The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

by Philyaw, Deesha

  “Have you seen that new Fat Boys video? With the Beach Boys?”

  “ ‘Wipeout’?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. It’s a trip,” he said, laughing.

  “I heard the song on the radio, but I haven’t seen the video.”

  “What? They play it, like, fifty times a day on MTV.”

  “I don’t have cable.”

  “You don’t have cable?”

  I shrugged.

  “But I know you watch The Cosby Show.”

  “Yep. You know who I can’t stand? Vanessa. She is so annoying!”

  “She makes me glad I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

  “Me too. Though I wouldn’t mind Denise. She’s cool.”

  “That honey is foine. I wouldn’t want her for a sister, though. That’s illegal!”

  We both cracked up, and then silence followed. My hand rested near Trevor’s on the dining room table. His fingers were not stubby sausages like his father’s. They were long and slim, and I wondered how they would feel inside me, how he would feel inside me. What if I went all the way with him? Something I hadn’t done before. I pictured it: Trevor and me, naked and all tangled up, groping and sucking, on the dining room table beneath his mother’s crystal chandelier. I felt sick again at the thought, this time at the pit of my stomach. Sick with desire. The words took shape in my mind, black and slick like oil, rising from the page of a trashy novel I’d gotten from the grocery store the week before.

  In that moment, I understood how enough desire could drown you, take you all the way under.

  I closed my eyes, cleared the fantasies, and pulled myself back to the surface.

  At home that night, I took the envelope of money Miz Marilyn had given me and dropped it on the kitchen counter next to where my mother stood washing dishes. I headed for the living room.

  “How was it?” my mother called after me.

  I stopped without turning around to face her. How was it? How was it? Was she serious? Oh, it was about what you would expect from spending time with the wife and son of the preacher your mom is fucking on a weekly basis.

  “Fine,” I said, my back still turned.

  “That’s it? Just ‘fine’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Here. Take this. It’s yours.”

  I turned around. My mother held the envelope out to me.

  “No, ma’am. I don’t want it.”

  “Here,” she said. She shook the envelope. I sighed and took it.

  “Sit down.” I sat at the table, and my mother sat across from me. “Tell me about the house.”

  “It’s . . . big. And . . . full of old, expensive furniture.”

  My mother frowned. “What else? What about her?”

  “What about her?”

  “Watch your tone. And don’t get smart with me.”

  “I’m not. I just . . . I don’t know what you want me to say.” I shrugged. I felt a strange sense of loyalty to Miz Marilyn and to Trevor. None of us asked to be in this situation.

  “She was nice.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And . . . I don’t know. She’s not white.”

  “You thought she was white?” My mother laughed, loud and throaty. “No, she’s just high yellow. As black as he is, he likes a high-yellow woman, of course.” My mother was only a shade or two darker than Miz Marilyn. I was darker than my mother, but not as dark as Pastor Neely. A sick feeling came over me, for the third time that day: could Pastor Neely be my father? My mother only ever said he was someone I wouldn’t want to know.

  As if she’d read my mind, my mother said, “Just like your daddy. Black as midnight, but chased high-yellow and white women nonstop.”

  “May I be excused?”

  My mother looked disappointed. “I made you a TV dinner.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  “Did you eat over there?”

  “Just some sandwiches.”

  “What kind?”

  I had to bite my tongue. I couldn’t believe she was giving the third degree about a damn sandwich. I just wanted to go take a shower. “Chicken salad.”

  “And what else?”

  “Coke.”

  “And that’s it? Hmph.”

  “Yes, that was it,” I said. “May I please be excused?”

  My mother waved me away.

  Later that night and many nights after over the months I tutored Trevor, I drifted in and out of dreams about him. I had liked a couple of the boys I’d fooled around with, had liked a few others from a distance. But Trevor was the first boy I really crushed on. His big, curious eyes; the round tip of his nose; and his full lips. A smile or a laugh was never far from his mouth. I wanted to kiss him. Every Tuesday brought a new opportunity to kiss him. The way I would catch him looking at me, I was sure the feeling was mutual. But all I allowed myself to do was inhale the sweet mix of hair grease, soap, and sweat emanating from him when our heads hovered together over his precalculus textbook. On the rare occasions when I did allow our eyes to meet for longer than a second, Trevor would smile, satisfied. And I would be flooded with a mix of desire and irrational guilt. Trevor couldn’t blame me for what my mother and his father were doing. And while I certainly wasn’t going to tell him, my knowing and his not knowing just felt wrong somehow. But what could I do?

  All of this cemented my understanding of God as a twisted puppet master watching his creations bounce around, trapped and tangled up in tragedies for his amusement.

  Despite the tension, Trevor and I always got back to the work, back to the reason for my being there: he wanted to do well in precalculus, and I wanted him to do well so that he would graduate and I could stop hugging his mother every week, like a Judas by proxy, and frustrating my mother with reports of turkey sandwiches, sloppy joes, and corn dogs. But I would miss spending time with him, guilt and all.

  I managed to avoid Pastor Neely for four Tuesdays of tutoring. But on the fifth Tuesday, he opened the door when I rang the bell. I took a step back. My mouth went dry, and I did not return his hello.

  Pastor Neely grinned and extended his hand to me the way he did to parishioners during the love offering. I looked down at those fat sausage fingers, and my stomach lurched. He dropped his hand and his grin, but his voice was cheerful. “Come on in. Olivia . . . is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I stepped partway into the foyer, but kept one foot close to the door, imagining the fallout if I just turned and ran.

  Trevor came bounding down the stairs. He froze on the last stair and narrowed his eyes at his father. “Where’s Mom?”

  “She went to check on your Aunt Catherine. She hasn’t been feeling well lately.”

  “Oh,” Trevor said. He didn’t move from that bottom stair.

  “Well, just do whatever you do when your mother is here,” Pastor Neely told Trevor. “I’ll be downstairs in the study.”

  Trevor waited until his father was gone before stepping down into the foyer.

  “Come all the way in,” he said. “You look like you ready to bolt. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Sometimes people are intimidated by my dad. You look scared.”

  I managed a laugh I hoped was convincing. “Me? Scared? Please. You looked scared.”

  Trevor’s face reddened a bit, and he looked at the ground. “I was just surprised to see him home this early. That’s all.”

  I wasn’t buying it. But then he flashed me a smile, so I dropped it.

  Miz Marilyn had left us grilled cheese sandwiches wrapped in foil on the dining room table.

  Trevor took a huge bite out of a sandwich. “My mom’s not the greatest cook in the world, but she makes a good grilled cheese.”

  I took a bite. The sandwich was buttery and delicious. “This is goo—,” I started to say, but Trevor was on me, his lips on mine, his body pressing mine against the table.

  I swallowed the bits of sandwich in my mou
th and then returned Trevor’s kiss. He slid his hands beneath my shirt and cupped my breasts. I moaned and placed my palm on the table to steady myself.

  Trevor reached around to unhook my bra. “No!” I whispered. “We can’t. Your dad . . .”

  “. . . is in his study.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Trevor held his hands up and backed away. “You’re probably right.”

  I exhaled, relieved that he wasn’t upset, but also screaming with joy inside, already replaying the kiss in my mind.

  “Now you expect me to just sit here with blue balls and solve some polynomial equations,” Trevor said. He made a big show of walking wide-legged to his chair.

  “You are so silly,” I said.

  And after that, we started each tutoring session with a brief make-out session. We knew that if Miz Marilyn was going to check on us, it wouldn’t be in the first few minutes. Oddly enough, making out with Trevor made me feel less guilty where he and Miz Marilyn were concerned. For a few moments at least, I could forget about our parents, and just be a girl kissing a boy she liked. Simple.

  At the end of April, Miz Marilyn turned sixty. “It’s my birthday!” she announced as she threw the door open to let me in.

  “Happy birthday!” I said.

  “I am sixty years old today. No spring chicken!” she chuckled. “You know, Trevor was my miracle child, my change-of-life baby . . .” Trevor had come into the foyer, but turned on his heel when he heard the topic of conversation. Miz Marilyn reached out and pulled him back.

  “I thought it wasn’t God’s will for me to ever be a mother, but he gave me my beautiful boy when I was forty-three!” she said, throwing her arms around Trevor.

  “Ma, come on, cut it out,” Trevor said, squirming away. “I need to study.”

  “All right, all right,” Miz Marilyn said. “I’ll leave you two scholars to your work.”

  In the dining room, Trevor tried to kiss me. “No!” I hissed and pushed him away. I turned my back to him to wipe away tears.

  “Okay . . .” he said. “That time of the month, I guess.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  Trevor shook his head. We sat down and went over the problems he missed on a pop quiz. Then he started his homework, stopping to ask questions when he needed to. After a while, I started to pack up and leave.

  “What are you doing?” Trevor looked at his watch. “We’ve still got fifteen minutes left.”

  “So you’re a timekeeper now?” I snapped.

  “No, I just . . .” Trevor looked dejected. “I just had a question about number six.”

  I sighed, dropped my bag, and sat back down in the chair. “Look,” I said. “If your mother wants to hug you, let her. Don’t be an asshole.”

  The following week, Trevor answered the door when I arrived. He wore a Public Enemy T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. Message: I’m a jock, and I’m righteous. How could I possibly stay mad at him?

  I stepped inside. “Where’s Miz Marilyn?”

  “She and my dad just left to go the hospital. My aunt’s really sick.” His voice cracked a little, and he pretended to cough to cover it up.

  “I’m sorry. I hope she’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” Trevor said. “I heard my mom say she might not make it. Her heart is failing. They are going to make a prayer circle around her. Like that’s going to help.”

  “You don’t believe in prayer?”

  Trevor looked at me. “I’m a PK. Of course I believe in prayer.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “What’s a PK?”

  “Preacher’s Kid. I thought everybody knew that.”

  “Well, you thought wrong.”

  We stood there, staring at each other.

  “I never told anybody,” I said, “but I don’t believe in prayer either.”

  Trevor did that half-smile thing and shook his head. “I bet you have a lot of secrets.”

  “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  Trevor reached for my hand, and I gave it to him.

  Upstairs in his bedroom, Trevor put a cassette in his boom box and pressed Play. As Keith Sweat crooned “Make It Last Forever,” we kissed and undressed each other.

  “Wow,” Trevor said once my bra and panties were off. Instantly his hands were everywhere. For once I didn’t feel embarrassed or annoyed. I felt powerful.

  I pushed Trevor back on the bed and straddled him, letting my breasts sweep against his face.

  “You ever did it before?” he asked.

  “No. You?”

  He hesitated a beat too long, so I knew that no matter what he said, the truth was that he hadn’t.

  He told the truth. And then together we figured out how to put on the condom.

  Trevor closed his eyes as he positioned himself between my legs. I wondered what he was thinking about. I was trying not to think about his father and my mother. The white-hot pain of him entering me brought me to tears. Tears from the fresh pain and from old hurts ran together.

  “You want me to stop?” Trevor asked, still thrusting.

  I never wanted him to stop.

  When it was over, we finished the risky business of removing the condom. My fears of getting pregnant, all the what-ifs I had held at bay while we were doing it, they all came flooding back. My mother would kill me. And Miz Marilyn . . . I didn’t even want to think about how upset and disappointed she would be. If Trevor was thinking about any of this, he didn’t show it. He just adjusted the pillow beneath our heads, laid back, and smiled at me.

  I propped myself up on one elbow. “Don’t you think we should go back downstairs? Your parents could come back at any time.”

  “They’ll be praying for hours. Trust me.”

  So I laid down on the pillow next to him and stared at the ceiling. “Now what?”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “No, it’s not that . . . I don’t know. It’s weird. How something can feel right and wrong at the same time.”

  “My father would say that what we just did is plain wrong, a sin. Fornication.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He shrugged.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  He shrugged again.

  “For a long time,” I said, “I thought your father was God.”

  “Yeah. You and me both.”

  And then Trevor reached for me with one hand and for a condom with the other.

  Miz Marilyn’s sister died a few days later. When I showed up for Trevor’s next tutoring session, I brought Miz Marilyn a peach cobbler I’d baked. I had hoped that Pastor Neely wouldn’t be there and was relieved when he wasn’t. It would be the last tutoring session; Trevor had finals, then graduation, and then he was off to More-house in Atlanta.

  “I’m so sorry about your sister,” I said.

  “Thank you, dear,” Miz Marilyn said. “She’s at peace now.”

  Miz Marilyn’s eyes were red from crying. It was the first time I’d seen her without a full face of makeup, and her hair was loose and a bit bushy. But she clapped her hands when I showed her the cobbler. “Oh, my word! It almost looks too good to eat. Almost! Trevor!”

  As Miz Marilyn chattered on about the cobbler and how her sister used to make good apple cobblers, “God rest her soul,” I noticed a new framed picture on the hall table. In it, Trevor wore a tux, and his arm was around a pretty light-skinned girl in a seafoam-green prom gown. Her makeup was flawless and her hair was done up in glossy ringlets. They looked like wedding cake toppers, posed and stiff.

  “—my best china and silverware. Because a special treat calls for special dishes. Oh, didn’t Trevor and Monica look lovely?” Miz Marilyn asked when she saw me staring at the photo. “They took that picture in her backyard. The Caldwells have a beautiful home up in Hillcrest. A perfect backdrop.”

  A Woodbury Academy girl from Hillcrest. Whose mother hadn’t been fucking his father for over a decade.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s perfect.�
��

  In the dining room, I could barely swallow a bite, but Miz Marilyn and Trevor dug into the cobbler. They both said it was the best they’d ever had. Miz Marilyn closed her eyes every time she took a bite. I tried to absorb all this goodness, but I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t even belong there, sullying her spotless home. Trevor finished his first helping, pushed his plate aside, and ate directly from the pan. I wanted to stab him with my fork.

  Trevor kept stealing glances, asking me questions with his eyes. When Miz Marilyn left us alone to study, he stopped me when I asked to see his homework. “You okay?”

  “It’s not your concern.”

  “Whoa. You pregnant?”

  “What? No!” I said, way too loudly.

  “Then what—”

  “Nothing. Let’s just go over your homework.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what’s the matter?”

  What was the matter? What was I expecting? For him to take me to the prom just because we’d had sex? He hadn’t told me he had a girlfriend, but I also hadn’t asked. What did he owe me? What did anyone owe me?

  “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” Trevor said. “Yeah.”

  Yeah? That was it? Yeah?

  The next forty minutes felt like a year. Trevor finished his homework. I checked it, and we went over the ones he missed. I spoke as little as possible. My voice was slow and heavy and felt like it belonged to someone else.

  When the session was over, I grabbed my bag to leave.

  “Wait,” Trevor said. He stood up and pulled me to him.

  “Let me go.” I pushed him away.

  Trevor shrugged. “All right. If that’s how you want to be.”

  How did I want to be?

  I wanted to be free of other people’s secrets.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s how I want to be.”

  In the foyer, Miz Marilyn handed me my cleaned baking pan and my last pay envelope. “With a bonus!” she said, hugging me. As I stepped outside, she called after me. “Please come and see me, anytime. This big old house will be lonely come fall.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, knowing I never would.

  As soon as I was on the street and out of sight, I ran. I ran and cried the entire bus ride home.