FIVE

Mother, May I?

TODAY my baby blessed. I’m the one that blessed her in the tub while I was bathing her after they dropped that ball at midnight for the New Year and all them people was there in New York on the TV, happy and screaming drunk. Imani was still up with me in the living room like there was something to see. But Aunt Mavis nem had gone, and I had took down the Christmas decorations. Mama was out with her secret boyfriend. Nothing left but just me and Imani. And then I heard some fools up the block shooting off guns. Maybe they was doing it for the New Year or maybe they just shooting like they usually be. It made me scared for Mama. I was hoping right then that she was safe inside some club someplace and not out in the street where a bullet could find its way to her. Like it was her it was looking for. Me and Imani was down on the floor anyway. But I waited until I ain’t hear no more bullets before I took her upstairs to bathe her.

I ran just a little water and got in the tub with Imani. She was busy playing with these plastic rings I got her for Christmas, and I know she wasn’t thinking nothing about a blessing. The idea had been right inside my mind to do it. I got up on my knees and made sure I held on to her real tight. I kept a good hold of her, like I was holding on to her for life, and bent her back gentle into the warm warm water. Back and back and back. So slow and easy she wasn’t even scared. Her eyes was wide open, looking at me. She was holding on to a toy. When her head was laying on the bottom of the tub and the water was hugging her face, when it was all around her body like a blanket, I let go with one hand and scooped up a little water with the other. I poured it gentle over the top of her head, and I say, Imani Dawson, I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost. I say it to her like I have the power to say it. Like I have the right to be the one that blessed her. When I know I don’t, because I’m just her mama and not some preacher that know God like he real.

Ain’t no other way Imani going to be blessed in a church. Mama don’t believe in it. She ain’t even want me to go to the christening for Eboni two twins last Sunday. Mama say, Them niggers is just looking for gifts for them babies. If you want to take the Christmas money I give to you and waste it on some gifts for them babies, you go right ahead. What the hell kind of church is giving a blessing to bastard children anyway?

I say, It’s the New Light of the Covenant Church.

It ain’t no real church, Miss Odetta say.

And I’m thinking, How you know? You probably ain’t never been there. But I ain’t say that. I ain’t even show that on my face. Miss Odetta was sitting on our couch like it was hers. All slouched down, with her feet all up on top our glass cocktail table. Mama never let me sit like that. And I was getting mad at Miss Odetta, because I know it was me that was going to have to Windex the tabletop when she left. She was drinking some malt liquor and smoking. I can’t say she a drunk or nothing. But Miss Odetta like to drink and then be coming here, talking some trash to me and Mama.

She be funny sometimes. But sometimes she be getting on my nerves. Miss Odetta say, The preacher run that church a crackhead.

Mama ask, You know him?

And she look at me all sly where I was sitting on the floor. I smiled to myself and looked back down at the table, counting the smudges Miss Odetta dirty sneakers was making.

Miss Odetta know almost any man name you bring up, and not just men from around the way or live in Buffalo. She say she know Bill Cosby, James Brown, Billy Dee, O.J., Teddy Pendergrass, Jesse Jackson, Bob McAdoo—when the Braves was still playing basketball in Buffalo, the O’Jays, Richard Pryor, and Donna Summer—when she was a man. She even say that Rick James tried to pick her up at the Golden Nugget over on Fillmore. Before he had all them braids in his head and wasn’t a freak, she say. She clean rooms at a hotel downtown. So I don’t know. Maybe she done met some of them men. But I don’t even be believing she know the men she say she do. I know Mama don’t neither, and I wonder why they friends. I half think Mama don’t even like her. I know she don’t trust her. Maybe that’s the best kind of friend to have, though. Some bitch you can’t trust behind your back. You never have to worry about her stabbing you in the back, because you ain’t going to let her get that close to you.

 

While Miss Odetta sneakers was making more work for me, she say that June Bug sell to the preacher at New Covenant. He try to say he off that crack, but he ain’t. All he is is a hype, Miss Odetta say.

Me and Mama, we ain’t say nothing. Mama smiled and Miss Odetta ran her tongue over her teeth and blew out a mouthful of smoke up at the ceiling.

Miss Odetta say, I can tell you don’t believe me. Hey, but even a broke clock right twice a day.

Mama say, Uh-huh. Now ain’t that the truth. I don’t care nothing about who preaching in there. Ain’t nothing going on in a church got anything to do with God.

Wait a minute, Mama say. God a man. Odetta, you know him?

I bust out laughing and cut a fart at the same time. Excuse me, I say. Mama laughed too. You a pig, Tasha, she say.

Miss Odetta ain’t even laugh. She lit another cigarette even though the other one was still going in the ashtray. Drunk.

Hey, now. I don’t even joke about no God, Miss Odetta say. She took a drag off her cigarette and put it in the ashtray. Matter of fact, I do know him, she say. He know ya’ll asses too.

Mama say, He don’t know me.

Yes, he do, Miss Odetta say. And he know who you sneaking around with.

Mama say, I ain’t sneaking around with nobody. And even if I am, he ain’t nobody husband.

Miss Odetta say, Simpkin ain’t nobody husband, neither. Even though he married.

Mama and Miss Odetta both laughed and Miss Odetta lit another cigarette. Drunk.

Ain’t that some shit, Miss Odetta say. I’m going to hell over some man. She reached for her malt liquor and knocked the ashtray on the floor. I rushed and got up the two cigarettes that was still burning. One of them had rolled under the couch.

Damn, Odetta, What you trying to do? Burn my goddamn house down? Mama sent me to get something to clean up the ashes. When I come back to the room with the whiskbroom, a dustpan, a wet rag, and a roll of paper towel, I was hoping Miss Odetta already was gone.

But she was still sitting there, and Mama was saying to her, You ain’t going to no hell, girl. Nigger hell is right here on earth. We living it right here in these streets. Shit, if God cared anything about us, we wouldn’t even be living in no ghetto. Mama looked up and seen me then and say, God ain’t done nothing for me. He ain’t done nothing for you neither, Tasha.

I don’t really know what God done for me or ain’t done for me. In the woods that night. In the dark. In the trees and quiet, I don’t know if he was anywhere around. I ain’t feel him inside my heart. I ain’t had his name on my tongue. I ain’t call on him for no help. When Mama say that about him not doing nothing for me, I was thinking she could be right. Maybe she was some broke clock ticking off two truths a day about my life. On that day I was a pig and somebody God ain’t even care about.

I was thinking about what Mama say about God the morning of the christening, when I got to the New Light of the Covenant Church and seen it used to be a store. Organ music was coming out of it, leaking out from under the door like water. I ain’t know if I want to go into that water with Imani. Can’t neither one of us swim. We had took two buses to get to the church, and was late because we missed one of the buses and had to wait a half hour for the next one. I had Imani all stuffed in her snowsuit. It was so much snow on the ground, I couldn’t take her stroller. So she was in my arms, heavy like a bag of groceries. I wanted to go right straight back home. But it was cold and I was tired. And most of all, I ain’t want to find Mama mouth wide open tick tick ticking and maybe Miss Odetta’s, too. I ain’t even want no static from them, so I made up my mind right then to stay. I made up my mind right then too, before I opened the door of the church, to tell them a lie about how great New Light of the Covenant was. To tell them I seen God where some Arabians used to sell lottery tickets. That I found Jesus in a place that never closed.

 

So I go in. The church is real dark, but I can tell it’s already full up with people. They shadows to me. Sitting on benches with high backs. It’s like I’ve come into a movie after it already started and my eyes trying to get used to things. Up front the preacher is already talking into a microphone. He dressed up in a white robe, and a light is shining on him from a stand he behind. I stop and stare at him, because he don’t seem real. Seem like he’s glowing in all that white, not looking nothing like a crackhead. He look like a angel that might have fall out of heaven. While I’m watching him, this woman come up next to me to show me to a seat. She’s all in white, too. She even have on white gloves and a white hat like nurses be wearing in old movies.

I can’t hardly see nothing. The windows is all painted over. One blue. One red. Yellow. Green. A light look like the moon is in the middle of the ceiling on a chain. It’s yellow and ain’t hardly giving off light. Like the moon through clouds. The whole bottom black like a piece of night. As dark as it is, I can tell a mess of dead bugs is all collected in the bottom like they in a graveyard. Looking up at the light, I trip over somebody foot. That woman catch me by the elbow and take me to a seat halfway up the aisle. I don’t see Eboni nem no place. But they could have been right next to me. The devil could have been right next to me and I wouldn’t have know it.

The organ music I heard when I was outside come rolling soft to me under the sound of the preacher voice. Like a wave. A old woman is sitting at a organ with a table lamp on top it. She has a wide hat on that look like a plate turned upside down on her head. I can’t see her face at all. Her hat make it into a shadow. Just as soft as her music roll in, it roll back out, leaving the preacher talking and the choir behind him fanning.

It’s real hot. Not just dry hot like from a heater, but wet hot like from bodies. It’s like ninety-nine people that’s wearing wool and breathing in a corner store where didn’t used to be nothing but a clerk and a few people playing numbers and buying pop. I take off my coat and get Imani out her snowsuit. I bump elbows with this boy sitting next to me. He look like he probably in high school. I don’t look too hard at him. I do what I think I should be doing. Listen to the preacher.

I’m thinking he was going to be young if he was doing crack. But he ain’t real young. He ain’t real old neither. He somewhere in the middle, and he’s steady sweating, wiping at his face with a handkerchief as white as his robe. If he on crack, he would have been all skinny. Like them addicts be when you see them out in the cold light in the morning. All dried out. They skin ashy. They lips all cracked. They eyes all flat and empty like they dead. Like somebody stuck a big old straw in them and sucked out all they life and left them walking around like monsters from a scary movie you be scared of even in the daytime. But the preacher is fat. His neck is hanging over his collar, and his face is round, shining and greasy, even though he keep wiping it. And I’m thinking Miss Odetta ain’t even know what time it is. Mama neither. That make me even hotter, and I pick up a fan from a small box stuck to the back of the bench in front of me.

White Jesus is on it. My eyes used enough to the light to see he have long hair down to his shoulders, and he’s floating up in the middle of the air with light all around him. He got on a white robe, and his heart outside his body, all red and open. On the bottom is an address for Paterson Brothers Funeral Home. Serving the Black Community for 75 Years. Brothers in Christ in Your Time of Need. Imani grab at the fan, and I start fanning so she can’t get at it. Its hardly making a difference, because Imani all on me, making me even hotter. I give her a bottle of cold Kool-Aid I’d made real sweet with sugar. She laid back and is good while the preacher start talking about how Jesus walked on some water of a lake.

Jesus just walked right on top of it, he say, because his friends was in a ship out there. I ain’t bit more believe that than there’s a real man in the real moon. The preacher say it’s true, and a shot of music come from the organ so loud, I jump and my baby drop her bottle. The boy next to me pick it up. I ain’t look at him. Just say thank you to his hand. The woman at the organ keep playing. Her head’s leaned over so for, all I can see is the top of her head. The preacher say what Jesus did was for real. The truth.

People was talking back to the preacher. I can see some of they hands. Not like real hands. But shadow hands. Raised up like you raise your hand in school. People telling him to preach it. Voices talking back from faces I can’t see. Faces that’s part of the dark. Hid from me under the yellow light of the moon hanging from the ceiling on a chain. They say the preacher is telling the truth on Jesus. It seem the music saying it too. Seem like it’s creeping into me, the way it roll. The way it come up the aisle shaking me all inside. Shaking at my heart. But I ain’t believe no Jesus walked on no water.

The preacher say, Now you ain’t got to believe me. His own friends ain’t believe him, and they seen him with they own eyes. They was up in that ship like a ship of fools. Screaming and hollering because they thought they was seeing a ghost. Now ain’t that something when you own friends doubt you? It’s got to make you think, What kind of friends I got? But Jesus ain’t say that. He ain’t think that. He say, Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid. Now there was this one man in that ship. Peter. Doubting like the rest. But he had some courage, and let me tell you this, the brother had some nerve. Because he say to Jesus, If you really Jesus, tell me to step on out there with you. Call me on out. If you so bad, Jesus. If you so real, Jesus. If you so powerful, Jesus, let me walk on out on the water with you. And you know Jesus was cool. All he say. All my Lord say was, Come!

Now, I tell you I wouldn’t have wanted to have been nowhere near Peter. Because you know the brother had to be sweating. You know the brother had to be stinking. Wasn’t no deodorant back then, people. And I can tell you Peter had to be funky with the sweat of doubt. You know he must have been. Stepping out in the water. Out in the dark. Out in the night with doubt in his heart. Now tell me people. If you really ain’t know, would you have stepped out? Walked out to Jesus?

Yes. Yes, Lord. Say the voices. Yes, Lord, say the dark. Yes, Lord, say the music. Say the music in my heart.

Now, people, don’t you lie. Would you have stepped out in the dark? In the water. In the water. In the water. In the water. Would you have stepped out on your faith? On your faith in your heart? On your faith in Jesus. On your faith. On your faith. In Jesus. In Jezzz. In Jes-us. In Jezzz. In Jes-us. In Jezzz.

Yes; Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Say the dark. Say the voices. Yes, Lord in my heart.

And then they hands turn into voices clapping in the dark. Clapping and clapping and clapping. Until I look down and see my baby hands turn into a voice. She clapping with them. Her bottle hanging in her mouth.

Faith! the preacher scream, and Imani sit up. Peter stepped out on faith. That’s all he had. And you know what, church? Peter walked on the water, the preacher say. Walking across the front of the church, the wide sleeves of his robes flapping. Peter strode on top the water, he say. Walking back the other way. I tell you, people. It was getting good to Peter. You know how it be when something get good to you, he say, wiping his face with his handkerchief. You know how it be when you got the feeling and you don’t want to come up off it. You don’t want it to stop. That’s how Peter was feeling. Feeling so good, he could have skipped across the water, he say. And the preacher skip across the front of the church like kids be skipping on the playground. His robe flying all up. His robe dancing up around his legs. I bust out with a laugh. The preacher keep right on skipping. I think the boy next to me looked at me. I feel a whole flash of heat hit me like I done opened a door to a oven. I fan even harder, and the preacher step back behind his stand.

Now you know that feeling ain’t last, say the preacher, breathing hard. Wiping at sweat that’s coming down his face like water. Just because something good to you don’t mean it’s going to last. And it didn’t take much to shake Peter’s faith. All it took was some wind, he say. The wind come up around Peter. It blew all in his face. Whipped all at his clothes, and he fell. He fell down. In the water. In the dark. In the deep. And he say, Lord, save me. Save me. Lord, save me. Save me. Save me. And Jesus, you know our Lord. You know Jes-us. You know Jezzz. He picked him up. He picked up Peter. Jes-us. Picked him up, and then he say, You know what’s wrong with you, Peter. You have little faith! Our Lord said it. To a man. That stepped out on faith. Jes-us then asked Peter. He asked, Why did you doubt me? He asked, Why did you doubt me? He asked, Why did you doubt me? And. what did Pet-er Pet-er Pet-er have to say? How did Peter answer Jesus? Who had just saved his life? Who had picked him up from the deep?

Nothing, say the voices calling from the dark.

Nothing, say the preacher standing in the light. Because the Lord spoke the truth. Faith. You need faith. In your life. In your heart.

When you doubt. As soon as the wind. As soon as the storms that fill this life. Blow your way. You going to fall. Like Peter. Like Pet-er. Like Peter.

You need faith. In this life. Because we’re like the children of Israel. Living in wilderness. But our wilderness is in the streets.

The preacher say this and pointed at the yellow window. We lost in a wilderness that ain’t been lost in us. It’s in our hearts. And done turned us into beasts. Using drugs. Selling drugs. Selling our bodies. It’s turned us against each other. Turned us into idolaters, adulterers, liars, thieves, murderers. Left us scared like children in the night.

Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord.

Left us doubting just like Peter. Wondering who can we trust? And you know the answer. Just like Peter. Jes-us. Jes-us. Jes-us. No matter how far down you fall, Jesus can pick you up, he say. Then he sung them same words. No—matter—how—far—down—you—fall—Jesus—can—pick—you—up. The choir start singing too, like it was practiced that way for a show.

Everybody in the choir stands up at the same time. Somebody starts beating on a tambourine and the choir starts stepping side to side. Rocking side to side. They feet stomping out music. They hands clapping out music. Singing that song about Jesus that ain’t mean nothing to me. Singing with words I ain’t know. Words that mean something to them.

And in the dark, I see people standing up. One at a time. Two. Three. They popping up like they been under water for a long time and was coming up for air. Like they can’t stand to be under no longer. All around me they getting up. Coming up until I can’t see nothing. Until all I can see is the dark. All I can feel is the heat, and I can’t hardly breathe because it seem like all the air’s over my head. The only way I going to get some is to stand up. So I do.

I put Imani down next to me in the aisle. She clapping, still holding her bottle with her teeth. Slinging it back and forth across her chin. My baby bouncing the way she do when she be dancing to music on the radio. Even though this isn’t no music on the radio we listening to. This music is about Jesus. Somebody Imani ain’t even know nothing about. But she act like I brung her to the New Light of the Covenant Church every Sunday. Like she one of these people I can’t hardly even see.

About all I can see clear up front is the heads of the choir. Rocking back and forth. The floor shaking under my feet. It’s moving with a beat and I can hear that music of the organ getting louder and louder. It’s all up next to my heart. Pushing past it. Into my arms. Running down my legs. It’s scaring me, how it can do that. Leaving me even hotter inside so that I’m steady fanning. Trying to cool down. Trying to find some more air.

Some woman up front. Some voice starts hollering about Jesus. Over and over. Saying, Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. And the choir start singing his name over and over. Jes-us. Jezzz. Jes-us. Jezzz. While the preacher ask, Don’t you want to come to Jesus this morning? Don’t you want to give your life to him? He gave his life for you.

I see the preacher face then real clear in the light. Glowing. While that woman steady screaming. He say, Come on up here. It’s only a short walk. Step out on faith this morning. Come on out across the water.

I’m looking to see who’s going to go up there to the preacher when I see my baby crawling up the aisle! Imani headed up front. Like he was talking to her. Calling to her. I take off and grab her up in my arms before she get all the way there. Imani don’t like it. She start kicking to get down when I think she seen what I seen and stopped. That woman hollering up front is Miss Lovey.

She right off to the side of the preacher, standing up with her body jerking like there’s something in it. Something trying to get out. The woman dressed like a nurse is there with her, and another two women dressed the same way. Fanning her. Miss Lovey say, Thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, Lord. With her hands throwed up in the air. With her face of tears turned up to the ceiling.

The preacher humming and fanning at hisself with that handkerchief real hard. So hard it come from out his hand. Now I know I ain’t crazy. I guess it’s the light or something. But for a second it look like a bird up in the air. Some white bird that had come right through the ceiling. Down from the trees. Out from the wilderness and floated down to the floor.

The preacher say, Won’t you come this morning?

Looking right straight at me. I can feel his eyes on me, and my feet stand still while the music roll hard up against me. Holding me up. Holding me there. Touching me like I want to be touched. In a place I need to be touched. Like when I used to be kissing on Peanut. That music in my heart. In my arms. That music in my legs making me think it is all right to take a step. Even if I don’t believe what it’s saying. I don’t think it’s lying to me. Like some boy lying to me. Like him lying to me that night. Out in the trees. Out in that wilderness. Like Peanut lying to me about liking me thick. Like Miss Odetta lying to me about the preacher. Like Mama lying to me about God. I think that music have truth in it, and I ain’t hot no more. I don’t have the fan with me. But I feel a cool starting inside of me. Pouring down on me like water. Coming down on me. I stand there looking at that preacher and he say right to me, Jes-sus. Jezzz. Jesus is in the wilderness. He’s in the forest. He’s in the trees.

I want to step to him. To follow his voice. Miss Lovey already there by the preacher in the light, and it seem like it might be safe to go out farther. To take a giant step like when I was little and playing Mother May I at recess. Mother may I take a giant step? Mother may I take a scissor leap? Some baby steps? Mother may I come to you? But I know Mama ain’t going to like that. She ain’t going to want to hear nothing about God and Jesus and the wilderness and how I feel just now. I’m thinking I could walk on water. That music could carry me right on up to the preacher. Where I could fall and he would pick me up. But I know if I go up there to him, I won’t be able to lie with my face right when I get home. So instead of going forward, I back right up the aisle. A baby step. A baby step. A baby step back to my seat. Back into the dark where the moonlight is hanging over me and I see in it what looked like a man.

 

All during the christening I was cool and shivering like I had just stepped out the tub from a bath. The choir was quiet and the music was quiet and the voices was quiet. They had all slipped into the dark, and the only voice there was the preacher’s blessing Asia and Aisha. The twins was all dressed in long white dresses and they was laid back sleep. Missing everything. Eboni was holding one and Miss Lovey the other one. They daddy was supposed to be there. But he ain’t even get out of jail. Eboni say he got in a fight or something stupid like that. I couldn’t tell which baby was which. But the preacher knew, because he went to each one with something look like a silver pie plate. He dipped water from it and sprinkled water over they heads. Saying, I bless you Asia Joelle Carter and Aisha Noelle Carter, in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost. Them babies ain’t even wake up. If that had been Imani, ain’t no way she would have slept through nobody pouring water on her head. My baby would’ve been all awake and paying attention. Seem like that blessing was wasted on them.

I ain’t even say that to Eboni, though, when it was over. I told her everything was real nice. Which it was. Her babies got to be blessed like that and have God looking out over them special. The Holy Ghost and Jesus too! And I was thinking, Who my baby got? Just me? I made it up in my mind right then that I was going to bless her. Because a baby need a blessing. There ain’t nothing in them books Mrs. Poole be making us read about a blessing. It ain’t nothing Mama never talked to me about. But I left the New Light of the Covenant Church knowing I was going to bless Imani, because when I took her out that door, we was heading out into the wilderness.

Mama was sitting right on the couch when I got home. Miss Odetta, too. Drinking and smoking and her feet up making work for me before I even walked in the door. Ain’t neither one of them open they mouths about the church. But the question was all on they face. Making they mouths curl up on the ends with smiles because they knew they was right. Imani was sleep by then. All wore out with the cold and wind.

I sat right down next to Mama and I say, just as big and bold as day, That church wasn’t about nothing. I say it with a flat face. My baby’s eyes popped right open and she stared right straight at me like she know I was lying. Miss Odetta actually sat up straight like her back wasn’t broke.

Mama say, I could have told you that. Money. That’s all church is about.

Miss Odetta ask, How the preacher look? Bad? Imani was still looking at me like she was understanding, so I shook my head and say I had to go put Imani down so she could get a good nap in. I was thinking of blessing her then. But I wanted to wait until we was all alone, like we was tonight.

After I blessed her, Imani got the shivers before I could get her out the tub. I ain’t even let the water out. I just got her out and dried her real good and dressed her before I even dried and dressed myself. Then I put her down in her crib with a bottle and went to let the water out the tub. Before the last of it went down the drain, I was thinking that I didn’t know if the blessing took. I hoped it did. That she got more than me. And then I took a few drops of water up in my hands and blessed myself.