Holy Ghost Corner

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  “We haven’t had a sermon this morning. And to be completely honest, except for this good singing, we really haven’t had much church in the good ole tradition of our beloved Gospel United Church of America. But church, as much as I love this denomination, I love the Lord even more. So, with the permission of Rev. Quincey, I am opening the doors of the church.”

  Rev. Quincey came down and stood beside his bishop, eager to see who this new child of the King was. Since he first joined the ranks of the ministry, there were two things that got him excited. The first was discovering that two people loved each other so much they wanted to immerse themselves into that incredible mystery called Holy Matrimony. And the second and most important was when somebody got saved. That had to be the most incredible rush he’d ever felt—to watch somebody accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.

  The fire in Baby Doll’s chest area alerted her to the possibility that this bishop man might be talking to her. She rose up out of her seat slightly and then sat right back down, dismissing the fire as heartburn—she had been suffering from acute attacks of acid reflux disease for about six years. She popped an antacid tablet into her mouth but to no avail. The burning started again but unlike heartburn, it didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt good, like holding cold hands over a warm fire, or coming into a warm dry spot after being forced to stand in the icy rain for hours on end.

  Baby Doll rose up out of her seat again, only this time to stand all the way up. She made a move to the center aisle and then stood there frozen, not sure what to do next. Her new husband stood all the way up, took her hand and, using his senses, walked her to the altar and placed Baby Doll’s thin, work-roughened hand into the bishop’s large one.

  Eddie felt the sorrow and the hurt, the loneliness, the despair, the aching for help and not knowing where to turn in the woman’s tiny hand. He gazed into her eyes and saw a testimony that was guaranteed to bring somebody else to this altar.

  Queen Esther began to cry so hard, Joseph had to encircle her in the protection of his arms. Cousin Buddy hit his helmet a few times, then reached into the inside pocket of his baseball jacket and pulled out a starched white handkerchief that he had been saving to give to a lady in distress. He’d once seen a movie where a man handed a crying lady a clean hankie, and thought that had to be about the sweetest and kindest thing a man could do. He had been waiting for many years for an opportunity to do the same, and was glad that it was for his favorite lady on earth, Queen.

  “Don’t cry,” Cousin Buddy said sweetly as he gave his prized possession to her.

  Both Lamont and James were upset to see their favorite aunt cry like that, until it occurred to them that perhaps her tears were filled with joy. She had, after all, been after both Miss Baby Doll and Mr. Lacy to turn their lives over to Christ.

  “You have an incredible testimony, don’t you?” Eddie asked, anxious to discover how the Lord had moved in this woman’s life.

  “Yes,” Baby Doll whispered, surprised at the calm she felt.

  She had always thought that getting saved would hurt—that it would be a violent wrenching from the world as she knew it, to become a child of God. Queen Esther was so right when she always said, “You know the devil is a straight-up liar.” Because the lie she had believed all of these years was that her sins were so great, her life so poorly lived, her mistakes so expansive, it would take a whole lot of pain to get saved. She thought that she would hurt real bad, like the time she was beaten mercilessly by a petty drug dealer when she was a dime short the first and last time she took a mind to work in that area of “commerce.”

  “Mister,” she slurped out, drawing Eddie’s attention to her mouth and what looked like the putty cast a dentist took of your teeth. He thought that her maneuvering of those things like they were real dentures had to be one of life’s great mysteries.

  Ironically, to those who knew Baby Doll, she was actually looking pretty good this morning. She wasn’t wearing dark-colored socks in those yellow jelly shoes, her face was softer and rounder, she had gained some weight, and her clothes were not hanging off her body. Her hair was different, too. Gone were the funny-looking braids, colored rubber bands and barrettes. Instead, her coarse, natural gray hair was clean and shimmering in a becoming arrangement of sophisticated twists.

  “Mister,” she slurped again, “I have lived down in the hellhole of sin. I’ve seen thangs, and heard thangs, and done thangs, and thought about doing thangs that would give most of these finely dressed folks up in here nightmares on end. I’ve been insane, locked up in the crazy house, homeless, drunk, high, you name it. But I am still here and I am blessed. And my friend sitting over there . . .”

  Baby Doll pointed to Queen Esther.

  “. . . she told me all about Jesus and made me know just how much I’ve been blessed. And I want to tell the Lord that I am sorry for all of my sins. And I want the Lord to forgive me. And I want to be saved and receive the Holy Ghost and to give my life entirely over to Jesus. Can you help me do that, Mister?”

  Eddie and Rev. Quincey started laughing, as two of the three assistant pastors came and joined them at the altar. This was something they all wanted to be a part of.

  “Mother,” Eddie said to Johnnie, “did you bring your anointing oil with you?”

  Johnnie nodded as she dug in her purse around that big gun and found the oil. The same usher who had been doing her bidding all morning hurried to her side to get the bottle. He placed it in the bishop’s hand and sighed with relief when Mother Tate smiled at him.

  Eddie poured oil onto the palms of his hands and then passed the bottle around to every minister except Parvell. When everybody was “oiled up” to their own satisfaction, they surrounded Baby Doll and laid hands on her.

  “Give the church your name.”

  “My name is Baby Doll Henderson-Lacy because I just married my man, Lacy, here last week, y’all,” she chirped and slurped, every bit the blushing bride.

  Mr. Lacy puffed up at that announcement and laughed his trademark “heh, heh, heh.”

  Rev. Quincey had heard the term “love is blind” practically all his life. Never had it been as applicable as it was right now. He’d never met a couple who so perfectly balanced each other out. He sneaked a glance over at his wife, Lena, who was so tickled, she could hardly sit up straight and keep her mind “stayed on Jesus.”

  Obadiah narrowed his eyes to make Lena behave, working hard to keep those “church chuckles” welling up in him from spilling out. There was nothing worse than something happening right in the midst of the most serious part of a church service and it was so funny it made your sides hurt from keeping the laughter in check.

  Bishop Tate put his right hand on Baby Doll’s forehead and said, “Do you confess that Jesus is Lord? Will you make Him Lord of your life? Do you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? And do you humbly confess and repent of your sins?”

  “Yes,” she stated loudly. “Jesus is Lord. He is Lord of my life. The Bible says that he was raised from the dead and I believe the word of God and I believe He was raised from the dead. I humbly confess and repent of all of my sins.”

  Eddie smiled broadly.

  “You are saved, Mrs. Lacy, in Jesus’ name.”

  Rev. Quincey smiled at her and said, “Let the congregation say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “Louder. Y’all, somebody just got saved. That’s something to shout about!”

  “AMEN!” The congregation said loudly and with great enthusiasm.

  “That’s it, Mr. Pastor?” Baby Doll asked sweetly.

  “Not quite,” Rev. Quincey said. “Don’t you think you’ll need a church home to grow in your newfound salvation?”

  This time Baby Doll started to cry. It had been a long time since anybody had invited her to join anything.

  “You mean I can join this church and be a member?”

  “Yes, you can. Just turn around so that the congregation can extend you the right hand of fellowship.”
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  Baby Doll turned around and smiled. Then she held up her hand and said, “Mr. Pastor Man, may I please give a gift to my new church?”

  “Yes,” was all Rev. Quincey said.

  She looked up at Jarnquez in the choir loft and said, “Baby, I can sang. Will you help the musicians to follow me as I sang this song for the Lord and my new church?”

  At that point, everybody, including the ministers and the bishop, took a seat and got real quiet. Parvell, who had just been readmitted into the sanctuary by the ushers, sat down next to his Uncle Big Gold—whose presence at the service this morning was a shock even to him—and waited to hear this song.

  Bug leaned over to Theresa and whispered, “I show hope your cleaning lady can sang.”

  Baby Doll reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out the red plastic teeth box. She slipped her mold teeth out of her mouth and then put them in the box and snapped it shut. She started humming the hymn “Come, Ye Disconsolate.”

  Jarnquez gave the pianist and organist her key and instructed them to play one verse of the song. Baby Doll smiled and held out her hand for the portable microphone Mother Johnnie’s usher had just retrieved from the bishop and started into her song. It had been a long time since she had sung anything in front of anybody but Lacy. And nobody but the Lord had ever heard her sing a church song. She hoped that her memory didn’t fail her with the words too badly when she opened her mouth to sing:

  Come ye dis-con-ti-nent . . . where is de language . . .

  Come to ha’ mercy street . . . fervently kneel.

  Com’ere brang yo’ wounded hearts, Com’ere tell yo’ quaintance;

  Earth ain’t got no sorrow heaben cain’t heal.

  The only thing that kept that church, especially the youth choir, from howling with uncontrolled laughter was how beautiful Baby Doll’s voice was. She sounded like Gladys Knight. So, when she started singing the verse once more, folks forgot her words and only heard what the Lord wanted them to hear, which was:

  Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish,

  Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.

  Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;

  Earth hath no sorrow that heav’n cannot heal.

  At first, Lamont was just as tickled as the next person at Miss Baby Doll’s rendition of the hymn. But as he sat there, hymnal in hand, reading the correct words while listening to her beautiful and obviously anointed voice, tears started streaming down his cheeks. Here he was, with so much to be thankful for, and a woman who had seen every negative aspect of life imaginable, was standing in the very spot where he needed to be.

  Mr. Lacy had heard his beautiful wife sing to the songs on the radio and sound better than some of the artists she was singing with. But he’d never heard her sing for the Lord, and the difference between the two was night and day. When they first walked into the church, all he wanted was for his Baby Doll to find Jesus and get herself right with the Lord, so that she would feel better about herself. He’d never had much use for church or church folk. And in fact, Lacy had found far too many of them either truly lacking in the faith they professed, or as big a hypocrite as there ever was—like the so-called Rev. Parvell Sykes, who he didn’t think was any better than his Uncle Big Gold.

  But this morning, Baby Doll’s testimony got next to him. It made him remember what colors looked like before he lost his sight in the Vietnam War. It made him remember what a Carolina sky looked like when it was truly “Carolina blue.” It made him remember just how good one of those big, sexy ghetto booties looked in a tight red skirt. Lacy remembered, if only for a fleeting moment, the beauty that filled a woman’s eyes when she knew that you were truly making love to her with all your heart.

  And when his wife started singing that incredibly beautiful song with all those crazy lyrics, he remembered the promise he made to the Lord if he sent a platoon to rescue him, when he’d been shot down by “Charlie,” and was lying in a pool of his own blood, suddenly blind and hoping that he wouldn’t die in a foreign and hostile land. At the moment, Lacy told the Lord that he would give Him his life if he lived to see another day in the good ole US of A. It wasn’t until this day, that he was born all over again to see so many new days with eyes that were not born of the flesh but of the spirit of his sweet Lord.

  Lacy fell prostrate at the foot of the altar, hoping that his tears didn’t turn into heart-wrenching sobs. God had been so good to him all these years, and all he had given Him back in return for those blessings was a heart hardened by the pain and bitterness of knowing that he’d never be able to use his natural eyes to see again.

  “Father, please forgive me all of my sins. Please redeem me, save me, and make me worthy of one day living in Your Kingdom so that I can see Your face and hear Your voice say, Well done my good and faithful servant. For I would rather be a doorkeeper in Your house, Lord, than to set foot in the finest palace filled with wickedness and people who don’t know You.”

  Baby Doll ended her song and bent down to help her husband get up, so thankful that the Lord had answered her silent prayers for her dear, handsome Lacy.

  Rev. Albertson and Rev. Simmons hurried to give their assistance, while Eddie said, “Church, the Lord has done some mighty work up in here this morning.”

  “Amen,” sounded out all around the church.

  “And, I believe He has one more mighty work to perform. You see, there is someone in here who was raised to know the Lord, was saved at a young age and then strayed away from what he knows to be right. You know who you are. God is waiting on you to come back home.”

  Once more the church was quiet and still. A whole lot of folk were practically praying for the strength to stay still, and not start looking around the sanctuary to find out who the “you know who you are” was.

  Lamont felt a fire in his heart and then something he’d heard talked about but never felt himself. In fact, he hadn’t been too sure that “fire shut up in your bones” was even a real phenomenon. But if he weren’t sure then, he sure was certain now. That fire that started in his chest had now spread across his entire body and felt like it was shut right up in the marrow of his bones.

  Lamont stood up and walked as coolly as he could down to that altar. As soon as he grabbed ahold of the bishop’s hand, his mother stood up and started shouting, while his aunt ran right out into the aisle and did the holy dance without one note of music.

  That did it. He couldn’t stay cool one second longer. Lamont fell right down on his knees at that altar, and raised his hands up high, and called out, “I love you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. I’m home, I’m home.”

  Jarnquez got up and said, “Start singing: Just as I am without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me. And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”

  Rev. Quincey reached out and helped Lamont to his feet. He had been praying for his friend for years. And there were times when he almost felt like giving up because it seemed as if Lamont was so hardheaded and prideful that the Lord wouldn’t be able to make a dent in his rigidly set heart. But here was the answer to his prayers standing before him with a repentant spirit and a thirst for the Lord. The tears streamed down his own eyes as he beckoned to James to join his brother at the altar.

  James had been praying on Lamont, too. And like the pastor, had agonized over his brother’s determination to hold on to the world. As good a man as his brother was, he had that hard edge that comes from being in the world. Lamont believed his hardness accounted for his “confidence” and “business acumen.” At least he believed that mess until he ran up on the brick wall called the Durham Urban Development Committee and realized that he needed a serious and very un-worldly friend—Jesus.

  And James also secretly thought that same worldliness is what made Lamont so reluctant to find a better way of relating to Gwen. In the world, folks come up with all kinds of inept ways to compensate for a wrong they’ve committed against someone. But in the body of Chr
ist, that same person would go to the Lord, ask for His forgiveness, repent, and then seek out someone to pray for and with them on the matter. In Christ, Lamont would diligently seek the Lord’s guidance concerning the matter.

  James put his arms around his beloved big brother and said, “We’ve been waiting on you for a long time.”

  Bishop Tate knew that what he’d been sent to the church to do this morning was now complete. He hadn’t even known that the Lord had a specific task for him until he located the two individuals on assignment to stymie the flow of the Holy Spirit during the service and interfere with the salvation process. The first was Parvell Sykes. And the second was the extremely well-dressed misanthropic older brother (who bore a striking resemblance to Sykes) sitting all the way in the back laughing at the service like he was watching a comedy show. But that changed in a heartbeat when Mrs. Lacy got saved and turned the church out with anointed singing that gave new meaning to the term “malapropism.”

  As soon as she belted out that first line of side-splitting misapplied lyrics, that man hopped up and left the church so fast the heavy swinging doors practically revolved in a 360-degree turn.

  “If there’s one thing the devil can’t stand,” Eddie thought, “it’s the conversion from sinner to saint.”

  Chablis Jackson thought she’d seen everything when that lady joined the church and took her teeth out to sing a song, sounding like Gladys Knight and using all of the wrong words—a Kodak moment if there ever was one. Then, to put icing on the cake, that blind man fell out and got saved, even though he looked like he could sniff a fifth of Hennessy dry before he got around to taking the first sip from his shot glass. But what truly should have given sight to that little red blind man was her ex-man rededicating his life to Christ.

  “Lamont Green is a man of God,” she whispered incredulously, wishing that whatever was rolling up on folks in this church this morning would rub off on her mama long enough to make her remove those yellow rubber gloves and stop trying to sneak and wipe off the back of the pew with a tiny hand-wipe.