by Janet Walker
* * *
Tracy yawned.
The clean-cut black man on stage wore a business suit and looked like an insurance salesman who had just taken a bath. His fingertips, which gripped the sides of the podium, were pink and clean, and the brown skin of his nose shone in the glare of the florescent lights in the ceiling. A steady stream of words fell out of his mouth and washed over Tracy’s head, drowning her ears, so that she neither heard nor comprehended the meaning of his message. She remembered the visits she had made to the Kingdom Hall as a child whenever her aunt journeyed to the United States from overseas, or from Texas when Uncle Ed was stationed there. The visits had been exactly like this one: sitting for an eternity in a quiet air-conditioned hall, listening to men in suits, one after another, talk politely about the Bible from a stage, while her eyes grew heavy and her heart desired to be some place, any place, else.
Things hadn’t gotten better with age, she realized.
Not that she didn’t like the Witnesses—they were nice people and had always been kind to her when she visited. Someone was always shaking her hand or hugging her or giving her compliments. As a child, she was pronounced “good” and “sweet” because she sat still during the meetings and displayed nice manners afterwards, or she was “pretty” or “tall for her age”—which she never considered a compliment, really, though it was delivered as such. Earlier tonight, as she drank from the water fountain at the back of the hall, one of the members, a pretty woman named Sister Sterling who was Aunt Madge’s MacDonald Park friend, came out of the bathroom, saw Tracy, and embraced her warmly. “It’s good to see you!” she exclaimed in a whisper. Tracy nodded and smiled, and Sister Sterling grinned and walked away. Tracy appreciated Sister Sterling’s friendliness, but it didn’t make the trek back to her seat in the audience any easier. At that point, there was still an hour-and-a-half left of the meeting, and Tracy couldn’t bear the thought of sitting that much longer.
Now, the congregation stood to sing. Tracy, suddenly stirred by hope, stood also. Cheerful piano music began playing over the hall’s sound system, and Tracy looked at the words in the songbook her aunt held up for the two of them to read. About a hundred people formed the audience, and it seemed to Tracy that everyone in the place, with the exception of her, broke into song, a hopeful drone about a paradise and Christ and no more tears and pain. Tracy kept her lips closed. She didn’t know the song, nor did she want to draw attention to herself by doing anything. On top of that, Mama said she had a terrible singing voice. But when her aunt glanced at her, smiled, and indicated the songbook, Tracy mouthed the words, which declared that the earth would be a paradise because of Christ and God’s will.
As the congregation continued singing, Tracy glanced around, checking out the hall’s décor. Even though she had been going to the Thursday-night meeting with Aunt Madge for two months now, she still always found the interior features of the MacDonald Park Kingdom Hall interesting enough to examine while the meeting dragged on. She glanced at the ceiling. White porous panels and large rectangles of bright florescent lights. She glanced around. The upper halves of the walls were covered with elegant peach wallpaper that had a green floral pattern; the bottom portion was brown wood paneling. Rich burgundy carpet covered the floor. The audience chairs had shiny chrome frames and walnut armrests, with stiff tweed cushions made of a light pinkish color Aunt Madge called sammon. The stage was a carpeted platform, not very high, with a glossy wood speaker’s stand at the front of the stage. Upstage sat a pair of high-backed chairs with carved wood frames and cushions upholstered in dark-green velvet. Plastered onto the wall upstage was a huge picture of a breathtaking mountain scene, vivid with white snow and blue sky and green trees.
It was prettier than the Kingdom Hall near Area Place that she and Aunt Madge would visit when Tracy was a child. That Kingdom Hall had been located in an old windowless building in a neighborhood of small shotgun houses, and while its interior was color-coordinated and neat, it bore the dull look of a place that had been around too long. Because it was located near Area Place, it was protected behind a tall fence secured by a thick chain and lock. In contrast, the MacDonald Park and Napier congregations had a brand-new Kingdom Hall—Aunt Madge said the Witnesses had built it in one weekend—that sat on a grassy open lot with manicured landscaping, pine trees, and a sizeable paved parking area. The exterior of the building was brown brick, dark wood, and eggshell-white stucco. Across the front of the hall, in burgundy letters, were attached the words KINGDOM HALL OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES. The same words were swirled onto a handsome brick-based sign at the front of the property. The facility’s manicured neatness and appealing colors reminded Tracy of her aunt’s house, and whenever she and Aunt Madge drove past it on their way out of the neighborhood, it gave Tracy a funny feeling—a nip of pride, a sense of familiarity, but the feeling that the building and what it represented wasn’t quite hers.
Again, the audience repeated the verse about the earth’s becoming a paradise because of God and Christ’s desire to fulfill it, and the song ended.
Much to Tracy’s disappointment, the congregation sat down again. The Thursday meeting lasted two hours, she knew that, but she had hoped things had wrapped up earlier than planned. That was not the case; that was never the case. A different man came onstage and began talking, so Tracy checked out the people around her. The Witnesses in her aunt’s congregation were African Americans, but in the pictures in the Watch Tower Society books and magazines, Tracy always saw white Witnesses, and Chinese, Japanese and Eskimo ones, and Mexican-looking people, and Africans and regular blacks, and men and women with things wrapped around their heads, like people who lived in the desert. But there was something about the Witnesses Tracy had personally observed, the way they acted and dressed, that made her believe she would recognize them anywhere. The clean-faced men, with their neat haircuts and briefcases and business suits and ties, who never stared at her the way Eric Richardson and men in Area Place did but always spoke to her as if she were their daughter or sister, greeting her with handshakes and toothy grins and gazes directed only at her eyes. The women, who wore makeup, but not too much, and relaxed hair that was curled and feathered but never piled or frozen high in the ghetto-fabulous styles of Area Place; women who embraced one another in greeting and wore attractive dresses with hem lines that struck their legs at the knees or below, but rarely above. Even the children carried the look. The boys seemed crammed into the roles of men as they wore oversized business suits and ties, and the girls—even the ones Tracy could tell would be more comfortable in Daisy Dukes and halter tops—wore shin-length dresses, neat bangs, and Shirley Temple curls. Yes, they had a definite look, the Witnesses, and while as a child Tracy had admired them—associating them with her expensively dressed, affectionate, gift-sending aunt—she knew that the Witness look was not one she wanted to imitate. Instead, she had long envisioned her ideal self as a girl who sported brand-name clothes, heavy and baggy and bright clothes made of cotton and denim, with gold jewelry and leather boots. And now that she was at Beck, she dreamed of wearing other styles, slate and burgundy and navy and brown outfits made of all the fabrics in the universe, cashmere and houndstooth and rayon and silk, and leathers so soft and fine they looked like suede. Fresh, def, designer clothes, not the square-ish J.C. Penny suits and dresses of the people sitting around her.
Tracy’s mind continued to transcend the windowless walls of the Kingdom Hall. She was back in the corridor this morning at Beck, at her locker, and Eric Richardson was licking his lips, making her blush, calling her vanilla. Her chest rose and fell at the memory. He was Sheila’s boyfriend—he had admitted that. So why was she thinking about him? It was wrong, she knew this. It was like stealing, to want somebody’s boyfriend. So why couldn’t she stop liking him? And more than that: Why couldn’t she hate him?
“Let’s get Sister Porter’s comment.”
With the mention of the familiar surname, the voice from the stage broke into Trac
y’s thoughts and yanked her back into the moment. She glanced to her right. Her aunt’s hand was raised in the air, arm bent at the elbow, face demure, as she waited for the microphone to be brought to her. Tracy’s cheeks warmed. By offering to comment, Aunt Madge had drawn attention to them! Tracy felt the eyes of others upon her. She squirmed, kept her head bowed, and longed for the moment to pass. The boy attendant arrived at their row and handed a slender cone-shaped black microphone to Aunt Madge. Tracy glanced at the boy—he looked to be about thirteen but he, too, was dressed like a grown man, wearing a business suit, tie, and dress shoes—but she did not look at her aunt as the woman spoke.
“In harmony with Brother Atchison, it is selfishness in the hearts of people that causes most of the problems in the world today. And as the paragraph brings out, this could be abolished if people followed Jesus’s admonition found at Matthew seven-twelve.”
Aunt Madge handed the microphone back to the boy, who moved away, and Tracy exhaled.
“Thank you, Sister Porter. And Friends, what does Matthew seven-twelve tell us?”
Now that it was safe, Tracy glanced at her aunt, who returned the glance with a smile. Sister Porter. Tracy had always liked the name her aunt had at the Kingdom Hall; it made her sound important and good. Aunt Madge shifted the pamphlet in her hand closer to Tracy’s armrest so that the girl could follow along with the discussion. Tracy politely looked at the pamphlet. Our Kingdom Ministry was printed in purple at the top of the page. When her aunt pointed at the paragraph being discussed, Tracy trained her gaze on the tiny words on the page, but it made little sense to her and so soon she drifted back to something that did make sense.
She had been on the basketball team for—how long now? It was the second Thursday in October, so—a month and one week? It seemed much longer, for it had been a long five weeks, with daily practices—grueling sessions that left her limping, feet hot and tender with blisters, arms heavy and aching from weight lifting, muscles sore in places she didn’t even know she had muscles. But because the practices were conducted by Miz Grace, Tracy found them invigorating—the best part of her day. Of her life. And now that the team was meeting on Saturdays, she enjoyed the practices even more, for the second hour of Saturday’s session was a full-length game. This past weekend, she had thrilled at the opportunity to fly down court, to fly free, and show Miz Grace how capable she was as a player. And she had done that, she was sure, for she had scored twenty-seven points, and her team of sophomores and juniors had made it hard for the A team of seniors and juniors to win. But despite her impressive performance, Tracy did not see any reaction in Miz Grace. The coach had simply stood courtside and watched the game with the somber expression of one reading a book. Tracy had felt disappointed, for even though Miz Grace had displayed gravity ever since they began training, Tracy had hoped things would change when the team began scrimmaging.
“And so, Friends, what can we do to make sure our ministry is effective and pleasing to Jehovah?”
Tracy focused on the speaker. He wore glasses and a neat haircut, a small squared afro, and he lifted a finger as he spoke.
“First, we must follow the pattern set for us by the Great Teacher when he was on earth…”
It suddenly occurred to Tracy that the man’s way of speaking was funny, really—that his voice rose and fell like Mister Rogers or somebody on Sesame Street—and she concluded that he would be beaten up if he were a boy at Tyson Elementary who talked that way. Tracy sighed. The man looked like Steve Urkel from the TV show Family Matters—why hadn’t she noticed that when he first came onstage? But Eric Richardson looked like one of the cool, handsome boys Urkel had to compete against for Laura Winslow’s affection. A cool, handsome boy—and instead of Laura Winslow, it was she, Tracy Sullivan, who was being pursued! The thought sent a delightful chill through her belly—and then a quiver of panic. What if Eric tried harder? She couldn’t have a boyfriend now—Aunt Madge had made that clear. And Mama had been making the point ever since Tracy started her period at thirteen. Open yo legs to some boy and bring a baby in here and I’ll beat you blue and put yo ass right out on the street, she always said. Can’t feed you, as it is. It was a threat that angered Tracy because opening her legs was the last thing she wanted to do—she was afraid of the idea. But that did not mean she didn’t like boys or want to have a special one to call her own. Mama was a trip—always twisting things into something bad. But Tracy had to admit that her mother and aunt’s disapproval was fitting when it came to Eric Richardson. He was Sheila’s man, so it was wrong to be with him. Period. And on top of that, Sheila was captain of the cheerleading squad, and Miz Grace had said that the Grace Girls were to respect the cheerleaders. It wouldn’t show respect to talk to Sheila’s man behind her back.
Sheila’s man. Tracy considered the thought. She could have a man now, not just a boy. She had always had boyfriends—the safe, puppy-love kind. In kindergarten, Mama’s friend’s son Bay-Bay had been her boyfriend. In first and second grade it was Peanut, whose name in school was Duwayne. In third grade it was Tony Roberts. In fourth, it was Marcos Thomas, until he moved to Augusta. Then it was De’Andre Sanders. The first time she went through the fifth grade, she went with another Andre, but he tried to make her kiss him on the mouth, so she quit him. After that, she grew shyer and couldn’t approach people, and so she hadn’t had a boyfriend in five years. Instead, she simply had crushes from afar, and at Haines last year, she seemed to like a new boy every other week. She thought of Scooby and his confession a month ago. Since then, he acted as if the conversation had never taken place, which was fine with her because she didn’t like him that way, anyway. And besides, he had a girlfriend already. But part of her did wonder why he hadn’t mentioned his feelings for her again. And now, with Eric, here wasn’t a boy but a man, bigger than her and stronger, with hair on his face and muscles and a fat lump in the front of his pants. What if he kept trying until he made her his girlfriend? Would he expect her to become familiar with that lump, or would he understand that she wasn’t ready for it yet? Tracy chewed a thumbnail and gazed at the back of the chair in front of her. Once, she had tried to put in one of Mama’s tampons when there were no more sanitary pads in the house. The tampon had hurt so much, as if it would tear her open, that she didn’t succeed in inserting it. So what would she do with a real boyfriend? And what, really, was sex, anyway? The all-the-way kind? People on TV and movies acted like it was the best thing in the world. So there must be something to it. Tracy pouted thoughtfully. Was she the only one who hadn’t tried it yet? Scooby had. She wasn’t sure how old he was when he started having sex, but she sometimes overheard him talking to Pretty Boy, Drex and Pat about the fun they had with girls. And Tree had done it; she began in middle school and bragged about it. Tracy couldn’t imagine any girl wanting to be with Short Fat Bobbie, so it was probably just her and Bobbie, two virgins, still walking around dumb and left behind.
“But what, Friends, is going to be the fate of that harlot?” the timid voice on the platform said.
Tracy swung her head, remembered where she was. A new man was onstage now, an older one with high-water pants and a fat belly that stuck out from between the flaps of his unbuttoned blazer. She would stop thinking about sex. She glanced right, at her aunt, who sat with legs crossed daintily at the ankles, hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes on the Bible that was open in her lap. Bet she never thought about sex. And so Tracy sat straighter in her chair with the determination to be like the woman beside her. Yes, Aunt Madge had messed things up by confronting Jinya Daggett, but that was the only thing she had ever done that Tracy did not like, and so, yes, she would try to be like Aunt Madge—a proper and clean woman who could sit calmly through a boring meeting and pay attention the whole time and get respected enough by other people to be called Sister Somebody.
“Let’s turn again to Revelation and see another part of this vision the Apostle John had…”
Tracy tried to wrap her mind around the speaker�
�s words. He was talking about a woman whose name sounded to Tracy like “Babblin the Grape.” He said the woman rode the back of a seven-headed wild beast. Tracy glanced around. Was she the only one who didn’t understand what the heck the man was talking about? She once thought she knew everything the Witnesses believed, because of the books Aunt Madge had sent to her from overseas. One had been her favorite, Listening to the Great Teacher, a neat little pink hardcover book for children that discussed Jesus’ life and the things he wanted people to do in their lives. She learned from it that she was not being a coward but was being “peaceable” when she walked away from fights at school. And it taught that there was more happiness in giving to people than in receiving from them, a principle that always puzzled her as a child because she could never imagine feeling happy about giving away a candy bar she wanted to keep. In the second grade, she read the pink book all the way through, because at that time she still liked to read. She cherished the book because it was the first thing she owned that seemed designed especially for her, and in it Jesus was a nice white man with a nice invisible father named Jehovah, and he really cared about people. More than that, the book had come from Aunt Madge, and as a child Tracy believed that anything her aunt did was magical and so she loved everything her aunt had sent from overseas. When she was twelve, a little cherry-red book for teenagers, Your Youth—Getting the Best Out of It, came in the mail from Germany. Tracy read it, but not from cover to cover, as she had done the Great Teacher book, because by that time she no longer liked to read. She had learned, instead, to fill her time by listening to music on the Walkman radio Aunt Madge had sent earlier. And so before she moved in with her aunt, she had only scanned the Youth book, deducing the theme of a lesson by looking at the pictures and captions. In this way, she learned that a “good” girl resisted nasty boys like a wall, not like a door that opens to anybody who pushes against it, and doesn’t let a lot of men have sex with her because then she would be like a public towel that people wipe their dirty hands on. And she learned that Jehovah thought it was wrong to park in a car with a boy and kiss in the dark. He wanted young people to date by holding hands and ice skating in the daytime, or by playing the guitar at a picnic with other young people. And in order to have friends, the book showed, you needed to be a friend. And you needed to remember that true friends are like diamonds, not rocks. The book also said she needed to respect her parents and all adults in authority, but she didn’t like that advice because it didn’t seem fair to have to obey a mother like Mama. These lessons and others she was hearing during her Friday Bible studies with her aunt. She always dreaded the study but always ended up, at some point during the hour, feeling comforted by the arrangement, with the intimacy and orderliness of it. She respected the serious way her aunt spoke during their afternoon hour together, and she hoped that the mere act of having the discussions meant perhaps she, Tracy, would not be destroyed at Armageddon but would be allowed to live in the New Order, the paradise Earth, even if she didn’t want to actually become a Witness.
So, yes, Tracy thought she understood what the Witnesses believed. But now, here was this man on stage, talking about the Babblin woman and using words like “sim-ball-lick” and “har-let-tus” and “the conclusion of the system of things”—which, really, Tracy thought she understood but was not certain. She didn’t realize her confusion was showing until her aunt looked at her and smiled sympathetically. I’LL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU LATER, her aunt wrote in the margin of the leaflet on her lap. Tracy nodded in acknowledgment, but she wanted to say, Don’t bother. I wouldn’t understand, anyway.
The words from the stage again became a stream of boredom, and soon Tracy found herself submerged in other thoughts. Stop dragging your feet when you run, Dent. Sullivan, I want you at center this half—see how you operate in that position. Pat, stop wasting my time—do what the trainers have told you to do. Sophomores, get your act together out there—this is not junior varsity. Did Miz Grace ever think about sex? Probably not. She was pretty, yes, and Jazz Nelson was handsome, but—sex? An image of the couple having sex tried to push its way into Tracy’s head, but she had no place for it to go—did not know what having sex, the all-the-way kind, looked like in detail, and so the image became, in the end, a scene in which Miz Grace lay beside her husband, bare shoulders exposed as they lay beneath the covers, hand lightly resting on his chest the way Tracy saw actors do on TV, his arm wrapped gently around her shoulders. That, to her, was sex for Jazz Nelson and Miz Grace, and that was as far as she wanted her mind to take it, for to take it further would place Miz Grace in the same category with Mama. Tracy frowned. Mama, whose closed bedroom door wasn’t thick enough to block out sounds. Wasn’t thick enough to prevent Tracy from knowing that something adult was happening inside, something animal, something nasty. Something like the thing Tracy had seen when she was little and walked in and saw Mama and the man, his head in a place no person’s head should be. Tracy was sure Miz Grace would never do something like that. No, she would have sex the way nice married people did, and what was that like for Miz Grace? Jazz Nelson was so tall, after all, and Miz Grace was so little, though strong, and so lying next to him must have seemed like lying beside a giant tree. And so how big was his thing, and how bad did it hurt?
Tracy blinked, looked around again, focused on the high-water pants onstage, and hoped Jehovah would forgive her for being in the Kingdom Hall and thinking about doing the nasty.
