Everybody Loves Somebody (14 page)

“Mama!” she exclaimed, jumping up from her seat. But though her mama surely heard, she just smiled that angel smile without
turning her head to look and drifted right on past, showing no special affection for her own child, shunning her with that
sticky-sweet expression, pretending not to know her. The girl hardly felt the man’s hand pressing on her shoulder, pulling
her back, but she obliged without resistance, sat down again as the angels took their places at the head table. Mama had her
back to the girl, who knew that you could bore a hole through someone’s heart if you glared long enough. She fixed on that
velvety groove beneath Mama’s shoulder blades and above her dress line, was pleased to see her reach behind to scratch her
back, but that’s all she did, scratched just once. The only person Mama cared for was the little bald man coming through another
door up front. The girl gave up and turned to this man, the center of attention, the kingdom’s king, tucked as neatly as a
birthday present inside his blue suit. He was followed by a slight, sharp-featured woman, also dressed in blue, who led the
congregation in song while the man, the Father himself, sat and laid a napkin across his lap. The woman sang about justice
and truth, and the people joined in the refrain, something about a righteous government, the words as confusing as Mr. Dosan’s
speech. All these folks calling for a better world when what they really wanted was to help themselves to the food. The girl
could hear the hunger in their voices and would have heard the same in her own voice if she’d joined in. But it didn’t take
much thinking to realize that she preferred her granny’s temper to these hallelujahs. She stood up a second time and walked
away from the free lunch and her lost mama without offering anyone an explanation, walked straight out of this dingy heaven
into the rain and headed home.

In the days that followed, she kept telling herself that she was through with her mama, just like she was through with Mr.
Dosan. She tried feeling angry, but anger made her too jittery. She tried forgetting Mama. She tried hoping that Mama would
have a change of heart. Now here was a feeling the girl could tolerate, the hope that her mama might give up all that foolishness
and come on home, if not tomorrow then next week or next month, no need to hurry since her presence didn’t much change the
routine, and it felt good to be expecting her again, looking forward to the night—surely she would come home at night, just
as she used to—when Mama would creep into the apartment trying as best she could not to wake Granny and failing, of course,
so there would be an uproar, maybe a whipping, but the three of them would calm down soon enough, and the next morning the
girl would tell Mama how she’d learned to read.

It was this hope, her renewed expectation, that kept the girl cheerful during the long months of Granny’s sickness. Granny
wasn’t so sick that she couldn’t huck sweet potatoes and popcorn most days, but at night, after supper, the only meal of the
day she ate regularly, she spent hours on the toilet and then was so plagued by stomach cramps she couldn’t sleep. On Saturdays
she went over to the clinic on Seventh Avenue and the girl tended to the chores—she washed the laundry in the sink, using
hand soap to make suds, then draped wet clothes over the furniture since they didn’t have a wash line. She swept the floor
and wiped down the stove and made the beds, and upon Granny’s return at the end of the day she stood to the side of the room,
waiting for her hard work to be noticed. But Granny just closed herself in the bathroom without offering a whisper of praise.

One week hardly differed from any other week. Granny was sick, but she wasn’t getting sicker, as far as her granddaughter
could tell. The girl had stopped thinking about heaven since her visit to the kingdom, had stopped imagining the old woman’s
death altogether. Plenty of people suffered from ailments that wouldn’t go away and grew no worse. Granny assured her that
her bellyaches were no more bothersome than the ache in her fingers—two Bufferin always helped to set things right. And as
long as Granny still pushed her cart up and down Lenox, still hauled bags of sweet potatoes from the grocer, and still made
enough money to pay the rent, the girl could believe that everything was close to fine.

She didn’t see through her granny’s masquerade until it was too late. But even if she had suspected, she wouldn’t have known
what to do. The old woman denied that she was failing by clinging to routine with all her strength, and when she finally gave
up, she didn’t slip softly to the floor—she fell with a great thud in the middle of the night, waking the girl.

“Mama?” the girl said, sitting up in her bed. “Mama?”

“Your mama ain’t here, Sheebie.”

“That you, Mama? You come home?”

“It’s just you and me, girl. Now get on back to sleep.” She growled the command and lay still. The girl stood up and switched
on the lamp. She stared at her granny sprawled on the floor, seeing not the living woman but the hollow form of the woman
who was almost dead, Granny already different, an unworldly stranger to the girl, the change signaled by the vicious sound
of her teeth as she snapped at the air, chomping the space to show that she’d turned dangerous and would bite the girl’s hand
if she could only reach it.

“You all right, Granny?”

“Spoilation ain’t pretty. Now do as I say, get on back to bed!”

“Lemme help, please....”

Snap of teeth again, a vile, liquid fart. Poor Granny roaring from her grave at the bottom of the river, her voice bubbling
up through water.

“Please, Granny...”

Granny was a puppet coming to life. She was a statue rearing its stone head. The girl took a few steps away from the old woman,
who propped herself first on her hands and knees and then managed to grasp the table and pull herself up. She had no strength
left to scold, but the girl didn’t need words to know that the ordeal was over, at least for the present. Granny would clean
herself up and they’d both return to bed, never to speak of this night again, though from then on the child would be privy
to the truth that her great-grandmother refused to admit: she was dying, and when she took her last breath the angels wouldn’t
swoop down for the fanfare. The angels wouldn’t even bother to stop by for the occasion, and Granny would collapse in a puddle
of her own filth, snapping at any hand that came too close, as mean and helpless as a cat with a broken back.

The next day was Sunday, but the old woman didn’t bother to get up and dress herself for church. She slept through most of
the morning. Though Granny didn’t ask for it, the girl left a cup of water on her bedside table, and from across the room
she waited, as though she’d set a trap, for her to drink. When the cup was empty she’d refill it. Granny didn’t say a word
all day, except when she dozed, and then she recited lists of items to be purchased—“Thirty pounds taters, five pounds popping
corn, factree-made dress, pair of Florsheim shoes, nickel loaf, quart of milk, butter brick, bobby pins”—and on, her voice
fading as she woke until she was completely silent again, her set lips the ashen color of the November sky beyond the window,
her body rigid one moment then straining to expel the pain she wouldn’t admit to, until finally the girl felt herself being
expelled, driven out of the airless room by some mysterious force so Granny could suffer alone.

Outside, she stuffed her hands into her pockets and kept her head down. Where could the girl hide from the cold? The library
was closed, and the service at the Metropolitan Baptist Church would already be half over. For some reason Mr. Dosan came
to mind, uselessly, since the girl had vowed never to have anything more to do with him. Besides, she didn’t know where he
lived. She knew where her mama lived, though. Granny hadn’t asked for Mama, not in so many words, but the girl had started
to pay attention to her own intuition, which was telling her now that Granny needed Mama, even though she would have denied
it. Or maybe what presented itself as intuition was merely the child’s own desire in disguise: she wanted to be warm. She
wanted to put warm food in her empty belly, and she knew of only one place in the world where she’d be invited inside to share
a meal. But whether she was making the journey on her granny’s or her own behalf didn’t much matter, for by then she’d reached
the corner of Lenox and 126th Street and would only reveal herself to be a coward if she turned back.

She kept edging forward, as though along a lightless hallway, until she stood outside the kingdom. She waited for a crowd
to assemble and draw her into its midst; she waited for the girl with the umbrella to dash by. But the street remained empty
and the building seemed as impenetrable as a huge boulder, so lifeless that the girl wondered whether the Father had lost
interest in his mission and dispersed his congregation. She climbed the steps and cracked open the door, half expecting to
be met by silence. Instead, as she stood on the threshold she heard the intonations of a voice as powerful as the Pied Piper’s
secret melody, inviting all who heard it to
believe, believe, believe
.

The girl tiptoed across the front hall and down the corridor. In the dining hall she discovered the worshippers feasting not
on food—the tables were empty, though the fragrance of hot grease and baked goods still lingered in the air—but on the words
of the Father. He stood alone at the end of an aisle, without either a pulpit or Bible, and as the girl watched he raised
his right hand and snatched at nothing, as though pulling his sermon from the air.

“‘Jesus,’ said the sinner, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,’ and Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you, you
will be with Me in Paradise.’ Now I say to you, my people, you will be with me in Paradise.”

A woman kneeling in the aisle cried out, “We love you, Father!”

Another woman called, “My heart is beating faster!”

A man sang, “He’s our father, and he’s walking in the land!”

The Father scanned the room like an overseer surveying a field until his eyes, iron nails hammered into the bald globe of
his head, settled right on the girl, locking her in place. “They may prosecute me,” he seethed. “They may persecute me. They
may strap me to the electric chair.”

“No!” screamed the kneeling woman.

“It’s a new day, Father!” a man shouted.

“They may hang me by the neck. But I tell you now, they will never keep me away from you!”

To the girl, the man seemed to be speaking only to her. He lifted his hands, palms flat, above his head, and the people rose
from their chairs in unison and began chanting, “Father, O Father, give me the victory,” the clamor increasing as he spread
his arms in a gesture of embrace, still fixing his stare on the girl.

“I know you are God, God, God!” the people sang, and finally the Father lifted his eyes, releasing the girl from his gaze,
and beckoned farewell to the worshippers before he slipped out of the room.

In his absence the noise of devotion peaked and quickly subsided, and during the few moments of reverent quiet the girl looked
around, at first just to regain her bearings, for she felt as though she’d been swept up by an eagle and dropped hundreds
of miles away from home, and then to search the crowd for her mama. But today the angels stood in a row up front, facing away
from the congregation, and the girl couldn’t get a sufficient look as they filed out to tell whether her mama was among them.
She tried to follow the angels but couldn’t push through the crowd. Men and women clutched and kissed their closest neighbors,
and the girl was swept up into the ecstasy and passed along like a loaf of hot bread, finally ending mashed against the ample
bosom of a lady whose grin revealed a gap where her two front teeth should have been and whose name, the girl would learn
later, was Miss Smile All the While.

Miss Smile All the While loved the children “long as they live a holy, clean life.” Miss Smile All the While took it upon
herself to bring the “starveticating” girl into the kitchen and fix her a plate of leftover chicken and baked beans. Over
the meal she described some of the Father’s miraculous cures—her own rheumatism had disappeared the first time he touched
her hands, five years earlier. The girl revealed that she’d come looking for her mama, and Miss Smile All the While said,
“In good time,” then led her four flights up to a small room furnished with seven cots spaced no more than a foot apart. “You
take this one,” Miss Smile said, indicating the cot closest to the door, and left her alone, not once asking her whether she
needed to rest, though somehow giving the impression that they’d all be insulted if she refused.

So the girl sat on the mattress and scuffed her heels along the floor, hoping that her mama would come find her. After a while
she grew tired from waiting—she settled back on the bare mattress, tried to keep herself awake by holding her eyelids open
with her thumb and forefinger, and finally gave up, drifting off into a sleep so busy with dreams that when she woke a few
hours later she was more exhausted than ever.

The room was dark and her cot had been made up with freshly washed sheets and a wool blanket. Voices were murmuring softly
in the room, like pigeons chortling, such a comforting sound that the girl was lulled back to sleep. When she woke again she
found herself alone, and daylight shone through the single window. As the fog of sleep cleared, it occurred to her that Granny
would be wanting her supper. Not until she’d made her way downstairs and smelled breakfast cooking did she realize that she’d
slept straight through to morning. In the kitchen, Miss Smile All the While stood by a huge pot of percolating coffee, singing
a duet with a woman frying some bacon. When she saw the girl she gave her a wet kiss on the forehead and said, “You be blessed,
chicky. We got a sewing job just waiting to be filled.”

The girl didn’t understand at first. Sure, she needed a pair of stockings darned, a torn dress repaired, but how could Miss
Smile know that? It took a once-over look from the other woman to give the girl the necessary clue: they wanted to put her
to work. But she was planning to sell sweet potatoes and popcorn out in the open air, not sit in some musty back room pedaling
a sewing machine. Besides, she still had a couple of years of schooling to finish—Granny wouldn’t let her huck a single potato
until she’d made it through the eighth grade.