Colored windows

Where do I start from ?

I was 11 when my father forced me out of church.

I’m not sure what it was about the stained glass in the big brown building, but my father would wake us up every Sunday and drive us there. He always did, and it was always at the crack of dawn. Daddy hated driving, I’m not sure if it was the driving or the fact that we were always late that made him so angry, but on Sundays daddy was angry . My sister always took too long to pack her hair, the hair she decided to go natural with. Took too long to match her burgundy scarf with her beige skirt, only to add that big fat black belt that was nicknamed the “abortion belt,” with her heinous peplum top and her ugly gladiator sandals she wore for two years straight.

Oiled faces, oiled lips, moisturized hair. Sundays always smelled like that one perfume my three brothers and I shared—Bod Man. Sundays always smelled like Bod Man and anger.

I grew up Catholic—mostly. At least, that’s how I remember it. Until the morning I wore my green plaid shirt that I cried for at Christmas and we walked to the black Camry my mother drove for too long. She paused and said she wanted to tell us something. She asked if I could keep a secret. I was 11—I couldn’t.

That day, we drove past the big brown church with colored windows. Four turns later, we were on a not-so-busy road, in front of another old brown building. This one didn’t have fancy windows or a big sculpture of Jesus. This one had no picture of Jesus at all. Instead, it had a speaker perfectly positioned to somehow disturb every neighbor on the street. I wondered if it was intentional or just a mistake. Why would someone be so wicked?

We drove into the brown compound with my mother’s fear bigger than her gele. I think women were taught to always play it safe—to always become, but never in a way that was too becoming.

Woman: not woman enough, not woman too much. Just somewhere in between. Never too daring, never too submissive.

That day, my mother’s gele didn’t glisten. It didn’t shimmer like the ones she wore to our big brown church. The building didn’t shimmer either. In this place, there were no colored windows—only the colored outfits of the smiling women who welcomed us into the building and a bad choir. “Church.” This place was called a church? It barely looked like one, now that I remember. It was a mall during the weekdays. The teenagers' class was really just the front of someone’s store. So was the children’s class—tucked away behind the noise of the main church so we wouldn’t hear the pastor speak on sex and alcohol. Sorry—procreation and unwillingness.

This church was different. We didn’t go at the crack of dawn. We didn’t go when family members were around. And we most certainly didn’t speak about it when Daddy was home.

“Yes, Mummy, I can keep a secret.”

I’ve always thought the thing about being a child is that we’re often smarter than people think we are—more observant even. Almost like we know something is coming, something is happening. We can smell it in the air, like some kind of gift we have, or curse, you decide.

I didn’t have any friends in this church, but between you and me, I didn’t really have any friends in my old church either. As long as my siblings were happy… so was I.
Wasn’t I ? Wasn’t I supposed to be…..happy?

I didn’t care much about church. I was fat and short—the only thing I could afford to care about was how I looked. More specifically, how I hated how I looked. The thing about being young is that nothing matters, yet everything does.

I can’t remember what month this happened, but I know it wasn’t rainy. I know it hadn’t rained in a week because I begged God to let it rain. Maybe if it rained, Mummy wouldn’t wonder why I was wearing my brother’s oversized sweater. Maybe she wouldn’t know that I hated the rolls in my arms. Mummy never looked twice at me—I hoped she wouldn’t today.

Now that I think about it, I must have been 14 when Daddy dragged me out of church. All my siblings had left for university. It was just me.

I remember seeing his black Honda turning into the street the little brown church was on. My eyesight was never the best—until that day.

I remember running to my mother.
I remember the tears in my eyes.

Is it not funny how we fear the unknown?

“Mummy, Daddy is in church.”

I must have punctuated it with a “Jesus” in normal last-born fashion, but if you knew my dad, you’d know it wasn’t last-born fashion. It was real. I was scared of him. Mummy, on the other hand, wasn’t. Maybe it was that thing about being a woman. Maybe it was because she knew that being an adult—and sharing different views with my dad—didn’t mean they weren’t in love.

I was 10 when I had to learn the difference between Catholic and Pentecostal. When I learned how to code-switch between being an intercessor and reciting the Stations of the Cross. Isn’t it funny how I never confessed to the priest that I went to the Pentecostal church down the street?
I couldn’t.

Why was worshiping God… a sin?

I think the older I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to understand. Life isn’t black or white. It’s in-betweens. It’s the stories we never tell, the things we never become.

And what’s crazy? It’s happening to everyone at the same time.

Till today, I stutter when I’m asked if I’m Catholic or Pentecostal. I get cold when I’m yelled at because suddenly, I’m 14 again, and my daddy doesn’t understand why I’d follow my mum to that “church.” That church that always smelled like fresh paint.

I think I want to create a path for myself.

Why? Because I am everything my parents ever were, yet nothing they will ever be.

I will always carry my father’s rage and my mother’s will. But who says that’s bad? Who says that’s not who I am?

I recently read a quote: What if everything I ever wanted to be was me? I am becoming, and that’s okay. I don’t have to have everything figured out. Life is not black and white. It’s stained windows in a big brown building, in a place they called “church.”

You know I’ve had a shitty week, I’m trying not to beat myself up for forgetting what I’ve read, to not get angry at myself for snoozing my alarms. I am tired. I am allowed to be. Maybe this is why I made our love letters private, I’m writing for you now, for 14 year old me, for us.

But before I forget, my love, my Tobaby—how is your day going, joor?