*Introduction*
Reverend Bowen normally ended his sermons the same way. He would finish reading from the podium, conspicuously close his Bible and walk toward the organ, lay his hand on top of it and say:
"And one of these old mornings, you gonna look for me...I'll be gone on home... Everyday will be Sunday...Sabbath won't have no end..."
Every time he would utter those last words, my mind would drift out the door and across the street to the park, right outside of the church. In the summers, as I sat there in my dress and cotton tights, stuffy, uncomfortable, bored, I could hear the basketball beating against the blacktop; the chain from the swing sets swirling around the metal bar, kids laughing and yelling, having fun. Here I was stuck in this hot, stuffy, old folks church. It was a reminder of what we should be doing on Sunday; playing.
Soon, when I would drift back into the sermon, a deep question would clang in my gut: "Who wants to go to heaven if every day is like Sunday and won't have an end?" I worried, as I sat every Sunday hearing about salvation, that the point of church and God was to get to heaven. Well, what do you do when heaven is not where you want to end up? But no one wants to end up in hell either. My mind was often circling around this dilemma on Sunday's. I don't recall ever expressing it back then. But now, as I talk to people completely without faith, without a church upbringing, I often think about those days.
I got baptized at the age of eight or nine. The decision was a group decision among myself, my little sister Misty and Sonya, my best friend at the time. It must have been Easter, or Revival or the pastor's anniversary, one of those events where you had to be in church all day. I remember us girls were wearing all white. We also had those cut flowers pinned to the breast of our dresses.
It had to have been a guest preacher because whatever was preached that day, it had all three of us scared. Reverend Bowen moved the old folks, but not us. This preacher had us thinking about heaven and hell and somehow he made hell sound way worse than an unending Sunday. At that point, we were ready to be in church, uncomfortable, stuffy for eternity if that's what it took to avoid hell.
We were standing just outside of the basement, which was the banquet hall for our church. Trust me, it had all the signs and symptoms of a basement too, including the musty old paint smell. The same women, or as we called them, the Beulahettes, cooked every meal. My mom would bring Marzetti or Fried chicken or Mac and Cheese or Mashed Potatoes; normally, the best dish in there, that's fact. The stuffing always had the texture of Jello and was never warm by the time we ate it.
The mashed potatoes, when my mom didn't bring them, were always out of the box instant potatoes. My Aunt Nanny always burned the top of the mac and cheese, and the noodles were like soup they were so soft and overcooked. I loved Aunt Nanny's mac and cheese. All the kids got to eat first, then the oldest folks, then every one else.
We were finished eating and had managed to break away from the table of old folks asking us questions and talking about us to our parents, in front of us. Standing outside the basement door wasn't much better. Outside you could see all the fun you could be having instead of being in church. All your heathen friends who didn't have to go to church on Sunday beckoning you to cross the street and come play. You know you can't because as soon as you cross that street one of the "Beulahettes" was going to yell across the street "Yaw better get over here! Playing in those church clothes, I'm'll tell your mom!" Who needs the embarrassment?
Every now and then, one of the boys would defy the calls and keep going. They looked more ridiculous in their white shirts and ties, black slick shoes and slacks playing basketball. No, we were obedient enough that we didn't try that. We just stood close enough to look at the boys on the basketball court.
As we stood near the bottom of the church steps, I believe Sonya was the first to bring up the sermon, and I don't remember the exact conversation, but I remember talking about hell and how we didn't want to go to hell. Soon, we had come to an agreement that next Sunday, we were going to go up to be baptized. We sealed the deal by becoming blood sisters.
My dad often told us about how he and his best friend, Butchie Potts, became blood brothers. They pricked their fingers with a needle and put their fingers together and that made them blood brothers. So we three became blood sisters on a pact that we were going to go and be baptized the next Sunday.
We didn't tell anyone that's what we intended to do. That next Sunday as the call to be baptized drew near, nerves began to bubble up in my stomach. The old folks would always try to encourage us to "stand up and testify" during devotion. We were too embarrassed to do that, and going up to be baptized was something only the big kids and older folks did. We knew it would be a shock and the old folks would probably be all, "Amen, Amen" and the other kids would be looking at us like, "What?" Us standing there in the front of the church, a spectacle, while Reverend Bowen shakes your hand and lauds you in front of the congregation.
When the call came, we looked down the pew at each other, and slowly but surely we stood up and walked to the front. The congregation was clapping and amening. Then something unexpected happened. My brother and Sonya's brother got up and came to the front with us. Then Corey, then Brian, and Maya, next thing you knew almost all the kids in the church were up there in front of the church with us. It felt so much better to have all those other kids with us.
The following Sunday we were baptized. I think fourteen kids were baptized that day. I didn't feel anything after going down in the water, but I remember thinking, I'm a Christian now. And now, I get to eat Communion! Only the baptized got to eat the bread and drink the little grape juices on Communion Sunday. Now we were part of the crowd that got to take the bread. After church, we'd go to the Pastor's study and drink the leftover juices. The Sunday after that, a new wave of kids got baptized too. I remember thinking as a kid, isn't that some kind of miracle? That we were able to get other kids to be baptized just by our act of faith, is what God wants, right?
We did it, we were saved...now what?
I never went through some miraculous change at that time. I didn't even truly understand any of it. All I knew is that I didn't want to go to hell. Now that I was baptized, I guess that meant I wouldn't go to hell. I wasn't sure though, because after that Sunday, a lot of the kids would say stuff like, "I'm a Christian, I don't lie." They would use their baptism as a means to convince people of all kinds of things. The kids that said that phrase were normally the biggest liars of them all. I saw kids in other churches pretend to be shouting. They were doing the hammer and the wop, cabbage patching. Now that can't be right. And if they are all fake like that, what does my baptism mean?
My mom was the believer in our house. She would drag us along with her to visit other churches whenever she was asked to sing. We had to sit out in the congregation by ourselves in a strange church. They say in black communities in the city, there's a liquor store on every corner. Well, in my little country town, there was a church on every corner in the black community. Right around the corner from our church was Pleasant Green Baptist. There was a bit of a competition betweeen the two churches; our church, Beulah Baptist and that other church. Then there was the AME church down the street from us, Living Faith across the tracks and the Holiness Church.
We rarely ever went to the Holiness Church. Their church was old and rickety, their songs were spooky. I remember one night, my mom was invited to sing at that church. Not the entire Beulah choir, just my mom. Me, my brother Michael and my sister Misty were the only ones from our church in the congregation. The women all wore long skirts down to their ankles and they wore white doily hats on their heads. They all had, like ten kids. Back then, their church was a little rundown shack across the street from the pool.
The wood slatted floors would creak underfoot. When they started singing, they would all stomp and clap, chanting and shaking the whole house. Their songs reminded me of those old plantation sounding songs. Like that one album my mom would play on Sundays. I can still see the album cover in my head. There was a multicolored silhouette of the singer on the cover, she had a big afro. There was one song in particular that was spooky to me. It was just clapping and stomping, no instruments and they would say in a deep voice, “G-o-d's gonna set this place on f-i-i-i-re, ooh, G-o-d's gonna set this place on fire one of these days, Hallelujah...” I didn't want the world set on fire, and I never understood why that was something to shout about; Hallelujah?
Well, that night at the Holiness Church, in between the clapping and stomping, we started to hear claps of thunder. After mommy finished singing, she grabbed the three of us and we left. A severe lightning storm was overhead as she drove us quickly home. By the time we pulled into the driveway, the clouds burst and the rain began to pour down in buckets. The thunder rumbled the ground, the lightning streaked across the sky in wishbone and fork formations. We couldn't even see the steps leading up to the front door the rain was so heavy. Mommy is petrified of thunderstorms, so she began to pray. I love thunderstorms, but even I was unnerved by this one. It was a big one. Shortly after Mommy started to pray. The rain let up long enough for us to make a dash up the steps. By the time we closed the door, the rain began to pour again.
My dad believes in God, but he never went to church with us. I remember him saying one time, that he went to church one day and Aunt Nanny said "Oh Lord, the devil just walked in" or something to that effect. He never went back to church. Even at funerals, he seemed to feel out of place in a church. We never heard him pray beyond grace. Daddy is strict, even to this day, about saying grace before you eat.
But Mommy was the one dragging us to and from choir practice, and to Sunday school, and afternoon services at other churches. Mommy would kneel with us at the foot of our beds at night and have us say the Lord's Prayer. I realize looking back, that even though it all seemed ritualistic and distant to me, even though I didn't really understand what it was all about, the seeds were being planted and growing in me.
I was sick a lot as a kid. Turns out, I was allergic to almost everything green. Freshly cut grass caused an immediate sneezing fit. I still never really notice flowers, because just a hint of a flower's aroma, would make my eyes itch and my nose run. Add dust and mold, pollen and ragweed and every other thing you can think of and I had an allergic reaction for it in my nose and chest. I carried "snot rags" or a handkerchief around because I used so much tissue. I had a weakened immune system so anytime a kid caught a cold in school, I got it. And when I caught a flu virus, or even a common cold, it was always exacerbated by my allergies. Generally any cold I caught lasted a week. It included being short of breath and wheezy, topped with nasal congestion.
I was sick so often that either my mom or my dad would stay home the first day usually, and the rest of the time I would be home alone, and sick. I remember getting so sick, typically I couldn't breathe through my nose, couldn't get enough air through my lungs, that I thought I was going to die. I would say in my head, "God I just want to breathe normal again. Please let me feel normal again." It always seemed to take me getting so sick that I would begin to be afraid that I would stop breathing, before I would whisper in my head, "God, please let me breathe normal again." And every time, it seemed shortly after that prayer, no matter what medicines I had been taking all day, that was when the fever would break, or at least one nostril would unclog and I'd be back on the mend.
Some of the poems people marveled at that I wrote back then, I wrote in those moments at home alone, sick and scared. I wrote a poem called "The Story of a Lifetime" when I was 10 or 11. People said it was so beyond my years. I felt like I had confronted death many times in my mind. I had felt the wind through my body ebbing to barely a pant, thinking that this is it. I may die today all alone and miserable. I probably thought too deeply about things as a kid. But the seed had been planted. That seed that when you are afraid, and there's nothing else you can do, that's when you pray.