“Yes, Reverend,” she said, nodding. “I can do it.”
Reverend Mitchell looked back and forth between them twice before saying, slowly, “All right then. I would appreciate it. Why don’t you go up to the lectern and have a look at it so you know what you’re doing?”
When the time came for Elizabeth to read, she did her best to ignore the small flurry of whispering that followed her steps down the aisle. Her shoes sounded too loud, and the walk seemed too long, but once she stood in front of the Bible and placed her fingertips on the large “49” marking the chapter of Isaiah, she felt better. She began to read, her fingers following along the words.
“‘Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far,’” Elizabeth said. She looked up from the page, found her father’s face among the congregants, and smiled as she read the next lines. “‘The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.’”
She loved these parts of Isaiah. Since childhood Elizabeth always felt a nurturing presence all around her, and Isaiah seemed to affirm it for her as divine spirit. Isaiah enlivened her and made her feel she too was being called, like she could hear her own name in the wind. So she read the passage affectionately, like the words of a beloved summoning her.
“‘And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me.’”
Elizabeth glanced at the page, then looked out at the congregants again, careful to make eye contact with two or three people. She shook her head slightly and her right shoulder rose a bit as she read the next line with a sense of wonder, which was indeed how she saw it.
“‘And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’”
She found such amazement in that, to think God would think so much of her—and everyone. Would they hear that in her reading? She hoped so.
“‘Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.’”
To herself Elizabeth prayed that she would not labor in vain or waste her strength. But as long as she followed the spirit she trusted that would never happen.
“‘And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.’”
Then, the next part, again—God speaking to His servant! Wonderful. Elizabeth thought she might not sound as reverent as Deacon Phelps, but figured she could only read as she would read the Bible to herself. She could only hope her love of the words filtered through.
“‘And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.’”
She so wanted to be a light. When she read the Word she realized this, her standing there at the lectern, was a brief moment when she could be one. She looked up from the page again, tapped the Bible where she read, and smiled to the congregants.
“‘Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship,’” she said. Elizabeth scanned the room carefully. She wanted to plant the final four words of the passage firmly into her listeners’ minds like a sacred seed. She even dared to add her own slight emphasis. “‘Because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.’”
Elizabeth stepped down from the lectern into a pond of silence. No one looked directly at her. Heads hung down in prayer or stole sideways glances at her as she went by. She found her father beaming.
Reverend Mitchell stood to offer a prayer and welcome, but from the silence it seemed the congregants were already well into their own meditations. They listened to his sermon in the same quiet manner, resisting his attempts to rouse them. No one seemed to waken until the choir began to sing “Move On Up a Little Higher,” and then everyone clapped to the music in a way that felt a little more joyous, as though they’d never thought to clap before.
Afterward, strangely enough, people addressed their compliments to her father, and not Elizabeth directly.
Mother Hines in her white dress and hat gripped Elizabeth’s wrist with a marshmallow-soft hand and hunched over when she spoke to Walter Moore, like she was revealing a secret. “After hearing the Word like that, I didn’t need no sermon!”
More people, in the same manner, made similar comments about being touched somehow by Elizabeth’s reading in a way they couldn’t put into words, but knew they’d be thinking about for a long time to come. It tickled Walter Moore to no end, especially when Reverend Mitchell made no comment of his own.
“He’s not going to say anything, but it doesn’t matter,” he said to Elizabeth as they walked home that afternoon. “Everybody will know from now on what they’re missing. Now they know what a good Scripture reading can really do.”
Reverend Mitchell never asked Elizabeth to read again. But she grew in her community’s esteem and the congregants admired the simple, shining example she set for everyone else. Still, it discouraged Elizabeth to feel so close to divine light and hope and not see it reflected in the lives of so many of Harlem’s struggling residents.
She returned to Vassar for her final semester with all this on her mind. She persistently wondered what her life would be, and prayed about whether she should teach, the only job that seemed suitable for an educated young Negro woman. Then that spring, when she was on the verge of graduating, Kyle Townsend returned to her life.
She heard the shout reverberate down the dormitory hall. “Elizabeth Moore! Elizabeth Moore! You have a gentleman caller.”
She left her room puzzled. She touched a hand to her brown curls and smoothed the front of her green sweater. What man would come visit her other than her father? Elizabeth walked down the stairs and into the common room to find Kyle. He wore gray slacks and a red sweater over a crisp white shirt. She recalled hearing he had graduated from law school the previous year and he stood towering over her, even taller than when they first met.
“What are you doing here after all this time, Kyle Townsend?”
“I just wanted to talk to you. Can we sit outside?” His eyes slid toward the door like he already wanted to be on its other side.
A hint of daylight still remained when they sat on the bench under the crab apple tree in full bloom. The scent made Elizabeth strangely giddy, but she did her best to sit quietly while her surprise visitor spoke. For the first fifteen minutes or so Kyle looked at the ground as he explained to Elizabeth how he’d known right away at the cotillion she was a special girl, but he didn’t want to try for her until he knew he could support them in a good life. Once he’d graduated from law school and had a job, he went to her home to look for her.
“Your father told me you were here, so here I am,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders and his eyes finally met hers.
“How did you know I wouldn’t have a boyfriend already?” Elizabeth gripped the edge of the bench, her ankles crossed beneath her.
“I didn’t. I hoped you wouldn’t. Prayed about it a lot.”
She nodded. “So what do you want now?”
“I’m not asking for anything, Elizabeth.” Kyle held his palms up like he wanted to show he wasn’t hiding anything. “I just want to see you for a bit. And we’ll see what happens. Okay?”
Elizabeth looked up at the stars beginning to come into view. They seemed starkly white, like ice crystals. She thought she didn’t know what might happen. But she said, “Okay.”
He sighed then and sat up like she had lifted the weight of the world off his chest. Then he began to talk as though she’d released his words.
“The world is so messed up, Elizabeth. I don’t like how our people are being treated, here or in the South. But it is worse in the South. We have to acknowledge that. They string up black men with no more thought than hanging up their laundry. Like our lives aren’t worth any more than the dirt on their clothes.”
“I know! I see it in Harlem too.” She wanted to talk about what her father highlighted in his newspaper, about the inequity of how the black population of Harlem paid rents to white landlords and frequented stores owned by white business owners. She wanted to ask Kyle what he thought of the fact that so much of their money did not return to their own community, but she paused. She saw a tightness in Kyle’s face that made her realize he didn’t like her interrupting him. She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them in the dark. “I’m sorry. You go on.”
“You’re right, Elizabeth. The economics of our people is a serious issue as well. But I can’t work on that and civil rights at the same time.”
“No, of course not.”
He sat back and crossed his legs and draped a long, ropy arm on the bench behind her.
“Anyway, I think with my work and all your efforts in the church, we could stand for something really special. We could bring attention to things just because of who we are and the way we stand up for what we believe. We won’t be just another young couple bringing a bunch of babies into the world.”
He looked at her quickly. “But we’ll do that too when we’re ready. We’ve got plenty of time for children.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes.”
She wasn’t sure if Kyle’s words were those usually reserved for courtship, but she liked what he said. He had a vision for them as a couple, as a family. That was good enough for her. It gave her a place to be in the world, as though he had marked a spot on the map and said, This is where you belong. And she accepted it, grateful to be protected and loved in a place where, as she saw each time she read her father’s newspaper, there were so many, women especially, who went unprotected and unloved.
ELIZABETH TOWNSEND ARRIVED that Sunday morning, not late but not early enough to park close by. The side streets were so crowded she had to find a spot five blocks away. She was glad she had worn low-heeled shoes, but she moved slowly, trying not to sweat through her clothes before she got there.
The Mount Nebo Baptist Church rose up as a huge stone monument to its congregation’s faith on the corner of St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenues. It featured two medieval-looking turrets and a footprint that took up half the block. The building once housed a white Episcopal church but as the growing Negro population seemed to assure a complete takeover of Harlem in the 1920s, that congregation relinquished it to the Mount Nebo advisory board for six hundred thousand dollars.
Having one of the wealthiest congregations in Harlem helped Mount Nebo grow further and now the church leaders sought to move their soup kitchen from the basement to a separate center across the street.
“Good morning, Mrs. Townsend.” Howard Frisbee manned the open door, as he did every Sunday, with small bows and big gentle smiles. Elizabeth enjoyed seeing him because he was not only glad to be there, but also happy for every single person who made it in on Sunday.
“Nice crowd today, Howard.” She offered her hand, and he took it into the softness of his own as she climbed the final step.
“Every soul a blessing, Mrs. Townsend, every soul a blessing.”
CHAPTER 6
Cecily
Anselm, North Carolina, 1946
Cecily sat on a train headed south. The ride had lulled her into a deep and restful sleep. She didn’t sense the movement of the cars slowing down so she felt grateful for the warm pressure of the porter’s hand on her shoulder waking her as they pulled into Anselm. She sat dazed and humbled in her sleepy fog. Already her exile felt complete. She’d told her mother she didn’t want to come down here and the swiftness with which she found herself on the train and out of Harlem still bewildered her. Cecily closed her eyes again.
Had it been two or three days since that funny spring breeze came drifting through the windows of their town house? She had never noticed air before in her seventeen years of being in the world. This breeze felt soft like a baby blanket and warm like the arm of a friend looped into her own. And it seemed to gently push and pull on her like a child wanting her to come out to play. Cecily had followed the breeze through the doors of empty rooms, down the hall, and past the parlor where her mother was giving directions to their servant, Gideon. She finally went out the front door and settled herself on the stoop. She stuck her legs straight out in front of her and lifted her skirt to her thighs so the breeze could reach her there and tickle the soft hair on the surface of her limbs. She leaned back, her elbows behind her and supporting her on the stone steps as she took in the trees just beginning to flower. That’s when Royce Haywood walked by.
At least he was going to walk by, Cecily thought. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans and his shirttail, untucked, fluttered about his waist. He wore a sour expression, his mouth twisted in a knot of unhappiness. He pushed one foot in front of the other in a way that seemed, to Cecily, very determined. But when Royce was just two or three houses down he saw Cecily. She noticed how his lips seemed to relax and his face, the color of browned butter, lifted toward her.
“Hey, Ceci.”
“What’s wrong with you, Royce?”
“Why does something have to be wrong with me?”
“Because you ain’t calling me by my right name. You ain’t called me nothing but Cecily since we were five years old.”
Royce shrugged. Cecily didn’t bother to sit up.
“Why do we always have to do everything the same?” he asked. “Don’t you ever want to do different things?”
“I like my name just fine, thank you.” Cecily had shocked herself. She’d never spoken to anyone like that before, let alone a boy. “Sassy” would be the word for it. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing but she did like the way Royce looked strange for a moment, his forehead all creased up, like he didn’t know what to say. Did I do that? she wondered. Then he sat down on the stoop next to her and she liked that even better. He was close enough that she could smell him. His salty, musky scent mingled with the soft spring breeze.
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Cecily. I just feel like I’m tired of being me sometimes.”
“That’s silly. How can you be anyone but you?”
“By changing! People change all the time. I can still be me but something different. I’m ready to be different.”
Cecily wondered if it was possible to change parts of yourself—to put them on and take them off like you do with your clothes every day? Did it even happen to her just a moment ago? Then Royce went on as though he’d read her mind.
“We’re changing, Cecily. Don’t you feel it?”
She looked out into the street. The breeze pushed the petals from the pear tree blossoms down the pavement in a way that reminded her of drifting snow. “You mean like we’re not children anymore.” Cecily had meant that to be a question but as the words tumbled out of her mouth the truth of them stung her tongue and made it lie flat so she had no choice but to voice the words as fact.
“Yeah,” Royce said. He leaned back and, like her, rested his elbows on the steps. “Something like that.”
Part of her felt like she would obviously know this long before Royce did. Her period had started over two years ago. But she wasn’t settled with it. Its appearance still surprised her unpleasantly even though her mama had told her it would happen each month and tried to remind her to get ready. However, Cecily still soiled her panties and had taken to hiding them, then throwing them away. This behavior didn’t seem like something a grown woman would do but Cecily didn’t know what else to do and was too ashamed to tell Mama. She could only feel her heart drop into her stomach each time she went to the bathroom, detected the metallic smell, and pulled down her underwear to find it stained ruby red
. This part of her commiserated with Royce because it seemed they were supposed to be coming into something different but no one was telling them what it was.
And that’s when he did it. Cecily still wasn’t sure he had really done anything because all that happened was a movement of his hand. His fingers had ventured toward her thigh in a way that, Cecily thought, looked like he was about to brush an ant off her leg. It seemed to happen so slowly, like she was seeing it but really not sure of what she was seeing.
“Royce!”
The boy’s hand snapped back like he’d burned it on a hot stove. He jumped to his feet. Cecily turned to see her mama come barreling down the stoop like the 7th Avenue Express bus. Cecily didn’t know what to do because she didn’t understand what Royce had done. He had his chin dipped low and his hands back in his pockets. But when Cecily looked at her mama again she was staring at her, not Royce. Cecily thought her face seemed to soften and Cecily was even more surprised when she turned and asked after Royce’s parents like she would on any other day.
“They’re fine, Mrs. Vaughn,” Royce said, stammering.
“You better get along home. Cecily has to go in now.”
She said it, Cecily thought, like she and Royce were still little kids playing in the street, and that made a warmth rush up into her cheeks.
“Yes, ma’am.” Royce went down the last few steps and left but he didn’t, Cecily noticed, walk in the direction of his house. He kept going on his way to wherever he was going before he saw her. She wondered, now genuinely curious, where that was.
TWO DAYS LATER, Cecily found herself on the train to Anselm to stay with her father’s aunt Pearl and uncle Menard. Cecily blinked and looked around her. People gathered up satchels and the remainders of sack lunches as they moved into the aisles. She jumped in her seat when she heard a voice close by, just over her right ear.
Unforgivable Love Page 6