Joy. Marsha Hunt

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СКАЧАТЬ the emergency ward was as crowded as I warned Freddie B it would be on a Sunday afternoon with it starting to get real hot in our part of the world, they had to wait around for hours at the hospital ’fore Anndora got them three catgut stitches that the doctor said she had to have.

      Expecting they would take as long, while Joy played Brenda a game of Chinese checkers that I told her to take out the broom closet, I made the two big ones their favorite snack of a thick wad of grape jelly, between slices of nice fresh soft white bread and left two covered plates full of pork roast, crackling and greens in the warm oven for Tammy and Freddie B coming in, ’cause him and me was due back to the church at five as usual. And I was determined to be there as the whole congregation was planning to turn out ’cause Sister Hall’s brother Tommy was in town from New York City and was gonna sit in with the choir. He was a jazz trumpeter that showed up from time to time, to play for our church when he was working some clubs in San Fran. Them little bips and bops he added to sweeten Miss Scott’s piano playing always transformed the music and inspired our choir times before when he’d come, and I didn’t want to miss it.

      Naturally I was also excited that I had a excuse to have to take Joy and Brenda along with me not knowing how late their mama would be held up at the hospital. I was shocked when they admitted while I was getting them into their best dresses that they hadn’t never been inside no church.

      ‘Not neither for wedding nor funeral!’ I didn’t bother to ask how they missed getting to church when their daddy died, ’cause it wasn’t my business, but I thought that Mrs Tamasina Bang needed her backside slapped for not attending to them children’s souls. And with all the hoo-ha she sometimes made about colored people being backward, there she was acting backwards herself.

      Like I explained to Brenda and Joy ’fore we climbed the bus heading for the meeting, at the First Tabernacle of Saint Barnabus where me and Freddie was members and he was a deacon, the actual building wasn’t nothing but a ol’ grocery store that we was renting till the congregation could collect up enough to do better. But I didn’t tell them that by no way of apology, ’cause I was proud of our church. And with that choir of twelve, including Sister Hall who’d done some gospel recordings, First Tabernacle didn’t need my apologies nor nobody else’s.

      Once we was on the bus, Joy was acting back to her usual and it was nice to hear her say I looked real pretty, although pretty is one thing I ain’t never really been. Not bad looking, but not much better than ordinary ’cause of my teeth being too long and my cheeks being pudgy even when I ain’t carrying no extra weight which I wasn’t back in them days. I was wearing my white felt had with the black and white mesh veil and had pressed, waved and curled my hair, ’cause it didn’t matter how I used to go around looking on weekdays, I didn’t mess on Sundays. And still don’t. I had a good figure all through them fifties and in that chartreuse suit with the short waisted bolero jacket I had on that Sunday I showed it off, I think, though the skirt kept riding up ’cause any skirt that fitted me snug around the waist like that chartreuse one did was always too tight for me round the backside and didn’t want to stay down. And I knew I had to warn Joy and Brenda ’fore we got to church that a few ladies might get to fainting if the spirit hit them, but the girls wasn’t to worry ’cause that was a powerful sign that the Lord was with us.

      From the minute we arrived outside First Tabernacle, the girls had themselves a high time. The church was located on the corner of 7th and Front in a part of town where nobody bothered to sweep the streets and it was tucked between a tailor shop and a bakery, but since neither was open on a Sunday, if it was too hot to wait inside the church before Reverend Earl and his wife Naomi turned up, folks with little children used to congregate outside and some of us could sit on the big wooden ledge of the bakery window which had a big awning that cut out the sun that set in our direction.

      Joy and Brenda was my pride wearing their organdy party frocks and out there playing tag with the other children when the pastor drove up. When I introduced her and her sister to him and his wife Joy said, like she’d rehearsed it, ‘Good evening, Reverend and Mrs Earl, I’m very pleased to meet you.’ All that was missing was a curtsy.

      He sure worked up a lively sermon that evening and I was thankful that it brought a couple Sisters to their feet. ‘Vengeance must be the Lord’s’ was the theme, and Joy asked me what vengeance meant while the choir was getting situated. I did the best I could to explain. ‘I think it means don’t try to get back at folks if they do something bad to you.’ She smiled and nodded but I could tell she didn’t take it in. Remembering that Joy and Brenda wouldn’t know none of the songs that we’d be asked to join in on with the choir, I whispered to Joy to tell Brenda just to clap her hands.

      After the choir got to singing the fourth verse of ‘My Father’s House has Many Rooms’, and Sister what’s-her-name with the dyed red hair started to sing her solo with some trumpet accompaniment by Tommy Hall, Brenda got to waving her arms and hopping from foot to foot like she got a little spirit, but soon as I saw Joy swat her with her Bible study manual, I figured Brenda wasn’t doing nothing but mocking some of my congregation and I chewed her out about it soon as we got outside. Though she swore blind that the spirit had actually hit her. I got to admit she was the one that begged me to take her again and tried to tell her mama all about the choir, and Sister Hall’s brother playing the trumpet and Reverend Earl’s message about vengeance and how Sister Slater broke and run up to him in the middle of his sermon and tried to pull him off the pulpit ’cause the spirit got to her so.

      But Tammy was too caught up telling her own story to me about what had happened in the hospital to take any notice of what Brenda had to say. And whereas I would of expected Tammy to be het up with worry about Anndora who was passed out ’sleep in her mama’s lap from the day’s excitement, Tammy had her mouth full to overflowing with the name of John Dagwood who she’d met in the emergency ward.

      ‘I felt so sorry for the poor guy,’ she said. ‘His first day in town after driving all the way from Detroit and he had the bad luck to have a truck back into him at a stop light. He said he thought he only had a little whiplash, but being in the insurance business he thought he’d get a hospital x-ray on his back because John Dagwood said if you don’t handle things in the right way you never get any compensation. And after the trouble I had getting compensation for Sherman, I know what he means. Of course, Mr Dagwood said had Sherman been white things might have been different.’ I listened with one ear, ’cause I was too busy noticing how strange and quiet Joy got sitting next to her mama and stroking her baby sister’s little fair arm that was tucked under Tammy’s while Anndora was laying ’sleep with her perfect lips parted looking every bit like one of them baby beauties that was on the Ivory soap commercial. Joy was slowly running one finger up and down Anndora’s forearm and hedging as close as she seemed to dare to sit by her mama who tensed up when Joy got near to her. Tammy acted like somebody who don’t want to be touched and she was not trying to give Joy none of the hug that her Anndora was hogging all to herself.

      ‘You want to come over here and sit on Baby Palatine’s lap?’ I asked Joy in the middle of Tammy saying that John Dagwood had asked for her phone number, because he didn’t know many people in Oakland and thought it might be a good place to settle while he waited for a job with some national insurance firm in San Francisco.

      Couldn’t nobody blame Brenda when she gave up trying to tell her mother about our First Tabernacle choir and slumped over to sprawl herself in front of the TV which was blaring all the while her and Tammy had talked at cross purposes. I was glad that Joy’d sidled over to sit on my lap, but at eight she was already a bit too long limbed for cuddling which is why I figured that her mother didn’t like to bother.

      ‘Did Mr Ross like John Dagwood?’ Joy asked her mama like a grown person trying hard to make conversation with somebody they ain’t got nothing in common with. Nothing like when Joy and me was together and could have us a laugh about Dennis the Menace in the funny papers СКАЧАТЬ