The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

The story switches back and forth between the diary entries of Jael, a 14-year-old girl, and the commentary of her great-grandmother who found the diary and is appalled at what she finds inside it.

Jael and her friend Kachelle begin to hang around a 35-year-old man who has his own house and car. Jael isn’t amused by him, but Kachelle is head over heels. Jael is belligerent toward her great-grandmother, and so she prays for her, unsure of what else she can do to help her granddaughter. Jael is unremorseful when she misbehaves, she does not respond to discipline, and when she goes to church, she is unmoved by the word of God. Jael enjoys talking to Sweet Sadie, the pastor’s wife, who she’s sure used to be “a freak before she got into the church” (114). 

Jael doesn’t let men mess with her–she threatens them when they try to grope her or catcall her on the street. This leads some of the men to believe that she is attracted to girls, not men. They call her “crazy,” and they stay away from her. Jael’s grandmother was similar; she showed little emotion, even when her best friend died right in front of her. Jael’s mother was good until she met a man who changed her and ended up killing her. The great-grandmother sees patterns in her daughter and granddaughters passed through generations.

Jael’s great-grandmother lied to her about how her parents died and said they were in a car crash, but Jael says that she remembers seeing her mother being murdered by her father when she was a baby in her crib. She retreats from her great-grandmother and spends most of her time in her bedroom.

The great-grandmother describes the process that six generations of women in her family have used to name their daughters. They open the Bible to any random page, point their finger and whichever woman’s name is closest to the finger is the name of the daughter. She didn’t read the story of Jael in the Bible before settling on the name, but she wanted to continue the tradition, so she kept it.

Jael messes around with Kachelle’s 35-year-old boyfriend and almost has sex with him. She leaves while he gets up to fetch a “rubber” and walks home to her great-grandmother’s house. The next morning, Jael’s grandmother wakes up to news that someone’s home exploded from a gas leak. It was Jamie’s house, the 35-year-old man that Jael had been with the night before. Jael gets into bed with her grandmother and screens calls from Kachelle. Her grandmother realizes that the gas explosion and Jamie’s death is Jael’s doing. She understands why she did it but also worries about her because killing is a sin in the eyes of God. Jael writes in her diary that she is going to join her grandmother at church again, mostly to see Sadie.