My mother still wears the perfume she wore to church 6 years ago. It smells of the cheap pearls draped loosely around her neck and car rides filled with silence that’s too sacred to be broken. Our late arrival brought bickering from my father about how fragile our reputation was here. The sapphire carpet and stained glass windows of the man being worshiped deflects my mind from my father’s redundant rage. Whimsical polyphonic hymns and a mellow orchestra permeate the chapel and I thank him for quickly changing the melody that flooded my ears from a familiarly aggressive one to an uncomfortably traditional one. Pastor Dave preaches phoney lines of gratitude, playing God’s advocate but he’s as treacherous as the fibs he proclaims. Still, the golden offering tray was brought before us, begging for money to be placed inside. Disbelief swept my mind as the hypocrite that labeled us as “homeless” guilted us for money we simply did not have. Faith for a God that convinced me he wasn’t listening was lost and my prayers proved to be pointless. My Sundays are no longer spent in a place I was never welcomed in to begin with and hymns that were once whimsical devastate my ears like the shouting from my father I heard 6 years ago.