CHURCH LADY P.I. - PART #1
Sarah
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| Drawing by me of Church Lady, PI. LLR |
I should start by saying that as long as I can remember I have been attending church. In fact, my first memory is in a church. My big brother was being baptized and I got loose from my mother’s grasp and headed to join him for his “bath” in the baptismal water. So, it should come as no surprise that when I found that I had to travel to a small town for a few weeks on a personal errand, when Sunday rolled around, I found myself in the lobby of the nearest Bible-Believing Church.
The building was of a medium size and as I entered into the crowded lobby of mingling Christians, I was met by an Usher who welcomed me, handed me a bulletin and pointed me toward the door into the main sanctuary. As I arrived at that door, I was handed off to another Usher who asked if I would like to have help finding a seat. It was all very slick and extremely familiar to me. I’ve been in so many different churches in my tenure in the “Body of Christ” that I can instantly tell a church that has a good administrative team. All the staff were in their assigned places and knew their assigned duties. Very impressive indeed.
I knew that I would not be meeting the Minister at this time because this close to the “Main Event” (the church service) he and his team would have taken themselves away somewhere quiet and private to pray before they stepped in front of their congregation and guided them through the worship service.
I peeked into the Sanctuary and came to the conclusion that I could fit in a quick trip to the washroom to “powder my nose” and tidy my appearance and still have time to find a good seat before the service started.
I smiled and “Good Morning”-ed my way to the washroom where I took care of “business”, fixed my hair, pulled up my south-travelling pantie-hose and made sure I had extra Kleenex tissues on hand. (I’m not called “The Church Crier” without cause! It seems to be the one place I feel I can let my emotions out for a while. )
From inside the washroom I heard the congregation begin singing and knew that was my cue to get myself into a seat. I was hurrying out of the bathroom and up the stairs out of the basement, when I came across a little girl sitting on the bottom step with tears silently rolling down her cheeks. Since I had just made my tissues handy, I stopped to offer her some.
She took them from my hand and look up into my face with such a forlorn look that I just couldn't rush past. So I asked, "Do you mind if I just sit here next to you for a minute before going in with all those strangers?”
She nodded her consent, and we sat side by side on the bottom step in silence for a couple minutes.
Finally, I introduced myself and she told me her name was Sarah. I asked her why she was crying, which only brought forth a new flood of tears. Through her nose blowing, mumbling and crying, I was able to piece together why she was upset. She had lost her “best friend in the whole wide world.”, a stuffed bunny answering to the name, “Velveteen”.
I told her that I was a Private Investigator and “found things” for a living. She looked up at me with a look somewhere between hope and scepticism. Her sceptical look was what started sounding warning bells off in my head for the first time. It is a strange emotion to see in so young a child. But I continued to engage her trust by saying, “If you let me sit next to you during the Church service so I‘m not alone, then I will help you find your bunny after it’s over.”
A frown creased her forehead so I continued, “I’m pretty good at finding lost things. In fact, it’s what I’m best at.”
I was waiting for her look of acceptance but it still didn’t come. This was definitely no ordinary child or situation.
Finally she broke her silence and asked me, “How much?”
“How much what?” I asked her back.
“How much money do I have to give you for you to find Velveteen?”
She said it so business-like, as if she was negotiating a merger, that I had to actually fight my urge to chuckle. She was so innocent and sweet and small, but she was behaving like she should be sitting behind a big oak desk with a big cigar sticking out of her mouth. But I knew enough to wipe the "isn't-she-cute" look off my face. Often what we adults interpret as adorable, is deadly serious to a child and absolutely NO laughing matter from their point of view!
I told her that due to the serious nature of her problem, I would do it for free.
“I simply can’t stand to see best friends torn apart” was my explanation.
Once she led me to our seats near the back of a quite full Sanctuary, I asked her where the rest of her family was. She pointed at the lady sitting at the piano. The pianist was her mother and the only family she had.
It was a typical Church service. The worship music was lively, but the sermon was only mildly interesting. However, I must confess I might have found it slightly boring because my new tiny friend sitting next to me was taking up a great deal of my brain‘s attention. And of course, I’ve actually heard thousands of sermons in my lifetime and sometimes they can seem to blend into one another. As I look back in my mind, the only thing that stood out about that particular sermon was that a couple of Bible verses were misquoted. They were put on the screen for everyone to read, but the verses’ location in the Bible were inaccurate. I didn’t think much of it at the time and just chalked it up to human error.
But as the sermon continued, my mind wandered all around the room and around the facts. The deductive reasoning that makes me such a good Private Investigator, also caused my attention to switch to other things while in the sanctuary. I observed, made deductions and drew conclusions. It’s what I do. I could no more stop thinking that way than I could stop from burping after drinking a glass of Ginger ale.
The mistakes about the Bible on the over head screen brought me to the realization that, besides myself and four other people, nobody else sitting there that day had brought a Bible to church with them. And that is a very strange thing for a church that actually makes a point of advertising that they are a “Fundamentalist, Bible Orientated Church".
I also noticed there seemed to be a big difference in the way people had dressed for the service. A few peoples’ attire just screamed money, while the majority of the people there seemed to be dressed according to meagre means. The poorer families were clean and orderly in appearance, but a lot of their clothes didn’t seem to fit properly. As if they had been bought for someone else, or they had gotten them at the local Thrift Shop. But it wasn’t only that. According to their fashions, there didn’t seem to be anyone who fit into a middle class category. There were the poor and rich and nobody in-between. But I’ve never exactly been a “slave to fashion”, so I figured there might be another reason for this vast difference and I just hadn’t comprehended it.
But there is one thing I do know and that’s how to interpret human behavior. And because of that, I couldn’t keep my eyes from two men who were both fidgeting fiercely, even though they were sitting at opposite ends of the church. I actually found their constant movements quite distracting.
Then, as I continued to scan the members of the congregation, I caught sight of something sparkly out of the corner of my eye. There was a woman near to my right side who had several diamond rings on her fingers. In fact, they were on almost EVERY finger except for her thumbs. I immediately assumed they were cubic zirconium or rhinestones because if they had truly been diamonds she would have needed a body guard detail 24/7 just to watch over them.
With the final prayer said, the final hymn sung and the final doxology pronounced, the Minister dismissed us and raced toward the front door of the church to take up the usual “Ministers’ Position". This is something almost all reverends do in order to say “good-bye” to everyone leaving because they were unable to say “hello” to everyone arriving.
I took Sarah by the hand (or rather she took me) and we went up the aisle to see her mother who had been playing the piano during the service and was now gathering up her music.
I introduced myself and the young mother eyed me suspiciously before introducing herself back. From the expression on her face the thought rushed through my mind, “like mother; like daughter”. I felt I was seeing a younger and older version of the same suspicious nature. We shook hands and she said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Sarah’s mother, Ginnette. Has she been making a nuisance of herself with you?”
The way she said this statement irked me. Her tone seemed sweet, but she made sure to proclaimed her authority over Sarah by emphasizing the word, “mother” and then criticized her daughter by referring to her as a “nuisance“, all in less than 5 seconds. I had been in this church for only 90 minutes and already the strange occurrences were stacking up extremely fast. And the vibes were all wrong.
LINK to Next Part # 2 "Ginnette"
Copyright 2015 "The characters and events in this story are not meant to represent any persons living or dead and are entirely a product of the imagination of the writer." LR
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