Dominion (5 page)

Daddy, stop looking for the best in the worst. It’s not to be found.

Clarence remembered sitting out on their Puckett, Mississippi, porch as an eight-year-old, his father looking up at the sky and talking on and on about the man in the moon. “Yessuh, I see you’s smilin’ again tonight, ol’ friend. What you got up yo’ sleeve? What you know we don’t? Look like you’s ready to burst, ol’ man.” He’d laugh and laugh.

Young Clarence would ask him to point out all these happy features on the moon’s face. But no matter how much his daddy pointed, all he could see was the craggy, lifeless desolation, a scarred and beaten surface on a tedious repetitive journey across the sky. It bothered him then and it bothered him now that his father saw with such different eyes than he.

“I gonna miss her, Son. Gonna miss my Dani terrible. Already do. Already do.”

The congregation sang two songs about crossing Jordan. They sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Comin’ fo’ to Carry Me Home.” These songs blended pain and joy in the strangest ways, as if written by those who knew one because they had seen so much of the other, as if the hope they expressed somehow meant much more because of the suffering that preceded it.

Clarence mouthed the songs as a lapsed practitioner of a faith mouths its creeds, more out of habit than conviction. His lips moved, but no sound came out. It wasn’t so much that he disbelieved as that he resented what he believed.

I’m tired of injustice. I’m tired of evil winning. If you’re God, why don’t you just stop it?

A worship team came up front and sang a song he’d never heard. “Knowing you Jesus, knowing you; there is no greater thing; you’re my all, you’re the best; you’re my joy, my righteousness, and I love you Lord.”

Pastor Cairo Clancy stepped forward. A hush fell on the congregation. Dani had raved about Clancy over the years, but Clarence had only heard him preach once and wasn’t so impressed. He knew enough to realize that, like politicians, not every minister was what he appeared to be.

“Welcome to Ebenezer, family and friends of Sister Dani Rawls.” The pulpit looked like the bow of a ship, Cairo Clancy her captain. He gazed directly at the audience. Clarence could see no notes, nothing but a big black Bible.

“Sometimes I have to do funerals of people I don’t know. On a few occasions I’ve had to do funerals of people I
wish
I didn’t know.”

Some snickers and laughs and lots of knowing nods.

“But this time it’s someone I knew, someone I was
proud
to know.” His voice broke on the word proud.

“Amens” and “Yessirs” and “Hallelujahs” rippled through the crowd.

Clarence braced himself. He took pride in his objectivity. He resisted the emotional buttons they tried to push in churches like this. He viewed emotions as the back door, a way of sneaking past the mind to manipulate the audience.

Nobody’s going to manipulate me.

“Even as we meet right now, many of our minds and hearts are a few miles away at the hospital with little Felicia. Let’s go to prayin’ for her right now.”

Without looking down, as if no transition were needed, he talked to God: “Lord, we love that little girl and we pray for her healing. We want her back, Lord. She’s so young.” His voice cracked. “If you have a reason to take her to be with you and her mama, we’ll accept that—”

No we won’t.

“But you know we want her healed. You’re the great physician, Lord. You’re all powerful. And you’re all good. We commit Felicia to your care. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

If you’re all powerful and all good, you’ll have to prove it. I won’t let you off the hook.

“Most of you know Dani was an artist.” The pastor pulled out a painting from behind the big wooden pulpit. Clarence saw the blue waves of an ocean.

“Dani painted this for me. It hangs in my office and always will. I don’t think she ever spent much time at the ocean. But she knew how to dream, and her art was a gift from God.”

He held up the oil painting and pointed. “Look at this water. Just the right blue, with a hint of green. Bright and dark colors mixed just right. Now I don’t know a Picasso from a Grandma Moses—I’m no art critic. But one day Dani called me and Martha over, and we watched her finish up this beautiful painting. We saw her put her signature on the bottom. See, right here. Dani Rawls. And then she said to us, ‘I made it for you.’ Well, in the ol’ days people used to give things to us preachers, but I tell you, this painting sure beats fried chicken, collard greens, and a pan of cornbread! And you’re lookin’ at a man who likes his chicken and cornbread!”

Everyone laughed, replete with some hoots and snorts. Part of Clarence questioned whether this was appropriate at a funeral, but an older part remembered that in his family and in the black churches of his youth there had always been a close line between tears and laughter.

Clarence gazed at the painting. He knew Dani’s talent; she’d even sold a few paintings commercially over the years. In his home hung three she’d done for him and Geneva. One of his favorites was two old men playing chess. But the best was a painting of the Kansas City Monarchs, based on an old black-and-white photo of her father’s. There in the front of all these Negro League players stood Obadiah Abernathy, eyes sparkling and body strong. Obadiah loved that picture. Clarence thought he’d seen all her paintings, but never this one of the ocean. It took his breath away.

“Well,” Pastor Clancy said, “I’ve been looking at this painting, and I’ve been thinkin’ about Dani—about how leaving this world was like signin’ and framin’ her own self-painted portrait. What she said and did before she died, it was the finishing touch, the final signature.”

He took out a white handkerchief, slowly wiping it across his black face, the color contrast dramatic.

“Death’s the signature, now isn’t it? Till then our lives aren’t open to final appraisal, because it isn’t over till it’s over. As long as we’re alive, the painting’s still in process and we don’t know for sure how it’s going to turn out. Well, I can tell you that Dani’s life portrait was a masterpiece. It turned out well. She loved her family. She loved the church. Above all, she loved God.”

Sobs and “Amens” filled the sanctuary.

Clarence felt a sudden compulsion to leave. He couldn’t stand to stay in the auditorium another moment. He whispered to his father, “Got to go take an insulin shot.” He whispered the same to Geneva. He could tell she didn’t buy it.

He went out to the side aisle and walked to the back of the church, uncomfortable having everyone watch him. But it hurt less to leave than to stay. He didn’t want to hear any more. There were Jake and Janet, near the back of the full auditorium, a little out of place sitting there in their white skin. Jake turned and looked at him, his eyes asking if he was all right.

Clarence nodded as if to say yes. He went into the bathroom and took out of his suit pocket the three-by-five inch blood test monitor and his little vial of tracer strips. He grasped the beige pen-like pointer that housed the blood test needle and pushed it down on the little finger of his left hand. The spring popped, the needle pierced, and the dark red blood surfaced. Clarence gathered it into a bead, letting it drop neatly on the quarter inch of exposed litmus paper. He pushed the button on the monitor to begin its count to sixty. While it counted he wiped his finger with a cotton ball and stuck the vial back in his suit pocket.

When it reached 57 the monitor started beeping at him. He neatly wiped off the tracer strip on the third beep. He then slipped it down into the slot to be read in another minute. It said 178. Could have been worse, but higher than he suspected, too high. He reached to his other coat pocket and pulled out the small, clear-colored vial of insulin with the white label. He untucked his shirt, took off the orange syringe cover, drew four units of R insulin, and injected himself in the stomach.

His need to take insulin or to consume sugar to combat too much insulin sometimes embarrassed him, but in cases like this it came in handy as an excuse to leave somewhere he didn’t want to be. He knew he had to return now. Why had he consented to say something at the funeral? Reluctantly, he came back up the aisle and took his seat.

“God says it’s appointed to men once to die, and after that comes judgment,” Clancy said. “One day we’ll each stand before God. And it’ll take more than gold chains or lizard skin boots or fancy Easter hats to impress him.”

“Amens” sounded everywhere. A woman behind Clarence said, “Yessuh.” He heard the sounds of purses opening and closing and handkerchiefs unraveling and people crying. Though part of him resisted it, this black church brought up something in Clarence, something precious and long forgotten.

“Dani was a Christian,” Pastor Clancy said. “Her name was written in the Lamb’s book of life. God says because of what he did for her on the cross, she’ll spend eternity with him in heaven. Well, she’s there with him now. I’ll miss her. But if I had the power, would I call her back here?”

Yes. In a second.

“I don’t think so. It would be selfish. Once you meet Jesus on the other side, I have a feeling the last thing you’d want to do is come back here.”

“That’s true, pastor,” someone said.

Clancy went on for another few minutes, then looked at Clarence. “Now, I want to call up someone many of you know, or at least you know of him. Clarence Abernathy. Maybe you read his columns in the
Trib.
I asked him if he’d say some words about his sister, Dani. Welcome, Clarence. Come on up here.”

Clarence walked up front and faced the congregation. He saw the proud faces of the older women, glowing, beaming, ready to burst like they always were when a black man who’d made it stood up front before the community. He was never comfortable being shown off; it seemed to imply black men rarely succeeded. He felt particularly out of place standing behind a pulpit. If God wanted someone to speak for him today, Clarence knew he was a poor choice. He could think of nothing else to say, so he just looked at his notes for a prompting.

“Dani had that knack for fixin’ up the food, even when she was little. She always wanted to be near Mama, and Mama lived in the kitchen. I remember them fixin’ up possum, and Mama explaining to Dani you had to cook that possum till you could pull out the hair, nice’n easy.”

Some made faces and chuckled, many smiled.

Without him realizing it, Clarence’s diction had changed as he made himself at home in the community. “Dani and I did chores together. Went on adventures together. Snuck around and spied out raccoons and skunks and badgers and foxes. Sometimes we just spent the day watchin’ the corn grow and talkin’ about our dreams. We had lots of dreams, me and Dani.”

His voice thickened. He paused for nearly ten seconds.

“One of the things about my little sis was her laugh, that delightful, hilarious, out-of-control laugh.” Clarence had planned to say more about her laugh. He didn’t.

“Summers were the best. Sometimes we hiked into the Bienville Forest, just the two of us, not far from our home in Puckett. Other days we moseyed down the Strong River and walked through the Mississippi mud. Dani loved to squish her toes in it. Then she’d skip up to Farmer Marshall’s jade meadow and pick buttercups. She used to put them up to her face and the sun would hit them just a certain way, and I remember the reflection, the amber color it made on her skin.”

Sobs of recognition and comfort and anguish filled the auditorium. Clarence no longer looked at his notes and found himself saying very different things than he’d written.

“I used to work the grease into Sissy’s hair when she wanted to try something new with it, which seemed like about every week. One time in the Chicago projects, in Cabrini Green, some boys called her a name, made fun of her nappy hair. Next thing I knew my fists were bleeding, two boys were on the pavement, and I was on top of them. When I got home I caught it from Mama. Nearly knocked my head off, Mama did. I ended up hurtin’ a lot worse than those boys.”

Laughter erupted from the congregation, especially the men, many of whom had nearly had their heads knocked off by Mama too. Obadiah sat there nodding, as if to say, “My boy’s tellin’ the truth, now, this ain’t no story, folks.”

“Mama was so mad she told me to stay in my room for five hundred years.” More laughter. “Daddy told me I shouldn’t have done it, but he said he understood why. He said we had to protect our womenfolk.”

Clarence looked at his daddy, both of their eyes watering.

“Later that night Dani snuck into my bedroom and told me, ‘Thanks, Antsy.’ Then she gave me a big plate of cookies she’d baked up just for me.” He fought for control.

“She’d gone and baked cookies for me. That was just like Dani. Then she said, ‘I know you’ll always be there for me, Antsy.”’ His face contorted as if in a wind tunnel. “Well…I wasn’t there for her when those hoodlums came after her Saturday night. Nobody was there for her. Nobody.”

Not even God.

He didn’t say that out loud, out of respect for his daddy. But something inside him burned so hot he didn’t trust himself to say any more. He had some concluding words written out, some thoughtful words people would walk away saying were profound, but he decided not to say them. He crumpled them in his fist and sat down.