Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy

Father chose First Baptist — not that there was a Second or Third Baptist — because he preferred its down-home wooden exterior to the faux medieval stone and stained glass of the Sacred Heart. The storefront Unitarian church of Fort Michel, which could easily have been a 7–Eleven from a distance, wasn’t a contender. First Baptist had the peaked roof and squat shape of most of the older houses in town. The cross sat at the apex of the roof without a spire, unassuming as a weathervane. It was the very picture of normality.

I don’t remember much of the actual service. Hard pews, strangers in dour clothing, singing and standing and clapping. The pulpit was dead center with what I thought was a small, octagonal swimming pool off to the side. After a time, the preacher started pointing into the congregation. I hadn’t been listening and I jumped in my seat. You, he said. And you. And you! Mother dutifully filled out one of the cards for new parishioners that were with the Bibles in the back of the pew in front of us and left the card in the collection plate as it came around.

A woman called the house the next morning and spoke to my mother. What good timing, she said. The church picnic is this Saturday! Surely you’ll come?

A teenage girl called that evening and asked for Adele. You and your sister should come to youth group on Friday!

A man called the day after and asked for Father. Adult Bible study is a great way to network.

We went to the church picnic. Mother brought some horrific combination of marshmallows, potatoes, and mayonnaise in a casserole dish. It turned out not to be a matter of good timing at all — there was a picnic every three weeks. Some kids whom Bonnie knew from preschool seized on her. Adele vanished toward the rain ditch with the teenagers, one of whom had a guitar. The same woman who’d called my mother ambushed her to ask what was in her delightful potato salad. Father went to chat with the pastor. Helen and I sat on the grass in a corner. I ripped out blades of grass and tied the ends together.

The next morning, we got up early; Mother tied on my tie, Adele buckled Bonnie’s dress shoes, everything the same as the week before. We stood in a line in the hallway, alert as soldiers, waiting for my father to be ready. He came out in his pajamas. “Go back to sleep,” he said.

Just as he didn’t discuss why we’d gone, he didn’t discuss why we didn’t go back. It seemed like the kind of ritual he’d enjoy: getting dressed up, shaking hands with less attractive versions of June and Ward Cleaver, drinking sour coffee and eating stale muffins. Was there anything more white-bread? Bonnie made a wry guess when I asked her about it many years later: “He didn’t want there to be a higher authority than himself.”

But I remembered watching my father and the pastor at the picnic. The pastor put his hand on my father’s back. He pointed vigorously at the sky. I saw his lips form the word heaven. Or maybe, I thought later, heathen. Father looked up. Maybe Mother was right — death was special. And my father, the vainglorious, covetous adulterer, would be with his father, and his father’s father. No one would tell him otherwise.

In 1881, Mark Twain gave a speech at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. He commented that you couldn’t throw a brick without hitting a church window in this city. I heard this story from the Japanese-speaking sushi chef, who directed it at his crew of Arabic-speaking underlings. He used English only to quote people and he attributed just about everything to Mark Twain, so I had no reason to believe Twain had really spoken these words. “It’s like what Mark Twain said: ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on.’”

But no matter its source, it was true. On rue Prince-Arthur, near where I lived, a large church had been converted into loft apartments. Laundry was slung over once-sacred wrought iron. I passed several churches on my way to the grocery store: Notre-Dame de la Salette, St. John’s Lutheran, Pathway to Glory, and the Chinese Baptist. I’d stopped to read the sign for services in Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. I sometimes saw the youth-fellowship group leaving, kids in their early teens getting picked up by their parents or walking to the Métro together. Their hair fell along a range of bleached colors. From watching Bonnie’s hair under a transparent shower cap, I knew exactly how it worked. Black hair turns brown, then red, then brass, then a canary yellow that could only charitably be called blond.

God had never had a role in my life. If I thought about Him at all, I imagined Him as a small figure, something that could fit in your pocket or perch on your shoulder. A cheerleader for good, a kindly kindergarten teacher. The Chinese Baptist church called to me. I imagined its congregants could replace my father. I imagined they’d understand why I was ashamed. They’d understand guilt and silence. They’d use the same careful, euphemistic language that Father had — I was a man with weaknesses —and they’d guide me in the right direction without making me confess aloud. I assumed all kinds of things just because the people going in and out were Chinese. Because they looked like me.

And maybe that is what would’ve happened if I’d gone. Instead, one morning, I saw a poster taped to the side of a bus shelter.

Are you seeking a better life?

Are you troubled by your own thoughts and desires?

Has modern decadence left you feeling empty and guilty?

You can change. We can help.

PATHWAY TO GLORY

I’d seen the Pathway to Glory sign pointing down the external stairway of a brick building on rue Jeanne-Mance. I stood staring at this poster, reading the words over and over again. The cold morning bit through my spring jacket.

“Hits home, doesn’t it?”

Only when she spoke did I realize that a woman had been sitting on the bench inside the shelter. Her cheeks and nose were red, like she’d been sitting there a long, long while. Her frizzy blond hair was dense as a topiary sculpture. “Hi. I’m Claire.”

I shook her offered hand. “Peter.” She held just my fingers, no higher than the knuckles, a ladylike gesture that I wanted to imitate.

“You should come to a meeting,” she said.

“A meeting?”

“At Pathway.”

Her face was sweetly plump; there were a few rolls over the waistband of her dress under her open coat. “Do you just sit by this poster all day?” I asked.

“Not every day,” she said with a gruff laugh. “It’s part of my ministry. I just came back from their residential camp, Pathway to Love. It was my second time there. I recommend it.”

“Thank you, but I’m not very religious.”

She took out a card to give me. “Why don’t you have coffee with me? Maybe I can convince you.”

I felt drawn to Claire immediately. The way she forced a smile was both endearing and familiar. Her black coat had powdery gray patches from dust or flour. Was she flirting? I took her card. “Maybe,” I said.

When I went in to work that morning, Buddy was there, asking a table of girls how their service had been, calling for free Irish coffees from the bar. The café had survived its follow-up inspection; even coked up, Buddy had a certain charm. He came to collect the coffees personally.

“Buddy,” I said.

His eyes stayed on the girls, a saucer balanced in each hand. “Hmm?”

I hesitated. I wanted to know how Buddy saw me, how Claire might have seen me. I deepened my voice. “Could you set me up with someone?”

“Like, a date?”

“Yes. With a woman,” I added.

Buddy looked me up and down. His laugh was sudden and pointed. “I don’t know anybody for you, man.”