Tara's Teahouse: Chapter 2

It was several weeks before Tressa reappeared at St. Matthew’s. When she did, I found her in the church basement, idly browsing a stack of fabric that was used for Sunday School crafts.

“How was your vacation?” I asked, adopting that professional politeness that had become my trademark during the past few months. I had become an expert at asking questions without really wanting an answer. But then, that was the whole art of polite conversation – “how are you?” rarely ever meant "I want to know how you're doing."

“What vacation?”

“You were gone for a few weeks.”

“Oh, that.” She flashed her sharky smile again. “I wasn’t on vacation.”

I raised an eyebrow, unsure of how to proceed. It occurred to me that something unfortunate might have taken place during those weeks.

“Well, we missed having you around.”

“I’m sure.” She turned back to her fabric.

“The internet café’s been desperate for customers.”

She turned and regarded me over her shoulder with a thin smirk.

She was an expert at ending conversations, I thought.

--

In the weeks that followed, I busied myself with the implementation of a new initiative for reaching high school students with the gospel. It was brilliantly simple – we would circulate fliers offering free coffee at Gretel’s during the high school’s lunch hour, at which time we would sit the students down for Bible study. Reverend Law approved, and we set about advertising, careful to come as close as we could to the high school campus without crossing that invisible barrier where the church ends and the state begins. This was always a guessing game, and by now we were used to getting phone calls from enraged parents threatening to sue our church for proselytizing minors at the high school. I had designed the posters and fliers myself, giving them a catchy heading in bold: “This Week, Coffee’s On Him!”

Our first session was relatively quiet, and only four students appeared – two of whom announced that they had football practice after taking their cups of coffee. They would have loved to have stayed for Bible study, they said, “but you know how coaches are, and…”

“We’ll just have to try again next week.” The Reverend said. “We’ll soak that campus in prayer! Come, my boy, we’re going for a prayer walk this instant.”

Seven times around the campus and we were sure the walls of that secular Jericho were ready to fall.

The next week, we had a larger group, with seven kids opting to stay for Bible study. I taught from the Book of James – always a favorite of mine, but when we got to that niggling bit about works and faith, Reverend Law’s eyebrows stood up.

“That’s a contradiction.” One boy said. “In my church, we go by the Book of Romans, which says….”

“It’s not a contradiction.” Reverend Law insisted. “It’s a divine mystery.”

I was about to intercede, when a girl with curly blonde hair leaned over the table and interrupted.

“Doesn’t Tressa Durham go to your church?” She asked.

“What’s that got to do with the Book of Romans?” The boy grumbled.

“She used to go to our school. She was a senior, I think – or she would be one by now, if she hadn’t dropped out.”

So I was right. She was part of the campus drug scene – or worse. I had a scored a small victory over my young opponent.

“Idiot.” I half-murmured. And there it was again – that pitying tone.

“Huh?” The girl asked.

Reverend Law bit his lip and quickly flopped his Bible down on the table, nearly spilling his cup of coffee.

“I think we can conclude,” He said, with magisterial elegance, “that we’re dealing with a divine mystery here. Our Faith compels us to live righteously.”

When we got back to church, he sat me down in his office and kneeded his bald head into dough with his long, thin fingers.

“I understand your passion and zeal, Harrison.” He said in a fatherly tone. “But St. Paul cautions us not to pursue zeal without knowledge. It can be frustrating to see how lost our young people are today, but we must be temperate in our criticisms. I can certainly relate to your frustrations, but please try to keep a cool head on your shoulders. Calling students ‘idiots’ is simply not acceptable.”

The first black strike on my spotless pastoral report card. I made a note of it.

Idiot. I thought. Look at what she’s done to me now.

After making the necessary apologies – and assuring Reverend Law that I would curb my zeal to reach the lost – I stood and turned to leave.

“Just a minute.” He said, waving me back to my seat. “There’s another matter we need to touch on, if only briefly. This business about Tressa Durham – I trust that you won’t mention it to anyone. It is an uncomfortable situation, and we don’t want to cause Tressa undue embarrassment.”

I felt a bit relieved at what I had learned about Tressa that afternoon; I knew at least that she had no grounds for being smug, held no secret which set her apart or above me. She could go on regarding me with that sly, shark-toothed grin, but I would know her real secret.

She was a loser.

I bit my tongue.

How old are you now? I thought. 23? Why are you still acting like this?

---

Looking back now, with the early morning sun in my eyes and the gentle flow of the river in my ears, I realize that my fall had already begun long before Tressa entered my life. I can see now what I could not see then – that I hated Tressa because she was young and full of energy. I had hardly even had the chance to drop out, or join the drug scene, or do whatever illict things Tressa was no doubt doing, now that she was free of the high school’s confines. To my mind, the entirety of my youth seemed nothing more than a grey blur – punctuated at times by scenes that drifted through the grey aether like clouds in which one vaguely recognizes familiar images.

In those clouds, I recognized – here and there – the bright moments I had spent before the age of sixteen. Back then, I had been unholy, illict – like Tressa. I dressed in black, cursed like a sailor, and hid booze under my bed. But back of all this was a certain clarity that I have not known since – a clarity of identity and purpose.

How strange, that we in the church speak of people like Tressa as ‘lost.’ I had not truly been lost until I had been found and sanctified by chance circumstances. Stripped of all that was sinful, I had become a ghost in a black cassock, wandering aimlessly and all the while pretending to have found my destination.

No, I realize now that I would never have dropped out of school like Tressa; I would have done the opposite, in fact – I would have stayed at school indefinitely, had I the chance. Too bad, I thought, that it hadn’t occurred to anyone to open a boarding school. I would have been its most loyal resident.

No, my fall from grace had been determined long before Tressa took it upon herself to invade my office. I had been working it out, in secret, for years – formulating for myself, with subtle gestures and wandering eyes, the means by which I would escape the chains I had laid on myself just a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Self-sabotage might just as well be self-deliverance. Even then, Shiva’s dance had begun.