A great wave of red enters the room. Men and women in satiny scarlet robes flow in until they fill the entire floor behind the lectern. Everyone rises.
I expect a band to lead us off with a bass line and some drums, but this isn’t a Southern church. Instead, everyone opens their hymnals and the choir starts with a staid hymn about God’s love. I try not to let my lip curl. Not only is the music terrible, but it promises no spectacle for me to watch. At Southern Baptist churches, people dance and carry on. Sometimes they fall into the aisle and twitch. It was my reward for the times we got up early for church on Sunday morning.
But at least there’s no danger of my grandmother jabbing her elbow into my ribs and snarling at me to stop grinning like some whore devil. That was when I was nine. A precocious whore devil, apparently. By twelve I told my mother I’d poison her Dr Pepper with Visine if she made me go to one more service. Since she’d had diarrhea the Sunday before, she believed me. That wasn’t me, though. That was a result of bad handwashing habits. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
The terrible song ends, and they start another. I watch the people singing around me. Steven raises his face and sings loudly, of course. The woman I assume is his stepmother smiles as she sings, but it looks weird and fake to me, and I’m good at recognizing weird and fake.
Finally the pastor climbs the stairs at the side of the stage. He doesn’t look much like Steven. He’s gray and balding and a little pudgy, and his face is much softer than his son’s, but when he smiles condescendingly at all of us, I immediately see the resemblance.
“Friends!” He lets the word boom out over the congregation, and it hangs there amid the greetings the parishioners call back. “Friends,” he repeats once everyone has quieted down, “welcome to our church on this blessed day!”
A smattering of amens drift to him. In Oklahoma, half the people would’ve already been on their feet, but things are different in Minnesota.
“And this is a blessed day in a blessed place.”
“Yes, sir! Yes!”
“But not every place is blessed, is it? Not in this country. Not in this age. And we need to talk about the less fortunate.”
I raise my eyebrows, surprised that this man in this church is going to speak about the poor. I have to admit it’s not what I expected from Steven’s father. Maybe Steven is more nuanced than I thought he was. Maybe my view of the story from Meg’s side was skewed and twisted.
But the faces around me look self-righteous instead of sympathetic, and Pastor Hepsworth’s next words prove why. “Not everyone is blessed, because not everyone is fortunate enough to have found the Lord the way we have, friends. Not everyone understands the right way to live.”
Oh, here we go.
“The right way to live,” he repeats, the words deeper and louder and now whetted with hate. People around me begin to stir with excitement. “Because there is a right way, isn’t there, folks? Despite what you see on TV and in the movies and all over the internet, there is a right way to live, and people who don’t live it pay a price.”
Amens ring out. Everyone likes to be told they are right, because that means someone else is deliciously, fantastically wrong, and that is a joy that never gets old. I like it too.
“Times change,” he says. “Laws change. Cultures change. But God’s law . . . God’s law never changes, does it?”
“No!”
“God’s law is right there for us to follow, and if you follow it in heart and in deed, you will be rewarded.”
“Yes, sir!”
“You’ll be rewarded with work, with dignity, with food, with money, with love, and with the knowledge that you are living in the right.”
Steven holds up a hand of praise and shouts, “Yes!”
“Now, that doesn’t mean there won’t be trials and tribulations. We all have them. God tests us. He tests us with job layoffs. He tests us with gay, promiscuous children. He tests us with temptation.”
And slutty, cheating wives, I add silently.
“It’s up to you to pass those tests, my friends.”
“Amen!” someone calls from behind me.
I’ve heard this all before, but I’m still a little dumbfounded by what people will accept. When other people are suffering, it’s because they’re not righteous. But when our people suffer, it’s only a test of faith.
It’s all so blatant and misguided, but it works out great for me. These human foibles make it easy for me to navigate the world. Say the right thing, push the right button, and I get what I want every time.
He launches into the meat of the sermon, and—lucky me—today he’s focusing on promiscuity with a dash of homophobia. I have a feeling the homophobia sneaks in every week no matter the topic.
I listen, because this is important for me to know, but I also look around at the faces of the people taking this in. They seem to love the idea that women and children are abused and hungry because women can’t keep their legs closed. They nod along when he explains that poor women choose fornication over hard work. They shake their heads at the idea that upstanding, God-fearing people like them have to pay taxes to support these lifestyles.
“When children are taught that there is always a free lunch, how will they ever learn the dignity and blessings of hard work? A free lunch,” he sputters. “Free lunch and free love and free health care? I say we have free will! Free will to live the way our Lord intended. To marry and work and live in God’s grace! To keep your legs closed and your hearts open to the Lord!”
Several people are shouting approval now.
“Women used to have shame! They weren’t rewarded for promiscuity! They weren’t given food stamps and free abortions and an apartment with cable!”
The crowd is bright-eyed now. They are tired of paying taxes so little bastards can have a decent meal and a place to sleep.
Of course, I don’t have sympathy either. My sociopathy separates me from others and muffles me from their suffering. But it doesn’t make me blind.
I may not feel bad for women who work full-time and still can’t afford to feed their kids, but I can see what’s being done to them. I can see that the sociopaths heading up huge corporations take as much money as they can, and our tax money pays for their employees’ food stamps. We subsidize the corporate profits. It’s genius, really. A fabulous con. And all of these smug parishioners think they’re the smart ones. I’d fleece them too given the chance.
The lecture goes on and on, and I’m thoroughly bored by the end of it and mystified by the women nodding along to all the scolding.
In my experience, men try to talk women into opening their legs from the moment girls can walk on them. Men stand in for the Lord in this scenario. Always testing us to see if we choose right or wrong. But it’s a trick. There is no right. You’re a tease or a whore. A heartless denier or a Jezebel. Their penises are God’s divining rods, searching out evil.
I smile at this, and the pastor’s eyes light on me. I have no idea what he’s said that he thinks I’m responding to, but I’m definitely not supposed to be smiling. I press my lips tight together and bite them to stop my giggles. He watches me for a moment, trying to suss me out.
He’s intrigued.
I’m intrigued as well. Pastor Hepsworth has some intense thoughts about fornication. He thinks about it a lot. He likely has a secret I could use against him.
It would be a decent revenge. Painful and sordid.
Decent but not perfect, because Steven would just blame it on women being whores and he’d forgive his father and learn nothing from it. The wound wouldn’t be fatal, maybe not even disabling.
Still, it’s a fun idea. I’ll keep it in mind as a sort of . . . appetizer. Something to accentuate the main dish.