by Daniel Black
I suppose I was the problem because I wanted more than a mediocre country existence. I was never satisfied with the bare minimum or with things being the way they had always been. Rather, I wanted to experiment with new foods and creative forms foreign to Swamp Creek culture. My goal as a teenager had been to birth some new ideas in Swamp Creek—like reading for pleasure—and to question the validity of long-held traditions, the meanings of which no one knew. As an adult, much of what I once believed I didn’t anymore, but had I exposed this truth at church, I might have been crucified. Homefolks would certainly say I had lost my salvation. Like the time I objected when the church voted to excommunicate Ms. Janey and Ms. Pauline. I knew even back then the church was dead wrong, but Momma and everyone else said the two women had to go because they were “funny” and God didn’t like that. Whether they were funny or not, both women were kind to me. If they loved each other, I thought, they’d done better than any of us. “Maybe the Bible is incorrect on this matter,” I suggested boldly when the church met for the vote. Daddy shot me a glance more threatening than an automatic rifle, so I shut up and complied. I wasn’t afraid to disagree with church folks, but I was scared to death to defy my father.
I saw an old fan on the bathroom floor with the name Mosley Funeral Home across the top. That was the mortuary that had buried Grandma years ago. I had dreaded seeing her in a coffin. However, when Mosley finished with her and opened the casket at the funeral, she simply looked as though she were asleep. She wasn’t ashen and stiff, as I had feared. Actually, I remember thinking how pretty she was. Old Man Mosley and his son had dressed her in pink, her favorite color, and I asked them if I could comrow her hair. It was a strange request, I know, but Grandma loved it when I braided her hair, so they let me. In the morgue, I told her things I had never told anyone.
I returned to my seat in church as Sunday school was about to end.
“Seem lak to me,” Deacon Blue said, “we oughta git T.L. to come on up heayh and review dis lesson. He done gone and got all dat learnin’ and I sho’ would lak to heayh him talk.”
“Amen, amen,” said everyone except my folks.
I stood, a bit unsure, because I had not studied the Sunday school lesson, but soon calmed, for it didn’t take much learning to do what they were asking.
I spoke for a few moments, inserting a little drama here and there, and then resumed my seat. “Dat boy sho’ can talk, can’t he, Louise?” I heard Ms. Peggy say as she grinned proudly. Ms. Louise nodded her head repeatedly.
“Dat’s what dat schoolin’ do fu’ ya!” proclaimed Deacon Blue, returning to the podium. “I been tryin’ to git mine to go and git some learnin’, but seem lak dey don’t wanna do nothin’. But chu cain’t make nobody drank water. All you can do is hold de glass.”
“Dat’s de truf,” the congregation returned in chorus.
“T.L., it sho’ is good to see you back round here. Dese chillin needs somebody like you to come and tell em how to go’bout. I tries all de time, but dey don’t wanna lissen to no ole man. You talk to’em while you’s heayh, OK?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, knowing I planned to break town as soon as I got a chance.
Sunday school dismissed and church began. Aunt Cookie opened with “I Shall Not Be Moved.” I sat there, very still, trying not to cry, but I couldn’t help it. “Just like a tree, planted by the waters,” she bellowed from the pit of her soul. That woman could sing for me any day!
They did the announcements, took up collection, sang another song, and Reverend Dawson got up to preach. To this day, I don’t have the slightest idea what he said. He started somewhere in Genesis, and by the time he got to hoopin’ good, he was in Revelation. I tuned him out after a while. Since folks in Swamp Creek obviously enjoyed—or endured—him, I decided to roll along. I said amen occasionally, simply out of respect. His entire sermon was filled with trite clichés and lines from old Baptist hymns. It was funny, really, how people could go to church their entire lives and listen to the same sermons week after week. When black folks drop the fear of critique, I thought, our liberation can come.
Church ended and we headed home. Again, no one said anything. I sat behind Daddy, staring out of the car window at the open land that used to be full of trees. “Who cut all this down?” I asked.
“Willie James,” Momma sighed, probably hoping I wouldn’t ask anything else.
We arrived home and the first thing I saw when I exited the car was Sister’s grave. I instantly recalled that no one had said a word about it at church. Daddy, Momma, and Willie James walked by the tombstone and into the house unmoved by its presence. I shook my head in disbelief, walked over to the mound, and sat like a zombie. Momma peered at me through the kitchen window.
“Sister, I don’t understand,” I confessed softly, staring into oblivion. “What the hell is going on? Something is horribly wrong! Everyone else is fine, while I’m the one traumatized! Are niggas crazy? This doesn’t make any sense. What happened, Sister? What happened?” I rocked myself back and forth with my arms folded as the sun beamed down hard on me. “Girl, girl, girl!” I cried as rivers of tears meandered down my face.
Then, wondering whether I had lost my mind, I wailed, “This doesn’t seem crazy to anyone but me?” Momma was still surveying me with a devious smile. Her ability to witness my pain without reaction was uncanny. I rose to my feet and rubbed the tombstone gently. “Sister, is this real?” I searched back and forth from the grave to the house, totally bewildered. “I must be in the Twilight Zone,” I crowed, walking into the house.
“What’s so funny?” Willie James asked. He had changed into his overalls and was sitting at the kitchen table waiting on the rest of the family to sit for Sunday dinner.
“Man, I must really be crazy. I mean, for real. Do you see that grave, Willie James?” I pulled back the curtain from the kitchen window.
“T.L., please!” Willie James whispered intensely.
“Please what? Man, what’s wrong with y’all? This shit ain’t crazy to you?”
“Yeah, it is, little brotha, but I cain’t say nothin’. You oughta jes’ leave it alone.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“By keepin’ yo’ damn mouth shut.”
“Man, fuck that!”
“See? You still talk too damn much. You always thought you knowed everything. You never listened to nobody long enough to learn nothin’.”
Willie James was implying he might talk later; so I humbled myself and whimpered, “Sorry.”
“Trust me when I tell you dat you don’t want to know what happened to Sister. It ain’t a pretty picture.”
“I don’t care how ugly it is! I want to know!”
The kitchen table vibrated from our vicious murmuring. I was trying to get what I could out of Willie James before Momma and Daddy got to the table.
“The only thing I can tell you is that she was on her way to see you.”
“What?”
“One Thursday night, Sister came to my room and said, ‘I’m leavin’ tomorrow, Willie James. I ain’t stayin’ here anotha day. I’m goin’ to find T.L. I think I know where he is.’ ‘How do you know?’ I asked her. ‘Trust me,’ she said as she sat on the edge of my bed and started cryin’. She was desperate and hurting bad. ‘I gotta go. I can’t take it no more. Tell Momma and Daddy not to worry.’ ‘You got money?’ I whispered. ‘Yeah, I got some. I got enough, anyway.’ We hugged each other like we knew it would be the last time. She asked me if I would give her a ride to the bus station about five o‘clock the next morning, and I told her I would. I was jealous she loved you more than she did me, but wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it. I wished her well and told her to take care of herself.”
Willie James stopped talking. “Go on!” I demanded.
“Ain’t nothin’ else to say. She died that night before she got a chance to leave.”
“She died? That don’t make no sense, man! How did she die?”
“That ain�
�t yo’ business, boy,” Daddy blazed sternly. His voice startled both of us. We glanced up into the face of a man who would have killed had we spoken another word. I gazed at Willie James, frustrated he feared Daddy enough to deny me the information I wanted.
The only other time, years ago, Daddy warned me about minding my own business was the situation dealing with the banishment of Ms. Janey and Ms. Pauline from the church. Momma said it was a disgrace and a damn shame, two women sleeping together. I didn’t see what was wrong with it. Ms. Janey and Ms. Pauline had set up the college fund at church for any youngster who wanted to get a college education. God was glad about that, wasn’t He? Yet if He was, folks in Swamp Creek didn’t care, because they expelled Ms. Janey and Ms. Pauline anyway. It was ugly.
Deacon Blue got up in church and said he had an announcement to make: “It hath been reported that some of our members is funny.” Immediately everyone began to look at Ms. Janey and Ms. Pauline. “We all know God don’t like dat. De Bible say homosexials is goin’ to hell.”
“Amen,” people chimed.
“The Bible say fomicators are going, too,” Ms. Janey said defensively and stood to her feet. “So if I’m goin”, Blue, I’ll definitely see you there!”
Everybody knew, back in the day, Deacon Blue had been a ladies’ man, and Ms. Janey was making sure Deacon Blue understood God’s judgment to affect every life. Her case didn’t carry her far, though. The church voted unanimously to excommunicate them. Ms. Pauline was silent the whole time, having anticipated the judgment.
To quell my dissent, Momma said, “They started that shit years ago, and what’s done in the dark got to come to de light.” I told her, if I were they, I wouldn’t have been doing anything in the dark. I would have done it in the light from the start. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and to keep my mouth shut about the matter. That’s what I did.
Ms. Pauline was a retired schoolteacher who came home to bury her daddy and decided to stay. He had left her plenty of land, and her retirement pension left her financially stable. She was tired of running the rat race in Chicago, she told Grandma upon arrival, so she shipped all her things to Swamp Creek and took root once again. She had grown up there and moved away at eighteen. Grandma said she acted shy and aloof even back then, especially when boys approached. Whenever girls asked her what was wrong, she would say softly, “Pardon me, but I don’t share your male obsession.” The girls would snicker at her, because of both her response and the structure of her language. Ms. Pauline didn’t pay them no mind though, Grandma said. As long as she had a good book, she was fine. She wasn’t nasty, ugly, or mean; she just wasn’t consumed with men.
As a child, I watched her in church pull out some thick novel and read it as Reverend Samuels preached. One day I asked her why she read in church and she said, “No need to waste good reading time! If he were saying something substantive, I’d listen.” “Why come at all?” I asked in return. “Because every Sunday I hope he’ll say something worth hearing.” Ms. Pauline had an answer for everything. I loved to hear her talk because her words sounded clear, crisp, and smooth like church bells. Grandma said the woman had enough books to make a school library. I never saw the books, however, because Daddy said he’d whip my ass if I ever went inside Ms. Pauline’s house. I’d walk by there and wave vigorously, trying to tell Ms. Pauline I liked her but was forbidden to visit. She would wave with the same energy, confirming she knew my hesitation was externally driven. At times, I contemplated whether to go inside against Daddy’s command, but Ms. Pauline would smile sadly and I knew not to invite the battle.
Ms. Janey was a different story. She was loud, boisterous, and definitely wasn’t one to take any crap. Born and raised in Swamp Creek, Ms. Janey never left. She married Old Man Jake Harris and treated him like a dog, Grandma proclaimed. She wouldn’t cook or wash his dirty draws, and she definitely wasn’t giving him any pussy. I overheard Grandma tell Momma that Ms. Janey and Mr. Jake had their own bedrooms and Mr. Jake wasn’t allowed in Ms. Janey’s room. She just married him to keep folks from talking. Everybody already knew she was “funny.” When she was sixteen, somebody caught her and another girl out behind Mr. Blue’s barn doing something sexual. Exactly what they were doing is apparently irrelevant, because people filled in the blank themselves. Ms. Janey didn’t care. She kept on living like nothing had happened. Youngsters mumbled ugly comments at her, Grandma explained, and she would whisper lively, “Wish you were there, don’t you?” She smiled and walked away with her head held straight up in the air. Grandma mocked her demeaningly and asserted, “Ms. Janey Harris was a pistol!”
Folks said she and Ms. Pauline had always been lovers, but when Ms. Pauline left Swamp Creek, Ms. Janey was depressed and decided to marry Jake. People knew she was still in love with Ms. Pauline. Grandma said Mr. Samson, the mailman, delivered mail to her from Ms. Pauline and told everybody in Swamp Creek Ms. Janey got a letter from her lover. When Ms. Pauline came home to bury her daddy, Ms. Janey was right there the whole time consoling and cooking for her. It was wonderful, I thought. I was about twelve years old and I remember thinking how great it would be to have a friend who loved me that much. I knew they weren’t blood relatives; thus the commitment seemed all the more amazing.
Momma and Grandma didn’t agree with me. “Janey Harris oughta be plumb ‘shame’ o’ hu’self,” Grandma argued. “She got a man at home and she runnin’ afta anotha woman. Lawd, don’t strike us dead!” I smiled and said, “Isn’t it great how they take care of each other? I mean, that’s what Jesus would do, isn’t it?” That’s the only time Grandma slapped me in my mouth. “Go play, boy, and stop actin’ so damn grown!” she yelled.
After Ms. Pauline’s daddy’s funeral, Ms. Janey moved in with her. I walked by the house the day she was moving in, on my way to the fishing hole, and asked them if they needed any help. “That’s mighty kind of you, T.L. We could use a strong man for a minute or two.” I started taking Ms. Janey’s things off the truck. Suddenly Daddy came by on the tractor and summoned me angrily. I met him on the road and that’s when he told me never to let him catch me at those women’s house again. I started explaining they had been very kind to me and I was only giving them a hand because some of Ms. Janey’s things were quite heavy. He didn’t care. He wanted me to stay away from those damn dykes, as he called them.
The day they were banished from the church, I wept. Ms. Janey cussed and accused everyone of being judgmental. She didn’t deny anything they said about her; she simply wanted to know why she had to leave the church, but all the other sinners didn’t. She said, “We ain’t teachin’ dese children nothin’ but hypocrisy. Some of them exist today because y’all was in the wrong bed. Might as well tell de truth and shame the devil!” Folks got beside themselves and began to grumble loudly. That’s when the deacons physically threw Ms. Janey out the front door of the church. They weren’t thinking about her sin anymore; they were afraid she was going to tell the truth about their lives. Of course, they weren’t willing to suffer exposure. Truth and church folk never got along too well in Swamp Creek.
Ms. Pauline sat and cried softly. She watched the deacons throw Ms. Janey outside and accuse them of things no one could possibly have proven. She was no coward, though. She rose to leave, knowing everyone was waiting for her to do so. Before she reached the door, she turned and pronounced, “I’m glad I met God before I met you.” I never forgot that moment. Ms. Pauline had taught me indirectly that God doesn’t think like people do. I didn’t agree with the church’s decision, but I was only a child, and children have absolutely no power in Swamp Creek. Daddy reminded me later that the church must have standards. “We can’t allow sin to live in the church and do nothin’’bout it,” he avowed. I wanted to ask him what we were going to do about the sin in his life, but he would have beaten me. Everyone in the church had committed transgressions against God, but I would never have told them God didn’t love them. I also knew in my heart God loved Ms. Janey and Ms. Pau
line. Kicking them out of church was supposed to be a clear sign to me that God didn’t love them, but I never believed it. More important, I didn’t understand how God wouldn’t love them. They were the most righteous people I knew. Anytime someone died, they were ready to assist the family. If the church sponsored a program, they gave the most money and dedicated the most time to assuring its success. When I got ready to leave for college, Ms. Pauline slipped me a brand-new hundred-dollar bill and a note that read: “Study hard and do well, son. Education will take you anywhere you want to go. If you need anything more, just call.” My own folks had not given me anything. Even when Ms. Pauline and Ms. Janey were abused and talked about, they kept their commitment to righteousness. And these were the people Swamp Creek citizens sent to hell for their sins?
7
Before Sunday dinner was served, I escaped the house long enough to gather wildflowers for Sister’s grave. The makeshift bouquet made the reality of her death more comprehensible. I begged Sister to speak to me, to give me a sign she knew how much I loved her, but I got nothing. Placing the flowers at the foot of the tombstone very carefully, I decided to call the area around her grave Eden. She was my first love and the only paradise I’d known, so to think Sister was resting in Eden comforted me.
Willie James called me to supper. Not wanting to eat but trying to avoid turmoil, I rose and entered the house.
The food smelled good and looked pretty on the table. Momma was famous for making ordinary things appear extraordinary. I sat down and Daddy said the blessing.
“Lawd, thank You for dis food we ‘bout to receive for de nourishment of our bodies and the benefit of our souls. Amen.” We each mumbled a Bible verse and began to serve ourselves. Meat loaf, green beans, okra, potatoes and onions, and baked sweet potato pie. The food was scrumptious, but the company was sour. Everyone’s head remained bowed throughout the meal like disciples saddened at the lost of their Savior. No one dared speak. Sunday dinner had been the kind of ritual in our home where one’s presence was required yet one’s voice undesired. It was the time during the week when we reminded ourselves, in our attitude, how much we disliked one another. We chewed our food quickly, enduring the moment only because our flesh demanded it, and retreated into our own private worlds where we preferred to live. Once, Sister and I glanced at each other and burst into laughter. Daddy never raised his head, but Momma warned us, “Y’all better stop all dat damn clownin’ at de dinner table!” Daddy told me later, “Men don’t giggle, boy. That shit’s for women. Next time, I’ll slap de shit outta you.” I think my folks were afraid joy might come along one day and demand they relinquish their love for hatred.