—Grace
Their voices fall to me on the street. Call me to gaze up at the stained glass until I hear a break in the song. I skirt inside and mount the steps and, when I get upstairs, stand back as far as you can from the stage. Up front near the choir loft, a circle of members laugh and chat. Okay, okay, the director says, and the members file into the rows of the loft. The organist plays a chord. The director waves fingers bedecked with silver. La, la, la, la la, they sing, and somebody’s off-key.
I stroll down and find the pastor sitting in a front pew with a Bible balanced between his legs.
Well, well, well, he says, and sits the Bible aside. If it isn’t one of God’s glories. Let me guess, you came to lend us a voice.
No, Pastor. I say. I came to see you.
Then here I am, he says.
Do you think we could talk in private? I say.
He leads me behind the stage and pulpit, past a closet packed with the choir’s new robes, leads me into a dank room with walls lined by rusted pipes. He clears a fold-up chair and places it before a desk scattered with MLK fans and a portrait of him and his wife. He stacks the fans into a pile and turns the portrait to face me.
I need you, I say.
He loosens his tie and undoes his top button, exposing an inside collar rung with black. He asks what’s the trouble but I can’t tell him. He glides around the desk and lays a palm on my head, a touch full of a man’s strength and the fear of God. He prays, and while he does, I think, Yes, yes, there are such things as happy endings; they are wrong, those who say the happy ones haven’t lived long enough. He lifts his hand and opens his eyes and holds me in them an instant. The choir’s next hymn floats in faint from outside the walls. He asks if I’m in danger.
No danger. But trouble, I say, and compose. I am dignified, and this I want him to see. Pastor lifts a Bible from his drawer, thumbs pages, asks if he could read me a verse. Corinthians 3:17, he says: If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.
I take out the state papers and show him and watch his eyes track along as he reads. He finishes and he smooths the paper and lays it across his desk. How can I help? he says.
Pastor, I know I haven’t been here long, but if you could come, I say. I would love it if you could come and speak. If you can. If it’s not too much trouble.
Pastor folds the letter into fourths and slides it across to me. When you’re one of us, you are one of us, he says. And we take care of our own how we can.
When we leave we float past the choir and down the aisle and down steps and out of the church and onto the street, where this early spring warmth drops from the clouds. Hope to see you Sunday, he says. He catches my hands and presses them into a form of prayer. Keep faith, keep faith. We push on. We testify, he says, and glides back into the church.
Me alone hoping the choir sends another song falling. Where to next arrives as a taste in my mouth. I troop around to Big Charles’s store to buy a pop and chips and my first pack of cigarettes in months.
Thought you quit, he says.
I did, I say.
He shakes his head.
It’s one of those days, I say. But just this one time, that’s it.
He snatches a pack off the shelf and thumps it and lays it on the counter. Boy, if I had a dollar, he says. But fuck it, you good for business.
Best to pay and leave before I have the chance to reconsider. A foot out the door it’s as if I’ve wandered into a new county. The first drag stokes my chest and feels better than it has, the best it might feel ever again.