by Brit Bennett
He grinded against her, biting his lip in that serious way of anyone trying hard to be sexy. She giggled. He laughed too, squeezing her again.
“What?” he said.
“I thought you like boys now,” she said.
“Who the fuck told you that?”
“People.”
“Does this feel like I like boys?”
He pressed her hand against his bulge and she wrested her wrist out of his grasp, pushing him away. She felt trapped, suddenly, like she was suffocating. Blurry-eyed, she felt along the wall, past bodies bumping into her, the frenetic rhythms pumping out the speakers, through the sticky humidity to the back door. On the other end of the balcony, Cody Richardson leaned against the wooden railing. He was taller, thinner now, his dirty-blond hair shaggier, his plaid shirt hanging off his angular shoulders. He smiled, flashing his silver lip ring, and she eased toward him, gripping the rail.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” he said.
“What?”
He pointed over her shoulder. Beyond the lavender roofs of other beach houses, she could see the top of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, two white domes that kids on the school bus used to call “the boobs” when they drove past on field trips.
“Any minute—boom.” Cody’s eyes widened, his hands exploding away from each other. “Just like that. I mean, all it takes is a storm and we all blow up.”
Nadia rested her head on the railing, closing her eyes.
“That’s how I wanna go someday,” she said.
“Really?”
“Boom.”
—
THIS IS HOW she imagined it:
Her mother driving around town, her husband’s service pistol in her lap. A curve, then another curve, the morning light as pink as a baby girl’s nightgown. She was groggy or maybe clearheaded, as clear as she’d ever been. She thought first about driving to the beach because it’d be a good place to die. Warm enough. A dying place ought to be warm—enough coldness waiting in the afterlife. But it was too late. Surfers were already padding across the sand and dying should be private, like humming a little song only you can hear.
So she drove on, half a mile up the hill from Upper Room where her car was shielded by branches. She shut off her engine and picked up the gun. She had never shot anything before but she’d seen animals die, pigs squealing as they bled out, chickens flapping as her mother wrung their necks. You could coax out life or you could end it at once. A slow death might seem gentler but a sudden death was kinder. Merciful, even.
She would be merciful to herself, this once.
—
WHEN HER FATHER ASKED, Nadia told him she hadn’t seen the tree. In the darkness, the tree in front of their house was nearly impossible to see, so she’d made too sharp a turn. It was nearly four a.m., and they were both standing in the driveway, her father in his green plaid robe and slippers, her leaning against the truck door, her shoes in her hands. She had planned to sneak back inside the house, but her father had run outside as soon as he heard the crash. Now he crouched in front of his dented bumper, feeling the jagged metal.
“Why the heck weren’t your headlights on?” he said.
“They were!” she said. “I just—I looked down to shut them off and then I looked up and then the tree.”
She swayed a little. Her father frowned, straightening.
“Are you drunk?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“I can smell it on you from here.”
“No—”
“And you drove home?”
He stepped toward her and the sudden movement made her drop everything in her hands, her purse and shoes and keys clattering to the driveway. She jutted her arms out before he could come closer. He stopped, his jaw clenched, and she couldn’t tell whether he wanted to slap her or hug her. Both hurt, his anger and his love, as they stood together in the dark driveway, his heart beating against her hands.
THREE
We pray.
Not without ceasing, as Paul instructs, but often enough. On Sundays and Wednesdays, we gather in the prayer room and slip off jackets, leave shoes at the door and walk around in stocking feet, sliding a little, like girls playing on waxed floors. We sit in a ring of white chairs in the center of the room and one of us reaches into the wooden box by the door stuffed with prayer request cards. Then we pray: for Earl Vernon, who wants his crackhead daughter to come home; Cindy Harris’s husband, who is leaving her because he’d caught her sending nasty photographs to her boss; Tracy Robinson, who has taken to drinking again, hard liquor at that; Saul Young, who is struggling to help his wife through the final days of her dementia. We read the request cards and we pray, for new jobs, new houses, new husbands, better health, better-behaved children, more faith, more patience, less temptation.
We don’t think of ourselves as “prayer warriors.” A man must’ve come up with that term—men think anything difficult is war. But prayer is more delicate than battle, especially intercessory prayer. More than just a notion, taking up the burdens of someone else, often someone you don’t even know. You close your eyes and listen to a request. Then you have to slip inside their body. You are Tracy Robinson, burning for whiskey. You are Cindy Harris’s husband, searching your wife’s phone. You are Earl Vernon, washing dirty knots out of your strung-out daughter’s hair.
If you don’t become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words.
That’s why it didn’t take us long to figure out what had happened to Robert Turner’s truck. Ordinarily waxed and gleaming, the truck hobbled into the Upper Room parking lot on Sunday with a dented front bumper and cracked headlight. In the lobby, we heard young folks joking about how drunk Nadia Turner had been at some beach party. Then we became young again, or that is to say, we became her. Dancing all night with a bottle of vodka in hand, staggering out the door. A careless drive home weaving between lanes. The crunch of metal. How, when Robert smelled the liquor, he must have hit her or maybe hugged her. How she was probably deserving of both.
The truck was the first sign that something wasn’t right that summer, but none of us saw it that way. The banged-up truck only meant one thing to us then.
“Look what she done.”
“Who done?”
“That Turner girl.”
“Which one is that?”
“You know the one.”
“Redbone, clear-eyes like.”
“Oh, that girl?”
“What other Turner girl is there?”
“Don’t she look—”
“Sure do.”
“Like she spit her out.”
“Y’all see his—”
“Mhm.”
“How much you think that costs to fix?”
“Why she do that?”
“She wild.”
“Poor Robert.”
“She wild wild.”
We only felt sorry for Robert Turner. He’d already been through too much. Half a year earlier, his wife had stolen his gun and blown her head clean off her body. A little past sunrise, she’d parked her blue Tercel along some back road and sent her car rocking from the gun blast. A jogger had found her an hour later. Robert had driven the Tercel home from the police station, the headrest still darkened with his wife’s blood. No one knew what had happened to that car. Rumor was that after combing it for the rest of his wife’s things—her pocketbook, overdue library paperbacks, a ruby red hair clip he’d bought her, years ago, from Mexico—he’d put a brick on the gas pedal and sent it right into the San Luis Rey River. But a man as sensible as Robert had probably sold it for parts, and sometimes we wondered if a passing car had Elise Turner’s muffler, if her turn signal blinked at us from the next lane.
All of that, and now a reckless daughter too. No wonder Robert looked so troubled.
That even
ing, we found a prayer card with his name on it in the wooden box outside the door. In the center, in all lowercase, the words pray for her. We didn’t know which her he meant—his dead wife or his reckless daughter—so we prayed for both. It’s more than just a notion, you know. Praying for someone dead. When there’s no body to slip into, you can only try to find their spirit, and who wants to chase down Elise Turner’s, wherever it’s hiding?
Later that night, when we left the prayer room, we felt something in Upper Room shift. Couldn’t explain it, something just felt different. Off. We knew the walls of Upper Room like the walls of our own homes. We’d soft-stepped down hallways as the choir practiced, noticing that corner in front of the instrument closet where the paint had chipped, or the tile in the ladies’ room that had been laid crooked. We’d spent decades studying the splotch that looked like an elephant’s ear on the ceiling above the water fountain. And we knew the exact spot on the sanctuary carpet where Elise Turner had knelt the night before she killed herself. (The more spiritual of us even swore they could still see the indented curve from her knees.) Sometimes we joked that when we died, we’d all become part of these walls, pressed down flat like wallpaper. Near the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary or in a corner of the Sunday School room or even attached to the ceiling in the prayer room, where we met every Sunday and Wednesday to intercede.
We didn’t know then that the banged-up truck had knotted Nadia Turner’s future to our own, that we would watch her come and go over the years, each time tugging that knot a little tighter.
—
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, the Turners received a visitor.
Nadia had spent most of the weekend in bed, not because her stomach still hurt but because she had nowhere else to go. She wasn’t pregnant anymore but she had wrecked her father’s truck. What if it took weeks to fix? How would he stand it, no truck to turn to, no errands to run, only work and home? He loved one thing, her father, and she had ruined it. Worse, her father hadn’t even yelled at her. She wished he would rage when he was angry—it’d be easier that way, quicker—but instead, he coiled up tight inside himself, moving silently around her in the kitchen or avoiding her altogether. She felt herself disappearing into the silence until she heard two high-pitched notes stepping through the air, so light she thought she dreamed them. Then she heard three knocks and a brief stab ran through her. Luke. She jumped up, finger combing her hair into a ponytail, tucking her bra strap under her tank top, adjusting her shorts. She padded barefoot across the cold tile and opened the door.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”
Pastor Sheppard smiled from the doorstep. She had never seen him look this casual before, not in his church robes or a three-piece suit but a polo shirt and jeans and black sneakers with special soles he wore, Luke said, because his knees were bad. She’d always imagined pastors as mousy old men in sweaters and glasses but Pastor Sheppard looked more like the bouncers she sweet-talked outside of clubs, tall and wide, his shiny mahogany head nearly touching the doorframe. He seemed even larger on Sunday mornings, stalking across the altar in his long black robe, his voice booming to the rafters. But in his polo shirt, standing on her front steps, he looked relaxed. Kind, even. He smiled at her and she saw Luke for a second, a fragment of him, like a vein of light through smashed glass.
“Hi honey,” the pastor said. “Is your dad around?”
“In the yard.”
She backed up, letting him inside. He filled the entrance, gazing around the living room, and she wondered what he made of her house. He probably visited so many homes, he could read them as soon as he stepped inside. Some houses filled with sickness, some with sin, others with sorrow. But hers? It probably just seemed empty. The silent, uncluttered rooms, the whole house open like a wound that would never scab over. She led the pastor to the backyard, where her father was bench-pressing on the concrete slab. He racked his weights with a loud clink.
“Pastor.” He wiped his face with his gray USMC T-shirt. “Didn’t know you were stopping by.”
She slid the screen door shut and started back down the hallway. As she turned, she felt the pastor watching her and she wondered, for a second, if he knew. Maybe his calling had imbued him with divine knowledge and he could see it hanging off her shoulders, the heaviness of her secrets. Or even if he had no holy power, maybe he just sensed it. Maybe he could feel the once-connection between the two of them, and as soon as she’d turned, he’d reached up to touch its frayed edges.
She tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom and perched on the toilet lid, listening through the cracked window.
“I was in the area,” the pastor was saying. “Saw your truck earlier. Everything okay?”
“It’ll be fine,” her father said. “Just needs a little bodywork. Sorry about the picnic—I know I said I’d haul those chairs—”
“We’ll manage.” The pastor paused. “Folks are saying your girl crashed it.”
She gripped her knees tighter on the toilet lid.
“Were we that crazy when we were young?” her father said.
“Crazier, maybe. She okay?”
“She’s a smart girl,” her father said. “A lot smarter than me, that’s for sure. Going off to college soon. She should know better. That’s what worries me.”
“You know how these kids are—they just want to push the limits. Think they’re invincible.”
“She wasn’t like this before,” her father said. “Or maybe she was. Maybe I just didn’t know her before. Elise was always there to . . . they were so close, I couldn’t get between them and didn’t hardly want to. Mothers are selfish. You know she wouldn’t even let me hold Nadia at first? Not until the doctor made her rest. You can’t get between no mother and child. I don’t know, Pastor. I’m trying to raise her right. Maybe I just don’t know how.”
She eased back down the hallway. She didn’t want to hear more. She hated hearing her father blame himself for her mistakes, even though she knew she blamed him too. After all, she had been the one who held it together. She’d answered the door when the Mothers visited with food, while her father disappeared into the darkness of his bedroom. She had eaten the food the Mothers brought until she sickened of it, until she felt she could taste exactly who’d made what. Mother Hattie had brought the macaroni and cheese, so rich that butter pooled in the corner of the pan. Mother Agnes, rail thin, had made the apple pie, its lattices straight and ruler made. For weeks Nadia ate donated food, each bite soured by grief, until she grew tired of the old ladies, their kindly smiles masks for nosiness. So one day, she left their dishes on the front steps and ignored the doorbell. Then she drove her father’s truck to the grocery store and for dinner, she cooked meatloaf. It came out dry and brick-like, suspended in a pan of brown gel, but her father ate it anyway.
After the pastor left, she carried her mother’s clippers to the living room, where her father was watching a cowboy movie. Though it was their usual time, she thought he might ignore her, but he stood silently and stepped into the backyard. They could talk this way, over the buzz of the clippers, not having to look at each other.
“Pastor asked about you,” her father said.
The sky was filmy and light, like lavender silk rippling above her. She guided the clippers across his hair, clumps of black and gray wool falling to his shoulders.
“Okay,” she said.
“The first lady needs an assistant,” he said. “Just for the summer. Nothing fancy, but it’s money and you’ll learn some good skills.”
“I can’t work there,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t,” she said. “I’ll find something else.”
“It’s a good job—”
“I don’t care, I’ll find something else—”
“You’ll pay to fix my truck and everything else will go to your books and schooling,” he said. “It’s a good job and it’ll
be good for you. Spending some time at Upper Room. It’ll help you. God will—you have to trust Him, see? You trust Him and stay in His presence and He’ll carry you through like He’s carrying me.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself this was a good idea. As if by spending enough time in church, she might absorb holiness into her bones. She sighed, brushing hair off his shoulders. What did her father know about what would be good for her? What did he know about her at all?
—
ON HER FIRST morning of work, she slumped against the window as her father guided his loaner car up the hill toward Upper Room. The church—tan, with a tall steeple—rose in hills of wild brush, the worst place to be in a county that burned. Out-of-towners never ventured this far north. Anyone visiting a beach town wanted sparkling oceans and cool breezes, so they stayed downtown, strolling across the long wooden pier where fishers lounged in metal chairs, poles propped over the edge, and children skipped with red pails to the Dairy Queen. But north of the beach was miles of coastal sagebrush that became kindling during wildfire season. In springtime, fires were distant from everyone’s mind, but as her father drove, she stared out the window at black stumps jutting out of the charred ground. Even though Upper Room sat in a nest of kindling, even though it would only take a gust of wind carrying a single ember to its steps, the church had never burned. A sign, the congregation often said, of divine favor. God so loved Upper Room, He spared them from the flames.
These were the stories people told themselves. She’d heard, time and time again, her mother’s own story about how God had led her to Upper Room. She had been a young mother then, a military wife new to California and lonely. She didn’t even have a high school diploma, so she cleaned rooms at the Days Inn downtown, a job her supervisor, an older black woman, told her she was lucky to have.
“Used to be a way for us to make a living,” she said. “But nowadays? They only want to hire those Mexicans. Can’t speak a drop of English but dirt cheap. Pay them right under the table. You speak Spanish?”