Tambourines to Glory (4 page)

Somehow the song kept running through her mind that she had heard so often on a gospel program over the radio from Jersey City. Everywhere, Jersey City, Richmond, New York, everywhere she had ever been, everybody needed some rock on which to stand. Essie found herself eating and singing. The song was beautiful and cool in the room when Laura tapped lightly and tripped on in. Laura said, “Well, all right, now!” and joined in the song until her food got warmed up. Meanwhile some of the other tenement dwellers opened up their doors to listen since it sounded as if there might be a small revival meeting going on in the room, and Essie heard somebody say, “That singing sure sounds good!”

Laura said, “You see, girl, I’m telling you, this religious jive is something we can collect on. Look here, ain’t you got no meat or nothing to go with this rice jive here? I been wrastling with that old raccoon for the last two hours, I’m hungry. Maybe Uly will be by about ten or eleven o’clock—my heart, my lover-man for true! Ain’t we got a ham hock left from Sunday I can put on my plate?”

“Your memory is short,” said Essie. “You know we cleaned up
that ham hock and greens yesterday. Saturday, Sunday—how long you expect one pot of victuals to last?”

“The relief investigator thinks one pot ought to last a week. I sure will be glad when we ain’t no longer beholding to them people. My investigator is colored, too—talking about she don’t see why I can’t get along on the money I draw. Also, as healthy-looking as I am, why can’t I keep a job? And me, I done stooped myself over, uncombed my hair, tottered, and tried to look as sick and consumptive as I could for her benefit. We’re both of the
same
race, she and me. Why does she begrudge me them white folks’ money? Essie, you could at least have made some gravy for this rice. Even if I am from Carolina where it grows, I like a meat-flavor with rice, girl. I like meat! If 782 had just come out, we could have had pork chops tonight. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day. I’m sure gonna send Ulysses Walker for some wine when he gets here. Lend me a half, please.”

“Precious Lord, take my hand …”
Essie began to hum.

“Um-hum!” agreed Laura, “help Sister Essie, Lord, do—so she can help me—because, I swear, for some things I am weak—men, wine, and something fine—just naturally weak.”

WHEN SAP RISES

“W
hen the sap rises in the trees, it’s spring,” said Laura. “Babes and boys start holding conferences in which actions speak louder than words. Aw, do it to me, lover!”

“I wish you would not talk that way, Laura, and you supposed to be preparing yourself for the ministry.”

“I’m a she-male minister,” said Laura, “and there ain’t nothing in the Bible says male nor female shall not make love. Fact is, Essie, the very first book is just full of begats, which runs from Genesis through to Tabulations.”

“Revelations,” said Essie. “I read the Bible when I were a child.”

“Which were a long time ago,” murmured Laura.

“Just because I’m a few years older than you,” said Essie, “you
don’t need to reflect on it. But if we’re gonna start them meetings we been talking about, you ought to start reading up in the Bible.”

“Big as that book is, don’t nobody know all of what’s in it,” said Laura. “But I’ll take up reading when the time comes. All I need is one text to start me out. And I know one,
Jesus wept
. Also I know another thing He did do. He turned the water into wine—and ever since then somebody’s been drunk. Thank God, I seldom go too far.”

“Sometimes you guzzle a little too much.”

“A little too much is just enough for me—a pint, then I always need just
one
drink more. But what can I do on relief? Not being a street-walker, next best thing to do is be a street-stander—which we gonna be soon as it gets warm enough to stand still long enough in one place to pray.”

“Your faith should keep you warm,” said Essie.

“My faith and my wine together.”

“Laura,” cried Essie, “you ain’t gonna drink no wine and be standing up preaching God’s word beside me, no sir!”

“Are you telling me already what I am and ain’t gonna do, Essie, and we ain’t even formed our sisterhood yet? You’re no relation to me, you know. If we gonna fall out before we start the Lord’s work, I’m gonna go right straight and get my two dollars back I put down at Bernstein’s on that Bible.”

“You done made a payment on the Bible?”

“I did, went right straight and put every penny on it that I won when I caught that first digit the other day—the 4.”

“Laura! No you didn’t! I don’t want to start nothing religious on the wages of sin.”

“Wages, hell! I ain’t worked a lick since Lincoln’s birthday.
That money come from luck. Facts are, it were manna from heaven. I had begun to believe I could not hit a number no more, never in life. Now my faith is restored. Out of gratitude, I paid that two bucks down on a Bible.”

“Do, Jesus!” said Essie.

“I could have bought a whole half gallon of wine.”

“I know,” sighed Essie. Then she went into one of her silent pauses and did not say hardly another word to Laura the rest of the evening. So, when Laura got through looking at Essie’s comic books, she went on down the hall to her room and turned the radio on to the all-night record man. Essie just sat and looked at the wall until she got ready to go to bed.

It was warm enough to leave the window open tonight for air. But it was well past the middle of June before the two women thought it warm enough to go seek a corner on which to lift their voices in song and see if anybody stopped to listen. They found at the Good Will Store a tambourine and a folding camp stool, 35¢ for the latter, and a half dollar for the tambourine.

“Including the Bible, we have invested $2.85 in this holy deal,” said Laura.

“What we take up tomorrow night, if we does take up anything, goes on the Bible,” said Essie.

“Beyond that, we will split it two ways,” declared Laura. “A two-dollar payment to Bernstein’s ought to leave a little change for the Lord’s servants. We have our earthly needs.”

“All we take up at our first meeting is going on the Bible,” said Essie. “Period!”

Never having seen Essie that firm about anything before, Laura opened her mouth to speak, then closed it in surprise, opened it again, and very slowly let it close.

“Tomorrow night at seven at 126th and Lenox,” continued Essie. “Leastwise, that’s what you said, we raise our hymns. I think I’ll wear my coat in case it’s chilly.”

“Yeah,” said Laura, “and we might need that switchblade you keep in your coat pocket to protect our collection on the way back up these dark steps. You never can tell what folks will do when they see we got money.”

“Laura, can you play a tambourine?”

“I can play it and
pass it
both,” said Laura. “We gonna take up some money.”

THE CALL

“I
t were Palm Sunday when I got the call,” preached Laura. “I were setting in my room with Sister Essie here, and I heard a voice just as loud saying, ‘Take up the Cross and follow Me, go out unto the highways and byways and save souls, go to the curbstones and gutters and rescue the lost, approach the river of sin and pull out the drowning.’ Oh, I were drowning once, friends, but now I’m saved. I were down there in sin’s gutter lower than a snake’s belly—now look at me! Look at me up here on the curbstone of life reaching out with my voice to you to come and be saved, too. The Reed Sisters, folks, that’s who we are, lifting our voices for God’s sake. Our church is this corner, our roof is God’s sky, and there’s no doors, no place in our church that is not open
to you because there is no doors. So come in and be one with us, one with God, and be saved. See how things will change for you—from worst to bad to better to best. Babes and boys, come in! Draw nigh! Men and women, come in! Approach! Children, stand near! Young and old, everybody, drop a nickel, dime, quarter in this tambourine as we sing:

“Sing it, Sister Essie, while I shake and pass this tambourine.”

Essie’s voice rose in happy song while Laura’s tambourine trembled and shook in rhythm, and the words and the music spread to the crowd. The fifteen or twenty persons on the corner sang, too. Their singing made others stop to look, stop to sing, and as they sang Laura stopped shaking her music-maker to move among them, the tambourine held like a plate, and the very first nickels, dimes, and quarters bounced into it. Soon the bottom of the instrument was covered, then they didn’t bounce any more, they clinked. They clinked into a rising mound which grew heavier and heavier before Laura returned to the camp stool where her tote bag was into which she poured the money.

Laura lifted her empty tambourine in an ecstatic shimmer to the power of a song, brought it down trilling and spangling,
struck it repeatedly in a drumlike rhythm against her elbow, then shouted “Amen!” Both women led the song to a joyous close, and Laura hissed to Essie, “I think it’s time to stop this meeting, girl.”

Their first meeting had not begun at seven o’clock as planned. In her room Essie was dressed, ready and waiting, with her old black coat hanging over a chair—but no Laura. Uly
would
come by that afternoon to fool away Laura’s time. Laura’s room door was locked, and when Essie went down the hall and knocked after the clock hand had passed seven-fifteen, all she got was a “I hear you, Essie! Just wait. I’ll be along in due time.”

It was after eight when Laura came bouncing up the hall, powdered and grinning, and Essie heard Uly’s footsteps going down the stairs. By that time Essie had gone into one of her pauses, just sitting, so was not very communicative as Laura borrowed a slice of cheese from her icebox and chattered as she ate.

“Come on, let’s go! Tonight’s the night. You have the tambourine and the camp stool? Even if we ain’t got a Bible, I got a text, ‘Take up your cross and follow Me.’ Come on.”

“Laura, you’re a cross yourself,” said Essie.

“Then we’ll put up with each other’s crosses,” laughed Laura. “Get up off your fat bohunkus and let’s go see what’s cooking with the public. Energize yourself, Essie! You been setting looking at these four walls for the last five or six years. Get up and give out—and see what we get back. Cast your singing bread upon the muddy waters of Harlem this evening, while I pass this tambourine amongst the sinners.”

Laura grabbed the secondhand tambourine from the table and started shaking it:
Ching-a-ching! A-ching-ching! Ching-ching-ching!

Ching-ching! A-ching-ching! Ching-ching!
The way she shook it, it sounded good. The music pulled Essie out of her trance. She picked up the folding stool, threw her coat over her arm, fumbled for her key in her purse, turned out the light, and locked the door. Down the stairs and out into the June night went she and Laura headed for Lenox Avenue and a new life.

Auto horns were honking, taxis flying by, arc lights blinking, people passing up and down the street, restaurants and bars full, wine-o’s sitting on a box just around the corner from the grocery store drinking from a common bottle, and nobody stopping for anything when Essie and Laura stopped on the corner they had chosen the day before. There Essie put down her camp stool and laid her coat on it. Laura lifted up her tambourine and shook it. Just the shaking of her tambourine was enough to make a teenage boy stop, also a middle-aged couple, plus two children who ran past, then ran back and stood watching. Two human pebbles in the Harlem brook had begun to change the course of its water.

For a few seconds Laura shook her tambourine, then she began to sing: