’em all in the street! You don’t have to put up with that uppity mess.’
As the Bangs’ apartment door was directly opposite ours, it made me feel real uncomfortable with them not being neighborly, ’cause wasn’t nobody else living in the fourplex but them and us, since Mr Houseman wouldn’t get the plumbing fixed in them two studio apartments up at the front. But I just prayed night and day that things would get to rights, so that I could have Joy back.
All that April, at about half past three on weekdays, I would hear Joy and Brenda let themselves into the main door downstairs, and then leave it to slam shut as they raced each other to our landing to unlock the door to their place. With my ear cupped to my front door, I could hear that they was whispering and trying to be real quiet while they got their door open, and I knew they was scared that I’d come out and either embarrass them by saying ‘hi’ or offering them something. Once, I got the idea to leave the Papagallos in the box outside my door to remind Joy of the good times we’d had, but common sense got the better of me and I baked my baby sister her favorite lemon meringue pie instead.
But that month and a bit of us not speaking must have been way harder on Tammy than it was on me, ’cause I’m sure she’d got used to me doing things for her children. Not just Joy neither. ’Cause me and Freddie did try to remember them other two everytime we handed out quarters and bought double decker ice cream cones downstairs at the soda fountain in the drugstore that Mr Houseman’s son-in-law ran below us. And while Tammy didn’t have neither the time, inclination nor know-how to bake cakes and cookies like I did every week, her children must have been missing them goodies I’d always had for after dinner and weekend surprises.
Me and Freddie B was always buying the girls expensive treats on his pay day like eskimo pies, ’cause we knew that Tammy couldn’t really afford them extras on her stenographer’s salary. She couldn’t earn half as much doing office work as Freddie B did for bricklaying back in them fifties. So we had way more money to sling around than she did, and to top it off, we wasn’t hardly paying no rent to old man Houseman in exchange for managing his building.
Anyway, one Sunday in May, about five weeks after the photo mess with Tammy, when me and Freddie B’d been back from our church meeting for a couple of hours, long enough for him to fall asleep as usual in front of the television, Tammy come banging on our door. Hysterical she was with Anndora sniveling in her arms ’cause Anndora had cut her hand pretty bad playing restaurant and trying to open a can of Spam with a sharp can opener.
Tammy needed for Freddie B to rush her and the children over to Oakland General which was way on the other side of town, but I offered to let her leave Joy and Brenda with me which she did gladly. I was sure glad that I had on my Sunday best when they came and didn’t have my hair nappy. And I could see that Joy was glad to be setting back in my place even though she wasn’t saying nothing to me.
Since the emergency ward was as crowded as I warned Freddie B it would be on a Sunday afternoon with it starting to get real hot in our part of the world, they had to wait around for hours at the hospital ’fore Anndora got them three catgut stitches that the doctor said she had to have.
Expecting they would take as long, while Joy played Brenda a game of Chinese checkers that I told her to take out the broom closet, I made the two big ones their favorite snack of a thick wad of grape jelly, between slices of nice fresh soft white bread and left two covered plates full of pork roast, crackling and greens in the warm oven for Tammy and Freddie B coming in, ’cause him and me was due back to the church at five as usual. And I was determined to be there as the whole congregation was planning to turn out ’cause Sister Hall’s brother Tommy was in town from New York City and was gonna sit in with the choir. He was a jazz trumpeter that showed up from time to time, to play for our church when he was working some clubs in San Fran. Them little bips and bops he added to sweeten Miss Scott’s piano playing always transformed the music and inspired our choir times before when he’d come, and I didn’t want to miss it.
Naturally I was also excited that I had a excuse to have to take Joy and Brenda along with me not knowing how late their mama would be held up at the hospital. I was shocked when they admitted while I was getting them into their best dresses that they hadn’t never been inside no church.
‘Not neither for wedding nor funeral!’ I didn’t bother to ask how they missed getting to church when their daddy died, ’cause it wasn’t my business, but I thought that Mrs Tamasina Bang needed her backside slapped for not attending to them children’s souls. And with all the hoo-ha she sometimes made about colored people being backward, there she was acting backwards herself.
Like I explained to Brenda and Joy ’fore we climbed the bus heading for the meeting, at the First Tabernacle of Saint Barnabus where me and Freddie was members and he was a deacon, the actual building wasn’t nothing but a ol’ grocery store that we was renting till the congregation could collect up enough to do better. But I didn’t tell them that by no way of apology, ’cause I was proud of our church. And with that choir of twelve, including Sister Hall who’d done some gospel recordings, First Tabernacle didn’t need my apologies nor nobody else’s.
Once we was on the bus, Joy was acting back to her usual and it was nice to hear her say I looked real pretty, although pretty is one thing I ain’t never really been. Not bad looking, but not much better than ordinary ’cause of my teeth being too long and my cheeks being pudgy even when I ain’t carrying no extra weight which I wasn’t back in them days. I was wearing my white felt had with the black and white mesh veil and had pressed, waved and curled my hair, ’cause it didn’t matter how I used to go around looking on weekdays, I didn’t mess on Sundays. And still don’t. I had a good figure all through them fifties and in that chartreuse suit with the short waisted bolero jacket I had on that Sunday I showed it off, I think, though the skirt kept riding up ’cause any skirt that fitted me snug around the waist like that chartreuse one did was always too tight for me round the backside and didn’t want to stay down. And I knew I had to warn Joy and Brenda ’fore we got to church that a few ladies might get to fainting if the spirit hit them, but the girls wasn’t to worry ’cause that was a powerful sign that the Lord was with us.
From the minute we arrived outside First Tabernacle, the girls had themselves a high time. The church was located on the corner of 7th and Front in a part of town where nobody bothered to sweep the streets and it was tucked between a tailor shop and a bakery, but since neither was open on a Sunday, if it was too hot to wait inside the church before Reverend Earl and his wife Naomi turned up, folks with little children used to congregate outside and some of us could sit on the big wooden ledge of the bakery window which had a big awning that cut out the sun that set in our direction.
Joy and Brenda was my pride wearing their organdy party frocks and out there playing tag with the other children when the pastor drove up. When I introduced her and her sister to him and his wife Joy said, like she’d rehearsed it, ‘Good evening, Reverend and Mrs Earl, I’m very pleased to meet you.’ All that was missing was a curtsy.
He sure worked up a lively sermon that evening and I was thankful that it brought a couple Sisters to their feet. ‘Vengeance must be the Lord’s’ was the theme, and Joy asked me what vengeance meant while the choir was getting situated. I did the best I could to explain. ‘I think it means don’t try to get back at folks if they do something bad to you.’ She smiled and nodded but I could tell she didn’t take it in. Remembering that Joy and Brenda wouldn’t know none of the songs that we’d be asked to join in on with the choir, I whispered to Joy to tell Brenda just to clap her hands.
After the choir got to singing the fourth verse of ‘My Father’s House has Many Rooms’, and Sister what’s-her-name with the dyed red hair started to sing her solo with some trumpet accompaniment by Tommy Hall, Brenda got to waving her arms and hopping from foot to foot like she got a little spirit, but soon as I saw Joy swat her with her Bible study manual, I figured Brenda wasn’t doing nothing but mocking some of my congregation and I chewed her out about it soon as we got outside. Though she swore blind that the spirit had actually hit her. I got to admit she was the one that begged me to take her again and tried to tell her mama all about the choir, and Sister Hall’s brother playing the trumpet and Reverend Earl’s message