Walking Across Egypt (9 page)

"Well, thanks for everything you've done."

"Let me know when there's something else."

"The only other thing I can think of is I need a new top for my well house. That thing is so old, and it leaks. So if you're looking for something to do, for some work, I'd pay you."

"Okay, maybe I can fix you up. I'll let you know. Maybe I can pick it up one afternoon, fix it at home."

Lamar and Mattie walked out into the backyard. Mattie thought about that Wesley boy and how she used to visit Paul's cousin's husband in jail. Jesus said to do that. It was clear, in the Scriptures. And that kind of visiting made sense for some balance in the world, some balance against all those people with so much money who all the time buy buy buy. Greed greed greed. Never doing anything for anybody. "You think you'll be visiting your nephew?" she said. "Wesley?"

"Wesley. Yeah, I'll probably go see him sometime," said Lamar. "Take him some cigarettes."

"Well, when you go see him, stop by and I'll send him a little something to eat." That scripture, Jesus talking about visiting prisoners and all, was "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me."

Lamar drove away and Mattie went back in the house. She walked over to the rocker and pushed it to be sure it rocked evenly. She studied the brace and the way it had been put in. Right nice work. What was that? ... Stove eye. Red hot! From making the coffee. She hurried over and turned it off. She was going to burn the house down if she wasn't careful. I declare, she thought. I'm slowing down, that's all there is to it. I could be like Aunt Alba; she just all of a sudden started slowing down fast. Or a stroke, like Turnie. That could happen to me. It could happen any time. But I think I got a few good years left. Of course there's Mrs. Bledsoe who slowed down real slow and nobody thought she would ever wear out and Frances came to live with her which is something I don't know about. I don't think I'd want Robert or Elaine here. They wouldn't be happy. They need a chance to have families of their own. Besides, I don't think I want to live with anybody. I've lived with somebody all my life and took care and took care and took care and I've done a good job of it: clothed and fed and cared for a husband and two children for all my life and now I'm enjoying sitting at night and reading my Bible and I don't want somebody moving in. But look at Mary Belle there in a rest home, and Phoebe Sue and Dorcus and they just sit there and I can see Phoebe Sue and Dorcus as clear as if it was yesterday riding in that mule race, their faces red and them laughing up a storm, bouncing up and down on them mules and now there they sit every day that goes by, there they sit. Of course some of those places are right nice I suppose.

Mattie went into the living room and sat at the piano and played "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." She looked at the pictures on the piano.

Well, after all was said and done, after all was said and done, she had Jesus. She would always have Jesus. But. But it wadn't his way to come in and keep you company. You couldn't cook for him.

On Sunday morning Mattie woke early and couldn't go back to sleep. She was thinking of that boy. Wesley. She pictured him sitting at a picnic table in the prison yard looking through that tall fence with the barbed wire along the top. She saw Lamar—with his hat on—walking up to Wesley and placing a paper sack with a piece of her apple pie in it on the table in front of him. He'd open it and look at it and maybe not even be interested. What an awful way to live even if you are young. But he might deserve prison: stealing a car, taking something that didn't belong to him. She bet the food he got wasn't very good.

It was still dark outside, but she couldn't sleep. She stretched to see how sore she was. The soreness from falling through the chair was almost gone. It had been almost a week. Of course they would all know about it in Sunday school this morning. They would all be asking her about it and she'd have to tell them all. Then there would be those in other classes who'd need to hear before church, and then those who still hadn't heard first-hand would need to hear after church. She'd tell them all she was slowing down and didn't quite have the memory she used to have. She could say all that without complaining really. She didn't intend to start complaining. Not like Sarah Mae and that new woman who talked about her fingers. Mattie had more finger problems than that woman ever did. Mattie's thumb and index finger on her right hand wouldn't come together with any strength at all. But she didn't complain, except to Robert and Elaine, occasionally. She reserved the right to complain to her own family.

She stretched again. She would fix a slow breakfast, scramble her eggs for a change and fix some grits. Maybe she should start eating grits every morning—to keep from falling off so fast.

She threw back the covers, stood; yes, the soreness was about gone—because she'd kept moving. She wasn't about to give over to a little fall through a chair.

She put on her housecoat and sweater and went to the bathroom. Thank goodness she'd always been regular. No problems there. Because she ate so well. Anybody who ate all the vegetables she did couldn't help but be regular—didn't need Milk of Magnesia like Alora did. And never the first hint of a hemorrhoid.

She walked into the kitchen, turned on the light and saw through the window that the eastern sky was dark red. It was her favorite time of the day. She stepped out onto the back step. It was cool. She also liked it when it was cold and she could stand there taking in the cold morning while the sky was red, and time stopped, stood still, and rested for a minute. People thought that time never stood still, except in Joshua when the sun stood still; but she knew that for a minute before sunrise when the sky began to lighten, showing dark, early clouds, there was often a pause when nothing moved, not even time, and she was always happy to be up and in that moment; sometimes she tried to stand perfectly still, to not move with time not moving, and it seemed that if she were not careful she might slip out of this world and into another. That made the moment risky, bright shining, and very still at the same time. She hoped that when her time came, it would be close to morning, and she could wait for the still moment.

Mattie's Sunday school departmental assembly—one of the three adult groups—was held in a large meeting room on the second floor in the back of the church. Small classrooms fed into the large room. After the twenty-minute assembly the group always split into same-sex and -age groups and went into the small meeting rooms where they held classes for about thirty minutes.

The department president, Martha Bowers, standing behind a podium, called the assembly to order and opened with a prayer. Officers had been elected two Sundays ago, and Mattie was now vice-president. Of course, a vice-president never had to do much, unless the president was sick, but Mattie liked the sound of "vice-president."

Mattie sat in her usual place on the second row. After the prayer they all stood and sang "The Church's One Foundation." Then Martha announced that Clarence Vernon, the head deacon, would be around any minute with an announcement about the Lottie Moon offering. Lottie Moon was a missionary who had worked long ago in China, and in whose name money was collected for foreign missions each year. For the past five years, Mattie had been in charge. She was sure that this morning Clarence would announce that she would again be in charge. Her job would be to call up the president of each Sunday school assembly in the church and tell them where to pick up the envelopes. Then she would coordinate the whole affair, collecting money and making reports to the church treasurer. She would visit each assembly on Sunday mornings and make announcements and reports. Then at Christmas the money would be donated to missions.

When Clarence came in, he sat beside Mattie while waiting to make his announcement. He leaned over and whispered, "Mattie, you do want to do the Lottie Moon again this year, don't you?"

Mattie looked at him, smiled, nodded yes.

"You do such a good job."

"I enjoy it."

Clarence stood and made several short announcements, the last one being that Mattie Rigsbee would be heading up the Lottie Moon again.

Martha then gave the lesson, another hymn was sung, a prayer said, and the meeting broke up so people could go to their small classes. Mattie said a word or two to several people on the way to her class. When she arrived, three of the regulars were already there: Martha, Beatrice, and Carrie, the class president. The others usually lingered in the assembly room a little while.

As soon as Mattie cleared the doorway, before she even had a chance to sit down, Beatrice said, "Well, Mattie, I hear you got stuck in your rocking chair." Mattie had known Beatrice would be the first one to mention it. Beatrice was the secretary-treasurer of the class, and knew everything about everybody and was prepared at the drop of a hat to say anything about anybody. Her specialties were sickness, soreness, death, separations, miscarriages, and car wrecks.

Mattie didn't like Beatrice. "That's right. I left the bottom out. My memory's getting so I can't remember a thing."

"Lord, have mercy, I can't remember nothing no more either," said Beatrice.

"I can't either," said Martha, smoothing her dress under her legs, the wicker in her chair bottom popping. Martha was direct. She got to any point immediately with a straight look, straight mouth, straight head. Mattie liked her, felt secure with her, enjoyed speaking her mind to her. "Can't remember nothing no more," said Martha, staring without a smile at Mattie, and ready to talk.

"Somebody was telling me something about getting old and buying bananas," said Beatrice. "Something about green bananas."

"Johnny Arnold," said Martha, "told about how he was getting so old he was afraid to buy green bananas." She smiled.

"That was it!" said Beatrice and laughed.

Carrie and Mattie smiled.

"Don't you get it?" Beatrice asked Mattie.

She didn't get it but she wouldn't admit it. "Yes, I got it."

"You might die before they get ripe," said Martha.

"Right," said Mattie. "Well, that's like Old Mrs. Bledsoe. You heard about that. She said—"

Beatrice interrupted—"if she'd known she was going to live until she was ninety-four she would have bought a new bed."

She interrupted, thought Mattie, and on top of that she got it wrong. "What she said was," said Mattie, "'If I'd known I was going to live this long I'd of bought a new mattress.' That's what she said. I was there when she said it."

Beatrice looked stunned, then recovered.

"Let's get started," said Carrie. The others had come in. "Beatrice, would you lead us in a word of prayer?"

There, I went and did it, thought Mattie. Lord, forgive me. I shouldn't get mad at her like that. Dear Lord, please help me to control my anger and to love and tolerate Beatrice, a Christian. At least she says she is.

Mattie thought about Lamar and Wesley. She wondered if they were saved. Surely Wesley wasn't. Maybe Lamar, but she doubted it: the way he kept his hat on in the house indicated something, a lack of something. But maybe he'd been saved when he was a little boy, the way Robert had been saved when he was only nine. And Robert once sang the most beautiful little solos with the Primary Choir and then in the Junior Choir; but then he lost complete interest in singing. Seemed like he was embarrassed, and that was the last thing in the world she had wanted to happen. A man embarrassed to sing is a man incomplete somehow. Paul would never sing either. She never heard Paul sing a single word for as long as she knew him—over fifty years. And she'd heard him say only one prayer, and that was a blessing, at a family reunion when Steven Purvis had been asked by somebody who didn't know what they were doing to say the blessing and Steven, panic in his face and eyes, had turned to look at Paul standing beside him and without leaning over to Paul or moving his head said, "I can't pray!" and Paul had closed his eyes and said "Dear God, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, Amen." Mattie had felt almost stricken. It was so unlike Paul to say a prayer out loud. Surely he'd prayed silently; he was a Christian. But she'd never known when, or what for.

Beatrice was still praying. God forgive me, thought Mattie. If I get mad at my Christian friends what would I do with non-Christians. I'm supposed to love them too, even the communists. There might be some communists, thought Mattie, that I'd like more than Beatrice. At least if they talked I wouldn't know what they were saying. But if it was some Russian man my age who had a shop and made things, maybe sharpened saws and made little things out in the shop, had big hands, wore rough clothes and would come in and sit down beside me on the piano bench and sing a hymn with me, I know I'd like that man better than I like Beatrice whether he could speak English or not.

"Let's open our quarterlies, page forty-three," said Carrie, standing behind a podium in the small room. The others sat in their wicker-bottomed chairs. Two windows were along one wall. A bulletin board and a chalk board were along other walls. "Mattie would you read the scripture?"

Mattie found and read the scripture printed in the quarterly at the beginning of the lesson. It was from Jeremiah 31, about the new covenant that God was to make with the house of Israel, and included "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Mattie had thought about that Wesley boy when she studied it last night, and had wondered where that other scripture about "the least of these" was—doing unto the least being the same as doing for Jesus.