Tambourines to Glory Read online

  “Remember Elder Becton? Remember that white woman back in depression days, Aimee Semple McPherson, what put herself on some wings and opened up a temple and made a million dollars? Girl, we’ll call ourselves sisters, use my name, the Reed Sisters. Even if we ain’t no relation, we’re sisters in God. You sing, I’ll preach. We’ll stand on the curb and let the sinners in the gutter come to us. You know, my grandpa down in North Carolina was a jackleg preacher. And when I get full of wine, I can whoop and holler real good. Listen to this spiel.”

  Laura jumped up from her chair with gestures. “I’ll tell them Lenox Avenue sinners,” she said, “you-all better come to Jesus! Yes, sinning like hell every night, you better, because the atom bomb’s about to destroy this world, and you ain’t ready! Get ready! Get ready! I say, aw, let Him take your hand. Yes, sisters, brothers, He’s got mine! Let Him take yours and walk with Him. Now, sing with me:

  “When the darkness appears,

  Precious Lord, linger near.

  When my life is almost gone,

  At the river I stand,

  Guide my feet, hold my hand.

  Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.

  “Grab the chorus, Essie. Sing it, girl, sing!”

  Essie’s voice rose full and persuasive, so persuasive, in fact, that melodically she persuaded herself and Laura, too, that they ought to go out into the streets and move multitudes.

  “I sure wish I had me some more wine,” sighed Laura when they had finished singing.

  “The Wine of God is all we need,” Essie said. “Laura, I’m gonna pray.” She knelt down with her arms on the chair where she had been sitting. “Lord, I wish you would take my hand. Lead me on, show me the way, help me to be good. Help Sister Laura, too. And help us both to help others to be good. That I wish in my heart, Lord, I do.”

  “Amen!” cried Laura with her hand on her empty glass.

  “‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’” murmured Essie.

  “And never catch up with you unless you get up and do something yourself,” said Laura.

  2

  BLUE MONDAY

  The next morning, which was a blue Monday, when Laura could hardly scrape together enough change to combinate a number and put a dime on the lead, Essie said as she washed the percolator top, “I prayed again this morning for what we was talking about last night.”

  Laura, who had left her bed unmade down the hall in Number 7 to tap on Essie’s door in the hope of a hot cup of coffee, looked puzzled. “What?”

  “That church we gonna start,” said Essie. “I believe God answers prayer. In fact, that church is started.”

  “Started? Where?”

  “Right here in this room with you and me.”

  “Then lemme pass the collection plate,” said Laura, “because I dreamed about fish last night—782—and that is a good number to play. Here, put some change in this saucer, and I’ll put the number in for you, too.”

  “I said I was praying, Laura, not playing. If we’re gonna save souls, have I got to save you from sin first?”

  “Oh, you talking about starting a church?” said Laura, her mind clearing of sleep a little. “Well, as soon as the weather warms up a bit, we’ll buy a Bible and a tambourine and plant our feet on the rock of 126th and Lenox and start. But right now, I want me at least forty-five cents to work on these numbers. Suppose fish jumps out today? If it did, and I didn’t catch it, I sure would be mad. Girl, pour me one little drop more of that coffee. If I could just find that old Negro who’s liking me so much, so he says, I might could maybe get a dollar or two. But he never does come by here on Monday.”

  “Laura, you oughtn’t to be encouraging that married man to be laying up with you.”

  “He encourages his self,” yawned Laura. “Can I help it if I appeal to him whenever he can get out of his wife’s sight? The Lord give me my smooth brown body, girl, and I ain’t one to let it go to waste. Excuse me, I’m gonna comb my hair and go downstairs and put these numbers in. A small hit’s better than none. But I sure hate to be so poor! Maybe that Chinese that winked at me from behind the lunch counter will feel in a lending mood this morning.”

  “A Christian woman taking up with a heathen,” said Essie.

  “On a blue Monday morning I would take up with a dog,” said Laura, “if the dog said, ‘Baby, how about a drink?’ Soon as this coffee dies down, I’m gonna need something a little stronger.”

  Laura’s carpet slippers heel-flapped their way down the hall. All the nearby kitchenettes were quiet. Everybody on that floor except these two women had gone to work. Essie sat down to think, and sat a long while, which was what she liked to do—just sit. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, noon. But today, she kept seeing in her mind’s eye herself singing to more and more people on a corner, then in a gospel tent, then in a church, and people weeping and shouting and fainting and coming to Jesus because of her songs, and a railroad ticket, yellow and very long, that she was folding and putting into a letter and sending to her daughter in Richmond writing, “Honey, baby, daughter, child, come to your mother,” and she was signing the letter with her own name, Essie. And suddenly she was shouting all alone by herself, “Thank you, God! Thank God! Thank God!”

  Then she got up and started sweeping the floor, and imagined it was the living room of a nice apartment, and she was getting ready for Marietta to arrive. She looked out her rear window three stories down into a courtyard full of beer cans and sacks of garbage and saw, instead, a pretty view of a park—because where she lived now with her daughter was way up on the hill and there were trees outside the apartment windows. “It’s all because of You, Lord,” she said, “and because I am walking with God. Yes!” And she began to sing:

  “Just a closer walk with Thee,

  Grant it, Jesus, if you please.

  Daily walking close to Thee—

  Let it be! Let it be! Let it be!”

  Broom in hand, she stopped. “I wonder if that wine-head of a Laura has sure enough converted me? Thank God, I see some kind of light right now!

  “I am weak, but Thou art strong.

  Jesus, keep me from all wrong!

  I’ll be satisfied as long

  As I walk close to Thee!”

  “Sing it, girl,” cried Laura, breezing past in the hall to find the Chinese counterman in the Japanese restaurant, her numbers writer, and somebody on the corner to buy her a bottle of wine.

  Essie sat down again in her chair, filling it amply, and again her mind was sort of empty as it usually was. But the sun came in bright at the window, brighter than the sun had been for many months. It was spring. Vaguely Essie thought, I’ll raise the window in a minute. But she sat a long, long time before she did raise the window. Essie’s life had been full of long, long, very long pauses.

  3

  VISIONS OF A ROCK

  “Well, it did not hit,” said Laura, “no parts of it. The number was 413—so I did not catch the lead, I did not catch the second, and I had no change to put on the third. That Chinese man did not feel so well today. What did you do all afternoon?”

  Essie had a report to make. “I priced a Bible.”

  “Have I done dreamed up something that you are really taking serious,” said Laura, “about this church?”

  “Been passing the store for months and just never noticed,” said Essie, “that stuck back up there in the window of that furniture household shop, midst stoves, hassocks, floor lamps, and overstuffed chairs, is a great big Bible leaning up against a sign that says: GOLD-EDGED BIBLE ON INSTALLMENT PLAN—Two Dollars Down, Two Dollars a Month. That Bible costs eighteen-fifty.”

  “Where’s it at?” asked Laura.

  “Bernstein’s,” said Essie. “Big beautiful gold-lettered Bible. We might as well buy a big Bible.”

  “I agree,” said Laura. “If I hit tomorrow, I’ll put down the first payment.”

  “No,” said Essie. “Let’s start this thing right. When my Welf
are check comes, I’ll put down a payment. But let’s not use no numbers money to found our church.”

  “You are getting holier-than-thou already,” said Laura. “Girl, I believe I’ll go take a little nap before nightfall. Old daddy-boy-baby might come by to keep me awake after dark. Dig you remotely, doll. So long!”

  Concerning Laura, “She’s got a fine brown frame,” observed the men in the block. “A hefty hussy,” said the women, “more well-built than plump, but there’s enough of her.” From behind, young boys might whistle, “Whee-ooo-oo-o!” But if Laura turned around they saw she could be their mother, but a good-looking mother for true. When Laura got dressed up, her exterior decorations hung well. Sometimes emerging from the Rabbit Warren with her finery on, Laura looked good. Well ahead of her came her breasts, natural—like singers’ voices in the pre-microphone days, projecting without artificial aid—colloquially termed by the local Lotharios headlights, forty-fours, easy riders, daily doubles, Maes, meaning West. Concerning her legs, climbing stairs had kept them sturdy, dancing kept them graceful, pride kept them in runless stockings chosen to match her cocoa skin. Laura would buy stockings when she couldn’t pay her rent. If a man said something nice about her legs on the subway, she would pull her dress down. Otherwise when seated she was careless. Guile, not modesty, generally prevailed.

  Concerning the ancient building where Laura and Essie lived, well, if you didn’t see all those names under the different bells, you wouldn’t believe so many people lived there: B. Jenkins, Sarah Butler, J. T. K. Washington, Ben Wade, Mrs. E. B. Johnson (which was Essie), Katie Huff, Jefferson Lord, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Titter, Sisseretta Smith, Ed Givens, Laura Wright Reed (which was Laura), and so on and on into the dozens and dozens, sometimes three or four people listed in the same room. It was an old apartment house in which a door opening onto the central hall had been cut directly into every room, and inner communicating doors sealed. Then each room no matter how small had been made into a kitchenette with a gas burner (fire laws notwithstanding) plus a sink installed in a corner for washing both face and feet, pots and privates, clothes, cutlery, dogs and dishes. The building had a name, the Marquette, but the neighborhood called it the Rabbit Warren, for short just the Rabbit.

  Late that afternoon in the Rabbit, through the still-open window facing the areaway, Essie could hear kids coming home from school, romping and playing on other floors in rooms where parents had not yet come home from work. Alone, youngsters could make as much noise as they wished. Sometimes they made plenty. Essie did not mind. She kept thinking of her own child as still a little playful girl—only her daughter couldn’t be like that any more. Marietta was sixteen. Essie had not seen her for four years, but Grandma had sent her a picture when the girl came out of junior high school, a golden-faced kid, all in white looking mighty pretty. Grandma kept that child looking washed and clean all the time.

  She must be a church girl, thought Essie, because them people are religious down South. Well, when Marietta gets here, she will find me religious, too. Never was much of a sinner, nohow. I can’t go for sin like Laura. Fast life tires me out.

  Essie got up to pull down the window, since the sunset was chilly. She put on her coat, a shapeless, heavy old black coat, and sat down again. From the pocket of her coat she took a long pearlhandled knife, pressed a little button in its side and a thin sharp blade shot out. With the blade she began to clean her fingernails—which was about the only use she had ever had for that knife, although Essie carried it in her pocket when she went out, for protection, she said, against robberies and rapes and suchlike calamities. But nobody had ever even tried to snatch Essie’s pocketbook, let alone otherwise accost her rather corpulent person.

  Once in a while a man leaning on a stoop might say, “Big mama, you look good to me.” But none had as yet tried to drag her into a hallway to rob her of her virtue, or pull her down a janitor’s steps into a furnace room—where she had heard tell many a good woman had surrendered to males unknown. Had any man laid hands on her, “I have my knife,” said Essie, as she used it to clean her fingernails.

  When Essie had finished, she clicked the blade back in place, put her protector in her coat pocket, and sat for a long spell in the gathering dusk before she got up to turn on the light, wash the rice, and start to cook herself some supper. Might be maybe Laura would add something to the pot, and they would eat together. It was rather early in the week for Laura’s Old Man to be coming by.

  I need some rock on which to stand, suddenly thought Essie leaning over the stove. That Laura’s got several rocks of an earthly nature on which she leans, men, numbers, likker, even if they do slip out from under her sometimes. While me, I just set, and set, and set. “But now I see me a rock, and that rock is Jesus!” cried Essie aloud.

  Suddenly she was startled that her thoughts had become words rocking about the room, words spoken so strongly and with so much conviction that she almost dropped the spoon with which she stirred the rice.

  Then much more quietly and quite aware of the fact that she was talking, not merely thinking, “A Rock,” she cried, “I visions me a Rock.”

  4

  NATURALLY WEAK

  “Old raccoon, you,” cried Laura, “if you can’t bring me nothing, then don’t come by here.” Essie heard her friend’s voice all the way up the hall. “Just stay home, Negro!”

  “So you want me to stay home, huh?” growled the man.

  His walking papers, Essie thought. But they don’t have to let the world know every time they fall out. Some people are too broadcast.

  “I can’t come handing you out money every time I look in your face,” barked the old raccoon.

  “I know somebody who can,” cried Laura. “And he’s a young man, too.”

  Laura’s lying, thought Essie. Laura gives that young man money herself every time her Welfare check comes. Uly do not give her a thing but a hard row to go. Laura is just trying to collect from that old man to keep that young man on her string. That Laura, mused Essie as she cut a great big piece of Cushman’s cake to go with her third cup of tea. Laura’s hungry, that I know, and since that old man did not bring no change with him, this being Monday, I know she just wants to get rid of him quick so she can come on in here and eat. Payday, he’ll be welcome back.

  I need some rock on which to stand,

  Some ground that is not shifting sand …

  Somehow the song kept running through her mind that she had heard so often on a gospel program over the radio from Jersey City. Everywhere, Jersey City, Richmond, New York, everywhere she had ever been, everybody needed some rock on which to stand. Essie found herself eating and singing. The song was beautiful and cool in the room when Laura tapped lightly and tripped on in. Laura said, “Well, all right, now!” and joined in the song until her food got warmed up. Meanwhile some of the other tenement dwellers opened up their doors to listen since it sounded as if there might be a small revival meeting going on in the room, and Essie heard somebody say, “That singing sure sounds good!”

  Laura said, “You see, girl, I’m telling you, this religious jive is something we can collect on. Look here, ain’t you got no meat or nothing to go with this rice jive here? I been wrastling with that old raccoon for the last two hours, I’m hungry. Maybe Uly will be by about ten or eleven o’clock—my heart, my lover-man for true! Ain’t we got a ham hock left from Sunday I can put on my plate?”

  “Your memory is short,” said Essie. “You know we cleaned up that ham hock and greens yesterday. Saturday, Sunday—how long you expect one pot of victuals to last?”

  “The relief investigator thinks one pot ought to last a week. I sure will be glad when we ain’t no longer beholding to them people. My investigator is colored, too—talking about she don’t see why I can’t get along on the money I draw. Also, as healthy-looking as I am, why can’t I keep a job? And me, I done stooped myself over, uncombed my hair, tottered, and tried to look as sick and consumptive as I could for her benefit. We’re both
of the same race, she and me. Why does she begrudge me them white folks’ money? Essie, you could at least have made some gravy for this rice. Even if I am from Carolina where it grows, I like a meat-flavor with rice, girl. I like meat! If 782 had just come out, we could have had pork chops tonight. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day. I’m sure gonna send Ulysses Walker for some wine when he gets here. Lend me a half, please.”

  “Precious Lord, take my hand …” Essie began to hum.

  “Um-hum!” agreed Laura, “help Sister Essie, Lord, do—so she can help me—because, I swear, for some things I am weak—men, wine, and something fine—just naturally weak.”

  5

  WHEN SAP RISES

  “When the sap rises in the trees, it’s spring,” said Laura. “Babes and boys start holding conferences in which actions speak louder than words. Aw, do it to me, lover!”

  “I wish you would not talk that way, Laura, and you supposed to be preparing yourself for the ministry.”

  “I’m a she-male minister,” said Laura, “and there ain’t nothing in the Bible says male nor female shall not make love. Fact is, Essie, the very first book is just full of begats, which runs from Genesis through to Tabulations.”

  “Revelations,” said Essie. “I read the Bible when I were a child.”

  “Which were a long time ago,” murmured Laura.

  “Just because I’m a few years older than you,” said Essie, “you don’t need to reflect on it. But if we’re gonna start them meetings we been talking about, you ought to start reading up in the Bible.”

  “Big as that book is, don’t nobody know all of what’s in it,” said Laura. “But I’ll take up reading when the time comes. All I need is one text to start me out. And I know one, Jesus wept. Also I know another thing He did do. He turned the water into wine—and ever since then somebody’s been drunk. Thank God, I seldom go too far.”