Rate this Story (5 best) 1 2 3 4 5

SUMMARY: With apologies: This and the next Manny-in-church segment(s) comes before the "Anna from Betrayed by God" story where Emmanuel is dreaming. Just how alien does a black Baptist family feel trying to adapt to a lily white Catholic church?

The Nixon family gather themselves together and begin the long trek up the steep flight of stone steps to The Church of our Lady. Their hesitation does not only come from the fact they are the only black family ascending to the ornately spired cathedral that dominates the hill overlooking Maynard square. This change in places of worship will mean an acceptance of a whole new religion, new rituals, new beliefs. It is as frightening for their hearts and souls as it is for their sense of physical community.

Guilt rivals anxiety in Emmanuel Nixon's mind. From the moment he saw the golden light of God, he knew he would have to come to this unlikely place to worship, but dragging his family with him is a whole other matter. Somewhere deep inside, he knows they are not chosen. He is. He has been trying to reconcile that with his previously unwavering devotion to them. Maybe it is only that he has been called and they are not. God would not deny them just because He has a greater use for him. He is sure he will never be asked to leave his wife, abandon his family in the name of God.

His beautiful Clarice is his soul mate. She has been downright saintly in her support. She told him she believes he has had a profound religious epiphany; that he has changed from a man who went along with her to church to be a decent man and a role model to their children to a man for whom the call of god is as solidly real as the peel of bells from the twin steeples that now tower above them. She has held him for hours while his confusion has left him crying in her arms nearly every night for the past two weeks.

Her motherly patience, on the other hand, seems to be running pretty thin and Ashley managed to push every button she has this morning. There was the refusal to get out of bed, which has lately become more commonplace, anyway. But fresh from the shower and stretching through the whole morning routine, the child launched into a fit about not going to their regular church, and what she called "the real house of God" until they were through breakfast. She incited her brother to loudly sing all the silly songs they learned at Baptist camps over the years. This slowed the boy's own breakfast and prodded him into his own style of rebellion: He refused to put on his good dress shoes.

Emmanuel could not bring himself to get angry with any of this. Instead he withdrew from the whole scene in defeat. He does not remember leaving the table, but he was soon sitting on the deacon's bench by the door, tying his own shoes and only creeping toward awareness of a war of shouts and cries around him.

Clarice was standing almost in front of him at the foot of the stairs. She was shrieking something about going up there and picking the damned dress herself and what would have to be Ashley needed to "shut up the whining and put up like the rest of them."

"It's okay," he said a couple of times with whatever voice he had left in his sunken chest. "You can all go to Bethany. I'll go alone to Our Lady."

That had just infuriated Clarice after all the battling, and having to work past her own trepidation.