“Now, just a minute,” Melvin Jr. said, walking up in Ray Lyles’s face. “You better apologize to Bertha now, or I will knock you clean across this stage.”
“Are you threatening me in my church?” Lyles demanded. “Ushers!”
Twelve men in dark gray suits rushed toward the stage, one of them waving a baseball bat.
“Aww-naww,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, taking off his suit coat and handing it to Phoebe. “Get Bertha Kaye out of here with that baby. She can’t get hurt when we get to whipping tail.”
Phoebe grabbed Bertha’s arm and dragged her over to where Sheba was shedding her gloves and unpinning her hat to duke it out alongside the men.
A couple of the ushers were taking off their coats. The one with the bat stood next to his pastor, hitting it in the palm of his hand.
Mr. Louis Loomis reached for his belt and Melvin Jr. got down in a boxing position that would have intimidated Leon Spinks himself.
“That’s enough,” Ray Lyles said suddenly, disturbed by a vision of headlines about a racial assault in a white church. He knew how much blacks loved to capitalize on that kind of sensationalism.
Motioning for the ushers to back off, he approached Mr. Louis Loomis and Melvin Jr., fixing them with his preacher’s glare. “It is because of people like you,” he declared, “that the Body of Christ remains so separate.”
Mr. Louis Loomis narrowed his eyes in anger and said, “Boy, do you really know why black folks keep the Body of Christ separate? It’s because we know in our hearts that far too many of you cannot, will not, and don’t want to welcome us in your churches. Today we’ve been stared at, scolded, insulted, and treated like we were heathens simply because the good Lord saw fit to make us black. Is that what you folks call being Christian enough to unite the Body of Christ?”
Melvin Jr. said, “Don’t waste your breath on that man, Mr. Louis Loomis. Let’s get out of here.”
“You are not going anywhere until you apologize to Pastor Lyles and the members of this church,” said the usher holding the bat in his hand, as he tried to block them from leaving.
Mr. Louis Loomis didn’t even blink. He got still for a moment and then said, “I am going to ask you only once, devil, to get out of my way. And if you need any further instructions, I will take that bat right out of your hand and play ball with your head like I’m one of the St. Louis Cardinals.”
The man turned red, put the bat down to his side, and moved aside.
Melvin Jr. made a point of dramatically shaking the dust from his feet in front of the congregation and then led his folks off the stage and out of a side door. Once they were outside, he grabbed Bertha’s hand, laced his fingers through hers, and said, “Welcome home, Mrs. Vicks.”
Ray Lyles watched the door close on Bertha Green. He could barely hear the murmurs, whispers, and “Oh dears” above his own thoughts. Never in a million years would he have imagined blacks traipsing up in his domain, challenging him, and trying to make him look like a fool.
“Well, as the saying goes,” Ray thought, “he who laughs last, laughs best. And I am going to get my best last laugh if it’s the last thing I do.”
V
One month later, Phoebe sat at Bertha’s kitchen table eating breakfast and feeling thankful. She was so happy that her cousin, whom she loved like a sister, had gotten back in her right mind, had rededicated her life to the Lord, and was marrying one of the nicest men Phoebe knew.
Bertha put her hands on her round tummy. “Phoebe, you think it’s okay for me to have a big wedding being this pregnant?”
“What did Rev. Wilson say?”
“He said that I could have any kind of wedding I wanted, as long as it was in church, that I married Melvin Jr., and that I hurried up and got married before the baby came. Miss Sheba said the same thing.”
“Miss Sheba?” Phoebe asked.
“Miss Sheba was in Rev. Wilson’s office the first time I went to talk to him about the wedding.”
“You know something?” Phoebe said, raising her eyebrows. “Miss Sheba sure does spend a lot of time talking to Rev. Wilson. At first you couldn’t get her out of the club long enough to drive past church on her way home. But now that she’s saved, you can’t get her out of church or Rev. Wilson’s office.”
“I know,” Bertha said. “I bet she got a thing for him. But I don’t think that’s so bad. Rev. Wilson is single, and I ain’t never seen him with no girlfriend. And as weird as this is going to sound, he look like he something else behind closed doors. There’s some kinda smoke in his eyes and his voice and his smile when he not acting preacherly.”
Phoebe started laughing. “Girl, I thought it was just me. He does seem kinda hot underneath all that preacher stuff. And you’re right about his voice. When he’s out of that pulpit, he comes across real smooth.”
“You know what I think?” Bertha said. “I think it would be the funniest thing if Miss Sheba and the pastor got hooked up and she wound up being our First Lady.”
“You need to hush on that one, Bertha Kaye Green. Miss Sheba married to a preacher and the First Lady at our church?”
“It would be kind of fun to have Miss Sheba as the First Lady. Wouldn’t you just love to see her get Mr. Cleavon straight?”
“Yeah,” Phoebe answered. “That jive Negro is flat-out wrong—ain’t worth nothing and think he the man. But I don’t think he all that much a man. He run around but when he leave a woman, he don’t seem to leave her all that sad.”
“That’s ’cause he ain’t doing much o’ nothing to those women,” Bertha said. “Because when a man lay something on you, you can’t keep away from him, and it’ll make you act all crazy-like, especially if he leaves you. Remember when Granddaddy died?”
“Of course I do,” Phoebe answered, remembering how MamaLouise lay down on the floor next to the casket, crying and talking about, “Kill me, God. Put me out of my misery. Lord, I cain’t go on without my man.” She grinned at Bertha. “You would act more tore up than MamaLouise if, heaven forbid, something happened to Melvin Jr.”
“You sho’ talkin’ right on that one, Cuz. Because Melvin Jr. got what it takes to keep me running after him when we’re supposed to be too old to run. I could be a hundred ten and I’d still be trying to trot over to that man.”
She started trotting around the kitchen like she was an old woman chasing Melvin Jr., lifting her leg up in the air every time she pretended to catch him.
Phoebe broke out laughing, watching Bertha cut the fool, saying, “You crazy, girl. You know your pregnant self is crazy.”
Bertha chuckled and kept trotting around the kitchen, calling in a fake old-lady voice, “Come on, baby. Come on, Big Daddy.”
Phoebe shook her head. Even when they were little girls, Bertha would always do something crazy to make her laugh. Seeing her cousin act so silly and so content, Phoebe wondered why she would run off to the American Worship Center, when it was so obvious Gethsemane was where she was meant to be.
“Why did you leave us, Bertha? You said it was because you were pregnant. But you had to know that we all would have understood and prayed for you and Melvin Jr.”
Bertha stopped clowning as the impact of Phoebe’s words hit her. She got quiet and her eyes filled with tears. Picking up a paper towel, she dabbed at them and said, “Phoebe, I’ve been wondering that myself, for the longest time. I think it was because I felt so unworthy to stay at Gethsemane. I knew better, but I went over to Melvin Jr.’s home and lost my little mind. I am a woman of God. I was supposed to help set an example for Melvin Jr., not go and do everything I was grown enough to do.”
Phoebe kind of leaned back in her chair and looked at Bertha as if to say, “Just how ‘grown’ were you?”
“GROWN,” said Bertha, reading her mind.
“I see, I see,” Phoebe said, thinking that Bertha and Melvin Jr. needed to hurry up and get married. Melvin Jr. was mannish and Bertha, prissy as can be, was secretly a red-hot mama.
“So it
was like a punishment,” Bertha went on. “It’s like I had to give up something I loved to pay for what I had done.”
Phoebe studied her cousin a moment and said evenly, “Bertha, what right did you have to take matters into your own hands? I wasn’t aware that God had turned in His resignation letter. He still on the throne, I believe.”
Bertha couldn’t say anything, because Phoebe was right. She should have gotten on her knees and prayed or gone straight to Rev. Wilson. Bertha had known she was headed for trouble with Melvin Jr. the very first time he stopped one of their fights with a kiss.
“Bertha,” Phoebe said, breaking the silence. “Tell me something. When did you and Melvin Jr. ever stop fighting long enough to get grown?”
“We were fussing when it happened,” Bertha whispered, embarrassed.
Phoebe started cracking up. “You and Melvin Jr. are the only people I know who would get that mad at each other.”
“Well,” Bertha said, stroking her chin like she was a brother on the corner. “What can I say? Some folks get mad, and some folks get mad.”
Part 3
Mr. Oscar
I
Learning a new church—its history, its business, and the needs of its congregation—was a difficult task under the best of circumstances. But when a pastor was faced with the demands of an anniversary and constant conflict and opposition from a fierce opponent like Cleavon Johnson, the job could be near to impossible.
George Wilson had grown weary of Cleavon and his bulldog determination to control Gethsemane and run him out of the pulpit. About the only consolation George had was his faith that somehow, some way, the Lord was going to see him through this raging storm.
Cleavon Johnson had launched his line of attacks on George almost as soon as the man put his key in the church office door. And the assaults had been both creative and nonstop. The utilities were cut off just when George was scheduled to move in, forcing him to spend several days getting his lights, water, and heat turned back on. Then he had to scramble again when Cleavon’s Finance Board let the pastor’s health and car insurance lapse.
But petty warfare was only part of Cleavon’s game. Late one Wednesday night, after prayer meeting, Cleavon sat in his car down the block from the church nibbling on one of Pompey’s fat pig ear sandwiches and sipping on some Seagram’s. When the last light in the church went out and Rev. Wilson had gone, Cleavon wrapped up what was left of his sandwich, drained his liquor flask, and slipped inside the pastor’s office with the spare key no one knew he had.
With his flashlight propped on the desk, Cleavon quickly opened the pastor’s safe and found exactly what he was looking for. Reading the papers under the light, he grinned from ear to ear.
“Umph, umph, umph. Whoo, baby!” he said breathlessly, sucking on his teeth like he was sampling something awfully good. With the papers safely stowed in his breast pocket, he closed the safe, finished his pig ear sandwich, tossed its greasy wrapper into the trash can, and left, chuckling to himself with pure, unadulterated satisfaction.
But the next morning, all George had to do was follow the stale smell of the pig ear sandwich remains to the trash can, where he discovered some wax paper with “Pompey’s Rib Joint #Two” stamped on it. After examining the paper, George called Mr. Pompey Hawkins to ask if he had any idea who might have ordered a pig ear sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes.
“Lawd, Reverend,” Pompey Hawkins said, “the only one of my customers who mess up a pig ear sandwich with lettuce and tomato is your church member, Cleavon Johnson. And he got that sandwich last night.”
George’s first inclination was to call Cleavon and jack him up. But after thinking and praying on the matter, he called Phoebe Cates to take her up on her offer to serve as legal counsel for the church. Phoebe, who was itching for a fight with a member of the Johnson clan, immediately set out to issue Cleavon a court order for the contents of the safe.
But her grandmother MamaLouise pooh-poohed that tactic, saying, “Baby, this situation calls for a Negro law maneuver and not that fancy Perry Mason stuff. Phoebe, you have to get low-down and funky with Cleavon to get what you want from him. Because that’s about all someone on his curbstone level understands.”
Phoebe took her grandmother’s advice to heart. She retrieved the pig ear sandwich wrapper from Rev. Wilson and stapled it to a note: “If you don’t bring back whatever you took, I’m gone haul you off to court for breaking and entering, right after I crack that safe upside your big fat head.”
When Cleavon discovered that greasy note tacked on his fancy and very expensive white front door, he had what Nettie called a “hissy fit.” He snatched the note off the door and drove over to George’s office, walked in without knocking, and threw the note, along with a brown envelope, right onto George’s lap.
As interim pastor, George had never had the combination to the safe, so he had no idea what was in it. But his gut told him that if something was worth breaking into it to get, Cleavon would never return it without a fight. He opened the envelope and sifted through the contents twice, unable to shake the feeling that something was missing. He looked up at Cleavon and said, “Is this all of it?”
“And what if it isn’t, George? How would you ever know? And what could you do—get your babygirl lawyer to haul my butt to court?”
“Well, I just might, Cleavon,” George said, never taking his eyes off of him.
“Is that right?” Cleavon said, thumbing his nose like he was getting ready for a fight.
“You the man,” George answered calmly, then steered Cleavon to the door, shutting it in his face. Sighing heavily, he said, “I really need you, Lord,” and then dialed up Bert Green to get the name of a good locksmith.
II
George had his hands so full, between Cleavon and the anniversary, that it took him a while to get fully up to speed on the needs of his congregation. Fortunately, there were other dutiful stewards of the Lord in the church who kept an eye on their fellow members and stood ready to step in with prayer and help if necessary.
One of those praying stewards was MamaLouise. And MamaLouise was led to take her friend and sister in the Lord, Mozelle Thomas, under her watch-care the day that Oscar, Mozelle’s husband, retired from his job as a janitor at the Federal Building.
On his last day of work, Oscar cleaned out his locker and then went home to do what he had always done over the last forty years—pick on Mozelle. Sitting at the kitchen table with his hands folded, he watched her down on her hands and knees, cleaning out the bottom cabinets he had complained that morning were too messy. Mozelle hadn’t expected him back so soon. It had barely been three hours since she had sent him off with a hearty “congratulations” breakfast. But when Mozelle didn’t immediately stop what she was doing to attend to him, Oscar scraped his chair noisily on the floor and said nastily, “I been sitting here for six minutes now and you have yet to stop that nonsense.”
Mozelle ignored her husband for one more minute, to give herself time to rein in her temper. The last thing she wanted or needed today was a fight with Oscar because she got angry and gave him “too much lip.” She stood up and turned around to face him, bristling inside at the harsh expression she found.
“You hungry?” she managed to ask softly, hoping to soothe his irritation.
“What do you think?” he demanded, smacking his hand on the tabletop. “What do you think I been sitting here for? I could have starved to death while you were down there digging in that cabinet. You have to be the stupidest woman I have ever laid eyes on.” He shook his head and raised his hands up in complete frustration. “I don’t know why you don’t know how to take care of me after all these years—”
“But, Oscar,” Mozelle protested, “you just—”
“Shut up, Mozelle, and just forget it. I’ll go and get myself something to eat with Christmas Jefferson.”
“But Oscar . . .”
He stormed out of the house, slamming the door as hard as he could, leaving
her with tears streaming down her cheeks. Mozelle had hoped that Oscar would be so happy about retiring from a job he hated that he would finally be able to celebrate life and enjoy her company. But here he was acting like he had just been told he would have to work all of his natural-born days, plus a couple hours more after he was dead.
As the weeks went by, not only did Oscar remain mean and sullen, he decided that the best way to spend his newfound spare time was to run around St. Louis posing as a big-shot player with his friend Christmas Jefferson. But being a bona fide St. Louis player required a lot more style and flash than what Oscar had. So the first thing Oscar did, with the encouragement of Christmas, was buy a brand-new, burnt orange Cadillac with white leather interior, shiny whitewall tires, and silver belt buckles running down the back of the trunk. Oscar even had a fancy eight-track tape recorder installed, along with top-of-the-line speakers, plus a shiny fake antenna on one of the windows, so that everybody would think he had a TV in his car.
The car itself put anything ever owned by Shaft, the Mack, or Superfly to shame. But when coupled with that outstanding sound system, it qualified as a genuine, superbad “diggin’ the scene with a gangsta lean” automobile. You could hear Bobby Blue Bland moaning and snorting about two blocks before you even saw Oscar in his new car. And to make sure everyone got a good look at him in that big smooth vehicle, he took to driving real slow, leaning down so low you could barely see the colored toothpicks he sported to match his shirts.
At first Mozelle tried to ignore what behind Oscar’s back she called “his old-man shenanigans.” Even though he was making a fool of himself, she felt that maybe he did deserve some time to be silly after all those years of hard work. So for a while Mozelle acted as if nothing had changed, and she rode around with Oscar in that loud orange car, never so much as blinking when folks honked and cussed them out because he was driving slow enough to block traffic.
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