“I’m not going to Lakeland. I can’t.”
Sister McGowan took the girl’s hand and drew her into the room.
Peachie continued to blubber: “I’m sorry I messed everything up for everybody. I’m sorry I ruined Barry’s life. I can’t go up there to Lakeland. I have to stay right here in Miami.”
Sister McGowan let her talk it out. Only once did she let go of the girl’s hand and that was to get tissue from the nightstand to wipe her eyes. Sister McGowan felt like crying too, for the girl, for Barry, for herself.
She had known Peachie Gregory since she was only one of many little girls with ponytails reciting Bible verses in the beginner’s Sunday school class she taught. At eight, Peachie came right here to this house and became her piano student. She lacked natural talent, but she was a hard worker who eventually became one of the most reliable ministers of music at the church.
Sister McGowan had always liked Peachie, and perhaps that was the problem. She had missed Peachie’s sneaky side. The girl had seemed to like Sister Parker’s boy, Elwyn. Perhaps she had only pretended so that Sister McGowan would let her guard down and leave her alone with Barry. And she had left them alone together too often. Barry had denied it, but she believed they had enacted their carnal union a few times right here in this house behind her back.
What a shame it was for her to lose a son this way, especially after her own experience with Barry’s father, Dr. Leibnitz, her choir director at the University of Miami, who used her for his own pleasure and then abandoned her. Dr. Leibnitz had had that same sneaky look, as he praised her for being the first black girl to sing lead soprano in the school’s world-famous chorus, as he held her hand, as he touched the small of her back. It was right on his face all the time, but she had missed it back then too. It was the late ’50s. She chided herself for always being too easy, too trusting—and now her son was stuck with this girl. Sister McGowan felt like crying, but she held up.
When the girl’s rambling quieted, Sister McGowan said, “You’re such a pretty girl. I see why Barry fell in love with you. I was worried you were too young, but I see you’re smart. Barry needs a smart woman to watch over him. He can’t do it without you. You must help him build his ministry. You go up there, Peachie, and you play that piano just like I taught you. In time, you’ll come to love him.”
“But I do love him,” Peachie replied. “I don’t think he’s happy. I thought we would be happy if we did the right thing.”
“But did you do the right thing? Girls nowadays are so smart. They do it, and they never get pregnant. So when they get pregnant, you have to wonder why they didn’t do something not to get pregnant.”
“What could I have done?”
“You don’t know?”
“Well, after we would do it, then I would stand up and shake … you know—”
“My Lord, you’re just like I was. They never teach us anything. We have to learn the hard way.” Sister McGowan dabbed at the girl’s tears with the tissue and started to hate her a little less. “You’re married and you should be happy. You deserve to be happy, you poor thing.”
Peachie sobbed, “My husband doesn’t love me.”
“He loves you, I’m sure, but he’s angry too because you got pregnant and made him look bad in front of the others. He’s a good boy. He’s always done the right thing. He wouldn’t be with you if he didn’t love you.” She brushed back a strand of the girl’s hair, which had fallen across her face. She really was a pretty girl. At least their children would be pretty. “Stand behind your husband. Show him that you are a good wife. You go up there to Lakeland and help our boy build that church and everything will work out just fine, okay?”
“I will.”
There was a sound from outside.
Sister McGowan whispered, “I’ll bet you it’s Barry and Brother Philip with their ears pressed to the door.” A mischievous twinkle came into her eyes. “Let’s give them something to talk about. You put on one of my housecoats and you and me’ll go have some fun.”
“To eat?”
“Yes.”
“Egg salad.”
“You like my special egg salad.”
“There’s still some left in the fridge,” said Peachie, warming to the idea. “And we need some ice cream.”
“We have vanilla.”
“What about licorice-flavored?”
“I don’t have that,” Sister McGowan said, adjusting the sash on her housecoat, “but we could go get some. The Dairy Queen is open all night.”
So Peachie and her mother-in-law, decked out in housecoats and slippers, opened the bedroom door and strode without a word through the living room to the front door, past Barry and Brother Philip, who could only sit quietly mystified as the car engine fired up outside.
When they returned home an hour later, Peachie found Barry awake with the lights on. She removed his mother’s housecoat and sat on the bed. He was ready to listen to her now. She said, “I know you’re scared. I’m scared too. We need to be there for each other. If we’re there for each other, no one can come between us.”
“I’ll be there for you.”
“I’ll be there for you, Barry.” He took her in his arms.
She said, “These are real vows this time.”
“I was ashamed.”
“I had no bridesmaids.”
“Your dress was ugly. I hated it.”
“It didn’t hide my stomach at all. I never want to see those ugly old pictures.”
“One day, after you have the baby, we’ll have another ceremony and we’ll take better pictures,” he said, passing his hand through the arm holes of her full slip. He caressed her fat breasts, which used to be such little things. “You will wear white,” he said, moving his hand down over the rise of her abdomen and into her panties.
“Only virgins wear white.”
“You’ll always be a virgin to me.”
“Mmmm. It feels good in there, baby. You always know how to make me feel good.”
“Shhh, baby. Don’t talk dirty.”
“It is such a pleasure to be married to you. It is like the Song of Solomon being with you.”
Peachie shifted out of her clothes. They made sweet love this time and Peachie slept contentedly.
In the morning, as soon as Sister McGowan could get Barry alone, she scolded, “You’d better watch that girl, you hear me? I don’t know why you took up with her in the first place. I don’t trust her one bit. She’s a skinny, little nothing.”
Barry nodded.
I Need Thee Every Hour
He read from the Book of Daniel, then got down on his knees to pray, but there was a knock on his bedroom door and he looked up as his mother stuck her head in: Sister Morrisohn’s on the line.
Elwyn unclasped his hands and picked up the phone. He took a deep breath. He was still kneeling.
Sister Morrisohn said, Can you talk? No, he answered.
Can you listen? You can at least listen.
He rested his head on the bed and said to himself, Heavenly Father, what did I get myself into?
You missed church. You never miss church, she said. I’m putting myself in your place now. I see that you’re not ready for this.
He said: I’m not ready. I really am not. This is bad what we’re doing. I’m not making excuses for what I did. I was flattered by your attentions. I wanted you to like me. I should have known better. You’re young. Are you still there?
I’m here.
I just want you to understand me, is all. Who I really am. I’m listening, he said. He was still on his knees.
I’m a mountain girl, she said. I come from a PO Box settlement about seven miles outside of Asheville, North Carolina. We didn’t go to church when I was growing up. My father didn’t allow it. We didn’t go to school either. We were homeschooled. But my mother was a very religious woman. Some kind of Pentecostal, I believe. We read the Bible every morning when we got up and every night before we went to bed. My mother brought m
e and my little brother up believing that there was a God in heaven who loved us. She told us we must be good if we wanted to meet her in heaven. She was much older than my father and sickly. She knew she wouldn’t live to see us grow up. She died when I was fourteen.
She paused for a long moment and then he heard her cough and do something else that sounded like clearing her throat before she continued. She was so much older than him, twenty-six years, which made her older than his mother.
His room was dark now because his blinds were drawn and he hadn’t turned on the lights. Outside his room he could hear his parents talking with Deacon Miron and his wife, who was pregnant, and he heard them say his name occasionally, not calling him, but mentioning it as they often did because they were proud of him and remembered him every time the words child or son or young people today were mentioned. He was the perfect example of a good Christian son. Oh, if every child could be like Elwyn, they would say.
What I’m saying, Elwyn, is that I grew up without my mother, so I had but a skewed understanding of how a woman is supposed to behave. My mother had three sisters who would come up the mountain and visit us. Maybe I could be like them; these were wild, beautiful women. Mulattos, every one of them, just like my mother, their sickly baby sister, who would die and leave her children to an uncertain fate in this dark and sinful world.
She paused again, but this time he believed she might be crying. He could not hear her crying. There was something covering the phone, perhaps her hand.
From elsewhere in the house there came the sound of piano music.
It was Deacon Miron’s wife playing “I Need Thee Every Hour” with that heavy left hand of hers. Elwyn suspected she had the book propped open in front of her. Sister Miron was good when she had a book open in front of her, but she could not play by ear no matter how hard he tried to teach her. Sister Miron was a very fat, very pretty girl only about three years older than Elwyn. He used to call her Ginny Parker before she got married. Now she insisted that everyone call her Sister Miron, even Elwyn, who was her first cousin. Deacon Miron, a widower, was in his forties. He was Elwyn’s godfather. He heard them say they would name the baby Elwyn if it were a boy because Elwyn was such a model Christian. He could not hear what they would name the baby if it were a girl because Sister Miron was putting that heavy left hand into her music and Sister Morrisohn was speaking again.
You asked me once what kind of sins I committed before I met Buford. I tried to be a mother to my brother in my mother’s absence—cooking, cleaning, keeping the house for my lazy father—but once my innocence was lost, it became easier to behave like my aunts, who were a very bad example. Drinking. Smoking. Riding into town every Friday night in some strange man’s pickup truck. Not coming back till Sunday morning. I was a woman, but I didn’t really know what a woman was.
I understood sex, but I hated the man I was sleeping with. He was the worst brute. At eighteen, I became pregnant. I lost the baby, which was probably the best thing—God forgive me for saying that—but now I could not live at home anymore. I had to leave. I tried to take my brother with me, but my father would not let me.
Someone out there said, Where is Elwyn?
It was Ginny—Sister Miron.
Someone answered, He’s still on the phone with Sister Morrisohn, I think.
It was his mother.
Elwyn got up from his knees and went to the door and closed it. Then he went back to his bed and lay crossways on it with his legs hanging over the side.
Sister Morrisohn said, I came down and lived with my cousin and her husband until that became a problem. He made me feel I owed something more than the $35-a-month rent I was paying. When I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he got rough. When I told my cousin, she believed her husband. Never mind that I had a torn dress and a busted lip. I was out on the streets. I got fired from my counter job at Woolworth’s. For the first time in my life, I lost contact with my little brother Harrison. I hooked up with an ugly crowd. Sex, drugs, stealing to eat. I smoked marijuana. I shoplifted. I had lots of boyfriends, though I hated and feared men … Then I met Buford and Mother Glovine. They were ministering at the Dade County jail, where I was being held.
The church was bailing everyone out who would allow Buford and Mother Glovine to preach to them. Buford was such a good man. Not only did he bail us out, he also acted as our legal counsel pro bono. He seemed to be very impressed with me. I guess because I was articulate and perhaps pretty. We debated often, with me usually getting the better of him. He found me a job at the library downtown. He helped me get a little apartment in Overtown. Most importantly, he helped me get my brother away from my father. Brought him down to Miami and then paid for him to go to college up at Tuskegee when he finished high school. Harrison is now an accountant up in Boston.
Elwyn said to her: When I was a kid, I think I remember he used to sit with you and Brother Morrisohn and Beverly.
Beverly never sat with us. She absolutely refused.
I was too young. I remember it wrong.
Yes, you do. You were too young … you are too young. You are a child.
I didn’t mean to make you … mad, Sister Morrisohn.
I am mad. I am nutso.
I need Thee, O I need Thee, he heard his mother singing to Sister Miron’s accompaniment. It sounded good—it would sound better if Ginny would ease up on the bass.
Sister Morrisohn said, I fell in love with Buford immediately. How could I not? He was such a good man. Intelligent. Handsome too. Though nothing happened between us while Mother Glovine was alive. Buford wouldn’t allow it. But she was gravely ill. We married a month after she passed. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that’s what started the gossip. But we were in love. What did they expect us to do? This caused the rift between me and Beverly, my loving stepdaughter, who is actually older than me, ha-ha-ha. She’s become a real problem for me with Buford’s inheritance. There were vicious rumors about me tricking a senile old man into marriage to get his money. Your grandmother, Elwyn, I’m sorry to inform you, was chief among my accusers. But I loved Glovine … Mother Glovine. She was a mother to me … Our love overcame it all. I had found what I wanted in Buford, a man who would love me in spite of my past. A man who would not abuse me. A man who looked at me every day and said, I am so glad I met you. My life is complete.
She continued through sobs, Isn’t that what we all want? Not once while I was with Buford did I ever think of any other man. Not once while I was with him did he ever remind me of my past.
Elwyn said, Sister Morrisohn, don’t cry.
I loved him at first sight. And you remind me of him so much! It’s just that our situation—our ages, I don’t know what I feel for you or why. With him it was easy. I felt so old when he died. I thought I’d just hide up on a shelf for the rest of my life and gather dust. That day when you came over, you made me feel beautiful again. You made me feel young again. I didn’t fear you or hate you as I had other men, because I knew you were good. I had watched you grow up … You’re still growing up. You’re still a child. Oh God.
Sister Morrisohn, he said, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4:30 sharp are best for me.
Yes. You’re so sweet to … teach me the piano three times a week. And I won’t take money from you.
You must take the money. Piano lessons don’t come cheap.
I will not take money from you. You must, or they will know.
But it’s weird.
We’re weird. We have weird love, me and you. Me and you. It sounds so … yeah, weird.
But so right. So … weird.
I wish you were here right now so I could kiss you, my darling. I want to kiss you all night. I want to wake up in your arms. Do you mind that I said that?
I don’t mind.
Outside his room was quiet. He wondered if Deacon and Sister Miron had left. It was rude not to have gone out and greeted them, especially since they planned on naming their son after him. He would make it up to them. He would
apologize and say something flattering about Ginny’s—Sister Miron’s—heavy-left-hand music. He was, after all, the model Christian son.
Sister Morrisohn said, I bet when I told you I wanted to kiss you, you blushed.
Elwyn said, Maybe it would be safer if we didn’t call each other so often. We’ll see each other on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
You don’t understand how unpredictable this thing can be. Sometimes only your lover’s voice will do.
I’m blushing now, I think.
I wish you were here so I could kiss you. I’m definitely blushing, Sister Morrisohn.
I wish you were here so I could make love to you, my darling.
Long after her lover had hung up, she kept the phone to her ear like an embrace.
When she pulled away, finally, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a drink. The music from her record player in the living room switched from Tammy Wynette to Chester Harbaugh and His OldTime Fiddle Band to the Louvin Brothers to Jim Reeves. She kept time nodding her head. She liked old-time country music, the kind she had grown up listening to back home in North Carolina. In her father’s house. She liked the heartbreak songs, because she was a heartbreak girl. She liked the twanging and the whining in the music as a complement to the clever, sometimes depressing lyrics. She was a girl who was often depressed. Well, she used to be, but not anymore. Things, she told herself, were going to change. She opened the cabinet and took out the bottle. The wine was the good kind, a little tart with a sharp bouquet. She had kept the bottle hidden from Buford, who like all of the Faithful had disapproved of strong drink. But the Faithful are too strict in their rules concerning alcohol, Sister Morrisohn thought to herself. The Faithful are too strict about many things. Wine is good for the spirit, the Bible says so. Noah invented wine. Jesus turned water into wine. The Faithful are a bunch of tight a**es. She put the wine to her lips. Her spirit soared. There is warmth in the wine. There is warmth in him too. Her mind had gone back to Elwyn. There is warmth even in his voice, she said out loud.
She’d always had a problem finding warmth.
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