Home Fires

13

Less confrontation

More communication

—Freedom Chapel

Maidie had promised to save us seats if we got to Mount Olive early enough and a young girl, dressed all in white right down to the small white beads braided into her hair, was on the watch for Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and me as we walked up the gravel drive from the parking area beside the church. She looked about twelve or thirteen, that endearing time when they teeter between childhood and adolescence, more at ease in sneakers than the one-inch heels she wore this morning.

As she handed us program leaflets, the tilt of her head, her deep-set eyes and something about her shy smile made me ask, “Aren’t you kin to Jimmy White?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “He’s my momma’s daddy.”

“You’re Alice’s daughter?”

“Wanda’s,” she murmured and led us inside and down the aisle to where Maidie was seated.

Alice had been a year ahead of me in school, Wanda two years behind. Sometimes I feel as if I’m the only graduate of West Colleton High who hasn’t gone forth, been fruitful and multiplied.

Mount Olive’s interior was as classically simple as its exterior. Sunlight streamed through the frosted glass windows into a large open space of dazzling brightness. Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and I walked down an aisle carpeted in a royal blue that matched the pew cushions. Painted on the wall behind the choir was a large colorful mural of John the Baptist standing on the bank of the river Jordan with Jesus, ready to baptize him. Everything else was painted white: walls, ceilings, all the trimwork. Even the sturdy plantation-made pews had a hundred and fifty years’ worth of white enamel on them.

Four big white wooden chairs, seats and backs padded in royal blue leather, stood between the simple hand-carved pulpit and the choir stall like ecclesiastical thrones. I recognized the Reverend Anthony Ligon, who pastored here, and the activist attorney Wallace Adderly, of course. Sitting between Adderly and Ligon was the Reverend Floyd Putnam, a white preacher from Jones Chapel Baptist Church in Cotton Grove. On the other side of Adderly was the Reverend Ralph Freeman.

Sunday School wasn’t over yet and already the sanctuary was three-fourths full as Uncle Ash let me slide in beside Maidie. I glanced around and found more white faces than one usually saw at these things. I expected there would be even more for the picnic lunch. Mrs. Avery sat next to Jack and Judy Cater from Sweetwater and my friends Portland and Avery Brewer were there from First Baptist in Dobbs along with Chief District Court Judge Ned O’Donnell. Luther Parker nodded gravely from the end of the pew across from us and Louise gave me a wink.

To my surprise, I realized that the person in front of them with her eyes firmly fixed on the wall painting was Cyl DeGraffenried.

“An upright young black woman in a black church—why should that surprise you?” asked the preacher from deep inside my skull.

“Upright but uptight. Maybe a political move?” wondered the pragmatist.

Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t tell if it was the imminent baptism of Jesus that held her attention or one of the men on the left. Wallace Adderly or Ralph Freeman.

The church was filled with the hum and murmur of voices as we waited for Sunday School to be over at eleven. Even the preachers and Wallace Adderly were talking together in low rumbles. I leaned my lips to Maidie’s ear and whispered, “Is Cyl DeGraffenried a member here?”

“Never moved her membership up from New Bern,” Maidie whispered back, “but here’s where she was baptized. That’s her granny sitting next to her. Miz Shirley Mitchiner.”

Just then, a large woman in a blue lace dress and wide brimmed white hat came in from a side door, went to the piano, and without hesitation swung straight into a rollicking hymn. Children and adults streamed in from the Sunday School classrooms. They filled the few remaining empty pew spaces and soon lined all the sides.

Singing a joyful praise song, the choir marched down the aisle in royal blue robes with white satin collars and took their places in the stall behind the pulpit.

The director signalled and soon we were all standing and singing and clapping in time to “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

My mind often wanders during the sermon and today was no exception after Reverend Ligon introduced “my brother in Christ, the Reverend Floyd Putnam from Jones Chapel right here in Cotton Grove.”

Putnam was an earnest droner and even though the congregation encouraged his peace-and-harmony platitudes with polite amens and murmured yeses, he never caught fire and I soon found my thoughts drifting to Cyl and her grandmother.

From where I sat, I could see both profiles. Mrs. Mitchiner was at least seventy. She wore a rose linen suit, and a smart hat of pink roses covered most of her white hair. Her skin was so pale that she could probably pass for white if she chose, while Cyl was a dark rich brown. Mrs. Mitchiner’s nose was aquiline and her mouth had a thin-lipped severity. Cyl’s nose was slightly broader, her lips much fuller. If there was a family likeness, it wasn’t in facial features. Rather, it was the way they both sat so erectly, almost stiffly, their backs barely touching the back of their pew.

I wondered what it must have been like to grow up the darkest member of a light-skinned family. Had her step-mother made her feel like Cinderella? Had her fairer half-siblings and cousins taunted her? Colleton County must have seemed doubly lonely after her uncle left, which made me wonder all over again why she was still here. Her grandmother?

And why had she been crying in my office on Thursday? This wasn’t the first time I’d cast my mind back to that morning, but I could think of nothing in the usual lineup of minor offenses she had prosecuted that should’ve brought tears. Besides, she’d been distracted from the minute court began. Maybe something happened before she came to work? It occurred to me again that I didn’t have the slightest notion of Cyl DeGraffenried’s private life. For all I knew, she could have a live-in lover and six kids.

Well, okay, maybe not kids. Someone would have noticed if she had kids; but if she had a private lovelife...

Which brought my thoughts around to Kidd again. By now he was probably stopping in Goldsboro for a barbecue sandwich on his way back to New Bern and God alone knew when our schedules would next mesh.

The Reverend Floyd Putnam called for prayer and I automatically bowed my head and closed my eyes, but I’m afraid my prayers were more temporal than spiritual.

“Amen!” said Mr. Ligon when Mr. Putnam’s tepid prayer drew to a close. “You’ve given us a lot to think about this morning, Brother Floyd, and we thank you. But before we go any further, we want to welcome Brother Ralph Freeman and the whole congregation of Balm of Gilead here today. As most of you know, Balm of Gilead burned down Wednesday night. The Bible tells us to curse the deed, not the doer and we give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ that no one was hurt.”

(“Yes, Lord!” came the murmurs. “Praise Jesus!”)

“Brother Ralph’s family is with him here today and I’m asking them now to stand up and be known to you. Sister Clara? Stan? Lashanda?”

An attractive, slightly plump woman of early middle age with processed hair stood up in the front row and smiled shyly as welcoming sounds washed over her from the congregation. Her son Stan was probably thirteen or fourteen and looked as embarrassed as most teenagers are when the spotlight hits them, but his younger sister beamed from ear to ear.

Another twenty or more people got to their feet when Mr. Ligon called for the members of Balm of Gilead to stand. I wondered which were the strayed sheep that Maidie was annoyed about but decided this wasn’t the time to ask her.

The choir sang again—“The Storm Is Over Now”—and again we all joined in at the end. Then Wallace Adderly was introduced and Mr. Ligon promised that we’d get to hear him speak after lunch, but now we should welcome the words of Brother Ralph Freeman.

Ralph Freeman was as dynamic as Floyd Putnam had been dull. He, too, talked of trying to live in peace and harmony and racial goodwill, but somehow his words spoke to the heart and made the spirit sing. For that twenty minutes, he made us believe that Martin Luther King’s dream really could happen, that people might quit letting their eyes stop at a person’s skin but keep on looking deeper until each saw the other’s humanity.

His face glowed, his words soared and we were caught up in it, longing to believe, aching for the communal unity that bound us together for this brief moment.

After Mr. Freeman concluded, Reverend Ligon poured benedictions down upon us and then the choir led us out into the sunshine of a perfect Sunday morning in the South.

✡ ✡ ✡

Back when I was a very little girl, dinner on the grounds was just that: a picnic dinner spread on long tables beneath tall oaks or pecan trees, with wooden tubs of lemonade and iced tea at either end and every food known to the congregation’s women in between.

Yes, yes, I know it’s probably healthier to eat inside in air-conditioned coolness, away from the heat and flies and the dust kicked up by unruly children playing tag around the trees. And certainly it’s more comfortable to sit at a table rather than trying to balance paper plates and cups while standing up outside. Nevertheless, dinner on the grounds loses some of its picnic charm when serving tables are set up in a fellowship hall and people sit in folding chairs at long rows of tables draped in white paper tablecloths rather than walking around to mingle with this one, exchange compliments and recipes with that one, before finding a place to perch with yet another.

Uncle Ash and I fetched the cooler from the car and Aunt Zell set out her fried chicken, potato salad and watermelon pickles next to Maidie’s chicken pastry and huge bowl of butter beans while the men stood around outside, smoked, talked about the fire, and waited to be called in to eat.

With so many picnic boxes and coolers already stowed under the table, there was no more room for Aunt Zell’s and I slipped out a side door to carry it back to the car. As I rounded a dump of boxwood shrubs, I almost bumped into a skinny black man of indeterminate middle age.

Clouds of alcoholic fumes enveloped me and I registered his soiled white shirt half tucked into his pants and a wrinkled tie that hung limply over the collar, its knot halfway down his thin chest.

“Lemme help you with that,” he said, grabbing woozily for the bulky cooler.

“That’s okay,” I said, trying to sidestep.

“Naw, I’m ’sposed to help,” he insisted.

Before it could turn into a full-fledged tug of war, Mr. Ligon suddenly appeared.

“Arthur!” he said sternly and the man let go so abruptly, I would have fallen backwards if Mr. Ligon hadn’t caught me.

“I apologize for our sexton’s behavior, Judge.” He glared at the other man, who seemed to shrink back into the bushes.

“That’s okay,” I said. “It was nice of him to offer to carry this, but it’s really very light.”

I swung the cooler by one handle to demonstrate, nodded pleasantly and kept on walking. Behind me, I could hear Mr. Ligon speaking with controlled fury, then the sound of a door closing.

I looked back. They were nowhere in sight. I took a closer look and realized that the boxwoods screened a door that I hadn’t noticed till then. It was covered in the same white clapboard as the fellowship hall and the break was barely visible.

When I returned from stowing the cooler in the trunk of Uncle Ash’s Lincoln, the door was half open. I could hear the drunken man rage, “You can’t kick me out. I’ll tell the deacons. I’ll tell ’em all about you!”

“Tell whatever you want,” said the Reverend Ligon in an equally angry voice, “but come next week, your sorry behind is out of here!”

I scooted past the boxwood bushes and was well inside the fellowship hall when Mr. Ligon came through to inquire genially if it was nearly time to ask the blessing.

✡ ✡ ✡

By one-thirty, I was as stuffed as one of Maidie’s devilled eggs. Across the table from me, Judy Cater, who’s the reference librarian at the Colleton County Library in Dobbs, tried to give me a piece of her pecan pie.

“No way,” I said.

“But this one’s made without corn syrup so it’s not too sweet,” she coaxed.

I am always tempted by pecan pie no matter what the recipe, but what’s the good of church if it can’t stiffen your resolve to resist temptation in all its many forms?

As the last sips of iced tea were slipping down our collective throats, the Reverend Ligon stepped up to the speaker’s podium at the end of the hall and called us to order. He made a graceful thank-you speech for all the delicious food, praised God for the fellowship, then announced that he wanted to recognize all the dignitaries who turned out today to make this interchurch meeting such a success.

Indeed, there were a lot more whites than one usually sees at something organized by black Christians. But after Balm of Gilead’s burning Wednesday night, I guess the mostly white establishment wanted to avoid the risk of being thought insensitive. All but two of the county commissioners were here, the Clerk of Court, the superintendent of public schools, Sheriff Bo Poole, DA Doug Woodall and “our own Miss Cylvia DeGraffenried,” the county manager, and of course, Ned O’Donnell, Luther Parker and me.

The list went on: the president of the Democratic Women, a tall and stately black woman; her Republican counterpart, equally tall, equally stately, white; even Grace King Avery was recognized as returning to “her roots, to her homeplace here in the community after years of educating our young people on the importance of good English.”

It was almost two o’clock before he turned the microphone over to Wallace Adderly.

Adderly was savvy enough to know that after a heavy meal and long introductions, somnolence was ready to take over his audience. Impulsively, he called to the choir director and soon the whole hall was rocking with an a cappella version of “This Little Soul Shines On.”

If the Reverend Freeman was the conciliatory side of Martin Luther King, Wallace Adderly was his militant. Settling his gaze on one white official after the other, he exhorted us to take this morning’s spirit of fellowship back into our neighborhoods, our workplaces and (fixing his eyes on me) our courtrooms; to put our principles into economic and social practice.

To his fellow blacks, he sounded a clarion call to face up to new responsibilities and renewed challenges, to quit whining about the past and to accept that there never had been and never would be any free lunches in America. “What’s passed for free lunches—namely, welfare—has merely been another way to keep the poor and uneducated in a state of dependency. It’s time we all start paying the full price for what we believe we deserve.”

It seemed to me that he was pretty much preaching the substance of Cyl DeGraffenried’s text and my eyes searched the crowd for her face. I finally located her two tables over, but to my surprise, she wasn’t sitting in Adderly’s amen corner. Indeed, her chair was pushed so far back from the table—and Wallace Adderly—that she crowded the person behind her. She sat rigidly with her arms locked tightly across her chest and her lovely face was frozen into an expression of intense loathing.

Adderly’s message was stern but just, and the rest of us all went away feeling righteous and tolerant and convinced that we could overcome with just a little more goodwill and Christian charity.

That night, Mount Olive A.M.E. Zion Church and Burning Heart of God Holiness Tabernacle were both put to the torch.