The Greatest of These, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
(The following excerpt was taken from "Chapter 6: A New Leaf".
Setting: December 1992, Detroit.)
(The following excerpt was taken from "Chapter 6: A New Leaf".
Setting: December 1992, Detroit.)
After Aynie and Unc died, Mr. McCarthy had moved LaAnkra into the house until Cherie and me decided what we wanted to do with it. We'd put off thinking about it until now. Cherie hadn’t been back to Detroit since the crash. I hadn’t been in almost five years. So here we were, the morning before her friend Jasmine got married, driving toward the house in the rented red Taurus.
It started snowing when we were about a block away. By the time we pulled up, you could hardly see the house. And it was cold! Shivering in leather coats, we ran up to the door. LaAnkra had moved to L.A. at the beginning of the month and we had gotten the keys from McCarthry.
I turned the key in the lock.
Cherie was the first one in. She turned on the lights in the living room.
Everything was like I had remembered it from five years ago. It was so strange that I had to check my eyes. Then I had to check them again... the cold had made them water.
She peeked in the kitchen. Ran upstairs, and I heard doors open, close, slam. Then she flew back down and sat down on the couch, laughing like she was crazy. It was one of those `I'm trying to play it off' laughs, like when you trip on the sidewalk and embarrass the hell out of yourself.
"Aynie'll be home," she laughed. "She probably just stepped out for a minute."
She jumped back up. I followed her upstairs. Our rooms were empty, because McCarthy had packed and shipped most of our stuff to us. Aynie and Unc's room was still intact.
I opened the closet. All of Unc's suits were there. I pulled one out, and held it up to me. It was still too big. They would always be too big for me. I closed the closet.
Cherie was going through Aynie's jewelry box. "She took all of the nice pieces with her. I'm glad I got her to give me the cross before I left home." She pulled her rope chain from under her shirt and showed me the mitzpah half and cross. The delicate gold cross had belonged to her namesake, her maternal grandmother. The mitzpah was a medallion that had "The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another -- Genesis 31:49" stamped on it, and was broken in half. It had belonged to her mother Vivien and Vivien’s best friend Jacky. She and Nikki had inherited it. "There's a few nice costume pieces... here's the master window key."
"I still got the window key you gave me when I was sixteen," I told her.
She looked up with surprise. "You don't!"
"Yeah, I do. You ain't the only one who can keep memories around your neck." I pulled out my ball chain. The old key and a copy of my dog tags hung from it. "I don't know why I kept up with it. Usually I don’t wear it, but when we came up here, I got all nostalgic."
"How cute," she laughed. A real one this time.
We spent the whole day in the house, looking to see where things were and remembering the way things were when we were kids. I didn't think there was anything else left, but...
"I want my mama's chest," she said. "I think Unc put it in the attic when I went away to school."
I didn't even think the house had an attic, or if it did, that anything was up there. Apparently I stood corrected.
The stairs to the attic were in the hallway, right above the bathroom doorway. All that time, and I had never noticed the handle. I don't even think there used to be a handle.
"Come to think of it, there was when I first came to live with them," Cherie said. "But no, by the time you came it was gone. I never really thought about it until now. I never knew what was up there."
I could reach the handle easily. Pulling it down revealed a metal staircase.
"You go first," she said.
I went up. Prepared to sneeze or cough at the first hint of dust or mildew, it was almost disappointing to see how clean it was up there. There was Cherie’s old daybed that Quiana used to sleep on... how did they get that up there? A TV. Mack’s bassinet. A radio, a refrigerator, a phone. They were clean, but old-fashioned.
The whole room was surprisingly empty. Besides what I mentioned before, all that was up there was Cherie's mother's trunk on top of two boxes. She lifted it up and handed it to me.
I was almost at the hole in the floor leading downstairs. "Before we sell it, I say we have an estate sale. See how much we can get for all this, you know what I'm saying..."
"Peach..." she said quietly.
I turned around. She was sitting on the daybed, her back to where I was standing.
"Don’t sell the house right away, please? McCarthy and his wife will keep it up if we ask them to. Ethan and Jasmine are thinking about renting a house… I just don’t want people who didn’t even know how special they were living here. "
I walked back over to where she was. She was crying again. I felt all bad, because I knew what she was going through. I felt the same way when I realized Daddy and all my brother and sisters except Desi were gone.
Picking up her hand, I caressed her palm with the ball of my thumb. That seemed to calm her down. Then I held her and waited until the tears stopped. Deja vu… that night at Shelley. Only this time, Priscilla was seven hundred miles away.
"I thank God for you," she said softly. "Every day."
Thankfully, I remembered who she was. "Glad to be of service."
I pulled her up to stand. We went down the attic stairs and closed them. I put the door handle in the chest, which we carried to the car.
That afternoon, we stopped by the florist and brought a dozen yellow roses. For the first time since the crash, Cherie visited the memorial outside the restaurant to pay her respects. I can’t tell you how proud of her I was.
Then we went inside the Jeremie Rose and split an order of fried plantains, marveling at the improvements that had been made. The whole place had an authentic island feel. The walls were paneled in finished wood. There was a top inside deck from which most of the restaurant could be seen, which was used for entertainment. In addition, there were two banquet rooms, regular dining facilities, and a bar. Real palm and coconut trees soared up to the ceiling, two in-wall aquariums and a waterfall pumped gallons upon gallons of water, and various knickknacks and placards decorated the walls.
We laughed and talked about the summers Aynie and Unc forced us to work there. We saw a couple of local folks we knew from our childhood, and caught up with them. We ended up skipping dinner after the wedding rehearsal to hear a reggae group play and eat there.
"Cherie," I said as we walked back to the car, "you don’t really want me to sell the restaurant, do you?"
The light in her eyes faded. "I don’t care."
"Yes you do. You love that place even more than I do…"
"Emotions and money have nothing to do with each other. Do what you got to do."
I sure would.
I wasn't going to let Mack go sleep over his little friend's house. Even if my crazy cousin did know his mother and he'd gone over there before, I felt like being difficult. But Priscilla wasn't going to be back until next month, and Quiana, who was still in town, had promised to drop by later. He had to go somewhere. So I gave him a bath, made sure he dressed and packed his toothbrush and medicine, and took him over there.
When I got back, my apartment was empty. Silent. I locked the door and sat down on the couch with my coat still on. Listening to nothing until the quiet screamed in my ears.
Trust in the Lord, she'd said. I don't even know why she left, and judging from my past experience with Him, I doubted if He would tell me.
I Am That I Am, our Father in Heaven... the Lord God Almighty. Our Savior, the resurrection and the life... Jesus Christ. The Comforter, the Counselor... Holy Spirit. God in three Persons, blessed Trinity. We've known each other a long time. He was there at dawn on the first of November, 1969. My family always told me that I was the first one of the kids that Daddy saw born. Mama, who usually spit out babies without sweating, had a hard labor. I was a little premature; it wasn't until later I found out babies in Aaron's family have a history of being too early or too late.
So, the first thing (they told me later) Dad said when they cleaned me up and he held me was, "Praise God! Little man, the Lord says, `Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.'"
"Give me my baby, fool," Mama replied, a half smile playing around her lips. "My precious isn't going to be a Holy Roller before he even cuts his teeth."
My earliest memories were of my father’s church in Morningside, Mississippi. Tabernacle Baptist was the biggest black church in town. I would lay on the little cot in Daddy's office as a toddler, hearing the choir practice the hymns for service: O precious fountain that saves from sin, I am so glad I have entered in! There Jesus saves me and keeps me clean -- glory to His name!
Then old Brother Stevens would lead the refrain: Glory to His name (precious name)! Glory to His name (precious name)! There to my heart was the blood applied -- glory to His name! And Dad would be writing letters or reading, nodding his huge head and tapping his fat fingers on the desk. Humming the tunes right along with them.
Going to church seems to be coming back into style nowadays. People like Cherie get all caught up in this neo-Christian mess. See, she talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit and all that. But she and all these other folks that are fascinated by it don't know nothing about the Holy Ghost. Or don't know like I do. I grew up seeing it every Sunday. By the time I was five, or maybe even before, I knew when he was getting to that part of his sermon. Me and the triplets would look at each other like, here it comes. Juniper, Cynthia, and Teresa would give us the same look from the choir stands.
It was hard on us, being the preacher's kids. No, it wasn't. My brothers were bad, my sisters were fast, and we all had big mouths. As for me, I learned how to fight by the time I got out of kindergarten. Just because I was "red", had light eyes and curly hair, and my nickname was Peach, the other boys assumed a few things about me. I spent many a lunch hour proving them dead wrong with my fists. Then, if the triplets heard that somebody had dared to fight their baby brother, that person would get a second whuppin'. Of course, Dad and Great-Aunt Millicent (I'll talk about her another time) found out and we got it when we got home.
Mama, as the first lady of the church and one of the duchesses of Morningside black society, never caught the Holy Ghost. She never beat us. She saw that we attended every church function, scrubbed and in our best, Afros picked out and misted with her Luster oil sheen. She also expected us to ask to be baptized. The Christmas I was seven, it was my turn.
Look over yonder, and what do I see?
God's a-gonna trouble the water...
Dressed in a itching white robe, I walked up the stairs toward the newly built baptismal pool where my father and Deacon Edwards stood waist deep in the water. When my bare toes stopped at the edge of the water, Deacon Edwards stepped forward to help me down into the pool.
The Holy Ghost a-coming down on me!
God's a-gonna trouble the water...
"Go on, Peach baby!" No, that wasn't my sophisticated mother. It was my grandmother Marie, who'd come down from Atlanta with all my other relatives to witness my entrance into the Kingdom. I was always her favorite grandchild, and when she died in 1989, she left me a meaty trust.
I barely heard what Dad was saying about Jesus' command to go into the world, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. My main thought was, my own daddy's about to drown me.
Wade in the water, wade in the water, children!
Wade in the water, God's a-gonna trouble the water...
He had asked me the question on which my salvation hinged. The quiet in the church made me think about that part in Revelation where it says that there was "silence in heaven for half an hour".
I opened my mouth. "Ye..."
All of a sudden, the overhead light sputtered, then plunged straight towards the pool!
Deacon Edwards jumped out, and my father grabbed me and jumped out. A split second before the fully charged hanging light fixture hit the water.
"Lord have mercy!" Grandmama hollered. "They are trying to kill my baby!"
"No, Mother Hamilton," Dad said, holding a shivering me against his stomach. "We're standing on holy ground, and while we all know old Satan come to church too..." there was whooping and carrying on from those saints that used any excuse to get started, "...he ain't about to get no satisfaction here in God's Tabernacle! Because we know..." the organist started on them chords, "...that he was defeated on Calvary, two thousand years ago... by the One, oh yes, by the One who sits on high and looks down low, by the Child whose birthday we're celebrating during this here Advent..."
Daddy was singsonging, and I heard his stomach growl. I just knew I was going to have to get back in that water when the trustees cut off the power momentarily, cut the cord, and lifted the light out the water. And I did. He plunged me under that water and I came up, coughing, my tight curls loosening into waves that fell across my eyes.
The church was on fire. The choir sang, Saved (I'm saved!) by His power divine, saved (I'm saved!) to new life sublime! Life now is sweet and my joy is complete, for I'm saved! Saved! Saved!
Mama and Grandmama had come to the back of the altar to dry me off and get me changed back into my suit.
"Peach!" Mama said, sweeping me off my feet and kissing my face over and over again. "My baby angel!"
"Well, precious, your grandmama's sure glad you're saved. I'm not long for this world, and the good Lord knows I want to see all my grandbabies again one day."
Back then, I really wasn’t all that bad. I was a normal boy, did things that normal boys did like fight and torture cats and play house with the cuter girls in my classes. But every night, I said my prayers. Every Sunday, I sang treble in the choir and one time even had a little solo. Once in a while, I would go off by myself and have a talk with God about whatever was most pressing on my childlike mind.
Then Cindy and Junie-boy died. I took it up with God the same day we buried them. I asked Him how he could let such a bad thing happen. I'd heard of people's parents and grandparents and aunts dying, but none of the kids I knew had a late brother and sister.
I waited for a sign as I played, as I stared out the window during school, as I threw stones into the scummy pool behind Bean's house. He never said a word.
The single worst day of my life was when all my other brothers and sisters were killed. I was not even ten, still close to God but not as trusting of Him. The fact that I had gone all the way from baby boy of the family to oldest didn't hit me until we went to church for the memorial. Mama had three-year old Desi in her arms and I, taller than her even then, followed her down the aisle. The church was crowded. We sat down in our pew. I slid all the way down to the end near the window. Mama waited until I moved back towards the aisle before she sat down with Desie in her lap.
It was all over between me and God after Daddy passed. The funeral was at Granddaddy Quincy's old church, New Philadelphia, where Dad's "frat" Phil Glispie was pastor. I sat in service fuming, and when Rev. Glispie came to Grandma's house for the funeral brunch, he pulled me aside.
"If you ever need to talk, son, call the church and we can go get some lunch."
I glared at him cruelly. "What I got to talk to you about, sir?"
"I know that everything that's been happening over the past few years has come as quite a shock to you... I promised your daddy that I would kinda look after you."
"Sir, my daddy is gone. All I got is my mama and sister, and I'm supposed to be looking after them. Excuse me." And I went on about my business.
God and I haven't been the same since. I mean, I do believe in God, because I ain't stupid and only stupid people can deal with evolution. I don't think that He created all this and left us alone, neither. No. I believe that God controls fate, and He knows who's going to go to heaven or hell and all that. He knew that I was going to go against everything I was taught and not care about what He or anybody else thought.
I took off my coat, heading toward the shower. Humming a song to myself that I hadn't heard in almost fifteen years.
"Hold on, just a little while longer... everything will be all right."
I had the first dream the night of Mama's party. I had forgotten my house keys, and had to drive all the way back out there. By the time I picked up Mack from Mrs. Redmond's, it was one and he was knocked out. She was really nice about me being late. Reminding myself to put a little extra in her pay envelope, I carried him upstairs and put him to bed.
No messages. I went to the kitchen and made myself a banana milkshake with some Irish Cream. Afterwards, there was nothing to do but jump in the shower, scrub myself off, and get to bed.
I woke up covered with sweat about five. Reaching out... it had been so real. When I realized I was alone, I laughed a little bit, then opened the blinds. Everything was still pitch black. I closed them, returned to bed, and tried to sleep. Couldn't. Oh, well. I turned on the TV and spent thirty minutes convincing myself there's nothing on before seven in the morning, even if you do have cable. Then I got up and checked on Mack. He was still sleep.
Hell. If I couldn't sleep, somebody else was going to suffer, too. So I called Angelo. What else was your best friend for?
"Man, what is it?" he wanted to know.
"Nothing. Just trying to see if you was up studying this time of morning."
"Actually, I am. I'm studying for a test I have to take Monday afternoon. You wouldn’t believe how hard this is."
"Since I’m not trying to kill myself in no med school, guess I won't have to find out. Your godson's talking about he want a Starter jacket for his birthday, so maybe I need to join you there. I swear, I love him, but that boy is costing me too much."
"And the best part is, Q, it's all downhill from here. At twelve, he's gonna want more gym shoes than Imelda Marcos had in her heyday. At sixteen, he's driving and’ll want a car. Then there's college. Man, I can't say I envy you. I'll just be the doting godfather, sprinkling gifts here and there while the mean daddy gets his pockets cleaned out."
"Angelo. Go straight to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars." I yawned. "What's up with you and that Stacia chick?"
"She's sweet, man. I think I'm gonna keep her. She's coming out of Emory Med same time as I'm leaving this dungeon. Who knows? We just might end up like the Huxtables."
"That's sick. Talking marriage and you ain't even sampled the goods yet."
"This is 1993. If you could see some of the stuff I see in the lab, you'd run every time a woman dropped her panties. I'm waiting until I take that long walk before I indulge again."
"What the hell? C.B., you human. You trying to tell me that you willing to go back to the hand after having had years and years of the ultimate experience? Naw, money. I can't allow that. I schooled you, man! You messing up my reputation."
Angelo put me on speakerphone. "Stacia's making me think about a lot of things. She goes to church a lot, you know, and she's really into it. Salt of The Earth Christian Center. I went once, and it's not b.s. like most of the churches I've been to. It's a lot of people there our age, and-- get this, man -- the sermons are hilarious! I'm thinking about seeing what it's all about. You should come with us day after tomorrow."
"Whatever, dawg," I hooted. "You handle yours. Me, I got enough to worry about without checking the Ten Commandments every time I want to have a little fun."
"Man, I know you're at least going to the recording concert on Easter at her church. That's all Stacia's been talking about. A girlfriend of hers goes to New Philadelphia, and she says their choir is the bomb! And you know your sister's all up in it..."
"Cherie is not my sister." I cleared my throat. "She forced two tickets down my throat, but I know exactly what to do for her. Q is staying in the bed on Easter and sleeping till noon. Man, tell me why the hell should I get up at nine o' clock on an otherwise perfectly good Sunday morning in order to hear the same screaming and hollering I spent the first twelve years of my life listening to?"
Angelo huffed. "Man, I got to get back to studying. Catch you later."
I hung up. It was only six. I got Mack up anyway. Sadistic, because it was Saturday. But not for him.
"Wow!" he said, running in my room barefoot after he washed up. "I didn't know Power Rangers comes on this early on Saturday!" he exclaimed, looking at the channel I'd left my television on.
I patted the empty space on my bed. "Here. You can come watch it with me."
He jumped on me. We wrestled for a few minutes, then I let him win.
"Ha! Gotcha!"
"Get off me, little boy," I said, pushing him to fall on the bed.
We watched Power Rangers and Bobby's World. Then Winnie the Pooh came on.
"Ugh! Turn it off, Daddy," he insisted.
"I used to like Pooh when I was your age, man. What's wrong with it?"
"It's a girl's cartoon," he insisted. "Cherie likes it just like she likes Mario and all that other girl stuff."
"What's wrong with girls? You think Cherie’s all that." This said bitterly.
"Cherie don't count. She's not a real girl."
I cracked up. "So she's a real boy?"
"No, she's a cool lady. They don't have any ladies in my kindergarten. I only like one girl. And I'm gonna marry her."
I almost fell off the bed. "And who is she?"
"This girl named Dacia Cunningham. She likes to play video games. My friend Steven likes her, too, but I beat him at kickball so she's mine. She chased me around during recess. But she tried to get all mushy and stuff, so I pushed her away. Why do girls always want to kiss and stuff?"
"I don't know," I grinned, remembering my elementary school days. "One day real soon everything's gonna change. You're gonna want to kiss them and they're not going to want you to. That's when you got to change their minds, make them want to kiss you back." I looked at the television screen.
"Have you kissed a lot of girls, Dad?" he asked.
"Why you so interested all of a sudden?"
"I don't know. Have you?"
Starting to light a cigarette, I remembered that I'm not supposed to smoke around my five year old. "Yeah."
"Why? It's all slobber and lips."
Damn, sometimes I couldn't believe this kid was only five. "Malcolm. Can we please change the subject? That is, if you don't mind."
"Okay, Daddy. I just wanna know can I ask one more question, please?"
"Go ahead."
"Cherie always told me it's bad to lie. Why did she lie to me about that time you and her were kissing?"
Out of the mouths of babes. "She was embarrassed, I guess. You weren't supposed to see that, man."
"Oh. So you kiss her all the time, huh? Is that why she not our roommate no more?"
"You said one question, kid."
"Do you like her more than Miss Clark?"
"Malcolm Bartholomew Rice, what I tell you?"
He plopped back onto the pillows. "Dawg. Sorry."
"Yeah, that sorry mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble that your little butt can’t get out of. Stay out of grown folks' business."
Mack had worked a nerve. Not even six years old yet… how did he catch... I had to stop him from playing all those video games and watching all that TV.
I hadn't forgotten the dream, either.
