immediately after she endorsed her patients to the next shift nurse this morning, my co-worker immediately called home her only child, a daughter now in middle school.
she sounded stern. wake up, wake up. we'll be late for church. on the speaker phone, a wooly voice came on. but it's too cold, mom. could we skip church today?
taken aback and discomfited, my colleague scrambled to turn off the speaker phone and began talking to her daughter in whispers. she sounded more stern.
mama always spoke sternly to me growing up, like i was a hardcore parolee who could never be trusted. and most of the time, i never did anything to change mama's perception of me.
mama once caught me filching loose change from her threadbare red coin purse. rightfully, she whipped me with a rusty umbrella after that felony.
but i did not cry after that bludgeoning. i hardly did growing up. i could still recall the very few times i did like after the last sunday school i attended under the tutelage of this fresh bible school graduate assigned to our island church.
our novice teacher had the longest straight black hair i have seen a woman wore not in chignon. she let down her hair, a sheaf of unbraided black, dry tresses, down to her buttocks, and every time she flicked her head, her hair chopped the air like bone dry bamboo spurs rattled by an errant squall.
she spoke in uninterrupted sentences punctuated only by her cough gurgling not unlike the farting of our piebald dog.
when she started telling us the story of the messy love triangle of abraham, sarah, and hagar, i realized her unibrow grew to the thickness of a mature trellis of bitter melon.
and when she told my wide eyed classmates that sarah was the evil woman, i suddenly forgot her name and stood up without asking first for her permission.
sarah had cooked up this entire scheme, i must have told my classmates. i mean, this muss involving her patriarch-husband's siring a child with another woman, and of all the fecund women in the village, from her loyal handmaid, hagar.
the response was swift as an old testament dealing of divine justice. our sunday school teacher harangued me immediately for telling my now confused classmates that abraham's wife was, indeed, the meaner woman. for according to my exegesis, she chased hagar, toting her bastard child ishmael, from her household to almost die in the desert of hunger, dehydration and the shame of raising a kid all on her own without the help of the man of the house.
the sunday school teacher's voice must have been so loud, wafting beyond the makeshift partition between our class and mama's adult sunday school session.
my husbandless mama appeared suddenly and, without asking permission from my teacher, yanked me out from her class. she didn't tweak my ears as she was wont to. there wasn't any need for me to cry at that point.
i only cried when i caught my single mother stealing glances at me while we walked away from the church. she was not even glowering at me.
mama decided thereafter we would not have to attend sunday school in that church while that mean teacher was still around telling partial stories.
my mama never said a word to me while we walked home that sunday. she only pointed at her hemline behind as if asking me if her slip showed.