Next question: I think my mom and dad do it a lot. They make noises. It doesn’t sound like fun noises, though. Is that weird?

Some quick typing and a moment of reviewing results. My response: “It might be weird. Not necessarily bad weird. I mean, your parents might be into unusual stuff. That’s okay as long as they’re both into it. At least that’s what it says here.”

Shanice asked a follow-up. “What kind of unusual stuff? Are there examples?”

I scanned my results again, tried not to let my shock show. “Some people dress up as fuzzy animal mascots.”

Everybody in the room pushed back into their chairs a little.

I stirred the offerings, digging for a question at the bottom of the pile, really getting into my role as a sort of sexual raffle announcer. I touched a strip I liked, unfolded it, read the question a couple of times before I was brave enough to ask it.

My cousin has Down syndrome. Is God punishing his mom because she wasn’t married when she had him?

Tinny music secreting from Kiera’s earbuds was the only sound in the room. I couldn’t even hear their breaths.

My gut answer was no. Hell no! I was still on the fence about God as a thing at all, if I was being honest, but if that’s how He worked, I didn’t want any part of Him. Me and the Purity Pledgers had our ways, though. My answer alone wouldn’t do.

I typed the question into Google, and immediately got links to several mental health and parenting sites. When I clicked on them, I didn’t like them. Many were sketchy, badly in need of updates. Design aesthetics aside, there was no direct answer to the question—how could there be?—but the tone of the articles seemed really negative. Calling the syndrome a “death sentence” in some cases.

Naw. Not doing it. I adjusted the search, using only the term “Down syndrome,” and got a great-looking site with simple stats and info. But, those didn’t answer the question either.

They began to stir, shift, everyone uncomfortable. So much so, Kiera noticed and tugged the buds from her ears. “What’s wrong?”

When I repeated the question, the flesh between her eyebrows pinched and her mouth became a flat line. She searched the faces of everyone in the room, read their concern. “Guys, no. Absolutely not. At least the God I believe in doesn’t punish people—babies—because He doesn’t like something their parents did. That’s monstrous. Sometimes people are born . . . unique.” She leaned sideways so far, I wondered if she’d fallen from her chair, but popped back up with her personal Bible. Her flipping pages sounded like bird’s wings beating the air, then she traced her finger down a particular page. “Here. Ezekiel 18:20 says, ‘the one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.’”