Tambourines to Glory (10 page)

“God’s marquee,” said Buddy, “with your name on it—Reed. You’re a businesswoman, kid, runner-up to Rose Meta—without having to bother with heads.”

“I once thought of going into the beauty business,” said Laura. “Never could get the capital. I’m glad I didn’t now.”

“You’d of been a beauty,” complimented Buddy.

“Sweet daddy, I’d kiss you if we wasn’t in front of the church.”

One thousand seats, and each seat bottom folded back. A balcony that used to be for smoking, but no more. “I wonder if we’ll fill the upstairs?” asked Laura.

“Try them Lucky Texts,” Buddy advised.

“I’ll have to spring that deal on Essie by surprise,” said Laura. “I better not do it the first Sunday night. I want a little peace for the dedication.”

“You got enough on your program for the opener. Save the Bible luckies for next week,” Bud counseled. “Start your shot in the arm on another go-round. Get up there on the rostrum now and lemme see how you look.”

Laura mounted the stage. They had rented an enormous golden curtain as a background for the chorus.

“I’m gonna get me a red robe to wear up here,” said Laura, “and a purple one to change off. Essie’s so big, let her wear black for sin, or white for goodness.”

“Baby, you would look gorgeous with nothing on,” cried Buddy from the back of the auditorium. “And when that spotlight strikes you …”

Essie came panting in and looked around the vast playhouse. “They did clean it up right nice for us, didn’t they? And the rostrum looks wonderful with that gold velvet drape. But I miss our Garden of Eden.”

“Adam’s here,” said Buddy, pointing a thumb at himself, “and yonder’s Eve.”

Laura laughed, but Essie wilted silently into a folding seat at the back and went into a pause, a heaviness in her heart. The other saints were bustling around inspecting the place, and Deacon Crow-For-Day proudly placed the Bible on the rostrum which Buddy eventually brought down to the stage. Birdie Lee emerged from the bathroom and set up her drums, took out her sticks, and rolled a jolly gospel roll. Whereupon, in the darkened auditorium, Essie came to life and cried, “Amen!”

STRONG BRANCH

N
ow in their new apartment, they each had big, beautiful bedrooms. Essie slept alone. Laura—well, there were men’s coats hanging in Laura’s closet, and male pajamas in her laundry—not for sleeping—pajamas with a red B embroidered in silk on the jacket pocket. Naturally they belonged to that big
black
Negro (which is what Laura called him when she got mad—otherwise he was
dark brownskin)
by name of Buddy. Buddy said he liked the shower with the glass doors in the bathroom, which is why he often slept at their place, just so he could get up in the morning and take a shower.

Essie said “Huh!” at that one.

Water! Wonderful water, cleanliness next to godliness! Buddy was clean, teeth shining, nails polished, Sugar Ray’s Barber Shop
giving his hair a gleam. Sharp-moving like a boxer, like a beast. Tiger of a boy! Coconut eyes, hair which crackled sometimes when Laura ran a comb through it. For Laura, who had never touched the Holy Grail, Buddy was the nearest thing to such a vessel.

“I thrills when I touches the Bible,” said Essie.

“I thrill when I touch that man,” grinned Laura.

But it was in their new apartment in the late watch of evening that an unsmiling Laura often poured too many drinks. And it was in the late watch of evening that she occasionally talked too much—or rather too freely, for she always talked. But especially on nights when Buddy was not there, she would go to the case in the pantry and pull out another bottle if the built-in cabinet in the living room was dry. In the day, before services, Laura seldom, if ever, drank. But nighttime, with Buddy off somewhere, the hours were so long!

Essie, being a sleepyhead, seldom kept her company. Essie’s new Beautyrest mattress in the big cool bedroom in the new apartment was too comfortable! Besides, she had her books to read, slowly going through the whole Bible, plus Howard Thurman with his rolling sentences concerning Jehovah God, and Norman Vincent Peale telling people how to behave themselves easily. But sometimes Laura would start one of her glass-in-hand talking jags early, before Essie turned in, and it was hard for Essie to be so impolite as to go to bed in the middle of an exposition. When Laura was even just a little drunk, her conversations had a way of weaving continuous links that had no end—for in truth, the end was not yet. Tonight Laura was talking about her mother. It had begun with the lighted cross in the living-room panel
which Laura said the writer from
Ebony
that afternoon had called a
symbol
. “And I thought a
cymbal
was something on a drum,” said Laura.

“Crosses and nothing else holy don’t mean a thing if you don’t live right,” said Essie, “whatever you may call ’em. And you, Laura, singing and preaching and praying in church half the night and drinking at home the rest, you are burning your candle at both ends.”

“My mama burned hers at both ends, also in the middle too,” said Laura. “Did I ever tell you really about my mama? Hell-raisingest woman in Charlotte society! North Carolina ain’t forgot Mama yet. My mother was from a good family, but the family claimed she did their name no good. They put her out when I was born—I’m illegitimate, you know. The principal of the school was my father—married and a father twice before he fathered me. He never would graduate my mama from that school after she became pregnant, which he did not consider respectable for a student to do. I was born in Raleigh after all of Charlotte knew I was coming—too late for Grandpa, who was a mail carrier and a preacher, to send Mama away before the news leaked out—which is why she was always in disgrace at home. Do you think Mama cared? Never cared! She went on back to Charlotte from Raleigh and stayed right there until the day she died having her thirteenth baby at the age of forty-four. Mama should have knowed better, but she kept on producing black, yellow, and brownskin children for thirty years. Had so many marriage licenses around the house, one overlapped the other. Every time Mama got drunk, she wanted to go get married. Me, being the first one, was the only child not blessed by some kind of wedlock—Catholic, Protestant,
or Justice of the Peace. I told that reporter from
Ebony
today, don’t go digging too far back into my past—write about the
now
, not the
then.”

“How come they want to write about you in the magazine?”

“Because he says you and me’ve got the biggest independent church in Harlem—not belonging to no denomination but our own. He asked me in what did I believe. I said, ‘In myself.’ Of course, I added, ‘For publication, you better fix that statement up a little. Shall I grease your palm? Or do they pay you well on your magazine?’ He said, ‘We don’t accept money from others.’ So all I said was, ‘Do Jesus! Have a drink.’ We got on fine. Sorry you was taking your nap, Essie, when he was here interviewing. You’re always resting somewhere, so you miss a lot of what’s happening. But Mr. Morrison’s coming back with a photographer. They gonna take pictures of our lighted cross and me in my mink coat, me in my car, me singing in the pulpit with a tambourine. Girl, our church is getting famous! Had my mama lived to see me now, she’d of forgot I was a bastard.”

“Laura!”

“Well, I was—which is maybe why I’m what that
Ebony
man calls a personality—you know, like Eartha Kitt—with that little something extra on the ball. Essie, I got it from my mama. My mother could jive a man back, make him run and butt his head against the wall, lay down his month’s salary at her feet, then beg her for a nickel.”

“You just the other way around,” yawned Essie, growing sleepy, “giving away money.”

“I know. I took after my mother in reverse. Skip it! Tell a story! Mama could make a bar full of people laugh or cry, whichever
way her tale went, or if it was about ghosts, scare the hell out of ’em. Mama never saw a ghost in her life, no more than I ever saw Jesus, but she could make up ghost stories to raise the hair on your head. That’s where I get my gift of making up visions. I can tell ’em in church so well that even
you
believe me, Essie, and get to shouting up there in the pulpit. Sometimes, sister, I think you’re real square.”

“Laura, sometimes I do think you are telling the truth in the pulpit, but you just don’t believe it yourself. Your experiences is stronger than your faith.”

“I been through a plenty, girl, but never seen no visions. What I been through is
real
—robbed, raped, knocked down, plus being kicked on both haunches by that old Negro that bought me that new dress that time I run to you to hide. I have had experiences, Essie, not visions. High on hard likker when I was ten, converted Baptist and half drowned at baptism when I was twelve, married when I was sixteen, divorced when I was twenty, then married again by twenty-one to a simple old Negro who wanted to take care of me.

“I said, ‘Baby, I can take care of myself. Don’t I look like it?’

“He said, ‘You’re a fine figure of a woman, Laura—which is why I am willing to buy you new dishes every day just to throw at my head.’ I had a temper at that time—broke two chicken platters and a gravy bowl on his bald spot. Sometimes, all of a sudden, Essie, I would coo at him real sweet—and be reaching at the same time for something to bust that man’s brains out. But I hate to be kicked in the street where the lampposts is all cemented down. Otherwise, I would have picked one of them posts up and brained that joker that night I run to you. Sometimes my meanness
comes out, Essie—which, I guess, is from my mother, too. My mama took a red-hot poker in Winston-Salem one night and stuck it square up a Negro’s middle hole whilst he slept.”

“Fatheration!” said Essie, trying to keep her eyes open.

“I admired my mother,” affirmed Laura. “Sometimes I wish I had her gumption. Ball all night, play all day, drink a bootlegger dry, and still looked like a chippie when she died! Mama protected herself from all evil and got her share of life. This Haig and Haig I’m downing would be a soft drink to my mama. And that Negro Buddy—that I’m so weak about that I’m worried as to where he’s at right now—to her would be nothing but a play-toy. Take Buddy serious? Not Mama! She’d bust his conk wide open. They made women in them days—and I take somewhat after her myself. But the rest of Mama’s children turned out to be nothing—all fell by the wayside—except me, Sister Laura Reed. I’m a strong branch of a bitch myself.”

Essie was snoring politely in a gray silk chair from Sloane’s, so she made no comment. Laura poured another drink, lifted her glass, and made a toast to herself in the mirror.

“To Miss Bitch!” she said.

ENTER MARIETTA

W
hen June came all over the U.S.A. and Marietta’s school was out down South, it came about that at last she was coming to live in Harlem with her mother. Essie had sent her the money for two new dresses and a magic ticket North on the bus. In New York, Essie went down to the Greyhound Terminal to meet her.

Wonderland of the North—where white folks and colored folks all sit anywhere on a bus. The North where you can be colored but still get a Coca-Cola in any drugstore without having to carry it outside to drink it. The North—where young folks all go to school together. The North where New York is, Chicago, Detroit—and Harlem.

They all had come originally from the South—Essie, Laura,
Buddy, plus just about everybody else in their church, too. Mighty magnet of the colored race—the North! Roll bus! Roll across that Jim Crow River called the Potomac! Roll past the white dome of the Capitol! Roll down the New Jersey Turnpike, through the Holland Tunnel, and up and out from under the river into the North! New York! Roll into the magic streets of Manhattan! Harlem, a chocolate ice cream cone in New York’s white napkin.

“Chocolate candy of a boy! Buddy, baby, daddy, do you want another little nip of Scotch now before Essie gets back here tonight with her daughter? We’d better put these drinking things away before that teenager arrives.”