CHAPTER 7
CHURCH
Church defines my life. Our family attends services every Sunday morning and evening and also on Wednesday nights for prayer meeting. Plus, I'm expected to show up for Vacation Bible School, youth activities, "revivals," and whenever else the doors open. The church tells me what to believe, whom to trust and distrust, and how to behave.
My first church was a classic brick structure with a white steeple pointing skyward. "Your daddy sometimes preached there," Mother would remind us, "and that's where we had his funeral." However, a few years after his death that church split over the issue of whether to paint the outside bricks white, so she found another Southern Baptist congregation to join.
"It's much larger," she tells us in advance. "Nearly a thousand members." Colonial Hills Baptist occupies most of a block in a residential neighborhood in the town of East Point, not far from the Atlanta airport. On our first visit, I gawk at all the rows of theater-style seats lined up in the sanctuary. The separate Sunday School building looks bigger than Marshall's elementary school. Here is where we will spend our formative years.
Every week I breathe in the church's aroma, a mix of women's perfume, floor wax, leather Bibles, sweat-stained wood, and a burnt smell from the heating registers. No candles or incense, of course¡ªwe're Baptists. Tiny lights twinkle from a world map painted on the left wall, one for each missionary the church supports. From the right wall gleams a set of organ pipes, by far the showiest part of the sanctuary.
Our pastor, Paul Van Gorder, has a degree from Bob Jones University but no seminary training. A handsome man with dark wavy hair, he attracts a crowd despite being a Northerner, from Pennsylvania. We can tell he "ain't from around here" by the way he pronounces certain words. He says Gahwdfor "God," Holy Spilitfor "Holy Spirit," and ah-meninstead of "amen." Sometimes he speaks in language just like the Bible's: "We shall tarry a while longer until Jesus returns."
I'm too young to follow his sermons, but they must be good, because the nationwide Radio Bible Classprogram has chosen him as one of their main speakers. We take pride in our pastor, famous enough to be on the radio and sometimes even television. Many people, including my mother, take notes as he speaks, and some mark up their Bibles with different-colored inks. When Brother Paul says "Open your Bibles to Haggai," the sound of thin pages being turned rustles through the sanctuary. In our church, everyone knows how to find a minor prophet such as Haggai.
For Mother, Sunday is the highlight of every week. Other women talk about what wonderful work she's doing with her Bible clubs, and ask if she can possibly squeeze one more into her schedule. She introduces Marshall and me as her sons. "They can be a handful sometimes," she says with a laugh, and humbly accepts the compliments that follow. "I just don't know how you do it all, Mildred."
Mother believes children should act like adults in church, so I have to find ways to kill time. I test mental telepathy by staring at the teenage girl two rows ahead of me. Can I get her to turn around and look? Or I study the members of the choir, who sit in rows behind the pulpit. The fat man with a birthmark is nodding off¡ªin church! That woman in a beehive hairdo looks stupid with those cat's-eye glasses. I daydream: If a Communist invades our church with a machine gun, who in the choir will he shoot first?
Marshall and I invent games during the hymns. The song leader has the ladies sing the second verse and the men the third: "Let's hear it now, men. I want you to really belt it out!" Marshall pokes me with his elbow, hoping to trick me into singing at the wrong time¡ªwith the ladies. Or we alternate every other word: Marshall sings When,I sing the,his turn roll,my turn is,his turn called,my turn up,his turn yonder. We page through the hymnbook looking for weird names  among the writers, such as Augustus Toplady. None, though, can top P. P. Bliss.
It's funny, but all the talk about soul and spirit in church makes me more conscious of my body. In warmer months, when I wear a suit with short pants, splinters from the wood prickle my legs. I practice winking, popping my knuckles, anything that helps pass the time. I make tight fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. I hold my breath as long as I can, watching the clock's second hand. I squeeze the armrest hard, trying to make the veins pop out on my arms, like a weight lifter's.
Sometimes Mother catches on and reaches over to pinch me. "Pay attention to the sermon!" she whispers, loud enough for others to hear. A few humiliating times she drags me out by the wrist and spanks me.
Whenever possible, I try to sit near blind Mr. Baker, who relies on a German shepherd to lead him around. We kids have been told not to pet the seeing-eye dog unless Mr. Baker gives us permission, so I make it a goal to befriend the kind man. I envy his dog, who's allowed to sleep during the service. The poor thing must be bored all the time because he always has to obey his master. He can't even be petted without permission.
Everything changes when Mother agrees to teach a ladies' class during the church hour. She paroles us to other women, who find ways to entertain us. From humongous pocketbooks they pull out key rings, change for the offering, and goodies such as butterscotch candy and Juicy Fruit chewing gum. These women have different smells than I'm used to¡ªvanilla, apple blossoms, hair spray¡ªand a few even smell like cigarettes. One Sunday I'm assigned to a woman whose husband, a former sailor, pulls up his sleeve to show me a tattoo of a bosomy woman, possibly the first tattoo I've seen and definitely the first one in church.
I especially love sitting by Mrs. Horton, who wears a chain of furry animals across her shoulders¡ªa "mink stole," she calls it. The dead mink have hard, glittery eyes and narrow mouths full of mean-looking teeth. Each animal's mouth clamps down on the butt of the animal in front of it. Their fluffy tails and tiny black feet hang down, begging to be played with.
As the service drones on, Mrs. Horton draws faces on my hand¡ªan adult, drawing in church!¡ªin such a way that if I wave my fingers the eyes wink. She puts her arm around me and gently squeezes me. She gives me a peppermint, which I move to put in my pocket until she whispers, "It's OK to eat it now." It feels like a sin, candy in church, but that makes it taste even better. She lets me drop money in the offering plate and keep a dime for myself. For the first time ever, church becomes fun.
Sunday evening services are more relaxed, and often Colonial Hills brings in guest speakers for a "youth night." Gospel magicians make doves appear and people disappear. A scientist from Chicago hooks himself up to a generator and shoots a million volts of electricity through his body. Miniature lightning bolts spark from his fingertips, and when an assistant tosses him blocks of wood, they burn in his hands, filling the church with a fireplace smell. No one, however, can compete with Paul Anderson, "the strongest man in the world," who from a squatting position lifts a giant balance scale with eight teenagers standing on it, four to a side.
Afterward, we retire to a large room next door for refreshments, where Mr. Wharton is in charge. Even though he's an office clerk, with pasty skin and a wandering eye, he quickly becomes a favorite to us kids, because he has his very own cotton-candy machine. He pours sugar into a tube in the center of what looks like a stainless-steel washtub and flips a switch. Presto!All I have to do is hold out a paper cone, and sticky strands of pink cotton candy magically appear, winding their way around the paper and my fingers.
My most memorable Sunday evening service takes place when Dr. M. R. DeHaan, a radio star from Michigan, visits for a weekend conference. It's like the World Series of church. We arrive early for a parking place, and still we have to walk a long way. So many newcomers show up on Sunday night that Marshall and I get permission to join the teenagers in the usually closed balcony. I feel as if I'm in a sports stadium, looking down on all the balding heads and women's hats, with the choir and preacher way off in the distance.
On the main floor below, hundreds of fans are rippling, like ragged ocean waves. They're flat pieces of cardboard stapled to what looks like a Popsicle stick, and you wave the fan in front of your face to create a breeze. The front side of the fan has a picture: Christ at Gethsemane or the Good Shepherd or maybe a photo of our church. The opposite side has an ad for a funeral company.
Teenagers sitting nearby decide to edit the funeral ads. To air-conditioned chapelthey add, "Keeps the body from smelling." Next to ambulance servicethey print, "Oops, too late," and by 24-hour oxygenthey write in "Just when you don't need it." We spend most of Dr. DeHaan's sermon vying to come up with the best slogans. Marshall suggests an overall motto for the funeral home: "We always let you down."
After the sermon, our pastor announces that we'll be collecting a "love offering" for Dr. DeHaan. As the ushers spread throughout the sanctuary, one of the rowdier teenagers drops a couple of M&M's onto the main floor below us. A few minutes later, he proposes dropping a straight pin on a bald man's head. Just then, another teenager "accidentally" knocks an overflowing offering basket off the ledge. Paper bills float through the air, swept up and down by ceiling fans, and scores of coins roll around noisily on the slanted wooden floor below. Some coins find the heating grates and dive through with a loud plink! The pastor scowls mightily and deacons rush up the balcony stairs to restore order.
That's the last time we sit in the balcony.
Colonial Hills hosts two hallmark events each year. During the annual missionary conference, foreign flags hang from the balcony, dressing up the church. In five-minute time slots, the missionaries take turns telling us about their adventures overseas. I perk up when they describe things like eating monkey meat and working with pygmies. Some of them show slides, which always end with a sunset.
After the service, the missionaries stand beside booths in the back of the sanctuary, which have displays of blowguns, stuffed crocodiles, butterflies, and even a few shrunken heads. I learn about geography and foreigners from those booths. As I view the displays and talk to the missionary kids, suddenly I'm glad my parents never made it to Africa. I have nightmares about that continent's bird-eating spiders, and snakes that hide in the roof and drop on sleepers, and something called a guinea worm that crawls around under your skin.
On the final night, people make Faith Promise Pledges. Colonial Hills supports 170 missionaries, and each year its members raise bucketfuls of money. A man on the platform operates an adding machine with a long roll of paper.