by Pearl Cleage
"How far are you going?" Joyce knew I could have stepped right out the front door and gathered more flowers than we needed. Sustenance was a poor excuse, so I switched gears quickly.
"Ple-e-e-ase?" I said, falling back effortlessly into the irritating whine all little sisters carry as a blood memory and a sacred trust. If you don't annoy your big sister for no good reason from time to time, she thinks you don't love her anymore, and I was crazy about Joyce. I shifted into overdrive. "Puh-leeeez?"
"Take it, take it!" She winced, tossing me the smallest of the remaining fruit. Joyce can't stand whining.
"You brought that on yourself," I said, washing my prize and turning to see Joyce smiling tearily at me. Brattiness didn't used to make Joyce feel sentimental, but these days it doesn't take much.
"Welcome home, little sister," she said softly. "You look great." if everybody who claimed to be a vegetarian cooked like Joyce and Eddie, the world would be a much safer place for a whole lot of animals. By the time we got through with homemade pasta, homegrown vegetables, and Eddie's angelic tomatoes, we decided to wait a few minutes before tackling the peach cobbler. No wonder Joyce had a hard time dieting. The girl could burn.
She and Eddie exchanged news while I sat there watching the stars come out. I was realizing how many more stars you see in the country than you ever see in the city when I heard Eddie say something about finishing a house in Grand Rapids.
"Is that what you do?" I said. "Build houses?" "Houses, fences, furniture," he said. "I'm a carpenter." "Just like Jesus." I was just being a smart aleck, but I realized that with his hair hanging down around his shoulders, the beard, the sandals, and his penchant for dashikis, he definitely had a biblical sort of look going.
"Eddie's the best around," Joyce said, refilling iced tea glasses all around.
"Is that what you always did?" I said, sipping the icy lemon-peppermint mixture.
Eddie smiled slowly. "Not always."
I waited for him to continue, but he just looked at me. He had answered my question, but gone no further. I'd have to frame my questions in a less open-ended way unless I wanted to end the evening without any more details then I'd had when we started.
"I saw something funny yesterday," Joyce said. "This kid was visiting somebody in the hospital and he had on a T-shirt that said 'Jesus Was a Black Man.' Period. I watched him walk down the hall and all these white folks were glaring at him like they were waiting for God to send a lightning bolt in defense of his whiteness. But when you think about where he was born, what are the chances he'd be a blue-eyed blonde?"
She was right about that. "The sunburn alone would have killed him," I said.
Eddie laughed at that so loud it startled me and I knocked over my iced tea, but it didn't matter. We were outside and I didn't break anything. I mopped up a little while Joyce went in to get the cobbler and then me and Eddie just sat there looking at the sky, which was dark enough now to reveal the thousands of stars that only show themselves without the presence of neon.
"Can you name them?" he said.
"Only the real obvious ones," I said.
"Which ones are those?"
I pointed. "The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, and sometimes Cassiopeia's Chair, if I concentrate real hard. Can you?"
"I can do those three and Orion's Belt."
"My father knew them all," I said. "I almost went blind as a kid trying to make out bows and arrows and goats with fishtails."
"Your father was the one who showed me the ones I know."
"Really? I always forget that you knew him."
"That's because you weren't born yet," he said. "I was probably about eight or nine and I was running away."
"From home?" I was trying to imagine him as a wayward eight-year-old.
"From here," he said, laughing and shaking his head at the memory. "Your father passed me on the road and figured it was a little late for me to be out by myself."
"So he showed you how to find the Milky Way?"
"He asked me if I needed a ride somewhere, and when I didn't answer, he said he was going home and sit on his dock and read the sky and if I wanted to come, he'd sure like some company."
"I'm surprised he didn't take you home to your mother."
"He probably figured that was the last place I wanted to go. We turned in right here and strolled on down to the lake like this is what we always did on Saturday night. We sat down on the dock and took off our shoes and he started reading the sky to me, just like he said he was going to."
Eddie stopped and looked down the slope at the dock as if he could still see my father and his boy self down there talking softly so they wouldn't wake up my mother. "In the morning I woke up in your front room on the couch. Your mom gave me some breakfast and told me she'd talked to my mother, who was glad to hear I was okay, even if she was going to have to beat my butt when I got home."
"Did she?"
"No. She said she was sorry things were such a mess and if I ever felt that way again, to let her know and we'd figure out another way to come at it."
"Did you?"
"I didn't have to. After that I figured she was doing the best she could and I ought to be helping her instead of driving her crazy."
Joyce came back out with the cobbler, some freshly whipped cream, and a pot of coffee. For a while nobody said anything and then the mosquitoes came out from wherever they had been hiding and chased us inside. Eddie helped us clean up and as we dried the last dish, Joyce invited him to come to church with us in the morning.
"I don't think so," he said.
"Just thought I'd ask," Joyce said, laughing. "I figured I could get extra points in heaven by bringing in two nonbe-lievers on the same first Sunday."
"Are you a lapsed Baptist, too?" I said.
"I'm not a Christian," he said, making me instantly curious.
"What are you?"
"Now, that's another question altogether." He shrugged, a gesture I was beginning to recognize as one of his favorites. "I don't really know yet. But I'm working on it."
Okay with me, I thought, watching him walk off into the darkness, heading for home via the path at the edge of the lake. I've always been a sucker for a work in progress.
16
When we got to the church, Joyce took me downstairs to show me the nursery. The room was clean and bright, and even though it was only ten o'clock, there were already two toddlers and an infant comfortably in residence. A young girl who looked about fourteen, but was probably a couple of years older from the way she was handling things when we walked in, was balancing the baby expertly on her right hip while bringing out a box of toys to entertain the other two children, who seemed to be twins.
"Do you want puzzles?" she asked, and they nodded slowly in unison without letting go of each other's hands.
"Let me do that." Joyce pulled out several colorful wooden puzzles with pieces big enough for little hands to grab on their own and made the introductions.
"Aretha Simmons, meet my sister, Ava."
Aretha smiled, shifted the baby to her left hip, and extended her hand. "Welcome," she said. "Or I guess I should say welcome back."
"Thanks," I said, as two more toddlers and their moth-jrs arrived and Joyce went to greet them.
"How old is your baby?" Up close, Aretha didn't look }uite so young, but she didn't look like she ought to be a mother yet either.
She laughed. "This little pumpkin?" she said, tickling the baby gently under its double chin, which resulted in a contented gurgle and a sleepy yawn. "This is Doetha's baby."
"Which one is yours?"
"I don't have one."
"Hey, Ree." A young woman with a sleeping bundle breezed by us and deposited her baby gently in one of several portable cribs.
"Hey, Tomika," Aretha said. "How long she been asleep?"
"About twenty minutes," Tomika replied. "She ought to be good for another hour, but I brought a bottle just in case." She handed over a frilly pink diaper bag.
"You better." Aretha slung it over her baby-free shoulder. "Otherwise, get ready, 'cause you know I'm bringin' her right up to you!"
"You gonna be the one answerin' to Old Lady Anderson if you let this chile mess up her solo!"
"Everybody know she ain't my baby," Aretha said. "How am I gonna be the one in trouble?"
" 'Cause everybody also know I ain't got no sense," Tomika said with a grin. "You got no excuse!"
Aretha laughed, put the now-sleeping baby she'd been carrying in the crib next to Tomika's daughter, and turned to collect another one, already awake and howling, from a har-ried-looking young woman who practically threw her child into Aretha's arms and ducked upstairs to the relative peace of the sanctuary.
Joyce was busy getting the toddlers settled in with their choice of toys, picture books, puzzles, and doll babies almost as big as they were. It looked like an appropriate time for me to make my exit upstairs, too. I told Joyce I'd meet her after the service, waved at Aretha, who waved back while reaching to wipe a nose that needed it, went upstairs, and took a seat in the back.
There were three or four older men in the front on the left-hand side who I took to be the Deacon Board and two solemn ushers in dark suits and white gloves when you first walked in, but the congregation was overwhelmingly female, from the young ones who had dropped off their babies downstairs to the ones who had been old for as long as I could remember them. There were flowers on the altar and, as always, a large painting of a sweetly blue-eyed Jesus kneeling in prayer. I remembered our conversation of the night before and I mentally substituted Eddie's face, but that brought on such a rush of feelings that didn't have anything to do with church that I blushed in spite of myself.
It was already warm in the sanctuary, and the lazy ceiling fans were being actively outclassed by the hand-held variety provided by Brown's Funeral Parlor up the road in Baldwin. I think they're probably the people who put us on the list to receive the suicide booklets, but I couldn't swear to it.
It wasn't long before the choir took their places at the back of the church, the organist nodded her readiness up front, and we all stood for the processional. Mama and Daddy weren't big on church, so we hardly ever went while I was growing up, but I always like the music and they were singing one of my favorites, "Great Gettin' Up Mornin'." The choir started as one voice:
In that great gettiri up mornin',
Fare you well, fare you well,
In that great gettin' up mornin',
Fare you well, fare you well.
Let me tell you 'bout the comiri of judgment,
Fare you well, fare you well,
Let me tell you 'bout the comin of judgment,
Fare you well, fare you well.
They were right behind me, clapping and singing, and they sounded so good they made me shiver even in all that heat. They surrounded my less-than-stellar soprano with such a symphony of passionate praise that I felt like I could really sing. We all did. The pews were full of smiling, swaying black women, eyes closed, heads thrown back, voices loud without apology, all of us convinced we were singing our sanctified asses off.
Then, all of a sudden, I heard a female voice lifting up and swooping over our best efforts like Diana Ross assuming leadership of the Supremes. This was a voice that celebrated the delicate, death-defying balance between the secular and the sensual that makes Sunday morning service the sweet, sweat-drenched experience that it is.
God's gonna up and speak to Gabriel, Fare you well, fare you well. God's gonna up and speak to Gabriel, Fare you well, fare you well . . .
The choir, rising to the challenge of this amazing voice, leaped even higher in pursuit of the same ecstasy, and those of us in the pews opened our eyes and glanced at each other to confirm the unexpected wonder of it.
Blow your trumpet, Gabriel, Fare you well, fare you well. Blow your trumpet, Gabriel, Fare you well, fare you well.
The choir started walking now, swishing their robes as they walked down the center aisle and up to the choir loft. As they passed beside me, I waited to see which of these women who I passed at the grocery store or greeted at the gas station had been hiding a voice that made you want to believe whatever she believed just so you could sing that way. As I turned to look, Gerry Anderson caught my eye and returned my sur- prised, admiring smile without missing a beat, her voice running between us like a bright red ribbon.
In that great gettin' up mornin', Fare you well, fare you well. In that great gettin' up mornin', Fare you well, fare you well.
17
If the good Reverend Mrs.' voice was a surprise, the Good Reverend himself was a revelation. Tall, white-haired, and six-tyish, the Rev looked like an aging Cab Galloway and preached like Jesse Jackson. He had a long, black robe with full sleeves that billowed out like wings when he raised his arms in praise or flung them wide in surrender. His voice was rich and more powerful than his slender" frame would lead you to believe.
His sermon topic, as promised, was "No Hiding Place Down Here." It was a fairly weird mixture of traditional references and contemporary anecdotes. The Apostles, for example, became the Jesus Posse, which I thought was going just a little too far, but at the heart of things, it was still a depressingly old-fashioned message about an all-seeing, always-judgmental God the Father, who's got a lake of fire waiting for your sinful ass if you don't shape up.
I hate that kind of preaching. It scares the shit out of people for an hour on Sunday and hopes the threat of hellfire will keep them under control until they get back for another dose the following week. I've been reading one of Joyce's Buddhist books and it was a revelation to me that an entire spiritual practice could be constructed without all that guilt and punishment and damnation.
The Rev, of course, was a Baptist, not a Buddhist, but our basic theological differences aside, I had to admit the threat of an angry God had never sounded so good.
The Good Reverend was charismatic and he knew how to work it. After painting a picture of all the terrible things in the world from which any sane person would want to hide, the Rev came slowly out from behind the pulpit and began to pass among his congregation.
"But the Lord has already told us that there is no hiding place down here. Down here among the sinners and the unsaved. There is no hiding place down here!"
"Yes, Lord!"
"So what do you say when that alcohol says it can hide you?"
"No," said a church full of people who had been drinking all week.
"And what do you say when that dope says it can hide you?"
"No," said a church full of people who couldn't wait to go home and get high.
"And what do you say when that Devil sends that snake, that pet of Satan, just like he sent to Eve, and tries to tell you that sex can hide you?"
"No," said a church full of people who started having sex with as many people as they could as soon as they hit puberty.
But the Rev was on a roll, touching this one's shoulder as he passed, smiling Christian encouragement at that one as she gazed up at him, building and blending the message and the feeling and the promise with such conviction and style and passion that suddenly a woman threw up her hands and wailed. It was a long, high, desperate-for-relief sound, and every woman in the room recognized it.
That was all it took. By the time the Rev was through, two women had shouted, one had flung herself at his neck, and three more had swooned in their seats and been fanned back to consciousness by two large deaconesses in white dresses who were standing by for that express purpose. When the choir came in right on time as he opened the doors of the church to new members, his wife's voice again promised sweet rewards for those who, like her, found their way to the feet of Jesus. Eyes closed, the Rev sat in his thronelike chair behind the pulpit, seemingly exhausted by the demands of his message.
I was impressed with the quality of their act, but confused. They were good at this. As a team, probably one of the best I'd ever seen. It was sort of like seeing Jessye Norman and Kathleen B
attle singing Puccini in a community talent show. You're glad to be there, but you can't help but wonder, What the hell are they doing in Idlewild?
After service, Joyce set up a meeting with the Good Reverend and his Mrs. for tomorrow afternoon, and we found out that another house got robbed last night. Hattie McNeil has got to be eighty and she lives alone. They took her TV, her radio, and all the money she had in her purse. She was in her room asleep and she never heard a thing. She came downstairs this morning and freaked out when she started thinking about all the things that could have happened if they'd come upstairs and found an old woman home alone. Joyce dropped me off and went to check on Hattie.
I guess the Rev had it right. No hiding place down here.
18 i dreamed about walking in Eddie's garden. I'm wearing a long, white dress and I've got on this big-ass straw hat and I'm holding up my skirt so it won't get dirty. Eddie's walking right in front of me telling me what he planted and when it's coming up. Neither one of us has any shoes on and the dirt is soft and warm and moist without being squishy.
He stops to show me a new kind of tomato he's planted this year for the first time. I am surprised to see that it is perfectly golden and not red at all like the other tomatoes he ^rows. It is also small enough for him to hold four or five in nis palm like candy. I take one and pop it into my mouth, savoring the warm sweetness, and I drop my skirt to reach for another and the wind catches it and lifts me up like wings and I hold his hand and his hair lifts him up like wings, too, and all I hear is the sound of the wind and the sound of our laughter and then he leans over and tells me the name of the golden tomatoes.
"Yellow Plum," he says into my ear. "They're Yellow
Plum."
And then I woke up.
19
Joyce lioured she d need as much help as she could get trying to outmaneuver the Good Reverend and his Mrs., so she drafted me into going to the meeting with her. I groaned all the way there, of course. That's a younger sister's job, no matter how old you get, but the truth of it is, I'm really curious about the dynamic duo. There's something just a little off center about them, but I haven't figured out what yet.