa linen slacks. Renata wondered where he was going after this brief meeting at the church. “Let me ask you again. Are you ready?”
A sweet smile curled across Malcolm’s lips. With it, his nervousness and fidgeting diminished significantly. He looked up. “Most def!” he said.
Devin chuckled. “Where’d you get this kid?” he asked.
Where did the church get you, Renata wondered, noting the complete change in Devin’s demeanor. She followed them into the corridor of the sanctuary and into the back storage room thinking about how sincere he looked and sounded.
Even though Devin hadn’t asked, Renata was ready. She had her clipboard, pen, checklist, and work agreement. She had a process that she followed for every first day on the job. Above and beyond the paperwork, she was there to assess whether her client’s work style and the sponsor’s work expectations meshed or clashed. If they clashed, she would use her skills as a facilitator to work through the issues. If they meshed, she would note all of the basic information on the forms and put them into a “recommend for continuance” file.
She had no doubt in her mind that Malcolm, once he calmed down, would do wonderfully well. Something about the way they were all getting along right now made her believe that his experience at Red Oaks Christian Church would be, to coin a phrase, a blessing. And thinking of blessings, she’d need one if she didn’t get out of this house of worship soon. Something about it was making her feel very, very…
“Oh!” Renata said, seeing a woman come out of the shadows. She’d walked straight into her without realizing she was there.
“Watch where you’re going!” the woman said, her face snarling into a frown.
“Renata,” Devin said, stepping gently to her side. Pulling her arm, he brought her close to him. After he saw that she and the other woman were not harmed, his face softened with concern.
“Sister Edna, we didn’t know you were here.”
“Yeah well, I don’t see why not. You see me standing here don’t you?” The woman in front of Renata looked like her name could have been Old Mother Hubbard. She couldn’t imagine the woman going home to anything other than bare cupboards, cobwebs, and rat traps. Sister Edna looked like little more than a rat trap herself. Small, dark, bird-like eyes; tall, thin frame; hook nose; and clothes that although they were probably size three, hung off of her skeletal frame. Renata had to fight the urge to buy her a double Big Mac with extra cheese.
“Pleased to meet you,” Renata offered. She was surprised to find that the woman’s grip was not as fragile as she’d imagined.
“Who are you?” the thin whisper of a woman asked.
“Sister Edna,” Devin said, a knowing smile growing on his face. “This is Renata Connor and Malcolm Goodwin.”
She smelled like powder. Baby powder to be exact. And she was dressed in what was only a short step above a robe. Nothing short of a miracle from the Son of God would do that woman any good.
Devin pulled Renata even closer. The nearness of him canceled out any comment of shock she may have uttered.
“We’re sorry, Sister Edna. We’ll be more careful in the future.”
“You’d better,” she said, spitting out the words like a bad taste in her mouth.
Renata folded her arms, wondering if she should put the woman in her place. Devin must have sensed her thought process. He hurried with her and Malcolm until they were out of sight of the bird-like woman.
“I know this is a church, but I was ready to tell the ol’ girl thing or two up in here.”
Malcolm laughed first, then Renata joined in. She could tell that Devin was fighting it. But even in that, there was a small victory.
“Sister Edna has a kind of dementia.”
The laughter stopped.
“The next time you see her, she’ll probably be so nice to you that you won’t believe that you saw the same person today.”
“What’s dementia?” Malcolm asked.
“That’s when your brain doesn’t function correctly and sometimes it believes things that aren’t true.”
The definition did something to Malcolm. Not like knocking the wind out of his sails, but more like squeezing the air out of a tire. His nod came slowly this time as his comprehension grew.
She wondered what things kids with lives like the one he’d led make up in their minds.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the security office, I’ll take Malcolm back to see Brother Mack.”
Renata didn’t feel like being alone in the church. There were too many memories her mind could find to dwell on. “That’s all right. I’ll come with you. I’d like to see what he’ll being doing.”
The expression on Malcolm’s face told her she was being more like a mother than a mentor.
“Damn,” Malcolm said under his breath, but nothing got past Devin. His quick glare caught the young man’s attention and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Well?”
Renata sighed and maneuvered herself down the hallway like a twig off to find a pot to plant herself in. “I’ll be fine out here, I guess,” she said, looking around and hoping they would be quick.
Their words and footfalls, even though on carpet, sounded loud in the large open sanctuary. Renata took a seat in a pew as if waiting for service to begin. She could pull the memories from her childhood as if they’d only happened moments ago. Her parents were fanatical about two things, their children and their God. Days and days, and evenings upon evenings they’d devoted to church. Her family spent more time in church than they did in their own home. At first, church life was all she knew. Greater Faith Church of Christ. If someone had asked her what her address was, she would have pointed in the direction of the church.
As she got older, she resented the time she spent there, wearing dresses, and watching people fall out as if some maniacal puppeteer had suddenly picked up their strings and started them dancing.
She knew where the squeaky floor boards were in the back of the church. She knew how frayed the velvet altar drape was; she had counted the number of mosaic tiles in the abstract painting of Jesus in the vestibule. She even remembered that the choir closet room was once the pastor’s office, until there was enough money in the building fund to actually build a larger office for the head of the church.
No, her home-town church—gas station turned house of worship—was not the structure surrounding her. This building was grand in every sense of the world. More than large enough for the two thousand members Devin told her they had. The massive stained-glass windows—six windows in all—humbled any other church she’d been in. They seemed large enough to drive a diesel truck through. She hadn’t picked up a Bible in years, yet she could identify the scripture depicted on each window.
She sighed again and rubbed the sides of her arms. Her anxiety about being inside a church had come back. Devin and Malcolm couldn’t return soon enough.