The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

by Philyaw, Deesha

  And then I feel the water on my feet and pull away.

  I run back to the blanket I brought from home. Sweet Sadie sits next to me and says, What’s wrong? And I tell her about the water. About how I run showers and baths that I never get into to make Granny think I’m bathing. I just do what Granny call a birdbath, at the sink. I get clean from head to toe like that. Just takes a lot of scrubbing and rinsing. And I tell her about the day my mama died and how I saw it all underwater. We were all under the water. My mama, my daddy, and me. We were in our house, in the bedroom, and I was in my crib. Underwater. Sweet Sadie says, How can you remember so much as a baby? I say, I don’t know how. I just do. And I saw what he did. And I tried to scream but the water filled my mouth and then everything went black. Granny lied to me. She said they were killed in a car accident. But one time when I was 8, I heard Auntie Vashti tell Granny that somebody slit his throat in prison and let him bleed out like the animal he was. Auntie sighed real sad and said he had seemed like such a nice boy. Granny said she knew from jump he wasn’t no good, but my mama didn’t know it because he had her nose wide open . . .

  I remember his face that day in our house. Tight and mean. We were underwater that day, but I remember it.

  Sweet Sadie rubs my arm and calls me Baby Girl. Baby Girl, she says, you weren’t underwater. Those were your tears.

  I looked up over the top of the magazine, and the daydream was over. Jamie was walking back to shore with Kachelle on his back. When they got back to me and the umbrella, Kachelle’s head still rested on his shoulder, like she never wanted to let go.

  On the ride home, Kachelle sat in the back seat with me. I was still mad that she had sat in the front seat on the ride to the beach. Jamie lit up another damn cigarette and I rolled the window down and let the wind hit my face. Then I heard Kachelle call my name real soft. WHAT? I asked her, real loud. She kept whispering. Telling me to remember what she told me when she woke me up, calling from Jamie’s house early in the morning. That if her mama asked, we took the bus to the beach at 8:00 in the morning.

  The truth was, she didn’t call me back to ask me to come to the beach with them until 1:00.

  I turned my back on her and pretended I was sleep.

  IT’S TIME to toss out that old throw rug in my living room. I been meaning to get rid of it. I got myself so worked up fussing with Jael about getting a job that I must’ve tripped over that rug. Yeah, that had to be it. I must’ve lost my balance. I was fussing, then I just felt myself falling, and the next thing you know, I was on my hands and knees. I must’ve tripped on that old rug. Or maybe it was that vertigo, I think they call it. My friend Alma gets it from time to time. That had to be it.

  I was there on the floor, and Jael just looked down at me. Didn’t offer to help me up or nothing! And I can’t even repeat what she said to me when I told her to start looking for a job.

  I crawled over to the settee and pulled myself up. And that girl just stood there and watched me struggle.

  And ever since then, she stay holed up in her room. She came out to get a plate of food a few times and to wash up, but that’s it.

  Yes, I lied to her about her mama and her daddy. But Lord knows I was just trying to protect her from the ugliness. He knows my heart.

  Maybe I could try and talk to her about that, now that she’s older. But she won’t come out of the room. She wouldn’t even come to the phone when that Kachelle called. Just kept calling and calling, till the girl finally came to the house. Jael wouldn’t even talk to her through the bedroom door. Kachelle came in here talking all sweet to me like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Granny D this, Granny D that. I started to tell her, “If I was ya granny, you wouldn’t be the hussy you are.” But I asked Jesus to bind my tongue and He answered.

  KACHELLE SWORE on Miss Debra’s Bible that all that time she was alone at Jamie’s house before we went to the beach, all she let him do was kiss her. I said, Yeah, kiss you WHERE? And she got all mad. I didn’t want to talk to her for a long time after that day at the beach. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was lying to me. And I’m sick and tired of people lying to me. But I guess me and Kachelle are friends again. I worry about her more than I’m mad at her. But when she does stuff to make me worry, that makes me mad! Being friends with someone who can’t look out for themselves is a lot of work and I’m tired. But Kachelle would just say, I can look out for myself! But she can’t. I know she can’t. She ain’t built for it.

  So I finally said yes when she asked me for the fifty-leventh time to spend the night at her house. She called Jamie a couple of times while I was there. They talked about him taking her shopping for school clothes next week. I asked her how she was going to explain new clothes to Miss Debra and she covered the phone receiver and shushed me. Then I asked her does she make Jamie brush his filthy cigarette mouth before they kiss, and she dragged the phone into the closet and shut the door. I guess I was just supposed to entertain myself while they gabbed away.

  We laid in Kachelle’s bed later, talking, but I didn’t say half the things I was thinking. She kept going on about Jamie this and Jamie that. And how boys her age just want to fuck her, and have the nerve to not even be cute. How Jamie was happy just to kiss her and spend time with her and spend money on her. And how he didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. I wondered how long that was going to last, not making her do things. How long before he turned into someone else and hurt her? But I kept all that to myself.

  Then she said, Why you being so quiet? You jealous? And I said, OF WHO? No answer. Then I asked her a question. I said, Do you think heaven is a real place? She said, Of course it is. Then I said, I think heaven is a lie. And she sat up in the bed and said, God is going to strike you down for talking like that, Jael! I just laughed and told her God is just a white man stupid niggas made up, like Santa Claus. Well, she didn’t like that one bit. She folded her arms across her chest and said, Well if there ain’t no God, then answer me this. Where do people go when they . . .

  She couldn’t even say the word “die,” with her scary ass. I just laughed and turned over in the bed. And then we were just quiet until we fell asleep.

  The next evening, I was walking back home and went past Jamie’s house again. He was in his front yard watering the grass with the hose. The sun had went down so it was kinda cool and he wasn’t sweating for once. He said, Hey, Pretty Girl. And I said hey back. He said, You always going somewhere in a hurry. Stop by and see me sometime.

  I said, Okay.

  THIS IS all my fault. I picked the child’s name from the Bible, at random, but I was the one that picked it. My mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, my sisters and my aunts and their children . . . we all had our names chose out the Bible. The oldest woman in the family would open the big family Bible and point her finger on the page. Whatever woman’s name was closest to her finger that was the name of the girl-child to be born. And we kept turning pages and pointing until we found a woman’s name. All we ever birth were girls. For seven generations, nothing but girls. If I believed in luck, and if our lives had turned out better than how they did, I’d say it was a lucky seven. Even still, I sometimes play a bunch of sevens in the lotto. Just every once in a while, no regular thing. Because maybe the sevens is a message from the Lord. Folks like to say, “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” But that ain’t Scripture. That’s a hymn. It’s Romans 11:33 that says, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

  Playing them sevens helped keep my lights on a time or two. Lord can’t be mad at that. Seven generations of us. Dorcas in 1871. Adah in 1890. Adah’s five daughters: Chloe, Mara, Shelomith, Salome, and in 1906, my mother, Matred. Damaris, me, 1922, and my younger sisters, Vashti, Euodia, and Cozbi. My daughter, Timna, in 1937. Jael’s mother, Keturah, in 1955. And a bunch of nieces, great-nieces, and cousins, I forget. I used-ta could na
me us all.

  I named her Jael. My finger landed right on top of the name. Usually I had to look around the page until I found a name for a girl, or start over on another page. But that time, I landed right on it. I was so excited by that, thinking it was a sign that this child would be blessed. That she would be different. I didn’t stop to read the story of Jael in the Bible, not till much later.

  Maybe if I had read it, I mighta chose a different name. But probably not. What I look like going against six generations of tradition? We never talked about the stories behind the names. The name picked was the name given.

  When Jael was first taking the bus to school, some of the kids would tease her, call her “Jailbird,” especially that Twan. He one of Verdine Russell’s ill-mannered grandsons. He’d follow her home from the bus stop, and I’d hear him out front there, calling her “Jailbird! Jailbird!” And the other kids would laugh and join in. And that Kachelle told them time and time again, “It’s JAH-ell.” They kept on. But Jael didn’t pay ’em no mind. At the time, I thought she was just doing a good job of ignoring them and leaving them to the Lord like I told her to. But now I know that their teasing just watered that bad seed planted in her.

  We would come together for the naming. My mother and her mother, when they were living; my sisters and me; our children and then their children and so on. We’d cook and eat. We’d ask Father God to bless the mother and the girl-child yet to be born. We’d laugh and tell stories. And someone, usually whatever man was around at the time, would always ask, “But what if it’s a boy?” And we’d just laugh some more.

  Even if we was arguing, fussing, and fighting with each other just the day before, the tradition brought us together. We honored tradition. What else were we going to cling to? We had five living generations when Jael was born because we had our babies young, at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Ain’t no shame or pride. Just the way it was. A family full of women, and we had the worst time with men. The good men died young, and the terrible ones stayed just long enough to make you wish they would die. God forgive me.

  Some years back, the news people came and did a story on our family reunion. It was on a national program. But now my mama, my aunts, my sisters, my daughter, Jael’s mother . . . all gone, ’cept my baby sister Vashti, some cousins, and the nieces and great-nieces. I guess the rest of them just naming their babies any old thing now because I don’t hear from ’em. Maybe even had some sons. Who knows?

  Jael was the last one I named. And she is my cross to bear.

  And I named the ones I didn’t give birth to, the ones I drank the tea and got rid of, Lord Jesus, forgive me. Anah. Shimeath. Ruth. Baara.

  CIGARETTE MOUTH didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would. Or maybe because I had something else on my mind, I didn’t care. In the end, it would be worth it. The cigarettes Jamie kept smoking made me want to gag, though. But I didn’t. I just smiled at him through the smoke.

  We had been on the couch kissing for a while. Then Jamie said it was starting to get dark and maybe I should leave before Granny got worried. Plus he had to get up at 3 in the morning for work. He worked at the Sunbeam bread factory. I told him that Granny wouldn’t be home from Bible study for at least another hour. And that we could do more than just kiss. He asked me if I had done more, with somebody else. I said no, which is the truth. Jamie asked me if I was going to tell Kachelle. I said I don’t tell her my business. He gave a tiny little smile like he really liked that answer but didn’t want to let on. And I told him that. He laughed and said, You don’t miss anything, do you?

  He started to push me back on the couch. I asked him if he had a rubber. He looked all disappointed and said, Yeah. He got up to go and I told him to brush his teeth while he was at it. He laughed and said, Girl, you a trip.

  By the time he finished brushing and came back with the rubber, I was standing in his front yard. It was dark out there and quiet. Jamie came outside and asked me, What’s the matter? He didn’t say it in a mad way. Kinda in a whisper. I told him nothing was the matter. I just changed my mind and I better get home. He nodded real slow and said okay and that I was welcome anytime.

  When I walked home, it was like all the thoughts in my head were competing to be first. I couldn’t hold on to one at a time. When I turned the corner onto my street, one thought finally won out: Sweet Sadie. I hadn’t seen her in a while ever since Granny started leaving for church without me. But I think about her a lot and I miss her.

  I SLEPT through it. I hadn’t been sleeping too well these last couple of weeks, but I took a pill as soon as I got home from Bible study, and it knocked me right out. But Barbara next door said she heard it, woke her out of a dead sleep, just a little after three this morning. She said it was a big boom! And she thought it was thunder and then rolled over and went back to sleep. But then she heard the sirens.

  Some kind of gas leak is what the police said, from a gas stove. It was on the news this morning. They said his name was Jamie McWhite, but they didn’t have no picture. My mother was friends with some McWhites long ago when I was a girl. Barbara said he was that light-skin one drive the white Cadillac around here. Said his mother—rest her soul—her last name was Porter and that was her house he was living in. Now I remember her from way back when, but I didn’t know her to have no kids. Barbara said Jamie’s daddy raised him, over on the east side. That’s why I didn’t know him. But Barbara know a woman what live down the street from him, and she told Barbara that every time she saw him, he had a cigarette in his mouth. And cigarettes and gas don’t mix. Good thing he lived at a dead end and the property next to his was vacant. Barbara say there was a little damage to the houses behind his, but “no other fatalities” is what the news said.

  Jael did something this morning she ain’t done in years. She climbed in my bed with me and went back to sleep.

  A little while later that Kachelle started calling on the phone for Jael, sounding sad. Just calling and calling all day. But Jael shook her head no when I tried to hand her the phone. Finally, about the tenth time that lil hussy called, I just told her, “God don’t like ugly,” and hung up the phone. She ain’t call no more after that.

  But I want to talk to Jael too. I still don’t know what to say to her. This child thought she was doing the right thing. And yes, he was a nasty, nasty man. But the Bible clearly say, “Thou shalt not kill” and “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” And what if the woman Barbara knows saw Jael leaving that house yesterday? What if she tells the police?

  Maybe Jael can tell the police how he was messing around with her and that Kachelle. People would understand what kind of person he was.

  But what if they don’t? What if they say Jael is a fast-tail girl who . . . ?

  Lord Jesus, give me the right words to say to this child and give her ears to hear!

  And watch over me, Father God.

  I’M GOING to set my alarm clock to get up Sunday morning and go to church with Granny. Wanna see Sister Sadie again. For real and not just in my dreams.

  Granny always say, Every shut eye ain’t sleep. And that’s how I am. I don’t tell everything I know. I keep some stuff to myself. Sometimes forever, sometimes till the time is right. I just let people think I don’t know what’s going on. And then, when they least expect it . . . I strike.

  But it doesn’t have to be that way. As long as people keep their mouths shut, leave me alone, and mind their business, it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

  Extolled above women be Jael,

  The wife of Heber the Kenite,

  Extolled above women in the tent.

  He asked for water, she gave him milk;

  She brought him cream in a lordly dish.

  She stretched forth her hand to the nail,

  Her right hand to the workman’s hammer,

  And she smote Sisera; she crushed his head,

  She crashed through and transfixed his temples.

  At her feet he curled himself, he fell, he lay
still;

  At her feet he curled himself, he fell;

  And where he curled himself, let it be, there he fell dead.

  —Song of Deborah, Judges 5:24–27

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR MARRIED CHRISTIAN HUSBANDS

  THE BASICS

  You, the infantilized husbands of accomplished godly women, are especially low-hanging fruit. Ripe for the picking with little effort on my part. Buttery soft laughter at your attempts at humor, or eye contact that lasts a beat too long but subtle enough that it leaves you wondering if maybe you just imagined it was a beat too long. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on your part that I leaned in closer each time you spoke, that I was really tuned in to and turned on by your monologues on fantasy football and barbecue. Or maybe you just want a woman to treat you like a man for a change, and not like one of her children.

  Despite your frustrations, you may not want to stray. Perhaps this is your first time. And you didn’t imagine it would be with someone like me—dark with short, kinky hair. Someone so different from your wife. But it was my eyes, my lips, my teeth, my smile, my intellect, my breasts, my easy laughter that got you. I understand you feel the need to offer some explanation for stepping out with someone like me, some reason for why I turn you on.

  Why do you turn me on? It’s that you want me when there are so many reasons you shouldn’t. That turns me on. Your hunger, your deprivation turn me on. I don’t care why your wife won’t fuck you properly; it’s satisfaction enough simply knowing she won’t. All the risk is yours, but I’ll wade out into it with you. I’ve always enjoyed playing in the deep end.