Something Real

by J. J. Murray

  But ... There was no room in our marriage for a child or a dog, because we already had both, but I didn't know I did till I married Jonas Borum.

  Two

  Reverend Ebenezer Hamlin was retiring after fifty years as Antioch's good shepherd, mainly because the congregation had dwindled from two hundred to thirty during his final wheezy, gravel-voiced years. The church board, which made up half of the remaining members, urged him to retire, while secretly, I'm sure, wishing the old fart would just go on and die.

  Reverend Hamlin refused to die, said he'd "go on a- preachin' to his grave," said "Jesus never retired-He was just sent home early," said "God will call me home in God's good time." Which He did, taking Reverend Hamlin home the week after Christmas while folks were returning gifts at the mall. Folks said that God was just calling Reverend Hamlin to our rest, not his. Yes, old "Hambone" died in his sleep, most likely saving another generation from dying in theirs every Sunday morning.

  After three consecutive Sundays of only singing and testifying, candidates to take Reverend Hambone's place began preaching at us, trying to win us over. It was quite a show, too. All of them were young, fine black men who preached hellfire and brimstone, who strutted and pleaded, who sweated all over the threadbare carpet.

  They weren't hired.

  Then Jonas showed up. Boring as lint. Dry as hot sand. Dull as a butter knife. Tedious as watching dust settle.

  Jonas was hired.

  During his first sermon, we had to listen hard since we had no idea what he was talking about. He quoted something from Dante's Inferno, and I could hear someone in the choir whisper, "Dante Who?" and someone else replying, "Oh, that's Mattie's sister's nephew's boy." He quoted from Pilgrim's Progress, "by that great writer John Bunyan," and another whispered, "Bunions? What he talkin' 'bout bunions for?" Finally, he quoted from C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, and I started looking it up in the Bible. Let's see ... Letter to the Corinthians, Letter to the Galatians, Letter to the Ephesians ... but no Letter to Screwtape. "These famous quotations will be illuminated by the end of our discussion of sin." There was no illumination during that sermon. The man lost us from the first "thee-thou-thy" and had us scratching our heads at his constant reference to someone he called Wormwood. Still, it was different, a change of pace from Reverend Hamlin, and it really made us pay attention ... so we could have some shit to talk about after the sermon.

  Back then, the choir outnumbered the congregation most Sundays. Antioch's music was and still is a blessing to all who attend. Folks seem to come for the music like some folks attend football games to watch the halftime show. Naturally, we had a bigger budget for choir robes than for the building fund. Jonas, to his credit, noticed this discrepancy and approached the music committee, which back then was just me and Mrs. Edna McKinney, the choir master.

  Mrs. McKinney was a bitch's bitch, cruel and demanding, requiring Wednesday rehearsals past midnight if necessary, screeching, "Louder!" and pounding her fists if she heard a stray note. She was also the best damn choir director Antioch's ever had and probably ever will. At only four feet seven (if that) and maybe eighty pounds, Mrs. McKinney could make even the most tone-deaf person sing like an angel. Unfortunately, I was never an angel. "Ruth, you just hum, softly, please, in your head, please," she'd tell me. I miss her a lot, because the new director, Cedric Lee, a sweaty man who closes his eyes to sing every damn song, has made himself into the featured soloist and probably thinks he'll be a star someday with his little towel and glass of water.

  Jonas approached Mrs. McKinney and me and asked, rightly, that we put off buying robes for a year to get Antioch's roof reshingled. "It's in really bad shape, Sister McKinney," Jonas said.

  "No," Mrs. McKinney said quickly.

  "Kinda hard to keep singing if rain's comin' down on you, Sister McKinney."

  "There will be showers of blessing, Reverend."

  "Be right cold, too"

  "The Lord will provide, Reverend."

  Jonas shot his eyes at me, and I shrugged. "It's not something that can be patched, you know. The shingles up there now were put on over seventy years ago"

  "They've held up thus far," Mrs. McKinney said. "I don't see any leaks. And, Reverend, the Lord surely wouldn't let it fall."

  "I'd hate for anything to ruin those nice robes y'all have, Sister McKinney. Such beautiful colors. The blood red of Christ and the electric blue of heaven" Which matched absolutely nothing in the church. The choir looked like a bunch of folks from an old roller derby team. Thankfully we have golden robes that match everything now. "Who picked out those colors, Mrs. McKinney?"

  "Why, I did, Reverend," Mrs. McKinney said, her hand to her chest. He was getting to her.

  "You have a keen eye, Sister McKinney," Jonas said with a smile. "A keen eye and a keen ear. You have created the best choir I've ever heard, too. Y'all ought to travel, to compete" Oh, how that man could talk from those thin-ass lips under a thin-ass moustache, thin-ass nose, and thin-ass eyebrows. He put his thin-ass fingers on Mrs. McKinney's bony little hand. "Take it to the Lord in prayer, Sister McKinney."

  Mrs. McKinney seemed a little out of breath. "Well, we could put it off for six months .. °"

  Jonas smiled then, but not at Mrs. McKinney. He smiled at me. "Wonderful. And then maybe we can get the piano tuned, the organ fixed up a bit .. ."

  Antioch's roof reshingled, the piano tuned, the organ a little less dusty, and Antioch started to change. Jonas ordered two offerings taken per service, stressed the hell out of tithing, and even siphoned off some of the flower fund from old Miss Paula, Antioch's self-appointed flower arranger who never met a lily she couldn't tape somewhere. Pews were replaced or refinished, windows replaced or scrubbed clear of eighty years of filth, grimy railings cleaned or sanded and painted. A new neutral carpet appeared under our feet. If nothing else, Jonas Borum was a practical man for a practical people. Jonas helped Antioch bloom again. We had chosen well.

  On Easter Sunday, Jonas was, as usual, as dull as a wait at the doctor's office, but he got the service started on time (10:30) and ended the service precisely at noon. That had never happened before. I had noticed that the services were getting shorter and shorter over his first three months, but to pull off an Easter Sunday miracle like that? A ninety-minute Easter service at a black church in the South? Unheard of! Miss Paula told me afterward, "Christ for sure be comin' back this evenin'. I'm goin' home to pack"

  But word got out. There's a black church in Calhoun that isn't on Colored People's Time? It starts on time and ends on time? What, I can get home in time to catch the beginning of the first football game? Wait, you mean I can get out of my heels and serve Sunday lunch before four o'clock without rushing? Hold on here. You mean, I won't have to beat my kids in the pews during the service because they can't sit still? Where is this heaven of a church?

  Normally empty pews started filling. Clock and watch watching became all the rage. Alarms beeped all over the sanctuary at 11:59. Jonas even removed his wristwatch and laid it on his Bible before every sermon, and every service ended precisely at noon. Mrs. McKinney remarked, "You could time a pound cake to that man"

  More folks turned into more money turned into new sidewalks, new front steps, new oak front doors, and new light fixtures ... Antioch was reborn.

  At a church board meeting in October of Jonas's first year, the board voted to give him a raise. They also hinted, and they said it almost exactly like this, that he should "perhaps, um, well, in order to be able to more fully do your duties as spiritual leader of Antioch Church, maybe, um, well, this is so delicate, but, um ... You should marry ... and, um, perhaps, well, we don't like to say these things, and we normally wouldn't, but it's just that, well, you know ... Your further tenure here could depend on it ... so you take it to the, um, the Lord in prayer, Brother Jonas"

  I was shocked. What nerve! All that he had done in just nine months, and he was being threatened with marriage? The church board proved to me that there wasn't
a generation gap at Antioch-it was a generation trap. The old ways hadn't passed away like the verse says, and nothing was new.

  I lingered after the meeting and found myself alone with him for the first time. I waited at the front of the sanctuary till the last crusty board member left before saying, "They have got some nerve, huh?"

  He shrugged. "I understand their concerns"

  "Don't mean you have to listen to them," I said. "Or do what they say. I mean, telling a grown man to marry to keep his job after all the wonderful things you've done? You've quadrupled the daily attendance, tripled the membership rolls, fixed this place up, and made it shine, and they tell you that you need a wife to keep your job? That is so wrong"

  "It's their right, Sister Childress. They're the board. They were here before I got here, and they'll be here long after I'm gone"

  "Reverend, if they suggested as much to me, I'd be out the door."

  He sat in the first pew and sighed. "I don't have that luxury, Sister Childress."

  "And please call me Ruth. That `sister' business is as oldfashioned and stale as the bow tie Deacon Rutledge wears"

  He smiled. "Ruth." He sighed again. "You know just about everybody here, don't you?"

  "Yes. Born and raised in this church"

  He squinted. "Why haven't you married?"

  I dropped into the pew on the other side of the aisle. What a question! "I've, um, I haven't found the right man, and I wasn't exactly blessed with beauty."

  He didn't answer right away. Doesn't he know that I'm fishing for a compliment? "Inner beauty lasts forever," he said eventually. So I ain't pretty, but I got pretty innards. Thanks a lot. "You know something, Ruth? I like watching you play. Watching your feet marching, almost dancing, your hands flying. You are really talented. I know you could be playing for a different church, a bigger church, on a nicer organ, most likely making a nice salary. But you stay here. Why?"

  Now, those are compliments. "This is my home. I love this old building, that dusty old organ, the dusty old people." I laughed. Quit your babbling, girl. "I wouldn't dream of going anywhere else."

  "Hmm," he said. "Building, organ, people. No mention of the preachin'."

  Oops. "Well, to be honest, Reverend, you're, well-" I looked at him, and he seemed very interested. "You're sometimes too ... logical, like maybe you're more of a teacher or a professor than a preacher. It's like we're all in school or something."

  He dropped his head. "I'm boring."

  Least the man knows the truth about himself. "Well, I didn't say-"

  "No no," he interrupted. "I've heard folks talk. `Bore-'em Borum,' they call me. `Least he gets us out in time for the kickoff,' they say." He rubbed his hands through his thinning, neatly groomed hair. "Guess I need a little fire, huh?"

  Boy, you need a flamethrower, a blowtorch, and a bolt of God-honest lightning. "Well, there are a few things you could do to spice things up, but not too much at first. Gradual-like. Antioch isn't a place for drastic changes, you know."

  Then he looked me dead in my heart, I swear, and asked, "Would you help me, Ruth?"

  Damn right I did. I helped him with those sermons, lighting a match or building a fire here and there, and eventually the amens came, the hands started to rise, folks started to sway, the testifying lasted longer, the singing came from the heart, and we sang that extra chorus like we really meant it. Jonas compensated by shortening his sermons, and, I swear before God, Antioch became warmer all over and under and everywhere in between.

  And so did I. Working next to that man, and being able to tell folks that I had a "date" with a preacher every Saturday night (I didn't tell them what for), and, God forgive me, listening to "my" sermons all the way through each SundayI thought I was getting closer to God. I even prayed that Jonas would think I was truly beautiful on the outside, too.

  One evening we were tackling I Corinthians 13, the so called love chapter in the New Testament, when he touched my hand for the first time. I froze. Then he said with the most serious eyes, "I've never been in love, Ruth."

  My meaty hand had never felt better, and I felt a tingling in another place, too. Damn, gettin' moist in the pastor's study. "Never?"

  He shook his head. "How can I preach on love, Ruth, if I've never been in love?"

  I tried to pull my hand away to point at the Bible, but Jonas wouldn't let go. "This chapter is about God's love, right? You know all about God's love, Reverend."

  He let go, leaving traces of his warm, skinny fingers on my hand. "Yes, but ... I want to make it relevant." Jonas firmly believed in the adage, "If the congregation can't apply it, don't try it." He stared into my eyes. "Have you ever been in love, Ruth?"

  My eyes popped. "Me?" Oh, I had some lusting crushes on some traveling singers, a guest pastor or two, once on a pianist who played so beautifully one Sunday that I was in tears. But he never came back. Probably because the piano was out of tune then. I looked at the man I prayed to God for every night and, trying to remain calm, said, "No, I've never been in love."

  Jonas moved closer. "Well, maybe, Ruth ... Maybe we can discover love ... together."

  My freckles were threatening to sweat off; I was blushing, breathless, my heart pounding. What a beautiful thing to say! "What ... What do you suggest?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. It's all new to me. Would you like to see if, maybe, we're a possibility?"

  I was twenty-five, had but one date in my life, was a tall, plump, unmarried woman the color of a penny, and the holy man of a growing church was asking me to discover love? I tried not to sound too anxious. "Would you, um, like to see if we're a possibility?"

  He smiled. "Yes"

  After several silly moments, my eyes and stomach dancing up and down, I said, "I'd like that ... Jonas"

  I should have asked him if he had ever been in lust before. If I had known that Jonas needed a quiet, homely "show wife" to accent his career, that he needed a wife to praise his holy name daily, that he needed ... damn, a religious slave, I never would have given him the chance. But I did. And I thought the whole time that he was the answer to my prayers.

  After just four months of courting without a single kiss, hug, or held hand, we were engaged to be married. It bothered me some that he didn't show any affection toward me, but, damn, I was so fat and he was so skinny. He probably couldn't reach his arms around me. The folks at the church used to smile at us with pursed lips and nods, and for the first time in my life I was getting attention from people for something other than my playing the organ. We didn't go on "dates" during our courtship, exactly. We visited sick folks in the hospital or at their homes together, sometimes went for walks, and once got some fish sandwiches from Dude's Take-Out Soul Food on Vine. It wasn't very romantic at all, but at the time, it was wonderful. He never said he loved me, and I never said I loved him; yet there we were. Engaged.

  The first time I kissed Jonas was after "You may kiss the bride." Damn, I thought at the time, his lips taste thin, too. We had us a potluck dinner in the church basement afterward, with Tonya and Naomi taking pictures. Yeah, it was a cheap-ass wedding since I had no family to help pay for it, and his family was a bunch of skinny, gray cheapskates from Maryland who didn't say a damn thing to me and barely even spoke to Jonas. I asked him why they were so cold, and he said, "That's the way they've always been" I've sat on toilet seats that were warmer than his family.

  We went on our honeymoon to Hotel Calhoun, a very expensive hotel, but for only one night. I was nervous, scared, excited, worried, proud, and happy (and even a little guilty at all my sinful thoughts) all at the same time. I slipped under the covers wearing a sinfully slinky nightgown, a gift from Tonya. When Jonas came out wearing some maroon-andgold pajamas, I nearly laughed. Who wears pajamas anymore? And plaid? Man looks like a sofa. Before we finally got down to business, Jonas led us in a prayer. A long prayer. A prayer so long my coochie dried up. He said, "Amen," turned off the light, and went to work. After some difficulty on his part with his pajama pant
s and my draws, he got himself in, did his business for about twenty seconds, whispered, "Yes, Lord," pulled out, and went to sleep, snoring on the other side of the bed while tears spilled out of my eyes. I waited twenty-five years for this? The pre-sex prayer lasted a hundred times longer! Your wedding night ain't supposed to be a prayer meeting! What about foreplay? It's in, it's out, it's over? Ain't there supposed to be a wet spot? I had wet dreams that lasted longer, and there was definitely a wet spot in my bed in the morning! I stayed up most of that night listening to the sounds of cars on the nearby interstate blend in with Jonas's nasty snoring. Man even smacked his lips and ground his teeth.

  The next morning we went to church as husband and wife and got all those knowing nods and smiles again, especially from the old biddies who probably hadn't had none since World War II. I wanted to scream, "YES, I HAD SEX WITH THE PREACHER!" but I didn't. Their little biddy hearts would have stopped.

  Tonya cornered me downstairs after the service. "So?"

  "So what?" I replied.

  "Was it good?"

  "Was what good?"

  Tonya's smile flipped to a frown. "Damn. I told you that man would need a two-by-four tied to his ass. Bet he fell in. He skinny down there, too?"

  "Shh, Tonya, we in church"

  Naomi joined us. "How are you this fine morning, Sister Ruth?"

  "Horny," I said.