Читать книгу Jesus Boy - Preston L. Allen - Страница 8
ОглавлениеAt sixteen, I met my first great temptation, and I yielded with surprisingly little resistance, I who had proclaimed myself strong in the Lord. There had been, it seems, a chink in my armor, through which Satan had thrust his wicked sword.
As I wondered how I could have felt so strong and yet been so weak, I labored mightily to get back into the ark of safety.
I took a more active role in the Lord’s work. On Sundays, I rose early and joined the maintenance brethren in preparing the main hall for morning service; I stayed late to help them clean up afterward. Brother Al and Brother Suggs were surprised but happy to work with me. Often, we discussed music.
“Elwyn, I really like when you do that dum-dum-da-dum thing at the end of service,” said Brother Suggs, a retired seaman of about seventy who had both a stoop and a limp. When he pushed a broom, he resembled a man perpetually playing shuffleboard.
Brother Al, a squat man with a massive chest and arms like telephone poles, shouted down from the ladder upon which he stood replacing a cylinder of fluorescent light: “I was first trumpet in my high school band.”
Unemployed and in his late twenties, Brother Al spent his days lifting weights or visiting the three children he had sired out of wedlock with a Nicaraguan seamstress named Bettie. This was, of course, before he had accepted the Lord.
“Maybe you and me’ll do a duet one Sunday,” Brother Al suggested. “Maybe we will, Brother,” I answered, scraping chewing gum from the underside of a pew with a putty knife.
Now on those Sundays when it was not my turn to play piano for the youth choir, I stood as usher at the entrance to the church: I’d rather be an usher in the house of the Lord than a prince in the palace of hell. My legs, standing motionless for the better part of the hour, were diligent for the Lord, my knees strong and true.
I stopped the children from talking or fighting, tapped them awake when they fell asleep. “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” Christ said. When babies cried, I was quick to pull them from their grateful mothers’ arms and take them outside into the calming sunlight, or lead some other mother—a visitor—to the restroom at the back where she could change a soiled diaper, or perhaps nurse her baby.
When the Holy Spirit descended, I waited for Him to touch one of His favorites—Sisters Davis, Breedlove, Naylor, or Hutchinson—and set her to trembling, to move upon her so powerfully, in fact, that she would collapse. I would rush to the fallen sister and drape the velvet shawl over her spasming legs, hiding what would otherwise be revealed—the usher is the guardian of decency—and then with the help of another usher, I would carry the fallen sister to the nursery where she could rest on a cot until the Spirit had passed.
Scripture says it is not through our works that we are saved, but only through His Grace, and Scripture can’t be challenged. I reasoned, however, that if I were indeed going to work, then let it be in the service of the Lord.
It struck me that part of my problem was that I didn’t pray enough; yes, morning, noon, and evening found me on my knees, head bowed, but what about the times in between? Scripture admonishes us to pray without ceasing, so I increased my standard prayers to five times a day and began a campaign of fasting on the weekends.
One Sunday afternoon, during the lull between morning service and youth hour, I sat in my bedroom reading from the Book of Daniel, searching perhaps for my own handwriting on the wall.
I heard my grandmother say: “Elwyn’s not eating today?”
As was customary, we had guests over for Sunday dinner—my grandmother and Sister McGowan, my old piano teacher.
My mother answered, “Elwyn’s fasting.”
“Fasting? Every time I come over here he’s fasting.”
My mother said, “All of us Christians should be fasting along with Elwyn. There is so much trouble in the world.”
“Especially the way them Arabs have shot up the gas prices,” said my father.
“Please pass the salt,” said Sister McGowan.
“Here it is, Sister,” said my father. “Over there in the Middle East, there’s sure to be a war. Armageddon.”
“We are living in the last days,” said my mother.
“Watch and see if the Lord doesn’t return soon,” said my grandmother. “Watch and see.” There was a chorus of Amens, and then she continued, “I still think he’s been too serious lately. Something’s bothering him.”
My mother said: “‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’ The Lord was only twelve when He said that.”
My grandmother’s voice boomed, “Don’t quote Scripture with me, girl.”
“Mother,” said my mom timidly.
“I know my grandson. And I know—”
“So much salt?” I heard my father say.
Sister McGowan answered, “I know it’s bad for my blood pressure, but I’ve had more of a taste for it since Barry and Peachie announced they’re getting married.”
Oh Peachie. My foggy eyes could not read the prophet. I found my ear moving closer to the open door. Why did I want to hear what I already knew?
“Peachie and Barry make a nice couple,” said my father. “I pray their children don’t witness Armageddon.
“They’re so talented,” added my mother.
Then there was awkward laughter as they attempted to maintain the pleasant air.
“Humph,” snorted my grandmother, “all this time I thought she was Elwyn’s girl.”
“Mother,” said my mom, “Elwyn doesn’t have a girl.”
“At sixteen?” said my grandmother.
“But he likes girls, I can tell you.” My father laughed without vigor. “He’s my son.”
“I-thought-Elwyn-liked-Peachie,” my grandmother said, punching each word.
It became quiet.
I pictured my grandmother, her large arms folded across her chest, her head tilted at a defiant angle, and everyone else seeming to eat but only just touching their lips with empty forks, or filling their mouths with drink they did not swallow. My grandmother was an old-time saint. She wielded the truth like the double-edged sword Saint Paul says it is. She was noted for rebuking the women of the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters when in the late ’50s they thought it was acceptable to straighten their hair. Later when the skirtlike gauchos became popular, my grandmother exhorted the women not to wear them because skirtlike or not, gauchos are pants, and women aren’t supposed to wear pants.
And chastity? My grandmother’s chastity was legendary among the Faithful. She had kept her virginity until age thirty-four, “and would have kept it longer,” she always said confidently, “if the right man hadn’t come along.”
The right man was Private Cooper.
None of us except for the real old-timers had ever met my mother Isadore’s father, but from what Gran’ma had revealed about him over the years, we knew Private Cooper had been a migrant laborer and a country preacher.
Private Cooper was foreign born, she told us, a Jamaican, but when Gran’ma met him, he had been living in America for several years and spoke American English with only a slight accent. Upon hearing him speak for the first time, Gran’ma (who was known as Sister Mamie Culpepper back then, or Sister Mamie because she was still a maiden) had guessed incorrectly that he was from the Bahamas, where folks were known to talk funny. There were lots of Bahamians around South Florida back in those days working the agricultural circuit for the big fruit and vegetable farmers alongside the Mexicans and the regular American black folk. In fact, the small wooden houses with the slanted roofs and the porches out front that you see in places like Overtown, Coconut Grove, and Goulds to this very day are Bahamian-style houses.
My grandmother Mamie Cooper (née Culpepper) herself was the offspring of field laborers. She was born in Tifton, Georgia, but didn’t remember much about the place (or her own father who had stayed behind) because her mother had brought her to Florida when she was too young for it to stick. Her earliest memories were the series of small wooden shack homes in South Florida as they followed the crops through the yearly cycle of picking oranges and grapefruit and lemons and limes and tomatoes and peppers and onions, and chopping sugar cane with her mother and her aunti (who had no name that I ever heard of other than “Aunti”).
When she first met Cooper, Gran’ma knew right away he had come from somewhere else. It was not just the hint of accent. He wore his suit too tight, and he let too much cuff show. When he ran—and often he did run in his fervor on the pulpit at tent meetings—his knees didn’t bend enough, and his arms, with the Bible tucked tight under one of them, hung straight down at his sides. Some of the boys, the other cutters and pickers, joked: “He’s a big man, but he runs like a girl.”
“He does not run like a girl,” Sister Mamie would say in his defense. She knew the other boys were just being mean out of jealousy. He was a good preacher, a fast fruit picker, and he was not afraid to court Mamie, who was on fire for the Lord and had already dismissed a goodly number of the same jacklegged suitors who were poking fun at Cooper.
“He’s so young for you, Mamie. He’s got to be ten years younger than you, if not more. You know that means trouble,” some of the ladies would warn. But she knew where that was coming from too. These lady friends of hers believed that if a woman waited so long to marry she deserved only the slimmest of the pickings, but Cooper was handsomer and more gentlemanly than all of their ugly, old dried-up men.
She first saw him in the orange groves near Goulds, shirtless, swinging a machete. He cut quite a figure. When she found she couldn’t get him off her mind, she prayed and asked the Lord if he was the one. The Lord told her yes. They met formally at the tent meeting he was running with the permission of the local preacher, none other than Brother Buford Morrisohn, who had come from up north to build the Faithful flock down here in South Florida, where Catholics, AMEs, Holy Rollers, atheists, and Baptists were in abundance. Sister Mamie and her family had been mostly Holy Rollers and “jump up” Baptists until Brother Morrisohn arrived, but they had been among the first to convert and they were strong in their faith and brought many into the fold.
Their hands first touched as Gran’ma, the blushing Mamie Culpepper, dropped her coins in the collection plate.
It was around the time of the war, and there was a training camp set up down there. It was common to see men in jeeps or armored vehicles rolling through the old dirt roads. A lot of the boys back then were joining up. It was a great opportunity for black men to make some good money to support their families. It was a great opportunity for black women who were looking for husbands who could take care of them properly.
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.
“David was before Christ’s time. That’s Old Testament.”
“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.”
“I hear,” she said, “about all the things you’re doing around the church and at school. You’re amazing.”
“Praise His name,” I said.
She opened her hands. “And this. I don’t think I could have played at Barry’s wedding if I were in your place.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a wedding. I’ve played at lots of them.”
“Don’t deceive yourself, Elwyn.” She extended her hand and I took it. She was wearing a sky-blue dress that was a cascade of fine lace. The hat on her head, tilted at a stylish angle, had the same lace pattern on it. Her hair was braided into a single long black tail. She uncrossed her legs as I helped her out of her seat. “All liars, even those who deceive but themselves, shall have their part in the lake of fire.”
I took my hands away from hers and shoved them in my pockets. A few feet away, Barry guided Peachie’s hand in the ceremonial cutting of the cake. A camera flashed. There was applause. It all seemed very far away, as if happening in another country but being broadcast on TV.
I turned back to Sister Morrisohn. “Peachie and I never promised each other anything.”
“Deception, deception,” she sang in a voice that tinkled. “You can’t fool me. It must have really hurt you.” She reached up and touched the side of my face near my mouth. “Poor boy, love is often cruel.”
I considered Sister Morrisohn’s own mouth, the way the bottom lip poked out when she pronounced a word with an open vowel sound: “you,” “poor,” “boy.”
The devil was causing me to focus on the pink on that pulsating bottom lip and urging the physical manifestations of lust to take place within me. I reminded myself that I was strong in the Lord. The Lord reminded me that I was still in control of my feet.
“Sister Morrisohn, I’ve got to go,” I said hurriedly.
I left her and walked straight to my car. In a blur of confusion and emotion, I sped down familiar streets made unfamiliar by my anger at my shameful weakness. Fearing what I might do to myself, I pulled over to the side of the road, clasped my hands, and bowed my head before the steering wheel.
Lord, I prayed, give me a sign. Show me what to do.
My vision cleared. I looked up and saw that I had parked beside a canal. A large turtle rested in the grass on the shoulder of the water. I got out of my car. I picked up a long branch that still had some leaves on it and prodded the turtle until it retreated into its shell. I put down the branch and pondered the large animal safe inside its shell and at length concluded that if this were, in fact, a sign, then I certainly had no idea what it meant.
At about 6 p.m., when I figured the reception had ended, I drove back to church to help Brother Al and Brother Suggs clean up.
I would work for the Lord. I would be strong. Praise Ye the Lord!
I was the last one to leave the church that night. And when I left, not a scrap of dirt remained behind.
The next day was Sunday, and I fasted.
That night, I received a call. It was Peachie, but she was crying so much that it took me a few minutes to figure out what exactly she was saying: “I made a mistake and now everyone hates me.”
“No one hates you, Peachie. And you know God loves you. His greatest gift is that He forgives us our sins.”
“It’s not that, Elwyn. It’s just that everyone thinks I deceived you.”
I sat up in my bed. “What?”
“Your grandmother makes it sound like I—”
“My grandmother?” Of course. The truth is like a two-edged sword.
It cuts going and coming.
“Sister Morrisohn too, and that whole Missionary Society. They make it sound as though I—”
“Sister Morrisohn?”
“Yes, she wouldn’t even talk to me at my own wedding.”
Peachie deteriorated into sobs and it was awhile before I could understand her again.
“Sister Morrisohn is the one who pressured Pastor to kick me off the choir.”
“But you’re pregnant,” I said. “What did you expect?”
Peachie shouted, “It has nothing to do with my pregnancy! There’ve been pregnant girls up there before and you know it. You said yourself God has forgiven me. They wouldn’t even let me have a regular wedding. That ugly blue dress! The real problem is I offended their pet. You.”
“Me?”
“With all the witnessing and stuff you’re doing at school, you make the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters look good. All of those new converts. And me, your perfect mate, big and pregnant for another man.”
“That’s not how it is.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
I felt a great sadness for Peachie and her plight, but in many ways this turn of events served her right. These were the wages of her sin, the fact that she had wronged me notwithstanding. I could not tell her this, so I tried to change the subject.
“Where’s Barry?”
“He’s right here. He told me to call. He’s afraid they won’t ordain him if I don’t apologize to you.”
“Peachie, this is ridiculous. You don’t owe me any apologies.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, Peachie.”
“I’m sorry, Elwyn. I am so very, very sorry,” she said. “I hope that satisfies you, you arrogant knucklehead.”
“Oh, Peachie, don’t be that way.”
The second day after Peachie married Barry was a Monday, but I did not drive directly home from school.
I stopped by Mr. Byrd’s office. I was a conqueror come to claim new lands for the Lord.
With an exasperated expression on his face, Mr. Byrd looked up from his cluttered desk. “What now, young evangelist?”
“I feel I’m being persecuted for my religious beliefs.”
“How so?”
“Security broke up my prayer meeting today.”
“Good,” he said. “I sent them.” He put his pen down and came around the desk. “The cafeteria, I believe, is a place for eating. Many of the students complain that your activities upset their stomachs so much that they can’t eat their meals.”
“I don’t believe you. What students have complained, sir?”
“Don’t press me, boy.”
I had him where I wanted him. I opened my book bag and pulled out five sheets of paper. “I have a petition here signed by over a hundred students and staff who feel that we should be allowed to form a Jesus Club at this school—”
He snatched the papers from my grasp. “I don’t see my signature,” he said. He tore the petition in half two times and dropped it in the wastepaper basket.
“I have a photocopy.”
“Who cares? The real issue is not your prayer meeting but your grades. This is a school, not a church!” Mr. Byrd roared.
We stood toe-to-toe now, and he proved to be about an inch shorter than I (and I was no giant), but I was suddenly afraid of him. I shrank at the sound of his angry growl.
“I know Christians, but you’re not one, Elwyn. You’re weak. And you use your religion to shield your weakness. You can’t make it on the football team, so you lure the best players away to your Bible studies.”
“I’m not an athlete. They come freely.”
“You can’t get a girl, so you preach about adultery and fornication.”
“Fornication is ruining our women.”
“Not my woman. And I got a woman.” He pointed to the photograph behind his desk. “A big, happy, sexy woman. Look at her smile.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“You should try passing your classes instead of passing out Bibles.”
“I can pass if I want to. I’m an honors student.”
“You were an honors student.”
“I’m smart.”
“Smart enough for Bible College at any rate. What SAT scores does Bible College require?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I was on the verge of tears, and I didn’t know why. “You’re persecuting me.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Don’t use God as an excuse for failure and unhappiness, Elwyn. Don’t think that your misery on earth is a free ticket to heaven. Have fun. Be young. Pass your classes.”
“No!” I could not prevent the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Satan was winning. Then Mr. Byrd slapped me three times hard in the face.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
It stung like a revelation. I tested my lip, which had begun to swell, and I stared without anger at Mr. Byrd.
“Now you’ll probably sue me for assault,” he said as he ushered me out of his office, with the hand that had smote me holding the door open against its strong spring.
I did not drive directly home after getting slapped by my principal. I visited Sister Morrisohn. A Christian must be valiant, brave. A Christian who has sinned must confess.
“I am saved.”
“By the Grace of God.”
“How, then, did I let go of His unfailing hand?” She forced my palms together. “Pray, Elwyn.”
I bowed my head and closed my eyes. A sobering thought prevented me from praying, and I opened my eyes. “You never told anyone what I did that day.”
“There was no point in ruining your reputation.”
“I would have lost my position in the church, like Peachie.”
“You didn’t really sin,” Sister Morrisohn said. “Peachie sinned.”
“I did sin.”
“But you prayed for forgiveness.”
“So did Peachie. And she confessed openly. I didn’t so much as do that. Open confession is good for the soul.”
“God knows the heart. That’s enough, don’t you think? Let your little transgression be a secret between me, you, and God.”
“But the secret is driving me crazy.” I was at a crossroads of faith. I had to either do what the Bible said was right, or not do what was right at all. It was now 4:15. Sister Morrisohn wore a red sundress. A half hour ago she had removed her shoes. I had been there almost an hour.
I had told her the devil had got ahold of me and made me love her. She had raised her eyebrows and then removed her shoes. Another revelation. She had beautiful feet.
“There are many secrets in the church. Those who confess are no worse than the rest, but they suffer for their forthrightness.”
“The Bible says open confession is good for the soul.”
“Everyone will treat you like a backslider. You don’t want that.” She closed her eyes. “Some will even laugh at you.”
“Laugh?”
“You’re so much younger than me. They would find that amusing.”
“Did they find it amusing,” I asked, “when you married Brother Morrisohn?”
This seemed to catch her off guard. Her face underwent a series of quiet transformations, from disbelief to anger to resignation, before she spoke again: “How old are you, Elwyn? Sixteen?”
“Almost seventeen.”
“I’m twenty-six years older than you.” She rose from the couch where she had been sitting for the last half hour and walked in her stockinged feet to the other side of the room and stood beneath the portrait in oil of her and Brother Morrisohn on their wedding day. It was a painting in broad strokes and drab colors: black, gray, a rusty brown, a pasty yellow where there should have been white. “I was married for nearly twenty years to a man close to forty years my senior, and I loved him every second of that marriage.”
“You’re saying it doesn’t really matter, then, the age difference.”
“It matters a little. Oh, there are times when it matters.” She laughed suddenly into her hands. “I’m so flattered. I just can’t believe that at your age—well, just look at me.” Sister Morrisohn lifted her arms like wings and spun in gay circles, revealing herself from all sides.
I gazed unabashedly. She had dancer’s calves, a slender waist, arms that were thin as a young girl’s.
“I see nothing wrong with you.”
“Look at me again.” Now she grabbed her hem with both hands and raised it above her dimpled knees. “All of these imperfections that come with age.” She spun. Her sundress spread out like an umbrella, exposing thigh-high garters and the black silk panties of mourning.
I saw no imperfections.
When I looked at my watch, it was 8:00 p.m.
“Elwyn, this is a secret you’d better keep.” Sister Morrisohn rolled over and hid her face in my chest. She laughed out loud and then she cried, soaking my chest with her tears.
I ran my fingers through her beautiful hair.
After that, we scrambled to end it, to get back to our lives. What pieces of our clothes we could find, we put back on, and then we knelt at the foot of the bed to pray for the forgiveness of our sins. But she was too close to me, and Satan won the battle again. My hand went under her dress and touched her.
“Oh God,” I said. “Lord,” she said.
And then we sinned again—me and the woman who smelled like spring blossoms, whose slender waist fit so pleasingly into my palm, the woman who did not weigh much when she fell. Me and the wife of my deceased benefactor and friend.
Afterward, she said, her cheek against my neck, “How are we going to do this, Elwyn? People may begin to wonder.”
“I could be giving you piano lessons twice a week,” I suggested. “Good,” she said. Then: “Only twice a week?”
I called home once more. “I’m still at the mall,” I told my mother. “Witnessing.”
“Don’t forget that dinner is waiting for you,” she said. “Or are you fasting again?”
“I’ll be home in a little while. I’m hungry. My fast is over.” I looked at Sister Morrisohn. She turned her head away.
My mother said, “Well, I’ll keep your plate warm. Bye, Elwyn.”
“Bye, Mom.” I hung my head in shame.
Father, forgive me.
