Another Day at Sunday School
By Daniela Cedillo Ornelas (PO ‘26)
Lilian is glad she won’t be thrown in a lion’s den for praying. And even if she did live back then, it’s not like she prays three times a day. Or even every day. Should she? Maybe it’s like flossing. Except she doesn’t floss either. So maybe it’s like brushing your teeth.
The chair, too tall, leaves her legs dangling. She swings her shiny white shoes in and out as Ms. Gale’s smooth voice at the center of the semi-circle paints a picture of hungry lions with mouths kept shut by God. And lions have big mouths. She saw one yawn at the zoo. She was kind of sad that the lions just kind of lay there. They didn’t roar. They didn’t even walk! But the lions in the Bible were hungry, really hungry, and they really wanted to eat, so they would’ve eaten anyone thrown in there, they would’ve even eaten her even though she’s kinda short. Lilian is glad she won’t be thrown in a lion’s den for praying. And even if she did live back then, it’s not like she prays three times a day. Or even every day. Should she? Maybe it’s like flossing. Except she doesn’t floss either. So maybe it’s like brushing your teeth. Except Ms. Laurel says you can pray anywhere and it seems harder to brush your teeth anywhere. She usually prays on the car ride to school. It would be so silly to brush your teeth on the car ride to school! She tries to tell Emma this, but she must not be very good at whispering because Ms. Gale turns to Lilian, purses her lips, and widens her eyes behind her red glasses until she quiets down. Oh, she missed part of the story. She keeps swinging her legs but listens.
“And I have a special announcement. Today, after the service is over, Elizabeth is getting baptized in the Great Hall! If you want to, you can stay to watch as she takes this big step. It’s so exciting. Everyone, let’s give her a round of applause.”
Elizabeth’s face is all blotchy with her blush but she’s smiling and Lilian smiles too because it really does feel exciting to see how happy Elizabeth is. When the clapping tapers off, they’re all dismissed from the circle and drag their chairs back to the tables. After sitting down at the table where her friends are, she grabs a yellow marker out of the cups set out for them and begins coloring today’s page. Darla is chatting about how she’s visiting family in North Dakota over the upcoming break and how she’ll get to see her cousins. Lilian tells them about how she’ll get to go to Sea World. It’s quiet after that, or as quiet as it can be when the other two tables are laughing so loudly.
Hannah has to speak up to be heard over the chatter. “Maybe I should get baptized. Do you think I should?”
Darla’s head perks up. She leans forward and talks so quickly it’s hard to understand. Darla honestly sounds like she’s trying to say a tongue twister but not one she knows very well so she has to pause every few words to remember which ones come next. “I mean, Elizabeth is, and Hudson got baptized over the summer, he was first, so I think we should do it soon, except I don’t know if I want to be baptized in the Great Hall or the Sanctuary because I usually go to the Great Hall service but the Sanctuary seems like a better place to be baptized. When are the rest of you going to get baptized?”
Emma shrugs. It’s very Emma of her, so the rest of the girls turn to Lilian. She shrugs too, but they keep pestering her. Emma tells them that it’s nunya, nunya business, but they’re too nosey to back off, and Lilian usually word-vomits about everything, so the lack of answers is very exciting. She tries to explain that she doesn’t — she isn’t — but her hands are too warm and she feels like she does when she ate too many candies on Halloween and lay down but lying down only made everything feel worse. Their attention is diverted as Ms. Gale walks up after chatting with the table behind them and she feels a little better. Hopefully Ms. Laurel will visit right after Ms. Gale does to keep the pestering away for even longer, maybe even until her dad arrives.
Ms. Gale crouches down. “What’s so interesting that it’s got y’all waving your hands around instead of finishing those poor half-colored lions?”
Hannah sounds whiny when she tells. “We were asking Lilian when she’s going to get baptized, but I don’t think she wants tooooo.”
“Now, Hannah, it isn’t very nice to make assumptions. I’m sure Lilian would be delighted to be baptized!” Lilian thought Ms. Gale would move on to another table then, but instead, Ms. Gale pulls up a chair and, even though it’s too small for her, sits and leans toward Lilian’s spot.
“In fact, I or Ms. Laurel could go talk to Pastor Silva after class and open up a spot for you to be baptized next Sunday!” She’s smiling down at Lilian who shrugs, not knowing what to say. Ms. Gale finally leans back to chat with Darla about how to deal with fear by remembering that God is with us. At all the tables, everyone is talking, and it creates a loud buzzing that makes her want to walk out of the room and just keep walking until she’s home. Soon, Ms. Gale leaves, and the conversation turns to fears turns to nightmares turns to weird dreams they’ve had recently. As Lilian tells her friends about her bird spy dream, one of the markers dries out, so she has to color half of the robe red and half of it pink. Sighing, Lilian grabs the useless marker and walks towards the door near the trash can. “Lilian,” Lilian snaps her head upward with wide eyes. She hadn’t noticed, but Ms. Gale stands in the hallway, hovering right outside the doorway, ready to greet parents who will come soon.
She looks at Lilian and says, quietly, “I know you. You come to Sunday School every week, and you’re a bright girl full of lots of love. I know you’ve accepted Jesus into your heart, you’ve said so before. Why don’t we set a date for you to get baptized? It’ll be an exciting experience.” She’s not sure why, but Lilian wants to shake her head. But if she does that then Ms. Gale will look sad like she does when Hudson gets loud and disruptive during lesson time. Instead, she shrugs.
Ms. Gale smiles like the shrug means agreement. “I’ll talk to your mom about it when she picks you up.”
Her dad is picking her up today, but Ms. Gale doesn’t seem to expect a response from her, so she just scurries back to her seat. Emma gets picked up and waves goodbye. Darla asks Hannah if she wants to play tic-tac-toe and they do for a while but Hannah’s really bad at it, so Hannah gets sad and stops playing and Darla gets bored. So then Darla tries to convince Lilian to play tic-tac-toe with her. But Lilian doesn’t want to. And when Darla asks again, Lilian snaps, and her voice doesn’t really feel like hers.
“Oh my god Darla, no one wants to play tic-tac-toe with you. Would you stop being annoying and just let me finish coloring?”
Right after, Hannah’s name is called for pickup. Hannah quickly stands up to leave and starts to raise her hand to wave but winces at whatever face Lilian is making and scrambles away. There’s a pause and Lilian’s ready to shoot back against anything Darla says.
But Darla actually shuts up and starts drawing stick figures. She wants to ask if the stick figures have names but she’s too tired or something and she really does want to walk or something so she raises her hand and asks to go to the restroom. Ms. Laurel accompanies her.
On the walk back, Ms. Laurel talks at her or maybe she talks to herself, Lilian can’t really tell.
“You know, all this talk about Elizabeth’s baptism has me remembering my own. The funny thing is, I was actually baptized when I was six years old, but later when I was seventeen years old, I decided to get baptized again. I just thought of my relationship with God so differently at that point that I wanted to. I kinda wish I had waited, but I think it all worked out.”
“That’s weird.” Lilian doesn’t mean to say it. It’s only that she’s never heard of anyone being baptized more than once or anyone who wishes they hadn’t been baptized. It seems like something people just shouldn’t do. But Lilian didn’t mean to tell Ms. Laurel that it’s weird, Ms. Laurel knows more about God than she does, and it’s so rude!
Ms. Laurel laughs and tells her that maybe it’s a little weird but everyone has their own relationship with God and that baptism is a public celebration of accepting Jesus and that there are plenty of people who have accepted Jesus and not been baptized yet and even people who haven’t accepted Jesus yet and that’s all okay. She also tells Lilian a story about one of her best friends who works as a firefighter and was baptized when she was 33 years old because she didn’t really learn about Jesus until she was all grown up. Ms. Laurel starts to talk more about her best friend but trails off so it’s quiet again.
Ms. Laurel definitely doesn’t sound like she’s talking to herself when she speaks up again and asks.
“Do you want to get baptized?”
Lilian shrugs.
“That’s okay. …I don’t know if that’s a no, but that’s definitely not a yes.”
Lilian isn’t sure what to say to that. Or think of that. “Okay.”
They walk until they’re close enough to the class to reach the outer edges of the swarm of parents.
Lilian stops walking and says, “Ms. Gale said she would talk to — well, my dad, but she said my mom, but my dad — about baptism, about me getting baptized.”
“Do you want me to talk to Ms. Gale about it?”
“No.”
“I could ask Ms. Gale to switch with me and watch y’all while I greet the parents.”
Lilian nods. She keeps walking and sits back at the table. Lilian decides that her page is colored enough. In her absence, Darla’s stick figures have gained faces and hair.
Lilian asks,“Why is that stick figure so much shorter than the other ones?”
Darla is indignant and offended by the implication that her drawing of a dog has been mistaken for one of her stick figures. It is a mistake Darla passionately claims she will never forgive, and Lilian lets her know that her dog looks more like a bear than a dog, look, it doesn’t even have a tail, and they’re talking to each other with oh so snobby snippiness, but they’re both laughing as they wait for their parents.
