What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day...

by Pearl Cleage

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  The choir started walking now, swishing their robes as they walked down the center aisle and up to the choir loft. As they passed beside me, I waited to see which of these women who I passed at the grocery store or greeted at the gas station had been hiding a voice that made you want to believe whatever she believed just so you could sing that way. As I turned to look, Gerry Anderson caught my eye and returned my surprised, admiring smile without missing a beat, her voice running between us like a bright red ribbon.

  In that great gettin’ up mornin’,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  In that great gettin’ up mornin’,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  • 17

  if the good Reverend Mrs.’ voice was a surprise, the Good Reverend himself was a revelation. Tall, white-haired, and sixtyish, the Rev looked like an aging Cab Calloway and preached like Jesse Jackson. He had a long, black robe with full sleeves that billowed out like wings when he raised his arms in praise or flung them wide in surrender. His voice was rich and more powerful than his slender frame would lead you to believe.

  His sermon topic, as promised, was “No Hiding Place Down Here.” It was a fairly weird mixture of traditional references and contemporary anecdotes. The Apostles, for example, became the Jesus Posse, which I thought was going just a little too far, but at the heart of things, it was still a depressingly old-fashioned message about an all-seeing, always-judgmental God the Father, who’s got a lake of fire waiting for your sinful ass if you don’t shape up.

  I hate that kind of preaching. It scares the shit out of people for an hour on Sunday and hopes the threat of hellfire will keep them under control until they get back for another dose the following week. I’ve been reading one of Joyce’s Buddhist books and it was a revelation to me that an entire spiritual practice could be constructed without all that guilt and punishment and damnation.

  The Rev, of course, was a Baptist, not a Buddhist, but our basic theological differences aside, I had to admit the threat of an angry God had never sounded so good.

  The Good Reverend was charismatic and he knew how to work it. After painting a picture of all the terrible things in the world from which any sane person would want to hide, the Rev came slowly out from behind the pulpit and began to pass among his congregation.

  “But the Lord has already told us that there is no hiding place down here. Down here among the sinners and the unsaved. There is no hiding place down here!”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “So what do you say when that alcohol says it can hide you?”

  “No,” said a church full of people who had been drinking all week.

  “And what do you say when that dope says it can hide you?”

  “No,” said a church full of people who couldn’t wait to go home and get high.

  “And what do you say when that Devil sends that snake, that pet of Satan, just like he sent to Eve, and tries to tell you that sex can hide you?”

  “No,” said a church full of people who started having sex with as many people as they could as soon as they hit puberty.

  But the Rev was on a roll, touching this one’s shoulder as he passed, smiling Christian encouragement at that one as she gazed up at him, building and blending the message and the feeling and the promise with such conviction and style and passion that suddenly a woman threw up her hands and wailed. It was a long, high, desperate-for-relief sound, and every woman in the room recognized it.

  That was all it took. By the time the Rev was through, two women had shouted, one had flung herself at his neck, and three more had swooned in their seats and been fanned back to consciousness by two large deaconesses in white dresses who were standing by for that express purpose. When the choir came in right on time as he opened the doors of the church to new members, his wife’s voice again promised sweet rewards for those who, like her, found their way to the feet of Jesus. Eyes closed, the Rev sat in his thronelike chair behind the pulpit, seemingly exhausted by the demands of his message.

  I was impressed with the quality of their act, but confused. They were good at this. As a team, probably one of the best I’d ever seen. It was sort of like seeing Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle singing Puccini in a community talent show. You’re glad to be there, but you can’t help but wonder, What the hell are they doing in Idlewild?

  After service, Joyce set up a meeting with the Good Reverend and his Mrs. for tomorrow afternoon, and we found out that another house got robbed last night. Hattie McNeil has got to be eighty and she lives alone. They took her TV, her radio, and all the money she had in her purse. She was in her room asleep and she never heard a thing. She came downstairs this morning and freaked out when she started thinking about all the things that could have happened if they’d come upstairs and found an old woman home alone. Joyce dropped me off and went to check on Hattie.

  I guess the Rev had it right. No hiding place down here.

  • 18

  i dreamed about walking in Eddie’s garden. I’m wearing a long, white dress and I’ve got on this big-ass straw hat and I’m holding up my skirt so it won’t get dirty. Eddie’s walking right in front of me telling me what he planted and when it’s coming up. Neither one of us has any shoes on and the dirt is soft and warm and moist without being squishy.

  He stops to show me a new kind of tomato he’s planted this year for the first time. I am surprised to see that it is perfectly golden and not red at all like the other tomatoes he grows. It is also small enough for him to hold four or five in his palm like candy. I take one and pop it into my mouth, savoring the warm sweetness, and I drop my skirt to reach for another and the wind catches it and lifts me up like wings and I hold his hand and his hair lifts him up like wings, too, and all I hear is the sound of the wind and the sound of our laughter and then he leans over and tells me the name of the golden tomatoes.

  “Yellow Plum,” he says into my ear. “They’re Yellow Plum.”

  And then I woke up.

  • 19

  joyce figured she’d need as much help as she could get trying to outmaneuver the Good Reverend and his Mrs., so she drafted me into going to the meeting with her. I groaned all the way there, of course. That’s a younger sister’s job, no matter how old you get, but the truth of it is, I’m really curious about the dynamic duo. There’s something just a little off center about them, but I haven’t figured out what yet.

  Their grandson was at church yesterday, along with Eartha’s brother from hell, Frank, who seems to be his best friend. Joyce said the rumor is that Tyrone’s mother left him with his grandparents for the weekend and never came back, but that’s just a rumor. She also told me that Frank was there only because it is part of the condition of his long probation. The judge who sentenced him must have seen too many Andy Hardy movies. Send the young man to the country! Get him some fresh air and sunshine! Make sure he goes to Sunday school! He’s still young enough to turn his life around! Of course, he’s practically illiterate, couldn’t get a job if there were any around to be gotten, and has no idea how the world works, but hey! He’ll probably get a great tan out of it anyway!

  When the announcement was made about the robbery, Tyrone and Frank looked at each other and snickered like the idea of a terrified old lady sleeping through what could have been something really dangerous was the funniest thing they’d heard in ages. After service, they circled the church yard like lions waiting for a distracted antelope to separate itself from the herd long enough to be vulnerable. A couple of girls giggled in their direction, but nobody made an approach.

  I felt sorry for them. I’d seen boys in my Atlanta neighborhood grow into swaggering young men who were suddenly scary until you looked into their still baby faces and realized who they used to be, but I also knew how dangerous they were. I’d seen Frank hit that girl like he didn’t care if he broke every bone in her face. I’d seen Tyrone smoking dope right behind his grandmother’s back. It was tempting bu
t foolhardy to focus on their vulnerability instead of your own.

  When we got there, the front door was unlocked and we could hear the sound of some pretty tortured hunt-and-peck typing coming from the church office. Gerry was sitting behind an Underwood upright frowning at the keyboard as if somebody had mysteriously rearranged it. When she looked up and saw us, she smiled and held up her hands in mock surrender to the ancient machine.

  “I told the Good Reverend if he doesn’t hurry up and find us a new church secretary, he better!”

  Joyce and I were still standing in the door, and for a minute she just looked at us. The intensity of her smile’s wish to be believed always gave her face a brittle appearance, and the complete coldness of her eyes didn’t help matters.

  “I’m here for the meeting,” Joyce said. “This is my sister, Ava.”

  “We met the other day,” Gerry said. “Such an unusual name. Does it run in your family?”

  I wanted to say, Only if you believe my mother’s tale that Ava Gardner was a mulatto second cousin of ours, once removed, who had managed to pass her way into the movies and was therefore worthy of having children named in her honor, but I just shook my head no.

  “Well, come in, come in,” Gerry said. “Our little group is going to be just the three of us, I’m afraid.”

  She motioned us toward two wobbly straight-back chairs and settled herself behind the pastor’s desk as if she belonged there.

  “Isn’t Reverend Anderson coming?” Joyce said in a tone that carried just a whiff of warning. Joyce has calmed down a lot lately, but her reputation as a firebrand had probably preceded her. When she was in high school, she chained herself to the church front door to protest the war in Vietnam. Of course, that was long before the Andersons got here, but it was too good a story for somebody not to have shared it in the normal recitation of local who’s who. Joyce even got her picture in the Lake County paper. Idlewild Teen Protest Reflects National Mood. I was so proud of her, I took it to school for show and tell.

  Gerry smiled again. “As he and I prayed together earlier in preparation for this very meeting, he received a sign from the Lord, praise him! He rose and went immediately to work on his message for next Sunday morning, understanding, as he must, that divine inspiration is not under any obligation to petty cares and earthly schedules. He’ll try to stick his head in later.”

  Sure he will. Joyce had been right about the Rev. He was a preaching somethin’, but when it came to doing the dirty work, Gerry was definitely the Head Negro in Charge. Excuse me. Negress.

  “All right.” Joyce decided to be cool. “I’d like to know why the Sewing Circus meeting was canceled.”

  “Postponed,” Gerry said. “The Good Reverend wanted me to make it clear that the meeting has only been postponed until we reach a meeting of the minds.”

  Joyce just looked at her.

  “And I’m sure that such a meeting can be reached, aren’t you?”

  “I hope so,” Joyce said. “I think we have to do more for our young people, not less.”

  “The Good Reverend couldn’t agree more.” Gerry nodded enthusiastically as if now convinced that they were on the same wavelength. “As you may know, at our last congregation, the Good Reverend created a youth program that became a model for churches all over the Midwest. We had over two hundred young men actively involved in a program of Christian education.”

  “Where were the young women?” Joyce said.

  Gerry glanced sharply at Joyce and then modified her expression to convey her disappointment at the lack of understanding reflected in the question. “The Good Reverend saw our young men as a top priority, both as part of his calling and personally.” She lowered her eyes briefly and her voice softened a little. “One of the reasons this congregation is such a blessing is that it allows us to remove our Tyrone from the evil influence of the city and bring him to a place where God’s majesty is evident all around us.”

  Too bad, I thought. They came all this way so Tyrone and Frank could find each other.

  “The Good Reverend is an expert on the kind of outreach work you’re trying to do with the young women in this community—”

  “I thought he was an expert on programs for young men,” Joyce said sweetly.

  Gerry ignored her. “And what the Good Reverend has found is that what these children need is a straightening of their overall Christian values. They are already overstimulated and confused by all the terrible sex material aimed at them.”

  She got that right.

  “The last thing they need is more information about those kinds of things.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “The things those brochures were talking about.”

  “And what things were those?”

  “I don’t think we have to play games here, do we, Sister Mitchell? I think we both know what I’m talking about.”

  I felt like I was back in Atlanta listening to people talking in tongues, trying not to say HIV. Joyce took a deep breath and her voice was very calm.

  “They are ignorant, Sister Anderson. They need information about everything, but especially about AIDS. Their generation is dying faster than anybody else because they don’t know how to protect themselves.”

  “Abstinence.” Gerry’s voice carried the righteous conviction of people who still think the best way to combat any galloping social ill—drug abuse, sexual irresponsibility, teenage pregnancy—is to simply advise those undisciplined few who are tempted to just say no.

  “It doesn’t work,” Joyce said. “We’ve had four new babies born in the last six months to girls who are still not twenty years old.”

  Gerry’s voice cut in like a hot knife through butter. “Weren’t all of them active in the Sewing Circle?” I wanted Joyce to reach across the desk and slap her, but she didn’t. Joyce is nonviolent.

  “Yes.”

  “So I guess your method isn’t so surefire either, is it, Sister Mitchell?”

  They looked at each other across the desk and then Joyce said slowly, “No, I guess it isn’t surefire at all, Sister Anderson. It’s probably many things, but surefire is definitely not among them.”

  Gerry looked pleased. “Well, see there. We agree on a lot of things after all.”

  Joyce smiled suddenly and stood up, extending her hand. “I appreciate your time. I’m sorry Reverend Anderson couldn’t join us, but I’m looking forward to his message on Sunday, so I can’t really be disappointed, can I?”

  “Praise God!” Gerry got to her feet and shook Joyce’s hand.

  “Maybe we can talk again after I’ve had a chance to think about some of the excellent points you brought out this morning.”

  I thought Joyce was laying it on pretty thick, but Gerry was eating it up.

  “Of course we can, dear,” she said, holding out her dry, smooth hand to me. “And it was so good to have you in our little congregation on Sunday, too.”

  “You have a wonderful voice,” I said, following Joyce’s lead with some flattery of my own. I wasn’t lying either. The woman could blow.

  “He blessed me with an instrument to glorify his name!” she said as we headed for the door, then Joyce turned around with the phoniest innocent look on her face you could ever imagine.

  “Sister Anderson? When shall I bring you the bulletin announcement for next Wednesday? It’s only our regular nursery school scheduling session. Not very exciting, but if it helps free up these young mothers so they can concentrate more fully on the word of God, it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

  Gerry peered closely at Joyce, but Joyce was totally cool.

  “Of course, dear,” Gerry said. “Just be sure it gets here by Thursday noon. I’m not as good at this typing business as I used to be.”

  When we got outside, I started fussing immediately, but Joyce stopped me.

  “Wait until we pull out,” she said. “I’m sure she’s still watching us.”

  “You’re not going along with all that, are you?” I sa
id as we climbed into the car.

  “Of course not, but now that she thinks I am, I’ve got some room to move around for a minute or two. She never comes to our meetings. I’ll tell her we’re going to be discussing the nursery from now until Christmas if that’s what makes her happy. The woman’s out of touch. She’s worrying about them storing up points in heaven when what they need is some survival lessons.”

  As Joyce pulled the car out of the empty parking lot, I looked in the side mirror and saw Gerry standing in the window, watching.

  • 20

  i had finally convinced Joyce to let me pamper her a little bit with a hard wash, deep conditioner, and rebraiding. When I rubbed some warm oil on her scalp and snuck in a little neck massage, she sighed and closed her eyes like I had finally hit the exact spot that needed it.

  “You were right,” she said. “This feels great.”

  “I’m always right.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she smiled. I rubbed a little oil in the kitchen where the hair is always so soft it feels like a baby’s first growth. In beauty school, they told us to call the “kitchen” the “nape,” but any black beautician worth the name knows you can’t use a term that has the word “nap” in it. Joyce sighed again. “That feels wonderful.”

  “I’m good at this.” I wasn’t bragging. I always made good money, but I never really enjoyed it until I got into the psychology of the whole process. I knew sisters spent a lot of time and money and energy on our hair, but I figured it was all about looking good for whatever brother was on the home front or on the horizon. Then I started watching my clients and listening to them more closely. They all talk a mile a minute. I’m not required to talk much. My function is more to ask the right questions, praise whatever course of action they have already followed, show indignation or approval at appropriate intervals, and make sure I don’t cut it too short on the sides or leave them under the dryer any longer than absolutely necessary.