Take Me to the Water

PART 3 // Church

When word spread around town about what had happened, I became known as the miracle child. People at church came up to me and shook my hand and pinched my face more than usual. I began to get lots of looks and people even wondered if I had power too, which I didn't, and all of the attention annoyed me.

I don't know why, but after a while, to get people to leave me alone, I began to bark at them. I didn't care who it was. If I felt like they were coming to gawk over me, I'd begin to growl and then bark like a dog, and without fail they'd leave me alone.

My mother told me to be nice and let people celebrate God's miracle, but that wasn't easy. I hated people, especially church people. They were the meanest ones. Every Sunday someone was always yelling at me to spit out my gum, or be quiet, or sit like a lady. The one thing that made me happy about being stabbed was the thought of not having to go to church anymore. I thought for sure I'd be able to miss it for at least a year, but that wasn't the case. My parents had me back in church in no time, and I was miserable.

Church lasted entirely too long. We got there every Sunday at 7 a.m. for Sunday school, and that lasted until regular service started at 11 a.m. Regular service didn't end until 3 p.m., and don't let it be a first Sunday. On first Sundays, after the church let out at 3 p.m., everyone packed into Shiloh's tiny fellowship hall to eat dinner. (That part was cool though. Black church women could throw down, my mom included, and I loved eating and playing around with my church friends). But after everyone had finished eating, instead of going home, at 5 p.m. we'd start evening church service, and that wasn't over until 9 p.m. I hated First Sunday, and I especially hated the baptisms.

On every First Sunday at Shiloh, Pastor Green would baptize anybody who wanted to be saved. Pastor Green said that everybody who wanted to go to heaven had to be baptized. After you believed that Jesus died on the cross and rose again on the third day, next came the baptism. It symbolizes your sins being washed away, and if your sins weren't washed away, you could kiss heaven goodbye, at least that's what Pastor Green said. He said if you weren't baptized, you were going to spend an eternity separated from God in hell, and I didn't want to go to hell. I hated the heat of Georgia, so I couldn't imagine the heat of hell.

Sometimes, Pastor Green performed baptisms in the small pool inside of the church. The pool was shaped like a rectangular coffin and was only about 4 feet deep, but for me, even that was scary. Even at nine, I was barely 4 feet tall, and the water terrified me back then too. The first person I ever knew to die, died while in water. It was a girl in my 2nd grade class, Vivian.

Vivian and her family were swimming at the beach when a wave took her under. She was a great swimmer, her parents said, but she couldn't get out of the wave. They tried to save her but it was too late. Her lungs had too much water. My parents took me to her funeral and that was the first time I knew that water could kill. After Vivian died, I didn't want to go in any type of water, even to save me from hell.

My mother said she wasn't going to make me get baptized but my father said that I had to, especially since I was scared. The Sunday morning I was to get baptized, he knelt down to be eye level with me and looked me in the eyes so seriously.

"No child of mine is going to live in fear! You got to conquer this thing baby girl!"

He told me that once I finally conquered my fear of the water, nothing would ever scare me again. That's the secret to life, he said.

"Fighting Giants, like David and Goliath."

What he said sounded good, but my mind was made up. I was not being baptized. I tried to fake sick. I even tried to run away, but I didn't make it out of the front lawn before my father scooped me up. He brought me to my mother and she forced the white gown on me as she tried to calm me down.