The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

by Philyaw, Deesha

  “Go on and change out of your school clothes,” my mother said.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks as I backed out of the kitchen. At first I stood in the hallway out of sight instead of going to the bedroom to change. Normally I did what my mother told me to do. But at that moment, I was too crushed.

  I peeked around the corner. My mother had sat down at the table, across from Pastor Neely. She couldn’t see me peeking, but Pastor Neely suddenly looked up from the cobbler, right at me! I quickly moved out of sight, bracing myself. But instead of ratting me out, Pastor Neely asked my mother a question: “Why won’t you let the girl go to the party?”

  I peeked around the corner again.

  My mother sighed. “Because I like to keep to myself and she needs to learn to keep to herself too. It’s better that way. You go accepting invitations, then people expect an invitation in return. Then you got people coming in your house, looking at what you have and what you don’t have. And the next thing you know, your business is all over town.” My mother ran her fingertips along the edge of the table and smiled to herself. “And I’m sure you can understand not wanting to have your business all over town.”

  Pastor Neely didn’t say anything. He just took another bite of cobbler and shook his head.

  “And besides . . .” my mother said, “I’m trying to raise her to be satisfied with what she has. I know that lil girl Latasha’s mama and her daddy. Went to school with them. They’ve always been flashy, like to show off. He used to drive her around in his daddy’s Lincoln until his daddy bought him a Mustang. At sixteen years old. They got money and all that come with it. So you know Latasha don’t want for nothing and that birthday party is going to be over the top.”

  “I don’t know these people,” Pastor Neely said, “but if the Lord has blessed them, and they want to celebrate their child’s birthday and invite your child to share in it, I don’t see the problem.” It was strange hearing Pastor Neely talk about the Lord outside of his pulpit. Instead of that scary, booming voice, he sounded like a regular person. A regular person who might convince my mother to let me go to Latasha Wilson’s birthday party. I crossed my fingers on both hands.

  My mother sat up straighter in her chair. When she spoke, it was slowly, as if she were trying to choose her words carefully. “They can raise their child however they see fit. But I’m not going to raise mine to go through life expecting it to be sweet, when for her, it ain’t going to be. The sooner she learns to accept what is and what ain’t, the better. She get a taste of that sweetness, she’s going to want it so bad, she’ll grow up and settle for crumbs of it.”

  Pastor Neely glanced at me again, shook his head, and ate the last bite of cobbler.

  I ducked back out of sight and uncrossed my fingers. My eyes filled with tears again. Without looking, I knew my mother would whisk away the empty cobbler pan, the pastor’s plate, and the spoon. I knew she would dunk them in the soapy dishwater in the sink, like she always did, so that I couldn’t even sneak a taste of the remnants later.

  “You got the best cobbler in the world right here,” I heard Pastor Neely say, Latasha Wilson’s birthday party invitation apparently forgotten. He said this all the time. And because I believed he was a kind of Black Santa, I imagined him preaching at church on Sunday, traveling the whole world Tuesday through Saturday to try other mothers’ peach cobblers, but always coming back to my mother’s on Monday.

  I went and changed out of my school clothes, then sat on the couch, unsure of what to do with this new feeling toward my mother: anger.

  I heard them go into our bedroom and shut the door. I got up to put a TV dinner in the oven. Sometimes my mother remembered to put one in, sometimes she didn’t. The fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, and warm brownie was my favorite. I always ate the brownie first, while it was still gooey in the middle.

  Sometimes Pastor Neely and my mother would be in the bedroom for minutes, sometimes an hour. Always there was laughter when they came out. My mother would be laughing at some joke I hadn’t heard, and she would wish Pastor Neely a good night. And he would laugh and thank her again for the peach cobbler.

  I remember the laughter because the silence in our house between visits from Pastor Neely made me wish I knew the right jokes to tell to make my mother laugh like that. I didn’t know the right jokes, but maybe if I watched her hands as she sliced the peaches, counted how many times she stirred, and learned to gauge by smell the exact moment to take the cobbler from the oven—maybe I could make a cobbler that pleased God. And maybe that would please my mother.

  On those Mondays that God didn’t come, my mother would toss the cobbler in the garbage after dinner, pour herself a large tumbler of Tanqueray, and send me to bed early. Sometimes he wouldn’t come for several weeks in a row. Or several months. I remembered one time a toothless old woman testified at church saying, “God may not come when you want him, but he’s always right on time.”

  One Monday night, when I was eight, I lay in bed, restless, thinking about that cobbler in the bottom of the garbage can. But this night, I remembered that I had taken the garbage out and put in a fresh bag right before my mother threw the cobbler away. I got up, as if I had to go to the bathroom, but I went into the kitchen instead.

  In the darkness, I reached down into the garbage can until my fingertips were wet and sticky. I grabbed a handful of the cobbler and shoved it all in my mouth at once. The sugary juice dribbled over the corner of my mouth down to my chin as I chewed. I savored the peaches and the soft bits of crust soaked through with the syrup. Nothing had ever tasted so good. From memory, I pictured every movement of my mother’s hands. How she dunked the peaches in boiling water, then ran them under cold tap water to slide the peels off. The easy way she wielded the knife to slice the peaches. The care she took to drain canned peaches when Georgia peaches were out of season.

  I wanted to be those peaches. I longed to be handled by caring hands. And if I couldn’t, I wanted the next best thing: to make something so wonderful with my own hands.

  “What are you doing?”

  I swung around. My mother stood in the doorway with her bare arms folded. She wore a faded cotton nightgown that had been sky blue once upon a time.

  “I asked you a question,” she said, her voice still thick with gin.

  Tears streaked my cheeks, and my sticky fingers were still in my mouth. I bit down on them, not sure how to answer her, and afraid not to answer. My mother didn’t whup me often—by then, I had learned how to stay on the right side of her anger most of the time. But when she did, it was like she had lowered her bucket into an ancient well of fury that ran far deeper than my present crime. She would wail along with me as she hit me, saying over and over that I had to learn. I had to.

  “Answer me.”

  “I wanted some of the cobbler.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What did I tell you about taking things that are not yours?”

  “It’s stealing.”

  “Who does that cobbler belong to?”

  My mother and I had never spoken about what happened on Mondays, but instinct had told me it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, and as a general rule, my mother had no patience for my questions.

  “It belongs to . . . to God.”

  My mother’s eyes widened. “Are you sassing me, girl?” She stepped toward me. I ran to the back door and pressed my back against it. Outside, I decided, was still scarier than inside.

  My words came tumbling out. “No, Mama. I’m not sassing you. You make the cobbler for God.”

  “I make the . . . ?” Mama dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “You think that . . .” She made a sound, something like laughing and coughing and choking all at once.

  “Sit down.”

  I sat in the chair across from her. “I know you don’t understand why some things are the way they are,” Mama said. “You just haven’t lived long enough to know. But I know. I kn
ow what’s best. I know what’s good for you.”

  Mama reached over and touched the back of my hand. The thrill of her touch made me forget for a moment that I was in trouble.

  “One thing you gotta understand, though: Pastor Neely is not God,” she said. “He is a friend of mine. That’s why he comes by here.” She spoke with a softness that matched her touch and tamped down my fear. Even when she continued, saying “But that ain’t nobody’s business but mine,” some of the softness remained. I wished this softer mama would show up more often.

  “Do you understand me?”

  I didn’t. Not completely. But I understood enough to know I was being asked to keep a secret. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  And it was an easy secret to keep. First there were the questions of who I would tell and why they would care to know. Not being allowed to spend time with my classmates outside of school had positioned me firmly on the sidelines of any group of girls that would have had me in the first place. Pretty much everybody on our side of town was poor. But thanks to my too-small or too-large Goodwill clothes and run-over shoes, the other girls never found themselves last in the elementary school pecking order.

  And while those girls (save Latasha Wilson) weren’t much better off than me, at least their hair was brushed into carefully parted, well-oiled ponytails with barrettes most days. This currency of being neat and cared for was always out of my reach, a fact that was evident every time I stood on a chair in front of the bathroom mirror, struggling to wrestle my giant ball of thick hair into a single puff atop my head. Mama always said she had never been good at that kind of thing—she had loose curls that didn’t require taming—and she was relieved when I could finally do it myself.

  So I had no real friends to confide in about Pastor Neely, and the idea of saying anything at all—not to mention my mother’s business—at length to an adult? The idea of it made my stomach flip-flop.

  Even if my mother hadn’t asked me to keep her secret, what happened one Monday when I was ten guaranteed I would never tell.

  One hot day in late May, I was walking home from the bus stop. Our electricity had been shut off again, and all the windows in our house were open, to catch a breeze. As I approached the house, one of those wished-for breezes swept past, lifted the curtains at our bedroom window and held them in mid-air long enough for me to see Pastor Neely’s huge, bare ass, to see him standing and thrusting against my mother, crushing her against our dresser.

  As I walked closer toward the front door, the curtains continued their air dance, and I could see more of Pastor Neely. I could see him gripping my mother’s hips with those fat sausage fingers of his covered, I imagined, with sticky syrup from the cobbler, oozing down my mother’s body, and I hated him. This was sex, the it girls at school giggled about behind their hands.

  I got my first period a week later, a shock to both my mother and me. I didn’t know what was happening, and at first my mother would only say, “You’re too young, you’re too young . . .” Her crumpled face and the bulky pad between my legs felt like a punishment.

  By the time I turned eleven, I was covered in pimples and wore a 36D bra. My mother was more embarrassed by my breasts than I was, always chastising me to cover up, as if that was possible. I sensed her retreating even further away from me, so I made the first move. I moved out of our bedroom, took over the living room, and slept on the couch.

  When I stopped going to church, my mother didn’t push.

  Even though I no longer ate the peach cobblers out of the garbage can at night, my hunger remained. I still watched my mother make them because I didn’t want to forget how she did it. Maybe I could make one for myself. Once I asked if she could buy extra peaches so that I could make a cobbler. “I don’t have money to waste on you messing around in my kitchen” was her answer.

  At fourteen, I got a job at the mall, at Thom McAn shoe store. I would buy my own damned peaches.

  I made my cobblers on Friday nights when my mother would hole up in her bedroom with a bottle of Tanqueray and I had the kitchen to myself. I didn’t change a single step or ingredient, so my cobblers tasted as good as my mother’s, even better eaten off a plate instead of my fingers. I ate cobbler with every meal throughout the weekend until it was all gone. I would soak the empty pan in the sink, my hands lingering in the warm dishwater. I had made something wonderful.

  Only once did my mother acknowledge my cobbler making. She came out of her room one Friday night and stood in the doorway of the kitchen wearing an oversized flannel shirt, gin in hand, watching me. The liquor made her slower and more deliberate, softer, and even more beautiful somehow. Her hair was out of its usual bun, and it flowed over her shoulders. She was in her mid-thirties, but looked girlish, like a life-sized doll.

  “You think you know what you doin’, huh? Think you so smart. Smarter than everybody.”

  I turned away and went back to stirring the batter for my crust.

  My mother walked over to me, so close I could smell the gin on her breath. “There’s book smart, and there’s life smart,” she said. “If you was life smart, you wouldn’t try and be anything like me.”

  I imagined asking Pastor Neely to try my cobbler. But besides our awkward hellos, we never said a word to each other. If I was in the kitchen when he arrived, I would leave and go into the living room. Still, I imagined him tasting my cobbler and telling me it was better than my mother’s—the best in the world. I also imagined serving him a piece with ground-up glass baked into the crust and watching him crumple to the floor. More than that, I wanted my mother to know and be proud that I could make a good cobbler. Mostly I just wanted my mother.

  By eleventh grade, I had tired of fighting off boys and gave in. But none of the boys I fooled around with in the park behind the school deserved my peach cobbler. Mostly they just wanted to mess with my breasts, and mostly I just wanted to be touched.

  One Monday night, in mid-January of my junior year, my mother came into the living room with me after Pastor Neely left. I felt my chest tighten. I much preferred our usual routine where I couldn’t bear to look at her after he left and she didn’t seem to want my company either. But that night, she joined me on the couch and handed me a piece of paper.

  “This is the Neelys’ address. They are expecting you Tuesdays right after school. For tutoring. Trevor is having trouble in math,” she said. “I told him how you get straight As and all in the advanced classes. He’s just going to tell her that the school recommended you as a tutor.”

  He. And her. So we were not going to say Pastor Neely’s name or his wife’s name.

  Of course, there were many things we were not going to say.

  I was going to keep my mouth shut, as expected. As it was always expected.

  That first Tuesday, when First Lady Neely threw open the front door of their McMansion before I could even knock, I realized that she was black, not white. Up close I could see her full lips and broad nose. And looking at her relaxed hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, I could tell it was almost time for a touch-up.

  “Hello, Olivia! I’m Marilyn Neely,” she said, ushering me into the foyer. “But you can call me Miz Marilyn. And I hope you don’t mind,” she said, wrapping her bony arms around me. “I’m a hugger!”

  Realizing that she wasn’t the white woman ice queen I remembered from years ago made me feel even worse about being in her home. I willed myself not to stiffen at her touch, tried to remember that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I wasn’t the one betraying her. I touched her back lightly during the hug, and I could feel her shoulder blades protruding. I felt huge by comparison, like I could crush her bones with one hard squeeze. With one hard truth.

  I felt light-headed at the image of such power, at the memory of Pastor Neely’s naked ass, and at the thought of my mother. What if this woman can read my thoughts? I swayed and almost lost my balance.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Miz Marilyn held me by my shoulders with a surprisingly strong grip. On
each of her hands, three huge diamond rings sparkled.

  She guided me to a small sofa inside the foyer. “This settee has been in my family for fifty years,” she said. “My papa used to say settee was French for ‘useless chair’!”

  She laughed at her own joke, and I tried to smile, but my lips, like the rest of me, were shaking. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little weak. I skipped lunch today.” Which wasn’t a complete lie. I skipped lunch most days because cafeteria food was gross and I preferred the company of books over that of my peers.

  Miz Marilyn clapped her hands. “Well, come on into the dining room. I have a nice snack prepared, and that is where you and Trevor will be working. Trevor!” she yelled up the stairs.

  Trevor Neely was a star football player and college-bound senior at Woodbury Academy, a local private school. He was fair, tall, and lean like his mother. No doubt he had his pick of girls at school. I thought he would have a problem with his tutor being a year younger than him, and a girl. But if either of those things bothered him, he never said.

  After his mother introduced us and then left, closing the pocket doors of the dining room behind her, Trevor stared openly at my breasts. His gray eyes flashed with confidence.

  I picked up a finger sandwich, chicken salad, from the tray Miz Marilyn had prepared. Between bites, I said, “So . . . why don’t you show me what you’re working on in precalc?”

  But Trevor kept staring, at my breasts, into my eyes, then back to my breasts.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I have big tits. Huge boobs. Giant hooters. Enormous knockers. And yes, you’re cute, but your eyes don’t work on me. Now cut the bullshit, and let’s get to work.”

  Trevor laughed, showing his perfect teeth. “You all right,” he said. “You all right.”

  He showed me his last test, on which he’d gotten a 69 percent. We went over his mistakes for about half an hour, then he asked to take a break. We ate sandwiches and sipped Coke. This time when Trevor looked at me, I found myself looking away. He really was cute.