Incognito....

What if the pastor's ex-wife wrote a syndicated anonymous church critique? She would have a tremendous eye for the good, bad, ugly, artificial, or dangerous aspects of a congregation and its pastor, right? Of course, her observations would be biased and viewed through the lens of her own wounds but who better to be able to participate in just one service and come out with a sense of how a church really functions?

But what could enable the pastor's ex-wife to visit churches without being recognized? How could she (assuming she did not relocate far from the place where her ex-husband's church was) pass for someone nobody could identify?

In around 1980 I was the children's coordinator/crisis counselor and chief parenting expert at a shelter for battered women in Danville, Illinois. We decided to throw a Halloween party for our residents and for the clients who no longer lived at the shelter. Many volunteers were involved in planning and hosting the event what with games, crafts, food, pumpkin carving, apple bobbing and security, as you can imagine. I was frazzled  (just ask my current staff at the Bolduc House Museum what I am like the few hours before our board meetings today!) I had about 20 minutes to breathe before the guests were due to arrive, thankfully.

Didn't I?

Oh, NO!

Where was my costume? Everyone was expected to come in costume - it was a Halloween party- dah!. Ok, Lesley, don't panic. Think....What do you have here at the shelter to make a costume?

You have to realize that I had very long hair then and that my co-worker, Varence, had very dark black skin.

And, we had bedspreads galore.

"Varence, do you have any foundation make-up that I can use?"

She did. It turned my fair white skin quite brown very effectively. I covered my arms, neck, face, ears and every piece of skin that did not get covered in the green bedspread draped sari-like over my then thin body. I braided my long hair which everyone mistakenly called black but it was dark brown with red highlights (operational word here is "was") and I used red lipstick to place a dot in the middle of my forehead.

Just in time to grab the microphone and welcome the guests and volunteers, one of which was my now ex-husband.

He did not recognize me for fully twenty minutes.

I would make my fictional pastor's ex-wife anonymous church critic dress as a black woman.

The only problem was that she would have to really scrub the inside areas of her arms every time she got back from visiting a church incognito because black foundation makeup permeates deep into white skin and does not yield easily to soap and water.