C
HAPTER 20
D
addy said he'd heard that Georgia barbecue, like fruitcakes, shouldn't be missed. I added it to my list of favorite foods, along with onion rings and pecan pie.
Mama took a bite, closed her eyes, breathed deeply. “Delicious.” She'd said, “Bill, oh, God, Bill,” in that same tone of voice. I had to look away.
“Have you talked with Carter?” Mama asked Stell.
“Yes. He and his family are going on to Pawleys today.”
“And the people we rented from, will he tell them about our delay?”
Stell nodded. “He'll get the key and directions to our place. I told him I'd call when we leave Claxton, maybe Monday. He'll wait for us at the pier, no matter how late.”
“That is just so nice of him,” said Mama.
Stell said, “He's a nice boy.” She ate a hush puppy. “There's a tent meeting tonight.”
Daddy said, “So?”
Stell said, “As you know, I have a great interest in religion.”
Oh, brother,
I thought.
Daddy rolled his eyes.
Stell wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I've always wanted to go to a revival.You remember when we went to see Daddy Grace and Iâ”
“Where's this meeting?” Daddy asked.
“Just outside town.We can walk. I'm sure Mary would like to go.”
Mama looked at Daddy. “Or they could use the Chrysler.”
“Not on your life,” Daddy said. “She already wrecked the Packard.”
“That wasn't my fault!” Stell shrieked.
Daddy looked sorry. “What time's this thing?”
Stell smirked at me. “Not until eight, and it's only five thirty.”
I watched my feet while we walked, trying to keep my tennis shoes from getting too dirty before we got to the meeting. Stell had polished her white patent leather flats with Vase- line; they were glopped with a paste of grease and red dust.
I remembered something I saw in a newspaper in Claxton. I wanted to ask Mary about it but wasn't sure how. School would be starting soon, and there was all sorts of speculation about how we'd be affected by something called
Brown versus Board of Education
. The Supreme Court. Colored and white kids going to school together. I'd seen a picture in the paper of a Negro girl in Washington who was going to a white school because the Court said she could.The girl stood in front of her house with her mama and daddy. The words under the picture said it was little Alysha Alderman, but she didn't look little to me. Her skinny arms dangled from the sleeves of her dress, and she was almost as tall as her father.
“Mary, did you go to school when you were a girl?”
“How else you think I came to read and write?”
“Your mama could have taught you.”
“Mama never read nor wrote, not in her life.”
“Where'd you go to school?”
“In what used to be a house, till the land around it got farmed out. The people moved on, leaving a rotten barn and a decent farmhouse.”
“Who was your teacher?”
“We had first one, then another.Wore them out because all of us was in the same room, even ones too young to be in school, but they had to be someplace while they mamas would go clean houses, do mill work. Then they was us older ones. I kept going till I was fifteen and had to go do houses my own self.”
“You know those signs we keep seeing, âNo Browns in Our Schools'?”
“I know about that.”
“That's because of
Brown versus Board of Education
,” Stell said. I'd never thought to ask her.
“That's it,” said Mary. “But I s'pect your mama's right. Won't see Negro children going to school with white children here. Not for a while. But it'll happen. Just people needs to register, vote. Take time, but we do it.”
She meant her people, not us.
The rest of the way to the tent meeting, my mind was filled with thoughts of what it would be like to go to school with coloreds. Would they sit beside me? Were they smart enough to learn? Mary was. Leesum was. The way Mama and Daddy talked, mixing blacks and whites in school would be horrible, but maybe they were wrong.
We saw a lake in a field, a rowboat tied to a pier. A platform with a stub of a diving board floated out in the middle, and two colored boys sprawled on the float. A girl stood at the end of the board, holding her arms over her head, hands together, pointing toward the sky. She leaned over the end of the board until she fell in, then climbed up and did the same thing again. I could have showed her a thing or two about diving.At the far end of the pond, a woman was fishing, the float on her line making rings on the water.
Long before we got to the tent we could see it, a huge khaki box growing out of the grass. A man and three children trotted down the road.
“We gone be late, Daddy,” said one of the children.
“Naw we ain't,” said the man, “if you runs fast.” He touched his hand to his hat as he passed us.
At the path that led to the tent, Stell brushed the dust from her legs. Mary smoothed down the skirt of her dress, straightening till she seemed a foot taller.
In the dusk, the tent glowed, with yellow light pouring from every opening. As we approached, I heard a jumble of voices, a girl giggling. A man shouted something I didn't understand. Whatever he said made the girl laugh so hard she choked.
Mary spoke to a man standing by the entrance, smoking. “Evenin'.”
“Yes'm, yes'm.” He nodded to us.
“We comin' to de meetin',” Mary said.
“Yes'm, you and the young misses?”
“That right. That right.” Her head bobbed up and down. “Have it started?” She sounded like our yard man.
“No'm, and still plenty room.”
“Mary, why are you talkingâ” She grabbed my hand and looked at me in a way that hushed me.
She asked, “It okay we takes a seat?”
His head bobbed back and forth. “Fine, just fine.”
Inside the tent the air was warm and damp. Too many bodies too close together. We stood in the aisle. People turned in their seats, looked at us. Silence moved across the tent. An old woman stood and held her hand out to Mary.
“Evening, Sister.You visiting the meeting?”
“Yes'm, me and de girls. I works for dey mama.”
“We welcome you.” She motioned to some empty chairs three rows from the back. “Help yourself.”
We took seats on the wide aisle. A center pole raised the canvas high off the floor. Support poles formed a vast square room, with flaps tied back at each corner to let in air. People sat on folding wooden chairs, ladder-backs and stools, metal porch chairs, wooden rockers. Children sat on fruit crates in the aisle. In less than a week I'd been in two tentsâthe first one at the carnival where I met Leesum.
The wooden altar had a cross painted on it, with twelve flaming candles set in brass candlesticks around the front and along both sides. A choir in purple robes filled chairs behind the pulpit, sitting silent and still, their faces lit by the flickering light. All I could think about was how hot they must be in their robes.
Stell's shoulder touched mine. She fingered her cross, pulling the chain tight against her neck. Mary opened her purse and took out a fanâcardboard with a wooden handle and a picture of Jesus suffering the little children. “We can share.”
A family sat in front of us, a man in overalls and a white shirt, a woman in a flowered dress and hat. Three children, two girls and a boy. The older girl looked at me. She wore pearls and there was a coarse hair caught in the clasp.
Two boys in white robes entered through one of the corners of the tent, carrying flowers they put in front of the choir, which stood humming in unison, then falling into harmony until the hum became a strong chord that faded and grew, soft, loud, soft again. Eyes closed, they swayed side to side.
A fat man in a dark suit walked up the aisle, holding a Bible against his chest. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed, but he never missed a step. When he turned and looked at the congregation, the candles lit his face. His white hair bushed out from his head, and his eyes glittered as he set the Bible on the pulpit, then lifted his hands and said, “Brothers and Sisters, welcome to the house of God.”
“Amen!” the congregation responded in many voices. The hum of the choir rose in pitch.
“Welcome to Jesus!” the preacher shouted.
“Jesus! Amen!” the people replied. I heard Mary's voice.
The humming got louder. The preacher lowered his face, closed his eyes. A woman began to sing, her voice strong and rich.
“O my brother, do you know the Savior”
âshe stepped away from the pew, raised her arms and sang so loud the tent filled with her voiceâ
“who is wondrous kind and true? He's the rock of your salvation. There's honey in the rock for you.”
The choir echoed her last phrase.
“Oh, there's honey in the rock, my brother, there's honey in the rock for you.”
The singing made the air in the tent even hotter, and I could hardly breathe for the smell of the bodies around me. The woman singing solo raised her arms again, and loose skin swung in arcs to her elbows. Her face glowed.
Stell Ann repeated the words. “There's honey in the rock for you.”
The hymn ended and a man behind us said,“Sister Roland, she got the call.”
“A voice from God.”
Nothing else broke the silence until the preacher shouted, “Repent!”
Stell gasped. Mary sat still, her eyes closed.
“Repent!” the preacher screamed again. “Is there honey in the rock for you? We got to ask ourself this question every day. Not just on Sunday, not just when we in trouble, but every day. Every minute of every day we got to live for Jesus. Elsewise Jesus can't be waiting around for us.”
“Can't wait!” a man shouted.
“Amen!” came from several places at once.
“Has you got sin?” asked the preacher.
“Yes, Lord,” screamed a woman.
“Yes, yes!”
“Repent!” the preacher shouted.
“Amen! Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!”
“Some of you thinks your sins is forgiven,” the preacher said. “You repent. God forgives you. But the Lord don't work in advance. He don't pardon sins you fixing to commit.”
“That right, Lord don't work in advance,” a woman behind me repeated. Sweat slid from my hair down my neck.
The preacher stared first at one person, then another. “Let the one who has no sin throw a rock at me now.” The only sound was the rustling of Mary's sleeve as she fanned herself. “If there's somebody out there who repented last meeting and hasn't sinned in the meantime, come on up here and take my place.”
Voices rumbled, “Yes, Reverend. We all sinners. Amen. God's love.” Nobody walked forward.
He touched the Bible on the pulpit. “Read the Word, my people! The Good Book will keep you straight. Study on it till it's in your mind, for those times when a Bible ain't handy or you cain't find your glasses.” He picked up the Bible, opened it, and recited:
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and unto his courts with praise: Be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”
He snapped the book shut. “But none of us is ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Not you. Not me. We got to ask Jesus to forgive us. Get down on your knees. Pray till it hurts. Be ready when you're called.”
Stell's face glowed. Her lips parted. “Jubie?” She fell against me, then hit the floor, wedged between me and the chairs in front of us.
“Oh, no!” Mary screamed. The preacher paused. People turned to look at us. A big woman rose from her seat across the aisle. She shoved chairs out of her way and bent over Stell Ann, pushing me aside like a chair.
“She be okay, just fell out.” The woman picked Stell up as if she weighed nothing and headed down the aisle toward the exit. Mary and I followed.
The preacher started up again, and the congregation turned back to him.
Outside the tent, the woman lowered Stell Ann to the ground and sat down beside her. She grabbed the fan from Mary, clutched it in her beefy hand, and began to fan Stell with a fury. I reached out to pat Stell, but the woman said, “Leave her be. She in the spirit.” Like Mary giving me an order. I sat back in the dust. The woman had BO so bad it made me choke. Mary kneeled beside us, her eyes closed, hands folded in prayer.