A Hope in the Unseen (24 page)

Yet, it is Long’s fate, and that of his church, that the greatest transformations occur among those who usually end up leaving. They’re the special few who distill their unquestioned faith in God’s power into a faith in themselves and their own power, a faith in their own ability to figure things out, improve themselves, and find their way in the world. And when they get it, there’s a subtle, though defining, change of perspective.

It’s something Long can detect. When a congregant, probably living paycheck to paycheck, gives $500, winning a trip to the stage for Bishop’s own Holy Spirit “touch” to the forehead, it’s because that contributor truly
believes
the Bible’s assurance that each such gift will return a blessing to them tenfold. But, as the true believer dances on the stage, infused with the Spirit and sure that tenfold—or a hundredfold—rewards are coming, Long might spot some lady in her new dress wince or a newly confident man, fresh from a big promotion, snicker. There are a few congregants who’ve discovered another way to get ahead, to get that house, and a bigger one after it—the secular way, by studying hard, going to a top college and maybe graduate school, by networking, strategizing, and matching preparation with opportunity. Sure, they still believe in God, but He’s got competition now—a belief in the sovereignty of self—and the spell of absolute, unquestioning faith, upon which Long has built his cathedral, is broken.

Despite all he’s built, Long knows he can rise only so high as a pastor to the downtrodden. It binds him to the bottom. Even when he profits modestly for himself, his wife, and his kids, the disparities between his life and those of his constituents grow so wide that fingers point at him. The accomplished people, the city’s black professionals and leaders of its public life—they don’t come to this church. Sure, a few visit—Jesse Jackson and a handful of well-known ministers and black politicians—but they’re like him, people whose success is, paradoxically, owed to the needy and the threadbare.

It can all get so bitter. After Long detects the telltale snicker or wince—that sidelong look of doubt—it’s just a matter of time. He wants to scream at them, “I remember when you were down and out, when you were sure that no one could love you—with all your betrayals and bankruptcies and sinning—and I showed you how Jesus can cleanse you and God can love you, even when the whole world seems to hate you. Isn’t that worth something, if nothing more than loyalty?” But, they just slip out anyway, usually without a word, and later he hears that they’re bad-mouthing him, saying he’s just about stealing, squeezing money from poor people who just don’t have it to give. And, Lord, he tries not to get angry. Those prosperity-bound defectors just don’t want to remember their debt to faith, he tells himself.

As the choir finishes its last chorus of “Give Your Problems to God,” he wonders if he should lash out, right now.

But why? Doesn’t do any good. They still leave, his favorites—the most capable among them—the ones who discover enough faith in themselves that the world suddenly seems hopeful, so hopeful that they feel they don’t need a sanctuary. It breaks his heart. He closes his Bible as the choir sits, and he turns his glare on Cedric Jennings—the one he’s worried about.

“I know a few of our children will be leaving soon for college. And we’re all very proud of them. And we want them to study hard,” he says quietly, choosing his words with care.

He sees Cedric look around, like he’s worried that everyone is watching him.

Long grabs the pulpit’s edges and begins again, speaking softly and deliberately. “I’ll tell you something that I don’t want any of you children
to forget. God is sometimes hard to find on the college campus. Don’t you forget that Satan loves a mind that strays far from the Holy Word. And, where some of you are going, you’ll be taught to trust your mind, to trust man’s theories about history and literature and how the world works. Yes, all you fine students must ask your questions and get your good grades ….” He stops and puts a hard eye on Cedric, who is looking back now, frozen in place. “But, never forget—never—that the only real answers lie with God.”

The room is silent. Long exhales and looks at his watch. It’s 2:30. This service that began at 10:45 is almost over. He, like everyone, can smell the fried chicken’s sweet greasy scent wafting up from the basement and causing stomachs to growl.

But no one leaves the room—no one eats!—until they’ve made their sacrifice to faith.

“Have you given the last $10 in your checking account?!” Long screams. “Have you!? If you haven’t, now is the time—see what it feels like to put your trust in the Almighty. I want a line down the middle, a long one, with everyone giving $20 each. And I want all the givers to come up front for a special blessing. Let’s Goooo!”

The line starts to snake up the aisle as the pews empty. “It’s so sweet,” Long exults. He glances over at Cedric, standing in a row that’s now mostly empty, looking confused, and he knows that there
are
demons up ahead for this boy, his prize child … who’s
not budging
. Long decides that he’d better crank it up a notch, and he starts wind-milling his thick arms, jumping and yelling, “Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!” his robes billowing as he whips the faithful to frenzy, uncoupling hope from reason with the swinging ax of faith, and watches the line stretch toward the chapel’s rear doors.

Finally, he sees him, his boy, a baby of this church, run up the aisle to drop a crumpled bill in the basket and join a swarm of uplifted arms at the foot of the stage, each hand groping for the Holy Spirit “touch,” hoping to feel the surge of God’s power. And Bishop C. L. Long, gripping the pulpit, reaches over the crowd—way out—toward Cedric Jennings, who lifts his long fingers for a final blessing.

W
ashington’s Northwest corner of wide, tree-lined streets and brick center-hall colonials has emptied out. The beltway around the city was jammed last night and this morning as the army of lawyers, lobbyists, journalists, and assorted bureaucrats escaped to cooler locales in the mountains of Virginia, the Maryland shore, or favored spots up the coastline to Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The typical itinerary is to begin vacationing this weekend and stretch it through the following Labor Day weekend.

As dusk arrives on Saturday night, August 24, it seems like everyone remaining in Washington is out on the stoop. Despite the heat, there is a festiveness everywhere, with those who remain behind having now won the city by default.

Over at Scripture Cathedral, lights blaze through the stained-glass windows, like there’s a bonfire inside, as fifteen hundred black men stand shoulder to shoulder in the pews and the crowded balcony. It is the first official organizing meeting for next month’s Million Man March. Bishop Long, proud that Scripture was selected by Minister Louis Farrakhan to be march headquarters, reaches for the hand of a Nation of Islam official—an aide Farrakhan sent down just for this meeting—so they can raise their clasped fists in triumph. And as they do, the throng of black men in dashikis and business suits and worn jeans lets out a roar that so many of them clearly hope will be the start of something … anything.

On the northeast fringe of the city, Cedric Gilliam pecks Sherene, his new girlfriend, on the cheek as he slips through the door of the Chateau—a raucous black nightclub—where she works as a hostess. He breathes in the smoke and the smell of beer, not wanting either to leave his nostrils. A month ago, one of the regular parole department urine tests found his urine dirty with heroin—a violation of his probation—and since then a half-dozen federal marshals have been by his mother’s house. It’s just a matter of time before they overtake him. He had hoped that the intoxicating buzz of this favorite joint—as familiar to him as his own voice—would help drone out the ticking clock he hears in his head. Instead, being here makes him feel like the air is slipping from his lungs.

Across town, on a quiet street of row houses in Southeast, Cedric Jennings is also trying to breathe deeply. Tomorrow he will begin packing for Tuesday’s journey to Providence. Tonight is his last big night in town. He exults, slapping tree branches with his up-stretched hand as he walks. It’s a night for feeling good.

He spots a few of his relatives sitting on the stoop of his aunt Chris’s house, half a block ahead, where a going-away party for him has just started. He breaks into a trot.

“Va, Uncle Va,” his nephew Lawrence shouts as he enters the house, and Cedric sees that most of the guests have arrived.

“Hi everybody!” Cedric shouts, looking neat and casual in his long white T-shirt and black jeans.

Aunt Chris pokes her head out of the kitchen and yells, “I hope you’re ready to eat tonight, Lavar,” and waits until he assures her, “Oh, yes, I’m ready,” before she disappears back to her ministrations. Everyone returns to the couch or chair where they were a moment ago, and the room’s hive of conversation resumes.

Everyone comes over to greet him, and Cedric looks around the bustling room, lips together in a wet smile. He feels a wash of sentimentality, a nostalgia for the present, and lets his eyes wander back and forth across the room like he might a poem he needs to memorize for an English class—wanting to remember it, every line. Then he settles into a living room chair near the front door.

The only man present is a cousin of Barbara’s named Douglas, a computer specialist in his mid-thirties who has had solid jobs but some problems with drugs. He says to one of Barbara’s sisters that he’s not out running tonight with the other men because “I’m trying to get my life together.”

Eating his chicken, Douglas starts into a routine about Barbara’s mother telling her father to “bring that big old thing over here”—some sort of sexual reference—and Cedric is soon laughing hysterically along with the table of Jennings sisters. The talk is fast, riffing between subjects and inside references, and Cedric gets seconds, then thirds.

He jumps up, says he can’t wait to cut the cake, and opens a large box to see the creamy white rectangle with “Congratulations, Cedric”
in blue icing. “Cedric??” he says in mock confusion as everyone turns. “Oh, uhhuh. Cedric, dat’s just my professional name.” This, as always, gets big laughs.

Soon the little kids are running down from upstairs, having heard about the cake. There’s a lightness to everything, a sense that anything is possible. Someone says that Cedric should touch the heads of the children “so to pass on the gift of intelligence.” Little Lawrence and the others squirm and dodge as Cedric shouts, “Come here, you,” chasing them. He corners Lawrence long enough to tap his forehead.

All the talk of the future, of gifts being passed on, makes Daisy, the oldest sister, want to say a few words. That’s why they’re here, after all. To wish Lavar well.

“Come on ya’ll,” she says purposefully. Somebody turns off the TV, and a circle forms around the dining room table as everyone joins hands—Cedric next to his mother—and squeezes their eyes shut.

“God,” Daisy begins, her voice searching for a comfortable pitch. “We ask you to bless Lavar. Oh boy, God bless him ….”

It is expected that inspiration will arrive, that Daisy will feel the Spirit and the words will spill forth. It takes a moment to happen, and then her voice grows steady and firm.

“Everything that his hand touches, let it turn good …. Oh Yes! Lord, let him bring a good report back to his family. Let him succeed, Lord, in this long journey!”

The last fiery words are barely out when Cedric, his eyes closed, feels an ache about the length of the journey—winding and treacherous, into unexplored country—and Daisy seems to feel it, too, because her voice drops to a plea. “Oh please,” she says, softly, “we’re praying that you shield him and protect him. And let him not be brought down …. And even when he is far away, God, let him know that he is loved by his family.” It is better that their eyes are closed, better to see beyond this shabby room and their plain clothes, as they all say, “Amen.”

After a few hours, the party ends, and Cedric—full from the feast and warmed by a round of hugs—ambles outside onto the lamplit street. He walks a few blocks, smiling back at the black folks who nod
at him from stoops or from the doorways of bodegas, and then finds himself checking the street signs.

It’s not far from here, he thinks, not far at all. A few minutes later, he’s rounding the corner on 15th Street. He wanders a bit, perplexed, having come onto the block from an unfamiliar direction. He’s not sure which house it is—even though he lived here, on and off, as a kid and was here four years ago when his grandfather died. He begins studying the front facades, his step slowing.

He walks by a porch where two men are reclining on kitchen chairs and then turns to look back at it.

“Uncle Butch?” he calls out tentatively, and one of the men comes to the railing, watchful and on guard.

“It’s me,” says Cedric. “It’s Lavar.”

“Lavar! Damn, I didn’t recognize you,” says the man, waving on Cedric’s approach. “Come here, boy.”

Cedric excitedly bounds up the porch steps and Butch—Barbara’s younger brother, a federal service worker who took over the house—surveys him in a toe-to-head sweep. “Boy, you got big. You’re like a man, now.”