Second Sunday (15 page)

“Yeah,” Bertha answered with plenty of attitude in her voice. “You heard me as right as I heard you when you disrespected
my church.
Morning sickness,
as in pregnant. And this
bro-tha
standing right here is my baby’s daddy.”

“I knew it,” Sheba exclaimed. “Remember when I kept telling you about all those dreams about fish? I knew it, I knew it, I
knew it.”

“You sure did, babygirl,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, shaking his head, wondering why Bertha hadn’t told Melvin Jr., or even her
own mama and daddy. Sometimes Bertha Kaye acted like she had rocks in her head, crowding up her brain so bad that she couldn’t
think straight.

For a moment Melvin Jr. looked relieved that Bertha had run off for a fathomable reason. But then he got mad. “Have you lost
your mind?” he said. “Running off from me and your church to these wouldn’t-know-Jesus-if-He-smacked-them-down-to-the-ground
folks, talking ’bout how you looking for a good brother, with
my
baby in you.”

Melvin Jr. ran his hand over his Afro and shook his head. “Girl, if you wasn’t in a delicate condition, I’d sit down in a
chair, turn you over my knee, and give you the spanking your daddy should have given your spoiled self years ago. Always did
go off and do a bunch of foolishness. Used to make me mad when we was little, and you done made me spittin’ mad now that we
grown.”

Bertha started crying. “Melvin Jr., I—”

Melvin held up his hand and, backing away, said, “I don’t want to hear it, Bertha Kaye.”

“But . . . ,” Bertha sobbed. “Melvin Jr., wait!”

He stopped.

“How could I stay at Gethsemane, pregnant, alone, and Daddy the head deacon at church?”

Melvin Jr. walked over to Bertha and grabbed her by the shoulders. If she hadn’t been pregnant, he would have shaken her until
her teeth rattled. His heart ached as he asked her, “How could you think you would be alone? How could you think I didn’t
love you, girl?”

Bertha shook him off. “You never told me you loved me, Melvin. How was I supposed to know? If you didn’t love me, how could
I burden you with my baby?”

“
Our
baby, Bertha,” Melvin Jr. said, opening his arms to her.

Crying hard, Bertha fell into his arms, reveling in the comfort of his embrace.

“I’ve always loved you,” Melvin Jr. said. “Even when we were children, I loved you so much, baby, I thought you could see
it in me.”

“Well, Melvin,” Bertha sniffled, “no matter what you might think I could see, I needed to hear it from you.”

“Yeah, Melvin Jr.,” Phoebe and Sheba said together, practically in tears themselves, “a woman needs to hear that from a man.”

Ray Lyles stood there simply aghast at this drama, straight out of Catfish Row in
Porgy and Bess
, playing out in front of all of his parishioners.

“It’s a good thing you are leaving, Miss Green,” he said coldly, “or else I would have had to put you out of my church. You
deceived us, calling yourself a godly Christian woman when you were nothing but a promiscuous, pregnant, unmarried, black
girl.”

“Now, just a minute,” Melvin Jr. said, walking up in Ray Lyles’s face. “You better apologize to Bertha now, or I will knock
you clean across this stage.”

“Are you threatening me in my church?” Lyles demanded. “Ushers!”

Twelve men in dark gray suits rushed toward the stage, one of them waving a baseball bat.

“Aww-naww,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, taking off his suit coat and handing it to Phoebe. “Get Bertha Kaye out of here with that
baby. She can’t get hurt when we get to whipping tail.”

Phoebe grabbed Bertha’s arm and dragged her over to where Sheba was shedding her gloves and unpinning her hat to duke it out
alongside the men.

A couple of the ushers were taking off their coats. The one with the bat stood next to his pastor, hitting it in the palm
of his hand.

Mr. Louis Loomis reached for his belt and Melvin Jr. got down in a boxing position that would have intimidated Leon Spinks
himself.

“That’s enough,” Ray Lyles said suddenly, disturbed by a vision of headlines about a racial assault in a white church. He
knew how much blacks loved to capitalize on that kind of sensationalism.

Motioning for the ushers to back off, he approached Mr. Louis Loomis and Melvin Jr., fixing them with his preacher’s glare.
“It is because of people like you,” he declared, “that the Body of Christ remains so separate.”

Mr. Louis Loomis narrowed his eyes in anger and said, “Boy, do you really know why black folks keep the Body of Christ separate?
It’s because we know in our hearts that far too many of you cannot, will not, and don’t want to welcome us in your churches.
Today we’ve been stared at, scolded, insulted, and treated like we were heathens simply because the good Lord saw fit to make
us black. Is that what you folks call being Christian enough to unite the Body of Christ?”

Melvin Jr. said, “Don’t waste your breath on that man, Mr. Louis Loomis. Let’s get out of here.”

“You are not going anywhere until you apologize to Pastor Lyles and the members of this church,” said the usher holding the
bat in his hand, as he tried to block them from leaving.

Mr. Louis Loomis didn’t even blink. He got still for a moment and then said, “I am going to ask you only once, devil, to get
out of my way. And if you need any further instructions, I will take that bat right out of your hand and play ball with your
head like I’m one of the St. Louis Cardinals.”

The man turned red, put the bat down to his side, and moved aside.

Melvin Jr. made a point of dramatically shaking the dust from his feet in front of the congregation and then led his folks
off the stage and out of a side door. Once they were outside, he grabbed Bertha’s hand, laced his fingers through hers, and
said, “Welcome home, Mrs. Vicks.”

Ray Lyles watched the door close on Bertha Green. He could barely hear the murmurs, whispers, and “Oh dears” above his own
thoughts. Never in a million years would he have imagined blacks traipsing up in his domain, challenging him, and trying to
make him look like a fool.

“Well, as the saying goes,” Ray thought, “he who laughs last, laughs best. And I am going to get my best last laugh if it’s
the last thing I do.”

One month later, Phoebe sat at Bertha’s kitchen table eating breakfast and feeling thankful. She was so happy that her cousin,
whom she loved like a sister, had gotten back in her right mind, had rededicated her life to the Lord, and was marrying one
of the nicest men Phoebe knew.

Bertha put her hands on her round tummy. “Phoebe, you think it’s okay for me to have a big wedding being this pregnant?”

“What did Rev. Wilson say?”

“He said that I could have any kind of wedding I wanted, as long as it was in church, that I married Melvin Jr., and that
I hurried up and got married before the baby came. Miss Sheba said the same thing.”

“Miss Sheba?” Phoebe asked.

“Miss Sheba was in Rev. Wilson’s office the first time I went to talk to him about the wedding.”

“You know something?” Phoebe said, raising her eyebrows. “Miss Sheba sure does spend a lot of time talking to Rev. Wilson.
At first you couldn’t get her out of the club long enough to drive past church on her way home. But now that she’s saved,
you can’t get her out of church
or
Rev. Wilson’s office.”

“I know,” Bertha said. “I bet she got a thing for him. But I don’t think that’s so bad. Rev. Wilson
is
single, and I ain’t never seen him with no girlfriend. And as weird as this is going to sound, he look like he something
else behind closed doors. There’s some kinda smoke in his eyes and his voice and his smile when he not acting preacherly.”

Phoebe started laughing. “Girl, I thought it was just me. He does seem kinda hot underneath all that preacher stuff. And you’re
right about his voice. When he’s out of that pulpit, he comes across real smooth.”

“You know what I think?” Bertha said. “I think it would be the funniest thing if Miss Sheba and the pastor got hooked up and
she wound up being our First Lady.”

“You need to hush on that one, Bertha Kaye Green. Miss Sheba married to a preacher and the First Lady at our church?”

“It would be kind of fun to have Miss Sheba as the First Lady. Wouldn’t you just love to see her get Mr. Cleavon straight?”

“Yeah,” Phoebe answered. “That jive Negro is flat-out wrong—ain’t worth nothing and think he the man. But I don’t think he
all that much a man. He run around but when he leave a woman, he don’t seem to leave her all that sad.”

“That’s ’cause he ain’t doing much o’ nothing to those women,” Bertha said. “Because when a man lay something on you, you
can’t keep away from him, and it’ll make you act all crazy-like, especially if he leaves you. Remember when Granddaddy died?”

“Of course I do,” Phoebe answered, remembering how MamaLouise lay down on the floor next to the casket, crying and talking
about, “Kill me, God. Put me out of my misery. Lord, I cain’t go on without my man.” She grinned at Bertha. “You would act
more tore up than MamaLouise if, heaven forbid, something happened to Melvin Jr.”

“You sho’ talkin’ right on that one, Cuz. Because Melvin Jr. got what it takes to keep me running after him when we’re supposed
to be too old to run. I could be a hundred ten and I’d still be trying to trot over to that man.”

She started trotting around the kitchen like she was an old woman chasing Melvin Jr., lifting her leg up in the air every
time she pretended to catch him.

Phoebe broke out laughing, watching Bertha cut the fool, saying, “You crazy, girl. You know your pregnant self is crazy.”

Bertha chuckled and kept trotting around the kitchen, calling in a fake old-lady voice, “Come on, baby. Come on, Big Daddy.”

Phoebe shook her head. Even when they were little girls, Bertha would always do something crazy to make her laugh. Seeing
her cousin act so silly and so content, Phoebe wondered why she would run off to the American Worship Center, when it was
so obvious Gethsemane was where she was meant to be.

“Why did you leave us, Bertha? You said it was because you were pregnant. But you had to know that we all would have understood
and prayed for you and Melvin Jr.”

Bertha stopped clowning as the impact of Phoebe’s words hit her. She got quiet and her eyes filled with tears. Picking up
a paper towel, she dabbed at them and said, “Phoebe, I’ve been wondering that myself, for the longest time. I think it was
because I felt so unworthy to stay at Gethsemane. I knew better, but I went over to Melvin Jr.’s home and lost my little mind.
I am a woman of God. I was supposed to help set an example for Melvin Jr., not go and do everything I was grown enough to
do.”

Phoebe kind of leaned back in her chair and looked at Bertha as if to say, “Just how ‘grown’ were you?”

“
GROWN,
” said Bertha, reading her mind.

“I see, I see,” Phoebe said, thinking that Bertha and Melvin Jr. needed to hurry up and get married. Melvin Jr. was mannish
and Bertha, prissy as can be, was secretly a red-hot mama.

“So it was like a punishment,” Bertha went on. “It’s like I had to give up something I loved to pay for what I had done.”

Phoebe studied her cousin a moment and said evenly, “Bertha, what right did you have to take matters into your own hands?
I wasn’t aware that God had turned in His resignation letter. He still on the throne, I believe.”

Bertha couldn’t say anything, because Phoebe was right. She should have gotten on her knees and prayed or gone straight to
Rev. Wilson. Bertha had known she was headed for trouble with Melvin Jr. the very first time he stopped one of their fights
with a kiss.

“Bertha,” Phoebe said, breaking the silence. “Tell me something. When did you and Melvin Jr. ever stop fighting long enough
to get
grown
?”

“We were fussing when it happened,” Bertha whispered, embarrassed.

Phoebe started cracking up. “You and Melvin Jr. are the only people I know who would get
that mad
at each other.”

“Well,” Bertha said, stroking her chin like she was a brother on the corner. “What can I say? Some folks get mad, and
some
folks get
mad.
”

Mr. Oscar

L
earning a new church—its history, its business, and the needs of its congregation—was a difficult task under the best of circumstances.
But when a pastor was faced with the demands of an anniversary
and
constant conflict and opposition from a fierce opponent like Cleavon Johnson, the job could be near to impossible.

George Wilson had grown weary of Cleavon and his bulldog determination to control Gethsemane and run him out of the pulpit.
About the only consolation George had was his faith that somehow, some way, the Lord was going to see him through this raging
storm.

Cleavon Johnson had launched his line of attacks on George almost as soon as the man put his key in the church office door.
And the assaults had been both creative and nonstop. The utilities were cut off just when George was scheduled to move in,
forcing him to spend several days getting his lights, water, and heat turned back on. Then he had to scramble again when Cleavon’s
Finance Board let the pastor’s health and car insurance lapse.

But petty warfare was only part of Cleavon’s game. Late one Wednesday night, after prayer meeting, Cleavon sat in his car
down the block from the church nibbling on one of Pompey’s fat pig ear sandwiches and sipping on some Seagram’s. When the
last light in the church went out and Rev. Wilson had gone, Cleavon wrapped up what was left of his sandwich, drained his
liquor flask, and slipped inside the pastor’s office with the spare key no one knew he had.

With his flashlight propped on the desk, Cleavon quickly opened the pastor’s safe and found exactly what he was looking for.
Reading the papers under the light, he grinned from ear to ear.

“Umph, umph, umph. Whoo, baby!” he said breathlessly, sucking on his teeth like he was sampling something awfully good. With
the papers safely stowed in his breast pocket, he closed the safe, finished his pig ear sandwich, tossed its greasy wrapper
into the trash can, and left, chuckling to himself with pure, unadulterated satisfaction.