“Go on,” her father said, unlocking the door. “You don’t want to be late.”
She had never been in Upper Room during the week, and as soon as she pushed open the heavy double doors, she felt like she was trespassing. The church, crowded and bustling on Sunday morning, was now wrapped in quiet, the halls darkened, the main foyer, with its sprawling blue carpet, empty. She felt almost disappointed by how plain the unoccupied building seemed, like how once at Disneyland, Space Mountain had stopped mid-ride and the lights flashed on, revealing that she was only in a gray warehouse, riding along a track with tiny drops that had only seemed exciting in the haze of special effects. She followed a dark corridor toward the back of the building, past the Sunday School room where she had reported, dutifully, from kindergarten to the eighth grade, past the choir room and the pastor’s office, down to the first lady’s office at the end of the hall. The room spread regally in front of her, mahogany furniture gleaming under the sunlight, tiny potted palm trees sprouting out of every corner. Mrs. Sheppard leaned against the desk, her arms folded. She was tall—at least six feet—and in her red skirt suit and matching high heels, she towered over Nadia.
“Well, come on in,” she said. “Don’t just stand there.”
She had always seemed intimidating, if not because of her height or her title or the way she walked slowly as she talked, like a panther stalking its prey, then because of her odd eyes. One brown and one blue, the coldness of that blue eye forcing Nadia to stare at the ground whenever the first lady passed her in the church lobby.
“How old are you, honey?” Mrs. Sheppard asked.
“Seventeen,” Nadia said softly.
“Seventeen.” Mrs. Sheppard paused, glancing in the doorway as if she expected a better girl to walk through it. “And you going off to school somewhere in the fall?”
“Michigan,” she said, but her response felt bare, so she added, “ma’am.”
“Studying what?”
“I don’t know yet. But I want to go to law school.”
“Well, college girl like you must be smart. You ever work in an office?”
“No ma’am.”
“But you worked before. Right?”
“Of course.”
“Doing what?”
“I was a cashier once, in the mall. And I also worked at Jojo’s Juicery.”
“Jojo’s Juicery.” Mrs. Sheppard pursed her lips. “Well, look. I never had an assistant and I never needed one. But my husband seems to think I could use some help. So let’s find you something to do, okay?”
She sent Nadia to bring her a cup of coffee from the pastor’s office. As she headed down the hall, Nadia glanced out the window overlooking the parking lot. On the lawn in front of the church, little children played tag in the grass. Summer day camp, she figured, but she still paused, squinting, as she spotted, in the midst of the chaos, Aubrey Evans. Of course Aubrey would spend her summer at church—of course she had nothing better to do. She was wearing a stupid safari hat and baggy cargo shorts, and she loped slowly toward kids who scattered as soon as she drew near. She let most escape her grasp, but in the end, she caught a slow one, sweeping him into her arms as he squealed, kicking his little legs in the air. In another life, maybe, Nadia could have been like her. Playing in the summer morning, scooping up a child who smiled, grateful to be caught by her.
—
HER FIRST WEEKS working at Upper Room, Nadia and her father fell into a routine: wake early, eat silently, and climb into the loaner car. He would drop her off on his way to work. On the drive over, her father would complain about the different steering or how he hated sitting this low in traffic, but she knew he only missed his truck because while it was in the shop, he couldn’t serve Upper Room. After work, he lingered in the kitchen, patting his pockets like he’d stepped inside a stranger’s house and didn’t know what to do with himself. Should he leave his shoes by the door? Where was the bathroom? He eventually filed outside to lift weights in the backyard, like a prisoner quietly biding his time.
At work, Nadia did the tasks Mrs. Sheppard assigned her: calling caterers for the Ladies Auxiliary luncheon, proofreading the church bulletin, scheduling toy donations at the children’s hospital, photocopying registration forms for the summer day camp. She tried to do everything perfectly because when she made a mistake, Mrs. Sheppard gave her a look. Eyes narrowed, lips pursed somewhere between a frown and a smirk, as if to say, look what I have to put up with.
“Honey, you need to do this again,” she would say, waving Nadia over. Or, “Come on, now, pay attention. Isn’t that what we hired you for?”
To be honest, Nadia wasn’t exactly sure why the pastor and his wife had hired her. They pitied her, she knew, but who didn’t? At her mother’s funeral, in the front pew, she’d felt pity radiating toward her, along with a quiet anger that everyone was too polite to express, though she’d felt its heat tickling the back of her neck. “Who is in a position to condemn? Only God,” the pastor had said, opening his eulogy. But the fact that he’d led with that scripture only meant that the congregation had already condemned her mother, or worse, that he felt her mother had done something deserving of condemnation. At the repast, Sister Willis had pulled her into a hug and said, “I just can’t believe she did that to you,” as if her mother had shot Nadia, not herself.
On the Sunday mornings that followed, her father never gave up knocking on her door but Nadia always turned away in bed, pretending to be asleep. He wouldn’t force her to go to church with him. He didn’t force her to do anything. Asking her already required enough energy. Sometimes she thought that she ought to join him; it would make him happy if she did. But then she remembered Sister Willis whispering into her ear and her stomach turned cold. How dare anyone at that church judge her mother? No one knew why she’d wanted to die. The worst part was that Upper Room’s judgment had made Nadia start to judge her mother too. Sometimes when she heard Sister Willis’s voice in her head, a part of her thought, I can’t believe she did that to me either.
At Upper Room, Nadia tried not to think about the funeral. Instead, she focused on the little jobs assigned to her. And they were all little because Mrs. Sheppard, brusque and businesslike, was the type of person who’d rather do something herself than show you how. (The type who would prefer to give a man a fish not only because she could catch a better one herself, but because she felt important being the only thing standing between that man and starvation.) Nadia hated how much time she spent studying Mrs. Sheppard and anticipating her desires. In the mornings, Nadia stood in front of her closet, searching for an outfit the older woman would like. No jeans, no shorts, no tank tops. Only slacks and blouses and modest dresses. As a California girl who rarely wore anything that didn’t show her legs or shoulders, Nadia didn’t own many outfits that met Mrs. Sheppard’s standards. But she hadn’t been paid yet and she couldn’t bring herself to ask her father for money, so a few nights a week she hunched over the bathroom sink, dabbing at the deodorant stains on the armpits with a wet towel. If Mrs. Sheppard noticed the repeated outfits, she didn’t say anything. Most days, she barely acknowledged Nadia at all, and Nadia couldn’t decide which was worse, the criticism or the indifference. She saw the way the first lady looked at Aubrey Evans—softly, as if a hard look might break her. What made that other girl so special?
Nadia had run into Aubrey one morning outside the bathroom, both girls jolting at the sight of each other. “Hi,” Aubrey said. “What’re you doing here?” She was still wearing that floppy hat and baggy cargo shorts that made her look like a mailman.