3
Sister Betty took her time coming out from among the crowd in front of Pookie's. She'd spied both Bea and Sasha moments earlier as she walked down Left Street, where she always went to pass out her Bible tracts on Sunday evenings. Even before she'd moved into her palatial home, she'd done so.
“You know that you need Jesus,” she'd say as she offered a tract. She always made it her business to stop by Pookie's place to get the church crowd as they came and went.
She didn't need to be right up on them to know that Bea and Sasha were having one of their regular fights. She purposely took her time handing out her Bible tracts and holding a prayer vigil as the police escorted the numerical engineer, as Pookie liked to be called, into the waiting patrol car.
She didn't stop praying until she saw Bea walk away in the opposite direction. “Thank you, Jesus.”
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Bea, who had hurried about a block away in the opposite direction, stopped to rest. She was so tired that as she began to move again, she actually looked like a turtle walking through tar.
Bea thought about returning to her empty apartment and quickly dismissed the thought. Since she'd stopped dating eighty-year-old Slim Pickens because of his infidelity, she was lonely. For a moment, she stood there wishing she'd married or had children so she'd have a reason to go home.
There's got to be another way of making some more money. My rent is due and my pension ain't
, Bea thought. Then she heard the ripples of laughter.
Lounging around at a bus stop farther down the block were several other old people. It seemed as though the only people on the street that night were the senior citizens. Bea saw that most were leaning on canes and she swore she could smell them reeking of Bengay. They were huddled in front of a closed grocery store, smiling and just glad to be alive.
As Bea approached the crowd, she called out to an old man she thought she recognized. She believed his name was Buck or Chuck. She decided to call him Buck.
“Hi there, Buck,” she whispered. “What's going on?” His appearance made her think of an old pervert she once knew. With such nice weather, no reason for him to be wearing an overcoat.
Buck didn't answer right away when he heard Bea call out his name. Instead, he blew his bulbous nose into an old, wrinkled handkerchief.
“Good to see you tonight. You are Bea Blister, aren't you?” He wiped his furrowed brow and squinted before continuing. “I'm just trying to see if I can add a couple more dollars to my pension this evening.”
The words
more dollars
made Bea's arthritic knees straighten, carrying her quickly to Buck's side. “What's that you say?” she asked.
“We're on our way to the bingo game at the church over there on Shameless Avenue. The game's supposed to begin in about thirty minutes, and that doggone church bus is running late. If it don't come soon we're gonna miss the game and the nursing home will know we're gone and send out security.”
These weren't just seniors on a mission. They were a few old folks who'd walk barefoot into a flaming volcano for a chance to add a dollar to their small pensions. They didn't feel too guilty, since the church that held the game sanctioned their innocent gambling habits and provided transportation.
“What church is holding it?” Bea asked suspiciously. What was left of her survival skills caused her to question a lot of things.
“I can't give out that information without some incentive,” Buck said, licking his crusty lips as he leered at Bea.
“Why don't I just take a rock and hit you?” Bea replied while pretending to look for a rock.
“It's the No Hope NowâMercy Nevah Church,” Buck answered quickly. He'd have quoted the church history if the rumbling of the old bus approaching hadn't interrupted.
The dimly lit bus approached with a cockeyed, redheaded driver with skin the color of rancid beef draped over its wheel. The bus shook and sputtered dark fumes as its brakes squealed like it was in pain.
She didn't see a destination sign displayed, but Bea decided to trust Buck, hoping that it was the bingo bus. She followed him and the others onto it.
4
While Bea went off to play bingo, Sister Betty returned home. After changing clothes, she knelt beside her couch as she often did, and prayed.
She'd barely gotten into her praying when the persistent ring of the telephone caused her to stop.
The telephone was on its fifth ring by the time she finally made it off her knees. Normally, she'd take the phone off its hook before praying. This time she'd forgotten.
“Hello.”
“How are you, Sister Betty?”
“Who is this?”
“It's Reverend Leotis Tom.”
“I'm sorry, Pastor. I didn't recognize your voice.” She had no idea what her pastor could want with her. “What can I do for you?”
“I read the headlines in the
BLAB
a few weeks ago, and I've been meaning to speak to you.”
“I'm so sorry,” Sister Betty began to explain, but she was cut off.
“No need to apologize. I've chatted with a few of the other women on the Mothers Board and, against their concerns, I've decided that I want you to run for the office of president. I'll let the board nominate a vice president.”
“Say what . . . !” Sister Betty's mouth flew open.
“I normally don't read the
BLAB
. But I'm glad it was in the bathroom and I did. God is so good. I've prayed that someone would come in and take the Mothers Board to higher heights. Everyone knows there's no one higher than you when it comes to God's business.”
“I don't wanna . . .” Sister Betty pouted, sitting down with the phone still stuck to her ear. Her eyes were wild with disbelief as the reverend continued chatting up a storm.
The more reasons she gave for not wanting to enter into World War Three with Sasha and Bea as well as the others, the more reasons the reverend gave as to why she should. They went back and forth for almost thirty minutes. He quoted scriptures, visions, and almost offered her a salary. Almost, but he didn't. He was about monies coming in, not going out.
“Don't be so modest,” the reverend chided. “I've already taken up a collection and purchased your ticket to the Las Vegas conference. I haven't told either Mother Sasha or Mother Bea yet.”
“You won't have to because I ain't going!”
And while the reverend and Sister Betty played word tennis, each trying to one-up the other with their own rationalities, all hell was about to break loose on the other side of town.
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Arriving finally at the church, the old folks piled off the mysterious bus. The last rider had barely stepped safely away before the bus and its cockeyed driver disappeared under the cover of darkness. Everyone checked their pockets and purses to make sure they had their ten-dollar entry fee. They huddled, counting their pennies, dimes, quarters, and taped-together dollar bills.
One by one they entered. Some of them shuffled, a couple of them griped, and one limped while a few others maneuvered their wheelchairs and canes onto an elevator and descended into the windowless subbasement of the No Hope NowâMercy Nevah Church.
Minutes later, they got off the elevator and lined up against a wall, fidgeting to try to avoid the chipped and peeling paint that began sticking to their clothes like lint. From nowhere three spry female ushers appeared. With one arm held behind their backs for propriety sake and nothing else, each usher zipped through the line with a collection plate for the fees and then quickly disappeared.
Once they found their seats, the seniors talked competitive trash. “I hope you've put aside some cat food for your dinner, 'cause I'm taking this pot,” Buck chided one of the seniors, whose seat kept sliding from under him every time he tried to sit.
“You must be goofed on stink weed if you think you're winning tonight,” the old man responded as he finally plopped down, almost breaking a brittle hip as he did.
The others said nothing as they concentrated on rubbing arthritis salve and alcohol into their elbow joints and flexed their gnarly fingers to get the blood flowing.
Ten minutes later, their clothes splattered with ink and a magnifying glass in one hand, the old folks were ready. The rousing once-a-month bingo game sprang into full swing. It was seniors night and no holds barred was the rule.
The pastor and founder of No Hope NowâMercy Nevah Church was the Reverend Bling Moe Bling. His ill-fitting snowy white toupee looked like a cloud hovering over his pointed head. He sported a shortened crippled leg supported by a bicycle kickstand.
Now in his late seventies, the reverend had first started preaching in his early seventies. He claimed that God had called him on his cell phone and told him to spread the word. He'd divorced his first wife after she'd insisted it was just static or probably a wrong number. He was determined to do God's work for a price and so he started the seniors' bingo night.
The reverend, who was dressed in his traditional bright red Nehru-collared long robe, stood lopsided behind a rickety picnic table. Smudged bingo boards were stacked high on the table. Off to the side, Pepsi-Cola bottle caps took the place of real bingo chips.
As the reverend called out one number after another, he leaned to one side, grasping the table for support with one hand. By the time one of the senior citizens, stuttering as if his lips were hummingbird wings, finally called out, “Bingo,” the bicycle kickstand the reverend used to support his shortened and useless left leg fell over. With his hands flailing as if he were trying to fly, he accidentally knocked over the table. The fall caused all the previously called and uncalled numbers to fall to the floor.
Every number from B1 to O75 shot off the table. It took a moment before it occurred to the seniors or sunk in that there was no exact way to tell who really had bingo. Echoes of “bingo” rang out at the same time as the players all inched and then clamored toward the table. By the time reasonable order was established, the only things distinguishable were the odor of Bengay and pieces of somebody's wheelchair.
It took another fifteen minutes for the ushers and anyone able-bodied to round up the seniors, and to lift the Reverend Bling's shriveled leg back onto his kickstand.
“I want my money and I want my money now,” Bea screamed from the back of the room. She stood shuffling from side to side, the hem of her long blue dress bustling as though it were alive and ready to do damage. As her eyes widened in anger, she moved her hands back and forth as though she were competing on a ski slope. “I just spent the last fifteen dollars of my pension money trying to win that one-thousand-dollar bingo pot and I'll knock out anybody who gets in my way and then pray 'em back on my way to the bank.”
Her tirade had forced her dentures to move forward in her mouth. While Bea stopped and adjusted her false teeth, to argue her point further, more drama was unfolding in the rear of the room.
The drama inched its way forward, making a
rat-tat-tat
sound with the tip of its cane as it emerged from a table in the back. Snickering, it spoke up and took advantage of the momentary silence from Bea's challenge.
“Y'all know she's crazy. She's probably having another Alzheimer's episode, because it was me who yelled out bingo first,” Sasha cackled.
Sasha was still dressed in her all-white linen gown from earlier. As she inched along, the dress billowed about her elfish brown frame. She used her walking cane to part the sea of other angry seniors as she limped up to the table.
“What tha . . . ? In all the rush to play bingo, Bea didn't know that Sasha was even there. She became so angry she started trembling.
“That woman wouldn't know bingo from Scrapple,” Sasha hissed, forgetting to continue her charade of humility, and that scrapple consisted of meat parts and was not a game. Shooting an angry look back at Bea, she continued to inch up to the table. She used the tip of her cane to poke at the Reverend Bling's chest. “That money belongs to me and if you don't give it to me right now, I'll tear you asunder.”
“Ain't you a woman of God?” the Reverend Bling asked as he bravely tried to maintain a vertical position.
He didn't want to appear weak but it was hard to do when he used a kickstand for leg support. “The Almighty wouldn't be pleased if you tore me
asunder
,” he said in a mocking tone so that the others wouldn't think he was afraid.
He could've saved his energy. The others didn't think he was afraid; they knew for certain that he was.
“If God didn't want me to tear you asunder, He wouldn't have put it in the Bible,” Sasha answered carefully. She never took her beady eyes off the reverend as she used her cane to drag a dust-covered Bible toward her from the end of the table. In her rush she'd left hers back at her table.
Before Sasha went on to further prove her Bible knowledge, she glanced over at Bea to make sure the woman didn't sneak up on her. Bea was still trying to collect her wits and didn't pose an immediate threat. Sasha picked up the Bible and didn't even open it, choosing instead to quote the passage while she held the book.
“It says in the book of Matthew, the twenty-fourth chapter, the fifty-first verseâ”
Sasha stopped suddenly and turned to the others to make sure that all eyes were on her before she continued. “ â. . . And shall cut him
asunder
, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.' ” She stopped again and pointed her cane to the others scattered behind her and particularly at Bea. “That would be y'all. Y'all, the hypocrites.” Then she turned back to the reverend, glaring. “There shall be weeping and gnashing of the teeth.”
Sasha laid her cane across the table and hung her head. Suddenly speaking softly and humbly, she added, “So saith my God.” She clutched her heart slowly and looked at the others as though they all didn't share the same God.
“Well, Mother Sasha, I guess you do know your Bible.” The reverend snickered, nervously. He quickly looked over his shoulder to see if any of the ushers were going to help him.
They weren't.
“Of course I know my Bible.” Sasha nodded with confidence and then added her own interpretation. “As you can see, God has said that I can beat you into a ball of Silly Putty if you don't give me my money.”
Sasha would have said more but suddenly she felt a sharp pinch on her shoulder and cried out, “Ouch!”
“If you try and take my money, you'll be the one looking like a ball of gray-haired Silly Putty.”
The voice was strong, determined, and of course, familiar. When Sasha turned around, rubbing her bruised shoulder, she stood face-to-chest with Mother Bea.
While her longtime foe had spouted customized Bible verses, Bea had snuck up behind Sasha and, with her own false teeth in her hands, had reached down and used them to nip Sasha's boney shoulder.
“Got a Bible verse for that?” Bea taunted, pointing toward Sasha's bitten shoulder. “How about Psalms one twenty-nine, verse four? Do you know that one?” She laid a finger to her lips to silence the others in case they wanted to butt in. “Let me quote it for you.” She lifted her head toward the church ceiling and proceeded. “ âThe Lord is righteous: He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.' ” Bea looked down and pointed toward Sasha. “And that's where you come in. You are that wicked heifer in the book of Psalms.”
The reverend took advantage of the face-off between the two mothers and beckoned two of the ushers, Sister Judah and Sister Israel, to his aid. “Why didn't you two come and help me while I was being attacked?” he whispered angrily when they arrived.
“I was waiting for Sister Judah to move. She was closer to you,” Sister Israel replied. She was still grasping the collection plate and felt secure that the reverend wouldn't want her to drop it to save his hide.
“I don't know what she's talking about,” Sister Judah said in a huff. “I don't understand what the big deal is,” she added while pointing toward Sasha. “She's just an old lady talking about a sunder. I don't even know what a sunder is or what it looks like.”
“Well, let me explain it so you and Sister Israel understandâ” The reverend gripped the table for more support. “Zechariah. The eleventh chapter and the fourteenth verse says, âThen I cut asunder mine other staff.'” He nodded towards them. “That's you two,” he said as he continued quoting. “ âEven Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.'” The reverend stopped abruptly and through clenched teeth, said, “Now in your case, it will be sisterhood.”
Sasha interrupted the discourse, barking, “Can we possibly get back to giving me my money?”
“It's not yours. It's my money. You're always trying to take what's mine,” Bea snapped.
Mother Sasha became so mad her bun appeared to be twisting like a helicopter propeller. “When we were younger and she was much uglier than she is now, if that's possible, Bea Blister kissed my boyfriend, Jasper, behind the bleachers at the homecoming game.”