Can you pick me up for book club?” I slurred into the phone. “Hand surgery a few days ago. Percocet. Can’t drive.”
“Of course,” Nadine agreed. An hour later, she eyed my cast when I climbed in her car. “How are you? It looks like it hurts.”
“Not right now. The drugs are working.” I preferred surgery to the Sickness; surgery gave me a break from the mental torture of wondering what was wrong with my body when my episodes hit.
“Did you read the book?” Nadine asked, turning down Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.”
“I not only read it,” I answered, “I bought the journal. Finding Your Own North Star is my favorite pick yet. Speaking of which, Trent asked me on my way out the door, ‘Why do you bother reading the book? Isn’t it just an excuse for ladies to drink wine and gossip?’ And I told him, ‘Book club is group therapy plus wine and minus a certified professional.’ ”
We laughed because it was true. The women in our club knew about one another’s bosses, birth control, eyebrow-plucking habits, weddings, evil co-workers, and childhood scars. The Sickness was the only thing my book club didn’t know about me. Some secrets are simply too shameful to be shared.
When we arrived, Michelle—our resident book summarizer—was giving a recap. “Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck is a guide to living your ideal life. She says you do this by tapping into internal compasses that are always pointed toward your core desires—your own ‘North Star.’ ” Michelle folded her notes and tucked her light brown hair behind one ear. “To me, this was a book about finding and following your dreams, so here’s my question: Did this book make you think about your dreams?”
Since our typical book picks weren’t self-helpy, the conversation turned from intellectual to personal in record time. We talked about our “North Star” dreams: opening a yoga studio, getting married, running for office, having children, getting over a broken heart. As everyone shared, I felt something slip in the room as it had in my closet: like the Godiverse was right there, lending weight and courage to our aspirations.
I told myself this woo-woo feeling had a name: Percocet.
Intending to retrieve my Kindle, I realized with dismay that I’d grabbed my workbag. Thank you, loopy drugs. I rooted around anyway. No Kindle, but from the bottom of my bag I pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.
My Thirty by Thirty list . . . What? How? I peered at it in bewilderment. I threw this away. I retraced my steps mentally: the limping out of Word Alive church, the tossing of the list, the driving home and sleeping for three days because the Sickness sucker-punched me.
Yet there was the list in my hand instead of the trash.
For the next half hour of chatter, I couldn’t shake the thought: I didn’t mean to keep this list, but it meant to keep me. I clutched the paper, wondering what to do until I hit on a brilliant plan. I’ll let the book club talk me out of it! These were professional, successful, well-educated women—pragmatic thinkers all.
Yes. The ladies would help my project rest in peace. Preferably in a trash can with a lid and a lit match.
“I’m thinking about going to thirty religions before I turn thirty,” I blurted.
There was a moment of silence; I assumed everyone was checking to see if I had lost my mind. Backpedaling, I braced myself to be talked off the ledge: “It wouldn’t be actually thirty religions, because a lot of them would be Christian denominations . . .”
My book club ladies did not talk me off the ledge. They shoved me over that shelf so fast that I hardly had time to catch a breath on the way down.
Excitement palpable, they all spoke at once.
“Would you do Scientology and Wicca?”
“What about a mosque?”
“You should totally be Amish for a day!”
“What about Mormon?”
I glanced at my list. The decision felt made for me, a current that swept me up and carried me along. Very slowly, I nodded my head in assent.
“Yes,” I said. “The answer to all the questions is yes.”
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY MORNING, Andre rolled down his car window in our shared driveway. “Hey love. How’s my Best Neighbor Forever? You look nice!”
I walked toward his Jeep. “Since I’m usually in sweatpants, the dress is a nice change.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Tenth Avenue Baptist?” I squeaked. A fellow PTCS sufferer, Andre had disavowed the Baptist church when he came out at age nineteen. He and God weren’t on the best of terms.
Andre was still sitting in his car, but he jumped anyway. “Church? You?”
“I’ll explain later,” I promised. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“Would Baptists who are African-American object to being called Black Baptists?”
Andre leaned out the window, his expression that of a teacher with a small child. “Reba. They’re black. They’re Baptists. It’s a fact, not an opinion.”
“Thanks for clearing that up.”
“You know me,” he offered cheerfully. “I’m your two-for-one deal. I can be consulted as your token black and your token gay friend. Hey, are you and Trent coming to my Pride party in a few weeks?”
“You know it wouldn’t be Pride without my famous white sangria. Okay, I’m off to worship with the Black Baptists.”
“Get ready to duck.”
“Excuse me?”
He smiled. “To avoid all the hellfire and brimstone.”
NADINE GRIPPED MY ARM as we approached the stone entrance of Tenth Avenue Baptist. “Should we have worn hats?” she whispered.
I surveyed the ornate head coverings perched like butterflies atop the heads of the ladies of the church. They were dressed to impress in full Sunday best. Even their husbands and sons looked like dapper accessories in three-piece suits, ties, and pocket squares patterned with flair and lapel flowers. We passed an elderly woman in a wheelchair wearing full makeup, a bright pink dress and hat, hosiery, and high heels.
“We probably should have worn hats,” I whispered back, “but it’s too late now.”
In the narthex, a greeter with ebony skin and blue eyes stopped us. Her name tag read “Sister Maggie,” and it was more than her substantial size and feathery aquamarine hat that made her intimidating. She wore the look of a woman on a holy mission, God’s own welcome wagon and security force.
Sister Maggie looked us up and down slowly, taking inventory of our shy smiles, pale skin, and linked arms.
“Y’all . . . visitors,” she stated. The sentence was not phrased as a question. “Mmm-hmm. Fill out these cards.”
Nadine, who had been so thrilled about my project that she volunteered to accompany me on this site visit, took a pencil and happily filled in her life story. I plotted to wriggle out of the obligation.
“May I please take it to my seat and return it later?” I asked sweetly, eyes downcast.
“No,” boomed Sister Maggie, correctly guessing that I planned to stuff the card in the nearest hymnal. Her look said, Don’t you challenge me, little lady.
I intuited that when in Sister Maggie’s church, you did as Sister Maggie said, so I grudgingly scratched some minimal information.
In a solitary act of belligerence, I then stole the pencil, furtively stashing it in my purse.
We exchanged our visitor cards for programs, and Sister Maggie showed us to our seats—the last row of the first section. We shared our pew with a blind man who kindly stood to let us pass. “Welcome, welcome,” he nodded his sunglasses in our direction, his guide dog lying calmly under the pew.
“I’m so excited,” said Nadine in a low voice when we were seated. “I’ve never been in a church that isn’t Catholic.”
Nadine shrugged. “My family and friends were all Catholic. I didn’t need to try anything else.”
I looked around at the eager congregation, heard the riffs of the organist warming up, and saw the fifty-person choir file onto the stage, robed in purple regalia. Oh boy.
“Nadine,” I warned, “I think you’re in for a little culture shock.”
On cue, a middle-aged black man with graying hair bounced onto the stage. He wore a full-length black duster over his suit, reminding me of Neo’s costume in The Matrix. “Can I hear you make some Holy Ghost noise this morning?” he half-shouted, half-sang. The organist punctuated the man’s words with decisive chords, signaling the congregation to rise en masse and issue forth a boisterous, joyful affirmation that included many Hallelujahs, Amens, and Yes, Lords!
“I came from a Pentecostal church,” he said, clapping in time with the organist who had started banging the keys hard and fast. I flinched a little. “And we gonna be praisin’ this morning—Pentecostal-style!”
Nadine nudged me in the ribs. “What does that mean?” she asked, understandably confused. She had a lifetime of exclusively Catholic liturgy working against her.
“It means that things are going to get loud up in here.”
And loud things got. On a Worship Enthusiasm Factor spectrum from one to ten, the Matrix music pastor was over the edge with an 11.5, maybe a 12.
He jumped for Jesus! He danced for Jesus! He may have even moon-walked for Jesus! The whole church seemed to be dancing along with him; our blind friend performed a few of his own moves next to us. Even the dog wagged his tail in time with the choir (which, by the way, could have hit the road as a touring act).
The music minister wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that perfectly coordinated with his tie. I felt a few degrees warmer just watching him.
I snuck a glance at Nadine. Except for the fact that her hair wasn’t blowing in the wind, she looked the same way I always do in those roller-coaster camera photos.
“What do you think?” I asked, my voice a normal level so as to not be drowned out by the praisin’.
“I love it.” Nadine looked like she’d been riding inverted loop-de-loops. “I had no idea people acted like this in church.”
By the time we sat down I was exhausted, and not only because the Sickness was pulling at my joints, begging me to go back to bed. Black Baptist praise time was a Zumba-worthy workout.
Sister Maggie shimmied her way to the front, and the Matrix music minister handed her the microphone. I glanced at the program, which announced that it was time for the formal GREETING OF THE GUESTS. The all-caps frightened me even more than Sister Maggie.
“We’d like to offer a warm Tenth Street Baptist welcome to our two guests this morning,” she said, looking our way.
Four hundred people at this church, and we are the only Caucasians and the only visitors?
“Will Miss Nadine Smart please rise?”
Nadine looked at me, slightly panicked.
Rise! Rise! I gestured. She rose.
“Welcome Miss Nadine,” said Sister Maggie. The congregation applauded. “Miss Smart is Catholic and attends church at her local parish. She resides here in the city and enjoys yoga, the beach, and book club. Welcome, Miss Nadine!” Nadine waved excitedly to the crowd.
Sister Maggie cleared her throat and glared at me. Uh-oh. Only she and I knew about the train wreck that was about to happen.
“Will R. please stand up? R.?” Gulp. I stood. What choice did I have? “Welcome, R.”
I waved weakly, cheeks flaming. Why did I have to use an initial? I berated myself, worried that the congregation would now show me the same cold shoulder I’d given the visitor card.
“It’s time to fellowship with one another,” boomed Sister Maggie. The organ started up and the crowd broke into groups, enthusiastically telling one another “Hell-o!” and “Don’t you look fine this morning!”
Nadine gave me another questioning look.
“Prepare to be greeted,” I intoned.
Within minutes Nadine and I were swept into the frighteningly enthusiastic embrace of the crowd. Never in my life have I given or received so many hugs in a fifteen-minute span. Fellowship time at Tenth Avenue was no cold, perfunctory, “Peace be with you, and also with you.” This was not a greeting of limp handshakes. Fellowshipping at Tenth Avenue Baptist was a full-contact sport.
After fellowship time, two ministers took the stage, tag-teaming the sermon in a good cop, bad cop routine that would have been funny if the bad cop (the older and shorter of the two) hadn’t triggered my PTCS symptoms by yelling about the congregation’s purported sins. In order of increasing decibel level, our collective sins were legion.
Why is he so angry? Nadine wrote on the program, scooting it under my gaze.
Some people think anger will scare a congregation closer to God, I wrote in reply.
Just as I thought I could take no more, the good cop stepped in to talk about dreams. He opened with Traffic Ticket Theology, which went something like this: If you have enough faith and pray hard enough when you get pulled over, God will get you out of a traffic ticket! (The Trinity I was brought up to revere would want me wearing my seatbelt and driving below the speed limit.) He backed up this theology with the Old Testament story of Joseph, a favored-son-turned-slave-turned-ruler who was known for being a dreamer—a line of reasoning I couldn’t follow, but enjoyed nonetheless, the same way I enjoy a winding drive in the country with no destination in sight.
But there was a destination in sight! “Let us bring forth the tithes and the offerings,” the good cop pastor rejoiced, signaling the organist to play a rousing ballad and the ladies of the church to reach for their perfectly accessorized handbags.
Nadine checked the time and leaned in. “I have lunch plans,” she said, looking in Sister Maggie’s direction.
I surveyed our options like a prisoner planning a break. The Tenth Avenue Black Baptists didn’t pass the plate; they walked up to it row by row. “Here’s the plan. We march up to the front with everyone else, put something in the plate, and instead of rounding back to our seats, we duck out the side door.”
Nadine looked ill at ease. “Have you done this kind of thing before?”
“I’ve escaped from churches in more ways than I can count. I am the world’s expert on the subject. Grab your purse.”
We marched up the aisle and kept right on marching straight out the side door. As it was closing behind us, I overheard the good cop pastor say: “Jesus gave you a dream so you could give it back to Him. He can do exceedingly and abundantly more than you could ever imagine. Hand your dream back to Him.” Apparently this minister has never handed any dreams to God, only to have them splintered, I thought. The familiar sour taste of bitterness rose in my throat, just as my heart beat: I want to be whole.
Some dreams are so big they wake you up.