Second Sunday

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  Unfortunately, the burnt orange Cadillac was only a dark cloud heralding a breaking storm. Shortly after Oscar bought the car, he decided that he needed a new wardrobe. His good clothes—expensive and exquisitely tailored suits—just didn’t look right with his new car. He ordered Mozelle to pack up all of those “old-timey” clothes in the cedar chest. And the next day, he and Christmas Jefferson went over to Londell’s Men’s Shop and picked out some pink, red, and lemon-lime polyester three-piece suits and coordinating brightly printed silk shirts with big collars; a turquoise leisure suit; and two fur-trimmed Superfly outfits, one in purple and one in powder blue.

  Oscar inaugurated his new look on the Second Sunday in February, when everybody came to church to hear the Holy Rollers Choir. He timed his entrance carefully, waiting until the pastor and the choir were positioned at the back of the church, with the service about to begin. Poor Mozelle tried to hang back and ease into the church, but Oscar wasn’t having that. He signaled for her to take her place slightly behind him. Then he ambled slowly down the center of the aisle, feet akimbo, cane in his right hand, a toothpick as purple as his suit hanging out of the left side of his mouth and his matching suede hat, trimmed with rabbit fur, tilted forward. The sanctuary was so quiet you could hear a pin before it dropped, when it was still tumbling through the air.

  “Oscar Lee,” Mozelle whispered nervously, her voice cutting through the silence, “our pastor needs for us to move so the service can start.”

  “Shut up,” he hissed through his teeth, and then proceeded slowly to his seat.

  Rev. Wilson stood at the back of the church, trying to decide whether to see how far this fool would go or to order him to sit down. “See how far this fool would go” won out, and George let the show roll. George was glad that he did, too, because he would have kicked himself if he had stopped Mr. Oscar Thomas in his tracks and cut off the second half of this performance.

  Oscar strutted down the aisle and stopped at the pew where MamaLouise and Mr. Louis Loomis were sitting. He nodded for Mozelle to take her seat, while he stood straightening the wide lapels of his coat and correcting the angle of his hat. Then he pulled a lime green silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and, bending over, dusted off his shoes. Finally he balled up the handkerchief and tossed it in Mozelle’s lap, gave an usher the “Black Power” sign, and sat down.

  “About time,” Phoebe whispered to Bertha. “And check out those clothes.”

  “Yeah, about only thing missing on Mr. Oscar’s outfit,” Bertha offered, “is a mouthful of gold ‘teefuses.’”

  “I heard that,” Melvin Jr. said, laughing out loud and not caring who heard him. “You know something, y’all,” he said, staring at Mr. Oscar, “I never noticed it before, but Mr. Oscar looks a whole lot like a ghetto version of Sammy Davis, Jr.”

  With one exception, the whole balcony crew—Phoebe, Bertha, Melvin Jr., Jackson Williams, and Melvin’s sister, Rosie Johnson—started cracking up. Latham Johnson, Rosie’s husband and Cleavon’s nephew, sat with his arms folded across his chest, mouth all tight, wondering what was so funny about that old man in that tacky getup. He glanced over at his wife, still laughing with her brother, and scowled, thinking, “She is so ghetto.”

  George pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face. All he really needed to do was wipe his eyes, but he didn’t want his parishioners to figure out that he was laughing. He nodded at the organist and pianist to start playing, so tickled he could barely say, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”

  MamaLouise could not believe that Oscar would walk up in church like that. He had cut the fool many a day, but this was a stretch, even for him. She leaned across Mozelle and whispered, “Oscar Lee, you gone remember Whose house you in and rest your hat?”

  At first Oscar acted as if he didn’t hear Louise. But his head was hot, and he didn’t want to start perspiring, marring his own cool composure with a sweaty new suit. So he “rested” the hat on his knee, giving Mozelle cause to slip out a relieved sigh, and even to hope that Oscar had had his day and would behave during the rest of the service.

  But that hope was short-lived. At collection time, Oscar hopped up, put his hat back on, grabbed his cane, and did an old-man version of the pimp-daddy walk down the aisle to drop a wad of bills into the basket. On the way back to his seat, he kept glancing to the left and right, hoping that the high rollers in the congregation would greet his new look with a few hand slaps. But nobody played into that nonsense. And in fact, later on, when Oscar “copped” one cool pose too many at the dinner, Katie Mae’s grandmother announced, “Oscar Lee, I’m gone pray your strength, ’cause you must be mighty sick to carry on like you been doing all morning.”

  That made Oscar so mad that he huffed and puffed up, high-stepped himself over to the table where Mozelle was eating peacefully, and gave her a signal that it was time to go home. When she opened her mouth to protest, he whipped out another handkerchief—this one in lavender silk—to mop invisible sweat off his face and neck before he said, “Mozelle, when we get home, I want you to read Paul’s Scriptures about how a wife is supposed to act.”

  Mozelle was about to defend herself, but when she saw Oscar bristling and turning as purple as his suit, she decided to avoid creating a scene. Louise was so outraged that she started to scold Oscar, but Mr. Louis Loomis shook his head no. Whatever she said would just be further provocation, which Oscar would probably take out on Mozelle.

  Since no one at church had the sense enough to appreciate him or his new look, Oscar decided that he needed more sophisticated company. So, the very next morning, he called Christmas Jefferson to accept his offer to join that happening social organization for “senior and ultracool black men in St. Louis,” the Mellow Slick Cougars Club. The club had a serious reputation, because a number of its elderly male members were known throughout the North Side as supersmooth ladies’ men. And for Oscar, who had never been viewed as smooth or sexy, being invited to join this group of retired players was a dream come true.

  As soon as Mozelle found out, she called Louise, hardly able to talk for crying so hard. “Girl, Oscar Lee done gone and lost his mind, joining that old good-timing Christmas Jefferson’s Mellow Slick Cougars Club.”

  “Now, Mozelle, you know that is some country St. Louis mess,” Louise said, just shaking her head at the phone. “The Mellow Slick Cougars Club? I sure wish I could have seen the old fool who made that one up. I bet he stayed up all night until he got just the right name with the right amount of chitlin flavor in it.”

  “Louise,” Mozelle said, sniffling, but now with a chuckle in her voice, “you know your self ain’t right.”

  “Well, if it smell like chitlins, then it is chitlins—or something worse. That club ain’t about nothing, plain and simple. There’s nothing wrong with our menfolk having a place of their own. But this Cougar Club mess they done concocted don’t offer nobody nothing but a bad excuse to do wrong.

  “And Mozelle, how in the world did Oscar Lee get into that club? Even with Christmas Jefferson sponsoring him, he ain’t cool enough to be a Mellow Slick Cougar. Look at Christmas—The World newspaper is always reporting that he was seen here or there, at this dance, that club, this tavern opening, and at every thinkable celebration and sale over at Londell’s Men’s Shop. Oscar Lee ain’t never had and never will have the kind of man-about-town exposure of a playboy like Christmas Jefferson.”

  “I was kind of thinking the same thing,” Mozelle said. “Oscar’s just too dry and stiff to be a successful player. He don’t even know how to have a good time. But what I do think got him in the club was paying cash for a whole year’s dues, and that car—a lot of them liked the car, especially the color. At least, that is what I overheard Old Daddy, the founder of the club, saying when he came by the house to tell Oscar he was in. When they saw his car, they felt that he really did have enough cool and style to be a Mellow Slick Cougar.”

  “Old Daddy?” Louise s
aid. “Girl, what is his real name?”

  “I don’t think I ever heard. He been Old Daddy for as long as I’ve known him. And girl, how old is Old Daddy, anyway?”

  “Old,” Louise answered her. “Louis Loomis almost seventy-six and he said Old Daddy is a good fifteen years older than him.”

  “You lying, Louise. That man past ninety?”

  “Umm-hmm. But he show don’t look it. And Lord knows he show don’t act it, the way he keep some little fifty-year-old hanging on his arm.”

  “Girl, you saying something. ’Cause come to tell it, I ain’t never seen Old Daddy with a woman old enough to have gone through the complete change. She might be playing with it but she ain’t changed nothing yet. Just like that mean Warlene girl he rumored to be fooling around with.”

  Louise snickered. “You know, last thing I want to do is talk down in Old Daddy’s pants,” she said. “But he like Lazarus or something. ’Cause if he got them little chickies all up on him, child, something getting called back from the dead.”

  “Ooh, Louise Williams! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Well, I ain’t.”

  Mozelle was giggling so hard, she almost forgot about her troubles with Oscar.

  Louise got a bit more serious and said, “You know something, girl. We need to figure ourselves a way to get up in that club. I want to see with my own eyes what is so mel-low about the Mellow Slick Cougars Club.”

  “You and me both. But you know that is the last place Oscar Lee Thomas would ever want me to be.”

  “Well, that is just too bad. ’Cause we gone get into that club, and Oscar Lee Thomas won’t be able to do a thing about it.”

  III

  Soon after joining the Mellow Slick Cougars Club, Oscar started acting like Mozelle was to blame for every unhappiness he ever suffered in his life. Just to be mean, he refused to take her anywhere—not to church, not to the grocery store, not to the doctor, and definitely not to visit her friends. The one time Mozelle, who couldn’t drive, confronted him, he picked up his car keys, dangled them up under her nose, and said, “If you think I’m your chauffeur, you thinking like Caesar. And everybody know what happened to him.”

  So Louise, fed up and thoroughly disgusted with Oscar, started driving Mozelle wherever she needed to go. For as she told her friend, “Girl, there ain’t no way I’m leaving you at home buried in all of Oscar Lee’s garbage.”

  Louise’s intervention came right on time, too, for it got Mozelle to church one Sunday when Rev. Wilson happened to preach the very sermon she needed to hear.

  The morning’s service was hot from the start that morning, with the Holy Rollers and Sister Hershey Jones performing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Hershey’s singing had folks up and running around that sanctuary with such fervor that Mr. Louis Loomis whispered to MamaLouise, “Lawd, these people acting like they at the Twelve Tribes of Israel Holiness Church down the street.”

  Louise nodded. The Twelve Tribes didn’t play. Sometimes they came out the church doors still shouting after service was over, and this morning, Gethsemane was in the same mood. Bertha got the Holy Ghost, fell out, and almost gave poor Melvin Jr. a heart attack. When she came to, he helped her up off the floor, just fussing. “Baby, next time you go in your prayer closet, you need to consult the Lord about the effect of falling out like that on the baby.”

  The singing and shouting comforted and strengthened Mozelle, filling her with the kind of peace that can be an anchor in a raging storm. And then George began to speak. “Church,” he said, “we need to grow in the Lord, to expand in our stewardship and ministries, especially in the neighborhood we have been called upon to serve. But before we can do all of that, we must get right with God. And y’all know that Gethsemane has some serious work to do in that area.”

  Where there had been plenty of noise and shouting just minutes before, silence fell, as the congregation tried to digest those words. Clearly Rev. Wilson had struck a nerve, highlighting the political dissension in the church. But the rancor he was talking about also described Mozelle’s marriage, Louise thought.

  “Now, Gethsemane,” George was saying, “there’s not a person sitting in here who doesn’t have a sense of what can happen if the core and foundation of something isn’t rock solid. And for a church to embark upon any venture without first being filled with the Holy Ghost and seeking direction from the Lord, both as individuals and as a Christian body, is crazy. You do something like that, you might as well stand up and then go and deliberately fall flat on your own face.

  “So, before this church goes anywhere under my leadership, we gone do some good old-fashioned, country spring-cleaning up in here. And y’all know exactly what I’m talkin’ ’bout, too. It’s the kind of cleaning your grandmothers made you do. Taking rugs outside to be beat and purified in the sunshine. Cleaning down in every nook and cranny, getting rid of clutter and junk and anything else you don’t need. You have to do that first, before you can put your house in order.

  “What we need, Gethsemane, is a rejuvenation of the very soul of this church. We all, myself included, got to get rededicated to the Lord.”

  As Louise listened, she kept envisioning Mozelle doing a spring-cleaning of her marriage and her life. Sometimes trials came to you not to make life bad but to get you moving to the next level. After the service, as she pulled the car out of the parking space that her two sons-in-law, Bert and Wendell, always made sure was waiting for her on Sunday morning, Louise formed her mouth to speak the words that had come into her heart.

  “Mozelle, we’ve been friends since the fifth grade down in Falcon, Mississippi, when we beat up that bully Eugene Willie White for taking your biscuit, fried fatback, and molasses sandwich.”

  Mozelle smiled. How could she forget that fight with Eugene Willie White? He knew she loved fried fatback on a biscuit with molasses all over it, and he went and took it anyway. She and Louise had to “tear that boy up.”

  “That’s a long time for girls our age,” Louise was saying. “But lately, you been getting on my nerves, acting like you actin’ over Oscar Lee.”

  At first Mozelle was kind of hurt, then she got mad. “Fine friend you are, Louise Williams,” she said, “to talk ’bout how I’m acting. You had a good marriage with Joseph, and now that he’s gone, you done found yourself another good man. So what do you know about the kind of sorrow, loneliness, and heartache that cause me to act the way I do?”

  Louise almost stopped driving the car right in the middle of Kingshighway Boulevard. She was shocked to learn that Mozelle knew she had a man. She had been so smooth that not even her nosy daughters, Nettie and Viola, or those two busy granddaughters of hers had gotten wind of it. Lord knows her youngest grandbaby, Bertha Kaye, was always trying to get all up in her business, as if her “Miss-I’m-Gone-Get-Me-a-Baby” self didn’t have her hands full.

  Mozelle seemed to read her thoughts. She said, “How they gone peep you out, Louise, when they ain’t never really seen more than a passing glimpse of that side of you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You wondering how I know about you and Louis Loomis, when your own children don’t have a clue—think you walking around all by your lonesome with nothing but a Bible and a prayer to ease your troubled mind. But girl, this me—Mozelle. I know how you act when you smellin’ yourself over a man. Remember, I used to help you sneak out the house to be all up on Joseph and kissing him, when we were young.”

  Louise blushed. She had only recently started dating Louis Loomis. She’d felt kind of bad about not telling Mozelle but thought it best to wait until some of this turmoil with Oscar had blown over.

  “I know,” Mozelle went on matter-of-factly, “because you actin’ frisky, ’cause you called him ‘Louis’—something nobody at our church has done since his wife died—and ’cause he looks at you like he a biscuit and you some gravy he want to sop up.”

  Louise was glad they had reached a stoplight, because she was laughing too hard to driv
e. Mozelle was always funny. Folks just rarely saw it, especially when Oscar was around. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor and didn’t seem to appreciate it in her, either. The look on Mozelle’s face warmed her heart, because she had what Louise called her “Little Imp” expression.

  “Well, I see you on your way back to the land of the living, because you got some mischief bubbling up in you. So I guess now is as good a time as any to ask you—what’s up with that husband of yours?”

  “Oscar having an affair with some young woman named Queenie Tyler, who he met over at the club.”

  “No!” Louise said. “He know his old rusty, Cornhusker behind need to quit. Just how young is this little heifer, anyway?”

  “That heifer ain’t hardly ‘little’ from what I’ve heard. And she’s about forty or so, somewhere close to our oldest daughter Dee Dee’s age.”

  Louise was just plain disgusted with Oscar Lee, having the nerve to be laying up with a woman who probably went to high school with Dee Dee. She said, “Oscar Lee know he wrong as two left shoes.”

  “I know,” Mozelle said miserably.

  Louise pulled into a parking space in front of Mozelle’s house, relieved that the burnt orange Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. They walked into the house and dropped their purses on the couch, then Louise headed straight for the kitchen while Mozelle went to change her clothes. After a good look around to make absolutely sure Oscar wasn’t there, Louise sat down at the table until Mozelle came back, looking comfortable in a soft pink cotton duster. She opened the refrigerator and took out a colander full of chicken waiting to be fried and started making up the batter and seasoning. She put water on to heat for her pole beans, then stuck the macaroni and cheese she had mixed up last night into the oven to bake.

  Louise got up and poured herself some of Mozelle’s special “dress-up tea,” made with top-secret ingredients. Nobody knew what Mozelle put in that tea, but it show did taste good.