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I try to see—without looking too obvious—if Sienna is in the congregation. Jannie sees me twisting my head around slightly, and, of course, she’s immediately on to me. So she nudges me hard as we’re walking and says, “Quit looking for your little crush. She and her folks go to the First Baptist Church.”
I didn’t know that, and actually that’s good news.
I do see A-Train, though. He’s sitting with his parents. The three of them are looking pretty stern. They see me (you can’t miss the Cross parade), and they look straight at me, and then turn away fast. I mean, come on. Be nice. This is church.
As we walk the endless walk, I sometime catch a nod or a smile or a wave from one or two people. But not many. Oh, man, it feels like it’s taking a few hours to get to the end of this aisle.
Finally, we make it to our seats and the Mass begins.
The organ music swells, and a serious-looking bunch of men and women walk on to the altar with the priest. Then everybody stands and starts singing a hymn. It’s always the same one: “The Lord Will Bring Me Peace.” I join in because, boy, do I hope that happens.
A shuffling of papers, a shuffling of feet. Everyone stands. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son…” Father Hannigan begins. Then another hymn. Then some guy on the altar reads an epistle. Then… I really can’t tell you a lot more. I am on another planet. And I stay on that planet through the rest of the service.
All I want to do is get home.
Outside, at the bottom of the church steps, a small group of people gathers around us. People always like a meet-and-greet with Dad and Bree and Nana. But this feels a little different. I suddenly realize that most of the ten or twelve folks gathered around us are looking at me.
One of the men, someone I don’t even recognize, grabs my shoulder.
“Good luck with everything, Ali,” he says.
My bio lab partner’s mom says, “We’re with you, Ali.”
“I’ll be watching and rooting for you.”
“You’ll be great.”
And this is the part where I should tell you that because of these people and their kindness and good wishes, all my doubts and fears just disappear. I should tell you that I was ready for the debate. I’d show them all. I was a winner.
Yeah, I could lie and tell you all that. But I can’t. Because as you know, I just came from church.
“SO,YOU’LL BEhelping out at the soup kitchen, right, son?”
There is a two-word answer to that question. The first word is “yes,” and the second is “Dad.” Sweet and simple.
Ten minutes later I’m up to my elbows in hot greasy water, scraping the burnt-on food from giant metal pots. I’m way too tough to use rubber gloves like a reasonably intelligent person. So my fingers keep burning, and the greasy pots keep slipping out of my hands. And if you were wondering whatever happened to Jannie after the Mass, and why she isn’t up to her elbows in water, well, the reason is that she has a Sunday morning job as a dog walker. And that sounds a lot better than washing dishes in a soup kitchen.
Speaking of the soup kitchen, I’ll tell you about it. St. Anthony’s soup kitchen is like a giant indoor block party. And it should probably be called a meal kitchen, since I’ve never seen them actually serve soup. An amazing number of people come to the Sunday meal, at least four hundred. On really cold Sundays, a lot of people come to the place just to get warm. Most of the people are from the neighborhood. Some folks bring their kids and their cousins and their aunts and their uncles. You can always count on there being a lot of old people joining the meal. Bree says that the elderly are “the overlooked poor in America.”
I’m stacking some pots on the super-big drying rack when I hear a voice. It’s a big voice, a gentle voice, a voice I know really well.
“Hey, I think you missed a spot of macaroni there, young man. Better start all over.”
It’s my dad’s best friend, John Sampson. He keeps talking.
“Before the Mass I told Father Hannigan to have you come up to the pulpit and give the sermon. That way you could get some practice talking in front of a crowd,” Detective Sampson says.
For a split second, I panic. In the next split second, he cracks up laughing. Yes, I can be kind of gullible sometimes.
Then Detective Sampson says, “You’d better get back to work, Ali. It’d be pretty embarrassing to get fired from a volunteer job. Plus, it would be even more embarrassing for it to happen before your big debate.”
Yourbig debate.Mybig debate.Thebig debate.
Sampson punches me (a little too hard) on my arm and then goes off to help bring out more food from the warming oven. Me? I look around and see people looking for second helpings, while most of the cooks and servers are mopping their foreheads in the overheated room.
I suddenly remember one of Nana Mama’s favorite expressions: “You can always find a way to make yourself useful.” Then she always adds, “If you can’t, then you’re not trying hard enough.”
So I try. And I guess I do try hard enough because I spend the next fifteen minutes helping one older lady cut her pork cutlet into really tiny little pieces. Then I help another lady trade in her scrambled eggs and ham steak for two donuts. I bus about a hundred dirty dishes, refill about a hundred coffee cups, and after I help myself to a bowl of Ms. Leone’s Chinese chili, I notice that there’s another sink full of dirty plates that need some serious scrubbing.
