Tambourines to Glory (16 page)

Essie, who never stayed on the platform for this performance, rose, bowed her head, and walked off while Laura sang:

The Tambourine Choir joined with her in the singing, so loud and strong that no one heard the startled scream that suddenly echoed from the room below the stage.

“Now, comes the time for testimonials,” said Laura, “for one and all to declare his determination. And I ask you with a song:

It had not occurred to Laura that a cracked old voice would sing out behind her without missing a beat on the drums:

And at that moment the spotlight of the spirit fell on Birdie Lee who took the song away from the star. Birdie Lee could sing louder than Laura.

This just is
not
my night, Laura thought, wheeling to stare at the little old drummer in the corner above the chorus. “Well, since Birdie Lee seems to want to take over,” she said to Marietta seated in the front row of the singers, “you go downstairs and tell your mother she can return from her meditations and be a witness, too.”

Birdie Lee ceased her drumming and stood up defiantly to testify. Laura, thinking fast, took a seat in her big red chair behind the rostrum and said “Amen!” Suddenly, a serpent with a diamond in its head whispered to Laura as Birdie Lee talked.

“I want to tell you-all what it means to be a witness, a witness for God, and a witness for men and women, too,” cried Birdie. “I were in a trial once, a court trial, and I lied. I let an innocent man go to jail for a crime he didn’t do, to protect some old Negro I thought I loved. Another man, innocent as a lamb, served time. But that old Negro I lied for lived to beat up, and cut up and shoot up two or three more people. In fact, that man did not appreciate what I did for him by not telling. Fact is, he lived to kick my—excuse me, I meant to say, to mistreat me, too. That man were so mean he wouldn’t let me do a damn, excuse me, I mean not a blessed thing. I’m just excited tonight, folks. But I tries always to keep bad words out of my mouth, now that I’m a Christian woman. What I’m trying to say to everybody this evening is, that when the time comes, in God’s name, I got a determination, and my determination is
I’m gonna testify!”
And her speech blended into song, the old song that Birdie liked to sing as she picked up her drumsticks and started to drum.

She fixed her gaze on Laura and sent her voice darting down from her corner across the rostrum and out to the people.

“Aunt Laura! Laura! Aunt Laura!” It was Marietta’s voice calling shrill and frightened from the wings.

Laura rose and addressed the church. “Excuse me, saints, let me go see what little Sister Marietta wants so urgent. She’s calling. Till I resume my seat on the rostrum, we’ll turn the services over to our beloved deacon known in love to all of us as Brother Crow-For-Day. Deacon, come forward, and raise a song.”

As the massed chorus raised its hardy voices behind her, Laura walked in her scarlet robe with long sleeves flowing toward the steps that led below.

If the Tambourine Chorus had not been singing so lustily behind Crow-For-Day, those on the rostrum might have heard a piercing wail of pretended anguish beneath the stage, and Laura’s voice crying, “Essie, you’ve killed Buddy! Essie, you done killed Buddy! Oh-ooo-oo-o! I know you never did like him, now you’ve killed him! You killed my Buddy!”

JUDAS IN SCARLET

L
aura groveled on the basement floor, careful never to touch Buddy’s blood, nor put her hands near the body. “Buddy! Buddy, baby, darling! What she done to you? What’s Essie done to you?”

Sensing something wrong, from her place in the chorus, Sister Mattie Morningside came bustling down the iron steps in the room beneath the stage. What she saw caused her to stop in her tracks and shake like jelly on a plate.

“Police! Sister Mattie, get the police,” screamed Laura. “Look what Essie Johnson’s done done to Buddy Lomax.”

“Jesus, help us, Jesus!” Sister Mattie moaned on her way to the street in search of the Law.

When the three were alone, Laura turned on the silent Essie
who stood as if in a trance with Marietta weeping beside her. “So this is the way you even scores, heh, Essie? It’s
your
knife stuck in his back!”

“Laura, you know I didn’t do it.”

“There’s blood on your robe.”

“When I bent over him to see if I could help him, I got blood all on me.”

“Why didn’t you help Buddy when he was living? No, you wouldn’t do that! You wouldn’t help us then. You’re too good, too sanctified. But he was smart. Buddy had ideas, the Holy Water, them Lucky Texts, ideas for making you and me both rich and happy, but you hated him! So holy, you! Now you’ve up and committed murder! How could you do this to me, Essie? How could you do it?”

“You know I didn’t, Laura.”

“Mama wouldn’t do anything like that,” cried Marietta. “She couldn’t! You know she couldn’t.”

“That’s what you think, Little Miss Holier-Than-Thou. I’ve known your mother longer than you have, and she’s always carried a knife.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” said Essie gently to her daughter, “God will straighten this out.”

Two policemen, one white and one colored, rushed in followed by the panting Sister Morningside and Laura’s wizened little chauffeur. The scarlet sleeves of Sister Laura’s robe waved wildly toward Buddy, then toward Essie.

“Look, officers! Her knife in his back and nobody down here but her. Blood on her robe! Essie Johnson killed Buddy. Brother Buddy! Oh-ooo-oo-o! and he just got converted last month!”

Laura buried her head on Sister Mattie Morningside’s ample bosom and sobbed for the benefit of the Law.

“Don’t nobody touch the body,” said the white officer. “We’ll send for the coroner.” To the colored officer he said, “Put that woman in the squad car.” The woman his thumb indicated was Essie.

Upstairs the church was singing “Get on Board, Little Children” while tambourines shook ecstatically.

WATCH WITH ME

“If they send me to the electric chair,” mused Essie, “I’ll understand it better after I get to Beulah. But I don’t want to die, nor be put away in the penitentiary for life. I got my child to live for, I got my daughter, and I got my church.”

There were exactly twenty-four bars to her cell and Essie sat behind all twenty-four. She had never been in jail before. It was like being in hell. That night cold sweat popped out on her brow—as she figured sweat must have popped out on the brow of Christ when He was praying in the Garden.

In the dark of the garden, alone, Jesus, who had said, “Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice,” said also, “Friend, wherefore art thou come?” And Judas kissed Jesus on the cheek and betrayed Him. Peter said, “I do not know the man.” And the cock crowed.

The old melodies came back to Essie in a flood of song as she sat alone in her cell.

They plaited a crown of thorns and they put it on His head.

If Jesus could stand what they done to Him, I reckon I can stand what’s done to me. Only if I just had my Bible to read! After all, I reckon

I should have riz in my wrath and cleaned house, Essie thought staring at the walls—which is what I guess is the matter with me all these years, setting—just setting doing nothing but accepting what comes, receiving the Lord’s blessing whilst the eagle foulest His nest, till the sinner gets struck down by somebody else with my own knife in his back. I let Buddy fill the house of God with sin, and vanities of vanities take over, and Laura parade her fur coat and purr in her fine car before them poor people what brought us their hard-earned money for God’s work—to which only such a little miteful did go. Religion has got no business being made into a gyp game. Whatever part of God is in anybody
is not to be played with
—and everybody has got a part of God in them.

I let Laura play with God—me, Essie Belle Johnson—when I should have riz in my wrath and cleaned house.

ONE OF THE LEAST

T
he next morning Essie stood with her hands on the bars and looked at Marietta. “Daughter, I did not mean to ever let you see your mama in a place like this.”

“But, Mama, I got news, news, good news! They found fingerprints on that knife—just like Aunt Laura’s. And, Mama, Birdie Lee, Sister Birdie Lee went to the police and told them last night how some hoodlums had already threatened to kill her. But this morning she girded herself in the strength of the Lord, and got herself a lawyer, and went to the Precinct House and told them that when she ran downstairs to the toilet Sunday night she saw Aunt Laura with her hand at Buddy’s back, and that knife was there, too—
in his back
. Then Buddy fell flat on his face in front of her before she could get to the bathroom, and he bled. Birdie Lee
swears Aunt Laura killed Buddy herself just before Laura came upstairs for services. And Mama, your lawyer says you’ll be out soon, maybe by afternoon, quick as he gets down here with the papers. And Sister Birdie Lee, she’s outside in the Reception Room waiting to see you now, but they wouldn’t let her in being she’s not a relative, unless you say you want to see her. She’s brought you a Bible. You’d like to see her, wouldn’t you, Mama?”