SIX SUNDAYS OUT OF SEVEN, LIONEL PARRISH PREACHED to his own little congregation, but on the seventh Sunday, he had explained to them, he needed to be preached to. Needed some refreshment for his own soul.
He never had been to Sixteenth Street Baptist, and he wanted his family with him. Two boys and two girls, a double double blessing from the Lord. They’d missed Sunday school, taking so much time with their outfits, but he was the one who, when they were all ready to go, made the delay. He told the boys to shine their shoes with spit, and the girls to go back and daub a new coat of white over the scuff marks.
“These shoes been wore all summer,” Jenny said. “They can’t look brand-new.” But she smiled at him.
Her dress was pale blue, with a white eyelet collar and wide, matching cuffs on the short sleeves. Jenny hoped he noticed how sweetly she complied with his wishes. She hoped he thought it was good to have such a wife. She turned around on a dime to go help the children find the shoe polish, stowed under the bathroom sink.
“I do like that color combination,” Lionel called after his wife. “The blue with the white.” (He had noticed how nice she looked. It had taken him all summer, but this morning he noticed.) He added, “Think I’ll change to my blue tie.”
Glancing back, she smiled at him again. “That’s the flashy tie,” she said.
Lionel Parrish was a good-looking man, and they both knew it. Jenny didn’t mind if she just kind of quietly set him off. He needed to shine.
Crowding into the bathroom to work on their shoes, her daughters both took after him—so pretty, both Lizzie and Vicky—and the two boys looked like her—kind of homely, but that was okay. Resigned, the boys sat on the sofa to wait for everybody else. Put any man in a suit, and he looked good. George and Andy could just concentrate on their studies and be like their smart daddy in that way.
Jenny put down the toilet lid and used it to sit on. She lifted her foot; yes, there was a black streak, heavy, on the inside heel of her white pumps, where she accidentally kicked herself while she walked. She took the swab from Vicky and rubbed white over the streak, but it was too dark and still showed through. Still, the polish did veil the black mark to some extent; it was certainly less noticeable.
Lifting the pink terry cloth curtain (it matched a whole set of bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths), Jenny glanced out the window:what a fine day. Last day for summer shoes maybe. All four of the kids, ages six, seven, eight, and nine, were in school this September. A sparrow fluttered across the window. And today, as a family, an American family living right, her whole family would visi tSixteenth Street Baptist. She felt as though they had all been promoted.
But they were late. The children wouldn’t get to meet the other children in Sunday school. Jenny rounded everybody up to leave the house again.
While they drove around the park, they saw quite a few others coming in just for church who hadn’t been to Sunday school. Some girls were playing while they walked—tossing a purse like a football between them.
Lionel had to leave the car three blocks from the church, clear on the other side of Kelly Ingram Park.
“Y’all walk behind us,” Lionel instructed the kids. “Two by two. Two girls, two boys.”
Jenny knew he was proud. She felt just right. No need to hurry, get hot and sweaty. After a summer of wear, her white Sunday pumps were comfortable enough for a little walking. She tried not to let one foot kick the other. It was always the right one kicked the left.
“Jenny, I’m thinking I might apply for some grant money for the dropout kids,” Lionel said as they walked toward the church. He took her hand—she was wearing white gloves—not a smudge on them. But the thick cloth muted the sense of his touch.
“Oh, yes,” she answered. Surely he was proud of her, of her spotless white gloves, each finger enclosed in its own long little white box of cloth, the seams forming the edges. They were a family visiting an important church; two by two they walked on the sidewalk between the street and the park, the trees still green in September. They made their own little parade, like the animals marching to Noah’s Ark.
“Use the grant to hire teachers,” he said. Yes, he was proud of her, satisfied with her, she was sure of it. She was the mother of his four fine children: two boys, two girls. “Not just volunteers,” her husband went on. “Try to give more kids, anybody, a second school chance who dropped by the wayside.”
“There’s way too many dropped out,” she said because he wanted his echo. She noticed the magnolia tree leaves in the park were coated with a thick layer of dust and grime. They needed some rain to wash them off.
“With grant money, I could hire more teachers. Take more students. Maybe start something big.” He purchased the word big up from his belly, rasped it in his throat.
“You already doing so much.” Now he wanted her to plunge ahead; take the machete of her mind and make a swath through the jungle—“Pay yourself something,” Jenny urged.
The air convulsed.
Shock waves grabbed their bones, collapsed their hearing. A terrific explosion.
There. Ahead.
At the church.
Jenny froze still, shrieked, and the girls started to cry.
Without turning around, Lionel held out his arms on both sides. “Children, come close,” he said, but Jenny felt terrified by the timbre of his voice, which was surely not his own tone of speaking but the voice of God.
Huddled together, the family watched smoke and dust rising up above the greenery of the trees, yes, over in the direction of the church. They waited for another explosion. On both sides of his body, he hugged the children tight to him. Jenny stepped in front of the girls. The atomic bomb, she thought as the billow of smoke rose into the sky.
EVEN AS HIS OWN arms gathered his children, Lionel felt the arm of God across his own broad shoulders, God gathering him close, ready to protect the man who would be shepherd.
Lionel’s four children imagined the sound again, though it had ceased, felt their souls rise up a little, try to leave their bodies, try to untether, then settle back into their unwounded flesh, burrow deep into the marrow of their bones. They felt their souls scurrying from danger. Each assured his soul in hiding, Stay there, stay there. Don’t come out. Not for years and years, you needn’t come out.
Their mother thought What if we hadn’t turned back to polish our shoes? She remembered herself sitting on the closed toilet lid, her left shoe in one hand, the shoe sideways so she could paint white over the black streaks across the inside of the heel. She saw the polish applicator in her right hand, with the thick white polish impregnating the fabric of the swab; a wire stem connected the swab to its handle, which was also the screw-top lid for the bottle of polish. The lid was white to indicate the color of the contents of the bottle. Jenny pictured the applicator again and again. The shoe polish applicator had been the instrument of their salvation.
Beyond the trees was screaming and screaming.