by Joanna Scott
One week hardly differed from any other week. Granny was sick, but she wasn’t getting sicker, as far as her granddaughter could tell. The girl had stopped thinking about heaven since her visit to the kingdom, had stopped imagining the old woman’s death altogether. Plenty of people suffered from ailments that wouldn’t go away and grew no worse. Granny assured her that her bellyaches were no more bothersome than the ache in her fingers—two Bufferin always helped to set things right. And as long as Granny still pushed her cart up and down Lenox, still hauled bags of sweet potatoes from the grocer, and still made enough money to pay the rent, the girl could believe that everything was close to fine.
She didn’t see through her granny’s masquerade until it was too late. But even if she had suspected, she wouldn’t have known what to do. The old woman denied that she was failing by clinging to routine with all her strength, and when she finally gave up, she didn’t slip softly to the floor—she fell with a great thud in the middle of the night, waking the girl.
“Mama?” the girl said, sitting up in her bed. “Mama?”
“Your mama ain’t here, Sheebie.”
“That you, Mama? You come home?”
“It’s just you and me, girl. Now get on back to sleep.” She growled the command and lay still. The girl stood up and switched on the lamp. She stared at her granny sprawled on the floor, seeing not the living woman but the hollow form of the woman who was almost dead, Granny already different, an unworldly stranger to the girl, the change signaled by the vicious sound of her teeth as she snapped at the air, chomping the space to show that she’d turned dangerous and would bite the girl’s hand if she could only reach it.
“You all right, Granny?”
“Spoilation ain’t pretty. Now do as I say, get on back to bed!”
“Lemme help, please....”
Snap of teeth again, a vile, liquid fart. Poor Granny roaring from her grave at the bottom of the river, her voice bubbling up through water.
“Please, Granny...”
Granny was a puppet coming to life. She was a statue rearing its stone head. The girl took a few steps away from the old woman, who propped herself first on her hands and knees and then managed to grasp the table and pull herself up. She had no strength left to scold, but the girl didn’t need words to know that the ordeal was over, at least for the present. Granny would clean herself up and they’d both return to bed, never to speak of this night again, though from then on the child would be privy to the truth that her great-grandmother refused to admit: she was dying, and when she took her last breath the angels wouldn’t swoop down for the fanfare. The angels wouldn’t even bother to stop by for the occasion, and Granny would collapse in a puddle of her own filth, snapping at any hand that came too close, as mean and helpless as a cat with a broken back.
The next day was Sunday, but the old woman didn’t bother to get up and dress herself for church. She slept through most of the morning. Though Granny didn’t ask for it, the girl left a cup of water on her bedside table, and from across the room she waited, as though she’d set a trap, for her to drink. When the cup was empty she’d refill it. Granny didn’t say a word all day, except when she dozed, and then she recited lists of items to be purchased—“Thirty pounds taters, five pounds popping corn, factree-made dress, pair of Florsheim shoes, nickel loaf, quart of milk, butter brick, bobby pins”—and on, her voice fading as she woke until she was completely silent again, her set lips the ashen color of the November sky beyond the window, her body rigid one moment then straining to expel the pain she wouldn’t admit to, until finally the girl felt herself being expelled, driven out of the airless room by some mysterious force so Granny could suffer alone.
Outside, she stuffed her hands into her pockets and kept her head down. Where could the girl hide from the cold? The library was closed, and the service at the Metropolitan Baptist Church would already be half over. For some reason Mr. Dosan came to mind, uselessly, since the girl had vowed never to have anything more to do with him. Besides, she didn’t know where he lived. She knew where her mama lived, though. Granny hadn’t asked for Mama, not in so many words, but the girl had started to pay attention to her own intuition, which was telling her now that Granny needed Mama, even though she would have denied it. Or maybe what presented itself as intuition was merely the child’s own desire in disguise: she wanted to be warm. She wanted to put warm food in her empty belly, and she knew of only one place in the world where she’d be invited inside to share a meal. But whether she was making the journey on her granny’s or her own behalf didn’t much matter, for by then she’d reached the corner of Lenox and 126th Street and would only reveal herself to be a coward if she turned back.
She kept edging forward, as though along a lightless hallway, until she stood outside the kingdom. She waited for a crowd to assemble and draw her into its midst; she waited for the girl with the umbrella to dash by. But the street remained empty and the building seemed as impenetrable as a huge boulder, so lifeless that the girl wondered whether the Father had lost interest in his mission and dispersed his congregation. She climbed the steps and cracked open the door, half expecting to be met by silence. Instead, as she stood on the threshold she heard the intonations of a voice as powerful as the Pied Piper’s secret melody, inviting all who heard it to believe, believe, believe.
The girl tiptoed across the front hall and down the corridor. In the dining hall she discovered the worshippers feasting not on food—the tables were empty, though the fragrance of hot grease and baked goods still lingered in the air—but on the words of the Father. He stood alone at the end of an aisle, without either a pulpit or Bible, and as the girl watched he raised his right hand and snatched at nothing, as though pulling his sermon from the air.
“‘Jesus,’ said the sinner, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,’ and Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you, you will be with Me in Paradise.’ Now I say to you, my people, you will be with me in Paradise.”
A woman kneeling in the aisle cried out, “We love you, Father!”
Another woman called, “My heart is beating faster!”
A man sang, “He’s our father, and he’s walking in the land!”
The Father scanned the room like an overseer surveying a field until his eyes, iron nails hammered into the bald globe of his head, settled right on the girl, locking her in place. “They may prosecute me,” he seethed. “They may persecute me. They may strap me to the electric chair.”
“No!” screamed the kneeling woman.
“It’s a new day, Father!” a man shouted.
“They may hang me by the neck. But I tell you now, they will never keep me away from you!”
To the girl, the man seemed to be speaking only to her. He lifted his hands, palms flat, above his head, and the people rose from their chairs in unison and began chanting, “Father, O Father, give me the victory,” the clamor increasing as he spread his arms in a gesture of embrace, still fixing his stare on the girl.
“I know you are God, God, God!” the people sang, and finally the Father lifted his eyes, releasing the girl from his gaze, and beckoned farewell to the worshippers before he slipped out of the room.
In his absence the noise of devotion peaked and quickly subsided, and during the few moments of reverent quiet the girl looked around, at first just to regain her bearings, for she felt as though she’d been swept up by an eagle and dropped hundreds of miles away from home, and then to search the crowd for her mama. But today the angels stood in a row up front, facing away from the congregation, and the girl couldn’t get a sufficient look as they filed out to tell whether her mama was among them. She tried to follow the angels but couldn’t push through the crowd. Men and women clutched and kissed their closest neighbors, and the girl was swept up into the ecstasy and passed along like a loaf of hot bread, finally ending mashed against the ample bosom of a lady whose grin revealed a gap where her two front teeth should have been and whose name, the girl would learn later, was
Miss Smile All the While.
Miss Smile All the While loved the children “long as they live a holy, clean life.” Miss Smile All the While took it upon herself to bring the “starveticating” girl into the kitchen and fix her a plate of leftover chicken and baked beans. Over the meal she described some of the Father’s miraculous cures—her own rheumatism had disappeared the first time he touched her hands, five years earlier. The girl revealed that she’d come looking for her mama, and Miss Smile All the While said, “In good time,” then led her four flights up to a small room furnished with seven cots spaced no more than a foot apart. “You take this one,” Miss Smile said, indicating the cot closest to the door, and left her alone, not once asking her whether she needed to rest, though somehow giving the impression that they’d all be insulted if she refused.
So the girl sat on the mattress and scuffed her heels along the floor, hoping that her mama would come find her. After a while she grew tired from waiting—she settled back on the bare mattress, tried to keep herself awake by holding her eyelids open with her thumb and forefinger, and finally gave up, drifting off into a sleep so busy with dreams that when she woke a few hours later she was more exhausted than ever.
The room was dark and her cot had been made up with freshly washed sheets and a wool blanket. Voices were murmuring softly in the room, like pigeons chortling, such a comforting sound that the girl was lulled back to sleep. When she woke again she found herself alone, and daylight shone through the single window. As the fog of sleep cleared, it occurred to her that Granny would be wanting her supper. Not until she’d made her way downstairs and smelled breakfast cooking did she realize that she’d slept straight through to morning. In the kitchen, Miss Smile All the While stood by a huge pot of percolating coffee, singing a duet with a woman frying some bacon. When she saw the girl she gave her a wet kiss on the forehead and said, “You be blessed, chicky. We got a sewing job just waiting to be filled.”
The girl didn’t understand at first. Sure, she needed a pair of stockings darned, a torn dress repaired, but how could Miss Smile know that? It took a once-over look from the other woman to give the girl the necessary clue: they wanted to put her to work. But she was planning to sell sweet potatoes and popcorn out in the open air, not sit in some musty back room pedaling a sewing machine. Besides, she still had a couple of years of schooling to finish—Granny wouldn’t let her huck a single potato until she’d made it through the eighth grade.
She didn’t feel right disappointing Miss Smile, though, especially since she needed her to help find Mama. So she accepted the cup of black coffee sweetened with a tablespoon of sugar and listened to the ladies trade praise for the man who made room for even the tiniest lamb.
And then the stories began. The woman at the stove—Miss Cheerfulness Good—spoke of an angel named Holy Light, who’d had twelve children and no food to feed them until she met the Father. He put her up in a fabricated house down in Miami for three months, then he brought her to New York, where she gave her children to God. The girl wondered what this meant: “gave her chillun to God.” She wondered if her own mama intended to give her to God. She didn’t ask any questions, though, just sipped the sweet coffee and listened to another story about an angel named Miss Beautiful, who got sick working in the nightclubs. Luckily for her, it was the Father who found her lying in the gutter one day, and he scooped her up and brought her to his kingdom. Next came the tales of Miss Charmed Life, Miss Sweet Soul, Mr. Disciple, and Mr. Righteous Government, all of them damned to sickness and poverty and all of them saved by the Father. It began to seem to the girl that the kingdom might be a haven, after all. Food was abundant, the rooms had working radiators, the toilets were clean, and the Father provided for anyone who arrived on the doorstep. Even if he wasn’t God, he might be one of those spiritual-contacting folks she’d heard about, and maybe he’d make Granny well. The girl resolved to get her granny and present her in person to the great wizard. Then she and Granny and Mama could live together again under one roof.
Miss Smile and Miss Cheerfulness served her a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon, and they didn’t hesitate to load her up with more food as soon as she’d cleaned her plate. Here at the kingdom a girl didn’t have to live on sweet potatoes. A girl could eat as much as she pleased. A girl could drink black coffee as though she were all grown up. When the two women began singing, the girl stood and did a little dance for them, spinning across the room, feeling as carefree as she did in the old days when Mama came home laughing. The girl was intoxicated by food and kindness, and she spun around and around and around, landing right in the strong arms of the man entering the kitchen, who said, “Now if she ain’t absotively posilutely the prettiest dancing soul I ever seen, I’ll eat my hat,” and lifted her up until she could touch the ceiling.
Miss Dancing Soul she became, thanks to the man called Mr. Loving Jeremiah. She spent the whole day at the kingdom helping with the meals and listening to the angels tell their happily-ever-after stories. She hadn’t forgotten Granny—she planned to go to her before the day was over, but when darkness fell, the distance between the kingdom and the apartment building seemed so vast, the cold so bitter, that she decided to fetch her great-grandmother the following morning.
She didn’t see her mama at all that day and couldn’t bring herself to ask about her. She’d find her in good time, Miss Smile had promised, and the girl believed what she’d been told. Gratitude filled her with a warmth that saturated her flesh, making her face and fingertips tingle with joy. She felt so excited when she went to bed that night, surrounded by gentle angels, that she couldn’t sleep, so she lay awake and imagined her future as Miss Dancing Soul, loved by all who lived at the kingdom, and loving them.
Another day passed before the girl bothered to return home. She intended to stay just long enough to pack up her possessions and convince Granny to come with her. As she let herself into the apartment, she braced herself against the wild scolding sure to greet her.
“Granny?” she called out. There was no answer. “You here?” She checked the bathroom. Only when she returned to the main room did she notice that the bedding had been stripped from her granny’s mattress. The smell of sickness hung in the air, and, inexplicably, crumbs of mud were scattered across the floor, as though booted soldiers had stomped through. Granny must have gone out with her cart, the girl figured, not quite believing it herself, for by then the knowledge of something else, something too terrible to name, began to come to her. She resisted the thought, and after stuffing her dresses and seashells in the net bag Granny used for groceries, she set out for Lenox in search of the old woman.
It was midday Tuesday. As she stepped from the building the door to the basement flat opened, and a woman, Mrs. Jenny, leaned out to shake dust from a throw rug. “Why there you is, Sheebie,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, painting her face with pity, “you poor orphan girl.”
It was true, then: the terrible thing had happened while Miss Dancing Soul had been gormandizing at the kingdom. The simple permanence of the situation turned everything familiar—the street, the building she’d called home for nearly a year, the woman in the doorway—into her accusers. Had she stayed with her great-grandmother she would have proven that she was not scared. Now everyone in the world knew that she was scared, so she had no reason to pretend otherwise and could run away without worrying about what others thought, for they already thought the worst of her.
Queen Sheebie ran from the poor orphan girl she was supposed to be. She ran so fast that the city seemed to fold beneath her, and it took just a few giant steps to reach the threshold of the kingdom, her home now. She flung open the door and collapsed in a heap. Soon people were murmuring above her, and a man lifted her gently into the cradle of his arms. She didn’t open her eyes when someone said, “Miss Dancing Soul,” for she knew that she’d be cared for here—all she had to do was live a holy, clean life and earn her keep as a seamstress and help wa
sh up after meals.
The man carried her into a small parlor and laid her on a divan. Someone draped a warm washcloth across her forehead. She heard a group of women whispering, thought she heard her mother among them, but still she didn’t open her eyes. She craved blindness, tried to will herself sightless as she lay there, for more than anything she wanted to be coddled, helpless, dependent upon these people who were so good to her. She wanted to feel the caress of their fingertips upon her skin, which had an appetite of its own that would be satisfied only by the loving touch of angels.
But they left her alone. The washcloth grew cold on her forehead so she laid it, folded, on the floor. Eventually, that more pressing appetite belonging to her stomach roused her, and she made her way to the dining room, where the congregation had already gathered. For the first time since she’d come to the kingdom, one of the men held his collection hat out for her, but she didn’t have a penny and just shrugged at him. His scowl felt like a fist on her teeth. She picked up her knife and fork and idly danced them together, fidgeting to hide her shame. It occurred to her that she’d lost the bag full of her possessions somewhere between the apartment and the kingdom. Now she had nothing except the flesh-and-blood part of her that filled this little bit of space at the table, along with the flower-print dress she’d been wearing for three days.
It was this sense of herself as almost but not quite nothing that made the skin-hunger unbearable. So later that evening, when the angel named Mr. Loving Jeremiah met her on the landing of the back stairs and gave his precious Miss Dancing Soul a hug, she nearly fainted with gratitude. The next day, when he found her alone in the kitchen drying the last dishes from lunch, he surprised her with an embrace from behind, curling his strong arms beneath her own and lifting her right off the floor.
