Prologue

Prologue

I hold my tongue,

biting so hard it draws blood. The taste is bitter, like chomping on a piece of rusted iron. I promised myself I wouldn’t become this person, the one who cowered beneath pointed fingers. But here I am. Cowering. Like a fool. And here they are. Pointing.

“I don’t know what to say.” Miss Beulah clutches her pearls. She’s one who is never lost for words, so the statement makes an impact. Her dark, mahogany-colored skin glows in the light of the sanctuary. She blots her forehead with a trembling handkerchief, but the spot still gleams.

They’ve kept all the lights on even though it’s just the five of us sitting in the first row of the church. I clasp my hands in my lap and train my eyes on the dusty white tiles that are in desperate need of new filling.

The silence lingers, forcing me to squirm. I need them to scream at me so I can scream back. I need them to disrespect me so I can channel my shame into a battle of wits. Yet, they just sit there, looking at me with big, disappointed eyes.

“I keep thinking of the youth,” Miss Beulah says. She’s getting her mojo back. The words are pouring from her like a flood. “What kind of example is this setting for them? Why should they bother following the Word and doing right if the people guiding them aren’t doing the same?”

“Rochelle…” Karen says softly, gently. Her thin round glasses slide down her flat nose. She’s begging me with her eyes, to tell her something else, to tell her the truth she wants to hear. “We’re not here to judge you.”

I snort. Their eyebrows fall swiftly. Their plump mouths ringed with cheap, drug store makeup in various shades of pinks and reds screw in distaste.

The air crackles with their disapproval. My leg is falling asleep. A prickly sensation crawls around my thighs as if a thousand fire ants are dancing up my kneecaps. I’m not ready for this conversation.

“We called you tonight to hear your side of the story, but we can’t force you to share.” Detrick Glendford scratches his scraggly beard. “And we can’t force you to be sorry either.”

But I was sorry. So sorry I could die. My mouth twitched and my breath came in hard, desperate gasps. Didn’t they see? Couldn’t they tell that I was coming apart at the seams? Someone was losing their minds right before their eyes.

“We’ve got no other choice.” The voice that’s been silent since the church elders dragged me here and surrounded me like a group of Pentecostal gangsters finally speaks up. I stare into my grandfather’s sad brown eyes when he says, “You will be relieved of all your church responsibilities—”

“Grampa…”

“We will find a replacement to lead the youths and you will no longer sing on the worship team.”

“Please.”

He stands, his chair legs scraping against the floor. The metal shrieks, adding to the cloud of panic hovering over my shoulders. Bile rises in my throat. I fling myself to the floor, desperate to have his forgiveness, even more than God’s.

“I’m sorry.”

He can’t even look at me. He faces the door, his jaw locked so tight I’m afraid he’ll break his dentures. “I’m disappointed in you, Rochelle.”

His words crush me. His footsteps clop against the ground and grow fainter and fainter, I curl into a ball—right there before the altar—and I cry.