Belong
One thousand, three hundred eighty-four and a half miles. Three days. Two parents in their mid-twenties, two daughters, one elderly calico cat named Piddles. A Dodge sedan and an old UPS truck painted gold and Kelly green. A hand-painted sign that read SHERWOOD FOREST BUILDERS. Jackson’s “Thriller” on the radio. Both vehicles packed tight and out of gas on this April day in 1984. This was how we arrived in Jacksonville, Florida, sweaty and bewildered. I was sure I’d just landed in hell.
Before the move from Michigan, the dominoes of our lives began to fall. The domino of my parents buying eighty acres more than they could afford. The domino of my falling in love with that farm and those trees. The domino of meeting God in the woods. The blizzard dominoes, so close together and cutting the power, the roads, the food supply. The Michigan economy and union strike dominoes. The domino of bankruptcy. The domino of the job offers in Florida. The domino of two months to sell everything you own, including the dog. The domino of no time to say goodbye.
These truths happened and led to one another. The fatal finger from the sky knocked those dominoes down, down, down.
But while my parents came to Jacksonville relieved, I came crying.
Because I’d spent my first ten years on wild acreage in the Michigan woods. I knew solitude. Resilience. Creativity and freedom. I’d met God in the trees, not at church. Sweet witches and fairies too. I read often and wrote stories of my own. I loved Fred Rogers, Bob Ross, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I daydreamed of motherhood and authorship—of making my mark on the world in unique and vibrant ways. I’d be an artist mother writer hiker friend.
My second ten years happened in Florida. I came with all that I knew, and what I knew wasn’t useful here.
We had pizza at the apartment pool on our first day in Jack-son-ville. I ground the hard consonants of this new town in my head. We’d come from vowel sounds. Es-ca-na-ba. Nothing would ever be the same again.
The dominoes kept on falling.
The domino of an apartment in a blistering hot Southern city, full of foreign sounds, colors, and crowds. The dominos of air-conditioning and cable TV: endless reruns of Perry Mason, Little House on the Prairie, and Trapper John, M.D. I kept a blanket over my head, afraid to go outside. I cried, stopped eating until my stomach ached, and sat in the dark.
A year later, I was eleven, watching R-rated Silkwood and Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye on HBO in the apartments of kids whose mothers weren’t home. I avoided the heat, stayed angry at the world, and started to find my words. I screamed often. My body popped sudden boobs and pimples, like a carnival sprouting in a parking lot. Anger is a stage of grief, but no one told me that, and no one called it grief anyway. They called it adolescence, and it was a problem to solve.
And so, there was the domino of my bad attitude. The domino of my rapid changes. The domino of my parents’ efforts to resettle in a new city. The domino of us all feeling so overwhelmed. The domino of a glistening megachurch in the heart of downtown Jacksonville, shining like a beacon on TV, offering hope and belonging. The domino of my dad’s resistance against the domino of my mom’s persistence. The domino of the magic words from the pastor’s lips.
We were sitting in our living room around the TV—Dad, Mom, me, and my younger sister, Monica. My mom wanted us to go to church like when she grew up. She said it would help us settle in better, adjust to Florida. The church promises to comfort the vulnerable and soothe the grieving.
The camera panned the audience—more people than I’d ever seen all together. A bald man with sharp features and a Hollywood suit stood at the wooden pulpit. “That’s Dr. Vines,” Mom said. “They have two pastors at First Baptist.”
Dad sipped his coffee in his recliner. “That place is huge,” he muttered.
First Baptist in the mid-eighties was majestic. Mom said they owned the largest pipe organ in the South, and the walls behind the choir and orchestra held pipes like tin soldiers. A replica of a mountain waterfall cascaded down fake rocks and real plants between the pipes. I’d never seen a church with a waterfall before.
“They have two services too,” Mom said. “The building seats over thirty-five hundred people. Two choirs, two orchestras. I’d love to sing in a choir like that.” She beamed. In Michigan, she’d directed the choir and sang solos. I knew she missed music.
The pastor paced and waved his hands. “You need to get plugged in to a good church,” he urged. “Children need to be raised in a good Christian family. Their eternity depends on it!!”
It was as if this man reached through the screen to speak directly to our family. He leaned over the podium, begging. “Brothers and sisters, we need the hearts of your young people. Adolescents still have a pliable mind. We must get ahold of children while they’re still young.”
I didn’t want an old man in a suit to get ahold of me. But “adolescence” was a big word that meant dangerous territory. In adolescence, kids either went right, or they went wrong—against what God wanted. I rolled my eyes. I still played with dolls, hated dresses, and wanted to move back home to the trees. Nothing wrong with that.
But I could tell First Baptist was the cool place to be. Mom wanted this for her new life—singing onstage, pretty clothes, friendly faces. At First Baptist, the women didn’t have to roll up their sleeves and work like men on farms. Men wore suits, women wore perfume, children smiled and walked in line. First Baptist was as opposite from where we came from as possible, and I’m sure she found that reassuring. The fatal finger from the sky tipped the dominoes ever so slightly. It was just enough to trigger a visit for a “New Members Tour,” an orientation session designed to help visitors find their bearings.
The following Sunday afternoon, we crossed one of seven bridges over the sapphire ribbon of the St. Johns River to get to “the big church downtown.” Instead of trees, Jacksonville had billboards. All over town, little frames around license plates read FOLLOW ME TO FIRST BAPTIST, so we did.
A short man polished like a game show host greeted us. “Howdy there, folks. My name is Tom. I’m a deacon here at First Baptist and your guide for the afternoon. It’s a big place—we cover eleven city blocks! And we’re built for expansion. But don’t worry a bit. If you get lost either on the campus or in life, First Baptist hands out maps!” He winked and Monica shuffled behind me. Neither one of us wanted his attention. “You must be here for our children’s ministry,” he said to our parents. “We have the very best youth program in all of Jacksonville. Some say in the entire country.”
Tom passed out brochures to our tour group. Four other families walked with us through the halls. “Dr. Vines sure can preach a good sermon, can’t he?” Tom said. “Really knows how to reel ’em in.”
The tour progressed through a series of restored retail and office buildings converted to Sunday School rooms. “These were built when people drove downtown to shop, in those big cars they had in the 1950s. That was before the suburbs. Over here’s our library and bookstore. Those are the Sunday School buildings—every age level gets their own floor.”
Our group walked past nurseries full of glistening brass baby cribs. “Folks, kids here meet their spouses at church, raise their families here, and graduate to our senior citizens building. You can attend cradle to grave, six days a week, and never have to leave.”
Tom strutted like a turkey in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, I thought. He told us the history of the church, and how the stone-and-stained-glass Hobson Auditorium was built after the Great Fire. The “sister churches” in the inner city—the Bethel Baptist temples and the Holy Congregations and the Fellowships of the Shekinah Glory of God—came through segregation. “As Dr. Lindsay says,” Tom told us, “everyone is just happier with their own kind.”
“Didn’t segregation end twenty years ago?” Dad muttered. I wished Tom had overheard him. I wished Dad would say we could leave and go get ice cream.
Tom motioned for us to follow him. “Every one of these buildings is owned outright, including our new auditorium across the street! We don’t believe in debt. We’re headed over there now. And we don’t even have to watch for cars! Would you believe it, God has blessed us with covered crosswalks? Don’t that just make you want to say, Amen?”
* * *
“She has a stomachache every Sunday!” Mom yelled at Dad in their bedroom several weeks later, pressuring him to pressure me to get my butt out of bed so we could make it to church by 8:45. I scrunched into a ball under my covers. I couldn’t eat when I was unhappy, and not eating made my stomach hurt.
A soft knock sounded on my door. “Can I come in?” he asked. When I nodded he sat on the edge of my bed.
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
“Yeah … but if you do, we’ll go out to dinner after. Sound good?” Sunday was the only day of the week Dad took off from woodwork and concrete, so offering dinner was high-stakes family time. If I got up, we’d have a good day. If I rebelled and refused to get dressed, he’d spend the day in the woodshop working, and she’d spend it bent over her sewing machine.
“I don’t have any friends, Dad,” I said. This was true. I’d been unable to make friends with anyone at school or church. Sunday School made it worse because the whole time they were talking about love and God and how great the youth group was for lifelong friendships, while I sat there feeling ugly and alone.
“You’ve got me,” he said. He looked at me hopefully, Michigan-solid to his bones. I’d lost the solace of the trees, but Dad was still here. Wood dust. Structure. Unbending loyalty.
“Oh, okay,” I said. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, irritated and comforted at the same time. He closed the door and I got up, went to the closet, and reached for one of the ruffled dresses Mom had made. When I came out of my room she said, “I’m glad you decided to cooperate.” The four of us headed to the car, my parents dressed up and smiling.
I tucked the lesson away, into a mental folder I kept inside myself for things I needed to know. Church made Mom happy. Mom happy made Dad happy. Parents happy made Monica happy. The power to make them all happy was mine, and I could wield it by swallowing it down and cooperating. Smiling children who got in line made parents, and God, happy.
As I walked into Sunday School, I tried to ignore the stares of shiny rich children wearing mall clothes. Most of these kids had been friends since the baby nursery. They had common names like Jennifer and Lisa, Jimmy and John. None of them knew what to do with a redheaded pimply new kid named Tia in homemade clothes.
Supposedly, God loved us all the same, but how did that work? We weren’t all the same. Some were rich, some poor, some good, some ugly. If church was a glimpse of heaven, then God played favorites.
I sat down in a wooden chair off to the side. The seat next to me usually sat empty as the rows filled with the pretty girls. But instead, a girl sat down. I looked at her flowered dress and recognized the pattern from Cloth World. She had a home perm and barrettes in her hair too. Like me, I thought.
“Hi, I’m Hannah,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Tia,” I said, and she smiled.
“What a nice and unusual name. Do you have any brothers and sisters? I have four sisters, three older and one younger. Their names are April, Charity, Jo, and Laura. We’re like Little Women plus one,” she laughed.
She sounded like a little adult, but she’d just said more words to me than any person my age all year. I loved her immediately. The teacher stood up and rapped on her podium for our attention.
“Now girls, we have a new member. Please welcome Hannah. And girls, let’s ask God for a miracle for her mother, who has cancer.”
We all gasped in collective “Oh no’s” of empathy. My stomach clenched. I knew from Trapper John, M.D. that cancer was very bad.
The teacher went on. “Hannah, we’ll be praying for your mother and also your dad, who must be very worried, having five daughters.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Thompson,” Hannah said. I wondered if her father would be less worried if he had sons. Was cancer something only women got?
“Cancer is a consequence of sin in the world, girls,” said Mrs. Thompson. “Hard things like cancer are never God’s will, unless He brings you hardship to teach you a lesson. The Lord disciplines those He loves. We must submit to His good and perfect will. Now girls, I want you to hold hands and let’s ask Jesus to give Hannah’s mother a miracle—if it’s His will.”
We stood in a circle and took one another’s hands. Hannah’s was cold. Some of the girls started crying. I felt desperate to reassure her—miracles were our superpower. Christians had a golden ticket out of our problems because the Bible was a book of miracles. Like, the one where Abraham didn’t kill Isaac. And the one where God didn’t let the lions kill Daniel. God was all about miracle rescues. This was part of our doctrine.
To get a miracle, the Bible said we just had to believe that God could do the big thing we asked. And then, because my own “big thing” sat like a rock in my heart, I weighed why my prayers to go back to Michigan hadn’t worked.
We were what Mom called “headstrong.” We didn’t submit enough in Michigan. We didn’t pray as a family or have devotions or go to church enough, so going back wasn’t God’s will. Like it or not, we had to stay in Jacksonville to be disciplined into becoming better Christians. The Bible said even people in hell could pray, although it might not do them any good.
God didn’t kill mothers though, I reasoned. Hannah’s mother would be fine.
Over the next few months, we prayed every Sunday for Hannah’s mother and her miracle. I squeezed Hannah’s hand as we prayed, so she’d know I was believing extra-hard God could and would do the big thing we asked.
As the weeks passed, Hannah’s homemade dresses faded, and her permed hair straightened. Then one Sunday, she didn’t come.
“Girls,” Mrs. Thompson said, smiling, “Hannah’s mother is with Jesus now. She’s gone to heaven and Hannah will see her again someday. Let’s not be sad. To die a Christian is to be with your Lord and Savior. To God be the glory!”
The fatal finger in the sky knocked over the single domino of my friend because Hannah didn’t come back. And, God did kill mothers. He was in control, not us. If I didn’t submit, he’d teach me a lesson too. I knew now God could take anyone, at any time, and I didn’t want to lose my family.
* * *
A year later, I didn’t have stomachaches only on Sundays—I had them every day. Mom took me to a doctor who kept photos of his pretty equestrian daughter on the wall. He pressed sausage fingers into my abdomen and told me to stick out my tongue. He asked me about my grades and how often I pooped. Then he declared, “These stomachaches are all in her head. Sometimes emotional distress leads to what we call chronic dyspepsia.”
“Well, what about allergies? Or her hormones?” Mom asked. “Her father has high acid.”
He gruffed, more dad than doctor, “Your daughter doesn’t need medication—she needs friends.”
My parents gave his diagnosis to the Lord in prayer, which was stronger than medicine. They’d already decided on a new school: the heat was on at church to enroll in private academies.
As it happened, the rise of private schools in the South was the result of someone else’s dominoes. The domino of civil rights. The domino of desegregation. The glitch in the chain when Jacksonville’s neighborhoods didn’t organically diversify. The mandate from the Supreme Court to use bussing to mix us up. The threat religious leaders felt with inner-city Black kids from the hood coming to the suburbs. The rise of private Christian academies as an alternative. The pressure from the pulpit to help parents decide.
“Don’t let the government teach your children about feminism! Abortion! Sex education!” The preachers’ faces reddened with anger. “Beloveds! Put your children in schools where they can freely pray to God! Prayer belongs in schools! And all God’s people said…”
The congregation clapped and answered, “… AMEN!”
So my parents pinched their pennies and placed me in Grace Christian Academy, a small school of a few hundred white kids. I was excited to hear the news. A new school meant a second chance at getting Florida right. Maybe Grace was my rescue from hell.
Mom drove me to a redbrick building that squatted behind massive old oak trees and bright pink azaleas. The brown paneled classrooms seemed dark at first but with wide windows that faced the woods. My schedule said I was in Mrs. Duvall’s class. Today my stomach buzzed with happy nerves, the good kind of fear.
Copyright © 2024 by Tia Levings
