“Kids coming over for dinner today?” Louise asked.
“No. Told them I wanted some quiet time. I’m not ready to let them know things not right with me and they daddy.”
She sat down across the table from Louise, and started to cry. “Louise, what have I done that is so wrong, to deserve this from Oscar Lee? I don’t know what to do.”
“Only thing you done wrong is fail to see that the problem doesn’t lie with you. It’s Oscar and it always has been Oscar. I’ve tried to tell you this for years, but every time I opened my mouth, you shushed me, ’cause you didn’t want to hear a bad word about him. So, I guess the way he’s running around now and showing his little narrow behind is a blessing in disguise.”
“A blessing?” Mozelle said.
“Yes,” Louise answered firmly, “a blessing. Sometimes storms are just making ways out of no-ways, clearing out what you don’t need to make room for your true blessings to come pouring into your life. Quit resisting this storm, Mozelle. You trying to fight this battle all by yourself, but the Father is standing right here, ready and willing to help you. You just got to have the faith and courage to let the Lord do His job. Don’t you think that the One who made the heavens and the earth and all the firmament knows what to do with a little banty-rooster like Oscar Lee Thomas? Our Father works in mysterious ways. No telling what wonders of mysteries He wants to work out in your life, if you will only let Him.
“And Mozelle, I just know the Lord leading me to help you. He always did like to enlist the help of his children, because He knows that we learn from helping others and doing His will.”
All of a sudden Mozelle started laughing. If ever the Lord had a servant able and willing to get involved when somebody did somebody else wrong, it was Louise Williams. She said, “Louise, it’s a good thing you wasn’t around back in the Bible days. ’Cause you would have knocked that angel down, trying to get to Mary to tell her that she was about to miss her monthly cycle.”
Louise tried to act like she didn’t know what Mozelle was talking about. But after a moment, she had to laugh. Mozelle was right. If she were back in the Bible days, she would have run herself ragged.
“Well,” Louise said, “if you up to working with a servant of the Lord, I’m up to getting you straight.”
IV
The first thing Louise did was make an appointment for Mozelle at her hairdresser, instructing her to give Mozelle a snappy new cut, along with a rinse to make the silver in her hair shine and shimmer when she moved her head. She had Mozelle get her nails done and then took her to Essie Lee Clothiers, located on Delmar Avenue, right on the border of a suburb of St. Louis called University City. “Now,” Louise said, “we gone get you some smooth Foxy Brown–looking clothes. If Oscar can walk around trying to look like the Mack, you sure as heck can walk around looking like Pam Grier.”
As soon as they entered Essie Lee Clothiers, Mozelle’s face lit up. It was the nicest and most welcoming store she had ever seen. When you stepped through the door, your feet sunk into a plush, pale purple carpet. The walls were painted a soft lavender, and the large picture window at the front of the store was framed with beautiful gray silk draperies and matching gray velvet cushions in the large window seat. Two purple suede sofas stood in the waiting area, surrounding a coffee table with a vase holding cream-colored roses. There were also beautiful lush plants in large clay pots hand-painted in silver, purple, and black in the corners of the waiting area and throughout the main section of the store.
And the music—a patron would never hurry with her shopping because the music was bad. This store was always filled with sounds that tickled the ears of its customers, music they would never hear in any other store: Evangelist Elroy Thorn and the Gospel Songbirds, the Canton Spirituals out of Mississippi, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Dells and Delfonics, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell, the Temptations, Supremes, Four Tops and Impressions, Curtis Mayfield, Freda Payne, Ann Peebles, the “clean-up woman” Betty Wright, Big Johnnie Mae Carter and the Revue, Shirley Caesar, Aretha Franklin, and so many more.
But more than anything, it was the merchandise that distinguished Essie Lee Clothiers from all others. Everything—clothes, lingerie, hats, and accessories—was unique. Essie Simmons, an accomplished seamstress, designed many of the outfits herself, and she was building an impressive entourage of black designers who contributed other incredible clothes and hats to her inventory. She traveled all over the country, the Caribbean, and parts of West Africa, looking for items to stock her store.
The store manager, Precious Powers, came running over to them, grinning. “Miss Louise,” she said, giving Mama Louise a hug. “Is this my patient?”
Mozelle was about to indignantly say “Patient?” when Precious raised up a hand and stopped her before she got started.
“Miss Mozelle, this me, Precious.”
Mozelle raised an eyebrow at Precious as if to say, “And?”
“Mozelle,” Louise said, “Precious is that girl I told you ’bout who can really fix a woman up good when she need to get her man straight.”
“Yeah, Miss Mozelle,” Precious said. “Ever since I worked that miracle on my play sister, Saphronia James, women been coming to me for help.”
“Saphronia James?” Mozelle asked. The name sounded familiar to her but she couldn’t put a face with it.
“You know who she is, Mozelle,” Louise reminded her. “She’s Mother Laticia Harold’s grandbaby. She used to be Saphronia McComb before she married Bishop Murcheson James’s nephew, Rev. Lakewood James. He that boy who pastors Mount Moriah Gospel United Church, in Atlanta. Big church, with almost two thousand members.”
“They have over two thousand members now, Miss Louise,” Precious told them. “Lakewood is a good preacher and a wonderful man. But like I always tell Saphronia, better her than me with a preacher. Last thing I need is a case of preacheritis.”
“I guess you wouldn’t have preacheritis,” Essie Simmons hollered out from her office, “with that husband of yours, Tyrone.”
“You need to quit, with your little red self,” Precious hollered back at her boss and friend. “You got preacheritis worse than anybody I know.”
“Oh really?” Essie said, walking up behind Precious with a swatch of beautiful peach Ghanaian fabric in her hand. She was looking good in one of her own designs—yellow silk hip-hugger pants with large bell-bottoms, a snug-fitting white stretch lace body shirt with ruffled cuffs on the long sleeves, cream-colored wedge shoes with daisies stamped on the edges of platform soles, and a yellow silk ribbon tied around her reddish-brown Afro.
“Hey, Miss Louise,” Essie said, embracing her. Then she turned to Miss Mozelle. “This your first time in my store, huh?”
“Sure is. And so far, I like everything I see.”
“Well, you just wait till I get through with you,” Precious said. “You gone look like a queen, Miss Mozelle.”
Louise loved Essie’s outfit. She always did think that Rev. Theophilus Simmons’s wife was a pretty little country girl, with a lot of sass and style. And how Essie kept that figure after dropping three babies for that big chocolate man was a question on the minds of plenty of St. Louis churchwomen. She asked, “How’s the Reverend, Essie?”
“Doing pretty good. The denomination keep him running a lot. Some folks want him to run for bishop at the next Triennial Conference, but he’s holding out. Don’t know how long that’ll last, though.”
“Well,” Louise said, “we’ll just have to keep him lifted in prayer. And you, Precious. How is your hubby?”
“Doing fine. He just a big ole sweetie pie,” Precious said, grinning at just the thought of her bighearted, easygoing husband.
“He more than that,” Essie stated matter-of-factly. “He is what I call a good black man who loves himself some Precious Powers. Miss Louise and Miss Mozelle, look at that girl’s hand.”
At first, Precious was bashful and hid her hand behind her back. But Essie tugged gently at her lef
t arm and she put it out there for them to see. The ring was stunning, a one-carat diamond surrounded by eight sapphires, set in white gold.
Mozelle whistled and said, “Babygirl, that’s what you call a rang. Your hubby want to make sure that all of these Negroes drooling over that rumpa-seat you got hanging off the back of you know they ain’t got a chance.”
“Yeah,” Louise added. “I bet Tyrone sneaks and pees in y’all’s front yard every morning before he heads out to work.”
“What?” Precious and Essie said. They had heard some country stuff in their day, but this was a new one.
“You younguns,” Mozelle said, shaking her head.
“It means that the boy marking off his territory. Haven’t you ever seen how a boy dog will pee in his territory to run off all the other boy dogs?” Louise explained. “See, when another boy dog who got an inkling to come around his territory smell that pee, it stops him dead in his tracks. Lets him know that if he goes any further, he gone get his butt tore up.”
“Sounds like you are talking ’bout both of our husbands with that one,” Essie said.
“Umm-hmm,” Precious agreed. “Because I know the Reverend probably cover every inch of your yard, every single morning.”
Essie laughed. “You ain’t right, Mrs. Powers. You know you ain’t right.”
“Now,” Louise said, upon hearing Essie’s reference to Precious’s married name. “Miss Lady, I been wondering for some time how you found a man with the same last name as yours.”
“I don’t know, Miss Louise. I just did. But it makes life awfully convenient, don’t it?” Precious answered. Then, smiling, she swooped up the pile of clothes she had picked out that morning after Louise called to say they were coming and started walking the two of them back to a large dressing room. In it was a lavender brocade love seat and a table for refreshments. Essie and Precious kept the store stocked with good things to eat—cakes, pies, and cookies, tiny finger sandwiches, chips, fruit-and-vegetable trays, juice, soda, tea, and coffee.
Precious arranged the clothes she had selected for Mozelle in color-coordinated piles. When she was satisfied, she went to get her customers some coffee and dessert. While she was gone, Louise held up a few outfits for Mozelle to begin trying on, each one pretty and perfect for her friend.
But all Mozelle could say, in the midst of all of those scrumptious clothes, was “Louise, I don’t think these are the kind of outfits that Oscar would necessarily like or approve of.”
Louise dropped the dress she was holding right on the floor and directed her eyes down to Mozelle’s black old-lady oxford shoes. “Mozelle,” she fussed, “do you honestly think his other woman, Queenie Tyler, wears the type of clothes that Oscar likes and approves of for YOU?”
Precious came back with a silver tray on which sat cups of coffee and slices of sweet potato pie with homemade whipped cream on top.
“Lord knows you right on that account, Miss Louise,” she said. “I know Queenie Tyler. And Miss Mozelle, honey, if your man with Queenie Tyler, you need to pick from every pile of clothing I brought into this room.”
Mozelle silently began trying on the clothes. She wound up getting every outfit Precious and Louise said looked good on her.
Once Mozelle’s makeover was done to Louise’s satisfaction, she enlisted Mr. Louis Loomis’s help to teach Mozelle how to drive. Mozelle had a perfectly good Chevy sitting in the driveway, which Oscar no longer drove because he insisted it was for “old folks.” Being able to drive would give Mozelle a lot more power and leverage. When Oscar got mad at her, which he was inevitably going to do, he couldn’t punish her by refusing to take her anywhere. Plus, Louise reasoned, if Mozelle could get around without Oscar, he wouldn’t know all of her business.
But Louise still wasn’t through. She was hot and on a roll. Her next job as the “servant of the Lord” was to instruct Mozelle not to always be home waiting on Oscar after he had been out in the streets with Queenie Tyler. She also told her to quit cooking him big, extravagant meals every night.
Mozelle could really cook, and there were few places, other than Pompey’s Rib Joint #Two, you could get food that tasted as good as hers. She always had a full meal going—pinto beans and ham hocks, fresh turnip greens, homemade pickled beets, salad with fresh garden tomatoes and green onions, corn bread, and caramel cake, to describe just one of her weeknight dinners. Folks would pull up to the curb in front of Mozelle’s house and get hungry before they’d turned off the car engine.
But after too many nights of eating big meals alone and then giving the rest to neighbors so they wouldn’t go to waste, Mozelle finally took Louise’s advice. When she first started cooking lighter meals (all from scratch, of course), Oscar complained so, he like to have worried the perm out of her hair. His complaining got so bad that Mozelle almost broke down and went back on her promise to Louise. Then she was granted two blessings in disguise in a single night.
The first blessing came the night Oscar sat down to a delicious meal of homemade vegetable beef soup, rolls, tossed salad, and lemon cake with lemon jelly spread between each of the three layers. As soon as he took the first bite, he frowned and said, “Ahh, Mozelle, this here food cold. And this soup taste like horse pee.”
At first Mozelle got teary. How could she have possibly cooked food that tasted that nasty? But those tears dried up in record time, when the Lord blessed her with the impetus to look at Oscar’s bread. It was so hot, the butter was running down the sides of it and onto the plate. And if the food wasn’t cold, it show didn’t taste nasty, either.
Then that second blessing rolled right in behind the first. Queenie had taken to calling the house at a certain time each evening. If Mozelle answered the phone, she would hang up, wait five minutes, call back, and let the phone ring twice. When that happened, Oscar would stop whatever he was doing, hop up and run and shower, get dressed in one of his Superfly suits, and put on his most expensive cologne.
That night, when the phone rang, Mozelle looked up at the clock on the wall and then over at Oscar, who sat fidgeting in his seat, expecting her to answer it. Even though Oscar knew good and well that it was Queenie, he was so used to having Mozelle wait on him that he didn’t even bother to interrupt his meal to intercept a call from his girlfriend. But the Lord had given Mozelle perfect peace to ignore that ringing phone, fix her plate, sit back down, and eat her dinner.
Grumbling about her laziness, Oscar threw his napkin down on the floor and went to answer the phone himself. After a brief exchange, he ran and got ready to go out, continuing to fuss about Mozelle until he left the house. As Mozelle stood on their front porch and watched him drive off, what Louise said about letting the Lord fight her battles came into her mind.
“Father,” she prayed, “my heart is so full of pain, there are times when I can hardly take it. These tears been roaring through me like a raging flood for years and years and years and years. I’m tired, God, tired down to the bone. I’m tired of my husband being so mean to me. I’m tired of no man seeing me for just who I am and what I have to give. It hurts. And I don’t want this pain, this man’s trashy behavior, that woman calling my house, or anything close to it in my life anymore.
“Lord, You rolled back the Red Sea to let the Children of Israel cross and then sent the waters rushing in to drown their enemies. So, if You did all of that, surely You can help me with my problem and deal with one little black man. My troubles, my burdens, they are in Your hands, and I am trusting You to deliver me. In Jesus’ name I pray, Lord. Amen.”
It took about a week for the answer to that prayer to arrive on Mozelle’s doorstep. Only then would she realize that the Lord had been delivering all along.
First, thanks to the work of His servant Louise, Mozelle was looking good—the makeup, the new hairstyle, and the new clothes showed off how cute she was, with that cute little figure and round butt still sitting up high like she was thirty-five. Even the pastor noticed it. One day after service, he stopped her and sai
d, “Miss Mozelle, I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you. But I do know this—the Lord been working on you. You been walking up in this church turning many a deacon’s head lately. Ain’t nothing like a makeover from God.”
Mozelle didn’t know what to say to Rev. Wilson. She knew she was looking better than she had in a decade. But at that point she couldn’t see it as the Lord’s work on her behalf, because she was going through one of the most difficult periods of her life.
The change in Mozelle wasn’t lost on Oscar, either. Not only did she look different, he was finding it increasingly difficult to waltz up in their house and rule over her. It upset him that Mozelle didn’t seem fazed by all of his cutting up—that God was helping her resist breaking down under his tyranny. And each time Oscar threw a fit on Mozelle, she shed one less tear over him.
Oscar’s friend Christmas Jefferson also started noticing how good Mozelle was looking lately. He’d always known of her fine character, but now he could see that she was a fine-looking woman too. Nothing like that combination, Christmas always said: a beautiful woman who was good stock. And since his friend Oscar was getting more action than the law allowed from Queenie Tyler, Christmas thought it might be worth hanging around Mozelle a bit more. Maybe she was lonesome and needed the comfort of a real man.
But Mozelle was sad, not crazy. She could see straight through Christmas Jefferson. He was a player down to the bone and would be one until the day he died. She told Louise over the phone, “Girl, why in the world would I want to trade in a mean old tight-butt for a trifling old buzzard? Louise, it’s all I can do to hold on to my religion when Christmas around and not cuss him clean out. And as a matter of fact, next time he come creepin’ ’round here, he gone get his self told.”
Louise wasn’t surprised by Christmas Jefferson’s foolishness. But she told Mozelle, “I don’t think you need to cuss Christmas out right now. Instead, next time he get all up in your face, ask him to take you to the Mellow Slick Cougars Club.”
Second Sunday Page 14