The Women of Brewster Place

by Gloria Naylor

  Them that’s got, shall get

  Them that’s not, shall lose

  So the Bible says

  And it still is news

  Each time the laughter would try to lie still, the two women would look at each other and send it hurling between them, once again.

  Mama may have

  Papa may have

  But God bless the child

  That’s got his own

  That’s got his own

  “Lord, Tut, you’re a caution.” Mattie wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of a huge dark hand.

  Etta was unable to count the years that had passed since she had heard someone call her that. Look a’ that baby gal strutting around here like a bantam. You think she’d be the wife of King Tut. The name had stayed because she never lost the walk. The washed-out grime and red mud of backwoods Rock Vale, Tennessee, might wrap itself around her bare feet and coat the back of her strong fleshy legs, but Etta always had her shoulders flung behind her collarbone and her chin thrust toward the horizon that came to mean everything Rock Vale did not.

  Etta spent her teenage years in constant trouble. Rock Vale had no place for a black woman who was not only unwilling to play by the rules, but whose spirit challenged the very right of the game to exist. The whites in Rock Vale were painfully reminded of this rebellion when she looked them straight in the face while putting in her father’s order at the dry goods store, when she reserved her sirs and mams for those she thought deserving, and when she smiled only if pleased, regardless of whose presence she was in. That Johnson gal wasn’t being an uppity nigger, as talk had it; she was just being herself.

  Southern trees bear strange fruit

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

  Black bodies swinging

  In the southern breeze

  Strange fruit hanging

  From the poplar trees

  But Rutherford County wasn’t ready for Etta’s blooming independence, and so she left one rainy summer night about three hours ahead of dawn and Johnny Brick’s furious pursuing relatives. Mattie wrote and told her they had waited in ambush for two days on the county line, and then had returned and burned down her father’s barn. The sheriff told Mr. Johnson that he had gotten off mighty light—considering. Mr. Johnson thought so, too. After reading Mattie’s letter, Etta was sorry she hadn’t killed the horny white bastard when she had the chance.

  Rock Vale had followed her to Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, and even to New York. Etta soon found out that America wasn’t ready for her yet—not in 1937. And so along with the countless other disillusioned, restless children of Ham with so much to give and nowhere to give it, she took her talents to the street. And she learned to get over, to hook herself to any promising rising black star, and when he burnt out, she found another.

  Her youth had ebbed away quickly under the steady pressure of the changing times, but she was existing as she always had. Even if someone had bothered to stop and tell her that the universe had expanded for her, just an inch, she wouldn’t have known how to shine alone.

  Etta and Mattie had taken totally different roads that with all of their deceptive winding had both ended up on Brewster Place. Their laughter now drew them into a conspiratorial circle against all the Simeons outside of that dead-end street, and it didn’t stop until they were both weak from the tears that flowed down their faces.

  “So,” Mattie said, blowing her nose on a large cotton handkerchief, “trusting you stay out of jail, what you plan on doing now?”

  “Child, I couldn’t tell you.” Etta dropped back down on the couch. “I should be able to get a coupla thousand for the car to tide me over till another business opportunity comes along.”

  Mattie raised one eyebrow just a whisper of an inch. “Ain’t it time you got yourself a regular job? These last few years them business opportunities been fewer and farther between.”

  Etta sucked her small white teeth. “A job doing what? Come on, Mattie, what kind of experience I got? Six months here, three there. I oughta find me a good man and settle down to live quiet in my old age.” She combed her fingers confidently through the thick sandy hair that only needed slight tinting at the roots and mentally gave herself another fifteen years before she had to worry about this ultimate fate.

  Mattie, watching the creeping tiredness in her eyes, gave her five. “You done met a few promising ones along the way, Etta.”

  “No, honey, it just seemed so. Let’s face it, Mattie. All the good men are either dead or waiting to be born.”

  “Why don’t you come to meeting with me tonight. There’s a few settle-minded men in our church, some widowers and such. And a little prayer wouldn’t hurt your soul one bit.”

  “I’ll thank you to leave my soul well alone, Mattie Michael. And if your church is so full of upright Christian men, why you ain’t snagged one yet?”

  “Etta, I done banked them fires a long time ago, but seeing that you still keeping up steam…” Her eyes were full of playful kindness.

  “Just barely, Mattie, just barely.”

  And laughter rolled inside of 2E, once again.

  “Etta, Etta Mae!” Mattie banged on the bathroom door. “Come on out now. You making me late for the meeting.”

  “Just another second, Mattie. The church ain’t gonna walk away.”

  “Lord,” Mattie grumbled, “she ain’t bigger than a minute, so it shouldn’t take more than that to get ready.”

  Etta came out of the bathroom in an exaggerated rush. “My, my, you the most impatient Christian I know.”

  “Probably, the only Christian you know.” Mattie refused to be humored as she bent to gather up her sweater and purse. She turned and was stunned with a barrage of colors. A huge white straw hat reigned over layers of gold and pearl beads draped over too much bosom and too little dress. “You plan on dazzling the Lord, Etta?”

  “Well, honey,” Etta said, looking down the back of her stocking leg to double-check for runs, “last I heard, He wasn’t available. You got more recent news?”

  “Um, um, um.” Mattie pressed her lips together and shook her head slowly to swallow down the laughter she felt crawling up her throat. Realizing she wasn’t going to succeed, she quickly turned her face from Etta and headed toward the door. “Just bring your blasphemin’ self on downstairs. I done already missed morning services waiting on you today.”

  Canaan Baptist Church, a brooding, ashen giant, sat in the middle of a block of rundown private homes. Its multi-colored, dome-shaped eyes glowered into the darkness. Fierce clapping and thunderous organ chords came barreling out of its mouth. Evening services had begun.

  Canaan’s congregation, the poor who lived in a thirty-block area around Brewster Place, still worshiped God loudly. They could not afford the refined, muted benediction of the more prosperous blacks who went to Sinai Baptist on the northern end of the city, and because each of their requests for comfort was so pressing, they took no chances that He did not hear them.

  When Israel was in Egypt’s land

  Let my people go

  Oppressed so hard, they could not stand

  Let my people go

  The words were as ancient as the origin of their misery, but the tempo had picked up threefold in its evolution from the cotton fields. They were now sung with the frantic determination of a people who realized that the world was swiftly changing but for some mystic, complex reason their burden had not.

  God said to go down

  Go down

  Brother Moses

  Brother Moses

  To the shore of the great Nile River

  The choir clapped and stomped each syllable into a devastating reality, and just as it did, the congregation reached up, grabbed the phrase, and tried to clap and stomp it back into oblivion.

  Go to Egypt

  Go to Egypt

  Tell Pharaoh

  Tell Pharaoh

  Let my people go

  Etta entered the back of the church like a re
luctant prodigal, prepared at best to be amused. The alien pounding and the heat and the dark glistening bodies dragged her back, back past the cold ashes of her innocence to a time when pain could be castrated on the sharp edges of iron-studded faith. The blood rushed to her temples and began to throb in unison with the musical pleas around her.

  Yes, my God is a mighty God

  Lord, deliver

  And he set old Israel free

  Swallowed that Egyptian army

  Lord, deliver

  With the waves of the great Red Sea

  Etta glanced at Mattie, who was swaying and humming, and she saw that the lines in her face had almost totally vanished. She had left Etta in just that moment for a place where she was free. Sadly, Etta looked at her, at them all, and was very envious. Unaccustomed to the irritating texture of doubt, she felt tears as its abrasiveness grated over the fragile skin of her life. Could there have been another way?

  The song ended with a huge expulsion of air, and the congregation sat down as one body.

  “Come on, let’s get us a seat.” Mattie tugged her by the arm.

  The grizzled church deacon with his suit hanging loosely off his stooped shoulders went up to the pulpit to read the church business.

  “That’s one of the widowers I was telling you about,” Mattie whispered, and poked Etta.

  “Unmm.” The pressure on her arm brought Etta back onto the uncomfortable wooden pew. But she didn’t want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.

  The scenes of her life reeled out before her with the same aging script; but now hindsight sat as the omniscient director and had the young star of her epic recite different brilliant lines and make the sort of stunning decisions that propelled her into the cushioned front pews on the right of the minister’s podium. There she sat with the deacons’ wives, officers of the Ladies’ Auxiliary, and head usherettes. And like them, she would wear on her back a hundred pairs of respectful eyes earned the hard way, and not the way she had earned the red sundress, which she now self-consciously tugged up in the front. Was it too late?

  The official business completed, the treasurer pulled at his frayed lapels, cleared his throat, and announced the guest speaker for the night.

  The man was magnificent.

  He glided to the podium with the effortlessness of a welloiled machine and stood still for an interminable long moment. He eyed the congregation confidently. He only needed their attention for that split second because once he got it, he was going to wrap his voice around their souls and squeeze until they screamed to be relieved. They knew it was coming and waited expectantly, breathing in unison as one body. First he played with them and threw out fine silken threads that stroked their heart muscles ever so gently. They trembled ecstatically at the touch and invited more. The threads multiplied and entwined themselves solidly around the one pulsating organ they had become and tightened slightly, testing them for a reaction.

  The “Amen, brothers” and “Yes, Jesus” were his permission to take that short hop from the heart to the soul and lay all pretense of gentleness aside. Now he would have to push and pound with clenched fists in order to be felt, and he dared not stop the fierce rhythm of his voice until their replies had reached that fevered pitch of satisfaction. Yes, Lord—grind out the unheated tenements! Merciful Jesus—shove aside the low-paying boss man. Perfect Father—fill me, fill me till there’s no room, no room for nothing else, not even that great big world out there that exacts such a strange penalty for my being born black.

  It was hard work. There was so much in them that had to be replaced. The minister’s chest was heaving in long spasms, and the sweat was pouring down his gray temples and rolling under his chin. His rich voice was now hoarse, and his legs and raised arms trembled on the edge of collapse. And as always they were satisfied a half-breath before he reached the end of his endurance. They sat back, limp and spent, but momentarily at peace. There was no price too high for this service. At that instant they would have followed him to do battle with the emperor of the world, and all he was going to ask of them was money for the “Lord’s work.” And they would willingly give over half of their little to keep this man in comfort.

  Etta had not been listening to the message; she was watching the man. His body moved with the air of one who had not known recent deprivation. The tone of his skin and the fullness around his jawline told her that he was well-off, even before she got close enough to see the manicured hands and diamond pinkie ring.

  The techniques he had used to brand himself on the minds of the congregation were not new to her. She’d encountered talent like that in poolrooms, nightclubs, grimy second-floor insurance offices, numbers dens, and on a dozen street corners. But here was a different sort of power. The jungle-sharpened instincts of a man like that could move her up to the front of the church, ahead of the deacons’ wives and Ladies’ Auxiliary, off of Brewster Place for good. She would find not only luxury but a place that complemented the type of woman she had fought all these years to become.

  “Mattie, is that your regular minister?” she whispered.

  “Who, Reverend Woods? No, he just visits on occasion, but he sure can preach, can’t he?”

  “What you know about him, he married?”

  Mattie cut her eyes at Etta. “I should have figured it wasn’t the sermon that moved you. At least wait till after the prayer before you jump all into the man’s business.”

  During the closing song and prayer Etta was planning how she was going to maneuver Mattie to the front of the church and into introducing her to Reverend Woods. It wasn’t going to be as difficult as she thought. Moreland T. Woods had noticed Etta from the moment she’d entered the church. She stood out like a bright red bird among the drab morality that dried up the breasts and formed rolls around the stomachs of the other church sisters. This woman was still dripping with the juices of a full-fleshed life—the kind of life he was soon to get up and damn into hell for the rest of the congregation—but how it fitted her well. He had to swallow to remove the excess fluid from his mouth before he got up to preach.

  Now the problem was to make his way to the back of the church before she left without seeming to be in a particular hurry. A half-dozen back slaps, handshakes, and thank-you sisters only found him about ten feet up the aisle, and he was growing impatient. However, he didn’t dare to turn his neck and look in the direction where he’d last seen her. He felt a hand on his upper arm and turned to see a grim-faced Mattie flanked by the woman in the scarlet dress.

  “Reverend Woods, I really enjoyed your sermon,” Mattie said.

  “Why, thank you, sister—sister?”

  “Sister Michael, Mattie Michael.” While he was addressing his words to her, the smile he sent over her shoulder to Etta was undeniable.

  “Especially the part,” Mattie raised her voice a little, “About throwing away temptation to preserve the soul. That was a mighty fine point.”

  “The Lord moves me and I speak, Sister Michael. I’m just a humble instrument for his voice.”

  The direction and intent of his smile was not lost to Etta. She inched her way in front of Mattie. “I enjoyed it, too, Reverend Woods. It’s been a long time since I heard preaching like that.” She increased the pressure of her fingers on Mattie’s arm.

  “Oh, excuse my manners. Reverend Woods, this is an old friend of mine, Etta Mae Johnson. Etta Mae, Reverend Woods.” She intoned the words as if she were reciting a eulogy.

  “Please to meet you, Sister Johnson.” He beamed down on the small woman and purposely held her hand a fraction longer than usual. “You must be a new member—I don’t recall seeing you the times I’ve been here before.”

  “Well, no, Reverend, I’m not a member of the congregation, but I was raised up in the church. You know how it is, as you get older sometimes you stray away. But
after your sermon, I’m truly thinking of coming back.”

  Mattie tensed, hoping that the lightning that God was surely going to strike Etta with wouldn’t hit her by mistake.

  “Well, you know what the Bible says, sister. The angels rejoice more over one sinner who turns around than over ninety-nine righteous ones.”

  “Yes, indeed, and I’m sure a shepherd like you has helped to turn many back to the fold.” She looked up and gave him the full benefit of her round dark eyes, grateful she hadn’t put on that third coat of mascara.

  “I try, Sister Johnson, I try.”

  “It’s a shame Mrs. Woods wasn’t here tonight to hear you. I’m sure she must be mighty proud of your work.”

  “My wife has gone to her glory, Sister Johnson. I think of myself now as a man alone—rest her soul.”

  “Yes, rest her soul,” Etta sighed.

  “Please, Lord, yes,” Mattie muttered, giving out the only sincere request among the three. The intensity of her appeal startled them, and they turned to look at her. “Only knows how hard this life is, she’s better in the arms of Jesus.”

  “Yes”—Etta narrowed her eyes at Mattie and then turned back to the minister—“I can testify to that. Being a woman alone, it seems all the more hard. Sometimes you don’t know where to turn.”

  Moreland Woods knew Etta was the type of woman who not only knew which way to turn, but, more often than not, had built her own roads when nothing else was accessible. But he was enjoying this game immensely—almost as much as the growing heat creeping into his groin.

  “Well, if I can be of any assistance, Sister Johnson, don’t hesitate to ask. I couldn’t sleep knowing one of the Lord’s sheep is troubled. As a matter of fact, if you have anything you would like to discuss with me this evening, I’d be glad to escort you home.”

  “I don’t have my own place. You see, I’m just up from out of state and staying with my friend Mattie here.”