My first contact with a church happened when I was a small child. My family did not actually attend any church on a regular basis, but I had been inside a few of them for ceremonies. The usual things, a couple of funerals, some baptisms, but the two times I remember with fondest memories were when I was the flower girl in two of my aunts’ weddings. They were married within a short time of each other. One of my aunts was on my father’s side of the family. The other aunt was my mother’s sister. I remember that I heard a lot of words from the preacher that I didn’t understand. It sounded kind of funny to me at the time. I honestly paid it no mind and spent most of the ceremony playing with the flowers that remained in my basket and feeling impressed that all of the audiences’ eyes were on the ten or so of us that stood at the front of the room. Although the churches were different from any building which I had been inside, they didn’t seem like scary places, but then again, I had always been with a member of my family whenever I was in a church. There had never been any reason for me to be left alone in a church as a child, until one summer.
I am the result of a 1968 high school love affair. My mother was 15 when she became pregnant with me, and marriage was the next step for them. My mother barely made it to the age of 16 before I was born and my father was only 17. The marriage, bound to fail by any standards, began to come apart at the seams within about 8 months. My father joined the Army and was out of the picture by my second birthday. Not long after that, my mother left for what must have been better and brighter things in New Orleans. I was raised by my mother’s parents after the age of 3. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t call my grandparents Mom and Dad. My grandmother did not return to work until my mother left and financial necessity became an issue. I don’t remember my mother leaving, but I do remember my aunt, who was 13 years older, telling me how it would be the two of us as roommates from then forward. She would tell me stories every night before I fell asleep.
My aunt planned on spending the summer working as a life guard while both my grandparents worked. During the school year it wasn’t terribly difficult, I was allowed to ride the school bus to the laundry where my grandmother was a seamstress, but something had to be decided for the long summer break.
I must have been about 5 years old when I was told that I was to start spending my days in the daycare program at a local church. I was immediately terrified. I had so much that I didn’t know about a church, any church, that I had no idea what kinds of questions ask. My grandmother became irritated with me when I said I was scared of the church because I didn’t know the things that people who regularly went to church knew. She brushed my fears aside with a comment of, ‘Well, there’s nothing else we can do. You’ll have to go, so we can work.” I remember that I did not sleep at all the night before I was to go to the church. To this day, I can remember the numbers slowly turning on the clock radio that lit up the nightstand next to my bed. The night seemed to pass quickly and crept by at the same time. I had always been shy and insecure, and I was scared and did not want to go to this daycare.
I cried all the way to the church. We drove in silence. I was surprised that my grandmother didn’t reprimand me. She dropped me off in front of the church and said she would return for me later in the afternoon. I opened the front door of the church and was met by an extremely nice woman who showed me the area that was to be mine. Still on my guard, I did admit to myself that it seemed to be going better than I thought. I began to feel better. Everyone was pleasant to me, and I loved hearing the stories about Jesus and learning lessons from the Bible. I was especially proud of a coloring job I had done on a picture of Noah’s ark and was extremely excited for my grandmother and grandfather to see it. The morning had been a success, and I didn’t feel any different from the other children. That was until lunch arrived and we all sat down at the lunch table and my world began to unravel.
We sat there with our sandwiches and little cartons of milk, and the teacher asked us to bow our heads. Bowing her head, she cut her eyes my way and said, “Leah, will you say the blessing?” My heart stopped. I had no idea what she meant. I’d heard a few blessings, but the preacher said the words. I only had to look at the ground like everyone else. I felt so embarrassed and confused that I just sat in silence while everyone in the room sat with his or her head bowed. My teacher spoke again, “Please, Leah, say the blessing.” All I could manage to say was, “I’m thinking!” Eventually the teacher either figured out what was going on or grew tired of waiting for me and asked another child to say the blessing. I felt humiliated when the child immediately began, what must have been an appropriate prayer. The shame of my ignorance about praying stayed with me the rest of the day and when my grandmother returned to pick me up, I cried and begged her not to make me return to the church because it was awful and explained my lunch prayer problem. She was angry with me, telling me that it was stupid to be upset about praying. However, she agreed and set me up in an area in the backroom of the store where she worked, and I watched television on a small black and white set all of my summer vacation that year.
This woman had just secured my attitude toward the whole church. Although this happened in the daycare, in my mind this woman was my treatment by the church, and I knew that this was a club to which I didn‘t belong. I didn’t know when to say “Amen” or what part of a prayer I was supposed to repeat with the other children, and I didn’t know the songs they sang. I felt like such an outsider. I believed that a church was a place where I did not belong, and it made a deep impression. It was a scary place. It was a place to be humiliated and embarrassed.
My next experience with a church came when I attended a Christian junior high school. I had always attended public school, and when eighth grade began, I didn‘t expect anything to be any different. My best friend since the third grade, John, lived directly across the street from my house. My grandmother was not working at the time, and John’s father had a series of heart attacks, and he was no longer able to work, so we were at each other’s houses almost every day. Although we attended the same schools throughout the six years we had known each other, we were never assigned to any of the same classes. I knew why. John was in more advanced classes than me. I always dreamed of being in the gifted program, so I could at least have one class with John. Eighth grade began, and we all reported to our different classes, and began getting familiar with our schedules. One particular Monday morning started like most when announcements began to be heard in the different classrooms that were on our hall. Very slowly at first, students were being asked to report to the office to go home. The announcements continued throughout the morning, and I was sure that although it was strange, it certainly had nothing to do with me and my name would never be announced over the speaker. I was in the lunch room when I was instructed to collect my belongings and report to the office to go home. This was the moment that I knew something out of the ordinary had to have taken place.
I collected my belongings and made my way to the office. By the time I got there, I could see my grandmother as well as John’s mother, Mrs. Richardson who was taking John home. “What is going on?“ I whispered to my grandmother while she filled out the early release information required on a clipboard which had to be 20 pages thick on this particular day. “We’ll talk later,“ she stated. She said goodbye to John’s mom, and I waved to John as he rounded the corner heading to the office.
To my surprise, as soon as the car pulled out of the school parking lot, my grandmother began explaining the events that had led to most of the children being picked up by their parents. The junior high school that I attended was directly across the street from the high school. Never to be one that particularly paid attention to social events such as this, I can only guess that some Homecoming game was played on the previous Friday, and the Homecoming Queen was crowned. A bonfire was apparently part of the celebration. Some sort of argument began among different students about the girl who had been selected as Homecoming Queen. Some must have been mad at the selection, and these students threw gunshot shells into the bonfire. As the shells exploded out of the flames, a cheerleader was shot. My grandmother told me that I would not be returning to the school, and I do not believe that the high school has ever had a bonfire since. “What school am I going to go to now?“ I asked, irritated. She said that she and Mrs. Richardson had an appointment with the principal at a private Christian school the next day. It seemed like a big deal to me for my grandmother to be going with John’s mother. My grandparents