We heard a car door slam and an engine fire up outside. Then we heard his tires screeching out of earshot.
I looked around the church, and everyone was stunned mute except for my grandmother, who stood again and lost herself in the oratory of senility: “We had only one mule to cover all that dry, rocky soil, but we prayed to God, and God touched the hearts of our neighbors who lent us their horses, their mules, their strength, but still it wasn’t enough. We had to pack up everything we owned in the world and move down to Miami …”
Pastor signaled for me to play a hymn, any hymn.
Rev’run and the Reverend Dr. McGowan, untangled at last, began chattering to each other:
“Was he with you?”
“I thought he came with you.”
“He didn’t come with me.”
The entire church was buzzing by the time I hammered the first chords of “Just as I Am.” When the church finally began singing, it was without enthusiasm. Then Pastor made a faint attempt at altar call.
“Jesus loves even you … so come up and get saved before it’s too late. Amen.”
When no one responded, Pastor announced that a meeting of the Brethren would immediately follow. Then he adjourned, forgetting to pass the collection plates.
While I had found service entertaining for a change, I did not stay for the Brethren’s meeting. On my way out, I shook hands with the Faithful, who were polite but abrupt. They were still jittery from the “miracle,” as they were now calling it.
I passed by mothers and children congregated on the cemented space around the flagpole. They marveled at God’s power and pondered the role of the white minister.
Sister Morrisohn stopped me. “You played real nice tonight, Brother Parker. How’s Sister Parker and little Benjamin?” She smiled knowingly. “We missed them in service tonight.”
“Sister Parker isn’t feeling too well tonight,” I lied. My wife Mary was a Baptist, and she had grown to despise the Faithful, calling us a bunch of “dry heads.” In our five years of marriage, she had attended maybe a handful of Sunday-morning services, a few weddings, a few funerals.
“Really?” said Sister Morrisohn. “What did you think of the beautiful witness of that white brother? Didn’t it touch you?” She rolled her eyes.
Aha, I thought, she found it interesting too.
“Yes, Sister, the Spirit was really moving in him.”
“Indeed.” Then she added in a way that only I would understand: “The Spirit hasn’t moved in me in a long time.”
“I’m certain it won’t move tonight,” I said in a way that only she would understand.
We separated ourselves from the crowd of women. We stood a safe distance from each other. We were just two members of the Faithful, the pianist and the president of the Missionary Society, making small talk after church.
“Service ended early, Brother Parker.” (There is an opportunity, she meant.)
“I’ve got to get up early for subbing tomorrow.” (I don’t feel like it, I fired back.)
“Liars too shall have their part in the lake of fire.” (It’s hard being alone, my love.)
“I need to look for some yards.” (Don’t make it any harder than what it already is, my love.)
“You need money?” (You need money?)
“I’ve got some things lined up. Some yards.” (I always need money. Who are you kidding? But don’t embarrass me by giving me any. I’m trying to save what little is left of my pride.)
“Don’t be afraid to tell me if you need.” (I love you, my darling. I would do anything for you.)
“I’m okay. Really I am.” (My life is sh—.)
“I just miss you is all.” She took my hand, a sister in the Lord shaking the hand of her brother in the Lord. “I guess I don’t always know my place.”
Sister Morrisohn walked away. I opened my hand to see what she had left in it: two fifties.
Now with ten yards and what I could get from Visa, I’d be but $300 in the hole. Things were looking up.
Of course, I had tarried too long on the church grounds, and now my godsons Elwyn Miron (eleven), Elwyn Jones (ten), and Buford Elwyn Gregory (nine) had surrounded my car, hailing, “Goddy Elwyn. Goddy Elwyn. Wait!”
I had missed Elwyn’s (Jones) birthday party (deliberately). I handed him, painfully, one of the fifties. He took it with a reach-in hug, and then he and the other two in their clean little suits and their shiny shoes skipped away, celebrating with squeals of innocent laughter and prepubescent ideas of what to do with the money. The last words I heard were “Nikes” and “Nintendo.”
When I got home, I had every intention of telling Mary and Benjamin about the white minister, but they were watching a sitcom on TV. Mary sat on the couch; four-and-a-half-year-old Benjamin sat Indian-style on the floor, his face about a foot from the screen.
I said, “What did I tell you about sitting so close to the screen? You’ll ruin your eyes.”
Mary said, “Move away from that screen, Benjamin.”
I said, “You wait until now to tell him to move away from the TV? You had all night.”
Mary said, “Sure I had all night. I always have all night. And all day. You’re never home. You don’t have a job, but you’re never home. And when you do come home, all you do is give orders.”
Mary’s skin was a dark olive, her head of curly hair jet-black. She was tall—two inches taller than me, about the height of K-Sarah—and thin with long, delicate hands and fingers. In that respect she reminded me of Peachie. Also like Peachie, she had thick eyebrows that ran together in the middle of her forehead. Mary’s brown eyes, though, seemed sensuous and at the same time too large to be set against her small nose and mouth.
Her left eye squinted almost shut whenever she became angry.
I said, “What do you mean I don’t have a job? I work hard. Who puts food on the table? Who pays the bills?”
“Your mom, your dad, your brother, your friends, your credit cards, and anyone else who is willing to give you a handout,” Mary said, squinting.
“That’s not true,” I said. (It was true.)
“Oh yes, you tell everyone you’re a college graduate. Top of your class, you brag. Oh yes, you preach the benefits of a liberal arts education, but where is your job?”
“I work hard.”
“A substitute teacher one day. A yard man the next. The big money rolls in at the end of the month when that dry-headed church pays you. All together you make about six hundred a month. Rent alone is five hundred!”
“I work hard.” (My life is sh—.)
Benjamin, a sensitive boy who got upset every time we fought, buried his face in his hands and began to cry in deep heaves until Mary scooped him up.
“You’re not fooling anyone, Elwyn. You’re a beggar. If I didn’t have a part-time job at Sears, we’d starve,” she said, carrying Benjamin into his bedroom.
When she walked back into the living room about ten minutes later, she too was crying. She dropped down into the couch beside me, rested her head on my shoulders, wrapped her thin, downy arms around my stomach, but I refused to even look at her. That she was sorry came as no surprise to me. We had been through this routine too many times. Why was she always sorry after she had shredded my confidence? Why didn’t she just learn to watch her mouth?
Mary said, “You try, Elwyn. You really try. We’re gonna make it.” She touched my cheek with tenderness. “If I had gotten my degree, I could help you more.”
I wondered how much better off we would be if Mary had, in fact, completed her undergraduate studies in anthropology.
“You should take off your shoes, honey. Here. I’ll take them to the room for you.”
Kneeling in front of me, she took off my shoes and socks, and kissed my feet playfully. When I did not respond, she swelled up to cry again, but for some reason she didn’t. She rose with my shoes and headed for the bedroom.
I wanted her to feel guilty. Go ahead feel guilty for opening your big mouth ag
ain.
She stopped at the bedroom door and turned. She was going to try one last time. “There’s a couple slices of pizza in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” she said pleasantly.
Again, I did not acknowledge.
She went into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I did not acknowledge that either.
I loosened my tie, took off my shirt and pants, folded them neatly, and then placed them on the coffee table. I stretched out on the couch. My legs dangled over the armrest. I fell asleep.
Around midnight, I awoke. An obnoxious salesman on a TV commercial was shouting: “I want to save, save—I mean save you money!”
There was something about his manner that reminded me of Rev’run.
I got up, turned off the TV, and went to bed. Mary fought me for my favorite pillow, which I found pressed between her legs. I thought she was awake, so I said, “Tonight a visiting minister grabbed the mike from Rev’run, spoke in tongues, and leapt off the pulpit.”
But Mary was snoring.
Or perhaps she was simply refusing to acknowledge.
The next morning, two schools called asking for me to sub. The elementary school was about fifteen minutes away, but I chose to sub across town at the high school, not because it was where I had graduated many years ago, but because it was located in a neighborhood that had many overgrown yards. I would carry the lawnmower in my trunk and visit some of the houses during lunch hour to set up yard work for later that day and the rest of the week.
Mary wanted to make love, but I was still angry about the night before.
“The Bible says, Let not the sun set upon your wrath.”
I snorted. Imagine that, a Baptist quoting Scripture with me. “I’m not angry anymore,” I told her. “I don’t want to be late for school, and I want to conserve my energy in case I get some yard work.”
She was in one of her giddy, chatty moods. “When we first got married, we used to do it every night and every morning, and sometimes you’d pick me up at work and we’d go do it in the car parked behind the dumpsters.”
“Did you iron my white shirt?”
She handed me the shirt, still gabbing: “And we’d do it and do it until our knees were shaky.”
“There are still wrinkles in this shirt.” I held it up. “I can’t wear this.” She touched the shirt with a finger. “Those are creases. Now we do it maybe once a month. This month is almost over and we haven’t done it yet.”
“This is the shirt with the missing buttons.”
“Are we going to do it or not?”
“Do what?”
“Divorce,” she said. For a second, she eyed me. Then she smiled as though she had been joking. “I mean sex. Are we going to do it at all this month? A woman has needs. Don’t you hear what I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Sexy?”
But she wasn’t fooling me. Joke or no joke, divorce was on her mind too.
I had never loved Mary. I was nearly certain she had never loved me. As long as we had been together, we hardly knew each other.
Why did we ever get married?
It was my senior year at the University of Florida, just before Christmas break in a piano cubicle in the student union. I was practicing “Clair de Lune.” She was passing by on her way to her dorm room, a large fries and a strawberry shake in either hand, when, she claimed, she heard the music and knocked on the door.
I opened it, of course, after peeping out and glimpsing the leggy, curvaceous thing standing there.
“The music was so lovely,” said she, the chatty freshman, who reminded me distantly of Peachie, “I just had to see who was playing it.”
“Only me,” I said, marveling at her pretty legs.
“Your playing is gorgeous. It’s wonderful. I used to take lessons as a kid, but I could never play like that. How do you learn to play like that?
It must take years of practice. You’re so talented. It’s the greatest music I have ever heard.”
I stood up. She sat down. She played “Chopsticks.”
When she finished, she lifted her hands from the keys and looked to me for appraisal. “That’s all I remember. I used to know a lot more songs than that, but I guess when you don’t practice it goes away. I used to go to piano lessons every Friday, but then when my father lost his business and we moved to Pompano—”
“Your playing is just lovely. I liked it very much. Let’s play it together.”
So I sat down and we played it together. Thigh against thigh.
“I’ve seen you around the labs. You’re a senior, a physics major.”
“Math,” I corrected.
“Oh, that’s right. You helped my friend Trudy pass calculus, remember? I was there with her a few times. That’s where I know you from. Do you remember me?”
She did look familiar. “You’re Jeff Edwards’s girlfriend. ROTC Jeff?”
“Yes,” she said. “I mean no. We broke up. He was too religious and all that.”
“I’m in his Bible study group.”
“I didn’t mean it in a negative way.”
“Yes you did.”
“Yes I did,” she admitted. “He was too pushy. Are you pushy?”
“Not anymore.” A few weeks earlier, during a trip home to Miami, I had spent almost all of my time with Sister Morrisohn and almost none of it with my parents. Selfishness. Who was I to judge people? “Salvation is for everyone and at the same time not for everyone, if you know what I mean. I’ll read the Bible to you, but then I let you do what you want to do. People have to be who they are.”
Her eyes were fixed on my face. “What do you want to do now?”
“Anything you want to do.” I reached for her strawberry shake, sipped it up through the straw. She took it back and sipped up the rest. I think we kissed for the first time after that, or maybe we kissed when we got back to her dorm. One thing led to another. There was more talk of music and math. More kissing. That first time I saw her naked, what turned me on the most was the way she neatly folded her little bra and her little pastel-colored underpants and placed them on the desk next to her books. It was such a cute and innocent thing to do just before having a penis shoved into you. It quite turned me on. Even these days, when I’m having a hard time getting aroused by her, I’ll look around the room to see where she has placed her neatly folded undies. She always does it, and it never fails to do the trick. To be honest, I remember liking her big, sensitive nipples very much too, though not so much anymore.
Other than Sister Morrisohn, Mary was the first woman I had ever slept with, so when she became pregnant, I didn’t encourage abortion. I proposed to her. My reasoning was that marrying Mary would help me end my years-old affair with Sister Morrisohn, which was almost as spiritually taxing as it was intoxicating.
I loved being with Sister Morrisohn, but it was an impossible love. The age thing. The grandfather thing. The Roscoe thing. There were just too many barriers to overcome.
I told myself that I wanted to give her a chance to find true happiness with someone else. Yet I knew, somewhere deep inside, that I would never find true happiness without her.
Poor Mary, I would never love her (the undie thing, yes). Mary was just a convenience.
But divorce scared me. I would never be able to live on the little money leftover after child support. And what if she needed alimony? And I wanted to see Benjamin grow up. I was stuck.
So on the morning after the white minister leapt from the pulpit, I approached Mary from behind, one finger brushing the inside of her thigh.
“Ah, yes,” said Mary as she became soft lips, clean skin.
“It truly has been awhile,” I said, with forced breathiness.
“I love you, Elwyn. I love you.”
“That’s good to know,” I said.
But as I sat naked on the bed watching her neatly fold and place her little panties, I didn’t believe a word of it.
“I’m a sub,” I said to the security guard, who was new and didn’t recognize me.
“Lift your arms.”
I lifted my arms and she passed a buzzing paddle under them, up and down my legs, in between them.
“Okay. You’re clean.”
Mr. Byrd, my old principal, saw me. “That’s Elwyn Parker. He’s a sub.”
The security guard nodded at him. “He’s clean.”
I shook Mr. Byrd’s hand as I always did when I subbed at Miami Gardens High, and he said the same thing he always said: “The bars, the armed guards, the metal detector, you’d think this was a prison. What year did you graduate, Parker?”
“1982.”
“In 1982, we sent two students to Harvard, six to Princeton and MIT, twenty to Stanford, forty to the University of Florida and Florida State, and nearly two hundred to Miami-Dade Junior College. Over 70 percent went on to some kind of higher learning that year.”
“I remember,” I said, though I wondered at Mr. Byrd’s astonishing memory. Would he recite the same figures if one day I told him I had graduated in, say, 1981?
Mr. Byrd pointed at two girls in cutoff shorts, halter tops, and gold sprinkles in their hair, which matched their gaudy gold necklaces and bangles. One girl was pregnant. They were both casually smoking cigarettes. “Put those cigarettes out!” he ordered in that deep growl that still struck fear in the hearts of wayward students. And me.
The girls eyed him menacingly before dropping their cigarettes and stomping them out with four-inch heels. They pouted rudely and disappeared around the corner, no doubt to smoke again, or worse.
Mr. Byrd took a deep breath and tapped the pipe in his breast pocket.
I waited for him to say But now.
“But now,” he said, “I’m lucky if 40 percent of the students even graduate. Luckier still if half of those who somehow graduate can read. Luckier still that one of them doesn’t blow me away for confiscating her cigarettes.”
“We can’t give up on them.”
“We can’t give up on them. That’s why I keep fighting. I’ve had offers to come to other schools. Plum, that’s my wife, she practically begs me every night to go to a different school where it’s safer, but this is where my heart is. I love this neighborhood. I love this school. You know I went here myself as a kid? Yes, we were the Red Devils back then,” Mr. Byrd said with a sly laugh. He put a hand on my back and patted me. “Maybe you could come out here and preach to them, I don’t know.”
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