But Mamie was thirty-four, and she had just found love and she didn’t want her man leaving to go fight some war no matter how much money he might send back home. She warned Cooper that she would not marry him if he planned on joining the war. He told her he would not join because he was in love. Their two-and-a-half-week courtship was chaste and pleasant. Brother Morrisohn officiated the small ceremony, attended by a few friends plus Aunti and Brother Morrisohn’s first wife, Mother Glovine. Gran’ma’s mother, whom she called Momma, had passed away a few years earlier so she was not there to see her holy daughter finally marry. Shortly after the wedding, my mother Isadore was conceived. It was the perfect love.
Cooper was also a good cook, Gran’ma would tell us.
“He could cook a duck and make it taste like pork!” she would boast, as her tongue lolled in her mouth and her dentures clicked. “You should taste his curry goat!”
In the grainy black-and-white photograph of him that she kept in a locket she always carried in her purse—never on a chain around her neck, for jewelry is jewelry, and jewelry is sin—he was wearing a polkadot jacket and a striped ascot. He was a smiling, fair-skinned man with sleepy, wide-spaced eyes and his hair was slicked back and parted at a jaunty angle. He looked a little bit like the secular singer Cab Calloway. Neither my mother nor I bore any resemblance to Cooper. We were dark like Gran’ma, with close-set eyes and a rougher texture of hair.
Then one day Cooper suddenly up and joined the war. Times were very hard and patriotism was high. Gran’ma did not want him to go. She told him killing was a sin. Even the killing of Nazis.
He told her volunteering was his duty to his adopted country. It was a righteous war. And besides, the Lord would protect him. The Lord would protect them all.
The way Gran’ma explained it, “We fought. We were in love, we loved the Lord, but we were husband and wife, so we fought. That happens in a marriage sometimes. Even now I’m ashamed of myself. What Cooper wanted to do was good. It was a noble thing. I didn’t see it like that back then. I just wanted my man.” Gran’ma would admit sadly, “The devil got ahold of me. A woman should submit herself to her husband. Cooper was so mad. I’m sure if I hadn’t been pregnant, he would have hit me. I would have deserved it too.”
My mother Isadore was born three months after Private Cooper was shipped off to Europe with the other young men. Aunti was the midwife. Private Cooper sent his wife a letter reaffirming their love, in spite of it all. Gran’ma mailed him a photograph of their child. A month or so later, she received a letter from the government telling her how she should be proud to be married to a dead man who had served his country so bravely.
“What hurt most,” Gran’ma always said, “was that the letter I had sent him with the photograph of Isadore in it was returned unopened. Private Cooper had never seen his child.”
My grandmother, Sister Mamie Cooper, that great old-time saint, never remarried, but she still wore her wedding band or carried it in her bosom when her arthritis was acting up. It was the only piece of jewelry she owned.
“Jewelry is jewelry, and jewelry is a sin, but the wedding band is sanctified by God,” she would explain. “It shows a woman’s submission to her husband, who is the head of her house, as Christ is the head of the Church.”
It was about a half minute before my grandmother’s voice broke the silence: “But now I guess Peachie and Barry have to do what’s right.”
“I’ve seen them … they do love each other,” said Sister McGowan tentatively.
I felt a useless anger well up in me. This anger was an emotion I, the meek and forgiving Christian, was unused to. Anger obscured the obvious: Peachie was lost; and the other one, the one I had offended, the widow, should never be mine. I prayed for a clear head.
“It’s probably Elwyn’s fault,” my grandmother said. “He’s too serious for these modern girls, that’s what.”
“He tries to be a good Christian,” my mother said.
“I guess you can’t blame him,” said my grandmother. “But he could at least give me a hug. He played so nice today.”
“Yes, he did,” my mother said.
“Lord, I’m proud of that boy,” my grandmother said. “He’s going to do great things for the Lord. He just has to wait upon the Lord.”
“He was always my best student,” Sister McGowan said.
“The actual city of Armageddon,” said my father, “is somewhere in the Middle East, isn’t it?”
Fasting left me numb, light-headed, closer to God. Fasting was good. But as I heard the sound of forks clinking against the good china again, my stomach growled. I sipped from my glass of water, which was the only thing the Faithful were allowed to consume on a fast.
Lord, give me strength, I prayed, to fast and to forgive. Give me a clean heart, Lord, that I may follow Thee.
Then I headed out to the dining room and greeted Sister McGowan and gave my grandmother her hug.
At my high school, I did not speak to my acquaintances except to witness to them.
Admittedly, a large number of students fled at the sight of me. Others hungrily accepted the tracts and Bibles I handed out. There was always a crowd at the prayer meetings I held in the back of the cafeteria during lunch. Many came to laugh and deride, but others came to bow their heads and utter their first timid words to their Creator. More than a few shed tears of repentance.
I skipped classes in order to confront those of my fellows who were themselves skipping to smoke marijuana cigarettes and vent their carnality in the dark dressing chambers between the band room and the auditorium. These last were not happy to see me, but as God was on my side, they came to respect, both spiritually and literally, the power of the light I brought. None could escape the Faithful servant of God.
I was on the battlefield for my Lord.
In fact, I increased my evangelistic efforts so much so that I found myself barely paying attention at school.
I was busy saving lost souls—John Feinstein, Eldridge Pomerantz, Marco Japonte, Marigold Hendricks, the bubbly Anderson twins, Tina and Sabina, and many more to whom I was spiritual leader. What did I care about trigonometry?
I ended up sitting on a backless chair in the principal’s office.
Mr. Byrd was a short man with a voice that thundered. His office was dominated by a large wooden desk overflowing with pink and yellow sheets of paper. In a picture frame nailed to the wall directly behind the desk there was a color photograph of Mr. Byrd and a plump woman wearing a pair of riding pants and riding boots. The woman stood a few inches taller than Mr. Byrd, who had his arm around her waist.
“Just stop it,” Mr. Byrd said. He sat on the edge of his desk, an unlit pipe hanging out of his mouth. “Stop it.”
“I am a child of God,” I said.
“Amen. I’m a deacon. A Baptist,” he said. “But I’ll expel you if you don’t stop it.”
“Then you understand, Brother Deacon. I’ve got to do my Father’s business.”
“Just stop it.” The short man’s heavy voice seemed to shake the very walls.
“No, sir.”
“Would you like me to call your parents?”
“They support my evangelism.”
He nodded. “That’s right. You’re all fanatics. That whole Church of the Blessed Christ Walking Whatever-you-call-its.”
I was prepared for such as he, and I said, “The Faithful is what we are called. Feel free to make fun of us because we don’t drink, don’t smoke, and our women don’t wear pants.”
“Pants?” Cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand, Mr. Byrd glanced back at the picture on the wall of him and the woman in the riding pants. He eyed me. “What’s wrong with pants?”
“Pants,” I informed, “Deuteronomy 22:5. The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man.”
“And you don’t danceth or weareth jewelry either?” he mocked. “We do not.”
“King David danced. He wore a good deal of jewelry too,” he offered.
“Deuteronomy is Old Testament too.”
“Well, Christ didn’t do away with everything under the old law.”
“Not those things which pleaseth your church, at any rate,” said Mr. Byrd slyly as he hopped off the desk. He raised the volume of his already powerful voice. “They didn’t even have pants in the Old Testament!”
I was undaunted, but my time was too precious to argue with such as Mr. Byrd. I should be out serving the Lord saving lost souls. I said to him, just as slyly, “I guess Baptists can do just about any old thing they please.”
Mr. Byrd let out a dry laugh, pointing at me. “Oh, no. Don’t mistake us for you.” As Mr. Byrd cackled, the unlit pipe in his mouth whistled. He lifted a folder filled with pink sheets of paper from his desk and read from it in an officious and mocking tone: “Elwyn James Parker, six unexcused absences, seven tardies, failing English, failing health, a warning in trigonometry—do you plan to go to college, young man?”
“Bible College.”
The grin left Mr. Byrd’s face and he sighed, as though I, a child of the King, were the lost cause. “Do you plan to graduate high school?”
“Of course.”
“Then stop it. Get back to being the student you were.”
“God’s will.”
Mr. Byrd closed the folder. He tried a friendlier approach—“I don’t want to expel you, Elwyn. You’re not the worst kid we have here”—but I wasn’t buying it.
At last, he put the folder down and signaled with his hand for me to leave. I stood.
“Just stop it.”
I shook my head. “No, sir.”
“The Bible is a book about life here on earth, Elwyn. For your own sake, start living life.”
“I am living, Deacon. But perhaps you’d rather I smoked a marijuana cigarette or got someone’s daughter in trouble.”
“You wouldn’t know where to start,” he fired back drily.
I opened the door and stepped out of his office. I shouted, “Praise the Lord!”
Mr. Byrd’s door slammed behind me.
I was gracious with Barry McGowan. I even shook his hand in brotherhood during one of his trips home from Bible College to preach a sermon on humility. Barry proved a charismatic speaker. That and the two songs he performed evoked thunderclaps of “Amen” and “Yes, Lord” from the congregation in spite of what he had done. I wished Barry well and meant it.
I also wished Peachie well, now that her condition had become obvious and the congregation was reacting to her as it always did to those who had strayed. Pastor had removed her from the choir and relieved her of her duties as minister of music. She no longer led prayers at youth hour, though she continued to give a cautionary testimony that moved all of us teenagers to avoid lasciviousness. Like me, Peachie was determined to regain that special relationship with God that she had lost.
As a further show of forgiveness, I asked Peachie and Barry after service that night if there were anything at all I could do.
“Play the organ at our wedding,” said Peachie.
“I’d be honored to, Peachie.” I embraced her, careful not to disturb the unborn child, who seemed to kick, she said, especially hard when I was around.
Barry said, “Remember, Elwyn, this is a wedding. None of that boogie-woogie stuff you like to play.” Barry was a tall man, broad with thick limbs, whose little head seemed wrong for his Goliath body. When Barry shook his head back and forth, it reminded me of those wobbleheaded dogs people decorate their dashboards with.
“Don’t be silly, Barry,” said Peachie, standing between us, holding one of my hands, one of his. “Elwyn’s always done a fine job at weddings.”
“I’m just making sure. Things are bad enough as it is without the musician going boogie-woogie on us.”
“Things aren’t that bad,” responded Peachie, who was five months pregnant.
“I’m just making sure,” Barry said, looking straight at me. “I’m not flexible on this point.”
“I promise I won’t play boogie-woogie at your wedding, Brother McGowan,” I said, smiling up at him. “Especially since I don’t play boogiewoogie. It’s called gospel.”
Peachie shot me a warning look, but Barry didn’t seem to take notice or offense.
“Well that’s settled,” he said, nodding his little head. “Now how much is it going to cost? You know we’re on a tight budget with me trying to build the church up in Lakeland and all.”
Before I could even answer, the groom-to-be added, “And we’ll pay you $20. If you want more than that, my mother will get one of her other students to play.” He glared at me with his little eyes. “I’m not flexible on this point, Elwyn.”
The nerve of him. Sister McGowan, his own mother, wouldn’t play at a wedding for less than $350. My usual fee was $100. There was no musician in the whole church who would take $20 to play at a wedding. But—Praise God—the Holy Spirit bridled my tongue. Twenty dollars?
I did him one better.
“Barry, there’s no charge. Think of my music as a wedding gift.”
As the bright college boy Barry McGowan struggled to figure out how I was getting over on him, his eyes grew large in his little head. “A gift?”
“Thanks, Elwyn,” Peachie said quickly. She gave me another hug and then flinched. “Ugh. The baby just kicked. Isn’t that funny? Every time you’re around, Elwyn.”
Barry stuck out his hand to seal the deal. We shook.
“Thanks a lot, Brother Elwyn. And no boogie-woogie, right? I’m still the groom.”
“Anything you say, Barry. Praise the Lord.”
I had asked God for grace, wisdom, humility, and strength. And He had given them to me. A little more than a month after my transgression and already I had gotten over Peachie. I had stomached Barry, even Barry. My faith was stronger than it had ever been. I was well on my way to becoming a great man of God, a beacon unto the Faithful.
There was but one thing I had left undone—my confession—and with my renewed faith I was willing to do even that.
Of late, I had ceased avoiding the widow’s eyes. I had greeted her quite pleasantly last Sunday as I stood usher and she passed through the doorway amid a trio of Missionary Society sisters. I had addressed her by her name, Sister Morrisohn, and cast a friendly smile her way. She had seemed surprised, but smiled back, waving with her fingers. Is this the same Elwyn who had offended me so foul?
Yes, I was he, that vile, weak creature, but now I had thrown off my mantle of iniquity and had been reborn. Christ lived in me.
Yes, if the widow so desired, I would even confess my secret sin.
Peachie married Barry the second Saturday in October, and the entire congregation was there.
The members of the bridal party were Peachie’s thirteen-year-old sister Gwen, who stood as maid of honor; Ricardo, Brother Al’s fouryear-old Nicaraguan son, who was cute and precocious as the ring bearer (we all laughed when he loudly echoed the “I do’s” of the bride and groom); and Brother Philip, Barry’s roommate from Bible College, who stood as best man.
Peachie wore a powder blue dress that was tailored to hide the obvious. Oh, she was beautiful, my Peachie, despite the somewhat desolate expression she wore throughout the ceremony. Then again, who could be truly happy marrying Barry?
At his own wedding, he sang a solo, “O Perfect Love,” which drew tremendous applause. He sang on his knees, troubadour style, earnestly peering up at Peachie. His mother accompanied him on piano while I sat at my silent organ musing. They hadn’t told me about the solo and it wasn’t in the program, so I didn’t play it.
I suppose I could have played it by ear, but I didn’t want to.
Barry and Peachie’s reception was the first gathering held in the church’s dining hall since we had renamed it the Buford Morrisohn Dining Tabernacle three Sundays earlier in honor of our late benefactor and founding member.
The Faithful ate home
-baked pastries and drank grape juice beneath pink and blue wedding streamers and Brother Morrisohn memorabilia: photographs of him from childhood to adulthood, the plaques we had given him over the years, his degrees from Tuskegee and Oberlin, even his birth certificate, dated February 1, 1901.
He had been our greatest saint.
He had been my friend. It was he who had purchased the old upright that stood in the hallway of our home, the piano upon which I had learned to play. It was he who had bought the used Mazda for me to drive when I turned sixteen. It was he who had taught me what it meant to be a good Christian man.
I had no appetite. In my mind, the Buford Morrisohn Dining Tabernacle that afternoon was divided into three zones. Peachie and Barry controlled the middle zone, surrounded by food, drink, well-wishers, levity. I occupied the zone at a far end, away from the commotion. At the other remote zone sat the widow. She seemed more interested in the pictures of her late husband than the overflowing joy of the newlyweds. She still grieved, as did I, for Brother Morrisohn.
Passing through the throng of well-wishers gathered around the bride and groom—“Congratulations, Peachie. Good luck, Barry, though I know you won’t need it, ha, ha, ha”—I made my way to Sister Morrisohn’s side of the room.
“Hello.”
“Elwyn!”
I got right to the point. I bowed my head and said, “I have to tell you how sorry I am.”
“For what?” She closed her eyes, then opened them slowly, remembering. “For that? Don’t let it worry you.”
“What I did to you … what I assumed about you was horrible.” An eyebrow lifted. “Did I strike you as that kind of a woman?”
“It was all my fault. I was confused.” She smiled. “I forgive you.”
“Thanks for forgiving me.”
“God, I’m sure, has already forgiven you, and that’s what really counts.”
“Praise His name.”
Jesus Boy Page 4