“The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” grapples with faith and sin.
Regardless of their individual origins, religions, as a monolithic concept, tend to share one key facet: an emphasis on guiding — if not prescriptive — principles. Believe in these principles, and act on them, and you will be rewarded with a fulfilled life, perhaps, or a blissful afterlife; fail to follow them, and risk punishment in this world and beyond.
Of course, living up to those principles is far more complicated than that. In Pittsburgh resident Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” that difficulty is explored through intimate portraits of Black women reckoning with the balancing act between being a “good” Christian woman and being one’s true self. Alternately joyful and heartbreaking, the nine stories dive into the innermost desires of their protagonists to conjure up gorgeously authentic women as they move toward self- actualization — with or without their church.
For many of Ms. Philyaw’s women, the expectations of their faith directly contradict their understanding of themselves; this is particularly true for the queer women who populate the book. For example, in the opening story, “Eula,” two close friends meet every year on New Year’s Eve as part of their secret sexual relationship. For Caroletta, the narrator, these furtive meetings are a manifestation of her love for Eula, yet Eula is tortured by the relationship and its contradiction of her faith’s homophobia. Eula’s cognitive dissonance between her desire for an “ideal” life with a godly husband, and her attraction to Caroletta, creates an uncrossable distance between the two women, even in the midst of their lovemaking.
In other stories, simply having any form of sexual desire is at odds with the teachings of their church, making sex itself a potential source of inner conflict. Lyra, the protagonist of “How to Make Love to a Physicist,” is paralyzed by her lack of selfesteem — a direct consequence of her mother’s admonishments about the unacceptability of her body. In order to allow herself to be loved, she has to find a way to love herself; as she frees herself from the expectations of her mother and their church, she gains the ability to experience her desires fully.
Alternatively, some of the women in “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” have already accepted their own desires and revel in their transgressions — particularly the thrill of adultery. The nameless narrator of “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” refuses to make excuses for her role as a serial mistress; her list of guidelines for philandering spouses paints a picture of a woman who has freed herself from guilt and shame. “You can’t save me, because I’m not in peril,” she says, making a declaration of liberation from the constraints of conventional relationships while acknowledging the inherent hypocrisy of the aforementioned Christian husbands.
Christian men cheating on their wives is not the only form of hypocrisy readers encounter throughout the collection, however. In particular, Ms. Philyaw scrutinizes the “do as I say, not as I do” method of parenting and its consequences for children, underlining the generational trauma some women face as a result of the near impossibility of living up to the standards of their faith. In “Jael,” the titular character’s great- grandmother discovers the teen girl’s diary and is horrified by the revelation that Jael is attracted to women — in particular, the wife of their pastor. As the older woman struggles with her anger over the 14- year- old’s “reprobate mind,” she reveals her own sins— from self- induced miscarriages to the simple refusal to accept Jael for who she is.
Meanwhile, the devastatingly accomplished “Peach Cobbler” looks at parental hypocrisy from a child’s point of view, as high school student Olivia recounts her experience of the yearslong affair between her single mother and their married pastor. The pastor’s presence in the house initially puzzles her — as a child, she believed the pastor was actually God — but after accidentally seeing them in the act, her feelings turn to revulsion as she faces the transactional component of her mother’s sexuality and the galling duplicity of a man who publicly preaches that fornication is a sin.
Ms. Philyaw — who has written articles for many outlets, including The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette — shows herself to be an intuitive and brutally honest fiction writer by creating indelible characters with all- too- human foibles. “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” is an unforgettable look inside the hearts of Black women as they evaluate their relationships — with God, their families and themselves.