Part 28 (2/2)
”What?” I said.
”We did no such thing!” Marian objected.
Ted continued, ”She's the one in charge of the youth right now. n.o.body told her these two were coming.”
”n.o.body told anybody anything!” Bill snapped. ”See? Now you've hurt Lucy!”
”Well,” said Pastor Marvin, ”why don't we open in a word of prayer? Dear Lord-”
Let us live, I prayed silently, clutching Marian's hand.
The moment Pastor Marvin said Amen, Bill spoke the first words of the formal meeting. ”And you announced his appointment from the pulpit! Before we've even met him or got to know him!”
”I knew your dad,” Wally told me with a smile. ”How's he doing, anyway?”
”Does he have another job?” Bill asked.
”We'll get to that,” said the pastor.
”This was something we talked about, remember? Wally, you're the accountant. Tell him. Again.”
Wally's face turned sad as he told the pastor, ”We can't swing a full-time salary, especially since we've lost the Cravens and the Johnsons.”
”We told you that!”
Pastor Marvin defended himself. ”I think we can do it.”
”If he has another job,” Bill reiterated, and then he looked at me and c.o.c.ked his eyebrows, expecting an answer.
Now they were all looking at me.
”I . . . I understood that this was going to be my job.”
”What skills do you have besides Bible college?”
The question stung, not only because it was mean-spirited, but because of how I had to answer. ”I don't have any.”
”Get some.”
”Now Bill . . .” the pastor tried to admonish.
Bill came right back, ”I'm being honest. He can't work in a church this size and expect a big church salary package. That's the truth of it.”
”Who's paying for the apartment?” Ted asked.
Bill's voice approached a squawk. ”What apartment?”
”We discussed that as part of the package,” said Pastor Marvin. ”He has an apartment?”
It went on and on, with Marian and I cowering in our chairs while the pastor and the board argued right in front of us. I've never had such an experience before or since then, watching my hopes dashed to pieces while almost laughing at the absurdity of it. Finally, I suggested, ”Why don't Marian and I leave so you can discuss this freely among yourselves?”
”Yeah, fine,” said Bill.
”Okay,” said the pastor.
We got up to leave.
Bill didn't even watch us go. ”If he can get another job then maybe we can work something out.”
MY s.h.i.+FT BEGAN at 9 P.M., as soon as the mall closed. My first task every night was to scrub and s.h.i.+ne all the public restrooms. The toilets came first, then the sinks, then the stalls, walls, and floors. My supervisor said each rest room shouldn't take more than an hour, but after a week on the job I had yet to cut my time down to less than two. I was working four nights a week and making five bucks an hour.
The toughest toilets to clean were the ones that got clogged sometime during the day but patrons kept using them anyway until the bowl was full. Then the only way to clean them was to ladle the stuff into a bucket, get the toilet unclogged, and ladle it back in again, flus.h.i.+ng it down in smaller loads. When I finished, I headed outside to get some air, laughing at the sign on the back of the rest room door: Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work.
This toilet in the north men's room was the worst I'd seen all week.
I flushed the last load and grabbed the toilet brush out of my tool cart. Under my meticulous care, the porcelain bowl would soon be white again.
With her business degree, Marian had landed a good job as accountant and office manager for a small firm that manufactured hydraulic valves and couplings. Suffice it to say, she was making better money than I was and providing the bulk of our living, including the apartment the church decided it couldn't afford.
What skills do you have besides Bible college?
I wanted to slug that guy. Did he think four years of college counted for nothing?
Well, apparently it qualified me to scrub toilets and sinks, refill soap containers and towel dispensers, and mop the floors.
C'mon, let's go, let's go, let's get it down to an hour.
I moved to the next stall. Ah. The last patron's mother had taught him well. This wouldn't take long.
My emotions and thoughts kept s.h.i.+fting back and forth from minute to minute. First, I felt okay about it. As weird, disappointing, and even maddening as it seemed, I accepted this as G.o.d's calling. He was using this time to humble me. I needed to accept and embrace it. I needed to stay put and see it through.
Then I thought of Minneapolis and the well-dressed man with the curly hair and the lady in the white silk blouse and navy skirt.
After so many years, the image still made my stomach hurt. I felt like I was standing in that office again, unqualified, unfit, inadequate, a loser.
What skills do you have besides Bible college?
The answer was the toilet brush in my hand.
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