"I Remember Being Their Age" by Nancy Werking Poling
a short story
An alarm sounds. Everyone on the cruise ship is racing toward a lifeboat. Sea waves wash over the deck, lightning flashes across the night sky. I try to scream but it’s as if my mouth is stuffed with rags. My muffled moan startles me awake. It’s not an alarm to abandon ship I heard but the buzz of my front doorbell. I’ve fallen asleep in front of the TV. Foggy-eyed, I check the score before rising from my recliner. Bears—13, Raiders—0. The same as it was when I fell asleep.
At the front door I put my eye to the peephole and regard teenagers in parkas. For twenty-seven years I faced adolescents daily, won the hearts of some, the disdain of a few. I open the door without hesitation. Before me stand six kids, all of them white, three girls and three boys. Each one well-scrubbed, like they’re auditioning for a McDonald’s commercial. Their sneakers give them away. Not that I’m up on the latest fad, but these all bear a similarity to each other that probably signals I’m cool. I gaze up and down the street through the top of my bifocals. No cars are parked within sight. Did these kids just drop out of the heavens? I stand in the doorway, neither in nor out, which doesn’t commit me to engage in conversation.
“Hello, ma’am,” a tall girl with a ponytail says. “We’re from Bethel Community Church up in Philadelphia, and our youth group is collecting cans of food for the poor.” The boy beside her lifts a plastic bag. Either I’m at the beginning of their route or my neighbors aren’t any more generous than I intend to be. There can’t be more than three or four cans.
“Would you like to contribute?”
Now, why are six teenagers from Philadelphia collecting food more than a hundred miles from home when suburbs wealthier than this surround their own city? From my TV set come cheers, like somebody’s made a touchdown.
I yawn then grumble what I hope will send these kids on their way: “Sorry, I already donate to our local food bank.”
A boy in a stocking cap steps forward, a trace of fuzz on his chin. Probably about sixteen, maybe seventeen. He flashes a wide smile, revealing the shimmering metal of braces. His tone is respectful as he glances down at a clipboard. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
After all those years of being a yes-you-can algebra teacher, I’m loath to discourage altruistic kids. “Shoot, but make it snappy.”
“Do you go to church?”
What the . . .? No wonder I don’t see a car; they probably came here in a bus. This isn’t altruism; it’s evangelizing. I remember the lingo: witness, salvation, sin. They probably want to convert the whole neighborhood.
“Yes.” There’s more cheering in the background. I want to see what’s going on.
“Which one?”
I point to the south. “Happy Corner Community Church. Down that way. Thanks for—” I don’t get the chance to add stopping by.
A girl has already stepped forward. She’s short, on the plump side, with a sweet smile that reminds me of—what was her name? Jenny. Jenny something. This girl asks, “What two words would you use to describe your relationship with God?”
Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not one for brevity.
I repeat, “Two words?”
The six stand there staring at me expectantly. It’s cold in this realm between inside and outside, youth and not-so-young. I want to get rid of them. “Lifelong—though it’s one word. My daddy was a minister.” Obviously, at least to me, I’ve not described my relationship with God, which would involve more of what I don’t believe than what I do.
As if the group has rehearsed this conversation, the boy in the stocking cap asks, “What is your concept of God?”
I remember being their age, positive I had this God business figured out. Right now I could speak my truth: that the older you get the less certain you are about the Almighty. That simple answers don’t cut it anymore. But if I say anything about God as an ambiguous presence—first of all, “ambiguous presence” will mean nothing to them—who doesn’t necessarily know everything and isn’t powerful enough to have kept the Nazis from killing Jews or Americans from spreading napalm across Vietnam. If I mention such ideas, I’ll be spending the rest of the afternoon arguing with these kids.
“Well now, I’d rather not answer that.”
A girl reaches in and gently tugs on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Our eyes meet. Hers speak out for . . for . . . No, they don’t speak. They scream. Over the years I saw similar signs of unhappiness and suffering in the eyes of students. Is it my imagination, or is she asking for more than perfunctory answers to questions on a clipboard? My concept of God? Her world is out of sync. Something in what she’s being taught doesn’t resonate. She wants an adult to speak honestly.
I grew up in the fifties, not all that great an era if you were female. If you had doubts. If your minister-father had all the answers. Question: Why would a loving God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Answer: It was to test Abraham’s obedience. Obey your father; obey God the Father. Why did God reject Cain’s vegetables? Answer: God demanded a fatted calf and Cain disobeyed.
It’s a strange time to think of my high school friend, Linda. Of the night when she tugged at my sleeve. We were seniors and sat cross-legged in the middle of her double bed, hair in curlers, discussing the Meaning of Life. She stood and walked over to the window. Her hands grasping the two venetian-blind cords, she opened then closed the slats, opened then closed them again. She turned to face me.
Her voice quivered. “Do you know what a lesbian is?”
I hesitated, uncomfortable about where the conversation might lead. “Yeah.”
She cleared her throat. “I am one.” Paused before adding, “I have a girlfriend.” She stepped toward me. Her voice choked, she asked, “Do you think I’ll go to hell?”
At that moment, like a fault in Earth’s crust, a deep chasm opened in my heart. A giant divide between God the judge who sent people to hell and God who loved everyone and protected them. It was the latter one I acknowledged. “No, I don’t think you’ll go to hell.” And I meant it.
But the people at church turned against Linda, told her to her face that she should repent. She quit coming to church and Daddy wouldn’t let me spend time with her anymore.
All of these memories flash before me right after the girl holds on to my sleeve and peers into my eyes.
“We’d like to keep you in our prayers,” a boy says. “Do you have any concerns we can pray about?”
I struggle to avert my attention from the girl. My chuckle is condescending, bitter even. I’ve got plenty of concerns. Pray for my retirement fund, I want to say, that it won’t run out. Pray my old Jetta doesn’t croak. Pray that the Middle East doesn’t blow up, that the planet won’t be destroyed by global warming.
Pray for Linda, that she found a partner worthy of her and that they live in a friendly place where her gifts can be affirmed.
“No, not really.” I step back inside the doorway to signal that I’m finished. The strangers thank me politely and turn to leave. The girl with the aching dark eyes briefly lingers.
I sense her disappointment. Or maybe I’ve imagined that she wants me to speak with honesty. In any case, I close the door and return to the football game.
This short story, "I Remember Being Their Age," was published in Nancy Werking Poling’s collection of short stories, Paradise Affirmed: stories of virtue and scandal at Happy Corner Church.
Nancy Werking Poling is the author of While Earth Still Speaks, an environmental novel; Before It Was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987), non-fiction; and Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman, a short story collection. After her essay, “Leander’s Lies,” won the 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize, she set about turning the narrative into a novel, scheduled to be published by April Gloaming Press under the same title (Leander’s Lies) in late 2025. She lives in the North Carolina mountains.