Juneteenth (31 page)

Their voices fell and I strained to hear, finally rolling over softly and over again, until I was directly beneath them, hearing:

 … And Irene told me her ownself that whenever Miss Lorelli comes around, which ain’t too regular, she screams like a cat in heat. Says she has such pain they almost have to tie her to the bedposts and keep the ice packs on her belly all the time. Irene said it’s worse than somebody birthing triplets.

Talking about the curse, she’s got a real curse, Mrs. Proctor said. That woman is damned!

Ain’t it the truth; Irene said it’s really something to witness. Said that the first time it come down on her the poor child was tomboying around up on top of the grape arbor….

Well, I hope she was prepared, Mrs. Proctor said.

Prepared my foot! Is a sow prepared? Is a blue-tick bitch? Irene said that it was at a time when her mamma was entertaining some ladies on the lawn too, but instead of being there learning how to entertain like any other young girl would’ve been, this Miss Lorelli is so uncontrollable she’s up there on that grape arbor climbing around! Well suh, Irene said it was like a dam bursting or something. The po’ thing come tumbling out of that tree like a scalded cat and come running across the lawn, straight to where Irene was serving those ladies. She almost knocked over the teacart and with it all over her hands and all. Irene said when she realized what was happening she got so mad at the child’s mamma that she dropped a
whole tray of fine china. Said she’d wanted to prepare the chile for what all the signs—her birthday, the calendar, and the sign of the moon—all of them. Said she was fixing to happen soon, but no, the mamma was so jealous and so vain about her age that she wouldn’t let Irene tell the child a thing. She was going to do it herself when
she
got ready.

As though nature was going to wait on
her
, Mrs. Proctor said.

Well, girl, it didn’t. Irene said it come right on schedule, right up on that grape arbor.

Girl, that’s enough to make anybody act peculiar.

Are you telling me? So there it was, Irene has to stop serving and teach the child right then and there and she said she didn’t bite her tongue in telling her either. Told her in plain language right there in front of all those fine ladies.

Oh no, girl! You must be yeasting this mess!

She sho did, told her all about her womanhood and about boys while she snatched off her apron and wrapped it around the child and carried her upstairs and went to work on her. Poor thing, she thought she was bleeding to death and giving birth, all at the same time. She had it all mixed up, poor thing. Irene said she asked her where her baby was and everything and Irene had some time calming her. Can you imagine that, having to fall out of a tree in order to pick up your woman’s burden?

That woman shoulda been whupped for doing that to that child, Mrs. Proctor said. One woman acts a fool out of her vanity and pride and ignorance. So now everybody has to suffer for it. That woman was just plain ignorant! Yes, that’s what it is. Whenever I think about it I remember what the monkey said when the man cut off his tail with the lawn mower. Poor monkey just looked at his tail laying there in the grass, and tears came to his eyes, and he shook his head and said: My people, my people!…

CHAPTER 11

Bliss, Daddy Hickman said, you keep asking me to take you even though I keep telling you that folks don’t like to see preachers hanging around a place they think of as one of the Devil’s hangouts. All right, so now I’m going to take you so you can see for yourself, and you’ll see that it’s just like the world—full of sinners and with a few believers, a few good folks and a heap of mixed-up and bad ones. Yes, and beyond the fun of sitting there looking at the marvelous happenings in the dark, there’s all the same old snares and delusions we have to sidestep every day right out here in the bright sunlight. Because you see, Bliss, it’s not so much a matter of where you
are
as what you
see….

Yes, sir, I said.

No, don’t agree too quick, Bliss; wait until you understand. But like old Luke says, “The light of the body is the eye,” so you want to be careful that the light that your eye lets into you isn’t the light of darkness. I mean you always have to be sure that you
see
what you’re looking at.

I nodded my head, watching his eyes. I could see him studying the Word as he talked.

That’s right, he said, many times you will have to preach goodness out of badness, little boy. Yes, and hope out of hopelessness. God made the world and gave it a chance, and when it’s bad we have to remember that it’s still his plan for it to be redeemed through the striving of a few good women and men. So come on, we’re going to walk down there and take us a good look. We’re going to do it in style too, with some popcorn and peanuts and some Cracker Jacks and candy bars. You might as well get some idea of what you will have to fight against, because I don’t believe you can really lead folks if you never have to face up to any of the temptations they face. Christ had to put on the flesh, Bliss; you understand? And I was a sinner man too.

Yes, sir.

But wait here a second, Bliss—

He looked deep into me and I felt a tremor. Sir? I said.

His eyes became sad as he hesitated, then:

Now don’t think this is going to become a habit, Bliss. I know you’re going to like being in there looking in the dark, even though you have to climb up those filthy pissy stairs to get there. Oh yes, you’re going to enjoy looking at the pictures just about like I used to enjoy being up there on the bandstand playing music for folks to enjoy themselves to back there in my olden days. Yes, you’re going to like looking at the pictures, most likely you’re going to be bug-eyed with the excitement; but I’m telling you right now that it’s one of those pleasures we preachers have to leave to other folks. And I’ll tell you why, little preacher: Too much looking at those pictures is going to have a lot of folks raising a crop of confusion. The show hasn’t been here but a short while but I can see it coming already. Because folks are getting themselves mixed up with those shadows spread out against the
wall, with people that are no more than some smoke drifting up from hell or pouring out of a bottle. So they lose touch with who they’re supposed to be, Bliss. They forget to be what the Book tells them they were meant to be—and that’s in God’s
own
image. The preacher’s job, his main job, Bliss, is to help folks find themselves and to keep reminding them to remember who they are. So you see, those pictures can go against our purpose. If they look at those shows too often they’ll get all mixed up with so many of those shadows that they’ll lose their way. They won’t know who they
are
is what I mean. So you see, if we start going to the picture-show all the time, folks will think we’re going to the devil and backsliding from what we preach. We have to set them an example, Bliss; so we’re going in there for the first and last time—

Now don’t look at me like that; I know it seems like every time a preacher turns around he has to give up something else. But, Bliss, there’s a benefit in it too; because pretty soon he develops control over himself.
Self-control’s
the word. That’s right, you develop discipline, and you live so you can feel the grain of things and you learn to taste the sweet that’s in the bitter and you live more deeply and earnestly. A man doesn’t live just one life, Bliss, he lives more lives than a cat—only he doesn’t like to face it because the bitter is there nine times nine, right along with the sweet he wants all the time. So he forgets.

You too, Daddy Hickman? I said. Do you have more than one life?

He smiled down at me.

Me too, Bliss, he said. Me too.

But how? How can they have nine lives and not know it?

They forget and wander on, Bliss. But let’s us leave this now and go face up to those shadows. Maybe the Master meant for them to show us some of the many sides of the old good-bad. I know, Bliss, you don’t understand that, but you will, boy, you will….

Ah, but by then Body had brought the news:

We were sitting on the porch-edge eating peanuts—goober peas, as Deacon Wilhite called them. Discarded hulls littered the ground below the contented dangling of our feet. We were barefoot, I was allowed to be that day, and in overalls. A flock of sparrows rested on the strands of electric wire across the unpaved road, darting down from time to time and sending up little clouds of dust. Body was humming as he chewed. Except in church we were always together, he was my right hand. Body said,

Bliss, you see that thing they all talking about?

Who? I said.

All the kids. You see it yet?

Seen what, Body. Why do you always start preaching before you state your text?

You the preacher, ain’t you? Look like to me a preacher’d
know
what a man is talking about.

I looked at him hard and he grinned, trying to keep his face straight.

You ought to know where all the words come from, even before anybody starts to talk. Preachers is suppose to see visions and things, ain’t they?

Now don’t start playing around with God’s work, I warned him. Like Daddy Hickman says, Everybody has to die and pay their bills—Have I seen what?

That thing Sammy Leaderman’s got to play with. It makes pictures.

No, I haven’t. You mean a Kodak? I’ve seen one of those. Daddy Hickman has him a big one. Made like a box with little pearly glass windows in it and one round one, like an eye.

He shook his head. I put down the peanuts and fitted my fingers together. I said,

Here’s the roof
,
     
Here’s the steeple
,
        
Open it up and see
             
the people
.

Body sneered. That steeple’s got dirt under the fingernails. Why don’t you wash your hands? You think I’m a baby? Lots of folks have those Kodaks, this here is something different.

Well, what is it then?

I don’t rightly know, he said. I just heard some guys talking about it down at the liberty stable. But they was white and I didn’t want to ask them any questions. I rather be ignorant than ask them anything.

So why didn’t you ask Sammy, he ain’t white.

Naw, he a Jew; but he looks white, and sometimes he acts white too. ’Specially when he’s with some of those white guys.

He always talks to me, I said, calls me
rabbi
.

The doubt came into Body’s eyes like a thin cloud. He frowned. He was my right hand and I could feel his doubt.

You look white too, Rev. Why you let him call you “rabbit”?

I looked away, toward the dusting birds.

Body, can’t you hear? I said he calls me
rabbi
.

Oh, it sounds like my little brother trying to spell rabbit. Reabbi-tee,
rabbit
, he say. He a fool, man.

He sure is, he’s your brother, ain’t he?

Don’t start that now, you a preacher, remember? How come you let Sammy play the dozens with you, you want to be white?

No! And Sammy ain’t white and that’s not playing the dozens, it
means preacher in Jewish talk. Quit acting a fool. What kind of toy is this you heard them talking about?

His lids came down low and his eyes hid when I tried to look for the truth in them.

All I know is that it makes pictures, Body said.

It makes pictures and not a Kodak?

That’s right, Rev.

I chewed a while and thought of all I had heard about but hadn’t seen: airplanes and angels and Stutz Bearcats and Stanley Steamers. Then I thought I had it:

It makes pictures but not a Kodak? So maybe he’s got hold to one of those big ones like they use to take your picture at the circus. You know, the kind they take you out of wet and you have to wait around until you dry.

Body shook his head, No, Rev, this here is something different. This is something they say you have to be in the dark to see. These folks come out already dry.