Noon just stood there, startled. But not over the cream, no, no. It was past four. It was even past four-thirty, but Noon hadn’t heard the church bells yet. The only sounds were from her breathing, which was coming faster now. She listened, trying to remember if maybe she had heard them and they were lost in her head, trapped with all her morning thoughts. She was certain. She hadn’t heard the church bells this morning. Every morning for the past twenty years they chimed through the black predawn air. Noon always considered that her first gift of the day. She ran into the living room and grabbed her jacket. She didn’t stop to change from her slippers into shoes, nor did she care that her pink and green flannel nightgown hung way below her jacket. She didn’t even take the time to untie her head scarf, knotted in the front with tips of twisted pieces of brown paper bag, her curlers, peeking through.
She walked through the darkness of Lombard Street. The mist was settling on her forehead and mixing with her sweat as she almost ran now, around the corner, past Bow’s, past Fannie and Liz’s, past Club Royale, past the schoolyard, and the jailhouse, and Pop’s nickel-and-dime variety store, and then past abandoned house on top of abandoned house that surrounded the church in what now occurred to Noon was a very systematic two-block radius. The air was turning dusty as she walked. The dust was thick with the smell of burnt wood and was mixing with the mist, its thickness seeming to suspend the mist in midair. Her eyes started to tear. Her breath came in heaves. And then she turned the last corner. The same way she had been turning this corner since coming to Philadelphia. She knew when she turned this corner, no matter what burdens she had to bear, her help was always here, just around this corner, her church, her solid rock.
She drew back horrified. “No! No! Please, God, No!” she shouted. The church was gone. Black air filled with misty dust hung in its place. She ran onto the dirt. She stretched her arms in front of her like a blind woman feeling her way. She thought surely if she couldn’t see the church, she could feel it. Surely her eyes must be wrong. If she just kept her arms stretched out in front of her, she would have to come upon the brick; she would have to be stopped short by the solid rockness of the church building. But nothing. Noon felt nothing but dusty air. On the other side of the now wide open, empty lot, she saw bricks piled on top of bricks. Not tenderly picked up, not stroked because this one had the founders’ names etched deep into it, or that one was paid for by the tithes of Sister Bertha, or this one was dedicated to the birth and death of the Jacksons’ infant daughter; instead they were just pushed away, just scattered, just kicked at, not touched, not understood, just bulldozed onto the vacant lot across the way. Noon covered the top of her head with her hands, trying to intercept the heaviness of the misty predawn air.
The dirt was soft and warm. She could feel its warmth through the thin, rippled soles of her slippers. She knelt in the dirt and rubbed her hands against it, as if to soothe it, comfort it. And then she dug her hands deep into it. She grabbed into it, trying to dig a hole, as if maybe if she dug fast enough and hard enough, she would come upon a grave that held her little church. When had they done this, when had they buried her church alive? If she could only get the dirt out of the way, she could reach it before it suffocated; she could breathe her breath into it and bring the church back to life.
She scooped up dirt by the handfuls. She threw it into the air. It fell on her heavily. It settled on her head, her face, her shoulders. Even blew into her eyes, blinding her. She cried out over and over, “No, no, please, Lord, no.” She sat back on her heels and reached her arms to the sky and cried out, and then she just cried.
Ethel woke all at once. It usually took her time to wake. She usually woke in pieces. First her hands, then she’d twist her hips around, her legs, slowly, slowly, her lips would come back to life, then her eyes, and finally her head, her thinking would move from groggy and muddled until she could get outside to walk so her thinking could get clear. But this morning all of her woke in an instant. As if she’d been hit by a sandbag to her head. She reached for her watch. Almost four. She loved this time of morning. She never slept straight through the night. Since she was twelve, she had been singing somewhere or the other until one or two. And afterward she was so revved she couldn’t fall asleep till just before dawn. But as she got older, there was always some man needing holding, some man she needed to hold to help her to settle down. Except that right about four, before the world came back to life, Ethel would wrap herself in a coat if it was cold, or just the stillness if it was warm, and go for a walk outside.
She pulled on her red pants, and black top, and red jacket and pushed her feet into her red high heels, and was out of the door, walking through the mist.
She thought about Fannie as she walked. They had become quite the girlfriends, buying new outfits, stepping out, flirting with the fellows, giggling as they smeared their fried chicken wings with hot sauce, talking about the shape of that man’s head, the crook in that one’s back, the ears on one, the hat on the other, the tie, where in the hell did that one get that tie? She told Fannie that she was dying to meet her young man, had to tell him that he was richly blessed to have someone like Fannie. They were truly like girlfriends even when she styled Fannie’s hair. Except for the one time when she piled it high on her head in an upsweep, and then she’d parted it straight down the middle, tried her hand at a little girl’s style the way she used to style Liz’s hair. She couldn’t get a straight part, though, and the braid wouldn’t even hold.
She breathed in deeply the black air that was getting dustier as she walked. Three days since they knocked down that church and the air down here still full of dirt, she thought. TV cameras and newspaper reporters all over the place. NAACP had even demonstrated, demanded an accounting. And still dust all over the place.
She was just about to turn around and head back to her empty room when a strangeness fell over her. Up the street, on the spot where the church used to be. She heard moans coming from that space. “What the hell is that?” she whispered as she walked toward the moans, slowly at first. Probably some drunk got locked out of the house, she thought. And then she saw her. A figure covered with dirt, pounding and hollering and summoning up the name of Jesus. Moaning. Ethel drew back at first. She stepped out of her red high heels in case she’d need to turn and make a swift getaway. But the moans wrapped around her like a lasso, and tightened, and pulled her urgently toward Noon. She ran across the street into the empty space, to help this woman, bent over as if she were broken in two.
“Oh, my God, what’s the matter? Are you okay? Let me help you, let me help you.” Ethel knelt down in the dirt with Noon.
“The bells,” Noon wailed, pounding her fists in the dirt, “what they did, look at what they did, they killed my bells, no more, no more, I won’t hear my bells no more.” She scratched at the dirt and sobbed, and her body shook from ferocious chills.
Ethel took off her bright red jacket and blanketed Noon’s shoulders. “Hush, hush,” she said as she held Noon to her and rocked her like a newborn. “It’ll be okay, you just hush, just hush now. Calm down, that’s it, calm down. Breathe deep and easy and just calm yourself down. Hush, just hush now.”
Noon didn’t want to hush. She wanted to tell her, make it clear what they had done. Without warning, without due cause or due process, they just gave the order, sent the trucks, surrounded the church, so sturdy, so vulnerable, they just flicked the switch, moved a lever, just like that, just moved a lever back then up; that’s all it took to send the wrecking ball crashing, crashing. Noon could feel the crashing in her chest, in her head, as she tried to make this woman understand that it was the empty space that was overwhelming. The air. The void. She wanted to make this woman feel it the way she felt it. But she couldn’t talk. Her breaths were coming in short, jagged lines. Her body was shivering. She moved deeper under Ethel’s bright red jacket. The rocking was settling her down some. And Ethel’s voice was like butter, smooth and rich and uninterrupted.
�
�How you just finding out?” Ethel asked as she waved away at the dust that was making her eyes start to tear. “Thought all of downtown knew by now. Been like one big funeral down here for the past three days, when they wasn’t getting ready to riot, that is. People was so mad at one point, throwing bricks at the city officials, I thought they were gonna have to call in the National Guard. Where you been that you ain’t heard?”
“Just back.” Noon sobbed. “I was away all week, just got back, just got back, oh, Lord, why’d I have to come back to this?”
“This church must have been a hell of a special place to you. To all those people raising such hell over it. The way you was pounding on this dirt, I would’ve thought it was your man or your chile. Must’ve been a damn special place.”
Noon was nodding her head that was throbbing now. Her eyes were on fire from the dirt and the dust so that she couldn’t even see. She wanted to tell her that she couldn’t see, that she was blinded by the dirt in her eyes. All she could do was put her hands to her head and whisper, “My head, it’s crashing.”
“What you say?” Ethel asked, putting her ear close so she could understand her.
“My head,” Noon whispered again.
“Maybe your head rag is too tight, you still cold, let’s move this jacket so I can get your head rag off.” She undid Noon’s scarf. “Are these curlers too tight? Let’s get these out too, pulling at your scalp probably; that’ll give you a headache quicker than anything when ain’t nothing else even wrong.” She unrolled the twisted pieces of brown paper bag and let them fall in the dirt. “You got nice hair,” she said as she took the curlers out. “Nice and soft. I gotta keep a hot comb to mine at least once a week, more if I been working up a sweat.” Her fingers worked through Noon’s hair as she fluffed at the curls, and combed through them with her hands, and then purely out of habit, started to give Noon’s hair a style, flipped behind her ear on one side, lifted in a slight bouffant on the other, then pulled some to the front for a bang.
Ethel’s fingers felt good going through Noon’s hair. The way they were lightly touching her scalp had the calming affect of tapping rain. She was usually very particular about whose hands she allowed in her hair. Her mother used to tell her that people could put something on her sure nuff if they got a couple strands of her hair. Burn it. She used to tell Noon, if you clip it, burn it, and don’t you go leaving no loose strands in your comb. But Noon allowed this stranger in her hair. At least she thought she was a stranger. The voice was familiar, though. She knew she had heard the voice before. She wished she could open her eyes to see who this was. “You from here?” Noon asked, able to talk just a little now.
“Awhile ago, I lived here for a few years awhile ago,” Ethel said as she sat up on her knees. “You better now. You think you can make it home?”
Noon almost wanted to stay there. Right there in the dirt with Ethel’s fingers tapping her scalp. She wondered what row of a pew she’d be on, if she were in this place in the church. She thought it would be up front. Facing the pulpit. “I’m about ready to go, I just can’t see, dirt’s all in my eyes. Can’t hardly open them.”
“Whereabouts you live?” Ethel asked as she pushed herself to standing.
“Lombard Street.”
“Well, that ain’t far, just keep your eyes closed, keep ’em closed tight now, till you get home and flush them with water. Hurt like hell you try to open them now in all this dust and shit out here.”
Ethel helped Noon to stand and dusted them both off. The sky was no longer pitch-black but gray. The gray was streaming down all around the two women, and Ethel looked at Noon through the gray, her eyes clenched tight, her face tilted the way a blind person does. With the dirt no longer covering Noon’s face, without the head rag and the brown paper twisted in her hair, Ethel knew the face. She reached in and pushed back the bang along Noon’s forehead. The line was there. This was her, Noon. The woman whose husband she whispered creamy words to at night when he cried over Noon that she didn’t have a nature to her at all. The woman on whose steps she’d left her child. Ethel reached for Noon’s arm. Afraid that if she didn’t that Noon would somehow know; even with her eyes shut tight, she might know and push her away.
“Just give me your arm,” Ethel said quickly, “and we’ll head on to Lombard Street. I just got to stop on the other side and step into my shoes. I kicked them off when I heard you crying like that; those high heels would have slowed me up if you’d been some crazy or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Noon said, holding fast to Ethel’s arm.
“What you got to be sorry about except that they busted up your place of worship?”
“Your clothes must be full of dirt, you probably was on your way somewhere, I’m just sorry I disrupted whatever you was fixing to do.”
“I was just fixing to walk,” Ethel said as they reached the other side of the street and she stepped into her bright red shoes.
“You got taller,” Noon said. “Those shoes must be awfully high; you know you could get bunions like that.”
“Already got ’em, corns and calluses too. Generally got bad feet.”
“Well, why you walking in them?”
“Habit, you know how it is, some habits you just hold on to even if they hurt, and it helps if they making you look good.”
“Here,” Noon said, stopping sharply and extending her foot. “Take my slippers, come on now, I won’t accept no, just take them.”
“And what you gonna do?”
“I’m a country girl. I can go barefoot.”
“You’ll catch another chill out here like you did back there in the dirt. Here, I’ll take your slippers, you take my shoes.”
Noon leaned on Ethel as she stepped into her high heels. She swayed back and forth for a few seconds as she tried to get her balance. “How do you do this?” she asked as she stood straight and held tight to Ethel’s arm.
Ethel pushed her feet into Noon’s slippers. “These feel good,” she said, almost sighing.
“Yeah, but not really for outside. I just ran outta the house so fast I couldn’t hardly think to put on some real shoes.” And then she let out a moan, as the reality of it crashed down on her again, and she started sniffing and tried to muffle her sobs.
“Hurts, I know it hurts,” Ethel said. “Guess you feel about as bad as you ever felt.” Ethel talked in her most soothing voice.
“You right. I haven’t felt this bad about anything, since I was a young girl and got trapped in the woods by the devil.” Noon’s voice shook.
“Mnh, what that devil do, made you do it?”
“Like I was animal,” Noon said, raising and lowering her free hand for emphasis.
“That’s not the worst thing,” Ethel said, half laughing. “I’ve done it with the devil a few times myself.”
“I mean the real devil,” Noon stammered.
“What you talking, I know about the real devil too now. This one joker even wore a red suit. Came by to pick me up, dressed in red from hat to shoes. I said, ‘Wait a minute, baby, I know you got to have you a pitchfork in your car trunk, so you might as well pull it out now so it ain’t no pretense.’”
Ethel laughed as she clutched to Noon’s arm, and Noon almost wanted to laugh too.
“I’m sorry,” Ethel said, composing herself, “you was telling me about your devil.”
Noon had never told the details of it. Not even after they’d found her tied down in the center of the dead calves, and her mother told her she must never talk about it with anyone else. But if she felt she must, she could talk to her, only her. Noon never could. Except that here and now she had to. With her heart so broken over her fallen church, so gaping, every pain she’d ever felt rushed to the surface like water seeking its own level, or the way blood rushes to an open gash and spills on out. It spilled on out. Stumbling through the street, blinded by the dirt of the fallen church, holding fast to the arm of this stranger of a woman with a buttery voice who walks alone at night in high
-heel shoes, Noon had to let it spill on out.
“Caught me in the woods one morning. I was out picking huckleberries for my daddy’s doughby.”
“What be?” Ethel asked, stark seriousness crowding her voice.
“Doughby, you wrap the dough around berries, then brush it down with butter and cinnamon, then cook it till the dumplings plump.”
“Sounds good,” Ethel said. Almost wanting to stop Noon. To tell her she didn’t have to talk about it, not really.
“Would’ve been good too,” Noon went on. “Those woods grew the sweetest blackest huckleberries in all of Florida.”
“And then the devil got you?” Ethel asked.
“It was a lot of ’em all at once. Chanting, killing calves.”
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