Over dinner, my girlfriend asked me to teach Sunday school. I met her request with a popping laugh and a look that meant, “Seriously?” I squeezed lemon into my water glass and tasted the tartness on my finger. The acidity traveled over my tongue and faded too soon. I hadn’t thought to order anything stronger until now. I only had half a degree, and my church years were far behind. She was only my second girlfriend and the first to ask so much of me.
“I could do it.”
Part of me had shimmered at the thought of becoming a preacher’s wife. Maybe a lung or some other mound of flesh. Some part that had not yet met the pleasure of preacher’s hands seemed to long for such bizarre normalcy.
Sunday, six bright-faced children sat at the end of an industrial-style table. I wanted to start at the beginning, but one of the older children said they already knew all of that. Sister Nelson, their old teacher, had covered the easy stuff before her death. Rest her mind, soul, and the aged vessel that had been her body.
I said it all anyway, how in the beginning, universes exploded like firecrackers. Asteroids collided with worlds like angry bumper cars. Planets shattered. Let there be light, mountains, oceans, stars, and astronomy bigger than the parts of me that never fit. The gig lasted through Moses thrusting his staff to part the Red Sea, Noah building and navigating the ark, and Jesus walking on water. So many stories of men who fought hard to keep dry.
The preacher fired me with the soul certainty of an altar call.
“You told them that Adam was a craft project that God let bake too long,” she said, massaging along her hairline, all straight lines, sharp as razors.
“God made man out of clay,” I amended.
“Like arts and crafts?” she asked.
“More like pottery.” An adult’s game, the pedal, the wheel, delicate and requiring skill. Subtlety.
“Do you want to break up?” she asked, seeming to mistake my failure at god work for a deeper dissatisfaction. Subtext: “Did you do this on purpose?”
Instead of answering straight, I ordered a bottle of wine, red and cheap. I would have taken it and slipped inside, genie dreaming, piece by piece until I discovered the parts of me that mattered most. A moment to bring clarity. Then I might’ve reached for her glass and filled it to the lip of overflow. The two of us satiated together at once instead of just waiting on the check.
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Ra’Niqua Lee is a Ph.D. student of English at Emory University, and she has an M.F.A. from Georgia State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her always.