Gloria taught me to pray when I was three years old. She knelt beside me, showed me how to press my palms together under my chin like a cherub. Church was her thing, not my father’s. There is a certain type of Christian woman who can’t resist a godless man, keeping his soul safe on her knees. Sometimes I wish I were like her, born to save a man; then I could follow my mother’s bread crumb trail.

“Now I lay me down to sleep.” Gloria almost sang the words, and I repeated, a little baby echo, eyes screwed tight. Before “Amen,” I opened my eyes and asked her to explain “I pray the Lord my soul to take.” She said that it was up to God to see if you got to wake up the next morning, to decide if you’re afforded another day. If you died in the night, you asked to go with Him back up to heaven. Or at least this is how I took it. Stricken, I lay in my canopy bed, afraid to even blink my eyes for fear of falling into an eternal sleep.

Every night, she put me to bed this way, the two of us chanting. As she knelt beside me, I prayed the way she expected, but when Gloria had gone, I recanted, negotiating to keep my soul for myself.

Somewhere it is written that your sins fall on your parents, mostly on your mother, until you’re twelve years old. After that, your trespasses are on your own scorecard. Once I had a choice in the matter, I seldom accompanied my mother to services, preferring the easy company of my father. But always, I say my prayers.

When I lived alone, I spoke the prayers aloud, but now that Andre shares my bedroom, I move my lips around the words, but I don’t give them air. I pray for Roy. I ask for his safety. I ask for his forgiveness, although in the clean light of morning, I know I have done nothing wrong. I also pray for Andre, and I ask him to forgive me for asking for forgiveness. I pray for my father, and I pray that I’ll figure out how to be his daughter again.

My mother taught me that we have no secrets from God. He knows our feelings because He made them. When you confess your sins, He will bless you for your courage. He will bless you for your humility. He blesses you when you’re on your knees.

God must know that in the bottom of my jewelry case, snapped into a felt box, is Roy’s missing tooth. A root woman would know what to do with it; even I, not talented in the unseen, can feel its blazing comet energy in the palm of my hand. But I have no way to harness this power or command it to my will.