As I watched the woman’s bouncing backside flee the airport restaurant, I was filled with the wonder and mystery of my brother, the little preacher for whom the kiss had been intended, my little brother Elwyn Parker, whom I had never met.
The Boy from Opa-Locka
When I got up the next morning, I heard voices in the house and not just my mom’s. They were already here.
I went into the bathroom and brushed and flossed my teeth and took care of some other urgent business. Someone pushed on the door, which had no lock. I didn’t want to be seen in the middle of my business, so I hurriedly yelled, “I’m in here!”
“Oh, Benny! College boy. I didn’t know.”
It was Character Pierre, my mom’s sometime boyfriend.
“How was the trip down from the university of the state of Massachusetts? You think the team has a chance to win the national title this year?”
“I’m not going to talk through the bathroom door.”
“I’ll give you your space. Good to see you.”
“You haven’t seen me yet. Jeez.”
I was still angry with my mother for dating him of all people. The neighbor from around the corner. What happened to the cop who was supposedly flirting with her? Now there was a good father figure and role model.
Outside the bathroom, Character was waiting and he gave me a hug, which I returned weakly. It was a strong hug, like a test of strength. It always surprised me how strong Character was, compared to how frail he looked. He was a small Haitian man, maybe 5’3”, but tough like braided wire. He could handle himself. He claimed to have killed a man back in Haiti who had offended his mother. But that was a long time ago, Character assured us, before he had fled the island to make a better life here in America. He was a man of peace now. He wore a khaki, four-pocket work shirt, a pair of oversized jeans rolled up at the cuff, and my old kickabout slippers, which I had lost track of some months ago.
“So that’s where they are,” I said, without explaining.
“What?” asked Character.
“Nothing.”
“Benny. Benny. Good to have you home.”
Home. Yeah, right.
In the kitchen, breakfast was already waiting on the big table. The children, Character’s daughters Marie, Amoneeze, and Sabine—fifteen, fourteen, thirteen—were there too. They were eating cereal, toast, and eggs scrambled with tomatoes. I shot the oldest girl, Marie, a frown in greeting. She frowned right back. Stuck out her tongue. Mom drank coffee, black with no sugar, and Character picked up a smoky glass filled with something no doubt alcoholic and drained it. He was a man of peace who liked his liquor first thing in the morning. I didn’t appreciate that sometimes he raised his voice at my mom when he had drunk too much. To his credit, he had never raised his hand.
The two younger girls lifted their heads from their plates long enough to say good morning. There was a place set for me at the table, but I didn’t sit down.
“You’re not going to eat?” my mom Patsy asked, looking up from her coffee.
She was a smiling bright-skinned woman with large boobies and a small waist. I’m not bragging just because she’s my mom, but she was very good looking, and she could do better than this little Haitian guy from around the neighborhood. I had waited all of my life for her to settle down with a man I could sort of look up to as a father figure, and she picked a guy who didn’t even understand football.
My mom said to me, “Sit down and eat.”
“I’ve got a paper to do.” I showed her the folder in my hand. “I’m going to the library.”
Marie lifted her eyebrows and shook her head pathetically.
My mom said, “You’re home for a few days. Relax. Sit and eat breakfast with your family.”
I winced inwardly at the word “family.” They were not my family, not yet, not until my mom married Character, which I hoped would never happen. The oldest girl, Marie, said something in Creole, and everybody including Patsy laughed at it, but not me. I deliberately did not speak Creole.
Patsy translated for me: “Pa etidye twop paske ou kapab aveg. Marie said to you, Don’t study too much or you’ll go blind.”
“I won’t,” I assured them, and then I went out the door.
Now why didn’t she just say it in English? Marie spoke perfectly good English. They did these things to upset me.
The bus ride from Opa-Locka, where we lived, to the North Dade Regional Library was long enough to make me regret not eating breakfast. I looked over the notes for the paper on international monetary exchanges, but I was distracted and kept rereading the same few lines. When I got off the bus, I went to a vending machine and bought a granola bar and a small bag of peanuts. I gobbled the granola bar and stuck the peanuts in my pocket for later.
Everybody in the library said hi or waved at me. They all knew me.
I had been coming here since a kid. I got in the elevator. At the secondfloor stacks, I found myself distracted again.
Character was a good plumber, but he drank too much and was perhaps dangerous. One minute he was trying to bond with me, the next he was trying to prove he was a stronger man. The girls spoke Creole to deliberately exclude me. I had talked to Mom about it, and she encouraged me to learn Creole as she had. I could have if I’d wanted. Mom worked as a certified Spanish, French, and Creole translator at the immigration building on 79th Street—she was so talented and yet so unmotivated it killed me. She could be anything she wanted, marry anyone she wanted. Every good-looking, well-put-together brother who had ever seen her had made a play. And she still lived in Opa-Locka. Jeez.
Maybe if she had played her cards right with Roscoe, Elwyn would have been the outside child, and I would have been numbered among the Faithful. Both Mom and Isadore were pregnant at the same time.
In fact, I’m three months older than the little preacher, so that means Mom had had the first shot at Roscoe and, of course, she blew it because she was waiting for her Haitian in shining armor to come along. Ah Patsy.
But being her son was not all bad. I inherited from her a gift for languages, and I was good enough in Spanish and Portuguese to win the Miami Herald’s Silver Knight Award in languages, which helped pay my way to Boston University, where I was majoring in international business. Yes, I was smart. I had graduated high school at fifteen. I was currently on an accelerated timeline to be done with college just one month shy of my seventeenth birthday. I would complete my master’s by nineteen, having already been accepted into the graduate program at Yale.
I’d done well for a boy raised by a single mother in a poor neighborhood. Unlike my mom, from whom I had inherited my gifts, I was motivated. When I wanted something, I went out and got it. I made a plan and I stuck to it. My motto was, He who fails to plan, plans to fail.
My ambition was to retire as a millionaire from my various successful business ventures before the age of thirty-five and accept from a grateful president the U.S. ambassadorship to Brazil, where all the girls were perfect tens like in the movie Black Orpheus.
There was movement on the other side of the stacks. It was Marie, who giggled and came around to my side.
“What took you so long?”
“They were watching me.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I’m at Nicki’s house. I’m having so much fun. We’re playing with dolls.”
“You’re too old for dolls.”
“We’re braiding hair and talking about boys.” When Marie got next to me, she smelled literally good enough to eat, but it was the brown paper bag in her hand. She passed it to me and I looked inside. Egg sandwich. Bacon. A carton of orange juice.
“You brought me breakfast.”
“I knew my baby was hungry.”
“Hungry for you,” I said, smacking her on the backside. “Fresh,” Marie said, pecking me on the lips.
We rode down on the elevator and left the library holding hands. As we waited on the bus bench, I ate my breakfast and Marie chattered on abo
ut some little party that she had been invited to that her friends were having tonight. I knew she was hinting that she wanted me to come. I kept quiet about it. I did not want to go to some kiddie party.
But for Marie I might do it.
Marie was my first crush. My first kiss. Back when we were in fourth grade. We were the two smartest kids in the class before I got double-promoted out and up to sixth grade. After that, there were some other girls, some other kisses, but they were getting older and stupider. Now they were too old, and saw me as too young. At college, they were all in their late teens or early twenties. They saw me as a kid, which left me kind of lonely. But it was okay. It gave me time to study. Then my mom had to go and start dating Marie’s father. Marie was at my house a lot. My Marie. It was weird the first time I saw her in my house, my own house. Jeez. We started liking each other again. But like Marie said: “We never actually broke up. I wondered where you went.”
So we picked up where we had left off in the fourth grade. Of course, we were careful not to let on. We hadn’t had sex yet. We were both virgins. We were saving it until we got married. Or until I became ambassador to Brazil.
When I finished my yummy meal, the bus still hadn’t arrived. I punched Marie in the shoulder. She punched me in the shoulder. We rolled off the bench and into the grass and ended up smooching under a palm tree.
When we got off the bus, Marie said, “This is a church.”
“Good observation.”
“You said we were going to meet your brother.”
“Your Benny keeps his promises. Roscoe said he would be here.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
It was a large church, with five walls that came together in a steeple topped off with a large crucifix. The name was really long: The Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters.
We went inside giggling at the church’s grandiose title. Inside was huge. There was a pulpit, an altar, and stained glass windows as in most churches. There were three columns, each containing about about thirty wooden pews. It was a Saturday afternoon, but Roscoe was right. There was a service of some kind going on. We seated ourselves in the furthest pews back. There was music being played on the piano, and dirgelike singing. I was disappointed when I saw it wasn’t Elwyn at the piano. There was an elderly woman up there playing as they sang.
Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?
Your heart, does the spirit control?
You can only be blessed,
And have peace and sweet rest,
As you yield Him your body and soul.
When I looked around trying to get a glimpse of my brother, I began to realize this service they were having was unlike any I’d ever seen before. Marie and I were the only ones seated in the back pews. Everyone else was crowded to the front seven or eight. Something was happening up there that I could not make out too clearly. Some of them were standing. Some were seated. Others, I discovered after watching awhile, were kneeling before those who were seated. The kneeling ones seemed to be doing something to the feet of the seated ones.
I sighted Roscoe, who was one of the standing people, but before that he had been seated. Roscoe had no shoes on his feet. Someone brought him a small white pail and a towel. Roscoe took the pail and the towel and knelt before someone who was seated. I craned my neck to see. The seated person, a man, was wearing no shoes. Roscoe dipped the towel in the bucket of water and proceeded to wash the man’s feet.
“Okay. That was weird,” I said to Marie. “My father is not only a bus driver, but he washes feet too.”
The church continued to sing their dirgelike hymn.
You can only be blessed,
And have peace and sweet rest,
As you yield Him your body and soul.
Marie said, “This do in remembrance of me.”
The men were washing the feet of the men. The women were washing the feet of the women.
“What do you mean, This do in remembrance of me?”
“It’s in the Bible. Jesus made the disciples do it.”
“Do what?” I asked. Then I said: “That’s him. That’s Elwyn.” I squeezed Marie’s hand and pointed. “That’s him.”
“Where?” She looked to where I was pointing. “That’s your brother?”
“That’s the little preacher.”
“I should have known. He looks like you.”
“He’s short.”
“He’s not that short.”
“He’s shorter than me.”
“He’s taller than you. At least an inch.”
“Thou poor blind Haitian child. Let me lay my hands on your eyes so that you might see.”
“He’s cute.”
“Let me lay these holy hands on your eyes and give you back your sight.”
“You say he’s musically talented too? He’s the full package.”
“Duh. I’m in my senior year in college and I’m sixteen.”
“Show-off.”
“And I’m not washing anybody’s feet like some slave.”
“Shhh. Before they throw us out.”
Then Elwyn rose up, fresh from washing another man’s feet, and made his way to the piano on the platform. He was wearing a white shirt, a black tie, and pin-striped black pants. There were no shoes or socks on his feet, as they had just been washed.
He got behind the elderly pianist and reached around her to place his hand on the piano keys. Smoothly and without missing a beat in the song, he replaced her at the piano.
Your heart, does the spirit control?
As Elwyn continued the music, the elderly pianist went to one of the pews, took off her shoes, and another lady knelt before her and began to wash her feet.
“It’s so cool you have a brother.”
“Yep.”
“Who is taller than you.”
“Shut up.”
“And a foot washer.”
“Shut up.”
“This do in remembrance of me.”
“Never heard of it. Explain, smart lady.”
“Foot washing, you heathen. It’s in the Bible. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet the night He was betrayed. They had the Last Supper and then they washed feet. Then they went out and Judas betrayed Him. You should try going to church once in a while.”
“But I don’t need my feet washed.”
“I’ll wash your feet,” Marie teased.
“I’ll leave them extra crusty for you.”
“Gross.”
Then the woman washing the elderly pianist’s feet lifted her head and I saw her face. And she saw mine.
It was the woman who had kissed me at the airport. “Uh oh.” I grabbed Marie’s hand.
“What?”
We got up and quickly left the church.
Epistles II
1.
I keep telling him I don’t think they’ll ever come, but he’s stubborn.
These factory workers, these farm hands, these citrus pickers, these smiling shopkeepers, these whistling front-yard mechanics, these fix-anything-that’sbroken-for-whatever-you-can-spare silver-haired men in overalls crisply pressed and dusty Brogan shoes (they call it BROW-GINE, Elwyn), and, of course, their dour wives who dislike me because, first of all, they think I’m too young to be the mother of a church, and second—“How old did you say that baby was?” They will not come, these Faithful of Lakeland, for Lakeland, they argue, already has a church, the Fourth Street Church of Our Blessed Redeemer
Who Walked Upon the Waters. Why worship in an empty barn?
Our one-bedroom apartment is at the back of our church, that empty barn. It was freezing cold in Lakeland last week, and the heat went out. We slept bundled in blankets with the baby between us.
I get up every Sunday and play piano for fifteen to twenty people, including myself, the baby, Barry, Barry’s loyal Brother Philip, and our choir of six. There is no night service.
The Faithful of Lakeland have rejected us.
I tell him to forget t
hem. Let’s fill our church with new people. Let’s go out and witness like we did in Miami. I was so mad I slipped up and used your name. “Let’s witness like Elwyn does.” He didn’t talk to me for a week.
I love my husband.
I have a part-time job at Eckerd Pharmacy.
Love,
Peachie, a preacher’s wife
2.
Sometimes I go to Fourth Street Church. The Big Church, we called it when we were kids.
You remember how beautiful it is. Its five walls of white polished marble slope nonchalantly up from the grass, so gradually you can climb them like a hill. Up they go, these holy walls, until they come together in a point, up where they put that huge crucifix you can see from five miles away in daylight and even further away when it’s lit up by floodlights that bathe it in white one minute (Behold, the lamb of God) and red the next (His blood was shed for you).
Inside are the arched ceilings, the floating balconies in three layers, the silver organ pipes rising up and out of the southern wall, the oak pews upholstered in royal purple velvet; the hewn-stone altar and pulpit, the orchestra pit, the white grand piano that me and you played three years ago at Convention. I outplayed you, knucklehead. The sacrament pots and candles of gold. The stained glass windows that depict great moments in the life of Christ. Do you remember the small gold plates in each pew where the names and dates of the great saints are inscribed? Elwyn James the Younger, 1780–1831, Elder Cuthbert Rogers, 177?—1840, Elder (Colonel) Hanes Culpeppar, 1801–1869, Bishop Curtis Rogers, 1809–1901, Rev. Jeroboam Montgomery, 1844–1918, Rev. D.L. Kirkaby Jr., 1859–1903, Kinew, 1821—1891, Mother Dorothy “Missy” Beecher, 185?—1941, and so on.
Three thousand members. The Big Church. For $125 a month, I, a preacher’s wife, a mother of the church, vacuum and dust and polish at the Big Church. It is humiliating, but I have to do it. We are so broke, but he refuses to take a job at the factory. He’s a minister, he says. He’s writing songs for an album, he says. Poor dreamer. Last month the church collections brought in $200 and half of that was money we put in the plate ourselves. I still have my job at Eckerd. The manager gets fresh. I want to quit, but we need the money. It’s hard right now, Elwyn, but we manage with the help of the Lord. Brother Philip floats us each month, bless him. His parents have money.
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