Friendship Cake (5 page)

I
know as much about cooking as I do about trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to a four-year-old. What was Nadine Klenner thinking when she told little Brittany that I could explain it to her? I'll tell you what she was thinking: “That preacher doesn't have anything to do this afternoon, here's my baby-sitter while I go get my nails done!” That's exactly what she was thinking.

A couple of months ago she claimed Brittany wanted to know all about baptism. I planned out some Bible verses to read to her, got her a little coloring book called “Dancing in the Water,” and even filled up the font to give her a demonstration. When Nadine dropped her off, Brittany went straight to the nursery, where she stayed for the entire hour while her mother did their grocery shopping. She had no interest in going to the sanctuary, seeing the baptism font, or coloring pictures of a baby being sprinkled. She wanted to play house in the refrigerator box that the nursery teacher had brought to church the Sunday before.

This time she's probably set on testing out the little Wurlitzer organ somebody donated. I suppose I should tell Nadine that she has to stay with us, eliminate this baby-sitting pattern, besides I don't know any male preacher who would baby-sit a four-year-old, but Nadine has a way of getting what she wants with me. She reminds me of my sister. An empty glass trying to fill herself up. Always managing to find somebody who'll drain themselves dry in order to give her an ounce of living. I poured myself out a long time ago, so I should know how to put the top
on with Nadine. But somehow I feel myself open up like a carton of milk when she walks into the room.

Serena never meant harm. It was the way she coped. The way she managed the life that was handed to us. For as long as I can remember she was living off me. My paycheck, as small as it was, my friends, my homework, my fears and my faith. I had only a few resources in knowing how to deal with our mother, Joyce. Serena had none except for the ones she borrowed from me. Thinking about it now, maybe that was more or better than having her own.

I could tell when Joyce fell off the wagon just by the distance Serena let between herself and me. Somehow it would be she that would awake to the late-night binges first, and it wouldn't be long before I would feel her hot, sticky breath next to my face. I'd slide over, and she'd crawl in the bed next to me.

Even now, as time progresses, I find that my body remembers her in the way my mind forgot. Like at night, when the darkness is as thick as wool, the moon clouded over, and the streetlight is hidden in the tree limbs, I still feel her spooned around my back, her arm carelessly thrown about my shoulder. She is still in me. Drained as I feel of most emotion, I still carry my sister deep inside my heart.

Hope Springs was a surprise. They called me right after seminary graduation. Their pastor left them after only a few months. “Got a bigger church,” they said. Mrs. Peele was the chair of the search committee. She heard me preach at a women's day service at the church on campus. She knew I was from the area, so she asked me to preach during the summer until they found an interim minister.

That was eighteen months ago. I moved from supply preaching to becoming the interim pastor to six months later being permanent. It seemed like a natural progression, just like the passing of school year to school year. And though we haven't ever really discussed it, I think most everybody is satisfied.

Because, as best as I can tell, things are going okay. However, I'll be honest, and it's hard for me to admit, but I realize now that I haven't always been prepared. Not for the big stuff and certainly not for the little stuff. And sometimes in church, I've learned, the little stuff is the big stuff. Part of my job, I'm discovering, is that I'm supposed to know the difference. And sometimes I don't. I just don't.

Like printing the bulletin. I think the order of service and the announcements should flow, be like a hymn or a litany of praise, but all I get are complaints that I put the middle son's name before the first daughter's on the flower memorials. Or that the inserts are too long. I've learned that most of the folks don't read them anyway. They don't seem to have much appreciation for any written material other than
The Farmer's Almanac.

There are times when I'm just not sure that I'm cut out for this preaching business. Looking back, I think maybe Daddy was right; I should have been a nurse or a teacher. At least that way you're able to see your patients get better or your students graduate. You have some sense that you're making a difference, that your project is complete. In the church you can never tell if anyone's getting any better or if anybody's learned a thing. It's like a long, dry summer, the only success you can claim is in naming what hasn't died.

Everybody's always asking about why I wanted to be a
preacher. It's a natural curiosity, I suppose. I never knew any women ministers. And though I wish I had some brilliant story of a mountaintop calling, some bush burning on a hill calling out my name, I know that my story isn't nearly so extravagant. I received a full scholarship to divinity school because of the urging of a religion professor. Since no one else took the time to nominate me for any other graduate school scholarships and I truly admired Dr. Little, I went ahead to seminary and finished the course of study in the recommended three years.

I started going to the Methodist church when I was little. A neighbor took Serena and me in an attempt to make things better for us. Joyce called it meddlesome, but I would still go every Sunday because I loved church. I loved the order of it all. Families sitting together. Mothers and fathers and squirming children, all bunched in tidy rows. A bulletin that spelled out exactly what would happen from beginning to end. Hymnbooks and Bibles with everybody on the same page. Everyone had the understanding that rarely would there be a surprise in church. And I, the daughter of an alcoholic, I longed for an hour without surprises. An hour of cleanliness, order, and clearly defined boundaries. So that church became that solid rock in my sea of disarray. It was where I went to quiet the chaos.

I never had what I would call a religious experience in church. There was never too much emotionalism. And the preacher only came to our house once. As most people did. I joined the church when I was twelve and went regularly right up until college. In all my years of perfect attendance in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, summer camp, and revival there
was never really anything unusual. I never witnessed one miracle, unless you count the tree face.

It was Jimmy Rudgers who showed me the countenance of Christ that had just appeared on the surface of the remains of the old tree at the back of his grandmother's tobacco barn. It was mesmerizing and strange. A miracle, to be sure. Jesus' face set and peeling into the center of a rotten tree trunk. Long hair and eyes set off in the distance, a crown of thorns around his head. He was not quite the clean and smooth-skinned man I had envisioned, but it was still him peering at us from the table of a tree. And we dared not tell anyone for fear the gift would vanish.

Every Saturday morning for a month we would meet at the shrine. I never spoke of where I was going, not even to Serena. Jimmy and I would light matches around the secret sanctuary and pray for stuff to happen: my mother to quit drinking, and his older brother to suffer the consequences of meanness. All week I waited for the chance to visit the wooden Christ. I collected flowers, beads from my jewelry. I even stole a dollar from Joyce's purse to leave at the altar that was mine only to share with Jimmy Rudgers.

In defiance of our pact of always going together, I went to the face alone on a Tuesday when I cut my lip on the water fountain. Butch Rierdon snuck up behind me when I was getting a drink and forced my head into the spout. My bottom lip was split, and I was sent home. Since Joyce was never known to show up in times of emergency, I walked home by way of the stump. In the daze of that warm autumn day, I knelt before the face of Christ,
touched my swollen, torn lip to his, and felt the skin grow back together.

I never even told Jimmy. So that when he finally confessed that he and his brother had made the carving the summer before, that it was no miracle after all, I was not even angry at their practical joke. I only smiled, licking the line on my lip that had become the only evidence I had that I was special.

Since then, the scar has practically disappeared, and my life as a spiritual person is more of an intellectual journey than an emotional or even a faithful one. I moved from class to class, level to level, concentrating on the tasks given, the expectations of professors and committees, and jumping through the hoops placed before me. I was the perfect student, who has always played by the rules without ever asking for anything special. Even when Serena died, I did not pause.

The president of the school called after the chaplain had heard the news and contacted him. He arranged a sort of medical leave for me. But I only missed four days of classes. One to identify the body, since Joyce was too drunk and Daddy was out of town. Two for the visitation and funeral. And one to clean out her things from my mother's apartment. I left Joyce passed out on the kitchen floor, drove back to seminary, and took my exams.

I don't think of myself as wounded or dysfunctional because of my upbringing or lack of family ties. I can't believe that my life is so terrible. I appreciate that I'm rarely surprised. I have low expectations of what life has to offer. And I like being in control. Frankly, it's much more satisfying than being out of control. Or so it appears. I don't know of a time when I wasn't in control.
Even sitting before the face of Jesus, I never permitted myself too much imagination. I was always very sure of where and who I was. There are some things even Jesus can't change.

When I got the job as pastor of Hope Springs, I didn't tell Joyce. She found out in November of that first year. Even though she swore she had been sober six months, I was still too worried that she'd show up one Sunday morning hungover or drunk. I managed to keep her out of it until she ran across my name in the paper in the wedding section. I believe I had just married Penny Throckmorton and that sailor the Friday before. Anyway, Joyce came in the next Sunday. And she was, I'm happy to say, on her best behavior.

Oh, the women were so happy to meet her. They treated her like a queen for the day. She was cordial, polite, even proud. But afterwards I asked her not to come back. Now when folks ask me where she is, I tell them she's Episcopalian and goes over to the church in downtown Greensboro. So far, I've not been bothered by her or the church people wanting her back.

Daddy comes to town every couple of years. That's about as much as he gets back to North Carolina. He's been in Texas for seventeen years. When he left Joyce he married again right away. That one didn't last either. But now he's married to Judy VanBerken, and I think because her family's got a little money he's going to try and stick it out. We've not talked much since I went to college, and I've never told him that I admire him for his willingness to keep looking for happiness. Unlike me, he always seemed to know there was something better than what he had. He's never quit believing that it might just come to him as long as he stays interested.

I suppose I would look too if I believed that there is something better out there for me, but, for the most part, I'm satisfied with my life. I don't want for much anymore. And the most I look for is to keep from being surprised, caught off guard, or running into the unexpected.

There are, of course, some aspects of being a pastor that I hate. The late hours. The pettiness of some of the membership. The endless committee meetings. Sometimes it feels more like running a business than the house of God.

But there are also some things that I love. Like being able to bless stuff. Marriages, babies, families. I even blessed Myrtle Simpleton's back porch because she was afraid a demon had camped out there. It is such a feeling of power to summon forth the forces of the universe, the nodding of God at the beckoning of my voice, the touch of my hand. And in the moment when I bring the blessing down upon the person or relationship or object of one's fear, even though I feel nothing, I like to think I am a lightning rod, a vehicle of grace. The power alive and surging through me. It never matters where or when or with whom, I still like the thought of calling on the name of God.

The rest of the time, though, I simply try to maintain the order. Keep programs for all the age-groups, Bible studies, visitation, fellowship. It's a lot of work to manage the faith and entertainment of a congregation, and I'm always trying to keep everyone comfortable. I guess that sense of trying to create balance is starting to show. Everybody seems concerned that I work too much and that I appear tired all the time or that I have no hobby or leisure activity. Mrs. Newgarden even brought me
books on flower arranging the other day. Could it be that I appear so unhealthy that I need a book on flower arranging?

And, only recently, one older minister down the road, the Lutheran, who was out weeding in his garden on a Tuesday morning, told me I needed to “cool my jets” and understand that for the most part the preaching business is to “hatch, match, and dispatch,” so that there was no reason to burn myself out trying to do anything other than baptisms, weddings, and funerals.