Tambourines to Glory (7 page)

T
he first convert in the new church was a man, a
real sinner
, too, not just a backslider returning to the fold. He was an old sinner who had been sinning for a long, long time. His name was Crow-For-Day—Chicken Crow-For-Day. He stood against the Garden of Eden and declared his determination.

It was a warm October evening and the front windows with the dusky lambs painted on them were open, so people in the street could hear him as he cried his new-found strength; and voices even outside the windows said “Amen!”

It was their first Sunday night in the new church. Laura was proud, Essie was happy, and their joy and happiness radiated to all the people. It was the first service they had ever held with a piano, too, and the young man who played had a rhythm and a roll
that sent waves of jubilant sound rippling up and down the aisles between the folding chairs and bouncing off the walls and ceiling. Somebody said that Eve in the picture, at a certain point, even started to open her mouth and sing, and the snake gave a couple of wiggles. And at one place in the Sunday services, maybe because she was thinking about her daughter in the South, Essie was moved to stand and sing all alone “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and people started to cry, and Chicken Crow-For-Day jumped up and said, “I’m motherless and fatherless, too, but right now this minute I know I have found Jesus.”

He shouted until Essie finished singing, then the old man took the rostrum and began to testify.

“Right now this minute I have come to God!” He was six feet tall, acknowledged sixty years old, thin as a shadow, and he said, “Right now I have found God! After all my years of sin, tonight the light!”

So many people in the church shouted simultaneously that you could hardly hear Crow-For-Day. But he went on, “Dyed-in-the-wool, dyed-in-the-wool, a dyed-in-the-wool sinner, dyed-in-the-wool with a dye so deep and a stain so dark that only the lamb of God could wash me clean. I seen these lambs in these windows and I said I’m going in. And I come—and look at me now, white, whiter than snow, washed white!” And nobody laughed that he was not white at all, because everybody was listening beyond his words and looking through him to the hope that they, too, might find some sort of joy akin to his, some kind of sin cleanser, though it be but for a moment, like this ancient reprobate had found—for you could look into his face and tell he had been until this moment a hound.

“Sniffing after women, tailing after sin, gambling on green tables,
Saratoga, Trenton, High Point, North Carolina, let ’em roll! Santa Anita, Hialeah, Belmont, Miami, never read nothing but the racing forms. Harlem, nothing but the numbers columns in the
Daily News
. And for relaxations, crime in the comic books. Oh, but tonight Sister Essie has done snatched me off the ship of iniquity on which I rid down the river of sin through the most awfullest of storms, through gales of evil and hurricanes of passions, purple as devil’s ink, green as gall. Yes, I tell you I shot dices. Now I’ve stopped. I lived off of women. Uh-uh! No more! I’ll make my own living now. I carried a pistol, called it Dog—because when it shot, it barked just like a dog. I won’t carry no pistol no more. Looky here! Everybody, looky here!”

Four women fainted and twenty screamed as Crow-For-Day pulled a pistol from his pocket, walked down the aisle with it above his head, and threw it out the open window into the street. Pistol out the window, gone.

“I carried a knife. Knives got me in trouble. Here goes old knife, too.” And out the window went the knife, gone. As heavy as Essie was, she leaped into the air three times on the rostrum and said, “Thank God!”

“I hope, Essie, you’ll throw your old switchblade away, too,” said Laura on the platform but Essie did not hear her at all, or if she heard, she did not reply.

By then Crow-For-Day had come back up the aisle to the front of the church and turned to reveal still more of his sinful past to the congregation. “I drank likker,” he shouted.

“Me, too,” said Sister Birdie Lee.

“It made me fool-headed,” cried Crow-For-Day. “Thank God I stopped last year so I don’t have to stop drinking now.”

“We stopped, stopped, stopped,” said Birdie Lee.

“Let the man talk, Birdie,” said Laura. “Let the new soul talk.”

“I witnessed the chain gang,” cried Chicken, “the jail, the bread line, the charity house—but look at me tonight. Look at me now!”

“Look, look, look,” cried Birdie Lee.

“Bless God, I’ve lived to see the rooster crow for day, the sun of grace to rise, the rivers of life to flow—and I have found my determination. Help me! Help me! Brothers and sisters, help me.”

Whereupon, Laura came forward with a singing cry, took the convert’s hand, and appealed to the congregation on Crow-For-Day’s behalf:

The building began to rock to the song. Shaking hands and dancing feet laced the rhythm into a net of ecstasy while the piano bassed its chords of confirmation.

LIKKER AND LOOT

“I
got two thousand dollars in that spice jar in the cupboard,” said Essie, “so I think we better take it to the bank.”

“I think so, too,” said Laura, “to the colored bank.”

“To the Carver,” said Essie.

“Yes, because that’s too much loot to keep in the house any more. Who’d’ve ever thought this time last year, you and me would be banking money?”

“You have shook your tambourine to blessings,” said Essie.

“I’m gonna shake it to a mink coat by Christmas,” declared Laura, inspecting an unopened bottle of Scotch.

“I’m gonna shake mine to glory,” said Essie.

“You are doing right well shaking since you bought your own
self a tambourine, too. But I’m still the champion shaker—and collection taker.”

“You do all right, Laura, and you deserves to buy a nice Christmas present for yourself. I wonder will I have my daughter with me by then?”

“You said you wanted to wait till we got an apartment, didn’t you? A nice place to bring her to, not this old rundown joint. Essie, suppose we take this two thousand dollars and move, instead of putting it in the bank?”

“No, Laura. The church needs a nest egg. This is it. We put this away. Then maybe we start doing a little something for ourselves.”

“O. K., as you say. I’m happy—I got my man to keep me warm.”

“Looks like you could choose a new man out of the church.”

“This one is just temporary, honey.”

“Must be, ‘cause I ain’t even met him.”

“He comes in early and goes out late,” said Laura. “Lemme get on down the hall and see is he there yet.”

“You gave him a key?”

“Sure—which is why I told you to keep our money in
your
room. You know I’m generous with my keys. Why, that key-man around the corner has made me so many keys to my door he must know its shape by heart.”

“Ain’t you scared someone of them mens will open your door some night and catch you with somebody else?”

“Don’t worry, Essie, I got a night latch inside, also a bolt. Besides, when I put a man down, they usually don’t fool around no more, key or no key, especially now—since they think I can put
the curse of God on their sinful souls, me being a lady minister. Negroes don’t play around with the church much. They take it serious.”

“I wish you’d take it serious yourself,” said Essie.

“As if I don’t,” exclaimed Laura. “But you won’t catch me lending no money to nobody in the church, like you did Sister Birdie Lee last week. Facts is, I don’t think you ought to start it.”

“Birdie Lee paid me back.”

“You’re lucky. I expect she borrowed it to buy herself a tambourine.”

“No, she didn’t. She borrowed it to get a tooth pulled.”

“Birdie’s trying to tambourine herself up on the rostrum with us,” said Laura, “setting in the front row playing like mad.”

“She sure can shake it,” confirmed Essie. “She tells me she can play drums, too. When we get our orchestra we planning, let’s give her a chance.”

“Essie, do you want to help every stray we pick up—and put them in the forefront, too? Let Birdie Lee set down there in the congregation where she belongs. Dried up and ugly as Birdie is, nobody wants to look at her.”

“No, but her music’s a different thing. Nobody wants to look at me neither, much, fat as I am, but they like to hear me sing. You are the rose of this church.”

“Thank God for making me a high-breasted woman,” said Laura. “But what you’re probably thinking, though, is—I can tell by looking at you—that
you
are the saint and I am the devil. Well, fool, go ahead on and work and pray and worry yourself down with their problems if you want to. Lend out your money. Kill yourself over that church. Not me.”

“Laura, the needs is so big up here in Harlem, and the ways of helping so little, I figure we have to work hard,” said Essie.

“How come, after all these years I’ve knowed you, just
this
year you find so much energy all of a sudden?”

“From God,” said Essie.

“With
me
propelling,” said Laura.

“You God’s handmaiden—even if you do not always act like a holy maiden do.”

“How does a holy maiden act?” asked Laura.

“They be’s not bold with their sinning,” said Essie.

“It’s easier for me to be a saint than to be a hypocrite. And neither my light nor my headlights will I hide under a bushel. The Lord gimme these breasts and if they look like headlights on a Packard car, it is not my fault. ‘Let your light so shine,’ is my belief.”

“You would have led that little young artist-boy what painted our church windows to sin if you could.”

“I don’t believe that boy was leadable, Essie. He were of the type you call ‘refined.’ But he sure painted a de-lightful Garden of Eden. Even that serpent looks like he can be persuaded! Oh, well, lemme see if this English White Horse tastes as good as that Johnny Walker I had last night. I’m trying all the different brands of Scotch to see which one I’m gonna settle on for life. I can see my picture in a magazine now—when I get to be as famous at soul-saving as was Aimee Semple McPherson—
Sister Laura Reed endorses Vat 69 as ideal for colds and fevers, nothing else
. I will get five thousand dollars for that endorsement.”

“Your mind sure runs to likker and to loot,” said Essie. “But one of these days the Spirit is going to strike you dry, strike greed from your heart, lust from your body, and—”

“Make me as stupid as you are,” Laura cut her off, “without a idea in your head until I put this one there—that’s brought us a good living. Now you want to cramp my style.”

Essie could tell Laura was angry. Suddenly the tone of voice hurt, her eyes cut, and Essie suffered. She sat down in her chair and said no more. When Laura left with her Scotch, Essie went into a pause.

ENTER BUDDY

H
e just walked down the aisle out of nowhere, confronted Laura, and spoke. “I saw you on the curb before you moved off the street into this church, and you certainly looked good to me.”

“I did not observe you in the services tonight, did I?” asked Laura. She went toward the switch to turn out the altar lights.

“No, I just wandered in after things was over. I saw the people going out. I wondered where you had disappeared to off of Lenox Avenue. Cold weather, naturally you had to go somewhere. I traced you here.”

“The Reed Sisters is flattered.”

“No
sisters
to it. It’s you I’m talking to. Maybe I could ride you somewhere, now that your night’s work is done.”

“You got a car?”

“I can call a taxi.”

“I usually go for a little drink after services,” smiled Laura.

“You’re a woman after my own heart,” grinned the young man. “I’m Buddy—Big-Eyed Buddy.”