Chapter 3- Church on Sunday

         I woke up around 8:30 that next morning. I rolled out of bed and put the sheets back on, making it look like I was never there. I walked out into the hall and smelled bacon, so I made my way to the kitchen. Alex was at the table, eating cereal and drinking coffee, wearing Hello Kitty pajama pants. By one glance, you could also tell that she hasn’t brushed her hair yet, either. “Good morning, Sunshine,” I say sarcastically, and she turns her head and smiled at me. I made my way to the counter to grab a couple pieces of bacon and pour myself a glass of orange juice. I didn’t feel like sitting, so I stood by the counter and began to munch on my first piece of bacon.

         “So Austin,” Alex’s mom said, “what time are you supposed to be home?”

         “Around noon is what I told Mom. Why were you wondering?” I ask.

         “Well today’s Sunday, so we have church at 10:00. We were wondering if you wanted to come,” Alex said.

         Her question stunned me.to be honest, I’d never stepped foot in a church before, let alone been to a church service. What was a church service like? Would I stand out over everyone?

         “Sure,” I said after giving it a couple of seconds to think it over. “When is the service over? I need to start thinking of a time to get walking home.”

         “The service is usually over at around 11:15, and we could give you a ride home,” said Alex’s mom.

I thought it over in my head a little. Finally, I said, “That’d be great. But all I have to wear is this stuff.” I pointed to my wrinkly shirt and skinny jeans.

        

“You can wear one of Josh’s shirts. And while we’re at church, your clothes can be in the washer, ready for you to wear when we get back,” said Alex.

I decided it was a fair enough idea, so I agreed and asked if I could take a shower before we go. They said yes, and I headed back upstairs to the bathroom. I grabbed a towel from the closet and began to undress myself, then turned the water on and stepped inside. The cold water made me wince at first, but it soon got warmer and I began to drift away in deep thought.

I began thinking about yesterday and my mom. She was probably at work, talking to random people over the phone in her tiny cubicle. Bruce is probably trying to call her and remind her that he’s out of cigarettes and beer, and I’d be surprised if she wasn’t keeping him on hold on purpose.

I’ve never understood why my mom married Bruce. Ever since the “incident” with my dad, nothing’s been the same.  Of all the people that my mother could’ve married, she married HIM. I mean, my mom is completely beautiful. She’s about 45, but she looks like 38. Everyone that has pretended to be my friend always asks me how old my mom is and if she’s single. They couldn’t care less if it was illegal, which freaks me out a little.

That’s another thing: I really don’t break the law much. I know that I look like the kind of person that would smoke and do drugs, but I’m not. BRUCE is. I have cops following me home sometimes when I’m walking home from the grocery store, and once got a full body pat-down as I was on my way to Alex’s house. The worst I’ve ever really done is drank a little sip of my mom’s martini when I was 7, and not put my seatbelt on in the car. I’ve never smoked except for that stupid secondhand smoking, and I typically don’t trespass on people’s property unless I’m late for school. And when I do, I just barely take a step through their lawn. So am I a bad guy? No, I’m not. I just kind of look like one.

I put shampoo in my hair and rinse it out, then use conditioner. I turn the water off, step out of the shower, dry off, and put my clothes back on. I leave the bathroom and go downstairs to the living room to let Alex know that I need some clothes. She takes me to a room that I‘ve never been to in this house and opens the door. I look inside and find rock band posters, old Monster cans, and a HUGE rack of CDs in the corner.

“So, this is Josh’s room, huh?” I say, hoping not to sound stupid.

“Yeah. It’s nothing really special, but it’s useful to dig around in his random crap sometimes.” She rummaged around in his closet and found some dress pants and a blur plaid long-sleeved shirt. “I know it’s hideous, but we have to wear things like this to church, so here you go.” She handed me the clothes and walked towards the door. “You can change in here or the bathroom. It really doesn’t matter. Just let my know when you’ve got clothes to send to the laundry.” She closed the door, and I listened to her footsteps slowly get quieter.

I began to change, and when I was finished, I looked around Josh’s room. Josh was Alex’s older brother, grown up and away at college. I’ve met him once, and he seemed cool enough. I found Skillet poster and an Insane Clown Posse CD in his collection on his rack. Maybe this guy’s a little better than just cool enough, I thought.

         I walked out of Josh’s room and went to find Alex again. I handed her my clothes, and she took them to the laundry room.  When she got back, she told me that she was going to go change for church. She left and I sat down on the couch. I began to wonder what she would look like in a pretty little church dress, because I’ve never seen her in anything other than skinny jeans and a t-shirt and her pajamas. Once I saw her half dressed up because we went on a field trip to the fine arts museum downtown. Other than that, nothing.

“How do I look?” said a voice coming from her room. I turned around and saw Alex in a beautiful black and purple dress. She had a cross necklace on her neck and a black and red jeweled bracelet on her wrist. She was stunning.

 I could feel my face getting hot. “Wow…” was all that I could manage to say. I got this sick feeling in my stomach and my knees felt like Jell-O. I’ve never felt this way before, and I couldn’t tell if I like the sensation or not.

She blushed and giggled a little bit, sensing that I was embarrassed. “You look pretty stunning yourself, Sir Austin.” She smirked and began to put some black glittery shoes on. “You can wear your normal shoes there. It’s not like people just sit around judging people by what their shoes look like. But we’d better get going soon if we want to be there on time.”

I went to go and put my shoes on and watched her as she walked off. I realized that the feeling I was having wasn’t anything I’d be able to shake off anytime soon. I’m gonna have to just cool down and understand that whatever’s happening is normal, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not.

Once I got my shoes on, I walked outside and got in Alex’s mom’s car. Alex and her mom were already there, waiting for me. I put my seatbelt on and we left the driveway.                   

 “So Austin,” Alex’s mom said, “have you ever been to a Methodist church service before?”    

“Nope. What’s it like?” I asked.                                     

“It’s really boring,” Alex said. She didn’t look very excited.     

“Alex, maybe you should just try to listen to what Pastor Don says. If you listen, he’s actually pretty interesting,” her mom said.          

“I’ve tried that before, Mom. But it’s just flat-out boring any way that you listen to it.” She turned around to me. “Austin, believe me. It’s really boring.             

I didn’t know what to say, so I just said “Alright,” and continued to look out the window. It was a beautiful day; birds were flying and flowers were blooming. It made me forget all about all of my problems for a while. It was fantastic.    

The car began to slow, and reality came back and hit me like a ton of bricks. We were pulling into the church’s parking lot. I looked at the church. It was a really pretty building. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be; I was expecting something huge with beautiful rose bushes and a huge Jesus statue on the roof. This was a simple orange-ish red-ish building with black shingles and two cherry trees above the doorway in. The sun was just peeking over the roof, causing the building to have a long, lingering shadow over the car.                        

I got out of the car and waited for Alex and her mom to get out. We walked to the doors of the church and stepped inside. The place smelled like old people perfume and mildew, but other than that, the room was pretty nice. There were at least ten big pots of flowers laying around, and their vines were looping all around the room.   

A woman in a blue dress came over and gave Alex a hug. “Hello again, sweetie! Nice to see you!”     

“Nice to see you, too!” Alex said, looking like she was getting suffocated from the tightness of the woman’s hug.

When the lady finally let go, Alex turned to me and said, “This is my Aunt Barbra. Aunt Barbra, this is Austin, my good friend.”      

I thought the lady was going to just stand there and say hello, but she plowed right over to me and gave me the tightest hug I’ve ever had. For a minute, I was convinced that she had broken at least two of my ribs. But when she let go, I took a big gasp of air and everything was fine again. “Nice to meet you, Austin! Are you becoming a member of the church?” she asked.   

Alex answered before I could, knowing that I was stuck in my words. “No, he’s just visiting. He came over this morning to hang out and decided to come to a church for the first time.”    

“How sweet! We’re happy to have you here, Austin! You’ll love the service. Pastor Don said that he had something special today to tell everyone.” The strange lady gave me a look that made me think she was going to explode or something from being so excited.      

Alex’s mom said that it was time for the service to begin, so we walked up the stairs and into one of the prettiest rooms I’ve ever been in. The walls were white, and there were plants hanging from everywhere. The place smelled like flowers and strawberries. I looked to my sides and saw stained glass windows on the walls containing every color of the rainbow. The pews had beautiful woodcarvings on them with green fabric to sit on. There was a balcony that       

But the chandelier was the best part of all. It was made of stained glass and had at least 15 shades of blues, yellows, and greens. The lights in it were very bright and left different colors on the walls, making the room look as if you were in the middle of a rainbow.  

We went down the middle isle of the room and sat down in a pew close to the front. Alex was texting someone and her mom were looking through the bulletin of the service. I just sat there and twiddled my thumbs while listening to the lady playing the organ in the front. The hymn she was playing sounded familiar. It brought back a memory from kindergarten: little kids everywhere singing “Jesus loves me, this I know…”                                  

A man in a black robe walked own the middle isle and up onto the stage. He was a middle-aged man (maybe in his forties or so) with a small beard and a clean haircut. He was tall and slender, with a face saying, “I’m fascinated in every single thing I see.”                 

The organ music stopped, and everyone looked up at the stage to the man. “That’s Pastor Don, the guy that does all the talking,” Alex whispered to me.         

Pastor Don looked around at the turnout, and with a voice much more loud and confident than I thought that someone that thin could have, he called out, “Good morning!”                       

“Good morning!” everyone called back to him.                

He began to talk about a bunch of upcoming dates and deadlines that were coming up. When he was finished, a lady at the piano played a high chord and everyone stood up. They opened up these books filled with music notes and began to sing the words. It sounded beautiful,, and I was astonished that anyone could sing that good in one try. I just looked off of Alex’s book and hummed what I assumed was the melody. I’ve never been that great with music, let alone reading notes.    

When the song was over, we all stayed standing and listened as an old man stood up on stage with a microphone and said, “Please join me in the call to worship.” We all opened our bulletins to a part on the first page and he began to read. When the part that was in bold text came along, all of the people in the room began to say it, too. When it was finished, we all sat down.       

Alex was right for a while: church CAN be pretty boring. But then, Pastor Don began to talk about how we all connect with God in our own ways, though sometimes it’s hard to tell when he’s trying to connect with us. I listened to his speech �" or sermon, as everyone was calling it �" and hung on every single word. It was magic to listen to, and I was fascinated to just be sitting in a room with a person telling me all that they know about something that I’ve never even heard about. It was amazing.      

His sermon ended and everyone sang another song, and Pastor Don began to say a meditation prayer.

“Lord God, we thank you for this day, and please guide us through the next. Bless everyone here, and forgive of his or her sins. Let them follow you and love you just like I do, Lord.” He continued and talked about people that were sick, people grieving some kind of loss, and some joys. I listened to it all and paid attention to everything that the people and Pastor Don said.

The prayer soon ended and the organ played its music. There were these golden dishes that were being passed around and people were putting money in them. Alex saw that I was confused, so she leaned over and whispered, “This is an offering. We all give money to the church to pay for different things that the church needs.”        

A dish came to me, and I just looked at it and handed it to Alex, feeling bad that I couldn’t put any money in the beautiful looking dish. Alex’s mom put in a $5 bill, and passed it on to the next person.                

After another 10 minutes or so, church was over. People began to pack up their things and say their goodbyes to people. We left relatively soon after we walked out of the room (I heard it was called a sanctuary), and we got into the car.   

We drove back to Alex’s house and I put on my regular clothes. I thanked Alex and her mom for taking me to the church with them, and they brought me home. I said goodbye to Alex and thank you again to her mom.       

I walked inside and saw my mom washing dishes in the kitchen and smoke coming from under the closed bedroom door. The house was its typical mess.         

I said hello to my mom and went to my room. I stepped inside and sat down on my bed. The first thing that came to my mind was that church that I went to. Just being there felt like magic, and being able to listen to someone tell about this amazing thing that loves everyone no matter what they’ve done. It was fantastic.     

I looked around my room. It’s not that big, and pretty simple. I’ve got a dresser and a bed, and clothes are sprawled around my floor. The walls are white-ish yellow-ish, and there’s an occasional band poster hanging on them.

I lay down on my bed and thought about the upcoming school year. Will it be just like last year; the lunch money being taken, the rejection, the hatred from the teachers? Maybe it’ll be like the year before, with everyone laughing at me when someone trips me in the lunchroom and I have to go home because mothers were complaining about me. Or maybe it’ll be like kindergarten, when I got juice boxes thrown at me, and kids bigger than me throwing me off of the seats on the bus.      

It seems pointless to worry, so I get my mind off of that and think about my mother. I really worry about my mother at times. She basically lives in that cubicle, talking in that phone with people yelling at her left and right, nobody ever satisfied. There are times that I come home from school and see my mom passed out on the couch with a blotchy face and moist areas around her eyes. I’ve never talked to her about this, but I really think that I should.      

My mom has a college education in performing arts, and had always wanted to be an actress on Broadway. But after one audition, she just gave it up and found a cubicle to spend her days in. It’s a sad story, really.   

I heard a “Austin! Lunch!” from the kitchen and stood up. I walked out to the kitchen and found �" what a surprise �" TV dinners.  It looked like it was supposed to be something like country-fried steak, but I would never be able to tell the difference between that and a sloppy Joe.          

Anyways, we ate our “food” and went back to our own thing. I went into my room and took out my laundry, then went back to my room and took out a notebook. It sounded like a good idea to write something at the moment. Something that I did today. I’ll write about church, I thought.                                 

So I ended up writing this poem:

 

 

 

This morning, in bed I lay,

T’was time to go to church today.

Never been, and never seen,

And you could tell

I was fascinated and keen.

Got there and met a lady in black,

Loud, boastful and a little out of whack.

Got to my seat and looked around,

The one pastor was nowhere to be found.

Someone playing the organ,

I listened, quite content,

But then I realized

The wall color was all bent.

I looked upward and leaving purple on my ear,

I saw a fancy stained-glass chandelier.

The man in a black robe said “Good Morning!” to all,

And after singing, the worship we called.

Some was boring,

All up until,

The pastor began talking,

And everyone was still.

His words were magic,

And filled with hope,

It all made me think:

“Even with problems, I can cope!”

My message from me to you today:

It’s fine if God steals your heart away.

                 

    Not my best ever poem, but it put my ideas onto paper. I was glad to see it written down so my thoughts could never leave the paper. I’m not a huge writer, but it’s a really good way for me to show everyone who I am and what I believe in.

 If only they would just listen…