Love,
Peachie, as we pray for victory over Satan and temptation
3.
He called me “an harlot,” then said he didn’t mean it.
We were arguing—fighting about why we have so few members (it’s up to thirty-three now, thanks to me evangelizing at work and at the daycare and not thanks to his stupid songwriting). I was trying to explain how you have to go out in the community and witness, and he was whining about how the Faithful of Lakeland will eventually come around because of how popular he was at Bible College, and Junior was crying because he was sick with the cold all week, and I said to Barry, “We need medicine for the baby.” And he said to me, “So?” And I said, “Well, go buy some. And while you’re at it, buy some
Pampers and wipes and Similac.” And he said something about babies being so expensive. And my tone was not exactly nice when I said, “Not if you have a job.” And this hurt him and he said in a real nasty way, “There didn’t have to be a baby.” And I said, “You wanted it just as much as I did. I didn’t rape you.” And he said, “I’m not the one who’s the harlot.” And I said, “Who are you calling an harlot?” And he said he was sorry, he didn’t mean it, but it was too late—I had heard him.
He’d been lying all this time. He was just like everybody else. Everybody believed that everything was my fault. The baby. The wedding. His low membership. All my fault.
I thought a husband was supposed to stand by your side in sickness and in health, not just make you sick.
Peachie
4.
Another fight. A big one this time. But with a happy ending.
It was my fault. He found out about my manager at work, about what he had done a few months ago. Remember I told you how he locked me in the bathroom and kissed me and I kicked him in the groin?
I was telling the story to Momma again and he was listening in on the kitchen line. I didn’t realize just how jealous he was until he came in the room yelling and screaming so loud he woke the baby and I had to hang up with Momma right away because he was The Man In His House. I explained to him what had happened, but he didn’t believe me and I begged him not to go to Eckerd, but he and Brother Philip went, and there was trouble. He hit the manager—a man of God, a preacher, walking into Eckerd in a robe and slippers and punching the manager in the mouth. I had to bail him out of jail with what little money we had. I should have left him there.
He gets out of jail, and everything is my fault again. It’s my fault men are after me. They can smell my scent, he says. I’m in heat all the time. They know I’m easy.
He said much worse than that, and we fought, and he hit me. And then we made love.
Now I know this may sound strange to you, Elwyn, especially since you’re a virgin and don’t know very much about sexual matters, but this was the best sex we had had in a long time. In fact, I don’t think I fully understand why it worked out like that. I was very angry with him for hitting me and then denying that he had. “I didn’t hit you, baby. I put my hand in your face. I was being demonstrative.”
“You hit me.”
“Why would I hit you? I love you. Don’t you know that?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“I’m just afraid that you don’t love me, is all. You’re so beautiful and smart and you’re right about the way the church should be built up. I’m afraid you’re going to run away with someone better than me.”
“Baby, there’s no one better than you.”
“I love you, Peachie.” We kissed and he had my clothes off and had his face buried in my you-know-where before I even knew what was happening.
I lost my job at Eckerd. Surprise. I’m pregnant again. Pregnant and I can’t even afford milk for this first baby. And guess what? You’ll never guess. Brother Philip made a pass at me. “I loved you from the first time I set eyes on you,” he said. “And you don’t have to leave Barry. The Lord will see to your financial needs through me. I can take care of you.”
He’s one of the rich guys, remember, and he knows it. The way he dresses. His fancy apartment. Always floating us. But I have more sense than that. The devil comes in many forms. And I love my husband. My husband will take care of me.
Eventually. (ha ha)
Burn this letter, Elwyn. And pray for Brother Philip.
Yours truly,
Mrs. Barry Sebastian-Bach McGowan, as she struggles onward and upward for the Lord
5.
Regarding your last letter to me, I am speechless. I need you to call me so that we can talk about this. If I have read your letter correctly, and have correctly interpreted the implications to mean things of a serious sexual nature concerning you and a certain elder member of the church, I need seriously to talk to you. There are things that should not be put into print for fear of who might read them and so I urge you to call me on Saturday at work so that we may speak without fear of being overheard by uninvited parties. Let me just say that I am amazed at the implications. I am in disbelief. I cannot imagine that a coming together of such unequally yoked oxen would be permitted by the Lord, nor even attempted to be undertaken by one of His greatest servants.
Understand that I am your friend and shall ever be. Understand that your secret is safe with me as all of mine I am certain are with you. Nevertheless, I am quite hurt and highly offended by the situation as I am reading it to be. I am wroth with you, Elwyn, and I need to discuss this matter with you right away. Please call me on Saturday.
Your friend Peachie
Our Father
I was scared of him drunk.
I was scared of his enormous size, his roaring voice, his falling down. I was scared of his alcohol, pee, and Aqua Velva smell. I was scared of his razor stubble when he held me against his face and called me his man-child. I was scared of how he took me out of the bed some nights and put me to sleep on the couch so he could be alone in the room with my mother. I was scared of how he made my mother cry out from behind the closed door, how he made her laugh and shout. How he made my holy mother say swear words.
I had the worst father in the whole world. Why couldn’t he be more like one of the Faithful brethren? All the brothers at church were quiet and clean. They took their children to the park on Saturdays to play. When I drove around with my father, he made me carry a crayon to write down his numbers for him. They appeared everywhere. On the big truck in front of us, on the billboard over the liquor store, large and glittery on somebody’s mailbox: 6-5-4, 4-5-3, 4-5-9, 5-4-5. He claimed he was helping me with my arithmetic. This was when we lived in the ghetto in Overtown. My father was a gambler and a sinner. This was before he got saved.
I would confess to my mother that I was having trouble loving him the way Jesus commanded us to do, and she would say, You must love him. Honor thy mother and thy father that thy days may be long upon the earth.
And I would say to my mother, But he’s an evil sinner. He’s going to burn in hellfire.
Actually, I only said that to my mother once, and she slapped me a hard one right across the lips.
Watch your mouth, boy! He’s your father!
And I ran into the closet to weep and pray.
Lord, don’t make my burden heavier than I can bear.
But the Lord is a miracle worker.
One day somebody pounded on the door.
My mother dropped the laundry she was folding. I turned away from the picture Bible I was reading. A knock like that usually meant an emergency. In the ghetto where we were living at the time it usually meant someone had been shot, or the police were looking for someone.
My mother went to the barred window next to the door and pushed back the blinds, and a man pressed his ugly face against the glass.
I remember he was dressed in a suit like some of the men at church wear, except he didn’t have on a tie and his jacket was all rumpled up and his hair was nappy looking, and in his fist he had a gun.
He saw my mother and growled angrily, Open the door, whore!
M
y mother answered, Who are you?
You know who I am, the man demanded. Open this door I said!
The man began hitting the glass with the butt end of the gun.
I ran to my mother and she held me. She said to the man, Sir, I think you got the wrong door. We’re Christians in here!
The man took the gun and pounded the glass hard, shattering it. My mother pushed me to the floor and covered me with her body as the man reached his hand through the broken glass and started rattling the iron bars with the gun.
He kept shouting, Open the door! Open the door! And he kept calling my mother bad names.
I was scared and crying.
My mother said to me, Don’t worry, Elwyn. The Lord will protect us.
But that man, I said, he’s going to shoot you. I don’t want you to die.
Don’t worry, Elwyn. The Lord will protect us.
And my mother began to pray.
Though I was still afraid of dying, I began to feel stronger in my faith when my mother prayed. I was still sobbing, but I joined her by reciting my memory verse for Sunday school: In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue.
And then the miracle came: my father got home.
He appeared behind the man, the old monster of my dreams, my father, but this time he was my savior.
He turned the man around with a punch to the face. He punched him again and the man fell.
There were more punches after that, but I couldn’t see because it was happening down below the window ledge. There was a lot of shouting and groaning and the sound of heavy bodies rolling around.
When the police came and wrestled my father off the man, we were all standing outside with half the neighborhood. I remember the man in handcuffs, with a black eye and a bleeding mouth, explaining to the police about being drunk and knocking on the wrong door because of some girl who had stolen his money.
Checking the flight above ours, the police found the prostitute the man had been looking for crouching behind a garbage can. As they marched her past our apartment, the woman said to my mother: Ma’am, y’all got any aspirin?
She was dressed in hot pants and she had an Afro so huge that it flopped over her eyebrows and her ears.
Now the police were laughing with my father, calling him a hero, and he went to put his arm around my mother, who pushed him away.
She said to him, The blood of the innocents is on your hands.
But baby, my father said, I got here in time.
She said to him, Where were you, Roscoe? Where are you when you’re not home? Where are you when your family is in danger? I know where you were. Don’t even try to lie to me. It’s that woman—
As my parents fought, one of the police officers started laughing: Uh oh. Trouble in paradise.
I can’t live like this anymore. You’re going to have to make a choice.
Isa, my father said. Isa.
He went to touch her and she pushed him away.
You smell like her, she hissed.
My father was quiet for days after that. My mother was quiet too. Every time I got a chance, I would smell my father to see who he smelled like. My mom had said my father smelled like her. I didn’t know anybody else who smelled like that.
We slept quietly in our room, my mother holding me, my father holding her, both of us pretending he wasn’t there. My father didn’t put me out even once during that time to sleep on the couch so he could be alone in the room with her.
One morning, I awoke and found them on their knees, my father weeping.
Lord, I want to thank You, he was saying. I almost lost my precious family. You have given me a second chance. Thank You, Lord. Thank You.
My mother had her arms around his back as he prayed and shouted. As he lifted holy hands. She was weeping too. My grandmother came over. Pastor and the elders came over. My father had gotten saved. My father had accepted the Lord.
O what a rejoicing.
On Sunday, my father was baptized. On Monday, he went with the Faithful to the home of the drunkard who had knocked on our door and witnessed to him. My parents dropped all charges against him and the drunkard became Brother Pendergast, the church mechanic, Praise the Lord.
Then they went to the jail and witnessed to the prostitute and paid the bail for her. She became Sister Winslow, the best singer in the choir.
On Tuesday, my father passed his chauffeur’s license exam, became a school bus driver, and we moved out of Overtown to a better home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
In the new house, I got my own room. On the wall behind my bed, we hung a picture of the Last Supper. I had my own bureau and a little reading table, where I could study the Bible. We painted the walls blue like the heavens above.
This was back when I was five.
He’s been a good father ever since then.
Good things come to those who wait upon the Lord.
The Brothers
The traffic to the airport was easy, like an omen. Sister Morrisohn found a curbside space big enough for the Cadillac just as he appeared.
She honked the horn, waving and shouting his name, though the windows were up. “Harrison! Harrison!”
Her brother.
Her son.
He carried a small valise in one hand and an overcoat under his arm. He stood out from everyone around him because he was tall, well over six-four, and he wore a hat—not a cap, but a hat, an elegant, black felt thing that hid his balding head. “The same old Harrison,” she lamented. “I have such a long way to go with him.”
Harrison had spotted her too, but did not return her wave as he strode to the car.
Sister Morrisohn dabbed her wet eyes with a kerchief and noticed the other man with him. He was short and red-faced with animated eyes. An older man, in his forties at least, he wore a thin mustache that made her think of a cartoon mouse. A mat of brown hair lay across his head. He had no hat and no luggage, but he wore a coat buttoned up to the neck that matched the one Harrison carried. She said a small prayer as Harrison opened the back door for the other man to get in.
“Elaine,” he said, “this is Otto. Otto, this is Elaine, my sister.”
They exchanged mumbled hellos, the man reaching over the seat, shaking her hand, as Harrison got in the back beside him, and Sister Morrisohn, who had not been hugged by this brother she hadn’t seen in three years, felt every bit like a cabbie driving home through traffic that was difficult, like an omen.
When they got to the house in Coral Gables, Otto was the first out of the car. He strolled the yard touching and smelling the flowers. He removed his shoes and socks and spread his toes in the grass, which Elwyn had mowed just yesterday. He sat down and stretched his stubby arms behind his head. “This is just beautiful,” he said. “I can see why she wants this. Isn’t this just beautiful, Harrison?”
“You should see the inside,” said Harrison, grinning. “It’s huge.”
“I feel like a kid again. I want to skip and jump,” said Otto, rolling in the grass.
“You look like a kid,” said Harrison, grinning at the dumbfounded expression on Sister Morrisohn’s face as she watched Otto frolicking in her grass.
She clutched her keys. “Let’s go inside. Let me show you inside, Otto.”
Otto sprang to his feet. “Boy oh boy. I can’t wait.”
She opened the door to the house and Otto, a first-time visitor, a stranger carrying his shoes in his hands, was the first one in. He shouted from inside: “This is awesome! I can see why she wants this.”
She whispered to Harrison, “I don’t think this is going to work.”
Harrison pushed his hat back on his head. “Believe me, Elaine. He’s a very good attorney. He’s never lost a case. Beverly doesn’t stand a chance against Otto Windmere, Esquire.”
“He acts like a child.”
“Don’t you lecture anybody about acting like a child,” he warned as they went inside.
She told them, smiling cheerfully, “That’s not necessary. I brought you lots more, Otto. There’s more in the kitchen too.”
Otto and Harrison laughed. At her? At what?
She held out the tray, and Otto scooped a healthy helping onto his plate, wolfed a mouthful, and then began to discuss the case. He spoke while twirling the fork in the air. It was an easy case, he assured them, one they were certain to win. Beverly Morrisohn didn’t have a leg to stand on. Brother Morrisohn’s will was crystal clear and airtight. All his heirs had received what he had willed. Sister Morrisohn had gotten the car, half the money, and the house. Beverly had gotten the property in Atlanta, the vacation place in the Hamptons, her late mother’s collection of African American art, and the other half of the money. In short, Beverly had no case. She was just a nuisance. Tomorrow in court would be a cinch.
But Harrison had to put in his two cents: “What she is, is disgusted to see the tart who spit on her mother’s grave living in the house she grew up in.”
Sister Morrisohn, who had been expecting something like this, fired back, “I did not spit on Glovine’s grave. Beverly has her own personal axe to grind. I’m so tired of beating this dead horse—” But their family quarrel was interrupted by the stranger.
“Harrison,” warned Otto.
Harrison pouted. “Don’t let her fool you. She’s one hot momma, Otto. When she wants a man, there isn’t too much that will stand in her way.”
Jesus Boy Page 9