The Mercy Hills Lutheran Church as a physical entity was just about as underwhelming as the name suggested. As Patience knew it, it appeared to be more of a dilapidated, repurposed prison. It seemed more likely to her that some nondescript Pastor had decided to bring in several pews, a pulpit, and called it holy ground in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rather than having been the original intention for the building, and even in pictures, most older than Patience herself, it was unimpressive.

Church began long before they stepped through the front doors. Before even the sun was awake, Shanice was already well into the arduous process of stuffing Patience into frilly yellow, pink, or baby blue dresses with her good white shoes that she wasn’t allowed to wear anywhere else. After letting it sit on top of the stove for a few minutes, she would force Patience to hold as still as was possible for a six-year-old as she straightened each curl with a hot comb, drawing the teeth so close to her scalp that she flinched from the steam. Her hair would be drawn back into a ponytail that made her face feel like it was going to split in two, and the three of them would shuffle into the car to go pick up her grandma before heading to Mercy Hills. Later, Isaiah came about and added an extra hour to the process, for her grandmother wouldn’t see him or her father in anything but dress shirts and slacks if they were going to the Lord’s house. Her brother hadn’t learned to just let things happen to him yet and so more time still was wasted in threatening him to behave.

There was appeal in the church’s close proximity to their home, but Patience came to know that the real reason they were bound to it was because her grandmother had nurtured roots there. They were the kind of roots that had the tendency to appear above ground yards away from the base of the tree, gnarled and knotted with the knowledge of every member of the congregation’s business; she knew whose kids were likely to be the first to disrupt the service, who liked sweet potato pie and who preferred banana pudding crusted with Nilla Wafers, whose child had inexplicably dropped out prematurely, who’s water was off and who would likely need a tray of macaroni salad delivered under the guise of a visit because food stamps were running late that month.

Holidays like Easter and Christmas were prime events, dredging up cousins and cousins of cousins who only saw the inside of a church maybe once or twice a year. Everyone had something for Jamie’s daughter, had to make her laugh so that they could pinch her dimples, had to comment on how well behaved she was during the service. On those days, the church was in constant danger of bursting at the seams, but they made do because that’s what they always did. The young men – plus the ones with receding hairlines that gave way to thinning grayed hair and bad knees that popped when they stood too fast – grabbed the old, rusted folding chairs three at a time from the closet near the pulpit and then leaned against the walls when there still wasn’t enough room. These moments were like little portals, allowing Patience to see what her grandmother could, even if it was just a glimpse.

But there was always someone to drag her back to reality. As she grew, so did her list of grievances with the church, and they all began with Pastor Rolland.

He was so bald that his scalp appeared to be nothing more than an extension of his forehead that carried on until it disappeared into the collar of the suit jacket he usually wore. This lack of hair was the very first thing she disliked about the Pastor before she had any real complaints that could stick. She’d hated the way that his hands felt as they encapsulated her smaller ones, his always damp and too tight after a successful service, forcing her fingers to overlap over one another like packaged hot dogs.

Sometimes, when she had little else to do, Patience watched him. She hadn’t seen him for several years prior to her death, and the time hadn’t been kind to him.

She was the first to greet him when he arrived at the church early to give the windows a good wipe down – these were a step up from the ones that Patience had grown up with, tall stretches of stained glass depicting different iterations of Jesus and Mary - and was the last to bid him a good evening after he swept out the dirt that his congregation had tracked in. His suits, though always clean pressed, were made for a stouter, younger man, and thus sagged around the frame that had both slackened and shortened with age.

During sermons, she sat in the front pew and waited with the rest of the world for him to work through his pauses that seemed to get longer with each day, eyeing the length of prayer beads he kept wrapped around a fist that shook. It was hard to imagine this man as the one who’s voice had been stuck in her head for years after the last time she’d set foot in a church. Against her will, she felt a maggot of sympathy for the aging man that burrowed itself deep beneath her skin.

“You must never lose faith in God because you better trust and believe he ain’t never lost faith in you. But what does faith mean? My brothers and sisters, faith,” A bit of spittle flew from his bottom lip. The organist, a wrinkled sack of a man who everyone referred to as JJ, flitted across the keys of the grand organ that took up almost half of the front portion of the room. A shiver traveled up Patience’s spine whilst goosebumps surged down her arms.

“Faith is a choice that you need to make. It ain’t one that’s gon’ come easy because the Lord is gon’ test you.” A cacophony of amens followed closely behind his words. “He testing us, all of us, right now, you betta’ believe that. I know who my God is, and because I know who my God is, I can lay down in my bed. I can lay down in my bed and I can go to sleep, rest assured, that I will get through whatever it is. That even if I do not wake, because I have entrusted my soul and my well being to the Lord, I’m gon’ be just fine. What about you? Can you say the same?” His voice rose, strengthened with each word. JJ followed faithfully behind, a beautiful crescendo.

“I know that’s right!” Someone cried.

Sister Yvette, a sweet older woman with a voice as mellow as softened butter began to sway, leading a sea of royal purple and white robes. Their souls swelled within them, releasing in a wave of fervent warbling and clapping hands. She didn’t recognize the hymn but it surrounded her all the same.

For a brief moment, Patience saw the specter of her grandmother amongst them.

It was almost intoxicating. He seemed so impossibly sure, just as he had when she’d been younger when he told her without telling her that she was destined for fire and brimstone. It was difficult to resist being drawn in by the sweeping motion of his arms, the safe haven that they seemed to represent, but Patience was heavy. She’d been heavy all of her life.

Nearly two months passed before James finally mustered up the courage and went to visit Marvin. Most referred to him as Rabbit on account of the ears on either side of his head that seemed to drag down his entire face, but Patience had always thought of him as something closer to Droopy the dog.

The thing about old folks was that they had a tendency to say whatever they wanted whenever they wanted because they knew your parents and knew that your parents raised you better than to raise a hand to an elder. Yet, regardless of how infuriating they were, they knew that you’d turn up for advice anyhow because they had more mileage than you; there was nothing you could say that they hadn’t already heard or said themselves, nothing you could confess that could top what they did back in ‘86 when they got that gold tooth and that tattoo of an ice cream cone that said lick me.

Just as it had when his mother had died, James’ front door acted as a revolving one, revealing member after member of the congregation that he hadn’t seen in years each time it spun. This time, they hadn’t even the official declaration of death before they descended upon him with faces stretched thin with pity, foreheads creasing when he claimed half heartedly that his daughter was fine. Most of them evaporated after this proclamation, but the choir ladies were persistent; they’d seen him do the same thing with his mother, and as they promised him prayers and good wishes, they prepared to see him fall again.

He didn’t bother to call ahead to make sure he was home; rain or shine, Rabbit sat in one of the two rusted chairs on his porch, his cane propped up against the wall next to him. That day was no different; swaddled in a thick blanket, his rheumy brown eyes seemed to be watching the sky for something that only he could see. Only when James was at the very top of the stairs was he acknowledged, and even then only with a grunt.

“Wassup, ol’ timer,” James dropped into the seat next to him like a sack of rocks. The back of the chair scraped against the brick of the house behind it.

“Ain’t nuthin’ shakin but the leaves in the trees, son.” He cleared his throat but the phlegm remained, rattling wetly as he spoke. “How dat wife ah yours doin’? You ain’t came to see me in a minute, I figure she must be keepin’ you busy.”

His knees parted and James leaned forward onto his elbows, a sigh emerging from somewhere deep in his chest. In that moment, he looked every bit of his forty-two years and then some. “Ion know man, you would know as well as me at this point and I live with the woman. Ion know anything anymore, truth be told.” He couldn’t help the exasperation that leaked into his voice. “You know the other day I caught her talking shit about Patience on the phone with one of her girlfriends?” He shook his head. “She think she ran away too but boy I swear, it ain’t no way in hell my daughter just up and left like that. The police can say whatever the hell they want. Shanice done lost every bit of her mind.”

The unspoken ceasefire of that one cold evening weeks ago had evaporated as quickly as the arrival of the next morning. All it’d taken was two sentences whilst he slurped down his orange juice. Nine words. I called the police. They still ain’t heard nothing. She’d told him to stop bringing it up unless he had something important to say. James bit his tongue.

The urge to speak about Patience candidly to someone had welled up within him to the point that he felt he might explode on the next person to tap dance around the topic, but he didn’t plan on shooting himself in the foot just because his wife had already blown hers clean off. As far as he was concerned, the information wasn’t the business of anyone outside of their family. Leaning back, he once again tried to pin down the exact moment when the relationship between his wife and daughter had begun to deteriorate. As far as he knew, the two had never been exactly close, but it had never been bad. Nothing to shed light on this belief that their child would be okay with just up and leaving in such a way.

Oblivious, Rabbit shook his head. By the way his mouth screwed to one side, James could tell that he had something none too pleasant to say, but whatever it was remained behind the barrier that was his rubbery lips. “Just like some men ain’t man enough to be fathers, some women ain’t woman enough to be mothers, son. That’s why Roxanne and I ain’t have kids. You get me?” He talked with the same cadence that most old folks did, as if they were constantly working to push their words through a mouthful of peanut butter with a tongue that just didn’t have the strength anymore and so the words, always presumptuous, came out sticky. James’s face burned. That tone he spoke with, as if he knew everything that went on in James’ relationship better than he did.

A strong gust blew through the porch, and he reluctantly zipped up his jacket, scrubbing a hand over his face. He hadn’t thought to shave in almost a month; the facial hair that he normally meticulously groomed had sprouted into a full beard, thick enough that he could no longer see the shape of his own jaw when he looked in the mirror. “It ain’t no such thing as a woman ain’t meant to have kids.”

The old man tutted. His fingers twitched with the intent to beat some sense into her father, but James knew he didn’t have the knees for it anymore. Instead, he made due with sucking the remaining teeth in his gums.

“You got the truth right in front a you, ain’t you? You know damn well even yo’ own mama ain’t approve of that girl, and you still went and put a baby in her. What kind of man goes and marries a girl that don’t even respect the woman that gave birth to him? Act like you got some got damn sense, boy. I know yo’ mama raised you with some.” His tongue, like the tail of a scorpion, struck expeditiously. The poison was fast-acting and James’s throat constricted. Heat returned to the skin all over his face, creeping down his neck. The words to argue bounced around in his head but he knew they would have come out feeble, the indignant rebuttal of a slighted boy. Rabbit had been around since he was a child, acting as a surrogate father after his own was gone. He had heard about every fit, every screaming match that occurred between his mother and him about the new girlfriend he’d procured 20 years ago; he knew everything about him. There was no point in arguing, and that was what he wanted to do the most.

He tried to change the subject, but whenever he tried to engage him, Rabbit simply grunted in response or hocked a mound of phlegm onto the porch. When the silence proved to be too much for him, James abruptly ended the visit that lasted no more than twenty minutes.

He didn’t return home, and his wife didn’t wait for him. When day melted into night and James hadn’t made an appearance, she turned on a LifeTime movie, curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, and called up a friend when the murderous antics of the progressively more unhinged leading lady was unable to hold her attention. She hardly had the time to get a “Hey girl, what’s going on with you?” out before Leesha was already talking her ear off, swaddling her in the monotonous drama of someone else’s life.

All of it was too much. She could feel it, the pressure gradually expanding and undulating inside of her, threatening to burst out of her skin and tear her apart in the process. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t help. She saw the cracks in the darkness behind her lids.

Patience’s disappearance was an earthquake, one that finally drove the tectonic plates of the foundation of her home even further apart than it already was, beginning at the front door. She could toe the edges of the growing wound if she wanted; it lead straight to her and James’ bedroom, splitting that in two before jaggedly separating Patience’s room from the rest of the house in a magnificent chasm, one that the two of them were equally unwilling to cross. She could see it, feel it even, more apparent than it had ever been as she sat there. She didn’t know that Patience had lived in it before she’d died in it.

Before either of her parents realized it, a week passed where none of her three remaining family members communicated. She spent most of her time with her father.

Although he had yet to admit to himself consciously that his daughter was most likely dead, she was able to trace his steps easily. Grief made his feet heavy, leaving deep impressions in the snow that had slowed but continued to fall. Each night that passed, he sank further and further, searching for whatever it was that had made his house a home. When he couldn’t find it, he felt robbed.

Always one to mind hers, Miss Keyshia didn’t pry when she found him bent out of shape in the back seat of his car on the curb of Blu’s Corner, failing miserably at sleep. Instead, she dealt him a quick swat upside the head as soon as he was close enough and suddenly, he had a place to sleep on the plastic wrapped couch in her living room. For a while, he allowed himself to be integrated into her routine; she was up before even the birds were singing, a worn scarf wrapped round her head, water mixed with a little bit of chicken broth boiling on the stove to start off her grits. He was always given a bowl first, and she watched him without watching him to make sure that he finished. She used salt rather than sugar as his own mother had done, but he knew better than to add anything. Regardless of the taste, it felt nice to have a warm, full belly and someone who worried about him without him asking them to do so.

After breakfast, she would bundle up as if she was heading off to war, and occasionally, he allowed her to drag him to church with her. He hadn’t been since his own mama passed, and sitting in the pews no longer brought him the same sense of comfort. Despite this, whenever he thought Miss Keyshia wasn’t looking, he sent out a prayer for Patience to the no one that he thought was listening. It wasn’t a God that heard them but his daughter, who plucked his words from the inbetween and cradled them close to her chest, wearing them around her wrists as if they were bracelets for when even Owl separated himself from her.

It was on a Monday morning, shortly after the start of March when he could finally step outside clothed only in a single layer that he received an answer in the form of a phone call.

Next Chapter: 12