Violet, Sara and Naomi in their jean overalls and colorful hair scarves begin to slather my halls in this horrid shade of green. “This paint makes me think of Caribbean waters,” Naomi says. “Just floating with the sun hitting your skin. The color’s relaxing.”
Though very different, the three girls are harmonious when together. Familial blood does not bond them. There is something deeper shared, maybe past lives or common troubles. Whatever small and pure miracle, these girls found one another and became as close as the Old Testament Hebrew boys from the Book of Daniel. Despite their shared knowledge of how empty and cruel the world can be, they are sisters and fierce protectors one of the other.
From their earliest years, they learn together, play together, fight and reconcile. And there is a phrase that means how they love one another—“Forever and to the end.” That’s what they say instead of “I love you.” When uttering this phrase, only they know what they mean. The three girls have something all their own. The world takes so much, sometimes words are all one can possess.
It is their secret to keep, one of many. Some of their confidences, schoolgirl crushes, skipped classes, are cotton candy light, sweet pink fluff, easily consumed and devoured in giggly pleasures. However, in the deep, uncompromising mystery of friendship, there are the things they keep to themselves for the sake of each other. Things, that for Sara, are acutely destroying her.
This damage is not quick. It is slow and painful as the stripping of thin layers of skin. Bearing this fire, this silent torment, changes Sara in ways her friends know. Violet and Naomi suspect something foul. Sara’s father’s hand lingers too long on her waist. Naomi saw him kiss Sara, like she was a woman. Naomi closed her eyes and quickly prayed, and opened them again. She saw the same thing. She told Violet the next day.
But what could the two of them do? What could they say to their dads? Their congregation? Naomi would be told she didn’t see what she thought they saw. They’d be labeled troublemakers. Their families spoken about. Lord knows what would become of Sara! You can’t go against a pastor, not with accusations of something so unspeakable.
So they suffer in silence with her, but try providing distraction and comfort and laughter and happiness whenever and wherever they can offer it. Painting my hallways this atrocious color is what they concoct for now, hoping they can get her to talk—if that’s even a possibility.
Sara’s brush batters my wall as she slashes up and down, crisscross with no thought for technique. In her bag, a cloth doll named Louisa sits patiently with black button eyes in a pretty green dress and perpetual sewn-on smile. She takes the doll almost everywhere, a reminder her mother will always watch over her.
“Girl, do you have to take that doll with you all the time? We’re almost twenty, people are starting to ask questions,” Violet teases.
“It reminds her of Ms. Sophia. Leave it be,” Naomi warns, her frame barely five feet, she rises on her tiptoes to reach the farthest corner on the northeast wall.
“Don’t worry about what’s in my bag,” Sara says. “Worry about getting these walls painted like the pastor, my father, asked.” It’s the tone in which she said pastor and my father that causes Violet to grit her teeth. A few loose strands of Sara’s light brown hair are ornamented by tiny speckles of green paint.
“I’d never choose this color,” Violet continues. “This paint makes me think of mint ice cream that melted after it hit the ground.”
“You like green!” says Naomi.
“Not this green!” Violet replies. “But this was the only color he agreed to. Like he’s the king of England or something. It’s green, who cares what shade we use for Revival?”
Every year for three nights, Revival was held at different churches in the Chicago community. This year it is held within my walls. Thursday to Sunday. Preaching and singing and praying will take place with renewed vigor under my roof. Revival is a tradition. It is a movement that sparks other movements of equality. Revival lures people out of gin-soaked taverns and dance halls with the opportunity of salvation for sins past and present.
Other people from churches within the city and beyond arrive to celebrate or mourn or release whatever pent-up anguish is harbored in their lives. These are people to whom the indifference of the world felt many times over is too much to bear. Brown bodies will arrive through my doors, seeking an impossible solution to injustices not provided by the nation at large. But the relief they feel need not be complete, just enough so that they can return to their normal lives with the strength to deal with the indignities large and small suffered because of skin color.
“Well, he is the pastor of this church, Violet. You know how big it is for Revival to be held here! So many churches are attending. We have to represent Calvary Hope in the best way possible,” reasons Sara, her hand shoots to her hip, her dark brown eyes cutting toward her friend.
“My father being pastor would be the best way to represent this church,” Violet says. “But it’s a damn popularity contest around here. And we all know King Saul is popular.”
“Stop calling him that.” Sara’s face tightens, her skin flushing red, her fists balled up at her sides. She hates that name! It was never meant as a compliment, but a warning. Sara remembers what happened to King Saul in the Old Testament. How he was a temporary king. How he eventually fell to David. Maybe if she was more righteous, maybe if she was more holy, maybe if she painted these walls the way her father liked. Maybe things would stop. Maybe Violet would stop being mad at her for things she couldn’t change. And maybe her father would stop.
“He worked hard to get this,” Sara whispers.
“You don’t even believe that,” Violet says looking at her. “Your daddy is light skinned with pretty eyes. Your daddy knows everybody on the church board. Your daddy, Reverend Saul King, is so perfect, huh?”
“You don’t know anything, Violet,” Sara says. “You talk so much but you don’t know a damn thing.”
Violet steps closer to Sara who drops her paintbrush, which luckily lands in the bucket, though a few splatters mar my concrete floor.
“Be nice,” says Naomi who steps in between the two girls. “We’re not gonna keep doing this. We’re friends. Cradle to grave. That’s how it is. That’s how God wills it. Forever and to the end.”
Naomi holds Violet’s stare until she breaks it, bends down and resumes painting. Naomi then turns to Sara who again picks up her brush and returns to slathering my walls.
“Forever and to the end,” Violet and Sara mumble.
“Now, it’s a good color,” Naomi continues. “This basement could use some lightening up.”
“Like your face,” quips Violet, who then flicks small droplets of paint to her right, hitting Naomi. Harsh looks and harsher words almost forgotten, Naomi and Sara run after Violet, laughing.
They speed through my halls, light cascading in cloudy shapes, never quite catching the quickness of the girls’ movement, their jostling. Raucous pattering of shoes resonates in heavy thuds on my floor.
“What’s all this noise?” a voice booms from the edge of the hallway tapering off into the worship hall.
Reverend Saul King looms in front of the girls, and Violet, unable to stop herself in time, slams into him and tumbles to the ground. She quickly scrambles onto her feet.
Saul King isn’t an especially tall man, he barely reaches six feet, but his compactly muscled body, honed by years of construction work, gives him the appearance of a modern-day gladiator clad not in armor, but a nicely tailored blue suit. His light skin and pretty green eyes cause flirtatious stares from women, hearty handshakes from men. When he smiles, all rumors about his character quickly dissipate like water on summer-baked sidewalks. But he’s not smiling now.
“I gave y’all permission to repaint this basement ’cause Revival is tonight and we gotta make sure the church looks its best. I also want you to make sure this one,” he says pointing to Sara, “stays out of trouble. Are y’all the bad influence I gotta keep her away from?”
Reverend King stares hard at the trio. Naomi and Sara tremble, hands crossed behind their backs, heads down. Violet looks at the Reverend in his eyes. Her father is the assistant pastor, second in charge, and she pushes King Saul at every opportunity.
“Violet, do I have to speak to your father? Better yet the church board? That wouldn’t be a good reflection of your father’s performance. They surely do listen to me, the church board does.” Saul King smiles cruelly. “Also, it’d be more of a shame for you and young Thomas Potter to have to get married somewhere else, if I were to say something.”
Violet grits her teeth and bows.
Reverend King pats Violet on the head, then turns to leave. “Good girls. Now this kind of lack of temperance, this arrogance of will is something that displeases God, is it not?”
“Yes, sir,” they answer as one body. Sunlight cuts through my glass block windows.
“Will disobedience be tolerated?”
“No, sir,” they answer, again as one.
Sara focuses only on her father’s light brown shoes, how they make the same hollow tap just before they approach her bedroom door in the night. The squeaky twist of the doorknob. The smell of lilies from Louisa’s black yarn hair.
“We’re sorry, Reverend Saul. We were having fun and we got carried away is all,” Naomi whispers. “Won’t happen again. We promise. It’s like you said in your sermon this past Sunday, ‘God favors those who favor forgiveness.’”
“So you do listen, little Naomi.”
“I treasure your sermons, Reverend,” her soprano voice almost a whisper in my halls.
Violet smiles wide, hoping King Saul can’t see from her bowed head the wide arch it creates in her cheeks. Naomi always falls asleep at some point during the sermons! So much so Violet and Sara take turns pinching her sides to keep her awake.
“Well, you’re right, Naomi. As the Bible says, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’”
Violet barely stifles her laughter. She’s not sure if King Saul even cracks open the Bible except for Sunday mornings. That quote is from Alexander Pope.
“And what’s this?” Reverend King strolls to Sara’s bag. “You still carrying this doll around with you?”
“It helps me remember Momma,” Sara murmurs, her voice barely floating past Violet’s ears. He snatches Sara’s doll from her bag.
“Put away childish things, Sara,” he orders, his voice heavy with authority. “You’re a...woman now.”
Violet slightly raises her head and turns, Saul King’s back and shoulders impeding most of her vision. Saul’s hand rests on Sara’s arm and then travels to her waist. Violet quickly whips her head back down farther into a bow. Her arm breaks out in skinny little bumps. Violet tries to float along in thought, tuning out most of King Saul’s rambling. Moments later, she peeks her head up and sees him turning the corner away from them and out of sight.
Spent, the girls slouch down on the ground leaning against my walls.
“You know that quote ‘To err is human...’ isn’t in the Bible—” Violet starts.
“I know!” Naomi whispers, her small hands covering her smile. “Didn’t have the heart to say anything.”
“My mom stopped correcting him,” Sara offers. “She said you can’t teach an ass to stop being an ass.”
For a moment, the girls laugh hard and loud and free. Sara is laughing such, tears spring from her eyes, until Naomi and Violet realize these are no longer laughs, but sobs, angry and unbound. She’s talking, but it’s hard to make out what she’s saying.
Naomi holds her and speaks softly, “What’s wrong? You can tell us.”
Sara lifts her head, her tears covering her face so that her skin seems to move with the liquid leaking from her dark brown eyes.
“I told him, no, but he wouldn’t stop.”
“You told who to stop,” Violet asks.
“My father, the righteous and holy Revered Saul King. He wouldn’t stop what he was doing, and Mom’s gone so, I got no one, but y’all.”
“What did he do?”
All Sara can do is look down. She can’t say those words, what he did, to her friends. She doesn’t need to. All she can muster is, “I been sick in the mornings. It’s been happening for a while now. My clothes are getting tighter. I know what’s happening to me. Momma explained woman things before she died. I know I can’t hide this. He’ll kill me if he finds out. I know he will. He can’t have me around the church like that...too many questions.”
They know. Her eyes tell them what Sara’s father did and the terrible consequence.
For a while, no one speaks. They hug and cry. Violet, however, can stand feeling sorry for only so long before taking action. Standing up, she wipes her face. “We need a plan. You can’t go back there, so we gotta figure out what to do.”
“Where can I go? He’s the pastor, above reproach, above everything I guess. No one’s gonna believe me.”
“I believe you,” says Violet.
“I believe you, too. And we can help you. Let us,” implores Naomi. “Now, my favorite aunt, Lennie Mae. She lives in Tennessee, in Memphis. She’ll look after you. I won’t tell her too much, but she’s always been a kind spirit. She won’t judge your situation.”
“Tennessee?”
What is there for Sara in Tennessee? People she doesn’t know, a different way of living, where her skin color is not a welcome sight in most places, an acquiescence, regression about black life and its meaning—and with this, she isn’t comfortable. Chicago has its limitations, a place where white people have created this rigid little box for blacks. The inequality permeating the streets and neighborhoods is not ideal by any means, but it’s livable. Down south, weight of segregation seems to be oppressive and immoveable. But what choice is there? Banishment to the South or the unknown dangers of her father.
Extending her hand, Violet orders, “Leave the rest to me. We’re going to your house now, we’ll get some clothes. You’ll leave as soon as Revival is over. There’ll be so much going on, King Saul won’t know you’re missing for a while.
“Time to go,” Violet says. “Say goodbye to all this, to him. You’ll never be back.”
With those few words, Sara’s decision is made, for a time. Violet thinks she has the answers, a set plan where God will allow everything to fall into that perfect and right place.
But Sara deep down in a place close to her blood and bone fears she will be back. That decision is made for her, too. Something will always bring her back to these walls, to her father, someone evil, but evil isn’t new. It doesn’t disappear. Men like him don’t disappear, but maybe with Naomi’s and Violet’s help she can. Maybe they’re right and she can leave. She must believe something good for once.
Walking to the end of the hall, they reach my entrance door leading to the densely packed street. The three girls look back at my half-painted basement wall, then at one another. Violet utters, “Forever and to the end.” Naomi and Sara, respond in kind, “Forever and to the end.”
They close my door.