Shirley, by all appearances, was devout. A little plain and a bit strange, sure, but she never missed a Sunday. Only because of Reverend Brown. She met the reverend as a young girl. He was the interim pastor after the former had passed and Michael Brown was a breath of fresh air for that congregation. He had this thick brown hair and these teeth, shiny and pearly white. Shirley begged her mother for whitening strips. At twelve, she had never seen someone so handsome. So she became pious. Every Sunday morning, she spent hours combing her coarse yellow hair. She had started to tie it back at the nape of her neck with a swathe of cloth she ripped from the reverend’s robes. She begged her mother to take her to Sunday school early, especially on the days that Reverend Brown would be leading her class. Those days, she spent until sundown with the reverend. She broke bread with him and the other adults for lunch and she stared at him from across the music room during handbell practice.
When she was seventeen, Shirley begged her mother for braces. She knew that her mother didn’t much care for Reverend Brown. She found him irreverent. Too young, too green, too handsome to lead a congregation. Shirley would have never told her mother that she wanted her teeth straightened on the off chance that he might look at her smile and find that she was the one for him. She had begun to lose him in the years following puberty. He never seemed to want to be around her. When she walked into a room, he cringed and made excuses to leave. But she would win him back. And she got braces. The metal tasted sour in her mouth and there was a constant, aching pain behind her gums. But, still, she flashed her white, bracketed teeth at the reverend whenever she could. She pretended not to notice his discomfort.
After handbell practice on a Wednesday night, Shirley told her mother to pick her up later than usual. Now that her teeth were sure to be straight, she felt confident that she could seduce Reverend Brown. She followed him to the basement where he locked up before going home every night. She crept down the stairs behind him, careful not to make any noise. At the bottom, he turned around and saw her in the narrow stairwell.
He yelled, “Christ almighty!”
“Um, Michael,” she said. She amped up the innocence in her voice to disarm him. He seemed so tense. “Do you think you could give me a ride home? Momma called and said that she’d be awful late.”
His eyes looked around, paranoid and frightened.
“Please, Shirley. Call me Reverend Brown.” She felt as though she had been slapped in the face. Or as though she was about to cry. He must have noticed. “Okay, come on. Why don’t I just call your mother first so she knows where we—where you are?” He pulled a phone from his pocket and Shirley pushed it back down. Harder than she meant to.
“Sorry, reverend,” she said. “It’s just that she’ll be at work and might get upset if we interrupt her.”
Now was her chance. She moved closer to him. She pulled the cloth from her hair, letting it flow down her shoulders. She grabbed his hand, and all the while he moved away from her. She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it, placing the forefinger into her mouth as his eyes bulged.
“Shirley!” He screamed it. “Get away from me.” He pushed her. She couldn’t believe that he had placed his hands on her and pushed him back. The tears were falling now. She was so angry that she couldn’t feel a thing besides fury. She could barely hear him attempting to soothe her from the floor below. She looked down at the glory that He had made. She smiled at her lover, the dim light glinting off of the metal brackets on her teeth. Then she stomped her feet. Hard. All over the concrete floor of the church’s basement. She smashed his fingers beneath her weight. And she broke his arms and she broke his face. Smashed his pearly whites to bits. And she left him there to take his place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Forever and ever. Amen.