Whatever it was, electricity or breath of God, it was palpable.
Wendell’s eyes went from the woman in the yellow dress up to the stage, to the Good Reverend Biddle. Biddle looked down at him. Wendell receded towards the wall, then stopped, and leaned forward. Biddle pointed at him, turned his hand to give Wendell a thumbs up, and smiled. No permasmile, no bravado or condescension, no “Smile for the ladies while I pick their pockets.” It seemed almost sincere. Almost real. And it reminded Wendell of his father, two years earlier, grinning from ear to ear as the cheese slid off his pizza slice, one of those dissonant memories that doesn’t seem to serve a purpose until it does, until it illuminates a dark period with the near forgotten notion that yes, yes there might be some good in this world. The mundane strikes a chord. And, as if dotting an exclamation point, Biddle winked. Wendell couldn’t help but smile.
Bible in his left hand, Biddle raised his arms up, parallel to the floor, and the crowd went silent. All that floated on the electric air were the faint strums of the base guitar.
“Welcome, my friends,” Biddle said into the microphone, still nodding. “Truly this is a day that our Lord has made, so let us rejoice, my friends, and be glad in it. Let us ask our Lord to bless us tonight.”
And without prompting, heads bowed across the room. Biddle began to pray. Wendell lifted his head slightly, opened his eyes and saw his mother, refusing to bow, staring at Biddle and smiling derisively.
“Amen,” said Biddle, lifting his head. “Now folks, today is a special day. You can feel it, I know.”
The crowd was quickly winding up again.
“And I can feel it. We can all feel it!”
Yes, there was something. Wendell felt something.
“Now y’all know,” Biddle continued, “we gotta start this night off on the right foot. And there’s only one way I know to do that.”
The crowd responded. Cheers, claps.
“Only way to do that is with an introduction.”
“All theater,” Diane muttered.
“And there’s only one introduction needed. Now I’m gonna introduce everybody here to somebody…” He shook his Bible lightly. More claps. An assortment of uh-huhs and mmm-yeses. Two women stood to clap.
“I want to in-tro-duce you to my friend…” and he pointed to his Bible. Again, he turned towards Wendell and smiled.
More people got to their feet. Some began hopping in place.
Yes, there was an element of theater, Wendell knew that. But at this point, he didn’t care.
“You know who he is,” Biddle said. “Y’all know who my friend is. Y’all know his name!” Each time he spoke, it was met with a flourish from the guitar.
“Buncha animals,” said Diane.
“Now you know that name, so you tell me that name!”
“Jesus!” they yelled.
“Brothers and sisters, Jesus!” Biddle said, and it came out Jee-a-zusss, and the guitar responded, and the crowd responded, and the neon sign by the door flickered and whatever electricity was moving in the air was snaking across the hairs on Wendell’s neck and heating those metal chairs to keep the people from sitting down. The assembly was no longer in the city. It had ascended, from among the rusted architectural hulks to somewhere within the clouds. Such were the fancies of young Wendell, at least. The woman behind him with the shot glasses over her eyes was weeping. Behind her was a man with patches of white on his olive skin holding hands with a woman bent over at a right angle, straining to keep her head up. Both were smiling, laughing.
Laughing. It should have frightened Wendell, this medical burlesque, this offense to nature in the face of such obvious pain, these wheelchairs and walkers and oxygen tanks attached to blackened lungs and corkscrew spines. But it didn’t. It was all entrancing, intoxicating. He watched Biddle continue speaking as the sweat began to form into beads on his forehead.
“So he rebuked her fever,” Biddle said, “rebuked it and sent it packing…”
The band was competing with the crowd. But it all seemed to function with a sort of order, the people’s shouts and the band’s rhythms, hardly cacophonous, but moving together, organic, each acting as the foundation for the other.
“…and then he took that mat of his, he rolled it up, tucked it under his arm, and danced his way home…”
“Get on with it,” said Diane, shuffling towards the step. She coughed into her fist again, and looked around.
Biddle continued for another few minutes, riding the wave of the crowd, speaking of Jesus putting mud on a blind man’s eyes and healing a woman with the hem of his garment. He ended with Jesus’ resurrection, a not so subtle signal to the crowd that his sermonette was over. Everyone was anticipating the next step.
“But now,” said Biddle, motioning for a few of the men from his prayer circle to come onto the stage, “now,” he emphasized, handing his Bible to one of the men, then taking off his suit coat and handing it to another, “now is the time for God’s presence to be known.” The line by the wall squeezed together, and then moved as one single unit, with Diane at its head. It snaked up a few paces onto the stage, stopping at two of Biddle’s associates. The doorman appeared next to Diane on the stage.
“What’s ailin’ you ma’am?” the doorman whispered. “You tell me, an’ I tell the Good Reverend Biddle at the mike.”
“I know how it works,” she said flatly.
He hesitated, unsure momentarily, looking down at Wendell and then back up to her, and nodded. “So then, what’s the problem?”
She spoke mechanically: “My name is Diane Mackey, and I have an embolism.” Two weeks earlier it had been a tumor on her kidney. She had gone to the New Faith Healing Assembly—thirty-six blocks from the apartment—for that one. It was good to switch the assemblies up from time to time, she thought, to avoid too many repeat offender skeptical eyes. Plus, New Faith served sandwiches and juice after their service.
“What’s that now?”
“An embolism. A blood clot passed through my heart, and now it’s in my lung—”
“So you got some breathin’ difficulties. I see.”
“No, it’s not just—”
He was already past Biddle’s two associates, and stopped next to Biddle himself.
“…and y’all know this isn’t magic,” Biddle continued, “this is the work of God,” emphasizing the words by jamming his right index finger into his left palm. He turned towards the doorman. “Now, Milt, who’ve we got to start us off tonight?”
Milt leaned in towards the microphone. “This here’s Diane, an’ she’s got herself some breathin’ issues.”
Biddle’s two associates parted, and motioned for Diane to pass through towards the mike. Wendell followed, and then stepped towards the back of the stage. He knew what would happen next, with the heathen she-wolf among the believing lambs, readying for her dose of holy-roller medication. Beneath that ceramic, faux devotee visage grew a serpentine smile, hidden to all but the one who knew her best, who had seen all too often that authentic Diane, that shadow of a flawed woman long since dead. He knew what was racing through her mind, a contradiction of desperation and mockery, arrogant disbelief and an almost mystical lust. Wendell looked at Biddle, his eyes clamped shut and hands extended, praying until it hurt.
“…and whatever demons may be lurking, Lord,” Biddle prayed, “whatever unclean spirits may be here right now, give us the strength—”
Diane closed her eyes. Three men positioned themselves behind her.
“—give us the strength to deny them a place, a home for them to pillage and burn…”
Right now, Wendell thought, right now there’s a devil in here. He wanted to reach out for Biddle, for safety, for something immovable and secure. But he also wanted to warn him. She was stealing, Wendell knew. But she was also desecrating the assembly, as much defecating on the stage in front of the crowd as she was dragging their rites into her own selfish neurosis.
“And so we ask you Lord, we ask o
n behalf of our sister, Diane…”
There are devils…
Devils scratching on the windows, wrapped around parking meters, seeping like water through nail holes in the ceiling.
“…that you provide for her, you heal her of her maladies, that you—”
They’re all so nice, Wendell thought. Just wish I could…
“—cast out of her this evil that’s infecting her breath!” Biddle opened his eyes, stepped towards Diane, and put his hand on her forehead.
Silence.
And then, brought forth from some unknown recess, welling up through his belly, his shoulders and arms, came this—
Electricity.
Something was uttered. A word, a sound, Wendell didn’t remember what. But this time it was different. A shudder passed through his mother. Fake or real, he didn’t know. Biddle hopped back. The crowd roared. The neon sign sputtered, and went dark. Diane fell back into the three men. And for a moment, the devils recoiled.
Biddle was smiling at Wendell again. “It’s okay,” he mouthed.
“Tomorrow’s sunrise will bring something new,” Biddle said to Diane. “As something special awaited Jesus’ disciples on that Sunday sunrise after his death, so too will something meet you tomorrow. You’re healed and whole, God’s new creation, and tomorrow’s a new day.”
Diane stood up, reassembled her permasmile, although with trepidation. Often, the Good Reverend Biddle wanted the healed to address the assembly, and speak of the opened lungs, or clear mind, or free-flowing colon. There would be the necessary “Hallelujah” or “Praise Jesus,” followed by a medical testimony. But Diane knew she would be the rat nearing the trap, a fraud exposed as she spoke of things about which she knew nothing. And they would turn on her, turn on her by turning away from her. There could be no greater curse than shutting off the spigot to the holy power.
“Diane,” said Biddle, gesturing to the mike, “come on up and—”
“No. No, I can’t. I’m just…too overwhelmed.” She reached for Wendell, grabbed his hand, and began to move towards the opposite side of the stage.
The woman with shot glass eyeglasses stepped forward between the two gatekeepers, and in the front row a line of obese women in flower print dresses jumped to their feet and flung their hands into the air.
Wendell looked back as they descended the stage to see Biddle recede from view, fearing that he would too quickly recede from memory, that the whole service—canary-clad singer, ululating worshippers, hopping epileptics all—would fade like the voices on a radio as the batteries begin to die. He needed something that would last.
“Y’all’re welcome back any time,” said the singer as they passed the band. Diane nodded. The singer turned to Wendell. “Did you feel it little man?” she asked.
Wendell stopped and stared at her, pulling away from his mother’s hand. The din had increased markedly. The shot glasses woman had just fallen back into the safety net of brown suits. The obese women in the front row were hugging each other as two other women in the aisle began to spin slowly, like meandering tops. They lifted their praises to the ceiling, but with words that Wendell didn’t understand. Long syllables, aaahs and ooahs, punctuated with staccato plugs of sharp consonants, an oddly melodious, controlled verbal chaos. Holy language, they called it. The tongues of angels. Again, he should have been frightened, but this night, it was different.
Wendell nodded to the singer. “Yes. I think so,” he said.
It was getting louder in the room, but she read his lips easily. She cupped her hands over her mouth, then opened her arms, as if presenting young Wendell to the crowd.
“It doesn’t end here little man,” she added. “He makes us new. The Lord makes us good and new.” But Diane had taken Wendell’s hand again and began pulling him towards the back of the room. The singer blew Wendell a kiss before she turned back towards the stage, picked up a tambourine, and began tapping it against her thigh.
“That’s rich,” scoffed Diane. “Retards don’t know what they’re doing. I didn’t feel anything at all.”
That wasn’t surprising. It was her common refrain. It was what kept her coming back. And she needed that immediate condescension as much as she needed her magic from the man on the stage. It solidified the neurotic loop, keeping the reins in Diane’s hands. She was now above them all, this pliant mass of supplicants, looking down from her haughty perch. But the way her eyes moved from worshipper to worshipper, from the members of the band to the stage and the man shuddering as Biddle placed his hand on him, to Milt the doorman and the women in the front row, she looked almost…
“God’s peace is with him, my friends,” Biddle said of the shuddering man, now grinning, and rising from his knees.
…nervous. This time was different. She feared whatever it was that moved those people, feared that it might make its way into her. So she quickened her step, pushing past worshippers, her eyes only on the church’s front doors. Wendell dragged behind, trying to be his mother’s anchor, but failing as she bumped her way towards the doors. It was almost unreal, he thought, this splinter of light in a shadowed city, this certainty amidst confusion. It hadn’t given into the city, hadn’t been darkened by it, as his family had.
“I think I feel it.”
“No you don’t. Nothing to feel,” she said to him. Her voice now revealed more than just anxiety. They made it to the doors and Diane shoved one open with her shoulder.
Outside, the sun had set on the uneven city horizon. Across the street the strip club had its own line forming at its doors. Purple neon women, lines of running lights, doors that belched a throbbing base beat. Diane stopped to button her coat, and Wendell watched the line across the street, the men speaking into raised coat collars, smoking cigarettes and shifting their weight from foot to foot eagerly. Their doorman was massive, and in his gray suit he looked like a concrete column poured into the sidewalk. Behind him Wendell heard the church’s band, muffled but still ebullient.
“Time to go.”
“Could we stay? Just this once?”
“No. No reason. Folks’re getting crazy eyes in there.”
“But we could—”
“You’ve got school.”
“No I don’t.”
“Then you’ve got cleaning.” She took his hand and moved down the sidewalk. On their side of the street there were few pedestrians, save for an ambling wino, his right side seemingly heavier than his left, pushing his gait towards the street. Diane and Wendell sidestepped him, and made their way to the intersection at the end of the block.
They waited for the light, and Wendell tried tapping one of the drum’s rhythms with his foot, needing something from that night to keep. The apartment would be dark and silent, the walls would begin to breathe, and his mother, in communion with none but her own mind, would pace her room like a condemned criminal. Wendell needed something immovable, something that the assembly offered, a remnant he could possess.
The light changed, the two of them crossed, and the street lights like ghost eyes lit their way.
New Faith Healing Assembly really did have excellent sandwiches, he remembered. They were enough to prompt even his mother to stay for an entire service a few times. The Church of the Holy Spirit of Grace and Truth would only, at times, put out pre-service wafer cookies like pressboard and lines of plastic cups holding orange bug juice. Wendell walked down the sidewalk on Mortimer Street, favoring his right foot, remembering New Faith and an acned blonde woman with a funhouse face setting the cold cuts platters out after one of the services, smiling with such energy that little Wendell thought her lips would burst. That funhouse face, he recalled, a testament to how the run-down bar-turned-church took all comers, no matter their peculiarities. Wendell thought about those platters, and how he folded the pieces of ham in half, stacking them up against each other on the sourdough like little pink waves, dotted the tops with mustard, put the sourdough roof on his house, and jammed it into his cheeks like a squirrel.
“Stop it,” he told himself. Wendell quickened his step. The yellow awnings ahead of him grew.
Brewster’s Market was where his mother always shopped—before becoming a self-imposed shut-in. After that, and before he moved out of the apartment, Wendell would trek down to Brewster’s and wheel the bags back in her fold-up shopping cart. Small and tidy, Wendell remembered the rows of apples and pears, dried dates like leathery brown eggs, the forests of broccoli and cauliflower, and the bundles of jerky on the counter in glass jars. On the wall behind the register was the necessary small businessman’s Medal of Honor, the framed First Dollar Earned. Bundles of fresh carrots tied together at the stalks hung from the poles at the end of each aisle, and small fans whirred at the top of each pole to keep the warm air from getting stagnant. The entire store was festooned with lines of garlic like Christmas lights. Some of the neighborhood kids used to tempt fate by stealing handfuls of tomatoes to throw at each other from opposite sides of the street. Mr. Brewster, long in the tooth but quick with his broom—a giant implement for a giant man, more a log with bristles than a broom—would chase the children down the block until giving up and returning under a cloud of profanities. Mr. Brewster was long gone, replaced by his son, who saw the city’s decline, read the handwriting on the wall, and sold the family business to a Pakistani family willing to breathe some extra life into it. Still with its original name even though all remaining Brewsters were off in the suburbs, it still looked as it had when Wendell was young. And now it was only one block down; Wendell saw the stacks of oranges. In two minutes they would be in his hands.
“I’m already a killer,” he whispered, “so what’s a little shoplifting?” Wrong, yes, but there was no nagging nun on Mortimer Street. Plus, he saw no other options. He needed to eat. And fruit was better than what his mind was conjuring up.
From where he was, approaching the market slowly, Wendell saw one of the employees, his back turned to him, sweeping the sidewalk. Even on his broken feet, he could grab a few oranges and be down to the corner before anyone turned.
The Death of Wendell Mackey Page 18