High Cotton (10 page)
Authors: Darryl Pinckney
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #African American
Scene 1. The English teacher who believes the harassment of having a large family has taught him all he needs to know about being understanding calls out the scores on the Dickens multiple-choice test. He holds back the new student’s test paper for an after-class conference. “I want you to be honest with me. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know when the material is too hard for you. Now be honest with me. Did you cheat?” The hands of the surprised Negro student—“I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have no knowledge” —fly to cheeks that Clearasil hasn’t helped.
Scene 2. The dwarfish American-history teacher begins to recite, but is drowned out by the Negro student in the second row who, in the shock of recognition, gets carried away. “Unheard beyond the ocean tide their English Mother made her moan.” The teacher squints, the way the peckerwoods must have regarded the abashed Negro student’s grandfather when he ran over that hunting dog in Brunswick, Georgia, back in the Depression. He says, “You’re going to be President of the United States one day,” which he also says to humor restless children at his moonlighting job as a shoe salesman. It sounds like “You that nigger preacher?” Fortunately, the teacher doesn’t ask the Negro student to finish the poem. The Negro knows only the first stanza, because once on a visit to Concord, Massachusetts, his uncle bought him a miniature plaster replica of the “Grave of the British Soldiers.”
Scene 3. The coolest kid in the eighth grade says hello “first” to the Negro student in brand-new penny loafers.
My happiness was a sin, of that I had no doubt, but even so I was not prepared to endure the punishment of following the
oil stains down to Louisville to hear one of Grandfather’s chilling sermons. That faculty the adolescent has of tuning out didn’t work with Grandfather. His voice I could not ignore or daydream against. One Sunday my objections were answered with the unusual, frightening argument that Grandfather needed us. I would rather have lived with the Murdstones than be needed by anyone.
oil stains down to Louisville to hear one of Grandfather’s chilling sermons. That faculty the adolescent has of tuning out didn’t work with Grandfather. His voice I could not ignore or daydream against. One Sunday my objections were answered with the unusual, frightening argument that Grandfather needed us. I would rather have lived with the Murdstones than be needed by anyone.
Louisville was as quiet as a back lot. We thought the service had been canceled, the church on Chestnut Street was so still. Grandfather was deeply attached to its stained-glass windows, which were, he liked to say, much older and sturdier than he and would be around long after he had joined his crowd in heaven. I knew that the little Congregational church represented the niche Grandfather had found late in life. He had never been anywhere else in my knowing him, but the family said they couldn’t believe he had managed to stay in one place for so long. It was getting on to twenty years. “They’ll put him out,” Great-grandmother said every year when we called her on her birthday. “They’ll get to know him and put him out quick.”
But he went on, more interested in fighting the urban renewal that had brought an interstate highway too near his church and reduced the houses around it to rubble than in saving souls. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirit of wickedness in high places.” He was often on local radio in those days, warning against “eminent domain” and the hotbeds of corruption that low-income housing projects inevitably became.
The dreaded stepgrandmother, clutching her cane like a throttle, pretended she didn’t see us and took her seat directly under the pulpit. She hated it that Grandfather had a family, connections she couldn’t do anything about, those extraneous mouths around the soup of the evening, beautiful soup. Old-fashioned
hats with feathers moved around her in the semi-darkness. My mother, who hated to cover her head, pulled a bow from her purse and stuck it on. The gesture announced that we were officially not ourselves, that we belonged to an entity that overrode our regrets for the phone calls, television shows, and Sunday boredom back home.
hats with feathers moved around her in the semi-darkness. My mother, who hated to cover her head, pulled a bow from her purse and stuck it on. The gesture announced that we were officially not ourselves, that we belonged to an entity that overrode our regrets for the phone calls, television shows, and Sunday boredom back home.
The reds and greens of the windows were bright as lollipops; strands of light touched the floor and dyed the wood yellow. Otherwise the interior of dusty, painted brick was lost in an electric bill—conscious gloom. The small number of parishioners, my father said, was a bad sign, as if a friend’s show were having a troubled run when he’d been saying how much the public loved his act. Some old-timers settled to doze conspicuously in the rear; a great gap opened between them and the fervent ladies in front. We, Grandfather’s family, couldn’t fill up the middle sufficiently.
I could make out the shine of hair, the glint of spectacles, and the white collars of the choir. A reedy organ began the prelude, a side door admitted a small herd of stragglers. They had the air of having “conferred upon a weighty matter,” as Grandfather would say. One jaunty man noticed us and was so indecisive about how wide to make his smile of welcome that I heard his jaw crack.
A woman with a two-toned face, like a pinto’s hide, spoke to the stepgrandmother, who barely inclined her head before she swiveled it around. She was inelastic with complaints from the neck down, but what she could do with her head never failed to make me think there was a tank gunner operating the gears behind her sour eyes. Her steel-girder look shot right by me. Then she grinned, as if at the approach of a bride.
Grandfather entered from the rear, alone—except for his black robe. I had the impression he wasn’t wearing it; the black robe
was accompanying him, surrounding him, attending him, filling up the aisle as he came briskly forward with his hands clasped in front. The sleeves billowed and I pictured arresting officers on either side of him. If he could have gotten away with having a crucifix precede him, he would have had his congregation bowing and dipping. One could almost smell the incense as he passed.
was accompanying him, surrounding him, attending him, filling up the aisle as he came briskly forward with his hands clasped in front. The sleeves billowed and I pictured arresting officers on either side of him. If he could have gotten away with having a crucifix precede him, he would have had his congregation bowing and dipping. One could almost smell the incense as he passed.
His people, as they had once called themselves, were at a turning point that Sunday morning, as I was to understand later, when I thought back to the way those in the front pews snorted and rolled their eyes as Grandfather sailed up the steps. Purges were inaugurated in a similar fashion in Westfield’s cafeteria: an ultra-cool kid would eye the kid whose membership in the set was probationary, make the yin-yang, up-down face that signaled “dork at twelve o’clock,” and the others at the lunch table, afraid of losing their status, would also make the happy-crying face, tell the victim who was cool yesterday but today just another dork who had gotten above himself that all the seats were saved, and snicker as the outcast carried his tray to a lonely spot, too wounded to seek refuge with the nerds he had dumped.
The flame-like bulbs in the candle-like lamps along the walls must have been cued by this solemn arrival. More of Grandfather’s theater: I am the light. I imagined his people inflamed with resentment, like Protestants back in the days of Jacobite mumbo-jumbo. Grandfather’s demeanor suggested that God would show His face only at his personal request. It was plain that he was up there at the rostrum and we weren’t. They mistrusted his scrutiny of Scripture for that reason. I’d been slow to hang up one day and heard him tell my father that his board had refused to vote him traveling expenses to a Bible seminar. They said he had studied long enough to know what he was talking about.
The choir tiptoed to hold a note, but Grandfather couldn’t wait. He intoned, “I command thee in the name of Jesus” several times, at arbitrary points during the hymn, random interjections, I knew, from the reaction of the organist, who jiggled on his bench as he attempted to control the choir at the same time. Grandfather looked the part of the clergyman, consumed by the image of some wonder across town, over the river, far away. Whenever he barked, “I command thee in the name of Jesus,” the organist struck harder, waved more vigorously, and snapped a look at the madman who’d spoiled his arrangement.
It didn’t help that the good sisters and brothers in the precious choir placed more confidence in the instincts of the soloist than in the discipline of the ensemble. Grandfather’s call, “I command thee in the name of Jesus,” threw them off even further than their tendency to upstage one another. By the time they reached the last hill of “Keep Working for Jesus,” the altos were in a struggle to hold the tempo and the tenors babbled to catch up with the sopranos, one of whom glared at her neighbor and inched forward to keep herself on key. “I command thee in the name of Jesus,” Grandfather said again. Command thee to do what?—to pay attention, I gathered, but he abruptly took his throne and played with the folds of his robe.
Perhaps Grandfather had a motive in allowing the uneasy silence that ensued, a simple demonstration to the combative women in the front pews that within their spheres, the Naomi Circle, the Eve Circle, or the Eunice Circle—groups meant to review the business of the congregation and to discuss questions of faith which in reality functioned as grievance committees and conspirators’ dens—they may have been movers and shakers, but when it came down to Sunday they were lost without him, sitting around without the least idea of how to glorify His name.
No assistant pastor dashed in from the wings; the humbler
chairs on either side of Grandfather remained empty. He was in sole command of his stage and studied his robe for some time. Then he gazed into his congregation, but not at any one of us. His look fell behind us, like someone on a porch roused by the familiar greeting of a neighbor coming for a visit. He watched his invisible friend draw near a melodramatic amount of time. The organist dared a patient background chord. I distinctly heard the woman with the pinto-hide face hiss and say, “Crazy as a Betsy bug.” A brilliant, white smile of the purest malice seeped into Grandfather’s coffee face.
chairs on either side of Grandfather remained empty. He was in sole command of his stage and studied his robe for some time. Then he gazed into his congregation, but not at any one of us. His look fell behind us, like someone on a porch roused by the familiar greeting of a neighbor coming for a visit. He watched his invisible friend draw near a melodramatic amount of time. The organist dared a patient background chord. I distinctly heard the woman with the pinto-hide face hiss and say, “Crazy as a Betsy bug.” A brilliant, white smile of the purest malice seeped into Grandfather’s coffee face.
As a child I knew that Grandfather was not Moses because the illustrations in my Sunday-school book depicted a heavyset, thin-lipped beggar with snarled hair. When I saw a drawing of the young, winged Satan among muscular cherubim I didn’t know who Grandfather really was. “Let us pray,” he finally said, and threw open his arms.
The service had something of the start and stop of Grandfather’s old shoe parked in what he called, in the interest of historical accuracy, “the carriage house.” He could have scared a Marine with his stern messages from St. Paul, but that morning he read as if talking to himself, his voice barely audible above the scraping. The congregation mumbled the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed like a schoolroom aware of collective guilt. “Offertory pans” that resembled deep-fry baskets on long poles went around with much change-making and pantomime of alms-giving. The two ushers sidled away with the cash and never came back.
The choir warped a few more hymns of adoration, sometimes in collusion with the audience, and always with an experimental, piercing wail from one of the sopranos. No babies were brought to Grandfather’s church and that was as odd as traffic without
horns blaring. Through it all Grandfather loomed above us, composed, even during the insulting settling-down hubbub before his sermon. The congregation made a fuss about getting comfortable, as if to say it had been through his walks with Jesus before. I fancied that I heard a newspaper back in the old-timers’ section.
horns blaring. Through it all Grandfather loomed above us, composed, even during the insulting settling-down hubbub before his sermon. The congregation made a fuss about getting comfortable, as if to say it had been through his walks with Jesus before. I fancied that I heard a newspaper back in the old-timers’ section.
Walk Grandfather did, back and forth, four steps to one side of the pulpit, then four steps in the opposite direction. Not once did he pause or speed up or slow down. He walked, swung around, walked back, and swung around again. His words seemed to depend on his being in motion, in the way a shark can breathe only if it keeps moving.
“First of all, their religion got both of them into trouble. Daniel in one way, Elijah in another. That is the perennial fate of the serious religionist, whether his religiousness expresses itself essentially in conduct or articulates itself specifically in worship.” He was in his element, and as he pivoted, he moved his reading glasses from one hand to the other. His robe flared at these turns. Had I ever asked him to join in my old game of king-emperor and tear through my mother’s closets in search of memorial hats and bedspreads I suspected he would have done so with alacrity.
There was an aspect of the school theatrical to his style. A winning innocence went into his gliding to and fro, and also into the vainglory of his rattling on with such easy authority. Grandfather was two years away from his seventieth birthday, the granite hair had thinned, the crown of his head was beginning to show like an island in the mist, but I had a glimpse of the lithe boy he must have been, committing to memory a speech condemning the slave trade from the set of Pitt’s orations that his father had given him and that he still kept by his bed.
“Trouble is logically the lot of both types. Daniel got into trouble in the same manner that the first-century Christians did.
Publicly, like theirs, his religion expressed itself essentially in conduct. Like theirs, his conduct was open to all but his worship was private. Even as they were, he was ostracized, persecuted, and subjected to martyrdom.”
Publicly, like theirs, his religion expressed itself essentially in conduct. Like theirs, his conduct was open to all but his worship was private. Even as they were, he was ostracized, persecuted, and subjected to martyrdom.”
He was positively shining. Either his head or his glasses reflected the lights. A white dot followed him along the back wall, like the ball that bounced from word to word on the television screen so that the audience at home could “Sing along with Mitch.”
“Of Daniel the narrative relates that he was distinguished above the satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, for as much as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Like ours, Elijah’s religious genius went largely into public worship, and conduct was decidedly a secondary matter. Even as we are, he was beset on all sides by denominational antagonists, harassed by sectarian opposition and driven from the field of power. Of him it was said that he was very jealous for Jehovah, that he ran for his life and that he requested for himself that he might die while on his way to Sinai, where pathetically he claimed to be the only real one of his kind left. Of us it can be likewise said that we cling desperately to institutional self-preservation and that we run home to God with our particular excellencies.”
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