Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Herbie’s shoulders were shaking up and down as he laughed. Fannie stood and kissed him on the cheek. “I got to go, Herbie. I got to find Noon and see what’s happening at the church.” And then she paused and looked at Herbie, and her face was as soft as it gets. “You sure you okay?”

  “I’m sure,” he said, able to smile now.

  “Later, alligator,” she said, and was out of the door.

  “Crocodile, after while,” Herbie whispered to the closed door.

  They were running out of time. Noon knew it. She sat at the end of the long table in the bottom of the church with her forehead resting in her cupped hands. Twenty-five or so had gathered there, hurriedly, to mull over this latest piece of information. They were being asked to vacate the building out of concern for their welfare. “‘Serious structural fractures,’” Bow read the letter aloud to them all. “‘With Tom Moore’s untimely departure, I as head of the Highway South Project will step in as interim liaison.’”

  Reverend Schell sat at the head of the table as Bow read to the captive twenty-five. His church clerk hadn’t been available when the courier had arrived at his office a short time ago while he and Bow talked about the Phillies training camp and the Eartha Kitt play at the New Locust Theater. “Forgot my glasses,” he’d told Bow, “can’t see a darn thing without them, what the heck does this say?”

  After only the first paragraph Reverend Schell had stopped Bow. Said they’d better call Noon and Jeanie and as many of the faithfuls as they could round up. “Doing something like this on a Saturday serious indeed,” he’d said.

  So now Bow read the balance of the letter, the part Reverend Schell wasn’t prepared for. The part that said, “I’d like to continue meeting with you, Reverend Schell. I sincerely hope we can also have the cordial relationship that you and Mr. Moore enjoyed as we continue negotiations for the acquisition of the church and the remaining properties in the affected area.” Bow’s speech slowed as he read the last sentence. The letter shook in his hands. He turned and looked at Reverend Schell. All twenty-five looked at him. Their faces were contorted somewhere between confusion and horror. Their exclamations too. Some gasped and clutched at their bosoms; others scratched their heads; still others just shuddered as if to say, “Oh, God, no!”

  Reverend Schell squared his shoulders in his best black suit, which made him look as if he were set to preach the eulogy at a Friday night funeral. He should have waited for his clerk to read the thing to him alone. He should have figured those meetings would come back to haunt him. He shouldn’t have sat on the fence for so long. Should have just told Tom Moore and those Highway South people no, right out. Should have slammed the door in Willie Mann’s face. Why’d he even give them an audience? For what? For those brown envelopes they slipped him. Even though his congregation was willing to meet his financial needs, sell chicken dinners all night long to meet his needs. He’d given audience to the devil for what? So he could be exposed here and now like this.

  Well, had he met with them? Bow demanded to know.

  “Divide and conquer,” Reverend Schell boomed. “Don’t you know by now those are their tactics? Now that Tom Moore’s gone, their tactics are gonna get even meaner. We can’t let them split up the few of us left united on this thing.”

  “Did you sit down with them or not?” Bow stood and pointed his finger across the table at Reverend Schell. “Were you negotiating with them, like this letter says?”

  “Once or twice I met with them; as your pastor I had to see what they were offering.” Reverend Schell stood now too. “But I made it absolutely clear that I would never endorse their Highway South plan.”

  “Well, why’d you keep meeting with them?” Sister Maybell asked. “My own pride-and-joy grandson, Willie Mann, been working with them, I’m ’shamed to say, and I wouldn’t even consent to meet with them other than the time that man what quit, or got fired, whatever happened to him, when he came down here to explain things as he saw it and made me an offer. Now that was one thing, but to keep on meeting with them, working against us like that. Bet you even smoked cigars with the good-for-nothings.”

  “Probably bought you that new suit you got on,” Pat Saunders from the funeral home yelled. “You probably came that cheap.”

  Reverend Schell straightened his tie and tightened his jaw and stared straight ahead. He couldn’t really say whether he’d come cheaply or not to the Highway South people. He never counted the contents of those brown envelopes they’d given him as payment for his time. He’d just spill the contents into his El Producto cigar box where he kept his spending money. He’d take out a five here, a single there, sometimes enough for a silk tie, an embroidered handkerchief. His lifestyle was modest.

  “No, Sister Pat,” he shouted. “They didn’t buy me this suit. Nor did they buy me out. If that were the case, would I have had Brother Bow stand up and read this to you all? Tell me, why would I have let him do that if I had anything, anything at all to hide? It’s because I wanted to expose them to you. Their tactics. We can’t let them pull the rest of us apart.”

  Noon slowly lifted her head from her hands. Suddenly she remembered the day when her hands shook over the papers that summoned them to a hearing about Liz’s legal guardianship. The way Reverend Schell turned the papers upside down and seemed to study them before turning them right side up again. It hit her now like a wooden spoon against an empty ten-quart stewing pot: Reverend Schell couldn’t read. That’s why he let Bow say those incriminating sentences out loud; he’d had no idea what those sentences were. She watched him standing at the head of the table looking almost stately with his shoulders squared. How brilliant he must be to have pulled it off all these years. Pretending to read the Scripture, the songs in the hymnal, the bulletin of announcements for the week. How it must have eaten him up to have lived that lie. How crumbled he would be if she exposed him now right here in the lower sanctuary. So easy. Just stand and ask him to read the letter himself, tell him to spell “cat,” or hand him some scribble and watch him pretend to decipher it. It would be too easy to crumble him right here and now. Easiest thing in the world to do. Give a Negro man a little authority, little power, then crumble him like a day-old cookie. It was ugly. How easy it was. Noon couldn’t be that ugly. No, sir, it would be too easy, too ugly to crumple the man now.

  “We spinning our wheels in knee-deep mud if we gonna sit here and try to make Reverend Schell admit to something that obviously was not wrongdoing.” Her voice wavered as she spoke.

  “How we know it’s not wrongdoing?” Pat Saunders asked.

  “Because if it was, he would’ve been more vocal in favor of the highway, wouldn’t he had? Did he encourage anyone here to take Tom Moore up on his offer? Who? Name me one person who he advised to sell and move.”

  “He hasn’t exactly been so vocal in his opposition to it either,” Bow said. “I’m trying to think of even one sermon that he preached encouraging us to hold our ground. In all the three years we been battling this thing, surely he could’ve done one sermon on it. And the fact still remains, he was meeting with them.”

  “We got to allow our leaders a bit of leeway. We got to get more sophisticated with our politics. By right we should have sent him to meet with them, should have let him be our emissary, shouldn’t have forced him to sneak.”

  “Reverend Schell’s rightness or wrongness is not the important thing here.” Jeanie stood and spoke in her clear, strong voice. “That letter Bow just read constitutes an eviction notice. We need to put our energy into challenging that. In fact, we need to have a challenge ready to be filed first thing Monday morning. So we need to get our own independent inspectors in here to see what all this fractures business is about.”

  One by one they went the length of the long table on both sides until they agreed that it wasn’t their Reverend Schell that needed to do the proving, at least not right now. Even finally Bow relented and sat and shook his head back and forth.

  Reverend Schell looked at
Noon and smiled. In that instant he loved her, truly loved her. Should have been my wife, he thought. Surely wouldn’t have needed healing prayers if she’d been my wife.

  Noon rubbed her hands over her forehead as they discussed the filing of the challenge. They’d get the church building historically certified. They’d demand a waiting period, a public comment period. Her birthmark, the line stuck at twelve that ran from her crown to just above her nose, seemed to deepen as they talked. It seemed she could almost feel it growing. As if it were being stretched as the skin on her forehead, and her entire face, got tighter and tighter. They were losing. Their voices seemed to be getting farther and farther away. Noon fought back tears. She couldn’t let them see her cry. She had been their unlikely champion. Keep-to-herself Noon. Egged on by Jeanie’s politics, she had become their leader. Surprisingly articulate once she got going, smarter than she ever thought she was, even quick-witted at times; she had begun to feel capable over the past three years as she fought off the running of the road. She began to feel as she used to when she was ten or eleven and she would help her mother take care of her father and brothers. She knew she was good at cooking, at getting just the right stiffness in their stark white Sunday shirts. She knew she could whip up a dress quicker than her cake could rise. She could wring a chicken’s neck in the morning and have it plucked, cleaned, stuffed, and roasted by dinner at two. She was good. And then in the midst of her goodness those devils tainted her. They took her goodness from her, scraped it out of her. The same way she felt as if her church were being snatched from her now. Her church: more than a building, much more than the brick and mortar and orange and blue stained glass windows, it was her precious haven, her salvation, her rock.

  Suddenly Noon wanted to go home. Not just home around the corner and three blocks to Lombard Street. But home to Florida. She wanted to look in her mother’s velvety face, fold herself up in her arms. She wanted her brothers to dote over her, tease her. She wanted to stand in the bedroom where her father had died and feel his spirit wash over her. Suddenly more than anything she just wanted to go home. Just for a while. A few days, a week. She needed to turn her attention away from the lie of the road. She needed to hear her mother remind her, “Noon, when a thing plagues you so and you done all you can, the outcome is no longer up to you. Sometimes the best thing you can do is take your hands off, just let it go, let it go.”

  Then they all heard heavy-booted footsteps rush down the stairs, and the door to the lower sanctuary flew open. A half dozen uniformed sheriffs stood there, handcuffs shining from their side pockets, nightsticks poised. “We’re here to escort you folks out,” one of them shouted.

  “Escort us out, why?” Bow shouted back.

  “Orders from L and I. Inspectors detected fractures in the structure. For your own good, we’re to escort you out from here and make sure it stays vacant until they can get it checked out or repaired.”

  “Suppose we say we’re not leaving?” Sister Maybell sat with her arms folded over her ample bosom.

  “Sisters, Brothers.” Reverend Schell’s smooth baritone voice crackled through the confusion. “Let’s go peacefully. We’ll be back here, we’ll have our papers filed first thing Monday morning. This is illegal and they know it. We’ll bring the Tribune back with us Monday, and the Bulletin too. We’ll call TV stations; we’ll show everybody the treachery going on here. We’ll win, we’ll win.”

  “Come on back to the funeral parlor,” Pat Saunders offered. “We can even have church there tomorrow if need be. I guarantee you no one’s gonna run us from there.”

  Noon felt a sinking deep in her chest. She walked slowly, heavily to the door. Reverend Schell touched her elbow. “Noon, er, Sister Noon,” he stammered.

  She looked at him. The blush that usually widened her face when she looked at him wasn’t there now. Nor the gentle bend that usually came up in her knees when she looked at him. Her pulse was steady, not that harder, faster pulse that usually rushed when she looked at him. She looked right at him. Just a man. That’s all he’d ever been. No better than Herbie even. No magic potions, no sleight of hand to pull a rabbit forth. No special healing powers to make her passions gush. Just a man. A needy, vulnerable man.

  “Reverend?” she asked as she looked at him, through him.

  “Noon, your, er, your healing time, I mean the place for your healing prayers, well, I just, since we’re leaving here now, I just wanted to set up—”

  “Heal yourself, Reverend,” she whispered as she pulled her elbow from his folded palm, “You bow at the altar and heal your own self first.”

  Then she saw Fannie all in yellow running toward her, pushing back the barricades that now surrounded the church. “Let it go, Fannie,” Noon shouted, afraid that one of the blackjack-toting sheriffs might crack Fannie’s skull. “Just let it go.”

  “I want the first train to Florida,” Noon told Herbie when she got in after being routed from the church by the sheriffs. “Need to go home, need to go home. Need to do like my mama would say do. Need to take my hands off and just let it go.”

  Herbie was relieved. Would have carried her to Florida on his back if she’d asked. Anywhere to put some time and space between her and her crusade to save them all from the highway. “Seven in the morning, Silver Meteor,” he said excitedly. “It leaves at seven in the morning, and it’s always on time. I’ll see you on the train myself. I’ll even go with you if you’d like. Got plenty of vacation time coming to me. Twenty years on the job, I know they’ll give me a week off with short notice.”

  “That would be nice, you go with me. Please go with me.” She leaned her head on his shoulders. He kissed the top of her hair that was soft; he’d almost forgotten how soft her hair was.

  Fannie went straight to Noon and Herbie’s after work. She was as relieved as Herbie that Noon was going home, just for a week to rest her mind. Fannie talked to Herbie with her facial expression over the top of Noon’s head, letting him know she hadn’t told Noon about Ethel. They’d just wait, they agreed. At least until after her trip.

  Fannie settled into the evening with Noon and Herbie the way she hadn’t done in a long time. They had dinner together, hoagies from Pop’s. They always used to have hoagies on Saturday night. They sat out on the steps until late, until the chill in the April night air made them shiver. Then Fannie ran upstairs and pulled her soft, nappy blanket from the bed, and the three snuggled under it on the steps warm from the cool April night the way they used to when Fannie was a child. Before Liz even. They played gin rummy and ate Popsicles and watched TV some. Perry Mason, Noon’s favorite show was Perry Mason. Then Fannie helped Noon pack for her trip home. Cotton nightgowns with lacy bows, opentoed shoes, straw Sunday hats, no aprons. Fannie insisted, “This a relaxation trip, no cooking and cleaning this trip. And I’m gonna call each of your brothers and tell them don’t look for you to be doing no cooking, not a yeast roll, not a sweet potato pie, not even a simple pan of quick bread.”

  Noon smiled as Fannie listed her demands of all she could not do. Home. She was going home.

  Fannie held Noon for a long time when she got up to leave. She kissed Herbie on the cheek and reminded him that this trip was his vacation too. She hugged Noon again and walked on out and down the street that was filled with quiet activity, people sitting out, or stepping out, or heading in on this Saturday night. She turned to look back down Lombard Street when she was about to round the corner. Noon and Herbie stood on the top step, watching her, waving to her; they seemed older, sadder. A lump came up in Fannie’s throat, suddenly, unexpectedly. She turned the corner quickly so they wouldn’t see her cry.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Spring break came, and Fannie lied to Ethel. Told her that Liz was spending the week with their friend Julep at Howard in Washington, D.C. She’d be back on the weekend, she told her. She had to tell her something. She had yelled through the door last night when she could get a word in through the banging on the wall to tell Liz that Ethel was back. �
��Fuck her” was the reply from Liz, who rarely ever cursed. So Fannie intended to talk some sense into Liz, help her get herself together, make her presentable for Ethel; she just needed some time.

  Liz was resistant to any help. Spinning around in that room the way her stomach was spinning, imagining her life unravel. Scholarship probably gone, she thought; job all gone; Noon hated her now, she was sure; Willie Mann probably fucking Fannie by now. So she pounded at the wall until her shoulders ached and she was weak from cramps. Then she’d go to the bathroom until the spinning in her stomach stopped. Then she’d brush her hair, shine her mirror, wave away the dust, and do her nails. She’d go to bed after that. And when she got up, she’d start all over again. See her life tumbling down all around her, then the relief of the wall. She was like an infant with night and days confused in that room. Except there was no one to rock her to ease her into sleep. So she’d rock herself too. For hours at a time she’d rock and even hum, the way Noon used to hum, or was that Ethel, or was that her own mother’s humming? Until she couldn’t stand the sound of her voice anymore, and she tried to catch her voice spilling out, so she could stop it, she’d clap her hands in front of her lips to smother the humming, until she couldn’t stand the sight of her hands. And then, mercy, mercy, she’d fall asleep. Day in, day out, that was her routine, spinning in that room.

  In the meantime, since it really was spring break and since Noon and Herbie were gone for the week, Fannie spent all of her time with Ethel. They were inseparable. They’d start with breakfast at Horn and Hardart, then shop on Chestnut Street until lunch. Then chicken salad sandwiches at Lit Brothers, and take in a movie, a play, or just sit in Rittenhouse Square. They’d go to Bea’s Barbecue for dinner one night, Fran’s Fish Fry the next. Then from club to club for what seemed like all night long. From the Postal Card to the Upper Lounge to Bill’s Be Bop Spot. Sometimes Ethel was called on to sing, and she just couldn’t deny the crowds. So she’d rapture them, have them begging for more, then leave them with their mouths hanging, the men drooling, the women weepy, stirred by the passion in her songs.