I thought Yulia knew that. Even at my lowest, it had to be savory, something that crisped up around the edges or was dense and peppery and dripped with melted cheese. I shoved sliced strawberries to the rim of my plate like they were skaters reluctant to touch the ice, and let Yulia and Khalid’s chatter buzz around my ears, until two words Yulia said made me rear my head up.

“. . . Sunday school.”

“What did you say?”

“Sunday school,” Yulia repeated patiently. “We thought it would be good for you to pop in today. You might make some friends!”

“Saying it that way implies I don’t have any.”

“When was the last time any of them were over here?”

“I like to compartmentalize my life. You know that.”

I hoped my glower at her transmitted everything else I wished I could say if there wasn’t another witness: that we both compartmentalized our lives. She ventured into kickboxing, decided she was going to get certified to become a day-care owner, or attended an MLM meeting and came home laden down with tacky leggings and stringy, cheap-smelling shampoo.

And I went to school, chose my lunch with care, hung out at my friends’ houses, where if their moms had hobbies, they indulged in them reasonably—wading in so that their passions sloshed just over their knees and didn’t immerse their faces, plunging in only to clamber out, gasping, because they went too far down too fast.

I put aside the kickboxing gloves when they started to gather dust on the coffee table, tore down the class brochures or told the pleasant-sounding secretary who kept calling that my mother had decided to drop her certification classes, and poured the shampoo down the drain.

But that was it. I didn’t get involved myself.

And up until now, I thought we understood each other about why that mattered, and how it worked well.

“And I’m not sure I’m a good fit . . . for Sunday school,” I managed, this time in Brother Khalid’s direction. He was still smiling, eyes downcast to focus on his crepe, dragging the tines of his fork through a smear of Nutella.

“You are. You will be,” Brother Khalid said. “The girls will love you. A change is always good.”

I took a bite of my crepe. It was too sweet, cloying on my tongue.

Everything was wrong.

He was wrong.

A change wasn’t always good, particularly when nothing tasted right anymore.

Before Yulia and Emmeline, my grandmother, parted ways with a final vicious phone call and a ceasing of Christmas cards, I had a faint understanding of what it meant to attend church. I think I went to a distant cousin’s wedding once, staring up in awe at Jesus etched out in glass panes—beautiful and patient as he hung on the cross—and shifting back and forth on a wooden pew.