Tambourines to Glory (13 page)

“Laura!”

“You can buy anything with money, honey, which is why I love it.”

“Sister, darling, I hope you won’t mind what I say—but don’t you think maybe money can do harm sometimes? I hope you ain’t spoiling yourself—and Buddy.”

“Do I mingle and meddle in your affairs, Essie?”

“I wouldn’t say nothing if you wasn’t my friend.”

“Sometimes friendship can rile even a friend, Sister. Just look out for yourself and your little girl, and I’ll look out for me, see! And whilst I’m on the subject of Marietta, maybe you ought to send her back down South—or else move to the suburbs, one.”

“Thanks for the hint, Laura. I reckon you feel crowded, now that Marietta’s come. I didn’t want to leave you—unless you told me to.”

“Girl, you ain’t Ruth, and I ain’t Naomi. And you got your daughter’s morals to protect. They call this thing a tiara,” murmured Laura, putting on her head a gold band with a cross in front. “Goes nice with this robe, don’t it, Essie?”

“Um-humm!” said Essie. “But I wonder what is Marietta and C.J. doing outside in the door so long. Why don’t them kids come on in here?”

“Necking,” said Laura. “I hope you don’t think C.J. really is named after Christ, do you?”

“Aw, now, Laura, them children—”

“Children, my eye!”

Laura took a few syncopated steps to the music rollicking down from above.

“Just listen at that fine singing upstairs, girl!” Laura cried. “We got some good gospel musicianers, I mean!”

“You really organized a fine band, Laura. You’re the backbone of it all.”

“Entertain people at Tambourine Temple, that’s what I say. You sing and pray, Sister, and I will arrange the show.”

“It’s more than a show, Laura. You’ve done better than you know—God is in this church.”

“I still got feet of clay, Essie. You’re the soul. But please powder your face a little before you go upstairs. That spotlight on the rostrum shows up your liver spots.”

Laura handed Essie her compact. While she stood in front of the mirror, Marietta and C.J. came running in.

“Mama,” panted Marietta, “C.J. wants to know can he take me out for a hamburger tonight after services?”

“I’ll bring her right home,” swore C.J.

“Not to your home—
ours
, I hope,” said Laura.

“Yes’m, Sister Laura.”

“I guess it’s all right, son, if she wants to go,” said Essie. “But behave your-all’s selves.”

“That’s settled,” said Laura, “so get on up with the band, C.J., where you should’ve been. Marietta, you hear that Tambourine Chorus shaking, don’t you?”

“Yes, Aunt Laura,” said Marietta getting her robe from the closet.

“Tell them musicianers, C.J., to give me and Essie a lot of noise when we appear on the stage—rostrum, I mean. I want plenty of
Thank Gods
tonight, honey, bass chords, drum rolls, tambourines, and hallelujahs from all of you-all.”

“Yes, ma’am!” answered C.J., as he and Marietta ran up the stairs to the rostrum.

“The Spirit don’t need all that ballyhoo and theatre kind of build-up,” murmured Essie.

“No, baby, but Laura Reed does. Are you all set to ascend the pulpit?”

“I’m set to ascend.”

“Now, I wonder how come them drums upstairs stop playing just when I’m ready to appear?” growled Laura.

“You know Sister Birdie Lee’s weakness,” Essie said. “I bet she’s heading down here.”

“That little old hussy we picked up in the gutter can really beat some drums,” admitted Laura, “even if she is kinder hateful.”

Essie was right. Birdie Lee came scooting down the stairs. “Excuse me, you-all, but I drunk so much beer when I was a sinner that I’m still going to the Ladies’ Room. Excuse me!”

“Hurry up, sister, and pee,” said Laura, “so you can roll them drums when I step on the stage. Come on, Essie, we’ll wait upstairs for Birdie to return. I like plenty of noise when I mount the rostrum. You can sneak in the pulpit quiet if you want to, but I want the world to know when Sister Laura Reed arrives. Let’s we ascend.”

ONE LOST LAMB

T
o make his conversion believable, Laura felt, it would have to be worked out carefully, and fortunately she had a flair for such things. The hymn she chose for Buddy’s cue to salvation was “The Ninety and Nine.” With her pianists, Laura rehearsed it several times.

“You’re around the church so much these days, officiating and helping me,” said Laura to Buddy as they drove through Central Park one afternoon, “that lots of saints are wondering how come you don’t belong to our church—how come you’re not converted?”

“So it would be good business then if I came into the fold, huh?”

“It would cover little Mama,” said Laura, “and I wouldn’t have to answer so many questions.”

“Since nothing exciting ever happens in the middle of the week, suppose I get converted Wednesday,” said Buddy, curving past the Tavern on the Green.

“Fine!” cried Laura. “That might cool Essie down a little. But listen, Daddy, after you get converted, don’t go getting
too
holy. Just learn to melt a little more. Be a little nicer to me, and don’t be so hard.”

“Don’t
don’t
me, sugar,” barked Buddy, stopping for a red light, then playfully ramming a fist under Laura’s chin. “I know how far to go, up or down, right, left, or in between.”

“Which is what I like about you,” murmured Laura. “Baby, you dig the angles.”

“All the angles.” Buddy flashed his lighthouse smile as their car purred away.

Laura never looked prettier nor sang better than she did that Wednesday night as the services drew near the close. Her tambourine lay silent on the altar. Only the two pianos played softly, very softly, behind her. Laura had expressly commanded Birdie Lee
not
to hit a tap as she sang. “And
don’t
sing with me!” The orchestra was not to play, only the soft, soft, sad, sweet pianos. There were almost a thousand people in the church, but Laura was singing to Buddy. The congregation knew only that she had asked for converts, requesting all who wanted to come to God to walk down the aisle and accept salvation.

Laura had not intended to cry on the rostrum. But as she sang, somehow in spite of herself, tears came. She found herself suddenly
wishing that she, too, were like Essie seated in the red chair behind her—truly a Christian.

Lamb! Buddy! Buddy! Tower-tall Buddy! Unsaved Buddy!

How lonely the song, how lost and lonely, as Laura turned and walked toward the rostrum where the Bernstein Bible shone.

Sobs broke out in the old rat-trap of a theatre-church and Deacon Crow-For-Day cried, “I once stood in the wilderness, too. I were lost! I were lost!” Laura pointed to the massed choir on the platform in their singing robes.

A piercing cry rent the auditorium and a woman fainted. Laura looked down at the long aisle that ran through the auditorium to the vestibule and out to the hard road of the Harlem pavements and she saw the park where the taxis sped up from Penn Station
where the trains came in from the South where the roads were un-paved and the shacks had no windowpanes and the money for the ticket North had been purchased with sweat, maybe blood, and sin, and surely sorrow:

How could Laura’s hands be the Lord’s uplifted there? But somehow they were His hands when she lifted them up. Nobody doubted that those hands were the Lord’s hands.

Look! Look! My hands! My dark hands! Shaking the brooms and mops of a nation, scrubbing and cleaning the floors of a nation, mining the coal of a nation, carting the slag of a nation, cleaning the outhouses of a nation.

So lone! So lost!

“Save me! Lord save me,” cried Buddy.

Buddy was not sure himself then that he did not mean his cry. Suddenly he got up and stumbled to the altar. Then the drums rolled—for Birdie Lee forgot what she had been told. The old man played on his flute, the trumpet blew a golden note, C.J.’s guitar sounded like a thousand strings, the tempo changed and Laura’s voice hit each word hard like a trip hammer:

Then the chorus picked up the words and a hundred voices proclaimed:

So it was that Big-Eyed Buddy became a member of Tambourine Temple. And at that moment nobody doubted Buddy’s conversion except Essie, who seldom in all her life had taken the Lord’s name in vain. But when she saw Buddy bow at Laura’s feet to beat his head upon the floor crying, “I’m saved! I’m saved! Thank God, I’m saved!” Essie said, “This is the Goddamndest shame yet!”

She then went into a pause from which nothing could move her until everybody had gone home. Then she put out the lights in the empty theatre and locked the door.

MOON OVER HARLEM

B
ig moon, golden moon, sifting its rays down through the trees in the park.

“You asked me to tell you about my mother, C.J.,” said Marietta, “so, even if you have got something else on your mind,
I’m going to tell you about my mother
. Listen!”

C.J. held her close, very close in his arms on the park bench.

“I know Sister Essie’s a good woman, Marietta, so there’s not much more to tell, is there?”

“She
is
a good woman. Like I told you, Mama wanted me to be with her for years, but she couldn’t manage it. She didn’t just want me to be with her under any kind of circumstances. I wanted to be, though, but she didn’t. Mama wanted things nice for me—a big apartment and all—and she waited until they were nice.”

“Nice,” C.J. said, his hand following the warm curve of her breast.

“C.J., I know you’re the same way—I can tell you’re good. And, listen! If you want to make love to me now—the way you want to right now, here in this park in the dark—if you was to have me now, then you wouldn’t want me maybe when things got right for us.”

“I would, I would want you,” whispered C.J., “I would.”

“Maybe you’d want me, but you’d think you shouldn’t.”

“I’d want you! I want you
now
, and I’d want you any time, all the time.”

“You might disrespect me, C.J., if I gave in to you
quick
like this. We’ve only known each other a little short while. I love you, C.J., but I want you to love me, too, not just—be with me.”

“I got to be with you, Marietta, I got to, I need to.”

“You will, sweetest boy in the world, you will—but please, not tonight.”

“Suntanned, honey-brown, honey-gold, you’re sweet, you’re sweet! You’re so sweet!”