Tambourines to Glory (6 page)

“I has done put a quarter in there once,” said a little old lady in the crowd, “now I wants to testify.”

“Speak, sister, speak,” cried Essie.

She came forward, and the little old lady talked so long and so loud that she held up Laura’s collection.

“My name is Birdie Lee,” she said. “Once I were a child of God, but I backslid, backslid, backslid. Tonight I’m coming home. This evening I makes my determination to stay on His side from here on in—and I mean
into
the Kingdom. Sister Laura, gimme that tambourine and lemme shake it a mite to his glory.” Whereupon that little old lady began a song and shook the tambourine—shook it so well that the whole corner started to rock and sway, feet to patting, hands to clapping, and Essie to shouting. So much rhythm swept up and down the street that some of the passing cars slowed to see what was happening—and it made Laura mad. But she did not show it. She sang and clapped her hands, too. But in her soul of souls Laura did not want any other woman on that corner attracting all that attention.

Who in the hell is this Birdie Lee? thought Laura without opening her mouth.

“I’m a sinner determined to be a saint,” said Birdie Lee, as if she read Laura’s mind. “I’m gonna join up with this band and sing and shout out here on God’s street this whole blessed summer long, and nobody’s gonna stop me, because—

Sister Birdie Lee shook Laura’s tambourine and sang the song until all of Lenox Avenue seemed like a street of gold leading right up to God’s throne. When she had finished her song and Laura snatched the tambourine out of her hand and started to take up collection, money showered into the instrument. Birdie Lee went and stood beside Essie on the curb and became a part of their church. Because Birdie Lee seemed like a good investment, commercially speaking, Laura did not object.

THE FIX

“S
ome of you-all are going to throw your money away anyhow, so throw some of it here,” was the way Laura opened her collection speech one Friday evening. This brought a laugh and filled the tambourine with bills from the sporting element.

“How you can keep your mind on money so much, and on God at all, is more than I can fathom,” said Essie gazing at Laura when they got home that night.

“God helps them that helps themselves,” said Laura. “I can’t help Him if I don’t get mine. Them pimps and gamblers and whores on that corner was all headed for the nearest bar or cabaret, anyhow, like I would be if I was them, so why shouldn’t I get mine before it goes to the paddys that owns these Harlem guzzle joints? After all, Lenox Avenue is
my
people. Let ’em drop
me a little of that money on the way to the bar, instead of it all going right to the white man. Money is color-blind—but you almost have to reach over the color line to get it. Only with the Lord’s help did we get what we got here tonight. And you, Essie Belle Johnson, you ain’t made so much money before in one day since you been black. Have you?”

“No.”

“And whose hand reached out to get it for you?”

“The Lord’s.”

“And
mine,”
said Laura. “These gospel songs is about the only thing the white folks ain’t latched onto yet. But they will, soon as they find out there’s some dough in ’em. They’ll be up here in Harlem running revival meetings on our corner, I expect, in due time. Billy Graham will have a gospel chorus and Mahalia Jackson a white manager. Just you mark my words.”

“Can’t nobody manage God,” said Essie.

“White folks’ve got the nerve to try,” said Laura. “And I don’t see nowhere in the Bible where God tells me not to pass my tambourine.”

“He driv the money-changers out of the temple,” said Essie.

“Money
-changers,”
said Laura. “Us is different. We are money-getters.”

“I visions trouble,” said Essie, and she went into a pause. Sure enough, in the midst of their singing that night a cop walked up and asked Laura if they had a license to be out there on that corner.

Laura said, “This is my license.” She reached down in her tote bag and pulled out a greenback which happened to be a ten, and put it in the cop’s hand—and that was that. Essie did not miss a note, nor Birdie Lee a handclap, and Laura’s tambourine shook
louder than ever as the policeman walked away. The next time, a few nights later, he came back with a pal in an ordinary suit, a plainclothes man of the type anybody can spot. At his appearance all the Negroes in the crowd sang louder than ever. The plainclothes man had the feeling that he might have a singing riot on his hands if he went too far, so he accepted a ten, too. But Laura and her tote bag moved off a half block from the meeting for this negotiation, out of the public eye. Meanwhile, Essie clapped the rhythm of a song while the corner continued to jump. The fix was on. For the rest of the summer whenever the Law came by for its cut, Laura would walk a few paces down the block, hand over a bill, and calmly return to her soul-saving.

By the time the summer hurricanes and the late August rains swept the trash from the gutters and the people from the sidewalks, the weather made it unfeasible to meet outdoors some nights. That did not worry Laura. When they did hold a meeting, they took up enough change to last a while.

Essie said, “Laura, what we gonna do when the cold weather comes?”

Laura said, “We’ll just find ourselves an inside meeting place. For a couple of hundred dollars under the table, we’ll rent some old apartment, buy some secondhand undertaker chairs, and raise a prayer.”

“We need a rostrum to put the Bible on, too,” said Essie. “I wonder how much does a rostrum cost. In what kind of store do you buy a rostrum?”

ETHIOPIAN EDEN

S
hortly after the first nip of frost bit the autumn air, Essie Belle Johnson, Laura Reed, and Miss Birdie Lee descended on an old first-floor apartment between Lenox and Seventh in the West 130’s with brooms, mops, and pails and proceeded to create that which is next to godliness, cleanliness, in rooms which badly needed cleaning. Three rooms, a bath, and kitchen. A front parlor and a back parlor, with big sliding double doors between, that nobody had used for parlors for years. An old brownstone converted into apartments, the parlors had become bedrooms, until the landlord put a family from Georgia out in response to Laura’s under-the-table payment and three months’ rent in advance.

When Essie pushed back the tall double doors and made the two big rooms one, she said, “Praise God, this is our church!” She
stood like a large angel with her arms stretched out between the double doors and shouted. Whereupon Birdie Lee got to leaping and jumping and shouting, too. But Laura just stood and looked at them. Finally she said, “Saints, we better get to mopping.” The next day Laura commissioned a young artist and gave him her instructions.

“I don’t care what scenes from the Bible you paint on these windows,” said Laura to the artist with the paint cans, “just so you make them colored. I want every last angel you paint to be brownskin. If you put the Devil in, make him white.”

“I thought I would put Christ feeding His sheep on one window,” said the young artist, “and the woman at the well on the other.”

“God made us in His own image,” said Laura, “so God must be black, or at least dark brown. As to the lambs, you know what color my Lenox Avenue lambs are.”

“Yes’m,” said the young man.

“So I look like a ma’am to you?” said Laura.

“No, ma’am, but—”

“I ain’t all that age-able,” said Laura, who had eyes for that artist. But the painter did not seem interested in anything but his work, and he made two such pretty pictures on the front windows that Laura said, “I think you had better paint me a Garden of Eden on the wall of that back parlor behind where the rostrum is gonna stand. Make me an Eve about the color of Sarah Vaughan. Put a diamond in that serpent’s head, and let that apple be a Baldwin. I want Adam to look just like Joe Louis. Champeen! I love that man!” declared Laura. “And let the grass be green, green, green, all around the floor level.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the young artist. “I will paint you the prettiest Garden of Eden you ever saw.” Which he did.

He also painted the rostrum gold. And he found two big red chairs at the Good Will Store for the Reed Sisters to sit in. He also suggested adding ribbons to their tambourines.

“I love that artist,” Laura confided to Essie. “He’s got ideas. That young boy could really be my man.”

“That boy ain’t nothing but a baby,” said Essie.

“A sugar baby to me,” said Laura.

“There will be no assignations in this church,” said Essie flatly. “That back bedroom behind Eden we are going to use as a powder room for the womens, and also as a place to revive them that passes out from shouting. The kitchen we will use for making coffee, tea, cocoa for our church socials. But there will be no beds nowhere.”

“I was thinking of moving one in myself,” said Laura, “and saving rent by using that bedroom. There’s got to be some kind of caretaker here.”

“The Lord is the caretaker of this church,” said Essie. “Besides, there’s a janitor lives downstairs. No need of you living in here all by yourself.”

“Just an idea,” said Laura. “But where we living now is not fit for servants of the Lord. We’ve both got to move. Since we got our church—which you just
had
to have first—to find a nice apartment for ourselves is the next step.”

“If we prosper here,” said Essie, “which I know we will.”

“And I do not want no private house,” said Laura. “I want a place with an elevator, janitor service, plenty of light, maybe even a doorman like they have on Riverside, everything for comfort.”

“You expects to live high on the hog,” said Essie.

“We both have chose the higher things of life now,” said Laura, “and it’s about time. You ain’t no spring chicken, you know.”

“Don’t but a midget span separate you from me, Laura. You just happen to be well preserved, that’s all.”

“In wine, too,” said Laura. “But you know, Essie, I’m developing a taste for Scotch.”

“Wine is a mocker and strong drink is a tempter,” said Essie.

“Even hard cider’s got a kick to it,” declared Laura. “When that serpent handed Eve that apple, he probably knew Eve could make hard cider out of it. Aw, look at that beautiful apple that artist-boy’s painted for our altar! Pretty enough to eat!”

“Eve do look a lot like Sarah Vaughan,” said Essie.

“Ethiopia’s Garden of Eden,” said Laura. “Listen, I got an idea. For our Sunday school, we gonna have some pretty brownskin cards printed too—Adam, Eve, the Lord God Jesus, Mary and Mary Magdalene all colored, black, brown, sepia, and meriney—with brownskin cherubs that our children can say, ‘That’s me!’ This is gonna be a race church.”

“We’re colored ourselves,” said Essie.

“When we add a man minister to our staff, he’s gonna be the biggest blackest coloredest minister I can find,” said Laura. “Black to the glory of God, amen!”

“I do not vision no man minister soon,” said Essie.

“Then God will have to lift the veil from your eyes,” stated Laura, “because male and female created He them—including ministers. So it would do no harm to have a man around now that we got our church.”

“Thank God it ain’t no little old storefront church neither,” said Essie.

“We’re eight steps up from the street,” said Laura.

“We’s rising,” said Essie.

Laura sat down in her big red chair at the right of the rostrum in front of the Garden of Eden. She threw one shapely leg over the chair arm and turned to stare up at the bright new picture of the Garden on the wall behind her.

“Aw, just look at Joe Louis—Adam—naked as a kangaroo behind that bush—and he’s peering out at Eve! Look at Joe!”

“Adam:
man
—that’s what Adam means,” said Essie,
“man.”

“Joe sure God is a man!” said Laura.

DYED-IN-THE-WOOL