C H A P T E R • 36
The funeral on Saturday morning felt intimate to be so full of folks. Reverend Doctor William Garrison in white vestments put on a memorable performance from his oak pulpit, handed down from his father, in front of the backdrop of oiled wood, stained glass and draped velvet. He preached with just the right mix of gratitude for a good sister now gone and certainty of her redemption in the beyond. The sentiments were buoyed by the voices of the Resurrection Chorus, who had been called out to sing on a Saturday.
Cecelia would have approved and I was glad when it was over. He ended with a Rumi poem he said she loved: But listen to me. For one moment, quit being sad. Hear blessings, dropping their blossoms, around you.”
I’m not sure how much more of it I could have stood. I moved to the back of the crowd filling the front of his church where I could watch the mourners file out. The crowd included Adrianne, Karl and Samantha from the newspaper.
And when we got outside, I stood next to Adrianne on the sidewalk, while the official mourners including what must have been out-of-town family climbed into two limousines behind a hearse full of Cecelia in her rosewood coffin under an abundance of floral arrangements. Behind them, the procession of cars waited. I got a chance to hold hands with sister friends and share about this and that we remembered about being girls together.
Viola was kicking her black with hot pink opera gloves and a Kentucky Derby hat with the veil of feather mesh covering her face. She left in her own black car.
Gary was among the last to climb in before the sad parade headed to some little upstate town to send Cecelia home at the graveside ceremony.
“Why aren’t you going to the burial?” Adrianne asked me. “You are really family. And I thought Buddhists have a place for death.”
“I have paid my respects as best I can. But I have something else I must do.”
When the space was empty, I walked from the church down the hill. I was glad to be wearing my lace Miss Kitty boots rather than heels. They allowed me to swing through the park and cross St. Nicholas and Eighth Avenues, to join the living along the wide boulevard of Seventh.
When I found a working phone booth, I called the Reverend’s community development office and got a message machine instead of any staff who might be there on a Saturday.
Harlem Village was in a storefront between a barbershop and a restaurant—both open at lunchtime. All the activity caused me to rethink my plan. The front office was visible through the big window and it was empty. When I walked around the corner, I discovered the back doors of all three businesses were accessible from an alley. The restaurant door was open and the smells were complex and meaty. As I fingered through a couple of the keys on Cecelia’s heavy key ring, I heard pots and pans and running water and some yelling through the screen, in French.
I tried some keys at Gary’s back door, and found the two that worked. Then I stood inside for a moment waiting for the alarm to sound. When it didn’t, I moved quickly through the dark back storage room and into Gary’s inner office behind the public room with the big window. Back there, it was kind of a mess of leftover Styrofoam cups and yellow legal pads. Every one of the file drawers I checked was locked.
But some of what would go back inside the drawers formed a cluster of clutter on the desk and tottering piles on chairs, and it looked like they might give up some secrets.
With all those movie scripts in mind, I went over and locked the door to the front office and began to take notes about what I was seeing, being careful to put things back where I found them.
I discovered several folders tagged Harlem Journal and closed my notebook and turned on Gary’s copier and started making copies. Looking over the top of the machine, I saw two duffel bags dumped in the corner. Both turned out to be full of money in small bills wrapped in rubber bands in denominations from singles to fifties. I thought it was unfortunate because if they were the small dollars from Bingo or the tithing baskets it seemed like they should be treated with more respect. I was estimating amounts when I heard a woman’s voice I recognized outside at the street door speaking to someone passing by.
I turned off the copy machine, put the money back in the bags and the bags against the wall and the folders back on the desk. I rolled my copies and stashed them in my tote as I was walking through to the back door. I looked both ways before I slipped out and locked the door behind me and went down the alley and turned around the corner.
As I often did, I superimposed on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard sepia images of the days when pretty women and fancy men dressed up for the kick of strolling on Harlem’s boulevards.
Until, suddenly, the time was now and the images were danger because a man in a sharp suit with a bandage on his face was walking in the distance toward Gary’s front door, and I moved easy and slow into the doorway of a bodega and hated the rush of heat in my face at the sight of him. And when he reached the office door, Bobby Bop turned and shot his finger at me.