Second Sunday

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  George walked over to Sheba, grabbed her wrist, and snatched her up into his embrace. When she tried to pull away, he held on, saying, “If you made just for me, you better keep still, girl, so I can see how well you fit into my arms.”

  “Stop holding on me like that, boy.”

  “Okay,” he answered. “I won’t hold you like that ’cause here’s how I really want to hold you.” George grabbed the back of Sheba’s head with one hand, tightened his grip on her waist with the other, and kissed her deeply and passionately.

  “Was that stupid and stubborn enough for you, baby?” he whispered, while planting soft hot kisses on her nose and forehead, then at the nape of her neck. “Mmmmm. You show is right, ’cause God definitely had me in mind when he made your sweet, fine self.”

  Sheba was having trouble reconciling his words with the fact that her children might be awake and stirring. Nothing like being soft-eyed and mushy over a man to make your kids feel the need to wake up and check things out.

  “They are sound asleep,” George whispered, mischief lighting up his eyes.

  “How you know?” Sheba asked.

  “Been keeping an eye out since I’ve been here.”

  “Oh?” she said, lowering her eyes.

  “You see,” George said, “I’m practicing keeping an eye out for the Brady Bunch when I want to get busy with they little grown mama.”

  “Is that so?” Sheba said, feeling a little bolder.

  “Yeah, baby,” he murmured through another kiss, then ran his hands up and down the length of her back.

  “Uhh, George, we . . .”

  “For a lifetime, Sheba.”

  “Huh?”

  George laughed. He was loving this. Even if he was asking the girl to be his wife, he was still controlling it. It was hard enough to ask.

  “You gone marry me, little sweet, saved grown girl?”

  Sheba was in shock. She had been praying for this very thing for months on end, wearing God’s ears out with her tearful pleas to bring her husband into her life. But this prayer had been answered so unexpectedly, she didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Baby, when God sends you a blessing, you better seize it. Or is it that you haven’t had it hard enough,” he teased.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Sheba said, trying to act bad with that big man all over her.

  “Oh, yes I do,” he whispered. “You call Precious Powers and Essie Simmons and get your wedding stuff fixed up. And do it fast. I’m not a patient man, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep my hands off you.

  “Now, I’m going home,” George announced, as he kissed Sheba’s hand and left before he forgot that he was a preacher and that the woman he loved was saved and doing her best to be a dedicated woman of God.

  Part 6

  God Ain’t Playin’ with You People

  I

  Ray Lyles paced around his office, biting his bottom lip to contain the expletives that were threatening to spew forth from his mouth. He had made a promise to himself to never curse in public, but the two men seated before him were making that promise near to impossible to keep. This had not been a good meeting for Ray. In fact, the meeting had not gone well for any of the men present—Ray Lyles, Rev. Earl Hamilton, or Cleavon Johnson.

  As the meeting had progressed from bad to worse, Cleavon felt less confident with each passing minute that Ray Lyles could be trusted to follow through with his plan. It was 1976, the country’s Bicentennial for liberation from tyranny and oppression, and white men still hated taking directions from a Brother. And especially guys like Ray Lyles, the ones with a foot in the door of a house in an all-white and very expensive suburb, while the other foot was dragging off the metal steps of a trailer.

  He should have pulled the plug on this thing when Lyles tried to weasel out of the original plan to put Earl Hamilton in Gethsemane’s pulpit and instead bully his own assistant pastor at the American Worship Center into that spot. When Ray first put that trash on the table, Cleavon looked at him like he was crazy and said, “This is a Missionary Baptist Church, which means it’s black—all black. That Opie Taylor assistant pastor of yours wouldn’t even be able to sneak in through a side window, let alone walk in through the front door, talking some junk about being the pastor of my church. I don’t know why you white people have such a problem understanding that black folks like their pastor just like their coffee—hot and some shade of black.”

  Cleavon studied Earl Hamilton for a moment. He wasn’t so sure about that tight-acting, tight-lipped-talking fool, either. Every time Cleavon saw Hamilton, he kept seeing a bigger and bigger “Bought and Sold for Massa” sign on him. And to make matters worse, Hamilton, who supposedly knew better, didn’t so much as open his mouth to yawn when Ray Lyles had the audacity to say that they would change the church’s name from Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church to the American Worship Center Auxiliary Congregation. “What Negro in his right mind,” Cleavon thought, “would even want to pastor a no-denomination church like that?”

  Cleavon watched Lyles pacing behind his desk and thought that this Dragnet-looking, plaid-polyester, light-blue-patent-leather-shoes-wearing, no-preaching white man was bad news. He was beginning to regret that he had ever struck up a deal with him. It had seemed like a good idea after Pastor Forbes’s death, when Cleavon had intercepted Lyles’s notice of intent to repossess the church’s land, effective June 1, 1976, just twelve days before the anniversary. He had told himself back then that he was doing it to help the church—to prevent its demolition and buy time to find the heir who was supposed to give Gethsemane the land, according to that letter in the safe. To get Lyles to play ball, Cleavon claimed to have the actual deed, confident that it would really be in his possession when push finally came to shove. But however the game played out—whether Lyles thought he was getting a satellite American Worship Center, with Cleavon’s man in the pulpit, or whether Cleavon saved the day by producing that heir, who would run Lyles off—Cleavon would hold the winning hand.

  Except now, his trump card—the letter in the safe on which his whole scheme rested—was lost.

  “How could you be so stupid as to let that deed slip right through your fingers? I—” Ray Lyles blew air out of his mouth, trying to calm down. Blacks! Why had he ever thought he could work with these people? According to his lawyers, his wife’s document granting Gethsemane the use of the land for a hundred years could be executed as long as the land hadn’t been deeded to someone else. So having that deed floating around was not good—not good at all.

  But Lyles was determined to get what was rightfully his, both that land and control over the church that would be his first foothold in North St. Louis. And if he had to stomach the likes of Cleavon Johnson and that weak-kneed patsy Earl Hamilton to get what he wanted, then so be it.

  Ray bore his eyes into Earl Hamilton, who flinched. He couldn’t understand why Hamilton couldn’t control Cleavon Johnson. The man was a black preacher, and anybody with half a brainful of information knew that black preachers had a lot of clout and power. What Earl stood to gain from this deal should have made him doubly conniving and forceful in getting total control of this situation at Gethsemane.

  Ray never doubted that the way to any man’s heart was through his wallet. So unbeknownst to Cleavon, once Earl took charge of Gethsemane, he would get a hefty off-the-record check for working with Ray each and every month. After Ray bulldozed that old church into the ground and built a new, modern satellite American Worship Center, he would allow Hamilton to serve as its pastor for as long as he followed orders from the central office. And the very first order he was giving Earl was to eliminate all that shouting, dancing, and just plain out-of-control black frenzied craziness from the Sunday service. Sometimes Ray secretly hoped that heaven was segregated, because he knew he couldn’t stand listening to all that noise and “mumbo jumbo” throughout eternity. And he certainly wasn’t going to stand for it in a branch of his own church.

  “Earl, do
you have any idea where that deed is?”

  Earl had been watching the other two men in quiet desperation. Neither Ray nor Cleavon knew that his current church was working feverishly to get rid of him. So if this plan fell through, Earl Hamilton was going to be out of a job. He shifted his eyes to Cleavon, who was digging dirt from under his nails with a pearl-handled pocketknife, wondering why the man couldn’t put his hands on that deed.

  Cleavon looked up from cleaning his nails and said, “What? Y’all staring holes in me like I lost the deed on purpose. Ain’t my fault that doggone thing disappeared.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Ray spat out, “is how you could entrust something that important to some old black janitor.”

  Cleavon sat up straight and glared at Ray Lyles. “For your information, Ray,” he said evenly, watching Lyles turn red because he called him by his first name, “Mr. Oscar Thomas was a respected member of Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church. He didn’t like where the church was going, and he was one of the people in my camp working to turn things around.”

  Ray Lyles wanted to punch Cleavon Johnson. He could tell that Cleavon didn’t believe that nonsense he was handing him.

  “Respected member or not,” Ray said in a hard voice that made Cleavon think of a slave driver, “he was just an ignorant Negro janitor who probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word deed.”

  Earl looked at Lyles, wondering if he had the good sense to remember that he was alone in a room with two black men. He hoped the man stayed out in St. Charles when he finally took over the church. Because if Ray Lyles waltzed up in Gethsemane talking that talk, one of those “ignorant Negro janitors” was going to whip his tail and then lead the charge to run Earl out.

  Cleavon stood up and leaned on Ray Lyles’s desk, staring him down. “You may have money and connections and be white,” he said, “but if you ain’t itching to take this up outside, I’d recommend that you think twice about talking trash about my people in front of me.”

  Ray Lyles squared off his shoulders, trying not to flinch under Cleavon’s street-hard gaze. He reached for the green security button under his desk and was about to push it when the intercom beeped.

  “Ray dear,” his wife Betsy’s voice rang out. “Are you still in that meeting?”

  “Yes, darling,” Ray answered. “What are you up to?”

  “Honey, I was just about to do a new song,” she answered brightly. In the background the pianist was playing what Cleavon thought was a very familiar-sounding tune, only the beat was kind of stiff and off.

  Betsy Lyles coughed, cleared her throat, and started in on the song that Sister Hershey Jones sang at Miss Mozelle Thomas and Mr. Joseaphus Cantrell’s wedding. Her voice was real high, thin-sounding, and somewhat off-key, in contrast to Sister Hershey’s rich and beautiful mezzosoprano voice. Cleavon happened to glance over at Earl Hamilton and noticed that he was wiping sweat off his brow and grimacing in pain. Cleavon was forced to close his eyes and massage his forehead when she hit a high note that almost made him cry out, “Help me, Jesus.”

  While Earl and Cleavon were suffering, Ray Lyles was sitting back in his chair with his eyes closed, listening to his wife like Cleavon listened to Gladys Knight. When the song finally ended, he said, “Betsy, darling, that was absolutely beautiful.”

  “I am so delighted that you liked it, Ray.”

  “Loved it,” he answered with a big smile on his face, momentarily forgetting the two black men sitting in his office.

  Cleavon stared at the intercom, wondering how in the world a Beaver Cleaver white woman like Mrs. Lyles got her hands on that song. It was on the only gospel album ever recorded by the blues singer Big Johnnie Mae. No one but a real blues lover would even know about Big Johnnie Mae, and then would have to find a record store in the black community to get the album.

  Once the intercom was off, Ray Lyles went from smiling to scowling in a matter of seconds. “Now about that deed,” he continued.

  Cleavon sat there thinking up a kiss-my-black-behind, boldface lie. The truth was, he had given the letter to Mr. Oscar so Katie Mae wouldn’t find it when she went snooping through his things looking for evidence of other women. And the deed, of course, might well not even exist.

  Luckily, a plausible explanation popped into Cleavon’s head. He looked at Ray Lyles, stroked his chin, and said, “Well, I thought it best to keep the deed out of my hands because I wanted to avoid facing a court order demanding that I turn over any church documents in my possession to the pastor. I didn’t want to give it to the current pastor. And I didn’t want the Deacon Board to know about it, either.”

  Ray studied Cleavon’s face a moment and then said, “That was a smart move, Cleavon. But that doesn’t make me worry any less that the deed may fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Raaay,” Cleavon answered, drawing it out, again enjoying how Lyles’s face flushed at the sound of his name in a lowly Negro’s mouth, “the possessors of the wrong hands at my church also possess very big mouths. They would never be able to sit tight and keep quiet this long if they had that deed. We’re black, Ray. Don’t you know how black people can’t keep secrets?”

  Ray Lyles gave what Cleavon and Earl Hamilton called his “white man laugh”—a hearty chuckle lodged in the back of the throat, with very little emotion—followed by a crisp, “You’re a riot, buddy,” to drive the point of the laugh home. “Well, buddy. I’ll bet you’re right. And if the deceased man’s widow does find it, I doubt that she’ll have any idea what to do with it. Maybe when Earl gets in here he can smoke it out with a little pastoral counseling, eh, Earl?”

  Cleavon fought to keep his temper in check. He was sick of sitting up here trying to look like a “safe Negro” with Lyles. As far as Cleavon was concerned, Gethsemane was his church, and it would remain his church after any pastor they hired was long gone. Up until today, he hadn’t possessed any qualms about doing a shuffle dance with the devil to regain what he considered his right to control his church. Cleavon Johnson was not a man with a secret desire to be a preacher. Instead, he was a layman run amok—one who was determined that no preacher ever gained full control over what he believed belonged to him and his family.

  Earl responded to Lyles’s suggestion with a weak laugh, knowing full well that Cleavon was trying to play them both for fools. And as for Ray Lyles, if getting this church wasn’t so important to him, he would have gone over to that hyena-laughing white boy and beat him like a slave. Ray Lyles didn’t have a clue about black church people. They were not about to let a white boy come up in their church thinking he was going to run it. They would burn it to the ground first.

  “Prayer Changes Things,” the motto for Gethsemane’s Prayer Troopers Intercessory Prayer Group, kept nagging at Miss Mozelle, causing her to toss and turn so in her sleep that Joseaphus shook her hard to wake her up, so he could get some rest himself.

  “Mozie, what did you eat before you went to bed?”

  “Nothing.”

  Joseaphus eyed her suspiciously, saying, “You sure about that?” Mozelle loved to sneak and eat hand-packed chocolate Velvet Freeze ice cream late in the evening, when she knew that it would give her indigestion, crazy dreams, and a restless night.

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “About chocolate, maybe yes.” Joseaphus sat up in bed. “But if you ain’t, why you tossing and turning so, Mozie?”

  “I’m just so worried about that letter Cleavon gave Oscar for safekeeping. The hundred years the church got to use the land is just about up, and we haven’t heard one peep about it. Cleavon never even came looking for that letter after Oscar died. And remember Oscar’s last words, telling us to keep Earl Hamilton out of the church?”

  Joseaphus nodded.

  “Well, I just know in my heart that snake in the grass Cleavon Johnson is in cahoots with that serpent Earl Hamilton, and they are getting ready to spring some poison on us.”

  “I think you’re right, Mozie,” he said.
>
  “But, Joe, I don’t know what I should do about it.”

  Joseaphus reached out and stroked her cheek. His Mozie was such a busy little thing. Always had to be doing something—cooking, cleaning, working in the yard, washing her car. Even when she got in the bed at night, the girl had to squirm and fidget for a few minutes before she could get still long enough to fall asleep.

  “What was running through your head in your dreams, Mozie?”

  Mozelle thought hard and then said, “I kept dreaming the words Prayer Changes Things.”

  “Then, Mozie, I think the Lord is telling you to come to Him with the problem, reminding you that He is in control. And when the Lord has given you some answers and His direction, you can tell the rest of us Prayer Troopers what we need to do.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do just that,” she said.

  “And now, get some sleep. Remember, we have a big day tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “Don’t know how you could forget, as much as you been praying on it, girl,” Joseaphus said, smiling and then pinching her on the thigh.

  “What was that for?”

  “I just remembered that I’m still on my honeymoon,” Joseaphus said, grinning and pulling Mozelle close to him.

  “You so grown, Joseaphus Cantrell.”

  “I know that’s right, baby,” he answered with a sexy laugh running all through his voice.

  II

  Mr. Louis Loomis stood next to Sheba, who was radiant in a pale peach two-piece ensemble designed by Essie Simmons. Sheba had seen the fabric in Essie’s shop when she was there to buy the lavender suit she wore to Miss Mozelle’s wedding. And as soon as she saw it, she said, “Essie, hold on to that material. Don’t know why I’m thinking this. But I know that’s what you gone make my wedding dress out of. Hope I don’t sound like I’m crazy, seeing that I ain’t even got a man.”