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prettiest churches I’d ever seen, across Goode Avenue on the corner of North Market, three blocks away from where the trolley off-loaded its passengers. It was built from Missouri clay bricks and chunks of limestone, rough blocks that met like right-angled fingers, like the corners of the building itself were interwoven, praying hands. On its east side, the church stood square, a castle turret against the sky. On its west end stood an archway and a broad wooden door where wedding parties gathered to throw rice, and brides floated down the steps in clouds of tulle to waiting getaway cars, a fine contrast of white nylon netting and dark skin. Every so often, Aurelia would talk about the messages she heard in church. She would say how the words lightened her heart, how they lifted her up higher than this world.
    “You got time to wait for Aurelia, Miss Jenny?” Eddie Crockett held the screen open for me with his trumpet hand. “You’re welcome to, if you want. They’ll head back just as soon as they’re done with the benediction and the supper they’re serving to the folks who go there hungry.”
    “I don’t really.” Hugging the bottles of soda pop against my chest, I was thinking that, any minute, Daddy might come home and find me gone. I declined Mr. Crockett’s invitation, feeling dismal because I’d snuck away and come so far and risked so much for nothing.
    “Well, sorry you missed her, child. You know she always loves it when you got the time to come around.”
    I stood still, waiting for him to raise the trumpet to his mouth. I loved the way he held it when he played, like it had been a part of him ever since he’d been breathing.
    He grinned, lifted the mouthpiece to his lips, wailed on his horn some riverboat sound, a tune I didn’t know. Something started singing inside whenever Aurelia’s daddy played his horn for me. I could still hear the sound of it, the notes big and warm and quick, even after I crossed Sarah Street three blocks away.
    Try as I might, I couldn’t pass Aurelia in that church, knowing she was close by, with me having so much to tell her. With the way Daddy acted about us leaving, I never knew when I’d be able to get over here again. I hid the grocery bag in a tangle of honeysuckle that clung to the irregular slabs of brick and moved with stealth from window to window, leaning up over the stone sills, trying to get a look inside. Every window I looked through was too dark, an impenetrable mosaic of blue and green and red glass. I was looking through pictures of ancient stories, the saints’ long hair and sinuous robes, circlets of amber behind their faces. Then, all of a sudden, I got to a clear patch.
    Later I would see that I had looked through the crystal wing of a dove, hovering over a manger.
    A pulpit stood at the front of the pews, its wood as polished and whirly as the sateen in the choir’s robes behind it. A purple banner that read HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER hung above the choir members’ heads.
    The singers rocked and clapped beside a man whose face was so dark he looked like he’d been burnished with Daddy’s bootblack. Aurelia had told me once that his name was Reverend Monroe. He was a husky, short man, with hair that poked from behind his ears like clumps of kettle corn. As he gestured, the sleeves of his black vestments flapped like pennants in the halftime show at the Missouri Tigers football game. With every line he hollered, he swung his fist and shouted that he was throwing punches at the devil.
    Sweaty people crowded the sanctuary, some of them applauding and shouting
Amen
every time the man said words about Jesus, some of them fanning themselves with cardboard pictures of lambs (“Smith’s Plant Nursery. Negro Owned and Operated” the notation read. “Our Dedication to You. If we can’t make it grow in your garden, then you don’t want it growing anywhere.”), others with their palms uplifted and cupped like they were trying to catch rain. Their