Mid-car on the F train, Bergen to 23rd. The air carried stale coffee and last night’s breath. People leaned into poles, backpacks pinned between shins, eyes fixed on screens or anywhere else.

Unspoken rules: stay still. Don’t block the aisle. Don’t look.

Then came the whoosh, that breath of air when the doors slid open mid-ride. That sound always meant risk—someone asking, someone demanding. If you made eye contact, you were caught. So, you performed invisibility.

At Jay Street the crowd thickened, the air heavy enough to taste. Every transfer swells like a tide—bodies flowing faster than eyes can process. The platform bleeds into the car. Everything takes a deep breath and holds it.

Someone got on. Their shoe was untied. Should I say something? The rule was silence, but my hand betrayed me. I waved, pointed. They looked down, saw, and smiled. Surprised, grateful. Score. That cancels out lying to myself about flossing last night.

I scanned the car. A battered Márquez paperback. A glossy thriller. A New Yorker essay peeking open.

Another whoosh. Coins in a cup. Boots dragging. Then the voice. A man, unhoused, preaching. His sermon looped between sinners and salvation, almost in rhythm with the rails. He paced the aisle like it was his pulpit. I leaned closer to the window, pretending the tunnel walls mattered more.

I wanted him gone. Just for a while. Until the yelling stopped. I shut my eyes and practiced vanishing.

The subway air thinned, became wood polish and the sour musk of hymnals handled for decades. I was small again, seven years old, wedged between Mama and Arthur at Tabernacle Baptist on White Horse Road. Daddy sat on the far side, his head sagging toward his chest, blinking slow.

The ceiling soared above, cedar-lined and golden in the light. Dust swam in beams from stained glass—reds and blues spilling across the aisle, tinting faces who believed in the colors. The pew under me was narrow, straight-backed, unyielding, like it knew we weren’t meant to get comfortable.

Dr. Phil Kibbs stood at the pulpit, wire-rimmed glasses catching the light, throat cords pulling tight. He started slow, then snapped his words like whips.

“You welcome FILTH—music, movies, foreign ideas—from the gutters of this godless world!”

Mama jabbed Daddy’s ribs. He jerked, snorted, woke. She ducked into the hymnal, neck flushing red. Arthur and I stayed forward.

“You sit there lookin’ like Christians while your hearts run WILD in sin!”

I didn’t know what sin meant, only that it lived somewhere between what I liked and what I was told not to like. Dr. Kibbs’ voice pressed down like a storm front.

“...Godless television...sodomite agendas...the JUKE JOINTS and the HONKY-TONKS…”

Behind us: “Amen.” Another voice: “Yes, brother!” The call-and-response swelled until the walls themselves seemed to agree.

Then a big man—Mr. Noffsinger, maybe—stood and started pacing the aisle. His shoes thudded like a bad heartbeat. I clenched the pew until the wood bit my palms.

He looped the altar; shoulders pitched forward like his legs had more say than his head. Each pass sent a gust of sweat and aftershave into my nose. The shouts rose with him.

“Preach it!” “Tell it, brother!” “Woo!”

Dr. Kibbs flushed, hairline damp. His finger stabbed the ceiling.

“You will BURN if you do not REPENT! God’s fire is READY for its JUST CLAIM!”

It wasn’t warmth I felt but something heavier, a hand closing inside my chest.

The pacing man lunged for the altar flowers—plastic daisies, edges yellowed. He hoisted them high, parading them up and down the aisles. Each pass a grunt, each step a shiver of petals. For a moment I thought he might never stop.

The sweat, the fake flowers, the thundered “Amens”—all of it wrong, all of it too familiar. I dug my nails into the pew; every muscle tensed toward the door.

Finally, he slowed, set the bouquet back, collapsed into a pew. The shouting ebbed. Dr. Kibbs’ voice frayed into prayer. A hymn started somewhere in the distance.

The sour musk of sweat and flowers clung to me—then whoosh, cold and sudden, air that didn’t belong.

I was back on the F train, easing into 14th Street, heart still keeping the preacher’s tempo.