BY TENTH GRADE, St. Ambrose Roman Catholic Church had morphed into a predominantly African-American congregation. After a few years of folk masses, which I loved, we had now moved on to a Sunday Mass featuring contemporary gospel music. Our Caucasian priests were still the norm, and each of our two African-American deacons had a wife, according to the Catholic Church’s new ordinance. The nuns assigned to our parish no longer wore traditional habits, though they sometimes wore veils. My mom’s friend, Sister Cecelia, declared they often came in handy. “I got out of receiving a ticket when the police officer came up to the car and realized I was a nun.”

I worked as an evening receptionist at the rectory several times per week in eleventh and twelfth grades. I also prepared breakfast every other Sunday morning. Being around the clergy gave me an opportunity to know and respect the people who served the congregation. To me, these were trustworthy, regular people with positive motives who had accepted a call to serve God in a different capacity than the laity. One of our priests, Father Henry Zerhusen, especially exemplified Christ-like compassion. He treated each congregant like someone who mattered. That kindness drew people to the congregation. Harvey was one of the people that kindness drew in.

Harvey, a high school student who was a few years older than I, was one of the unchurched neighborhood kids Father Henry ministered to. He spent as much time as he could at the rectory. Professing a love for God, Harvey aspired to become St. Ambrose parish’s first African-American priest. Though Harvey was well-regarded by many parishioners, I thought that if he ever became a priest, he’d be more like the evil cleric Rasputin than any priest I’ve ever seen at St. Ambrose..

Harvey never seemed to like me very much. Because he was a student at the zoned high school, I felt he was jealous of my private school education. I also believed he resented the fact that the members of my family, one of the families that integrated the church in the early 1960s, failed to regard him with awe. However, many long-time St. Ambrose parishioners delighted in his evangelical spirit. To his credit, several classmates he brought to church converted to Catholicism. This was a pretty good evangelism record for someone who had been Catholic fewer than five years.

One fall evening, Harvey joined me in the office where I sat at the secretary’s desk answering the phone. I half-listened as he rambled on using big words—some correctly, some incorrectly—until I heard him say, pejoratively, “Your mother is crazy.” That got my attention. Forget about sticks and stones or even hearing what he said, in context. I sprang from my chair and kneed him in the groin, exclaiming, “My mother is not crazy!” He had officially pressed my button. No one was allowed to associate the word crazy with my mother, a woman who once soldiered through a significant bout of depression.

This was not the first time I became angry when I suspected someone was calling Mama crazy.

In sixth grade, Sister Marie Carl informed our class, “Only crazy people talk to themselves.” Having heard my mother reason aloud from time to time, I raised my hand. When she called on me, I corrected her. “That’s not true,” I declared. She refuted my statement. Then, for the first time, I yelled disrespectfully at a nun. “My mother talks to herself sometimes and my mother is not crazy.” That outburst earned me a trip to the principal’s office with Sr. Carl’s hurriedly handwritten note in hand.

Because I was one of the good kids, who had just made her school look good by earning a scholarship offer to a prestigious private school, the principal listened thoughtfully to my side of the story. Once I calmed myself down, she firmly, then gently informed me my “flippant behavior would not be tolerated.” I apologized to my teacher.

By the time I calmed myself down in the Harvey incident, he had left the office. I went home and tried to call him at the rectory the next day. I failed to reach him. Being the kind of Christian he was, when I left the rectory the following night, he had a female friend follow me home with a small posse while he remained at the rectory. When they caught up to me, Harvey’s ally announced, “You hit my friend, now I’m going to hit you.” She punched me in the mouth, gave me a menacing stare and went back in the direction she came, accompanied by her followers.

I did not hit her back. She terrified me. She had recently been released from a juvenile detention facility for girls. And truthfully, I felt I got what I deserved. In the eye-for-an-eye world, my action had been inexcusable. I called and apologized to the duplicitous Harvey after the attack. The next day at school, when people asked how my lip had gotten swollen, I lied, “I tripped in my house and hit my mouth on the corner of a dresser.”

The following year, I had to decide whether or not I was ready to commit myself to the Catholic faith. I chose to be confirmed. Once the bishop anointed my head, I would be “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” When he asked if I was ready to serve the Lord with my whole being, I gave the prescribed answer, “I am ready and willing,” with vigor. I wanted to be a better person.

That spring, one of the young adults at St. Ambrose decided our parish would participate in the Catholic Youth Organization one-act play competition for the Baltimore diocese. We would be the only non-Caucasian participants. Our director chose the work of a local playwright, Faith Walker, entitled, The Everlasting Arm. I auditioned, reading Beneatha’s monologue from A Raisin in the Sun.

The play is about an elderly woman—my character—and her three children, the youngest of them having passed away. I was always thankful that Gregory was cast as the younger brother. One evening, Karen came to watch me rehearse. She pulled her lighter out of her purse and flicked it against the cigarette she had placed between her lips. The flame setting had become higher as the lighter was thrown in her bag, and it ignited the front of her perfectly shaped Afro. While I stood frozen, Gregory immediately used his script to extinguish the flames. That was how my father discovered Karen was a smoker. It was also one of the few times he held back his retribution against her. With second-degree burns on her forehead, she had suffered enough. She wore a realistic looking wig until her hair grew back. It took years for the scars on her forehead to heal. Thanks to Gregory, one of Harvey’s converts, I still had my sister.

Our play moved from the semi-finals to the finals, where we placed second. My fourth grade teacher’s friend, Mr. Russell, still taught at Park and was one of the judges. On Monday, as part of the morning announcements, the assistant principal announced, “We’d like to congratulate Charita Cole. She was awarded the best actress trophy in the Catholic Youth Organization’s one-act play competition on Saturday.” Before that day, I intentionally separated my home life from my school life. The two intersected now.

That summer, upon invitation, I participated in Park’s six-week Summer Arts Program, studying drama, at no cost. This would be the first of two summers in the program. The second summer, the director found a way for me to be a paid participant through a special grant opportunity for inner-city high school students.

In September 1975, my eleventh grade year, Lloyd Stephenson arrived at St Ambrose Rectory. An African-American college senior at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, he elected to live at St. Ambrose throughout that year, to the betterment of our parish.

Lloyd stood six feet, five inches tall and studied ballet. He introduced our congregation to liturgical dance, performing self-choreographed pieces in traditional attire. He produced and directed a Good Friday passion play in which he portrayed Jesus. I was surprised when the people my brother Kelvin called “the old heads” participated willingly. Our new seminarian challenged them to expand their religious borders.

He launched a teen youth group for high school students—to expand our cultural borders. Some members of the group, including me, attended plays in theaters for the first time. At our weekly Sunday-evening meetings usually held in Lloyd’s separate parlor, we engaged in informal discussions of life and faith. One of our meetings centered on how each of us envisioned the Trinity. It’s about time someone actively encouraged us to think about and articulate what we believe, I thought, with Park School exuberance.

I was drawn to Lloyd’s keen intellect, exceptional confidence and maturity. Although he saw the same Harvey I did, he treated him respectfully. Harvey resented the young people’s acceptance of a new spiritual mentor. Lloyd challenged the HNIC—Head Negro In Charge—status he had created in his own mind. To me, Harvey’s ego seemed a little deflated by the success this unwanted intruder was having with the parishioners. I was glad Harvey was unhappy. As Mama would say, there was no love lost between Harvey and me.

Karen, Lloyd, and I sometimes went to movies or out to eat without the rest of the group. Spending time with us, he encouraged us to become our best selves. His internal confidence bolstered mine. Not caring what others thought of him, he would tell me, “I know I’m a wonderful person.” Winking at me, his close friend, he would add, “So are you.” I loved spending time with a person so sure of himself, and of me.

Lloyd graduated in May 1976, returning to his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia for the summer before completing his studies for the priesthood in Rome. I still have postcards and a scarf he bought me while studying in Europe. Our communication became more sporadic as time passed.

Lloyd and I reconnected in the mid 1990s. I was in Newport News, Virginia visiting a friend who lived near his assigned parish. She invited him to her home for home-baked lasagna. As we caught up on one another’s lives, I shared my bipolar diagnosis and thanked him for setting an example of unapologetic fearlessness for me. Shortly thereafter, Lloyd and I lost touch.

When I started writing this memoir, I googled Lloyd’s name to find his address. I wanted to share my project with him, being certain he would offer inspiring words of encouragement. As a graduate of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, his information wouldn’t be hard to find. I found his obituary. Reverend Lloyd Franklin Stephenson had died in March 2004 at age forty-nine.

I printed out the obituary and wept, saddened by my loss as well as my inability to pay my final respects. Thankfully, Lloyd knew I appreciated the lessons he taught me about being emotionally honest with myself.