The Crawl Space

Hellie

"Upstairs" is barely a crawl space but somehow, Barbara Ann and I fit snugly enough. I try not to get the Beach Boys song by the same name stuck in my head, but it's too late. She waves her hand in front of my face as my brain starts rocking and a rolling.

"Earth to space cadet," she says, which I find weird, seeing she's the one in horizontal stripes.

"Sorry. So where do we put these?" I've only lugged up one box, but I'm already pretty miffed with Pastor Mike, who's out gallivanting somewhere instead of doing his own dirty work. Or is it squeaky clean work. seeing that we're in a church and all?

"Well, I think there's some room over behind the Christmas decorations." Barbara Ann gets to scooting around some boxes in a back corner while I try to pretend I didn't just see a spider on the sill of the only window in the room. It's round with stained glass and features a heart with something like barbed wire wrapped around it. Or maybe thorns. I imagine it has something to do with Jesus, again, seeing we're in a church, but I feel stupid asking. I'll Google it later.

"So, if I might be so bold, why were you following Magellan?"

I almost ask, "Who?" but then remember Zenith apparently has an alter ego.

"Who says I was following him? Maybe he was following me and cut me off."

"Nah, that's not it," she says, a tad too boldly for my taste. She's stopped rearranging boxes and is looking at me. No, wait, looking into me, which makes me miss the spider. At least it wasn't rude enough to stare.

"How do you know?"

"Because I can tell. You're not one of us."

"One of...?"

"You know, the church crowd. I don't say that accusatorily. It just seems like you have a sense of humor, so..." I feel like this is a pretty odd thing to say in God's house and whatnot, but I know what she means. Sister Rosie certainly wasn't joking about my journey to hell in jean shorts back in the day.

"Oh, well...thank you?" My initial reaction is to nod demurely and shuffle-ball-change my way back down the stairs, but the Great American Novel comes hurling across my mind's eye, and I know I have to sacrifice for my art, even if this means talking to people.

"So how long have you been doing...this?" I ask, Vanna White-ing my hand around the dusty, dank closet of an upstairs.

"Um, well, I've been a member of St. Jude's for seven years now. And it might just be my last." I'm taken aback a bit by her frankly saying so out loud. I pause as if waiting for God to strike us down in this suffocating space a cat tricked me into finding, but nothing happens. Something prompts me into Dr. Phil-mode, my go-to in uncomfortable situations.

"And how does that make you feel?" I say. She looks at me like I've grown another head, but I've got nothing else. I've never left a church. I've hardly ever really been to one (minus the Jean Shorts Fiasco of 1999), so I don't quite know how to respond to her pain.

Barbara Ann looks at me again, into me really, and says, "It makes me feel lost."

Now that? That I get.