by Maren Smith
“It’s a couple of nights a week for like two weeks. You already know the songs; we just have to see what spin Maurice is going to put on it.”
“Is he really still tinkering with the arrangements on the music we’ve all done a million times? That man is the only choir director I’ve known who can’t ever leave things straight forward.”
She knew I already turned down my mama’s request to come back and sing in Bishop Chambers’ anniversary choir. This was their way, though. Mama used guilt, and when that didn’t work, Bess would bully me and pull the best friend card. What kind of chance did I stand?
I was never in a hurry to return to the fire and brimstone environment that man created. Right and wrong were extremely black and white in the Bishop’s eyes, and he made sure everyone knew that his eyes and what they saw were all that mattered. I could probably get through it, but I didn’t want to. The best part about being forty-five minutes from home for college was that I could get there quickly in an emergency, but could feign exhaustion and distance when I didn’t really want to be bothered.
“Are you listening to me?” Bess was using her ‘do not ignore me’ voice.
“I’m here and all ears.”
“Now, you know Bishop doesn’t work on his anniversary Sunday, so he’s bringing in a guest preacher.”
“So? I don’t want to hear any of them spell out why I’m going to hell, either.”
“Oh, you’ll like this one. It’s Malik Creswell.”
Oh, my Lord. Did she say Malik Creswell? From Mercy High School? He’d been a young guidance counselor during our freshman and sophomore years, and the basketball coach.
“Yes, that Malik, and you already know that.”
“Did I say that out loud?”
Bess was full belly laughing at this point. For a best friend, my discomfort often amused her greatly.
“Asa, I’ve been able to read your thoughts for years, and when it comes to Malik, it’s not even a fair fight.”
Straddling the arm of my couch was getting uncomfortable, and I had too many questions. I slid off and onto the corner cushion to begin my interrogation.
“Why would Bishop ask Malik? He’s the anti-Bishop. Modern, forward-thinking, openly gay, and I’m willing to bet he’s not saving himself for marriage.”
“I sure hope not. When you two finally figure it out and hook up, somebody has to bring experience to the table.”
“You act like I’m a virgin.”
“Oh, please. Missy Holbrook does not count in this situation, or any situation. She was showing her panties to boys for a Jolly Rancher in the second grade. You started driving before any of us, so I’m not surprised she put out for a ride. And don’t get me started on Lance. That lying closet case. Talking about, he kissed you on a bet. Whatever, we are way off-topic. I will send you the rehearsal schedule. Pick out something nice to wear. You have two weeks. I love you and don’t even think about weaseling out of this, or I’ll call your mama back on you.”
I listened to silence for a full minute before I realized she’d ended the call.
Standing in front of my closet the morning of the concert, all I could think was, I blame myself. I should have stuck to my refusal regardless of anything Bess said. Seeing Malik was going to be a disaster. I practically ran from him a year and a half ago when he asked me out on a date. Well, I’m pretty sure it was a date. It was so long ago I remembered it a little differently each time.
He was so confident and sure of himself; I had agreed without a moment of hesitation. He said he wanted to have dinner and spend some time with me away from the basketball camp, and I was all about it. I’d wanted some alone time for years, but there was no way I’d ever be able to ask for it simply. I’d been a stupid kid with a crush all those years ago.
Then my mama texted. It had only been a to-do list, but it was an ice bucket of reality as I stood in front of Malik imagining what a good night kiss from him would feel like. I might be gay in my head and in my body, but I could not be gay out loud. I swear, though, Mama knew. She had to know. As long as I didn’t speak on it or act on it, we could both ignore it. I won’t say I came out the womb queer, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that the one kid not like the others was me.
Back then, and now, my crush on Malik Creswell made me think eternal damnation might be worth it. When I was in high school, he was my ideal everything. He was a full foot, if not more, taller than me back then. The coach of our basketball team. Smart. Highly engaged with the student body, and on my best day, I felt like a troll next to him. I was young, small, and felt woefully inadequate. I was virtually invisible to my classmates, and part of me loved it that way. The fact that he was a teacher and I was a student didn’t matter. That was logic, and logic played no part in my crush or comparative inadequacies.
He’d been gone by the time my growth spurt kicked in, my skin cleared up, my voice changed, and my body completed puberty. According to Bess, and more than one girl in our class, I’d elevated myself to hottie status. I had no idea what that meant to them, but I was sure we were not on the same page.
I only got to follow Malik around like a lovesick puppy for two years before he moved on from his career at Mercy High School. He was always really nice, but I knew he didn’t see me as anything but a scrawny little high school kid doing his best to fit in. My crush was hard, fast, and impossible to turn off. He consumed my thoughts. Concentrating at the end of the day before basketball practice was almost impossible. If it hadn’t been for Bess, I wouldn’t have passed Spanish, geometry, or health. Well, I might have passed, but it would have been a lot harder without her notes. She took notes, while I researched his college basketball team and read anything I could get my hands on about his life at Tennessee Union College.
When school started my junior year of high school, a new coach and counselor were in his place, and high school was a lot less appealing. That first week back was hell. I quit working with the basketball team. Once again, I couldn’t focus on my schoolwork, albeit for a different reason, and every lunch period, I sat underneath the large heritage tree on the farthest side from the cafeteria. By that time Bess had truly perfected her skill for sneaking up on me. I don’t know how long she was there before she put her hand on my shoulder, but she saw my notebook with Malik’s name written a few dozen times with a bunch of doodles that would make a twelve-year-old girl jealous. Looking up at her, all I could do was turn into her embrace and sob. It was Bess who pointed out to me that day I had just lost my first love.
It was four years before I would see him again. The summer before my junior year of college, when he came home from Georgia to be the community summer youth sports camp director. I was home from Tennessee Union. Yup, I had followed in his footsteps. As far as I was concerned, he was the perfect man to emulate. I had already secured a position as an assistant coach and counselor. I would never be star athlete material, but I knew the game well, and no longer ran like my shoes were on the wrong feet.
There was no way I made a good impression that first day. I opened the door, saw him standing there stretching, and froze. When he looked up, we stared at each other for a split second before he realized who I was. The second he did and called out to me, I bolted. I ended up in the sick room with the nurse most of the morning. I couldn’t quit my job, but it took until lunchtime before I got the nerves in my stomach to settle down enough to go back to that gym, be an adult, and do my job.
That was the summer when I found out he had gone into the seminary. I knew he had left to attend graduate school in Georgia, but I had no idea what he was studying. He wanted to be a minister. I never remembered that coming up in the time he was at Mercy. The idea and word were dirty to me. I couldn’t wait to get from under the oppression in the church, and he was running toward it. Figuring this was the point to pump the breaks on my hero-worship, I started pulling back a bit. I was prepared to treat the summer the way I’d treated high school all those years ago. I would come, wo
rk hard, and do my best to fade into the scenery. Malik was having none of it, though. It was as if he truly wanted me around, and not just around, but underfoot. Suddenly, I was his little lovesick puppy again, back to doing his bidding. It might have been four years later, but nothing had changed. The transition was seamless. He led. I followed.
It was during that summer that Malik told me, but more importantly, he showed me and the other kids that pastors came in all forms. They weren’t all cut from the same cloth, and he hoped to be a voice for spiritual youth. He wanted us to know that our good works, the good in our hearts, and the love for the Lord we had did not have to exist in one package only.
My mind had been blown, but I always asked him to back up his thoughts with specific scriptures, and he did. He didn’t mind being questioned. He embraced it. I would go home and read and study and return with even more questions. He never seemed to tire of me. I could never get enough of him. I wouldn’t admit to anything but, like my mama, I honestly believed Malik knew my secret.
The first time he disappeared from my life, I didn’t see him for four years. Now, it had been a year and a half since I fled from his dinner invitation, and honestly, I was willing to go another long stretch if it would save me from more self-induced social humiliation.
Now, because of my own stupidity and an inability to say no, I was going to be forced into the same room with him again after all this time. Please, God, no matter how impure my thoughts or how sinful my actions do not let him remember that last day of camp and my running off, or worse, ask me about it. I repeated that prayer from my apartment to my car for the entire forty-five-minute drive, while I pulled into the church parking lot, and the whole time we were processing to the choir stand.
I knew I was supposed to be focused on the song, the music, but most importantly, the lyrics that should have been saying something to me.
“Maybe God is trying to tell you something.” I could hear the rest of the choir and the entire congregation rejoicing in the song.
Well, if God was trying to tell me something, I was missing the message. Maybe he was speaking in tongues, and I had too much sin in me to understand. Or, he was speaking clearly, and the sin had my brain scrambled. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I did know that no matter how hard I prayed and no matter how many good works I did, at the end of the day I was still bogged down with sinful thoughts and a body that betrayed me with wants I should never have. Mama had made it perfectly clear that it was the acting on sin that made it so much worse. Which was why I knew how bad things could be for me in eternity. I had acted on my sin so many, many times.
No. Focus. This is not the time for your self-flagellation.
My self-talk was also super distracting.
This was honestly one of my favorite songs, and I was always thrilled when it was on deck for a Sunday service, but today was different. Today we had a guest preacher. The Lord Almighty himself could’ve been conducting, with a choir of heavenly angels backing him up, and my mind would still be on the tall, gorgeous man with thick wavy squid ink hair sitting in a chair just slightly lower and smaller than Bishop Chambers’. That old codger would never allow anyone, even a guest, to sit on equal footing with him.
The two men were as different as they came. It was hard to believe that Bishop Chambers would even invite someone like Malik Creswell to bring the Word, but who cared what motivated the old man. As long as he wasn’t going to deliver one of his eternal damnation speeches, I was good.
My whole childhood was spent being tormented and petrified of the Bishop and all the ways he’d instructed us that sin was everywhere and would eventually come around to tempt us all into perpetual wickedness. That was a lot to reconcile while contending with puberty and the fact that I knew I was gay. It was no wonder I was so versed in the scriptures. For a solid four years during high school, I read the Bible front to back, looking for anything that would allow me to get a restful night’s sleep. I needed a word that God would love me as I was, or that what I knew I was wouldn’t plunge me into the depths of hell.
Nothing was concrete in either direction. Malik had spent one summer showing me one way, but Bishop spent the last twenty-one years reinforcing his teachings too. With Bishop, things were perfectly clear, but I knew we were interpreting them differently.
Malik Creswell. He was a man I knew far better in my fantasies than I did in real life. I had crushed on him since the first day I stepped into high school. The first time I ever laid eyes on him, he was coming down the hallway with the rest of the basketball team as I cowered near a door, afraid to be run over. Standing in that hallway, as scared as I was, in that instant, I knew without a doubt that I liked boys. From that moment on, I went out of my way to find out everything I could about him and became his silent little stalker. He either never noticed or never cared. After all, he was an adult, and I was an insignificant little freshman.
I wasn’t at all coordinated enough to play on a sports team, but I’d happily volunteered to be the equipment manager that year just to be around him. As the manager, I did whatever Malik needed, and I got to hang out with the rest of the team. Technically, it made me a part of the team, but technicalities didn’t matter much to the actual players. It mattered to Malik. He had been nice to me. I never got smacked with anyone’s errantly flung jocks or snapped by a towel when he was around. There was never a cross word, or any real words spoken to me at all. He was polite, very polite, but nothing more solicitous than please, thank you, or a direct command ever crossed his lips during that time.
Hearing the music crescendo, I snapped myself out of the past and back to the business at hand. Oh, thank goodness we were on the last refrain. If I had to focus anymore, my head was going to explode. The amount of energy it took to not stare at the gorgeous man, to remember the lyrics, and to keep my lust in check was exhausting. I just needed to sit and at least try to listen. It was exciting to watch him deliver the Word, and anytime I had a chance to work with him, hear him, or be around him even in passing, I hadn’t missed it. I would lie on a stack of bibles before I admitted this to Bess, but she already knew it. This was part of the reason that I was currently belting out harmonies with the tenor section at the Third Street Baptist Church. Well, he was one of the more pleasant reasons.
Shifting my gaze to the first-row pew directly in front of the choir stand, I watched my mama, singing out with her hands raised to the heavens; there was no doubt that she was focused on what she should be focused on and wasn’t lusting after the guest pastor.
My mama, she was a small but mighty force to reckon with, and was a soldier in the army of the Lord. When the choir director said he didn’t want our choir looking like it lacked voices when there was a guest preacher, Mama was on it. Meaning she called me and said that a need to study wasn’t an acceptable excuse when the church needed me. I held my ground with her. I was much better at doing that over the phone. Mama played dirty. She put Bess on the case. I never stood a chance. So, here I was, sweating in the heavy robe that only came out during special occasions and holidays.
The applause was a clear clue that we had reached the glorious end. Apparently, it took me too long to sit down. Bess was tugging on my wrist to get me to put my butt in the plush green seat. Bess was always by my side. I liked to tease her that she only sang in the soprano section so she could sit next to me. The big diva could easily hit all the notes and would float where needed unless I was in town and singing too. Then she was an undisputed soprano.
“Someone is having a hard time concentrating,” Bess whispered in the worst stage voice ever. The two heads in front of us both gave us a subtle look back stink eye. She’d been the reason we spent so much time in trouble all through school. Before we even got to a new grade, the teacher knew not to sit us together.
“Hush, just worry about you and listen. Try to learn something,” I said back to her through my clenched mouth.
“I doubt I’ll be as focused as you. You’ll have to
break it down to me later. I know you won’t be missing a word.”
Turning myself away from her as best I could, I watched Bishop head to the pulpit. He gave the typical introduction, and the congregation clapped in the appropriate spot. Then it was like the rest of the room got fuzzy around the edges and blurred out. My eyes were lasered in on Malik. The way he wore his preacher’s robe and that little bow tie peeking out had me wishing I could get even a tiny glimpse underneath it—yup, straight to hell.
“Good morning, saints. Giving honor and glory to God for allowing me to bring this word to you today. I want to talk to you about acceptance.” His voice was hypnotizing.
As soon as I felt her clutching my knee, I made a low-key swipe to move her hand. I didn’t need her intruding in on my moment. I wanted to focus and spend the next twenty minutes or so gazing on this spiritual Adonis.
“Church, God loves you. Did you know that? God loves you exactly the way you are. His love is unconditional and does not require your perfection. You are His creation and therefore are perfect in His sight and completely lovable as you are. Now, does that mean you’re not going to make mistakes? No. We are all works in progress, and mistakes are a part of the process, but even in your flaws and errors, never doubt that God sees you, and He loves you.”
After service, I practically floated out of the choir stand and into the choir room to hang up my robe. I knew in my heart that Malik’s words were how a sermon was supposed to make you feel.
“Look who’s in a good mood.”
“Stop sneaking up on me.” I was always so jittery in this building. I backed up and turned so quickly that I banged my shoulder on the closet door.
“We are in the middle of the choir room. There’s no sneaking happening.” Bess leaned in close and then whispered, “None except the looks you were sneaking at your hot pastor boyfriend.”