Chapter 1: Sunday Morning Ritual
The microwave hummed a low, insistent hymn, competing with the static-laced gospel streaming from the radio on the counter. Charlene swayed her hips, a soft counter-rhythm to the stirring of her spoon in the pot of oatmeal. The scent of burnt arepas lingered from her father’s earlier attempt at breakfast, layered over the smell of cheap coffee and the faint, always-present trace of lemon Pledge.
At the chipped Formica table, Jose sat with his Bible open. His reading glasses perched precariously low on his nose, but he wasn’t reading. He was staring at a point just above the pages, his knuckles white where they gripped the edge of the table. A man holding onto a raft in a quiet sea.
“Papi, you want cinnamon?” Charlene asked, her voice lifting over the singer on the radio. She couldn’t help but harmonize with the last note, her own voice a warm, clear alto that fit into the kitchen like another piece of furniture.
Jose blinked, returning. “Just honey. From the bodega. Not the fancy stuff.”
“That is the fancy stuff,” she smiled, turning. Her hip bumped the vinyl record box on the counter, the one she’d decorated with glitter pen. My Dream: A Grammy. Next to it, propped against the toaster, was the envelope. Thick, cream-colored, with a logo that looked expensive. It had arrived three days ago. She hadn’t opened it.
She caught her father’s eye following her glance. His mouth tightened, a flat line she knew well.
“It’s probably junk mail,” he said, not sounding like he believed it.
“It’s from that producer lady. Victoria. From the film company.” Charlene brought his bowl over, setting it down gently. “She was nice.”
“Nice people don’t just show up at a church on a Tuesday asking to make movies about you, mi’ja.” He took the honey jar, unscrewing it with more force than necessary. “They want something. Always.”
The photo on the fridge watched them. Maria, forever thirty-eight, her smile expansive, her arms around a twelve-year-old Charlene on the boardwalk at Coney Island. The ache was a physical thing, a hollow behind Charlene’s ribs. She saw the same hollow in her father’s shoulders, curved under his clean, faded plaid shirt.
“She said it was about faith. About our community. About… preserving a culture.” Charlene sat, tapping her spoon against her own bowl. “It could be good for the church. You’re always saying we need to reach more people.”
“We reach people with the Word, not with cameras.” Jose took a bite, chewing slowly. “This city eats up good people and spits out the bones. You think because she used words like ‘narrative’ and ‘authentic voice,’ she understands us? She sees a story. A simple story. We are not simple.”
“But the music part, Papi. She said she knew people. In the industry.” Charlene’s voice dropped, barely a whisper over the radio. “She heard me singing last Sunday.”
Jose stopped chewing. He looked at her, really looked at her, and the fear in his eyes was more terrifying than any anger. It was the look he’d had when the doctors explained about Maria’s heart. A look of utter helplessness against a looming, unseen force.
“That is the hook, Charlene,” he said, his voice gravelly. “They dangle the one thing you want so you don’t see the trap. Your voice… your voice is for God. Not for their industry.”
The silence that fell was heavy. The gospel tune ended, segueing into a traffic report. The leaky faucet dripped into the sink. Plink. Plink.
Charlene stood, taking her half-eaten bowl to the counter. Her back to him, she traced the edges of the cream-colored envelope. Her finger left a smudge on the pristine paper. Victoria had been all sharp edges and warm smiles, a contradiction. Her suit looked like money, but she’d knelt on the hard floor of the church without a thought, her eyes glistening as the choir sang. “There’s a purity here,” she’d said, gripping Charlene’s hand afterwards. “A realness. The world needs to see it. Hear it.”
It was the hear that did it.
“I’m going to open it,” Charlene said, not turning around.
“Charlene.”
“I’m not saying yes. I’m just saying I’ll read it.” She finally faced him. “I’m twenty-five. I can read a letter, Papi.”
He took off his glasses, polishing them slowly on the edge of his shirt. The gesture was tired. Defeated. “Your mother… she had that same light in her. People wanted to be near it. To take a piece of it for themselves. They didn’t mean to drain it dry, but they did.” He put his glasses back on, his eyes magnified, weary. “By the time I saw what was happening, it was too late to protect her. I will not be too late for you.”
The words hung there, a testament of love and failure all at once. Charlene walked over and kissed the top of his head, smelling the familiar mix of Brylcreem and incense. “You’re not too late. You’re here.”
She picked up the envelope. It was heavier than it looked. She carried it to her room, a small space off the kitchen that had once been a pantry. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she slid her thumb under the flap. The tear sounded catastrophically loud.
Inside was a letter on thick stock, and a shorter, handwritten note on a lavender card. The formal letter spoke of a proposed documentary series, “Havens in the City: The Heartbeat of Urban Faith.” It listed potential filming schedules, a modest “participation fee,” and broad terms.
The handwritten note was different.
Charlene –
Your father is a wise man to be cautious. The world is not kind to true faith, or to true talent. But sometimes God puts a door in front of us and expects us to be brave enough to turn the handle. I have a studio time held for next Thursday afternoon. Just to record a demo of you singing that last hymn. No cameras. No obligation. Think of it as a professional courtesy. Your voice shouldn’t be confined to four walls, no matter how holy they are.
Call me.
– V
A business card slipped onto her lap. Victoria Sterling, Sterling Productions.
From the kitchen, the radio was dialed back to a preacher, her father’s preferred station. The voice boomed about temptation in the wilderness.
Charlene folded the letter, then the note, her fingers trembling just a little. She looked at the photo on her own dresser, a younger version of herself and her mother, mouths open in mid-song, laughing. A professional courtesy.
She tucked the card into the back of her phone case. The lie, if she chose to tell it, was already forming: A community sing-along at another church, Papi. They just need a strong alto. I’ll be home by dinner.
He remembered her as an infant, a warm, wailing weight in the crook of his arm, her whole world contained within the walls he could build. Now the walls felt paper-thin, and the world outside hummed with a predatory grace.
The studio was in a part of Brooklyn where the buildings shed their brick skins for sheets of slick, dark glass, and Thursday afternoon found Charlene hovering outside one, her heart hammering a rhythm of pure trespass. Victoria emerged not from the building, but from a sleek car that swallowed the curb’s noise, a study in contrasted ease against Charlene’s stiff, Sunday-best dress.
“You came,” Victoria said, her smile not warm, but pleased, like a mathematician confirming an elegant proof.
“You came,” Victoria said, her smile not warm, but pleased, like a mathematician confirming an elegant proof.
“I’m just listening,” Charlene heard herself say, the words sounding small against the hiss of a passing taxi. The studio lobby was cool and smelled of floor wax and filtered air, a sterile chapel so different from the warm, dusty sanctity of her father’s church. As the elevator doors sighed shut, she pictured Jose at the kitchen table, his closed Bible beside an empty bowl, and felt the ghost of his worried sigh on her neck. Victoria pressed a button, the light glowing like a single, unblinking eye. “Everyone just listens,” she said, her voice smooth as the glass walls, “right up until they decide to sing.”