FIRST ZION BAPTIST CHURCH
Est. 1863
4304 N. Yancouver Ave.
Portland, OR. 97212
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Chapter 15
One of those places you think can save you
if need be, from yourself.
—Grace
It’s more a drone than singing that fills the room when I walk in. It’s a warble and then not one. The deacon approaches the podium and I make my way past a white-gloved usher woman to a pew near the back. The deacon’s suit coat hangs knee-length. He reads announcements and when he’s done he calls up Pastor Hammond. The pastor, a freckle-faced man with black backcombed hair, rises from his seat and strolls up to the pulpit, where a massive Bible rest under a bent microphone. Amen, he says, offering a glimpse of a gold-capped front tooth. He nods at the choir and they stand and the choir director moves out in front with his hands at his sides and his head down. The director lifts his head and the choir hums the first notes of “Amazing Grace.”
Pastor Hammond—he was a guest speaker at my last church—asks the church to be seated. He clears his throat and sips from a goblet. Today, saints, he says, I want to speak to you about temptation. He unbuttons his jacket and grips the lectern and gazes out. The devil tempted Jesus to make stones into bread, he says. But Jesus refused. I said, the devil tempted Jesus to make stones into bread but Jesus refused. And when Jesus said no, the devil took him to the highest mountain and said he’d give him all the kingdoms and the glory if Jesus would get down on his knees. But Jesus, the pastor shouts, told that devil, I only worship one God. Jesus, amen, told that devil, I serve one God and one God only. And surely, the pastor says, and slaps the lectern, if Jesus could pass up all the world’s glory, then we can forsake the tiny temptations of our lives. He goes on and while he does the pews fill up and the members clap and here and there shout amen. The pastor stops and wipes sweat from his neck and face and waves his handkerchief and calls up his wife, the first lady. He fades to a seat pushed against the wall. The first lady takes the podium, looks out at the church, lays her Bible on the lectern. Today, saints, I’d like to speak to you about marriage, she says. The Bible tells us not to count another’s blessings. It warns us not to live beyond our means.
Not often, but sometimes talk of marriage makes me think of my ex, a man I met in NA—this should have been my first clue!—of the time I fell in starry-eyed love and married his non-working self at the courthouse months later. His name was Larry and he smoked and drank. The day after we exchanged vows, Larry earned a key chain that might as well have been the master key for every liquor store in the land. He jumped right back on the bottle, and before long, before I’d relapsed myself, he fell right back into puffing too. The man was an expert if ever there was one. He left on a hunt for his potion one October night and we didn’t see him until after New Years, the cold day he strolled in whistling as if the world had wound to a halt while he was gone.
The first lady preaches and the pastor, legs and arms crossed, beams from his seat. She finishes and the church applauds, big booming claps. The choir stands and sings “Soon and Very Soon.” The members sway in their dark blue robes with yellow stoles, the faces of praise. The women wear dark coats of makeup, the men sport beards edged just so. The pastor strolls up after the song and he thanks the choir and his beautiful wife for her kind and wise words.
Now, saints, he says, and saunters to the edge of the pulpit. I’d like to hear of the Lord’s good work.
The first to testify is a couple—the wife wears a diamond spec for a ring, the husband a crushed tie—who sit in my row. The husband thanks God for clothes, for a roof, for a decent car to get back and forth. God is good, he says. Praise Him.
A woman testifies next, tells the church how after her husband left, she stayed home a month straight trying to starve herself blind, says she would’ve whittled to dust if the pastor hadn’t came by and prayed her back to faith.
The next to witness is a man at the front of the church. He says that the Lord brought his daughter back after she’d been gone so long it gave him a stroke. He tears up, and there’s a certain part, a better part of me, that sympathizes.
The first time I was grown and joined a new church was after what happened to my cousin. She was younger by not many years and more of a sister. I introduced her to one of Kenny’s brothers and they dated against our family’s wishes. She went missing months later, and we all assumed she’d ran off with him, that Kenny’s brother had convinced her to prostitute. We didn’t believe otherwise until we found out the brother had been in jail. My cousin was gone from summer through fall. Then one night the news ran the story of a woman found in Overlook Park. The anchor said the woman had been stabbed dozens of times and left for so long her body had begun to decompose. The next morning the boys and I drove to Mama Liza’s. We hadn’t been there long when the police knocked, asking questions and I could feel right off why they had come.
The next Sunday I joined First AME Zion and gave my life to Christ, for my cousin, my sister, for what I’d done to my family, for what I must’ve known I’d do all too soon to myself.
The choir sings “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” The pastor dabs his face once more and waits for calm and glides again to the edge of the pulpit. Is there anyone here who needs prayer, he says, who wants to give their life to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
An elder woman in a gray wig, a boy in slacks that stop too high, a man in an oversize double-breasted suit, they amble to the front of the church and kneel before the pastor and the cross. Those who stayed back hum and sway. My neighbor nudges me and asks if I’d like to go and I shake my head. If I was a girl, Mama Liza would lead me to the front and stay by my side. But she’s gone. The organist fingers chords and it’s a language all its own. More of the brave drift down and submit.
John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life, the pastor says. Father, we ask that
You come into our house today. We ask that whatever is troubling the hearts of these men, these women, these children, your creations, Father, we ask that You come into their lives and heal it. Let us put our faith in You, Lord. Everything works together for the good of them that love You. The pastor strides from one side of the stage to the other and stops under a giant painting of Jesus. He drifts down the steps and lays a hand on those that have come forward to be born. He looks up and roves his eyes around. Then with his face shining and shining he starts up an aisle. It’s my aisle.
God, some of us have been before You once, but it wasn’t our time, he says. God, some of us have been before You twice and it wasn’t our time, he says. But dear God, this is our time. The pastor stops next to my pew. The organist fingers chords and the drummer taps his cymbals. Satan, the pastor says. You are no match for my God. You are a coward. I said, Satan, you are no match for my God. You are a coward. We rebuke you in the name of the Lord. The pastor stomps and shakes his fist and snaps his head back. We rebuke you, Satan, in the name of the Lord.
The pastor gazes along my pew. He reaches out. Reaches out to whom?
This time I want to turn away. This time I can’t.
He wades into my row and they part. Come, come, my saint, he says.
Chapter 16
Good sense says I’ve hurt her too much to keep her.
—Champ
Here’s the story that changed my mind about this love shit. Not by itself, but still. This happened back in high school, so it goes: me and the homies went to see the new black flick (you know how they do us. We had to roll to the outskirts to catch it; not that that matters, but it matters), and while I was in the lobby buying a Slushie and some ransom-priced popcorn, this super lame guy I’d seen in traffic bopped up. He asked me if my girl was my girl and grinned. I told him yeah and asked him, what about it? Bro, I ain’t no snitch, he said, but she’s in there with another dude.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if my girl wasn’t distinguished, if she hadn’t been the only girl in the history of my postpubescent fuck spree—which began in earnest in eighth grade and was full tilt by that point, who had ever inspired me to pass on a shot of ancillary pussy. We (the we being me and my homeboys, whose fatmouthing made a worse situation worser) found her in the theater sitting with this supernaturally pale half-a-nigger who hooped (I told y’all we all hooped) for a private high school in the burbs. So how did a fledgling Don Giovanni handle such trials? I tapped old girl on the shoulder and beamed high-watt and sat behind her and the half-a-nigger the whole flick, making a symphony of sucking down my Slushie and smacking my popcorn with true ambition. The credits rolled and I let them empty into the aisle and followed, trading big-ass guffaws with my boys. For the rest of the day and thereafter, I played like wasn’t shit wrong, that I was cool as the temperature (it was like they double-dutied the joint for storing cadavers) in that theater that day, though the truth was I was an emblem for grief.
Wouldn’t you know, when I got home, Grace was nowhere to be found. MIA until days later, when she slumped in too looped to lend advice of any kind of efficacy. When she finally got right, I told her what happened, expecting the kind of coddling my young self was too old for even then. That’s what I wanted, but this is what I got instead: Son, if you’re going to risk your love, save all the space you can for hurt.
Beth answers barefoot in a silk robe with music playing in the background, a surprise since I called her crib not an hour ago and she didn’t pick up. She lets me in, heads for the fridge, pours a glass of wine. She sways into her room and through her robe, through the silk-something under it, you can see her ass cheeks jump—picture two koala bears wrestling—just like I lust.
Damn, I say.
Damn, what? she says.
The kitchen’s light is lush. I weigh the dope, mix it with soda, and set a pot to boil. Then it’s back and forth from the kitchen to the peephole, my hands no good for anything steady, the sound of my pulse not the sound of a pulse. This happens every time I chef. It happens and I mind it or else. Beth ask me to top off her glass and I pass again by the peephole. This is intervention, no less, which is a priority when you’ve had dreams like mines, sleep wrecked for weeks with visions I can’t even speak on.
I take the pot off the stove and let the work lock.
I dump the water and let the work sit on a paper towel to airdry.
But this is as far as it goes with the play-by-play. This ain’t no how-to guide.
I lie across Beth’s bed. She asks me about school, and I tell her about an essay on happiness that I had to read for class. What would you rather have, a trick knee or a broken leg? I say.
I beg your pardon? she says
Of the two, I say. Which would you rather?
The leg, she says. It’ll heal.
Beth, her big brown nipples pressing through the silk, sits against the headboard with her knees bent and parted, no panties. An invite. And how could I pass on an invite like this? With Kim’s face a foosball knocking around my skull, I strip down to my boxer briefs and tell her she ain’t cool for seducing me.
So this is what you call seduction? she says.
Peoples, pause please before you blister me too tough. Me and Beth, we ain’t all the way reckless. We’ve got rules: no open-mouth kissing, no proclamations of love, a limit on postcoital pillow talk. Before that, though, I make a rhythm that lasts a few songs and part of another. She rests her thigh, warm and twitchy, across my stomach when we finish, while we lay looking at the TV without watching it, a paranormal quiet between us. This goes on till I get up to clean off. Our postsession cool-off is pretty much standard but what happens in the bathroom borders on the semifantastic. What happens in the bathroom is this: it hits me that I couldn’t, for a jackpot, recall Beth’s last name. Oh boy, talk about all bad intimacies. I grab the sink with both hands and look into the mirror. See a face that’s the face of a sucker who could do this on a whim to a good chick. I rub my nuts and smell a finger. To smell another woman on your nuts when you love your girl (I know, I know, I know) is foul. To be stumped on the last name of the girl that’s all over your nuts when you love your girl is no less than lowdown dirty despicable. I mumble the alphabet, hoping a letter will help the name catch hold.
You want to know some funny shit? I say, back in the room, stepping into my boxer briefs. I can’t remember your last name for shit.
Are you serious? she says. Do you think admitting that fact’s a little foolish? she says.
Admitting that fact might be the least of my fool, I say.
It’s Ford, she says. And for the record, you’re the worst.
Beth’s an army girl, a corporal, which in a strange way makes our setup extra-special. I bend to lace my shoes, see a fitted cap under the bed. I should shrug it off, but what can I say, I’m an opportunist. I toss it on the bed and ask if it’s competition for the crown.
Beth smirks. She asks if I can give her the storage fee. It’s early I know but things a little tight this month, she says.
You need it? I say.
Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t, she says.
So check it, I hope you don’t be letting your less special houseguests snoop, I say. Can’t have nobody stumbling on my stash.
If I have a guest you can believe he’s occupied, she says. The last thing he’s worried about is playing a sleuth.
What’s the size of the thing it takes to kill it, whatever it is?
Beth says this and I can hear Half Man in my head (the old jabbering voice of dissent) warning me against hitting Beth raw, reminding my silly ass that she’s in the field in a major way.
If your dad’s a plumber, you learn pipe work, how to dredge a pipe; if he’s a writer, he gives you books, show you how to write a decent sentence; if Pops is a preacher, maybe he teaches you Sunday sermons. My dad (by dad I mean Big Ken, who isn’t my real dad, but stepped up when my biological pops was into sleight of hand) was, Ibullshityounot, on everything I love, rig
ht hand to God, a pimp. Some days he’d take me along while he checked his hos: white girls who lived in dank apartments, who wore robes well in the afternoons and who smelled of cigarette smoke. Sometimes he’d have other errands to run, and would leave me with them. They’d occupy me the best they could, and when he swooped in an hour or so later, he’d stuff fives and tens in my pockets and let me lap-drive to the next spot. He never talked about what he was, and when I got older he never held his hustle up as a model, but for the last long while I’ve wondered how much of what he was is what I am.
Beth gets up to take a shower. She leaves her door cracked, tells me that the sergeant pulled her aside and said she might get stationed in another state, that I might have to find another spot to stash my work. She says I’ve got a few months, maybe more, but she wants to give me a heads-up. I lay her cash on her blanket and stroll in the kitchen, where I prep a few oz’s and scrub the pot and utensils clean. Forget the cliché: in this life cleanliness is next to freedom! I leave with a swollen plastic sack stuffed in my sleeve and my eyes stabbing every which way.
Here’s the mantra of me and my homeboys: Don’t let daylight catch you! When you live with your girl you can explain away loads of suspect business, but strolling in at the crack of dawn ain’t one of them. The homies, some of them would rather catch a misdemeanor (a couple of them actually have) and spend a night in a holding tank than face their girl after she’s spent a whole night seething. Now it ain’t a hard fast rule break when I creep through my front door, but it’s that hour when the sun ain’t far off from being an orange badge behind the clouds. I hope Kim’s asleep, but hope, what’s that? She’s on the couch with the blinds open and the lights off. What you doing up? I say. Kim keeps her back to me. Long strands fall over her shoulders. Long legs sprawled in shadows sectioned by blinds. She don’t say a word; matterfact, she don’t shrug or jerk or nothing. She’s got it bad, that not-answering shit, but all I can do at this hour is sigh. What you doing up?
The Residue Years Page 10
