Chinaberry Sidewalks (8 page)

The handkerchief pulled from the breast pocket of his coat symbolizes not the white flag of surrender but one last lap to victory. The mop of his brow, the tuck of his shirt, and the straightening of his tie are bold gestures of righteous supremacy. The slide of his handkerchief into his hip pocket demands that we arise and listen up, as further instructions are forthcoming.

“I have been given a vision,” he thunders, his voice filling the church with a godlike gravity. “God has spoken to me. His words were like the music of a golden harp. The light of His love was blinding, yet I could see the hem of His garment of the finest silk. He said this unto me: ‘My son, all is not lost. The time has not yet come for you to die. Return and lead your flock back onto the path of righteousness. Do this in my name, and thy flock shall return to the eternal peace of my fold.’ ”

I have to bite my tongue to keep from yelling out:
Did God really say that?

“The way has been shown to me by the King of Kings, brothers and sisters. You must go forth into the streets as witnesses. Testify to all whom you meet of the miracle you have witnessed this very day. Testify how the Savior gave life back to this broken body that only minutes ago lay shipwrecked on Satan’s perilous shoreline. Do this and know you are forgiven. Do this and reclaim your promised place in the sweet ever after.”

Hot dog, we got off with another warning ticket. Shoot, yeah, we’ll go out and accost bankers and winos alike. How hard can it be? All it takes is audacity and the willingness to annoy. People need to know what kind of deal we’ve got going on over here at the Emmanuel Temple. Sin like the dickens from Thursday through Saturday, ride out the Wednesday evening and Sunday morning performances, drop half a buck in the offering plate, and give a good review on the street, then all charges are dropped. Three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers require less effort, but the showmanship leaves so much to be desired.

As reward for service above and beyond the call of duty, the newly revived congregation gives Brother Pemberton a kneeling ovation. The organ player and ragtag choir roll into a modified version of the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly,” and we all join in.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling
,

calling for you and for me;

see, on the portals He’s waiting and watching
,

watching for you and for me
.

Come home, come home;

ye who are weary, come home …

Brother Pemberton can’t sing, alas, practically strangling these sweet old words. It sounds as if his heart alone is forcing them through the deflated balloon of his vocal cords. I’m constantly amazed by the difference between his singing, akin to “Turkey in the Straw,” and his speaking, more like “Great Balls of Fire.” An image forever burned in my memory is of Brother Pemberton standing tall at the altar, Bible in hand, nodding and smiling approvingly as his flock of lost sheep mosey forth one and two and three at a time to kneel down and receive a big dollop of spiritual liniment to rub on the aches and pains of the morning’s long ordeal, and all the while he’s butchering the beautiful hymn “Just as I Am, Without One Plea.”

With the service’s success fresh in everyone’s mind, Brother Pemberton says a closing prayer and makes his way to the exit, where he’ll accept congratulations on another stellar performance as his exhausted audience spills out into the blinding light of a summer afternoon.

Though disheveled and preposterous, his sermons were nonetheless inspired and, for a five-year-old boy, even fun. When the chips were down and my family was far behind on the scoreboard of life, my money (not that I had any) was on Brother Pemberton to pull the white rabbit of salvation out of the Devil’s top hat. Or thin air.

Meanwhile, Brother Modest’s style gave you the impression that polished insincerity was the hallmark of God’s inner circle, and much of the congregation preferred his chilly aloofness. For some he was also a symbol of hope, since he was as close to the middle rungs of the economic ladder as most Emmanuel Temple regulars were likely to come.

Brother Pemberton, on the other hand, seemed like somebody who’d been passed over for promotion, an underdog struggling against the evils of Beelzebub more for God’s amusement than his own satisfaction. This made him just another underpaid worker, like everybody else. Simply put, the former appeared to make more money saving souls than the latter.

Certainly the church elders deemed Brother Modest the better bet to lead them to the Promised Land.

One Sunday, toward the end of Brother Pemberton’s tenure as copastor, my mother and I were kneeling at the altar with our heads bowed; she piously, gratefully, sibilantly thanking Jesus for one thing or another. Bored to distraction, I snuck a look at who was kneeling beside me, and my eyes fell on a pair of brown and white, pointy-toed, bebop loafers. I stared at them with the kind of admiration I now reserve for Tom Waits and Mother Teresa, then took in a pleated pant leg and the bottom of a gaudy green plaid sport coat, my gaze traveling upward until I was staring directly into eyes that closely matched the brown and white of those two-toned shoes. Caught red-handed, my mind adrift and unrepentant, I braced myself for the inevitable, because surely a gaffe of this magnitude would provoke the wrath of God. Then Brother Pemberton did something that under the circumstances was the last thing I ever would’ve expected. He winked at me. With one bat of an eyelash, that poor man’s Billy Graham let me in on the secret of a lifetime: He, too, was bored.

Now and then, in waking dreams, I find myself kneeling at the altar of the Emmanuel Temple. In my less cynical moments, I realize that God once spoke to me directly through an old-school, hellfire-and-brimstone preacher. In the wink of an eye, I saw a compassionate, tolerant, and nonjudgmental God of love and great humor. My own faith was planted as a seed that morning, and there are days its fruit sustains me still.

The move to Jacinto City brought my mother’s churchgoing to an unceremonious halt. One day she was washed in the blood of the sacrificial Lamb, and the next she was stuck in some Godforsaken wasteland where charismatic Pentecostal preachers were as scarce as African Bushmen. For the first six months in what she called “your daddy’s new hellhole,” she struggled so hard to maintain her signature Christian buoyancy that even her husband took notice. One Sunday morning, in a rare but timely display of concern, he offered to drive her (and me) to the Emmanuel Temple for a much-needed shot in her gospel-starved arm. Of course he had no intention of attending the service; as usual, he’d spend the morning drinking beer with his buddies at the Texas Ice and Fuel Company a few blocks away on Harrisburg Boulevard. But his act of generosity, however limited, noticeably perked my mother up. Her postsermon spirits were running so high that she seemed to neither notice nor care when he arrived thoroughly sloshed to pick us up forty-five minutes after the janitor had finished cleaning the church for the evening service. As time went on, though, these doses of her beloved Brother Modest grew more and more infrequent, and the lack of prospects on the spiritual horizon sent her into a prolonged depression.

Parishioners at the Emmanuel Temple knew my mother as a first-class amen sister, and she earned their respect by peppering sermons with the well-placed and punchy “Thank you, Jesus.” That everybody counted on Sister Crowell to praise the Lord or proclaim the Devil a liar at ninety decibels and in perfect counterpoint to Brother Modest’s suave delivery of the gospel gave her a much-needed sense of worth, and intuitive concentration kept her half a step in front of every word forming in his mouth. If a man or woman ever paid closer attention to what a preacher was about to say than my mother, he or she was unknown in the East End. It was because of her righteousness that I was shocked senseless when, during an exploratory visit to the shabby little Church of God on Pilot Street, she allowed her mind to wander during the preacher’s monumentally long and boring sermon. Leaning sideways, she whispered sarcastically, “The Lord’s movin’ in the house this mornin’, isn’t He, son?” Before I could squelch the spasm, I’d committed the most unpardonable of all childhood sins—giggling in church. And unbelievably, it was my mother who’d made me laugh. Then, walking home from a onetime visit to the Assembly of God on Mercury Drive, she muttered, “Next time I need me a three-hour nap, I’ll go back over to that shit hole.” I had heard my mother use mild curse words many times before, but never in connection with the House of the Lord. I was starting to worry.

Perfunctory surveys of the Church of Christ on Market Street and the imposing and obligatory redbrick Baptist church on the corner of Palestine Street and Kirby Avenue only deepened her frustration. “Why, they ain’t a church house in all of Jacinto City worth puttin’ on a clean dress for,” she grumbled. “I might as well go on and surrender to the Devil.” Fortunately, her misgivings about finding a spiritual home in such a Godless vacuum were soon to pass.

Tent revivals—the Barnum & Bailey version of soul salvation—had begun cropping up around us like Bedouin villages, and the ones passing through southeast Texas at that time were owned and operated by some of the most highly skilled Devil-debunking outfits ever assembled. Starved as she was for a good old-fashioned Christian tongue-lashing, my poor mother didn’t take long to fall for the disingenuous charms of a series of nomadic evangelists, and before long her passion for hellfire-and-cash-money hucksters was even more intense than her crush on Brother Modest.

She couldn’t drive a car, due to her nerves, but that didn’t matter. She finagled rides to and from the revivals with the tenacity of kudzu. Young, middle-aged, and old Bible-thumping women were only too happy to park in front of the house and honk their horns for Sister Crowell to come hear Brother So-and-So preach, sometimes fourteen nights running.

My father gave her a hard time about this, often adopting a prim, singsong soprano to mock her newfound sisterhood. “Cauzette, one-a them church heifers just pulled up. You better get on out the door ’fore that ole biddy drives outta here.” And then, back in his natural voice, “I swear, I never seen nothin’ like these goddamn women haulin’ your ass around.”

“J. W. Crowell, if you don’t stop takin’ the Lord’s name in vain, you’re goin’ straight to hell.”

“I’d just as soon go there as whichever tent y’all are headed off to.”

The tent-revival period was a good one for me. Sunday night rides were often so overcrowded that I was allowed to stay home with my father and watch
Gunsmoke
. During the school year, weeknight revivals were subject to the fictitious demands of unfinished homework. Summer months were more vulnerable, since only Little League games constituted an excused absence. This new string of Brother So-and-Sos who’d so thoroughly captured my mother’s imagination failed to make any impression on me. One incident, however, I’ll never forget.

In the spring of 1959, my mother attended a weeklong revival twenty miles east of Houston in the small town of Highlands. Word got around the tent that Sister Crowell was epileptic; furthermore, that the poor girl had no control over when, how, or where she’d be struck down. The core group of prayer sisters associated with this particular revival took a disparaging view of such afflictions, and the consensus was that Sister Crowell was possessed by the Devil. In effect, my mother’s affliction gave them a golden opportunity to rebuke the hell out of that bony-fingered vermin who preyed so unmercifully on her soul.

One afternoon, six of them showed up unannounced at the house on Norvic Street and filed in like a coven. Wearing lace-up, square-heeled old-lady shoes and stockings and identical World War II–era business suits, their hair tied in braided buns, each one looked like a cross between Eleanor Roosevelt and Ayn Rand. The ringleader, probably in her mid-fifties, introduced herself as Sister Shook and informed my mother that the power of prayer was the only thing that could free her from an eternity in hell. As long as she played host to the Devil, the ravages of epilepsy would be visited upon her, and it was guaranteed that she’d have no chance of entering the kingdom of heaven. Telling my mother this was hitting below the belt, and Sister Shook did it without blinking. From then on, she could do with my mother as she wished.

First she instructed my mother to lie down on the living room floor. “Young man, go get a pillow,” the old prayer witch commanded. Assuming she was thinking of Momma’s comfort, I warmed slightly but soon realized she wanted the pillow only to kneel more comfortably beside her fallen prey.

“Show yourself, Demon,” she demanded. “In the name of God I order you to show yourself for the liar you are.” The other prayer witches chanted, “The Devil’s a liar.” Again Sister Shook demanded, “Show yourself, Demon,” and then all six of them started chanting the same thing over and over again, like some kind of weird Christian cheerleading squad. The rhythm and gathering intensity was starting to scare me.

Sister Shook was hell-bent on upping the ante. That she would bag the Devil this afternoon was preordained, and my mother’s well-being was beneath consideration. Sister Shook’s voice was like Thor’s hammer, and each new command a thunderclap. “Show us your cowardly work, Devil. Let us see you work through Sister Crowell.”

I eased in a little closer. She was inducing a seizure. “Don’t do that to Momma,” I said defiantly.

The old crone speared me with a look ten times more evil than the red-skinned Antichrist they claimed was messing with Sister Crowell.
“Silence!”

She couldn’t have shut me up more thoroughly if she’d cut off my tongue with a knife. This was finality distilled to its most base form. My lips were sealed.

The prayer witches kept the chant going while Sister Shook repeated her ultimatum. “Show us your epilepsy, you lying coward. In the name of God almighty I demand you show us your vileness, Satan.”