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SUMMARY: With apologies, this segment comes before the one titled "Anna from Betrayed..." It is the recent past and Anna is not really awake yet.

Catholicism strikes Emmanuel Nixon out of the blue while driving his family home from their own Baptist church on Sunday afternoon. It starts when they have to stop at the lights just below the Church of our Lady Cathedral to wait for a parade of white people to cross the street.

"How old's that church?" Germaine asks from the back seat. "Like a million years?"

"Nothing is that old, stupid!" his sister Ashley says with a slap to his arm.

"Don't hit your brother," Emmanuel orders, eying the thirteen year old in the rearview mirror. Germaine is so small, and she has really sprouted this last year. The usual of letting the two of them sort things out just does not seem right any more.

"He's being stupid, dad," comes her defiant response. "Somebody needs to hit him."

He thought Clarice would step in here, control the girl, but she is staring at the slow progress of an elderly woman who is still on the road even though the light has changed. The senior's presence is emboldening others behind her to also step out onto the sidewalk and dash across.

"I'm not stupid! Tell her dad."

"You are to stupid. ‘A million years old.' There is nothing around here that old. Stupid." With that, she strikes him again.

"Clarice..." Emmanuel pleads.

The old woman has stopped just past the mid point of the car's hood and turned to stare plaintively at the family with her cloudy eyes. "Come on, old girl," Clarice murmurs. But she is even more impatient with her family than the poor little old lady. She sighs deeply at the noise of them, which threatens to break her concentration of what little progress there is. "Just tell him how old the church is, Manny."

He is not going anywhere fast. He looks up the steep stairs to the high tower of the steeple. "I don't know," he mumbles as his eyes scan the edifice hoping for a plaque. What he sees above the pointed arch of the large double doors is the huge, round stained glass window, in a brief flash of all its intricate detail. It is glorious and strange. The whole building is awash in a golden glow that defies the grey stone and sets it apart from the world around it.

He is meant to be here. This is where his god resides. In a way that religion has never touched him before, his soul is moved to worship. "Ah," he says, and nothing more; not when his wife calls his name over and over; not when his frightened daughter shakes his shoulders; not when the cars behind blares their horns. He is removed from all of that, floating in a tranquil bliss of divine light.

The sudden bang of the old lady's cane on his side window is what manages to penetrate his ecstasy. Everybody inside jumps and screams at the same time. He looks around to her in time to see the caring hands of other churchgoers wrap around her shoulders and draw her away. Apologetic and fearful faces of her fellow worshippers now fill that side of the narrow street, but over his shoulder, the captured woman roars with anger. "Leave be!"