“Prescott, I am honored to meet you!” Grace’s mother says from the pulpit with her arms open wide, as if she’s embracing the entire congregation. She’s got her magic smile on, the one that wrinkles her eyes and makes you feel hugged even if you’re across the room. Grace looks around and sees people smiling, absorbing Mom’s warmth. They feel it—her sincerity, her passion, her love. Just one sentence in, and Mom’s a hit.
Grace remembers when their old church used to look at Mom this way, before she started talking about itchy stuff like social justice and the hypocrisy of conservative Christianity. Even the old curmudgeons who could never quite forgive her for being a woman couldn’t help but be charmed by her infectious warmth. She was a feel-good kind of preacher, the kind that spent a lot of time on Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and the pretty parts of Psalms, talking about God’s love and comfort and grace. The head pastor was the guy who did the fire-and-brimstone sermons; he was the guy who talked about sin. Mom warmed up the crowd with good news so they’d be ready for his bad.
Right now she’s up there telling jokes. Their old church wasn’t into funny. “A teacher asked her students to bring an item to class that represented their religious beliefs,” she says in her thick Kentucky drawl. “A Catholic student brought a crucifix. A Jewish student brought a menorah. A Muslim student brought a prayer rug.” She pauses for comedic effect before delivering the punch line. “The Southern Baptist brought a casserole dish.” Everyone laughs.
“Yes, y’all, I come from a Southern Baptist tradition. My faith evolved, and I moved on. But I still love me a good, cheesy casserole.” Laughter all around.
“We have to be able to laugh at ourselves,” she says. “We must question ourselves, our most firmly held beliefs. We have to evolve and change and become better. The very fact of Jesus, His very existence, shows us that change is necessary, that change is God’s work. Jesus came to change things. He came to make things better. We cannot insult Him by refusing to keep doing His work.”
She never got to talk like this at her old church. “Change” was a dirty word, a sinful word. Their old, white, blue-eyed Jesus was a totally different guy from the one she’s talking about today.
Grace has never heard her mother speak with this much passion, with this much joy. She can feel the electricity buzzing through the congregation. They are hearing her, feeling her. She is reaching inside and touching the parts of them where a little piece of God resides. Grace’s father sits next to her, his phone lying next to him on the pew, recording the sermon. The church makes its own recordings to post on the website, but that won’t go up until tomorrow at the earliest, and he will want to listen to this right away, to make notes, to find pull quotes, to scour Mom’s words for new angles to make her famous. They will sit at the dinner table tonight while Grace finishes the week’s homework, talking late into the night about their two favorite subjects: God and business.
Grace is in the front row, but Mom seems miles away. Grace is just one of many, just a member of her audience, her flock. Grace’s heart aches with yearning. Just look at me, she thinks. Make me special. But it doesn’t happen. Mom is everybody’s, not just Grace’s.
Mom walks back and forth, abandoning the confines of the pulpit, taking up as much space as possible, reveling in this freedom she’s never had before. This church isn’t nearly as big as the megachurch they came from, but it’s still big enough that she has to wear a mic on the collar of her robe. And the congregation is hers in a way she’s never had before. All hers.
As they rise to sing, not out of the hymnal but from a photocopied handout of an old protest song from the sixties, Grace realizes her face is wet. She wipes her eyes and mouths the words of the song without making a sound. There is so much room inside her, so much space to fill. So much emptiness. Even here, she feels it. Even here, where God is supposed to make her whole.
After the service, Mom is like a rock star signing autographs for fans. She stands in front of the big, colorful mural decorated by Sunday school kids that says JESUS DIDN’T REJECT ANYONE—NEITHER DO WE. Half the congregation is lined up for a turn to talk with her, to shake hands and get a hug, to tell her how much they loved her sermon, to tell her how honored and grateful they are that she chose this church to be her new home. Grace still doesn’t quite understand how getting kicked out as an underling at a rural megachurch skyrocketed her mom to rock-star status, but here they are, and there she is, amassing her groupies. Dad’s standing beside her, as always her devoted handler. Grace is standing in the corner between the wall and the foldout tables of snacks, shoving cookies in her face.
“Hey,” says a very large teenage boy coming her way, the only young Black face in a field of white. “Aren’t you the new preacher’s kid?”
“Um, yes?” Grace mumbles, crumbs falling out of her mouth.
“You don’t want to be part of the receiving line?”
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Before she can think of an answer, the guy extends his big, meaty hand to shake. “I’m Jesse Camp,” he says. Grace hasn’t met a whole lot of people who make her feel petite, but he is definitely one of them.
“Grace Salter.”
“You go to Prescott High?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. I’m a senior. Your mom’s pretty cool.”
“Thank you.”
“This must be really different from where you’re from, huh?”
“I don’t know. We’ve only been here a week so far.”
“I guess high schools are kinda the same everywhere, huh?” he says. “Same cliques. Same bullhonkey.”
“Bullhonkey?” Grace says, with what may be her first smile of the day.
“I figured the word I really wanted to say wouldn’t be appropriate in a house of God.”
“Yeah,” Grace says. “Same bullhonkey.”
“Cool.” Jesse grabs a cookie. So does Grace. They stand there in silence for a few moments, chewing. It is not an uncomfortable silence. He reminds Grace slightly of a teddy bear—endearing while not particularly attractive.
“My family used to go to a more traditional church when I was a kid,” he says. “Prescott AME? Across town? You know, the one where all the black people go? All ten of them.” He laughs at his joke. “My mom led prayer circles and everything. But then my sister—I mean, my brother—came out as transgender two years ago and it made my mom kind of reevaluate where she felt welcome. Mom didn’t like everyone calling her kid an abomination, you know?”
Grace nods. She does know. She knows all about a church rejecting someone. But why is this guy telling her all this over the cookie table?
“How many cookies have you had?” Jesse asks.
“Um, I don’t know?”
“Me neither. They’re not even that good, but I just keep eating them. It’s like the one thing I look forward to about going to church.”