Sinner (Priest, #2)

by Sierra Simone

We were baptized into the Church of Cancer, and I was as zealous as any new convert, going to every doctor’s appointment, researching every new trial, using every connection I had in this city to make sure my mother got the best of everything. So yes. I believe in cancer now.

First lesson in the Church of Cancer catechism? Thou shalt give Dad something to do.

“Never argue with a budding theologian,” my brother laughs. “We like being the smartest one in the room too much.”

Of course I’m only joking that I want to spend the rest of my life with the most beautiful, fascinating, sexy woman I’ve ever met. It’s all a joke. Ha ha ha. Hilarious. Oh my God, I’m so fucked.

I run my gaze over the group currently gabbing at my face, and all I see are entitled, self-absorbed faces honking like geese about their entitled, self-absorbed lives. I feel the same wave of discomfort I felt earlier with Valdman, but even stronger this time.

“I can’t get angry. If I get angry, then I’m the Angry Black Woman. If I admit to having my feelings hurt, then I’m being too sensitive. If I ask for people to treat me thoughtfully, then I’m being aggressive. If I joke back, then I’m being impertinent or sassy. If I cry, then I’m hyperemotional. If I don’t react at all, I’m intimidating or cold. Do you see? There’s not a way I can react where I win. I can’t win.”

Belief is this. Praying when you don’t feel like it, when you don’t know who or what is listening; it’s doing the actions with the trust that something about it matters. That something about it makes you more human, a better human, a human able to love and trust and hope in a world where those things are hard. That is belief. That is the point of prayer. Not logging a wish list inside a cosmic ledger, not bartering for transactional services. You do it for the change it works on you and on those around you; the point of it is…itself. Nothing more and nothing less.