He took a step toward her but stopped as if he had encountered a wall. Maybe like he was suddenly aware that anyone could see him. “I’m helping with sound for worship today. I don’t have time for this.”
“I don’t believe I called you over to talk.”
His expression darkened. “You’re cheating on me. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it? How else would you have a place to stay?”
She jerked back in shock. He might as well have slapped her. “Excuse me? Maybe I have friends. Maybe there are people who want to help me because they care about me. Unlike you. And you were supposed to. You’re supposed to be my husband. But you’re so dedicated to not facing the fact you aren’t perfect, that you’re the one who messed up, that all you can do is accuse me of sins you committed. All you can do is be angry at me.” She took a step closer to him. “Everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all, David. That’s a promise.”
She turned away from him, her heart beating so hard it was all she could hear as she put her head down and walked into the sanctuary. People turned and looked at her, but nobody said hi. She walked straight up the middle of the aisle to sit in the front of the church. She wasn’t ashamed. Not of anything. Not ofanything.
She looked down the row of pews and saw Stephanie, the pastor’s wife, blond and pretty and also not meeting her gaze. She took a breath and looked back toward the front, because if she found any of her close friends, and they did the same, she might lose her nerve. Might fail in her resolve to simply be here, unashamed and refusing to bend to this narrative of insanity.
Her boys were in youth group, so there was no chance of seeing them this morning, and it made her heart hurt. She missed them. Distant sightings at the baseball field weren’t enough.
It was part of the torture from David.
On some level, he must know he wasn’t enough all on his own. He had to take her kids, her house, her friends. That was what he thought might bring her back.
It was pathetic.
Pastor John came out onto the stage, a Bible in his hand, dressed in a collared shirt, but casually, his hair pushed off his forehead. He was a friendly, affable sort of man who made everyone who talked to him feel warm and accepted.
She wondered if she would still find that to be true or if he would close ranks on her also. If he would see it the same way everyone else seemed to.
She wondered if all the acceptance she had ever felt was something she had been paying for with compliance.
“All rise. Say hello to the person next to you.”
She turned, and the person to her left turned away. She turned to her right, and her gaze connected with a woman she didn’t know very well. Jennifer, she thought her name was.
“Hi,” the woman said softly. “It’s good to see you.”
Soraya was very aware she didn’t have her wedding ring on, but it was good to know not everyone was going to treat her like she didn’t exist.
She sat down when Pastor John gave the directive to do so, and he made some announcements, and then the worship team came out. She looked behind her, up into the sound booth, where her husband was manning the projector that put the words to the worship song, along with video clips behind it. Rushing streams and mountaintops and other natural wonders, all curated to create maximum feeling during the service.
Just another service David provided that made everyone think he wasjust so good.
She shouldn’t think of him as her husband anymore. Legally, he might be. In her heart, that was over. He’d broken their vows.
He’d released her. Set her free.
Two songs in, all the small children were dismissed to go to their classes.
“All right, everyone!” The worship pastor’s peppy tone felt so at odds with her internal monologue, it was jarring. “Stand up for this one.” He put his hands up over his head, clapping, before returning to the guitar and strumming rhythmically while he turned away from the mic and then back again to begin the song.
It was about trading your sorrows for joy. Even in this moment, she felt it. It didn’t matter what it meant to David. It didn’t matter if everyone here couldn’t understand her decisions. The song still resonated with her.
So she would sing it.
A choir filtered out from backstage, came to stand behind the worship team, all in red robes, swaying and clapping, singing a choral arrangement of a Madonna song that had been recently appropriated by church spaces, though even Soraya knew that, when Madonna sang about being on her knees in the song, she was not in fact singing about literal prayer.
She did her best to push that to the side and just listen to the song, which was being beautifully sung. She looked up at the lyrics on the screen and tried to sing along. A rushing river moved behind the words, the water swelling in time with the music.
Then the movie behind the words changed. It was dark and shaky. Then suddenly it was ...
Her jaw dropped, and she put her hand over her mouth as the reality of what she was seeing washed over her. As a man’s naked rear was suddenly projected across the whole screen, a few short screams rose over the music and the clapping faltered. When a naked woman bounced into view and onto the couch in the frame, the crowd fractured. Some were moving, turning away; others were frozen, mouths open and staring.
The lyrics were still rolling over the top of what was now a pornographic scene. What was now the literal, original interpretation of the prayer in the song.
