Second Sunday

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  That crying and acting out on Christmas Day was the last straw as far as Bert was concerned. Even as a little girl, Bertha didn’t fool her daddy, and she wasn’t getting by him now. Neither was Nettie, who Bert suspected knew something, if not all, that was up. Bert resolved to start the New Year off by remedying whatever was wrong with his baby—and he was going to find out just what that was today.

  It was the second Sunday of the month, when Nettie always cooked a big breakfast for their family and friends before the eleven o’clock service. When Bert arrived with the milk Nettie sent him out to get, everybody was already there: MamaLouise; Mr. Louis Loomis; their neighbor Sheba Cochran; Melvin and Sylvia Vicks, with their son Melvin Jr.; and Viola and Wendell Cates, with their daughter Phoebe. Bertha’s seat remained empty, one more stark reminder to Bert that something was up with his baby.

  Nettie had set the table with her favorite gold-rimmed china and used her cream lace tablecloth, fancy gold satin napkins, and the brass napkin rings with “Bert and Nettie Forever” engraved on them. The cream and gold complemented the soft neutral tones of the dining room: walls with ivory moire draperies, a pale beige area rug on the golden hardwood floors, and a soft sand, ivory, and off-white abstract oil painting on the wall facing the large picture window. Nettie had a special color scheme for each room in the house: sunny yellow for the kitchen, sage green for the living room, pale blue for the master bedroom, lavender for the guest room, and pink for Bertha’s old bedroom.

  As soon as Nettie finished putting out all the food, Bert had everybody gather and join hands to bless the table. “Father,” he prayed, “we thank You for this gathering of family and friends to partake of the bounties of Your love in the form of this wonderfully prepared meal. Bless the sweet brown hands that made it. And bless the food to nourish and keep us all healthy and strong. In the name of Jesus Christ our precious Lord and Savior we pray. Amen.”

  “Amen,” everybody said, and dug into the delicious-smelling breakfast of homemade blackberry pancakes, crispy bacon, sausage patties, fluffy scrambled eggs, fresh-sliced pears, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and Nettie’s wonderful coffee.

  When Bert was satisfied that everybody had been served, he took a spoon and tapped the side of his crystal water glass.

  “As always,” he began,” I am glad that we are all here to enjoy this good meal together. But even though I’m glad to see y’all, I am not happy about my baby not being here. Now, the girl has been missing church, she is not here with us this morning, and I want to know what is up with her.” He looked straight at Nettie as he asked, “Does anybody have any idea what is going on with Bertha Kaye?”

  At that point, Nettie hopped up to get Bert some more coffee, taking extra care as she sweetened it with honey, added a touch of cinnamon, and made sure it had the perfect amount of cream for Bert. He liked his coffee the color of rich caramel—said that color tasted good.

  Bert thanked Nettie for the coffee but didn’t let her off the hook: “Well, baby, what you got to say for yourself and that daughter of yours?”

  “Not much, Bert honey,” Nettie answered, starting to return to her seat. But Bert tugged on her hand and pulled her right back over to his chair.

  “What you know that I don’t know, girl?” he asked gruffly.

  Nettie didn’t answer right away. This wasn’t the first time Bert had put her on the spot at a family breakfast. Viola always thought that her sister would be better off just telling the man what he wanted and often needed to know when nobody was around. But Nettie hated to give Bert bad news and would always keep it from him as long as she could, until the man got tired of it and called her out in front of everybody. And it always worked.

  But Nettie wasn’t ready to cave in yet. “Now Bert, honey,” she said, “no need in us disrupting a perfectly lovely breakfast talking about troublesome things. Why don’t you sip on your coffee before it gets cold and get some more pancakes.”

  “Bad move,” Phoebe thought, having witnessed enough scenes between Bert and Nettie to know the script. She slurped on her coffee, unintentionally drawing attention to herself.

  At that, Bert let go of Nettie’s hand and zeroed in on the other person in the room who usually had the scoop on Bertha Kaye. Phoebe and Bertha, both only children of sisters, were just like sisters themselves and knew almost all of each other’s secrets. Close as they were, the two women were different as night and day. Bertha was flighty, comical, prissy, and spoiled rotten with her big, pretty, full-figured self. Phoebe was more serious—a lawyer—very athletic, no-nonsense, long and tall, with an incredibly beautiful head of hair that hung way down her back.

  “So, Phoebe Josephine,” Bert said, knowing that the use of Phoebe’s full name would put her on notice that he wasn’t playing. “What can you tell me about Bertha and her whereabouts?”

  Phoebe took as big a gulp of coffee as she dared, to buy some time. She really didn’t know what to tell her uncle.

  “Baby, stop slurping on your coffee,” MamaLouise admonished. “Now, if you have something to tell your uncle, you better tell it, because he really needs your help.”

  Phoebe almost huffed air out of her mouth. Why did she have to be the one to spell it out? She sipped some more coffee, being extra careful not to slurp it. If she did, all of them would swear she did it on purpose. Everybody knew Phoebe could have “her habits” on her, and her habits included being irritable and then deliberate in her refusal to cooperate.

  Bert was watching his niece expectantly, drumming the table with thick heavy brown fingers. Phoebe could see that she had no hope of escape.

  “Uncle Bert,” Phoebe began, “Bertha has been going to another church out in St. Charles.”

  “St. Charles?” Bert asked. “The only church that I am familiar with out in St. Charles is that . . .” He snapped his fingers and turned to Nettie. “Baby, what’s the name of the church that’s always on TV? You know the one. It’s called . . .”

  “The American Worship Center,” Nettie answered, hoping he wouldn’t keep pushing.

  “The American Worship Center,” Bert repeated. “That’s it, but—”

  “Nettie,” MamaLouise said impatiently, “is Bertha going to the American Worship Center?”

  “Yeah, Mama. She is.”

  “Why?” MamaLouise demanded, astonished that anybody, let alone her own granddaughter, would want to go to that church. The televised services didn’t look that inviting, and she had never seen any black people at them.

  “Don’t know, Mama,” Nettie answered truthfully.

  “Well, it must be something,” Bert interjected. “And I aim to find out. How long you been knowing this, woman?”

  “Two and a half weeks.”

  “Two and one half weeks?” he yelled, jumping up from the table so fast, he knocked over his chair. Everybody in the room grew quiet. Bert hardly ever lost his temper, but when he did, it was like standing in the middle of a tornado.

  “Now Bert, honey, don’t go getting all upset, running your pressure up. I—”

  “I, nothing!” he snapped, and snatched the chair up, flinging it back in place. “You kept quiet on this, Nettie Cordelia Williams Green, because you knew I would get all up in that silly girl’s business. And I don’t care if Bertha Kaye is supposed to be grown, she is silly sometimes. Don’t know where she got it from. You got good sense, Viola got good sense, MamaLouise got good sense, and I got good sense.”

  Bert pulled his car keys from his pocket and went to get his hat and coat.

  “Where do you think you’re off to?” Nettie asked, pulling on his arm.

  Bert pried her hand away. “I’m going to get my baby. She ain’t got no business out there.”

  “Maybe not,” Nettie insisted. “But you’re not the person to go out there and get her. All you’ll do is fuss at Bertha and she’ll dig in her heels, just to make sure you know she grown so you can’t tell her what to do.”

  “She might do something even more foolish,
like joining that church,” Sheba said, wondering if that was exactly what Bertha was planning to do. Recently she had asked Sheba for a copy of her tax forms for some “application” process.

  “Why don’t you go, Phoebe,” Bert said. “She’ll probably listen to you.”

  Phoebe sighed heavily. “But it’s Second Sunday,” she reminded Bert. Second Sunday at a black Baptist church was the very best Sunday, commemorating the days when poor churches could hire itinerant preachers only twice a month—on the second and fourth Sundays. But it was on the second Sundays that those congregations really had “chutch.”

  For his first Second Sunday as pastor, Rev. Wilson had installed the new choir, the Holy Rollers, who promised to tear up the service with their high-powered, on-fire singing. Phoebe couldn’t wait to get to church.

  “Your uncle Bert just asked you to do something, Phoebe Josephine,” her father, Wendell, stated in a no-nonsense voice. “Now you do right and go see to your cousin.”

  Meanwhile, Sheba had been keeping an eye on Melvin Jr. Lately she had noticed that he and Bertha spent a lot of time together for people who couldn’t “stand” each other. He had almost jumped when Bert started questioning Phoebe and had kept his eyes glued to the table during their exchange. So she asked, “Why don’t you go with her, Melvin Jr.?”

  “Don’t you think I would add insult to injury, Miss Sheba, if I showed up with Phoebe? You know how much I get on Bertha’s nerves over the simplest of things.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” Sheba answered him evenly.

  Melvin Jr. sighed out loud, not caring who heard him, and got up to get his coat and car keys. “I might as well drive.”

  Mr. Louis Loomis locked eyes with Sheba, acknowledging that she was on to something. “You know, Sheba,” he said, “I think you and I need to accompany these young folk. They don’t need to tangle with the American Worship Center, or Bertha Kaye, without a little seasoned backup.”

  “I know that’s right,” Bert said. He got up and walked them to the door, just to make sure they left right at that moment, before anybody had a chance to back out.

  II

  The American Worship Center was way out in the boondocks, far enough away from St. Louis that no black people could stumble up on it by accident. It was so far out that when Phoebe tried to locate the KATZ soul radio station, all she got was fuzz and static.

  “Shoot,” she spat out. “Can’t get nothing out here but country-western music. It’s bad enough I can’t go to my own church today but at least I could get to hear Evangelist Elroy Thorn, Rev. Cleotis Robinson, Martha Bass, or the O’Neal Twins. Heck, I’d be happy listening to somebody testifying on one of Rev. Ike’s red prayer cloths about now.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and somebody at this church will sing one of those singers’ songs,” Melvin, Jr. said dryly as he pulled off 70 West and found the street leading to the church. “And if you would let my boy Jackson put an eight-track player in this car, we’d be listening to a tape instead of the static that is supposed to be KATZ. But you and Bertha Kaye show kinfolk—you both hardheaded and don’t listen right when a man try to tell you something for your own good. I knew I should have driven my own car.”

  “And you could’ve done just that, Melvin Jr.,” Phoebe retorted, “if you had more than a half of a fourth of a tank of gas in your car.”

  “Women,” Melvin Jr. grumbled, and made a left turn, hoping it wouldn’t take much longer to find this place. He didn’t like driving around St. Charles looking lost and maybe drawing attention from some white folks nervous that they were out here to start some trouble.

  “Melvin Jr.,” Sheba said, “when did you get so grown and mannish that you know all about women being hardheaded with men?”

  “What you mean, Miss Sheba?” he asked, trying to play dumb.

  Sheba sat up and poked her face up forward, so Melvin Jr. could see it in the rearview mirror. Reaching up, he shifted the mirror to escape her expression, which clearly said, “Oh, you know exactly what I mean.”

  Melvin Jr. wished he did not have to come out here to deal with Bertha. He had a sinking feeling that he was connected to her running away. Melvin Jr. was in love with Bertha Green. He didn’t even remember when it happened—falling in love with the girl he had fought with all of his life. Maybe he’d always loved Bertha and was just too pigheaded to admit it to her or to himself.

  Mr. Louis Loomis once tried to talk to him about love. He told him, “Boy, a good woman without a man in her life is just like prime real estate that’s been overlooked. Sometimes real good property can be on the market for what look likes forever and a day. You think it’ll always be there, then somebody comes along and sees he has found a treasure and takes it right from up under your feet.”

  “Why didn’t I listen to Mr. Louis Loomis and tell Bertha that I loved her and couldn’t live without her?” Melvin Jr. thought. “Why didn’t I use the sense God gave me to grab a hold of the best thing that ever happened to me?”

  They finally found the church, and it took them fifteen more minutes to find a parking space. The parking lot stretched out across several acres of land and was so full that cars were parked in made-up spaces. Melvin Jr. saw a spot on the grass and made himself a parking space too.

  “It sure is crowded,” Mr. Louis Loomis said as he took off his hat and scratched at his head. “You know, I never would have thought so many people would come here. The preaching is so boring that it puts my TV to sleep.”

  “You ain’t never lied on that,” Sheba said, watching the steady flow of people moving toward the church. “And I show don’t see any black folks up in here.”

  “There are some brown dots over there,” Phoebe said, pointing to a lone black family leaving their car a few rows away. She gave them an enthusiastic wave.

  “Humph, that’s a shame before God,” Mr. Louis Loomis snorted in disgust, as the father steered his family away from them, walking all stiff and tight to hide that dipping-strut sway that would have made him look like a bona fide black man. “Some folks just hate it that the Lord made them black.”

  Sheba watched the man trying to walk all upright and pinched and thought, “Such a waste.”

  As soon as they reached the church door, Phoebe got to scowling.

  “What is wrong with you?” Melvin Jr. asked.

  “I don’t like the way this church looks.”

  Sheba backed up a few steps and studied the building for a moment. It had a long, square, industrial shape and was made of pale gray concrete blocks, softened a bit with stained-glass windows in gold, blue, and gray. “It looks more like an office building than a church,” she said.

  Phoebe agreed. “It sure is different from Gethsemane. There aren’t even any trees out here. It’s just standing in the middle of a big, empty field.”

  The spacious vestibule they entered made their own look tiny by comparison. Though rather cold and uninviting, it had clearly benefited from a very high-priced decorator. It had white, textured walls with pewter gray trim on the windows, and a black marble floor with white and silver veins, topped by a black rug in a pattern of soft gray flowers and tiny white doves.

  “Well,” said Mr. Louis Loomis, “it may not look like a church, but it show do look like a whole lot of money.”

  A group of members arrived, stopping dead in their tracks as they caught sight of the brown huddle in the vestibule. Not one person said good morning or even nodded in greeting. The rudest among them just stared, with shock on their faces and mouths struggling to form the question: “And just what are you doing here?”

  “At least we look good,” Sheba thought. She was decked out in a cream-colored sequined dress, and was sporting her hot pink ostrich feather hat like a crown, along with hot pink stretch-satin elbow-length gloves, hot pink shoes, and a matching shoulder bag. Conscious of how she stood out, Sheba moved to the wall to check her reflection in a large, oval mirror set in an opulent antique silver frame. Adjusting
the hot pink veil on her hat, she had just taken out her lipstick for a touch-up when a condescending voice cut through the silence.

  “You are in the house of the Lord. Act like it.”

  Staring in the mirror, Sheba locked eyes with a flushed-face “Big Missy,” a starched and poofed-out dark blond hairdo sitting high on her head. Knowing that Big Missy wanted to intimidate her, Sheba decided to act like she wasn’t even there. She put her lipstick on slowly and deliberately, enjoying every second of the woman’s agitation over being ignored. Then, to add more fuel to the fire, she made a big to-do of blotting and puckering her lips, before twisting the lipstick back into the tube.

  “Jezebel,” said Big Missy, loud and clear.

  Dropping her lipstick into her purse, Sheba turned to face the woman. In a low, threatening voice, she said, “I guess you ought to know, since your mama is a Jezebel. And if you say just one more thing to me, Big Missy, you’ll need Peter, James, and John to help you escape the flames of my wrath.”

  “Miss Sheba!” Bertha exclaimed, suddenly materializing out of thin air. Putting her hands on her generous hips, she demanded, “What are y’all doing here?”

  Phoebe stared her cousin up and down and felt relief when she saw what she was wearing. Bertha was “clean” in a creamy yellow silk suit with mother-of-pearl buttons and a matching hat, purse, and shoes. She whispered a prayer of thanks to the Lord that the girl, with her pretty, sexy, cocoa brown, size-eighteen, five-foot-eight, silly self, didn’t let this old dry-tail church take away her taste in clothes. Bertha still had that classic, fully accessorized look that black women considered essential for church.

  Melvin Jr. lit up at the sight of Bertha and started toward her with wide-open arms, but her stern look knocked the wind out of him. Backing off, he wiped the hurt from his face as best he could, while holding up his hands as if to say, “Have it your way.”