Free Like Sweet Potato Pie by Jennifer Rogers Spinola Page B

emotions, the curiosity, and then a surprising warmth.
    I waved back to Todd then glanced away. Pretending not to notice Adam’s hands clench slightly against the pew back then brush nervously through his hair.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered to Becky.
    “Huh?” She put a hand on her hip. Mocking me.
    Adam had turned back to the screen, but in the next second I saw another flash of blue. Asking.
    I nodded. And a slight flush rose in his face before the smile covered it.

    I could hardly look at Adam after the service. My head floated, full of the sermon, in which Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life. How He offered His broken body on our behalf. How Adam and Eve sinned by taking the first bite, but we could partake of Christ and never go hungry again.
    Hunger I knew. I’d never forget digging under lockers in the elementary school hallway, starving and hoping for enough change to buy a candy bar. Mom out with her cults again, forgetting to pack me a lunch or leave food in the apartment. I’d learned to make do with powdered Jell-O packets and canned corn, and sometimes filed through the soup kitchen line at St. John’s homeless shelter.
    But a different hunger gnawed in me these past years: anxiety, hurt, anger. Wondering if my drive and accomplishments could fill me, could make me forget my past and give me the love I’d always wanted.
    Bread of Life!
Rockets fired off in my head.
    “So yer gonna do that beginner’s Sunday school class with Pastor Davis?” Becky stood next to me, pink leather Bible in one hand. And a camouflage-patterned cloth Bible cover snapped over it.
    “His first name’s not Jefferson, is it?”
    “Jefferson Davis?” Becky laughed and slapped the pew. “Like the president a the Confederacy? Shucks, that’s a good’n, Shah-loh! The pastor’s name’s Matt. Real nice guy. Former army chaplain an’ pro ball player, an’ his wife …”
    But I didn’t feel like meeting anybody. I needed to think. To drive. To be alone with my thoughts and sort through the surfacing questions, like shredded blossoms bobbing in a Japanese pool after the rain.
    And to think of how to break the news to Kyoko, who would chalk one more tick onto her lunatic collection. “A religious nut job,” she’d call me. “So you’re gonna marry a truck driver and start pumping out bucktoothed kids?”
    Kyoko didn’t scare me.
    But Kyoko being right
did.
    While Becky yakked with somebody, laughing and tugging on Tim’s arm, I glanced down at my sleek Jimmy Choos and designer dress. A Versace bracelet sparkling on my wrist.
    I felt like a fake, a fraud. I didn’t belong here, with Tim’s striped Western-style dress shirt and polished cowboy boots. Southern accents and hand slaps twanging over the pews like Confederate bullets.
    I’m a Yankee snob, for crying out loud! Not a redneck denizen of the Bible Belt!
    Then I noticed my nails. Clipped short and hastily slapped with cheap pinky-beige CVS nail polish, already chipping around the edges from hot dishwater and too many hand washings.
    My longer-than-usual strand of brown hair curling down over my shoulder, coarse from cheap drugstore hair products and not enough time and money for expensive cuts. My old socialite friends would frown and cluck their arrogant tongues.
    Fine. Let them. I didn’t want to be them anyway.
    Not now. Not after Jesus.
    But as I stood and awkwardly shook hands with somebody, not hearing my own words, I realized one thing: I didn’t know who I was anymore.
    Where do I fit, God? Who am I supposed to be?
    The last time Kyoko saw me, my face kept a stone-like mask over Mom’s death; I neither cried nor prayed. I knew no more about Jesus than biophysics, and I didn’t care to. I could build my own kingdom, thank you very much.
    The kind of kingdom Adam’s brother Rick called
dust.
Because when I scooped it up, it crumbled and sifted through my fingers like cool Virginia soil.
    Dust. Ashes. Death.
I felt