The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

by Philyaw, Deesha

  Once I get to campus, it’s harder than usual to find parking because snow has been plowed into some of the spaces. Eventually I find a spot two blocks from my office on a tree-lined side street. I brace myself for the cold and throw open the car door.

  I step out and my feet slide from under me in an instant. My butt slams onto the patch of ice, and my shoulder and back scrape against the base of the car when I land. The car door blocks my view, and my first thought is Does anyone see me? But I’m not sure whether I want to be seen.

  The cold seeps through my waterproof pants and pain shoots up from my lower back to my shoulders. I want to get up, but I’m afraid of slipping and falling again. I can hear people walking and driving past. I could call out to them. I could get help. I look up at the sky, which is gray like the branches overhead. The branches bend toward me, yielding beneath the weight of the snow piled along them.

  A thought crystallizes and takes hold, a thought I haven’t had in years, maybe a decade: I want my mother.

  If my phone weren’t in my purse in the back seat of the car, I would call my mother right this minute. My mother who had been my soft place to land. Until she wasn’t.

  Everything hurts, and I suspect standing up will hurt even more. I wince at the thought of walking the two blocks to my office. Then I tell myself I’m being ridiculous. Get up. Get up get up get up. I repeat this in my head and then under my breath until I am on my knees. I hoist myself back into the driver’s seat and slam the door shut. I turn the car on and the heat. I’m sobbing now, and it’s as if the sound belongs to someone else. Like the time I woke up from minor surgery annoyed that there was a woman nearby who wouldn’t stop crying, not realizing that the woman was me.

  It hurts to reach back and grab my purse, but I do it anyway. I take out my phone and pull up my mother’s number. I sit there with my finger hovering over the Call button, for forever it seems. But then I scroll through the Recent Calls list and tap Rhonda’s name. I try to get the crying under control before she answers, but I can’t.

  “Leelee, baby, slow down, slow down,” she says. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. What happened?”

  “I hate this fucking snow!”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I hate the snow. I hate winter. I hate this city! I don’t want to be here.”

  Silence. Rhonda sighs. “Where do you want to be?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “I think you do know.”

  “I slipped.”

  “What?”

  “I slipped and fell getting out of the car. I’m fine. But . . . I almost called my mother.”

  Silence. And then Rhonda says, “Must be nice.”

  I want to explain how it was just a primal reaction, this urge to call my mother. I want to tell her that she is home too, that she is now my soft place to land, and I am hers.

  But nothing I can say will change the fact of my mother-privilege: I could call my mother if I wanted to and she would answer and she might even offer a modicum of comfort and concern, same as she would offer a stranger. I could get that, at least. Rhonda could not.

  “LeeLee, if you’re sure you’re fine,” Rhonda says, “I have to get back to work.”

  Fresh tears sting my eyes. “I’m sure. Yeah.”

  The call drops, and I return the phone to my purse. I push through the pain and get out of the car again, this time stepping over the icy patch. The walk to the office isn’t too bad, but I can feel a bruise pulsing across my back and shoulders.

  By the time my class starts, I’ve taken three Tylenol, and I get through it by sitting in a chair in the front of the room instead of standing and lecturing like I normally do. I feel like maybe I’m moving a beat slower than usual. But my students, an engaged group of twelve women and two men, don’t seem to notice. I tell them they are the only bright spot in an otherwise awful day. I’m certain this weirds them out, but I felt like saying it.

  Later, when Rhonda gets in the car, she asks how I’m feeling. I tell her I’m fine, and we make the slow crawl through rush-hour traffic.

  “LeeLee . . . I’m sorry for what I said earlier. ‘Must be nice.’ ”

  “It’s okay, babe. I get it.”

  “Actually, it’s not okay. Just because my . . . just because somebody hurt me doesn’t make it okay for me to hurt you, to not be there the way you need me to be.”

  I’m not sure what to say. The snow is just starting to come down hard as we enter our neighborhood. I pull the car into the driveway and push through the pain again to slowly ease out of the car. When my feet are steady, I notice Rhonda standing next to the driver’s side door with her car keys in her hand.

  “Head on upstairs, and I’ll see you in a few,” she says.

  “Where are you going? It’s snowing.”

  “I know. I’ll be all right.”

  “But where are you going?”

  Rhonda shakes her head. “Just go in the house and get yourself in a warm bath. Please?”

  I go inside, run the bath, and try not to worry. Our tub is the claw-foot kind, the kind we’d had in my house growing up. Rhonda thinks I chose this house because of the tub, and she might be right. There were houses in better shape and in better neighborhoods than this one, but only this one had a claw-foot tub. I sink down, letting the water cover my back and shoulders, letting my eyelids close.

  I guess this is how Rhonda felt the night of the first snow. I was out in it, driving, and she was at home, worried. She had stayed home from work that day to wait for the electrician to come and replace some outlets in the house. Traffic was awful because of the snow and an accident, so by the time I got home, it had been dark for a while. Rhonda had been torn between staying on the phone with me to know I was safe and hanging up so I wouldn’t be distracted. Then my phone died and that dilemma was solved.

  Now my fully charged phone rests on the floor next to the tub.

  I distract myself with a childhood game: I soap up my hands and blow bubbles using my fingers in the “okay” sign position as a makeshift wand. The pain in my back and shoulders begins to subside. I imagine it disappearing into the water mixed in with the soap residue.

  Eventually I doze off. I wake up off and on to add hot water and check my phone. At one point, there’s a text from Rhonda: On my way. I text back Love you. No reply.

  When I wake up again, Rhonda is standing next to the tub holding one of the oversized T-shirts I sleep in.

  “Your back looks like you’ve been in a fight with a bear . . . and lost. Come on,” she says. “I have something for you downstairs.” She’s changed out of her work clothes and into a strapless sundress I haven’t seen since before we moved here. I dry off and follow her downstairs.

  I smell it before I see it. The pepper hits my nose first, and then the full array of aromas: onions, peppers, Old Bay, Zatarain’s crab boil seasoning.

  Grocery store bags litter the floor and counters. The kitchen table is covered in newspapers that Rhonda must’ve bought at the store. My mother always saved old newspapers to cover the picnic table in the backyard. And just like on my mother’s table, there are little bowls of melted butter, a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce, and a pitcher of sweet tea.

  On the stove, the stockpot is full of roiling, bright-red water, a tiny, furious ocean full of snow crab legs, potatoes, and ears of corn.

  We’ve tried before to get live blue crabs at Wholey’s, the fresh seafood place everyone recommends, but their shipment comes in early Monday mornings and they sell out within minutes.

  I turn to Rhonda. She smiles and throws her arms out wide. “They’re frozen, but the best cure we got for the winter blues.”

  Just then, I catch on to the song playing on Rhonda’s iPod: “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. I two-step my way into Rhonda’s arms, and we swing each other around and around the kitchen until the crabs are ready and our faces are damp from the moist, salty air.

  Rhonda fills an aluminum
pan with crabs and sets it in the middle of the table. I pour us some tea.

  “Not that you need my permission,” Rhonda says as she joins me at the table, “but it’s okay with me if you want to call your mother. I mean, don’t let me be the reason you don’t call her. And maybe you want to go see her. Spend some time with her. She calls, not much, but that means she is leaving space for you in her life.”

  I try to detect any trace of resignation or martyrdom beneath her words, but as is always the case, what Rhonda says is exactly what she means.

  “Babe,” I say, “the space my mother has left for me isn’t big enough for two.”

  Rhonda nods, and we dig in.

  Outside, snow blankets our deck. It will fall all night, and tomorrow, we’ll again do its bidding.

  HOW TO MAKE LOVE TO A PHYSICIST

  HOW DO you make love to a physicist? You do it on Pi Day—pi is a constant, also irrational—but the groundwork is laid months in advance. First you must meet him in passing at a STEAM conference. As a middle school art teacher, you are there to ensure the A(rts) are truly represented and not lost amid the giants of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math. But as a Black woman, you are there playing Count the Negroes, as you do at every conference. He is number twelve, at a conference of hundreds. On the first day of the conference, you notice him coming down the convention center escalator as you ride up. You try to guess which letter of the acronym he is there to represent. His face and baby dreads give you equal parts “poet” and “high school math teacher.”

  On the second day of the conference, you see him again at a breakout session, “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He’s chatting with the presenter—a sista, number thirteen—before the session begins. From what you overhear, you glean that they know each other from their under-grad days in Atlanta in the early nineties. They have a lot of people in common at their respective alma maters. They promise to catch up again before the conference is over. You notice she’s wearing a wedding ring, and he is not.

  As you’re leaving the breakout session, he notices you noticing him. His smile is brilliant; you smile back. He falls in step with you, extends his hand, and introduces himself. He says “Eric Turman,” but you hear “Erick Sermon.” And your eyes widen and then narrow because you think he’s joking, in a weirdly esoteric way.

  “No, Eric Turman,” he says again, laughing. “Not the guy from EPMD.”

  “Got it,” you say. “I’m Lyra James. Not to be confused with Rick James.”

  Eric chuckles. “But often confused with Lyra, home to one of the brightest stars in the night sky.”

  The compliment takes you by surprise, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of hiding it. “So you’re . . . a science teacher?”

  He is not a science teacher, nor is he a poet. He’s a physicist and chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society.

  You make small talk about “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He asks what brings you to the conference and you tell him you teach middle school art—sculpting, printmaking, painting, fiber arts, ceramics. He asks if you will tell him more over lunch. And you do. And then the conversation continues over dinner—you learn what the chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society does—and then in the bar of the conference hotel, over drinks. And then on a sofa in the lobby. You each share your top five MCs. You debate Scarface vs. Rakim for number one.

  You notice his thick eyelashes, large hands, and a little scar next to his right eyebrow. When he lifts his newsboy cap a few times to scratch his head, you see the baby dreads are neat and well moisturized.

  He tells you about his job, the one that pays the bills, where he develops astrophysics and cosmology theories, and conducts research to test those theories. “I aspire to be an astronaut as a side hustle, but NASA won’t return a brotha’s calls.” He shrugs. “What about you?”

  “Me?” you say. “Oh, I just have the one job.”

  “And your aspirations?”

  You take a deep breath and spill your dreams. “You know that school LeBron James started? I want to start one like that. A bunch of them, actually, all over the country. But I’ll start with one, serving entire families. That’s really the key, you know?”

  He knows. And then before you know it, it’s after midnight, and you’re both still wearing your conference lanyards, and together, you are solving all of public education’s problems, but for want of an end to systemic racism, abolishment of the current system of school funding, and a few billion dollars. Eric has pulled out his phone, made a few calculations, recorded the recommendations you’ve given him—of artists, works of art, books, public school advocacy programs. He is curious and he’s listening.

  At 2:13 a.m., he says, “Well, you are refreshing.” And you feel anything but, because those French 75s you had at the bar have made you drowsy. And because it’s 2:13. But you want him to keep talking, to keep listening. Maybe invite him to come up? No, too soon. You don’t think he’s a serial killer; that’s not it. It’s that you don’t want him to think you’re that kind of woman. The kind your mother warned you not to be, so you have not been. You are forty-two.

  Maybe ask him to meet for breakfast in the morning, then? No, too presumptuous.

  Your eyes must’ve glazed over as you debated yourself, because he says, “I better let you get some rest. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.”

  And you both stand and stretch. But then you just stand there, looking at each other, not leaving.

  “I hope I’m not being too presumptuous,” he begins, “but would you like to meet for breakfast?”

  How do you make love to a physicist? On the flight home from the conference, you tally all the things you have in common:

  • You’re tired of people asking why you’re still single.

  • You care about children, but don’t want any of your own.

  • Fall is your favorite season.

  • You’re not a fan of Tyler Perry, and you’re tired of people insisting you become one.

  • You both have terrible vision and had to navigate your childhood being teased. (“Your glasses so thick, you can see the future” was a perennial favorite.)

  • The first Aunt Viv is your favorite.

  • In the case of Prince vs. Michael Jackson, you got Prince.

  You took all your meals with him for the rest of the conference and talked for hours and hours but left so many things unsaid. Like how you had a high school sweetheart and a college sweetheart and a grad school sweetheart. How men chose you, and you devoted years to the relationships, but never quite felt at home in your body with them—an understanding your therapist has helped you to articulate. You didn’t tell him how you stayed until those men decided to leave you for women more at home in their bodies, more sure of themselves, prettier.

  You didn’t tell him that, as corny and clichéd as it sounds, you’re more accustomed to speaking through your art. Paintings and sketches you framed and gave as gifts, or framed and hung in your own house. But these days, you mostly just pour yourself into your students. It’s safer that way.

  You didn’t tell him how, one by one over the decades, you’d lost all your good girlfriends to marriage and motherhood, your friendships reduced to children’s birthday parties and the rare Girls’ Night Out.

  You didn’t tell him that aside from the occasional online dating fling, plus some fumbling around with a childhood friend when he’s between women he would actually date, you’re celibate for months at a time.

  Later your therapist will ask why any of those things needed to be said to a man you just met. You know she has a point, but you have no answer other than that maybe you’re the kind of woman who should come with a warning, a disclaimer.

  If Eric had withheld even a fraction of the things you withheld, that would be a lot of stuff. By the time your plane touches down, you’ve resolved that you will never know the real him, or if he was even since
re. At baggage claim, you’ll decide that it had just been the excitement of the moment, that he’d get back to his life and forget all about you. And you should try to do the same. So you delete his number from your phone.

  That night, when you are back home in your own bed, you send your colleagues in the math and science departments a long email detailing your desire to collaborate with them in the coming school year.

  How do you make love to a physicist? You take out your charcoal and sketch his face from memory. You tell your therapist about him and how he didn’t forget you, but you’re allowing his phone calls to go unanswered and leaving his texts on “read.” Because you’re not good at stuff like this.

  “Stuff like what?” your therapist asks.

  “Men. It never works out.”

  “But you’ve sketched his face. And told me about him. Why?”

  “Because we had a great moment. But that’s all it was.”

  “Then why is he still texting you?”

  “Just being nice.”

  She tilts her head in that Girl, please way she does right before she challenges you. She asks, “Is this another example of you talking yourself out of potentially good things?”

  How do you make love to a physicist? You continue reading his text messages, even though you don’t respond to them. He’s been texting for weeks, undaunted. He asks how you’re doing, tells you how he’s doing and what he’s doing. He’s presented his proposal to his board for an arts and sciences summer camp and family retreat. He thanks you for the inspiration.

  One Sunday after church while you are at your mother’s for dinner, he texts you a picture of a deep orange and red sunset with the caption, Best scattering of light rays ever. You don’t realize you’re smiling until your mother asks, “Why are you smiling?” She sounds more suspicious than curious. And you wonder when she last saw you smiling, this woman who insists on sending you home every week with enough leftovers for ten people then asks when you’re going to lose some weight so you can meet a man.

  When you go back to school to set up your classroom for the new year, there is a package from Eric in your box in the faculty mail room. You wonder how he knew where to find you, then you remember the name of your school was printed on your conference lanyard. He has sent you Overview: A New Perspective of Earth, a collection of more than two hundred stunning, high-definition satellite photos of Earth that focus on how people have altered the planet. The collection is named for the “overview effect,” the sensation of overwhelm, awe, and new perspective astronauts report upon looking down at Earth as a whole. An aerial view of a planned community in suburban Florida is a colorful mosaic. A shot of retired military and government aircraft in the aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base resembles a collection of Native American arrowheads. Tulip fields in the Netherlands look like fiber art.