Second Sunday (12 page)

Melvin Jr. sighed out loud, not caring who heard him, and got up to get his coat and car keys. “I might as well drive.”

Mr. Louis Loomis locked eyes with Sheba, acknowledging that she was on to something. “You know, Sheba,” he said, “I think
you and I need to accompany these young folk. They don’t need to tangle with the American Worship Center, or Bertha Kaye,
without a little seasoned backup.”

“I know that’s right,” Bert said. He got up and walked them to the door, just to make sure they left right at that moment,
before anybody had a chance to back out.

The American Worship Center was way out in the boondocks, far enough away from St. Louis that no black people could stumble
up on it by accident. It was so far out that when Phoebe tried to locate the KATZ soul radio station, all she got was fuzz
and static.

“Shoot,” she spat out. “Can’t get nothing out here but country-western music. It’s bad enough I can’t go to my own church
today but at least I could get to hear Evangelist Elroy Thorn, Rev. Cleotis Robinson, Martha Bass, or the O’Neal Twins. Heck,
I’d be happy listening to somebody testifying on one of Rev. Ike’s red prayer cloths about now.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and somebody at this church will sing one of those singers’ songs,” Melvin, Jr. said dryly as he pulled
off 70 West and found the street leading to the church. “And if you would let my boy Jackson put an eight-track player in
this car, we’d be listening to a tape instead of the static that is supposed to be KATZ. But you and Bertha Kaye show kinfolk—you
both hardheaded and don’t listen right when a man try to tell you something for your own good. I knew I should have driven
my own car.”

“And you could’ve done just that, Melvin Jr.,” Phoebe retorted, “if you had more than a half of a fourth of a tank of gas
in your car.”

“Women,” Melvin Jr. grumbled, and made a left turn, hoping it wouldn’t take much longer to find this place. He didn’t like
driving around St. Charles looking lost and maybe drawing attention from some white folks nervous that they were out here
to start some trouble.

“Melvin Jr.,” Sheba said, “when did you get so grown and mannish that you know all about women being hardheaded with men?”

“What you mean, Miss Sheba?” he asked, trying to play dumb.

Sheba sat up and poked her face up forward, so Melvin Jr. could see it in the rearview mirror. Reaching up, he shifted the
mirror to escape her expression, which clearly said, “Oh, you know exactly what I mean.”

Melvin Jr. wished he did not have to come out here to deal with Bertha. He had a sinking feeling that he was connected to
her running away. Melvin Jr. was in love with Bertha Green. He didn’t even remember when it happened—falling in love with
the girl he had fought with all of his life. Maybe he’d always loved Bertha and was just too pigheaded to admit it to her
or to himself.

Mr. Louis Loomis once tried to talk to him about love. He told him, “Boy, a good woman without a man in her life is just like
prime real estate that’s been overlooked. Sometimes real good property can be on the market for what look likes forever and
a day. You think it’ll always be there, then somebody comes along and sees he has found a treasure and takes it right from
up under your feet.”

“Why didn’t I listen to Mr. Louis Loomis and tell Bertha that I loved her and couldn’t live without her?” Melvin Jr. thought.
“Why didn’t I use the sense God gave me to grab a hold of the best thing that ever happened to me?”

They finally found the church, and it took them fifteen more minutes to find a parking space. The parking lot stretched out
across several acres of land and was so full that cars were parked in made-up spaces. Melvin Jr. saw a spot on the grass and
made himself a parking space too.

“It sure is crowded,” Mr. Louis Loomis said as he took off his hat and scratched at his head. “You know, I never would have
thought so many people would come here. The preaching is so boring that it puts my TV to sleep.”

“You ain’t never lied on that,” Sheba said, watching the steady flow of people moving toward the church. “And I show don’t
see any black folks up in here.”

“There are some brown dots over there,” Phoebe said, pointing to a lone black family leaving their car a few rows away. She
gave them an enthusiastic wave.

“Humph, that’s a shame before God,” Mr. Louis Loomis snorted in disgust, as the father steered his family away from them,
walking all stiff and tight to hide that dipping-strut sway that would have made him look like a bona fide
black
man. “Some folks just hate it that the Lord made them black.”

Sheba watched the man trying to walk all upright and pinched and thought, “Such a waste.”

As soon as they reached the church door, Phoebe got to scowling.

“What is wrong with you?” Melvin Jr. asked.

“I don’t like the way this church looks.”

Sheba backed up a few steps and studied the building for a moment. It had a long, square, industrial shape and was made of
pale gray concrete blocks, softened a bit with stained-glass windows in gold, blue, and gray. “It looks more like an office
building than a church,” she said.

Phoebe agreed. “It sure is different from Gethsemane. There aren’t even any trees out here. It’s just standing in the middle
of a big, empty field.”

The spacious vestibule they entered made their own look tiny by comparison. Though rather cold and uninviting, it had clearly
benefited from a very high-priced decorator. It had white, textured walls with pewter gray trim on the windows, and a black
marble floor with white and silver veins, topped by a black rug in a pattern of soft gray flowers and tiny white doves.

“Well,” said Mr. Louis Loomis, “it may not look like a church, but it show do look like a whole lot of money.”

A group of members arrived, stopping dead in their tracks as they caught sight of the brown huddle in the vestibule. Not one
person said good morning or even nodded in greeting. The rudest among them just stared, with shock on their faces and mouths
struggling to form the question: “And just what are
you
doing here?”

“At least we look good,” Sheba thought. She was decked out in a cream-colored sequined dress, and was sporting her hot pink
ostrich feather hat like a crown, along with hot pink stretch-satin elbow-length gloves, hot pink shoes, and a matching shoulder
bag. Conscious of how she stood out, Sheba moved to the wall to check her reflection in a large, oval mirror set in an opulent
antique silver frame. Adjusting the hot pink veil on her hat, she had just taken out her lipstick for a touch-up when a condescending
voice cut through the silence.

“You are in the house of the Lord. Act like it.”

Staring in the mirror, Sheba locked eyes with a flushed-face “Big Missy,” a starched and poofed-out dark blond hairdo sitting
high on her head. Knowing that Big Missy wanted to intimidate her, Sheba decided to act like she wasn’t even there. She put
her lipstick on slowly and deliberately, enjoying every second of the woman’s agitation over being ignored. Then, to add more
fuel to the fire, she made a big to-do of blotting and puckering her lips, before twisting the lipstick back into the tube.

“Jezebel,” said Big Missy, loud and clear.

Dropping her lipstick into her purse, Sheba turned to face the woman. In a low, threatening voice, she said, “I guess you
ought to know, since your
mama
is a Jezebel. And if you say just one more thing to me,
Big Missy,
you’ll need Peter, James, and John to help you escape the flames of my wrath.”

“Miss Sheba!” Bertha exclaimed, suddenly materializing out of thin air. Putting her hands on her generous hips, she demanded,
“What are y’all doing here?”

Phoebe stared her cousin up and down and felt relief when she saw what she was wearing. Bertha was “clean” in a creamy yellow
silk suit with mother-of-pearl buttons and a matching hat, purse, and shoes. She whispered a prayer of thanks to the Lord
that the girl, with her pretty, sexy, cocoa brown, size-eighteen, five-foot-eight, silly self, didn’t let this old dry-tail
church take away her taste in clothes. Bertha still had that classic, fully accessorized look that black women considered
essential for church.

Melvin Jr. lit up at the sight of Bertha and started toward her with wide-open arms, but her stern look knocked the wind out
of him. Backing off, he wiped the hurt from his face as best he could, while holding up his hands as if to say, “Have it your
way.”

“I
said
what are y’all doing here? Don’t y’all have a church of your own to go to this morning? Don’t know why you-all are out here
all up in my business—and uninvited, I might add.”

“Well, Bertha Kaye,” Phoebe said, “we certainly do have our own church. But the question is, do you have a church of your
own to go to? ’Cause this place certainly don’t look like anywhere I’d go looking for someone like you, Cuz. So we came to
find out why you’re here.”

“And because my daddy sent you.”

“Well,” Phoebe said, “what did you expect when he found out that you sashayed your big, wide butt out of a perfectly good
church to come here?”

Bertha didn’t want to deal with the biting truth of Phoebe’s words. Trying to ignore the conviction in her heart, she lifted
her hands up in praise mode and said, “Our church is one of acceptance and love. We give to You, O majestic Lord, the misguided
sheep of the world.”

“You trippin’, Bertha Kaye,” Phoebe huffed, not caring one bit about Big Missy and the others studying them like monkeys in
a zoo.

Mr. Louis Loomis, who was growing tired of the stares, turned to the crowd and said, “This is an A and B conversation—so C
your way out of it.”

Most of the onlookers started drifting away, but Big Missy and another woman decided to stand their ground. Big Missy said,
“You people have no respect for anything, let alone God’s own house.”

Mr. Louis Loomis could see straight through this woman. He knew her type, black or white, red or green. She reminded him of
Cleavon Johnson’s mother, Vernine—all wrapped up in religion and just as mean and rude, nasty and ungodly-acting as can be.
He said, “What would you know about how to act in God’s house, holding on to the devil’s hand like he your date?”

Big Missy turned on her heel and marched off, indignant over that old man’s practically calling
her
a heathen.

Bertha herself kind of wished that her fellow members would just go away. She knew that her people didn’t like this church,
and she also knew that all four of them—Mr. Louis Loomis, Miss Sheba, Phoebe, and Melvin Jr.—loved a good fight. What better
place for fight-loving people to be than here, where it would be easy to provoke a confrontation?

So she tried another, more peacemaking reproach. Smiling broadly, she said, “As much as I love you all, my sisters and brothers
in the Lord—”

“Help her, Jesus,” Mr. Louis Loomis prayed, hoping to cut off having to listen to nonsense. But Bertha was persistent. “I
have to speak the truth. And the truth is that my old church,
your
church, has not transcended the muck and mire of wanting to keep the Body of the Lord segregated and separate. Gethsemane
is a
black
church. And my church simply wants to be called ‘church.’”

Sheba had to catch herself from popping “Girl, please” out of her mouth. Instead, she said, “Bertha Kaye, I think I speak
for us all when I say that I like being a member of a black church. If a black church was good enough for Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., it’s show ’nough good enough for me.”

Bertha knew she couldn’t counter that, but she wasn’t giving up without a try. Giving Sheba a dry-toast smile, she said, “Despite
our obvious style differences, we shouldn’t fight with each other.”

When no one replied, she smiled a bit more brightly and added, “Come on, let me show you-all our bookstore—something few
all-black
churches have.”

Phoebe sniffed in disgust, thinking that cut was a very low blow.

As Bertha led them down the corridor to the bookstore, Phoebe pointed to a large oil painting on the wall and asked, “Who
is that?”

“Pastor Lyles. I think the portrait does him more justice than the TV.”

“It does?” Phoebe said, studying the image of a bland-looking man with hard gray eyes.

“Yes,” Bertha replied.

“Pity,” Phoebe murmured. Rev. Lyles would have blended right into the background of the picture had he not been wearing a
rich black silk robe, trimmed with the most beautiful silver material she had ever seen.

“Well,” Bertha said, “Pastor Lyles may not have the look that you-all like, but he certainly can preach like no one I’ve ever
heard preach the word. He is so intellectual in his delivery—no emotionalism, no hollering and screaming. And when he speaks,
he’s so still, you hardly know he’s moving.”

“Makes you wonder if he’s kinda dead, huh?” Melvin Jr. scoffed.

Deciding not to let Melvin Jr. get to her, Bertha explained with obvious patience, “Pastor Lyles preaches like he does because
he prepared himself for the ministry in the wilderness.”

“Humph,” Mr. Louis Loomis said under his breath, “I need to sell you an acre of the Mississippi River, Bertha Kaye, if you
really believe that craziness.”

Melvin Jr. chuckled. “Fool,” he said, “you got to know that chump ain’t been training about nothing other than taking your
money.”

“What would you know, Melvin Jr.?” Bertha shot back. “You don’t go to this church.”

“Then tell me, Bertha. What wilderness he been out to? Ain’t no wilderness to speak of out here.”

“Well, Mr. Know-It-All Melvin Earl Vicks, Jr.,
my
pastor trained in Montana. I know they got some wilderness out there.”

Melvin Jr. laughed out loud. “Girl, ain’t nothing in Montana but a bunch of cowboys hoping black folks can’t find their way
out there and come set up some rib shacks on their streets.”

“Forget you, Melvin Jr. Didn’t nobody invite you here to tell me about my church.”