“Everything but this.” Her features softened, and she lowered her eyes. “I didn’t tell you this, Elwyn—because, I guess, I didn’t want you to hold it against me. You’re so perfect, so holy.”
“I’m not that holy. I told you that I deceived my parents in order to take piano lessons.”
“That’s small, Elwyn. Everyone does little things like that,” she said.
“I took piano lessons with Sister McGowan in order to be around Barry.”
I shook my head. “You never told me that. You’re making this all up.”
“Elwyn, you’re so innocent, you wouldn’t understand how these things happen. If I had told you about Barry and me, you’d have held it against me.”
“I’d never hold anything against you.” I said a silent prayer for courage, and the Lord sent me courage. “How can I hold anything against you, Peachie? I love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I do. I love you—”
“Elwyn, do you?”
“—and I think you love me too, Peachie.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“You knew. We both knew.”
“Oh, Elwyn.”
I let go of the gearshift and found her hand. “Don’t go to Lakeland with Barry. Stay here with me. You are the love of my life. You are the only girl I will ever love.”
She squeezed my hand in both of hers for one hope-filled moment. Then she pushed it away.
“Stay, Peachie.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” I said.
Peachie patted her stomach. I had to look twice before I understood. Now it made sense, but impossible sense.
“You and Barry?”
“Four months.”
“But that’s a sin. Fornication. The Bible says—”
“It is better to marry than to burn.”
“But you have defiled your body—the Temple of God.”
“God forgives seventy times seven. Will you forgive just once, Elwyn?”
How could she smile such a cruel smile? She was mocking me. And the church. Where was her shame? I wanted to cry, really cry. My Peachie, whom I had never kissed. Gone. Out of the ark of safety.
“Christ is married to the backslider. Barry and I went before God on our knees. We repented of our sin. But you, Elwyn, will you forgive us?”
“I’m not God. It’s not for me to forgive.”
“It’s important to me. You are my true friend.”
“I’m not God.”
She made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. My Mazda stalled again. I got out, walked around to the front, and popped the hood. I jiggled as Peachie clicked. Oh God, I prayed, give me grace.
I didn’t feel so holy as I waited for the last remnants of the Missionary Society to leave Sister Morrisohn’s house.
My grandmother, of course, was the last to go. She stood on the porch with her heavy arm draped over Sister Morrisohn’s shoulder telling the grieving widow a last important something. As my grandmother talked, she scanned the surroundings. East to west. What was she looking for? Did she think I would make my move with everyone watching? She should have known that I would park down the street behind a neighbor’s overgrown shrubbery where I could see and not be seen.
My grandmother embraced Sister Morrisohn and kissed her goodbye on the cheek. At last, she lumbered down the short steps with the help of Sister McGowan (the mother of Barry!), who often gave her rides now that she was too old to drive. As Sister McGowan’s car pulled off the property, I fired up my engine.
I left my black funeral jacket and tie in the car. I prayed for courage.
I rang her doorbell. “Elwyn. Come in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sit down. Would you like something to drink? There’s some fruit punch left.”
“Okay.”
I was sucked into the plush red-velvet couch. Mounted on the wall across from me was a large oil painting of them on their wedding day. She was chubbier as a young woman. He looked about the same. She had only been twenty-six the day they married. He had been sixty-two. Beneath the painting was the grand piano he had bid me play every time I visited his house. I remembered that two years prior, the youth choir had performed the Christmas cantata right here in their living room. I had played “O Holy Night,” while Barry, on Christmas break from Bible College, had sung. I had foolishly thought that Peachie’s enthusiastic applause was meant for me.
Sister Morrisohn, still wearing black, returned with a glass of fruit punch and a napkin. I took it from her and she sat down on the couch a few inches away from me. Limb brushed against limb. I drank the better part of my punch in one swallow.
She cupped her stomach. “I don’t know when my appetite will return. I haven’t eaten but a mouthful of food since I woke up and found him. I knew it would come one day, but I still wasn’t ready for it. We’re never ready for it, are we?”
“Well,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Well.”
“If it weren’t for the church, I don’t know how I would have made it. Everyone has been so nice to me.”
In a voice that flaked from my throat, I said, “You must have loved him.”
“Yes. I was a very different person when we met. He saved me from myself. He led me to the Lord.”
She was different when he met her. I prayed, Lord forgive me, as I glanced at her doubly pierced ears. What was she like before? Could she be that different person again?
“Before you met him, what kind of sins did you commit?”
“Sins? I don’t think about them anymore.” She raised holy hands. “Praise God, I’m free.”
“Praise God,” I said, raising holy hands, careful not to spill the remainder of my drink. “But are you ever tempted?”
“All are tempted, Elwyn, but only the yielding is sin.” She clapped her hands. “Hallelujah.”
“Hallelujah” died on my lips as my eyes followed her neckline down to the top button of her funeral dress. Bright flesh showed through black lace like a beacon. All the signs were there: her smell, her touch, her plea that I not forget her. Limb against limb. I would not let her get away as Peachie had. “But do you ever feel like yielding?”
“What?”
I folded my napkin under my glass of punch and with trembling hand set the glass on the octagonal coffee table before the couch. I turned and reached for her hand.
“Elwyn, what are you doing?”
I kissed her on the mouth. I pressed her hands up against my chest. She tore away from me and sprang to her feet. “Elwyn—help me, Jesus!—what are you doing?”
“You’re a beautiful woman,” I squeaked, but it was no use. She was not to be seduced.
“Elwyn!”
I buried my head in my hands.
“You need prayer, Elwyn,” she said sadly. “You need the Lord.”
“Yes,” I replied, without looking up. “Yes.”
Now there was a soothing hand on my neck like a mother’s. I wept and I wept.
“Serving the Lord at your age is not easy, Elwyn. Don’t give up.” Sister Morrisohn rubbed my neck and prayed. “Christ is married to the backslider. Confess your secret sins.”
And confess I did.
And then I wept some more because the more she rubbed my neck, the more forgiveness I needed. For when she got down on her knees beside me and began to pray against my face, the very scent of her expanded my lungs like a bellows, and her breathing—her warm breath against my cheeks, my ear, into my eyes burning hot with tears—was everything I imagined a lover’s kiss might be.
My Father’s Business
At sixteen, I met my first great temptation, and I yielded with surprisingly little resistance, I who had proclaimed myself strong in the Lord. There had been, it seems, a chink in my armor, through which Satan had thrust his wicked sword.
As I wondered how I could have felt so strong and yet been so weak, I labored mighti
ly to get back into the ark of safety.
I took a more active role in the Lord’s work. On Sundays, I rose early and joined the maintenance brethren in preparing the main hall for morning service; I stayed late to help them clean up afterward. Brother Al and Brother Suggs were surprised but happy to work with me. Often, we discussed music.
“Elwyn, I really like when you do that dum-dum-da-dum thing at the end of service,” said Brother Suggs, a retired seaman of about seventy who had both a stoop and a limp. When he pushed a broom, he resembled a man perpetually playing shuffleboard.
Brother Al, a squat man with a massive chest and arms like telephone poles, shouted down from the ladder upon which he stood replacing a cylinder of fluorescent light: “I was first trumpet in my high school band.”
Unemployed and in his late twenties, Brother Al spent his days lifting weights or visiting the three children he had sired out of wedlock with a Nicaraguan seamstress named Bettie. This was, of course, before he had accepted the Lord.
“Maybe you and me’ll do a duet one Sunday,” Brother Al suggested. “Maybe we will, Brother,” I answered, scraping chewing gum from the underside of a pew with a putty knife.
Now on those Sundays when it was not my turn to play piano for the youth choir, I stood as usher at the entrance to the church: I’d rather be an usher in the house of the Lord than a prince in the palace of hell. My legs, standing motionless for the better part of the hour, were diligent for the Lord, my knees strong and true.
I stopped the children from talking or fighting, tapped them awake when they fell asleep. “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” Christ said. When babies cried, I was quick to pull them from their grateful mothers’ arms and take them outside into the calming sunlight, or lead some other mother—a visitor—to the restroom at the back where she could change a soiled diaper, or perhaps nurse her baby.
When the Holy Spirit descended, I waited for Him to touch one of His favorites—Sisters Davis, Breedlove, Naylor, or Hutchinson—and set her to trembling, to move upon her so powerfully, in fact, that she would collapse. I would rush to the fallen sister and drape the velvet shawl over her spasming legs, hiding what would otherwise be revealed—the usher is the guardian of decency—and then with the help of another usher, I would carry the fallen sister to the nursery where she could rest on a cot until the Spirit had passed.
Scripture says it is not through our works that we are saved, but only through His Grace, and Scripture can’t be challenged. I reasoned, however, that if I were indeed going to work, then let it be in the service of the Lord.
It struck me that part of my problem was that I didn’t pray enough; yes, morning, noon, and evening found me on my knees, head bowed, but what about the times in between? Scripture admonishes us to pray without ceasing, so I increased my standard prayers to five times a day and began a campaign of fasting on the weekends.
One Sunday afternoon, during the lull between morning service and youth hour, I sat in my bedroom reading from the Book of Daniel, searching perhaps for my own handwriting on the wall.
I heard my grandmother say: “Elwyn’s not eating today?”
As was customary, we had guests over for Sunday dinner—my grandmother and Sister McGowan, my old piano teacher.
My mother answered, “Elwyn’s fasting.”
“Fasting? Every time I come over here he’s fasting.”
My mother said, “All of us Christians should be fasting along with Elwyn. There is so much trouble in the world.”
“Especially the way them Arabs have shot up the gas prices,” said my father.
“Please pass the salt,” said Sister McGowan.
“Here it is, Sister,” said my father. “Over there in the Middle East, there’s sure to be a war. Armageddon.”
“We are living in the last days,” said my mother.
“Watch and see if the Lord doesn’t return soon,” said my grandmother. “Watch and see.” There was a chorus of Amens, and then she continued, “I still think he’s been too serious lately. Something’s bothering him.”
My mother said: “‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’ The Lord was only twelve when He said that.”
My grandmother’s voice boomed, “Don’t quote Scripture with me, girl.”
“Mother,” said my mom timidly.
“I know my grandson. And I know—”
“So much salt?” I heard my father say.
Sister McGowan answered, “I know it’s bad for my blood pressure, but I’ve had more of a taste for it since Barry and Peachie announced they’re getting married.”
Oh Peachie. My foggy eyes could not read the prophet. I found my ear moving closer to the open door. Why did I want to hear what I already knew?
“Peachie and Barry make a nice couple,” said my father. “I pray their children don’t witness Armageddon.
“They’re so talented,” added my mother.
Then there was awkward laughter as they attempted to maintain the pleasant air.
“Humph,” snorted my grandmother, “all this time I thought she was Elwyn’s girl.”
“Mother,” said my mom, “Elwyn doesn’t have a girl.”
“At sixteen?” said my grandmother.
“But he likes girls, I can tell you.” My father laughed without vigor. “He’s my son.”
“I-thought-Elwyn-liked-Peachie,” my grandmother said, punching each word.
It became quiet.
I pictured my grandmother, her large arms folded across her chest, her head tilted at a defiant angle, and everyone else seeming to eat but only just touching their lips with empty forks, or filling their mouths with drink they did not swallow. My grandmother was an old-time saint. She wielded the truth like the double-edged sword Saint Paul says it is. She was noted for rebuking the women of the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters when in the late ’50s they thought it was acceptable to straighten their hair. Later when the skirtlike gauchos became popular, my grandmother exhorted the women not to wear them because skirtlike or not, gauchos are pants, and women aren’t supposed to wear pants.
And chastity? My grandmother’s chastity was legendary among the Faithful. She had kept her virginity until age thirty-four, “and would have kept it longer,” she always said confidently, “if the right man hadn’t come along.”
The right man was Private Cooper.
None of us except for the real old-timers had ever met my mother Isadore’s father, but from what Gran’ma had revealed about him over the years, we knew Private Cooper had been a migrant laborer and a country preacher.
Private Cooper was foreign born, she told us, a Jamaican, but when Gran’ma met him, he had been living in America for several years and spoke American English with only a slight accent. Upon hearing him speak for the first time, Gran’ma (who was known as Sister Mamie Culpepper back then, or Sister Mamie because she was still a maiden) had guessed incorrectly that he was from the Bahamas, where folks were known to talk funny. There were lots of Bahamians around South Florida back in those days working the agricultural circuit for the big fruit and vegetable farmers alongside the Mexicans and the regular American black folk. In fact, the small wooden houses with the slanted roofs and the porches out front that you see in places like Overtown, Coconut Grove, and Goulds to this very day are Bahamian-style houses.
My grandmother Mamie Cooper (née Culpepper) herself was the offspring of field laborers. She was born in Tifton, Georgia, but didn’t remember much about the place (or her own father who had stayed behind) because her mother had brought her to Florida when she was too young for it to stick. Her earliest memories were the series of small wooden shack homes in South Florida as they followed the crops through the yearly cycle of picking oranges and grapefruit and lemons and limes and tomatoes and peppers and onions, and chopping sugar cane with her mother and her aunti (who had no name that I ever heard of other than “Aunti”).
When she first met Cooper, Gran’m
a knew right away he had come from somewhere else. It was not just the hint of accent. He wore his suit too tight, and he let too much cuff show. When he ran—and often he did run in his fervor on the pulpit at tent meetings—his knees didn’t bend enough, and his arms, with the Bible tucked tight under one of them, hung straight down at his sides. Some of the boys, the other cutters and pickers, joked: “He’s a big man, but he runs like a girl.”
“He does not run like a girl,” Sister Mamie would say in his defense. She knew the other boys were just being mean out of jealousy. He was a good preacher, a fast fruit picker, and he was not afraid to court Mamie, who was on fire for the Lord and had already dismissed a goodly number of the same jacklegged suitors who were poking fun at Cooper.
“He’s so young for you, Mamie. He’s got to be ten years younger than you, if not more. You know that means trouble,” some of the ladies would warn. But she knew where that was coming from too. These lady friends of hers believed that if a woman waited so long to marry she deserved only the slimmest of the pickings, but Cooper was handsomer and more gentlemanly than all of their ugly, old dried-up men.
She first saw him in the orange groves near Goulds, shirtless, swinging a machete. He cut quite a figure. When she found she couldn’t get him off her mind, she prayed and asked the Lord if he was the one. The Lord told her yes. They met formally at the tent meeting he was running with the permission of the local preacher, none other than Brother Buford Morrisohn, who had come from up north to build the Faithful flock down here in South Florida, where Catholics, AMEs, Holy Rollers, atheists, and Baptists were in abundance. Sister Mamie and her family had been mostly Holy Rollers and “jump up” Baptists until Brother Morrisohn arrived, but they had been among the first to convert and they were strong in their faith and brought many into the fold.
Their hands first touched as Gran’ma, the blushing Mamie Culpepper, dropped her coins in the collection plate.
It was around the time of the war, and there was a training camp set up down there. It was common to see men in jeeps or armored vehicles rolling through the old dirt roads. A lot of the boys back then were joining up. It was a great opportunity for black men to make some good money to support their families. It was a great opportunity for black women who were looking for husbands who could take care of them properly.
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