A Visit to the Seer
To the best of my recollection, it was a chilly Saturday morning in early spring and had rained hard the night prior. The droplets’ descent had prompted most of the young blossoms of a mighty Kwanzan cherry tree to fall on the sidewalk, becoming a blush-colored carpet. Still, along my walk a few continued to drop around and on me, weighed down by the water that sat between its petals. In an attempt to avoid the awkward wet spots on my neatly ironed dress, I fortuitously paid homage to Baba Yaga. Enshrouding myself in a heavy gray scarf that was more akin to a blanket, also doubled as an effort to contain what little heat my body possessed. However, despite my cold fingers I decided against entering the warm sanctuary and tracked my petal-mush covered heels downstairs.
Entering the cold basement of my church that was uniquely populated solely by West Indian immigrants and their families, I patiently awaited the familiar clicking of a dozen pairs of heels and animated laughter going down the tin staircase. Contrary to expectation, at the age of 17 I was not excitedly anticipating the arrivals of my similarly aged contemporaries, but rather women almost 30 years my senior. These women have known me for virtually my entire life. They were the mothers that never birthed me and biological mothers of the church’s youth in their own right. And I was the only person under the age of 43 allowed to stay in the basement, allowed to participate in their space. Reuniting after spending a week apart, we warmly embraced in an enthusiastic frenzy upon arrival. Their array of pastel colored suits and flowing dresses were ripe with the distant scents of curry, scotch bonnet, and thyme from home cooked meals combined with liberally-spritzed floral perfumes; an experience an ignorant nose would be struck by. While exchanging the trials of our weeks, inside jokes and the typical church commentary in their affectionately aggressive tones, it was impossible to ignore how the somber basement had been almost immediately transformed to such vibrancy in a short amount of time. This feeling, this sense of earnest welcoming and belonging would become something that I would chase to maintain.
In its birth in the ‘90s, our basement television was a futuristic vision of innovation, but was now an obnoxiously large and creaking relic. But its presence was an effort to preserve the divinity of the service within the space so my mothers could pray and worship with the congregation upstairs. It also served as a timekeeper for preparing the meal, so that every table was set and every dish was hot by the time the benediction finished. In the sound technician’s room upstairs, my father adjusted the zoom of the camera to focus on the pulpit and I watched as the delayed movement showed on the screen. Having all arrived at the makeshift basement/kitchen/dining hall, we would shortly assume our roles preparing the day’s lunch.
Delivering the afternoon’s almost two-hour sermon was an African-American man no older than 30. He wore thick, uniquely shaped black glasses that were more of an accessory than a visual aid. Much to the ire of the older men, he wore a fitted royal blue suit whose sides had the familiar rippling of tautly pulled cloth. His pant legs were cropped to his ankles, revealing his green and blue diamond patterned socks. To them, his eclectic choices would be considered effeminate.
This phenomenon of “eccentric” youth pastors was a largely unwelcome plague, but they were an effort by aging congregations to retain their youth who were leaving the church in droves. Many of which were disillusioned with the church’s restrictive and unaccepting doctrine, and after growing up in such an environment their entire lives, now wanted to forge their own paths. This was usually by identifying as “spiritual” over “Christian,” a concept that many church elders considered to be too worldly. This movement preferred Kirk Franklin over 19th century hymns and had Bible verses tattooed on their chests. Men sported bleached hair and women opted to wear pants and sneakers instead of calf covering skirts and uncomfortable pumps. These youth pastors were brought in to bridge the generational gap and to guide these prodigal sons and daughters back home.
Always the instinctive critic, a hater really, it was evident to me that the youth pastors all had the same off-putting performative swagger found in an obviously undercover narc. They passionately yelled about God, often finishing their sermons drenched in sweat like their fore-pastors. Except their sermons included references to contemporary media whilst adopting the dialect of the youth, an embarrassing venture that was below the standards of any middle-aged preacher but acceptable enough for a 30-year-old.
That day was the usual sermon of nonsensical word vomit that the congregation enjoyed. There were proclamations of God’s love for his beloved sheep, conspiracies on the evil Catholic papacy, apocalyptic fear mongering, and the crowd favorite topic of “Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve,” interspersed with the aforementioned contemporary commentary on how black women are too high maintenance and can’t cook like their mamas did, references to basketball and to Tyler Perry’s horrid filmography, and a series of wholly uneducated socio-political remarks.
Most notably to my church mothers though, he wore a gold chain with an unusually large depiction of Jesus on the cross that flickered in the chandelier light with every slight movement. The severity of this action is inconsequential to most, but in this case it is greatly affected by context. The Seventh-day Adventist faith that I grew up in is an offshoot of Protestant Christianity and has a number of restrictions that vary in intensity by church. A few include abstinence from unclean foods like pork, shellfish, alcohol, puritanical beliefs on sexuality, and abstinence from “vain” adornment like piercings, makeup, tattoos, and jewelry.
So as he stood preaching, reveling in the attention being given to his holy performance every eye was focused on his chain and the mournful eyes of gold-plated caucasian Jesus looked right back at them. Its flashy presence dared the congregation to say something.
“Is that boy wearing a chain around his neck?” asked Sister Helen.
Every woman stopped stirring, chopping, and cutting to whip their necks up and look at the screen.
“Yeah, looks like it.” I replied and turned back to continue slicing cherry tomatoes.
I take much joy in my involvement with the food preparation for all of the church visitors, it's a cause I have faithfully tended to since 2016. Every week, anyone could come into the church and receive a warm healthy meal, seasoned with the flavors of the Caribbean and a mother’s unique love.
In all honesty, it’s also an escape from the excruciatingly boring service of a faith I didn’t believe in. An opportunity to be a fly on the wall as my mothers gossiped without inhibition.
Immediately, they started chatting about his audacity to wear a chain at the pulpit and launched into every problem they had with the church.
“These children have no respect for the church. Last week, after the service when everyone was downstairs eating, Miriam’s boys were running around and playing games in the sanctuary.”
“You see how Brianna is always glued to her phone instead of paying attention to the service? Why doesn’t her mother tell her to get off that phone, peel off those long nails, and wipe off that face paint?”
“They need to stop asking Sister Myra to do Scripture reading. Every time she goes up there, her skirt is always too short. At her age, no one needs to see all that.”
“You heard Sister Leeane’s daughter is acting like a boy? She even cut off her breasts!”
“He’s 24, why hasn’t he gotten baptized yet?”
“Who is she wearing those tall heels for? She can hardly walk in them. She’s always wearing new shoes but never giving tithes.”
“I haven’t seen her husband come to church in a long time, I wonder what happened…” “All he needs to fix that depression is some prayer.”
My mothers made a sport of discussing everyone’s supposed unholiness as though God himself bestowed these women with his singular authority to judge all of humanity. And in this severe review, I relished in my exception from it.
They called me an “old soul,” a term uniquely fit for an overly cautious child, one who was dedicated to non-confrontation to a fault, who voraciously took up new knowledge and maintained certain hobbies to distract from my own loneliness. But I didn’t know that the term served as a compliment to my inability to noticeably take up space, so I unashamedly listened and made sporadic affirmative comments.
In spite of the disagreements I had with the majority of the conversation’s content, I kept quiet because their presence created a sense of security. It validated my avoidant behavior and proved the worth of fearing retribution. I was already in a viselike faith, so I was condemned to forgo individuality lest I be removed from the home that nurtured me. I was given extra portions of food I enjoyed, specially-made home baked desserts, and money for my birthday and Christmas even though our faith doesn't condone the holiday. They raved about the quality of my respectful character. They admired how I always greeted everyone, always did my schoolwork, wasn’t lazy, and looked nice in my church-appropriate clothes.
In that basement however, my earned mothers could just as easily dole out a scathing criticism as they could reveal their own contradictory spirits amongst each other. I remembered how they stained the rims of their teacups with their wine colored lipstick and how their bare ears had piercings that weren’t closed. How they made silent competition among themselves through elaborately made dishes and debated over which of the young eligible men had the nicest butt in their too-tight pants. They loved to eat shrimp and roast pork on holidays and made jokes too crude to repeat. We kept a silent pact to maintain the façade whenever an interloper entered our space. The freedom in transparency also came with an inherent commitment to trust one another, as we were all unabashed hypocrites– our second lives slipping out at times.
Recently, I wonder what my mothers were like when they were younger, before they were anybody’s actual mother— much less my own. I wonder how many sexy but no-good boyfriends they had and if their pastel skirt suits covered poorly tattooed tramp stamps. I wished I had met them when they went to dance halls in their country, grinding in denim mini skirts and sweating out their fried hair. I wonder if they wore gold nameplates of their boyfriends in the hot sun that stayed tanned onto their skin long after the relationship had run its course. I wonder how many shots it took them before the dry rum stopped burning on the way down and became water. I wonder if they, like me, lit incense to mask the lingering smell of smoking weed out the window. It's an amusing dichotomy, these lives that they might’ve had but chose to leave behind so that the Lord would deliver them from their wicked worldly ways, ensuring that they would sit on his right side in white raiments and gold crowns upon his return. We were all in fear of retribution.
There are several aspects of my self-actualization that my heart intends to faithfully guard until I leave my childhood home and with it the church. I find that the breadth of the ego and fear of retribution stay with you. Even if I leave this place, the burden will still remain. Elements of my present life which I withhold and the future that I anticipate would probably petrify my mothers — both biological and earned — and I think at the same time, remind them of themselves. Mostly though, I wonder what they will say about me then and whether my life, as it currently stands, will succumb to the same fate.
By Rebecca Newell
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Leo Ng for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/