Chapter 113: [30] Close Encounters of the Bus Kind 30 [From Beyond Arc]

Close Encounters of the Bus Kind

[30]

The soap story wasn’t as bad as she feared it might be and it wasn’t even actually that much of a soap opera. It definitely fell hard on a variety of tropes, but it was an easy watch with a lot of gorgeous landscapes and horses.

After the show, it was basically suppertime. She had had breakfast with Erin, followed by a Mediterranean meal soon after, the ramen, and this was actually the smallest. All the courses from earlier returned but she mostly nibbled. The main topic of discussion was disappointment with the national team along with Duman smirking and cheering for England in the late game of the day. None of her siblings seemed to actually know how she snuck out, but her father alluded to the fact that he needed to repair a window in the master bedroom.

Nadia volunteered that she would be working at the restaurant, so she hoped to get to bed early after such a crazy day. She added a yawn covered by her hand and a sniffle. Unfortunately, the topic of homework also came up and she had no interest in dealing with that. She suspected that the Sunday group would clue her in. However, Sunday also meant church and that was another obligation she would have to deal with.

How religious did they expect Nadia to be? She desperately hoped that she wasn’t in some sort of choir or featured position in the church. Paul’s parents left channels like TBN on 24 hours in their later years, so she had picked up enough of certain denominations of Christianity in her life. Digging around her designated social materials didn’t reveal a lot of hopeful details. There were implications of a prayer group but no recent activity.

Considering the current schism, she felt it was prudent to at least placate her mother on this point and hopefully not discover any sore points for her father. This evening‘s shower felt much tenser than the previous. She could hear her siblings scampering outside and feel the implication that she wasn’t to hog the bathroom. Nadia‘s stuff in there was marked with printed, plastic labels. Quite helpful. With more than ten people in the house, it seemed necessary.

She also had to plan before her shower. Walking out in a large, sky-blue robe, fortunately, didn’t raise any eyebrows or alarms. Murat asked her to help him draw some shapes and Nadia did her best with that although he seemed a little disappointed. As Paul, he was definitely not as precise but, as Nadia, she just didn’t have the practice. The kid ultimately went to İdil to clean it up. Nadia plopped on her bed and wondered if she would ever actually be useful to the Baris family. Paul was generally useful but had to field exorbitant expectations.

Just get through Sunday, she told herself. Curling up where she lay, Nadia considered turning off the lights or sneaking under the covers, but tiredness and exhaustion rooted her to the mattress and she drifted off.

Mercifully, she didn’t find herself in any strange or menacing places in her dreams. They just manifested as a rehearsal outline of the day that preceded her and the expectations of the morning to follow. She saw the framework of how things might’ve gone, like smartly hiding the necklace before arriving home. Responding cleverly to her mother’s tears. And herself in a nondescript church waiting for and fielding every new occurrence. She reran the roads of working in a kitchen and cleaning up a restaurant.

There was nothing especially memorable to stay with her when she woke up, but the casual rehearsal brought her relief and anxiety. The morning routine wasn’t particularly different. She offered to help with breakfast and make sure her younger siblings got everything done they needed to do. The latter was encouraged by her mother, but she single-handedly gripped the responsibility of breakfast. It was a really good breakfast and she seemed to take immense pride in making it for her husband and all their children.

For church, Nadia was able to dig out some random old photos online showing her at different church events, always from the back. It was enough to ascertain the appropriate clothes in her closet to wear. A pink collared blouse and a flowing black skirt with long stockings and flats. She made her hair nice and tucked everything away in her purse. Downstairs, no one batted an eye at her, so she took this as a positive sign. Her mother gave her a quick once over but didn’t fuss with anything like she did with retying Murat‘s tie. Her father hugged and encouraged her as they piled into two of the largest cars in the garage.

Nadia did her best not to appear uncomfortable in a skirt. It wasn’t that weird, but she innately understood that her legs needed to stay crossed and together, especially at this place. The muscle memory of spreading out and stretching during driving hours was an easy position to slide back into, but she was cognizant of each time she slipped and corrected herself by bringing her knees back together. In other clothes, even the really tight ones that Erin provided, it was easy for the way her body looked and felt now to just slip her mind with so many other distractions.

In a skirt with a bra and a blouse, everything about her female body felt desperately highlighted and on stark display. Her face felt hot despite the fact she was perfectly attired for a girl her age. But she was a girl, a teenage girl. A notably, naturally pretty one. Compared to being bus driver Paul, teen girl Nadia was a world and a lifetime away. It seemed like a masquerade, and she was self-aware of her costume.

Her family’s church was on the outskirts, far to the north of town. It was a massive building that felt more like something Catholics would create, straddling a narrow canyon and pristine desert wilderness. Several ranches and fancy homes flanked the church, along with a sizable preschool and a strip mall at the end of the road prominently featuring a supermarket, credit union, and a sushi place.

The pastor greeting them at the door was also obviously Turkish and said some kind words. Nadia noticed that her mother lingered behind to whisper something that she couldn’t hear to the pastor. Her muscles tensed and she desperately hoped that it wasn’t her mother tattling on her. Dad didn’t notice.

The interior of the church was tall and intricate, seeming more like an auditorium rather than a place of worship. The pews were arranged in neat rows with a tall stage at the front. The ceiling was vaulted and painted in vibrant colors and the walls were decorated with elaborate murals. The floor was polished wood. And the air was saturated with incense. It took a while for the congregation to be seated, but it was standing room only as Sunday service began. This was easily the most people she’d ever been around in one place.

The air felt different with that many people. No matter what powers and influence she had or felt she had seemed utterly dwarfed by the presence of humanity all around her. The world is a simulation? Tell it to them. Fortunately, the procedure and routine of the service were laid out in the paper pamphlet passed down the row.

During the opening hymn, Nadia tried to make her singing voice sound natural. She checked around to see if anyone was looking at her. There were several worship songs in a row and a few of the melodies felt familiar. She probably heard them on the television. The last time she was in a church was her mother’s tribute after her death.

It was an unfamiliar denomination but one recommended by the mortuary and paid for with a small donation. It was a clusterfuck. The pastor didn’t know a damn thing about Paul’s mother. They had the wrong name and information on the memorial papers. Less than a dozen people came, and Paul’s aunt blamed him for the entire fiasco. Every close family member of his who passed after that just received a small wake at home.

She tried to reflect on the lyrics of what she was singing. God loves you, Jesus loves you, sing about His glory to all the world. But Paul listened to too many podcasts that detailed oddities about Christian history. Nadia‘s mind raced with them.

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Jesus was more likely a stone worker rather than a carpenter in the era that he lived, a tektōn. Stonemason. And he was possibly a royal-blooded priest by lineage and an Essene. Then Saul of Tarsus, aka Paul, coopted early Christianity and implanted it with Mithraism. In short, it didn’t mean anything either. It was all made up or tangled and twisted by the mists and mess of history. Yet so many people were devoted and vehemence in their faith, and she felt like such a phony. She couldn’t even believe this world was real.

Maybe she was completely wrong, and they were all completely right. Maybe there was a God that loved everyone and cared for them rather than dark monsters that ate what was left of your essence after you died. Maybe there was reason to be hopeful rather than fearful of dream people who claimed you would be responsible for the end of everything. Maybe someone was listening and actually loved her, who she was, and who she wanted to be. But it just felt so uncertain.

The rituals of the service always gave her something to do, even if it was just listening to the sermon. The topic of that was devotion along with questions and the superpowers of God. If the universe was trying to send her a message, Nadia noted that it was a little on the nose.

Pastor Anderson, whose name she figured out from her pamphlet, had them read several passages, including part of Philippians. Then he went into a pop-culture tangent about superhero movies and the need for people to have faith. He invoked familiar stuff about power and responsibility and humility and stories. She did her best to make her closed eyes appear like she was focused on the pastor’s words and trying to absorb them into her life. At the same time, fear filtered through her.

It didn’t matter if she was gay, right? Paul vaguely remembered that laws were being passed here and there about churches when it came to sexuality. Of course, if her mother and the pastor had a certain arrangement, they could just take her somewhere and who knows what they might do to try to change things for her. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get out of here, twisting from a sudden panic in her soul, like suddenly realizing you left something smoldering at home, and surely it will catch fire.

Her head swam with crazy swirls. She was a teenage girl in a skirt, in a church, singing a song about God. That phrase repeated over and over in her head like a mantra, a madness song. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply. She was panicking. She was going crazy. She was losing it.

She had to calm down. She had to get control. She had to focus. She had to stop thinking. She had to stop being afraid. This had to be like what Leslie felt when everyone’s voices inside suddenly spoke up within her. Only the problem was it felt like the entire world was a simple cardboard construct that would tumble over if she so much as touched it. She imagined Pastor Anderson pointing a finger right at her and singling her out amongst everyone else as a sinner, as a lesbian, as a teenage girl in a skirt in a church who didn’t actually believe in the God she was singing about.

Before she could scream, a wavy, wobbly sense of calm passed over her. Luna, who she hadn’t even realized was sitting next to her, nuzzled her arm and squeezed it. She was so perfectly, fantastically warm without being stiflingly hot. Nadia quietly cried and clung to Luna as desperately as she clung to her. The unreal uncertainty faded, and the routine of the prayers and the rituals settled into her senses. It wasn’t long before it was over, and she could stretch. The nightmarish panic barely even remained in her thoughts, feeling more like a fever dream.

She was ready to leave church. But there was quite a bit afterward to take care of. All of it felt listless and rambling, like filling out the empty spaces of her life with something to do. The pastor talked to her and said a prayer with her but didn’t aim it in any particular direction of admonishment or advice.

Eventually, she had done her duty, changed into more casual clothes, and part of the family headed to brunch while her father and she went to the restaurant. Duman had an entire chain in the area, but this one was the largest location which took the most of his attention.

Compared to the unfamiliar landscapes of church, Nadia found herself immediately at home in the steamy kitchen. She went to work with elbow-length gloves making sure everything was clean, setting aside new ingredients, checking the walk-in freezer, and scrubbing the floor. Her father delighted in her energy, which did concern her about whether this was an uncommon occurrence. She just couldn’t stop working though. It was exhausting but also liberating.

She almost missed the text message from Erin announcing that she was arriving with several of the girls and her mom. And Nadia was so busy that the time between that message and a smiling Erin showing up at the entrance felt like less than an instant.

They danced and hugged. All the pain of losing the necklace, the confusion of the evening, and the panic of the morning slid away like the haze and cloud cover of the last day that had finally burned away to reveal the pure, warming light.

If there was a heaven, then it had to be with Erin. 

 

 

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm actually not that far ahead this time and I am wide open for possibilities for this particular story. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

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