Holy Ghost Girl (8 page)

Those of us who remained were scared to death. A smattering of whites sat twisted in their seats, staring out at the robed figures. The crowd in Bossier City had been about half that of other towns, and now with a third of the audience leaving, the tent was almost empty. Quiet, too, except for the sigh of bodies in motion and the shuffling of feet on the ground. A woman a few rows ahead of us licked her lips constantly. A few men and women caught one another’s eyes and raised their brows, as if to ask, “What now?” Everyone looked ready to leave, if only they didn’t have to pass through those white robes. Several of the devils stood behind and to the side of where we sat. I cut my eyes toward them, and noticed for the first time the pant legs and shoes, regular men’s shoes, beneath the hems of their robes.

Up on the platform, Brother Terrell tried again to regain his audience. “Let’s focus our attention on the Lord. A time is coming in this country when God’s people will worship without fear. Amen?”

A dry cough and the whimper of a child were his only answers.

He tried again. “I said there is coming a time when the powers of this world will fade away and God’s kingdom will last forever. The lion and the lamb
will
lay down together. Amen?”

Not a single amen floated up.

“Don’t lay down and die on me tonight. I said there is coming a time when the devil will be defeated once and for all! Now, can I get a real amen?”

A lone voice called out of the silence. “CERTAINLY!”

The shout came from the other side of the tent. Brother Terrell put his hand to his eyes and peered through the spotlights.

“Well, that’s not an amen, but bless God, I’ll take it. When the devil wins one battle you got to believe there will be another battle, one you can win with God’s help. Amen?”

“CERTAINLY!”

Brother Terrell paced the platform and his words picked up speed as he moved. “You got to fast and pray until you’ve put on the whole armor of God. Then you got to go back out and win the next battle. Because there will be a next one and a next one until righteousness triumphs over evil, hallelujah.”

He took out his handkerchief and mopped the sweat off his brow.

“Ain’t that right?”

“CERTAINLY!”

Brother Terrell started to laugh.

“Well, Certainly, whoever you are, come on up here. I want to get a good look at a man who ain’t afraid to speak up when the devil is looking him in the face.”

A small man stood up on the left side of the tent and walked toward Brother Terrell. He wore a plaid sports jacket, dark pants, and a white shirt, all of which were at least two sizes too big. His short gray hair stuck up like pinfeathers. Brother Terrell left the platform and met him in front of the prayer ramp with his hand outstretched. He grabbed the little man around the shoulders and began to drag him back and forth in front of the audience. Certainly’s jacket flapped around him as they walked. People began to turn from the white robes and back toward Brother Terrell.

“Bless God, they’s some people will stand with you no matter who or what is standing against you . . . ain’t that right?”

The man blanched when Brother Terrell stuck the microphone in his face.

“Yes, sir, I . . . I . . . guess that’s right.”

“They’s some people won’t back down when the devil takes a pitchfork after ’em. Ain’t that right too?”

“Yes, sir, Brother Terrell.” Certainly seemed to grow more confident with each step.

“Some people when you ask ’em to say amen, they don’t just say amen. They say . . .” Brother Terrell turned toward the man beside him. “What was it you said?”

The man hesitated, then took the microphone, leaned back as far as he could, and whipped his body forward as the word shot out of his mouth. “CERTAINLY!”

“Look, saints. Look, Brother Certainly. I b’lieve you scared the devils. I b’lieve they’ve turned tail and run.”

We turned in our chairs. The white robes were stomping back to their cars and the cars were backing up and pulling away, the glare of their headlights finally receding. Brother Terrell ran up and down the aisles, dragging Certainly by the hand.

“We may not have won the battle tonight, but we didn’t lose it either. God protected us with his shield.”

Brother Terrell urged us to have courage, to have faith, to hold on. He told us that our brothers and sisters would be back, that we would raise our hands and pray together again. That God was still in his heaven, still in charge, and that in the end, we would be the victors. People wanted to believe him. They clapped their hands because they knew that’s what they were supposed to do. They said amen and hallelujah, but their voices fell flat. Brother Terrell took his white handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped his face.

“You know what we need tonight? We need a victory march. Sister Johnson, play us a victory march.”

My mother played the opening notes of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and Brother Terrell pounded out the rhythm with his fist and sang.

The ministers on the platform marched down the prayer ramp and queued up behind Brother Terrell. They shot one another quick, nervous looks as if they were on their way to a firing squad. Brother Terrell seemed determined not to notice how sick at heart everyone felt. As they proceeded down the aisle and around the tent, he pumped his arms and legs and grinned like a maniac. He marched with his hand in the air. He beat the tambourine double-time. He danced with his hand on his hip, stepping back, then shuffling forward. He spoke in tongues: “Lama bahia ma so may oh me la bahandala.” He acted as if the hosts of heaven had paid us a visit instead of a bunch of men wrapped in bedsheets. When he passed our section, Betty Ann, Pam, Gary, and I joined him. My mother left the organ and marched with us. Oh, Lord, we wanted to be in that number, but mostly we didn’t want Brother Terrell to march alone.

The crowd did not respond. Whether from fear of the Klan returning to the tent or of waking later that night to the sound of breaking glass and a cross burning, they remained in their seats. Brother Terrell would not give up.

Maybe people began to feel sorry for Brother Terrell or maybe they realized there was something to dancing like a madman in the face of fear and adversity. On about the second or third turn around the tent, a few folks from each section joined us. We were fifty, then one hundred, five hundred, a thousand, maybe more. Sometimes we tripped over a tentpole or a rope, but we picked ourselves up and marched on. Betty Ann spotted Randall leaning against a curtain pole and grabbed him by the ear. She pulled him into line and pushed him along in front of her round, swaying stomach. We marched until our legs grew heavy. We smiled until our faces hurt. We sang until our voices overwhelmed the dread inside us. Finally, Brother Terrell, my mother, and other members of the team made their way back to the platform and the rest of us drifted back to our seats. Mama took her seat at the Hammond and began to play a slow, soft hymn. From the platform, Brother Terrell urged people not to let fear keep them away.

“Don’t be afraid to come back. We’ll be here three times a day tomorrow and every day for the next few weeks. Now hug your neighbor around the neck and tell ’em you’ll see ’em here tomorrow.”

Once the crowd cleared, Brother Terrell gathered the evangelistic team together behind the platform and asked everyone to stay and pray for a few hours. “We haven’t seen the end of this. I feel like they’ll be back, and we need to make sure we have what it takes to stand firm.”

The four of us kids fell asleep on a pallet of quilts in front of the altar and were awakened by yelling. Randall jumped up. Pam and I moved slower. Unsure for a moment whether I was dreaming or awake, I watched a group of adults across the tent pull into a tight little circle, scatter apart, then collide one against the other, hard, harder, in a fierce, weird dance. Randall called, “Daddy. Look out!” Brother Terrell turned and threw up his bad arm to shield his face just as a wooden folding chair wielded by a short bald man crashed over him. He howled like a cat with his tail on fire. Mama came up behind the man attacking Brother Terrell and brought another chair down over his head, then turned and ran.
Go, Mama. Go. Go.
The man tried to catch her but was brought down by two tent men. The women screamed and screamed. A police car drove up, lights flashing, and two lawmen got out and waded into the fray, threatening to take everyone to jail. The voices grew quiet and the bodies drifted together again, softly this time. I spotted Mama, chin thrust out, hands moving like birds as she talked to the policemen. Brother Terrell and the tent men told us later they recognized the faces of the three men who had shown up earlier that night among the attackers.

The black people stayed away from the next day’s services. Brother Terrell asked everyone to remain in prayer for the safety of those who had been driven out by hatred. I thought of the three kids I had watched pack up and leave the night before.

That evening as the sun flamed out in the windows of the old Fords, Chevys, and Buicks that rimmed the field, the black portion of our congregation gathered in little groups just outside the tent and stood throughout the service. Their numbers increased throughout the week, even as the white audience dwindled.

The Klan did not come back in uniform, but we found several anonymous letters on our porch. The writer of one threatened to cut the unborn baby from Betty Ann’s body if we didn’t leave town. Brother Terrell ended the revival early. He told what was left of the congregation that he wasn’t tucking his tail between his legs and running from the devil. He cast our retreat as a victory of sorts. “It may
look
like we’ve lost the battle, but we haven’t. We stood up to the devil. We showed him we’re not afraid. There is coming a time when those who hide behind the sheets will be spat upon as the scourge of the earth. There’s coming a time when people of all colors will worship together in spirit and in truth, and that’s thus saith the Lord.”

Until the dawn of that Edenic age, there would be a new seating arrangement: blacks on one side of the tent, whites on the other, with a sawdust aisle in between. It was for the safety of the congregation, the evangelistic team, and his family. He began every revival with an announcement of the segregated sections.

“They threatened to cut the baby out of Sister Terrell’s stomach. They’d do it too. Y’all know who I’m talkin’ about.” Blacks and whites nodded. “Now before we move on in the service, I want those of you who are white to cross the aisle and hug the necks of your brothers and sisters. Tell ’em Jesus loves them and you do too.” That, at least, we could do.

THE END WAS ALWAYS UPON US AND THE SITUATION ALWAYS DIRE. THE revival in Bossier City just upped the ante. Unable to recoup the thousands he had spent on the revival, Brother Terrell left Bossier City owing everyone in town, plus the monthly equipment payments and staff salaries. It all added up to what Brother Terrell called his financial burden, and it got worse with each revival. If we didn’t raise a certain amount of money, we would lose the tent or the eighteen-wheeler or the sound system. Millions would die and go to hell. Their blood would be on our hands. Meanwhile, we had our own blood to worry about. As tensions increased in the South, the three-foot-wide aisle that divided black from white did not satisfy the more violent racists. Brother Terrell was beaten a few more times. One story has cops looking on as one thug holds Brother Terrell and another slugs away. Harassment by local officials increased. Our speakers were always too loud, the aisles in the tent too narrow, and the electrical system not quite up to code. Everything about us disturbed the peace. Authorities threatened to charge Brother Terrell with practicing medicine without a license, a tool that had been used before against faithhealing evangelists. One set of cops dropped all pretense and said they were taking him to jail for preaching to a mixed-race crowd. Brother Terrell grinned and held out his wrists to be handcuffed. “Last I heard that wasn’t illegal, but at least you boys are honest,” he said.

Our lives were a mess, and when the baby was born everything became even messier. There was less sleep, less space, less money, and more arguments, especially when Brother Terrell insisted on naming his new daughter after my mother. Betty Ann agreed, reluctantly I assume, and then called the child by the nickname Tina instead. The adults all seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They displayed tremors in their hands with solemnity and pride.

“Look at that,” they said, holding their hands out at right angles to their bodies. “My nerves are shot.” Nervousness was a badge of honor; why, I never figured out, but it carried over to us kids. When Pam and I argued with Randall or resisted his schemes in any way, he held his hand out and told us we were turning him into a nervous wreck. He played up the tremble to win our sympathy, but when he held a pencil or spread peanut butter on bread, I could see that his hands really did shake. I faked a quiver in my fingers on occasion, but Randall outed me. My insides were another matter. I felt as though we lived our lives on a tightrope and that at any moment the baby would cry unexpectedly or Gary would wet his pants or Pam or I would argue too loudly and everything, everyone, would fall to the ground. It didn’t take a divine revelation to figure out something had to change.

 

 

We were in revival in some nameless town that was like every other town we passed through. The evening service was long over, and I lay half-asleep under the tent, stretched out across two or three folding chairs, head to toe with Pam. My mother and Betty Ann sat in the row in front of us, talking with a group of believers under the floodlights that hung from one of the center poles. Gary slept on a pallet with Baby Tina beside him. Randall had disappeared as usual, but no one worried about him; he always showed up before it was time to go home. The adults talked endlessly, and I was lulled by the rise and fall of familiar voices discussing topics that should have been harrowing but had become comforting in their familiarity.