The Church of Sarah’s
Written by Lisa Gani
This is the night of your uneventful twenty-fourth birthday, a period when you lie more about your age than your heartbreaks and failures as a teacher. Your social media accounts and personal messages are already flooded with greetings and photos, but your crush who looks like an Asian version of Tom Cruise with neck-length hair hasn’t greeted you yet. While reading his new tweet about Bukowski on your laptop, your phone vibrates in your pocket. You wish it were him, only to be disappointed by a message from your best friend, Mia.
“hey melissa, im alone at Sarah’s”
“k dork”
“u r dorker”
The name of your favorite bar near the university brings back memories. You have spent a sixth of your life in Sarah’s; six years of drinking beer that calmed your tears and fears in life while your gut and liver sob in the corner of your internal system.
And just as fresh as yesterday, the memory of your first meeting with Emma resurfaces. You lied about your name to the slim elderly barkeep since, coming from the countryside, you thought people living in the city were all members of an organized crime syndicate. On the following night, Emma’s daughter called her, revealing that Emma told you her true name. Guilt-stricken, you admitted your dishonesty and preconceived notion about city folks. Emma laughed hard and said, “This place is like the church, my lady. You confess your sins and hide nuthin’.”
You hurriedly exit your faculty room, rush to your bike, drag it down the stairs, sit, step on the pedals, and wheel your way outward the institute building. You pedal along Velazquez Street bordered only by trees and grass, then turn right to CP Garcia Avenue, dimly lit by the widely spaced beige streetlights overhead. The stench of rotten blackberries alerts you of the garbage pile beside the basketball court, and the brown mixed-breed dog barks as the front wheel nearly grazes it. Your mind begins to reminisce your first days in college as you pass by a walking lad with thick eyeglasses, clinging to the straps of his black backpack, eyes seemingly lost at the weight of his struggles. The meaty aroma signals the street-vendor ahead at his tiny metal stand, cooking Chinese fish balls, squid balls and kikiam, while the vendor beside him grills orange chicken intestines swirling in wooden sticks and solidified chicken blood that appears as slim perforated black cubes.
Finally, you arrive at Sarah’s, bustling with drinkers and smokers congregating around circular tables. And at the nearest table, you find Mia, her lips painted red, her pointed chin cupped by her hand. She is smiling but then she becomes annoyed upon seeing you, and you wonder if her initial expression was just a hallucination.
“You’re slow as always, Melissa! Bet you’re just stalking Alex again,” Mia says. The accuracy of her accusation embarrasses you, and you cover it up with an angry response about getting away from bullying since it’s your birthday. Your initial conversation becomes hotter than the sizzling sisig that is being laid down on your table. Then you see an orange shopping bag on the seat next to her.
“What’s that?” you ask, diffusing the heat from your quarrel. Her face distorts in panic and her voice cracks. She freezes for a second until she hands you the orange shopping bag.
“The reason why I’m so angry is because I’ve been excited all day to give this to you,” Mia says, and as her best friend, you understand that the irritation in her voice was intended to mask her embarrassment. “Happy twenty-fourth, you hopeless old hag!”
Surprise takes hold of your body, and curiosity replaces it as your hands cop the slippery plastic texture of the thing inside the orange shopping bag. Alas! It’s a green raincoat, which reminds you of the night at the bar when Mia asked if you’re gonna bike your way home. Back then, you answered negatively because of the rain.
You thank Mia, who is still faking irritation while her hands are folded across her bosom. The stress from a long day of teaching made you forget Mia’s capacity for thoughtfulness, and then it reminded you of Emma’s honesty the first night you’ve met.
You think your ungrateful ass doesn’t deserve kind people in your life. Maybe you also didn’t deserve the scholarship from the university, the warm welcome of colleagues who came from different regions, the recent graduation, and the immediate job as a college instructor. But then you realize that maybe being true to people, as Emma has shown, and acknowledging your blessings can pave the way to reciprocation.
So you set aside your doubts and confess your disappointment on Alex to Mia in the company of beer, liveliness of a Friday night, and the latest arrivals: the raindrops falling on the galvanized iron roof of Sarah’s, one after another. #