by Robert Ward
“Of course you can,” I said.
I smiled at her, and we sat down together at the old piano stool. The song was “The Old Rugged Cross,” and my grandmother had trouble sight-reading the first few chords. After that she rattled the song off as though she’d been playing it every day for the past fifteen years. In a few minutes she began to sing. She had a surprisingly powerful alto voice, and when she sang the song, there was something in it that sent chills up my spine. I don’t mean because her voice was great; it was only average. But there was sincerity and a nearly frightening intensity in the way she sang the song that bespoke the mysteries of Christianity, mysteries that told of the sea of troubles, the nails in Christ’s hands, both the fear of death and the everlasting hope of the Resurrection. When Grace sang there was something ominous in the song, something beautiful but barren, forlorn.
When she was done, I told her as much. She looked at me and nodded seriously.
“You’re right. There’s a lot of desperation and fear in that song,” she said as we sat together on the piano stool. “Think about the words, ‘There on the hill stood the old rugged cross, a symbol of suffering and pain.’ That’s the truth. Jesus died on that cross, to save us from sin … sins we commit anyway. Hurting ourselves, the ones we love…. It’s a dark world sometimes, Bobby, and we all commit trespasses. Which we need to be forgiven for.”
“Not all of us,” I said, smiling with goofy affection toward her. “If you’re referring to me, you’ve got it wrong. I’ve got feet of clay like every other person.”
“Sure,” I said. “I didn’t mean you were perfect or anything like that.”
“Far from it,” she said. “And you better believe it.”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “You’re one of the great sinners of the world.” She laughed and kissed me, but then added seriously, “You’d be surprised.”
On other nights Grace and I would sit down and talk. These conversations always ended up being rambling philosophical discussions, but they never started out that way. There was no self-consciousness to them, no “Now it’s time to let me teach you a thing or two, young fellow,” the kind of lame approach most adults lay on kids, which often turns them off from learning altogether. Instead, we would usually start talking about a book she was reading. It might be Dickens, or it might be the nonviolent writings of Gandhi, whom she admired nearly as much as Jesus. She explained to me his philosophy of ahimsa, a nonviolent protest based on love of humanity. Her face lit up when she quoted him:
“ ‘We must love the British even as we fight them.’”
“The Negroes use Gandhi’s ideas, don’t they?” I said.
“Yes, they do. Martin Luther King is a student of Gandhi’s.”
“Do you ever think about going out there to demonstrate with them?” I said.
She smiled, and suddenly looked away from me.
“Only every day,” she said.
Her answer surprised me.
“Really?”
“Yes, but I’m a little old to be riding in freedom buses. So I try and collect money, and I’ve written a few letters to the Sun when I see one of their conservative columnists unfairly attacking the civil rights movement, but that’s the extent of it, I’m afraid.”
“Dad told me you were involved in other movements, though,” I said. “I forget which ones.”
She smiled, and patted my head.
“That was long ago,” she said. “In another time.”
“I’d like to hear about it,” I said.
“Some other night,” Grace said. “You have a school day tomorrow.”
I nodded and hugged her. I knew that the real reason she wasn’t telling me about her past was that it was so heroic, and she considered bragging a venial sin. But I resolved as I went off to bed that someday I would get her to tell me all about her glorious youth.
Sue Retalliata, me, and Grace,1955
I t was the seventh day at Grace’s, Sunday morning, and we were going to church together. I was looking forward to it; going to church with Grace was a special treat. After the Reverend Brooks, she was one of the most eminent people at First Methodist. She sang in the choir, played the organ in a pinch, and taught Sunday school. She was also the co-head of the Methodist Women’s Council, something I knew very little about, but which was obviously an important organization. She received calls at all hours from the other women in the group, calls about charity drives, church suppers, raffles, study groups. I knew about all of this in only the most sketchy manner, but it was exciting to go to church with her because it seemed serious. When Grace was in church she was in her true element, the place where, more than any other, she felt deeply at home. And especially during this unmoored and frightening time for me, I needed that security, that feeling of kindness, the old glow of inclusion, which suddenly had been turned off in my life.
I remember that Sunday more clearly than I remember where I was yesterday. My grandmother wore a green wool suit and a black comb in her hair. I had gone home for a few minutes early on Friday (when my parents were both at work) and grabbed some of my clothes, my football, and some books. So this day I was ready, dressed in my navy blue blazer, grey slacks, and penny loafers. My tie was a blue-and-red rep, which I had bought at Kevin Higgins’s father’s store, the Oxford Shop. I brushed my crew cut to attention and my grandmother and I walked from her house down Greenmount Avenue the few short blocks to the church. I remember walking out to the porch, seeing the Brandaus heading off to the Catholic church. I waved to Johnny and he waved back, then Grace joined me on the porch and we set off, walking together, her arm in mine.
We were halfway down the block when we heard the screams. “You bastard, give me that damned bottle.”
Startled, both Grace and I looked up and saw Sherry Butler through her upstairs window. She was wearing a slip, her dirty blond hair was a mass of springs, and she fought violently with some man over what looked like a whiskey bottle.
“Gimme it, bastard.”
“I won’t. You’ll only drink it all, you damned drunk.”
“Look who’s calling who a drunk.”
I stood in amazement. Though my parents had their troubles, there had never been a physically violent confrontation between them. Now I watched as the man raised his arm and brought it down on Sherry’s head.
Grace stopped, looked up at the window, and shouted:
“Don’t you hit her again!”
I felt my throat constrict.
“Gracie,” I said. “This isn’t our—”
“You hit her again and I’m calling the police,” my grandmother called.
The two struggling people in the window stopped and looked out, their bloated, drunken faces incredulous.
“Who’s ‘at?” Sherry said, peering down into the street as she pulled her straps up.
“Grace Ward,” my grandmother said.
The man, a big lug with a red slab of a face, now peered out as well. “You oughta mind your own business, lady,” he said. “You heard what I said,” my grandmother responded. “The two of you stop that behavior right now. Before someone is hurt.”
I felt an overwhelming sense of embarrassment, mixed inextricably with a flush of pride.
No one could have pulled this off but Grace.
“Go mind your business, lady,” the man said. “Nosy old bag.”
He laughed at my grandmother, but she stood stock still staring up at him.
“Are you all right, Sherry?” Grace said.
“Yeah, I’m okay, Mrs. Ward,” she said, and suddenly there was timidity and a sweet vulnerability in her voice. “We just got to drinking too much, ‘at’s all.”
“That’s no excuse for hurting each other,” my grandmother said. “You hear that?” Sherry said to the man in the window. “I didn’t hurt nobody,” the man said. “I just wanted a drink is all.”
“Try coffee,” Grace said, and turned smartly away, once again taking my arm as we headed up the street.
After that rather astonishing and upsetting beginning, I was relieved to get to the safety of the church. I liked seeing the families walking toward the church doors. They came from all directions, everyone dressed in their Sunday best, modest suits and sport coats. There was a security and kindness in knowing that we were all there together, that we thought as one. The only possible blemish on our common purpose was my feelings toward the Reverend Brooks himself. As we headed for the lovely old stone church on the corner, I tried to push all uncharitable thoughts from my mind. I told myself that I had misunderstood him, that I had judged him superficially, and I prayed that I might have the strength to be honest and see people for their better selves, like Grace did. As we waited for the light on the corner across the street, I suddenly realized that there was something different about today’s service. Just outside the open church doors, a small group of Negroes (as they called themselves then) stood, talking quietly. This was not news in and of itself. As the neighborhoods “changed” south of 33rd Street, Negroes had started coming to First Methodist. They usually congregated together just before the service on the little grassy knoll outside the church, talking and laughing with an apparent ease and good humor that I, in my ignorance, envied.
But this Sunday they weren’t laughing, and they weren’t talking to the whites. Indeed, they looked grim-faced, quietly determined … angry, and anxious. I should add that all of this registered in an almost subliminal way as we walked up the steps and my grandmother greeted her many old friends. As we got near the door, Grace’s great friend, Sue Retalliata, limped over to us, leaning on an old wooden cane.
“Oh, Grace,” she said, “You brought Bobby. Hi, sweetie.”
Sue reached over and hugged me hard, almost choking me with her cheap rose perfume and lilac-scented face powder. But I didn’t mind. I had always liked Sue.
“How are you, honey?” my grandmother said.
“Wonderful, Grace,” Sue said. “I’ve sold three more screen paintings this week. That’s nine houses in my neighborhood.”
“Nine? That’s wonderful,” my grandmother said. “You’re turning into a regular Grandma Moses.”
Sue blushed and shook her head. Like all good Methodists I knew she was anxious to keep her light under a bushel and that she felt embarrassed (and even guilty) by even a modicum of worldly success.
I was happy for her, and as we headed inside and found our pew, I was glad she was with me, because my grandmother was going to play the organ for the hymns. Sue patted me on the arm as we sat down together and picked up our Bibles from the back of the pew in front of us.
“I heard you’ve been staying with Gracie, Bobby. Is everything okay at home?”
“Sure,” I said. “Everything’s just fine.”
“Tm glad to hear that,” she said.
I could tell at once that she knew otherwise, which meant that Gracie and she had been talking about my parents’ difficulties. The revelation was not very shocking; of course, Gracie knew … and yet I found that I was shocked anyway. I didn’t like to think that people were discussing my family as “troubled” or “a problem family.” Such labels scared me; they were for other people, “the unfortunates who had broken homes” and whom people patronized in magazine articles. I wanted to believe, needed desperately to believe, that my family was capable of righting ourselves, working out our problems, that everything would be fine again.
Now, as I watched people file in for the church service, it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe we wouldn’t be fine at all. I wondered if my own parents were going to church together today, and I felt a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t there to help keep them together.
It was a quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before the service was to begin, when the seven Negroes came in. Traditionally, they sat in the last two pews of the church; it never occurred to anyone to question this. That was simply the way things were done. What was odd, I thought, was that they were coming in so early. Usually, they waited until the rest of the congregation was seated, then they quietly filed into their seats in the back pews. But today, to everyone’s astonishment, they didn’t sit down in the back pews at all. Instead, they came directly into the church and headed for the front, which was not yet filled. The seven of them, four men and three women, slid into the third row of the church and took their seats.
The moment was electric. The quiet, humble little church was quickly rife with whispers. But Sue Retalliata, sweet, slightly daffy soul that she was, had somehow missed the whole startling turn of events.
“What’s happening, honey?” she asked me. “Why’s everybody so loud all of a sudden?”
“Look,” I said, nodding my head toward the third row.
“At what … oh, my! My goodness!” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh at her sweet-natured surprise.
“What are they doing?” she said.
“I think it’s called ‘nonviolent protest,’ “ I heard myself say. “Or maybe you could just call it going to church.”
Sue said nothing to that. Her mouth had dropped open wide.
Just then, I saw two beefy-faced men, men I recognized as neighborhood guys who served as ushers, rush up the aisles toward the third row.
One of them was Edward Moon, a fat, ham-hocked man in his early forties with a blond marine haircut and wearing a shapeless brown suit. He was a churchman through and through, always the first to sign up for every committee.
He reached the third row and stood staring at the Negroes with his hands on his wide hips. In his shock, indignation, and arrogance he looked like a giant slab of beef. A steer in a suit. He stared, then shook his head in disbelief. For what seemed like an eternity, the seven Negroes kept their eyes front and center, totally ignoring him.
Finally, he was forced to speak, and as he did, the whole church was deathly still.
“ ‘Scuse me,” he said, his voice sounding like a gong. “What are youse people doing?”
Though there was a man sitting on the very end of the row, it was the young, attractive black woman sitting next to him who answered Mr. Moon. “We have come to praise Jesus Christ our Lord, same as yourself,” she said.
I was aware of the civil rights movement in those days but I never thought I’d see it firsthand. I saw it on television like everyone else, and lately my grandmother and I had started discussing it. However, up to that very moment I hadn’t known quite what I felt about it all. But when I heard those words with their quiet, dignified, but nonetheless rock-hard commitment and sincerity, I found myself breaking out into a wide and involuntary smile. I felt like cheering. I instantly knew, as only the young can know, that I was with these people, that I wanted them to sit there until Mr. Edward Moon’s eyes popped out of his moronic Waverly head. My family had always instinctively pulled for the underdog, against the bully, and here, it was abundantly clear to me, Mr. Moon was the force of stupidity and unbridled arrogance.
But my joy was short-lived. The church was again buzzing, and I heard a woman behind me say, “What is the world coming to? Niggers don’t even know their place no more, hon.” And the rejoinder from the sixtyish man sitting beside her was, “Commies put ‘em up to it. I totally blame Russia. The whole thing is Russia’s fault.”
I looked up near the pulpit, and I saw my grandmother standing next to the preacher, Dr. Brooks. I was intensely curious as to what he might do in this situation. But before he could act, Edward Moon decided to take matters into his own hands.
“You … you people do not sit here,” he said “You have seats provided for you in the back. Now I’m going to ask you nice one more time. Will you get out of those seats and go to the back where seats are provided?”
This time the black man on the end of the pew answered. He had a soft, mellow voice.
“These are the seats we have chosen. And we are staying in them for the rest of this service, sir.”
The “sir” was brilliant, I thought. An ever-so-polite punch in the gut
. Edward Moon’s face seemed to puff up like a blowfish. A blue vein throbbed furiously in his temple.
“Then I will be forced to remove you bodily from these here seats and from this church.”
“You do that, Mr. Moon,” the Negro said coolly, “and you will be sued in court. If you want to remove us, you will have to call the police and have them arrest us.”
“Good ideal” a man called from the back.
“Hell, yes, call the cops,” someone else yelled.
“This is awful,” Sue Retalliata said. “Just awful.”
I looked up at my grandmother and saw that she was talking to the Reverend Brooks. He listened intently, then nodded and walked up to the podium.
“Friends,” he said. “This is the house of God. There will be no violence here. And no police.”
But the noise didn’t cease. He spoke again, louder, with a tinge of desperation in his voice.
“Listen to me, friends. Please. Everyone sit down. That includes you, Mr. Moon. This can all be worked out among ourselves. No one call the police. Please be seated, and let this Sunday’s services begin.”
But Edward Moon did not sit down. He stared with unabashed hatred at the seven Negoes and especially the man on the end who had dared challenge him.
“This ain’t right,” he said. “It ain’t right, and it ain’t gonna happen. Not in my church, it ain’t.”
He stared at the Negroes for a while longer, as though he were trying to will them out of their seats. Then he turned toward Dr. Brooks and shouted, “I cannot believe that you would side with them over your own people!”
“We are all brothers and sisters here, sir,” Brooks said, his voice trembling.
It was a courageous and daring thing to say in the face of all the raw animosity staring up at him.
“Wrong,” Edward Moon said. “These people are no brothers or sisters of mine. I told you that we shoulda never let them in the door inna first place. Give ‘em an inch, they take a mile.”
Suddenly, my grandmother walked up to the podium.
