Holy music - short story

Holy Music

The Sunday in January when Gina dressed for church, she was still swollen from the baby she had carried for nearly four months - the longest she'd held any of her babies. Fetuses, she forced herself to call her lost children. She pressed her hand to her stomach as she searched for a dress to wear. Everything's too tight, she thought, staring at her clothes until the outfits in her closet became blurred. She wiped her eyes.

She watched her husband, Edgar, put on his gym suit and thought about the previous night; she had wanted to make love and he'd refused. Too tired, he said. She turned her head, and in that space he fled out the door. Not even a goodbye. She knew how much he wanted a child. A son. When they had first married eight years before, he'd told her that he wanted a lot of children. Edgar had been patient for the first two years, and even after they suspected there was a problem, he'd taken the tests and made love to her on a rigorous schedule medically designed to enable Gina to conceive. And she did conceive. Three times. It was after the last miscarriage that Edgar had become withdrawn. He'd never been good at expressing his feelings, but Gina knew he felt cheated. She felt her tears rise again. Why couldn't they mourn together, comfort each other? Brooding alone was no good. The suspicion shimmied up her spine before she could shrug it off, making her arch, grope: Maybe not exactly alone.

In the church's vestibule, an usher put a gloved finger to her lips and led Gina into the sanctuary just as the music began. The double doors opened, the covered hands led her through, and Gina waded into deep water. An Aretha-sounding sister was soloing, hitting notes that engulfed Gina with the startling power of ocean waves. "Oh, Mary, don't you weep . . . Tell Martha not to mooo-aan . . ." she sang with penetrating clarity as the voices of the sopranos, altos, tenors and baritones of the senior choir blended and throbbed in harmony. The power of their music pulled Gina into a pew near the doors and forced her down. Gina felt herself opening up, letting go. Suddenly, so easy.

She joined the young-adult gospel choir almost as soon as she became a member of New Bethel Baptist Church. Gina came early to the first Wednesday-night rehearsal and stood before Robert, the choir director and pianist, a big, solid man of almost 60, with a penchant for grandiloquence and flirtation. "All right, Beautiful. Now let's hear the scale." He snapped his fingers dramatically and she sang, "Do re mi." Robert grimaced. "Second soprano. A very rusty second soprano. No matter," he exclaimed, clapping his large hands together smartly and then spreading out his arms in a wide arc, "we'll rejuvenate your voice here. And your soul as well." He pointed toward the soprano section. "Find a seat over there, Darling."

The organist arrived, and the members began filling the pews. "Are you new?" her seatmate asked her. Gina nodded shyly. "I'm Doris. This is Benita," she added, and the woman next to Doris smiled. Doris nudged her. "You're gonna have a ball here." to see several white people in the congregation. "Every Sunday brings more and more white folks," Doris whispered. "What in the world do they want with us?"

The choir began to sing, light as baby's breath at first, and then their voices surged higher. "I belong to the Maaaaaaster . . ." A white man with spiky brown hair stood up in the congregation and waved his arm the way several Black women were doing. His motions were jerky and unsure. Gina looked at Doris. Their eyes lurched upward, and their lips trembled at the same time.

The following Wednesday evening, when Robert asked all the new members to stand with their sponsors, Gina was surprised to see the white man with the spiky brown hair standing alone, a wide smile filling his face. "I'm Tim Patterson. The singing sounded so good during the service that I decided to try you out," he said jovially.

Gina watched as Tim became aware of the whispering around him. He began tapping his fingers against his thick thighs, and it was at that moment that she recognized just how badly he needed a welcome. "I'm a baritone," he said quickly. "Hope you need another baritone." His grin was shaky as he faced the silent members. "I'm a real gospel aficionado. I've got every album Mahalia ever made. Mahalia, gosh . . . And I have most of The Five Blind Boys' recordings and The Mighty Clouds of Joy . . ." He looked around anxiously, and his eyes met Gina's and locked for a second until she turned her head.

"Well," Robert said grandly, his expression impassive. "Greetings and salutations, newcomer." He pointed to the baritone section. "If you will just take your seat there."

"Nothing but a hippie," Doris whispered to Gina as rehearsal ended. She nodded toward Tim. "Whenever they can't make it in their own world, they come running to us. Umph!"

"He's probably some Ph.D. studying us," a baritone named George said as they walked to the crowded parking lot. "You know how they love to research us. Next thing you know he'll be coming out with his book on how white people discovered gospel. He'll be talking that mess to Oprah!" He laughed bitterly.

Gina didn't answer.

Pulling into her driveway, Gina saw a light in her bedroom; her heart quickened. She'd been asleep when Edgar had come home the previous night. When she reached their bedroom, she saw that he was watching a basketball game on television.

"Sorry about last night," he said, not looking at her.

She walked over to the set and turned it off. "I'm not stupid," she told him quietly.

"Gina," Edgar said.

"Talk to me," she pleaded.

"What do you want me to say, huh? You think there's something going on? There's nothing going on. Nothing." The set of his mouth was sullen.

"You don't touch me anymore," she whispered, beginning to whimper.

"I've been tired."

"Of me?"

"Look. Every time we make love it's like we're on a mission. I want a baby, too. But sometimes it gets to be a bit much."

She went to him and put her arm around his shoulder, and he didn't move. For a moment he was once again the man who used to paint her nails and blow them dry - the man who called in the middle of the day to say that thinking of her made him get hard right in his office. Gina whispered in his ear, "I love you so much. I want you . . ." Edgar stood up and walked over to the television and turned it on.

"Please, Edgar, please just . . ." Without looking at her he said, "Gina, I'm tired."

A few weeks later Gina came to choir rehearsal directly from her office and arrived half an hour earlier than usual. The choir loft was empty except for Tim sitting in the corner reading a magazine. He looked up when she came in. "Hello. Gina, right?"

It surprised her, him knowing her name, saying it so suddenly. She felt wary. Caught. Doris and Benita were still waiting for Tim to get the message. Some of the members still didn't speak to him.

"Yes. How are you?" she said finally.

"Tired. I need to sing. That'll wake me up. That'll get me going."

She nodded and smiled a little. Tim got up and walked down to where she was sitting and slid in beside her. Gina had never been so close to him before. Sweat framed his hairline. He said suddenly, "Mahalia saved my life."

"What?"

"Jackson. Mahalia Jackson. There was this brother" (Gina flinched when he said that) "in Nam who had one of her tapes. T. J. used to play the tape all the time, and I started singing her songs. I guess that's funny, huh? I don't figure I ever even heard of Mahalia before I got to Nam. But T. J. told me that the songs would cool me out. You know? And they did. I think that's why I didn't take a hit. I was cooled out."

"Mahalia," he said, handing Gina a tape. "This is a real nice one."

"Oh, no. I couldn't . . ."

"No. You'll like it. It's therapy. You know what I mean?"

"Therapy?"

"You can spend half your life running in and out of uh, rehab, of uh, AA, all that jazz, and still you screw things up. I screw things up. But you know what? Therapy is anything that works."

"You coming here for therapy, Tim?" She felt herself smiling, even though she knew she was supposed to feel offended. "There wasn't enough therapy at your other church?"

"Some. But here there's more . . ."

Don't you dare say it, Gina thought.

" . . . soul."

But the hearty way he pronounced the word wasn't offensive. She started laughing.

"My life needs fixing; that's why I come," Tim said solemnly.

When rehearsal ended she said goodnight to Tim while the others watched.

"Aww, he's all right," Doris said in the parking lot several weeks later. "Shoot, he hasn't missed a rehearsal in all the time he's been here."

"And he can sing," Benita said, adding, "you gotta give the devil his due, y'all."

The first time Tim sang alone, his voice stunned the choir members. Robert had announced at rehearsal that the choir would be doing "Amazing Grace" and called for a baritone for the solo part. His eyes scanned the tight cluster of baritones. "Tim, come to the mike."

"Aaaa-mazing grace, hoooow sweeeeet the-uh, sou, un, ound . . ." Tim's baritone was deep, resonant. Soulful. He closed his eyes while he sang and pushed his chin into his neck.

"Praise the Lord!" Doris declared.

"So, are we trying to be Al Green or what?" This from George, whose hand pressed lightly against Tim's back after he finished.

"That was all right," Benita said enthusiastically.

"Hey, Good therapy," Gina said to him quietly in the parking lot. That was their joke.

Edgar was in the shower when Gina got home; his tennis shorts and T-shirt lay in a crumpled heap by the door. Her heart slammed against her chest as she undressed quickly and slipped into bed. The sheets felt cool against her bare skin. Her fingers brushed across her breast, and she thought of tiny lips at her nipples. She was in the middle of her cycle and had taken her temperature that morning. Inside, her body was warm and ready. If she got pregnant this time she wouldn't tell him. She'd just wait. Amazing grace . . . The water in the bathroom stopped running. A few minutes passed, and then the bedroom door opened. How sweet the sound . . . Gina slid out of bed and went to him.

Edgar's body tensed when she touched him. "Don't, Baby," he said softly. "Don't put yourself through this."

"I just want to make love to you."

"Gina, you want a baby, a magic baby to make everything all right between us. We have to talk."

"No. Not now."

He tried to pull away from her, but her arms around his neck tightened insistently. Her fingers groped at his belly. When she felt him stiffen in her hand, she shook with gratitude. In bed Edgar pulled her beneath him, and she held on to him like a drowning woman. In the morning, before she opened her eyes, she could hear him next to her, the sound so soft and strange that at first she didn't recognize it. He was crying.

The choir's annual concert was scheduled for Mother's Day, and they began rehearsing new songs weeks in advance. Although they were a gospel choir, Dr. Archer, the minister, had asked that the concert include one or two "more sedate" numbers, and Robert obediently introduced two anthems. The first song was difficult and plodding. Several of the members groaned after Robert sang it. "People will fall asleep right in the middle of that one," Benita muttered.

"I don't know why we're switching to anthems. Gospel's what you people do best."

Tim's words sprayed over the choir like vomit. You people, Gina thought wildly. She looked at Benita, Doris and George. Their eyes flashed angrily. The choir loft was engulfed in vehement whispering.

Finally Robert said in a low, deadly voice, his arms stretched out. "We aren't limited as musicians, Tim. And if that's the low esteem in which you hold us, then may I suggest that you correct an inappropriate choice."

Tim looked dazed. Once or twice he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it without uttering a word. He seemed alternately struggling to make amends and resigned to the fact that he'd committed an unforgivable offense. Finally he just shrugged his shoulders and stared impassively until Robert dismissed the choir.

"That white boy better not show his face," George said angrily the following Wednesday as the choir members were assembling. Benita and Doris nodded.

Gina spoke haltingly, "I don't think he meant it the way it sounded."

Benita pounced. "They always mean it - just the way it sounds."

Tim arrived just as Robert was about to get started. He remained standing while the others sat. "If I offended anyone last Sunday, I am very sorry," he mumbled. He appeared to be wobbling. Gina saw that his eyes were very red; sweat was running down the sides of his face. "This music means a lot to, to . . ." Tim hesitated. "I don't look down on anyone - I don't do that!" Tim gazed at the choir members who surveyed him silently; he stumbled, then slumped into his seat.

"Drunk!" Doris shrieked in the parking lot. "Gonna come to the house of the Lord stone drunk! With his white hippie self!"

On Tim's final Sunday at New Bethel, he sang "Amazing Grace." He sang the song plain and simple without any loop-de-loop notes or sanctified theatrics, sang it like an Iowa farm boy all alone on the prairie. Perhaps it was the authenticity of his rendition that made chills grab at Gina's stomach. But maybe it was something else. Her period was overdue. Just thinking of the precious possibility, she dug her nails into her palm, as if she were attempting to hold on to herself.

As she was leaving church she saw Tim in the parking lot sitting in his car. She hesitated a moment, then started to walk over to him, but changed her mind. What would she have said to him, anyway, other than she liked the fragile sweetness of his song? What good would that have done?

Robert read Tim's letter of resignation to the choir several weeks later. " . . . Your music has been a real godsend for me," he wrote. "There will be a void in my life."

"Umph!" This from Benita.

The choir members began to forget him. Services full of preaching and music passed one after another, and no one even mentioned his name. And then one Sunday the lady who read the bulletins announced that Timothy Patterson had died. She gave the address where the funeral would be held, although this could barely be heard above the whispering. Doris, Benita and George turned around to stare at one another. Had he been sick? Gina started trembling; she didn't understand her reaction. When she finally caught Robert's eye, he shook his head and mouthed the words, "I'll tell you later."

Dr. Archer stood unexpectedly. "We, all remember Tim. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer."

As soon as the people sat down, the senior choir rose, resplendent in crimson robes. They were the old heads of the church, weathered and enduring. "I don't feel no ways tiiiired," they began, almost chanting the lyrics. "Come too far from where I started from . . ."

A sudden all-too-familiar pain gripped Gina's stomach like a red-hot cleaver. She gasped, sensing that she was about to do battle in a familiar war. Oh, Jesus, please. Please. She thought of the still house that awaited her, a continuing echo of Edgar's good-bye. He had moved out two weeks ago. "I'm sorry, Gina," he told her as he snapped his suitcase shut. "Don't you think I know what a selfish, weak bastard I am? I didn't know how much I wanted those babies. I just didn't know." This time she saw his tears.

What passed through her mind as the choir began to sway was that time on her grandmother's porch. She'd driven to Alabama for a visit right after her college graduation when her every thought and word was revolution and power to the people. And Granny, in her chair, her rocking steady, was on her usual soapbox about church. Gina had finally exploded, her voice full of exasperation. "Church doesn't change anything, Granny!"

Granny had stood up, her face weary and wondering, but just plain tickled, too. She'd exclaimed heartily, "Change? Change? Honey, ain't nobody talking about changing nothing. I'm talking about carrying on. Prevailing." Then the old woman stretched out her hand behind her and felt carefully for the rocker she hadn't been able to see for at least ten years; she eased her body down slowly.

The woman who reminded her of Aretha stepped down off the pulpit and flowed toward the congregation. She sang, "I don't believe he brought me this far. I don't believe he brought me this far . . . Do you believe he brought you this far?"

"No!"

"Jesus!"

Gina could feel a thin trickling on her thighs. She took a deep breath, then raised her arms, letting the song surge through her like holy water. She stood suddenly and words and moaning bubbled from her lips like ocean foam. The white gloves were firm on her shoulders. "That's all right, sister. Jesus say that's all right." The strong arms pulled her up, held her until she could feel the frenzy inside her subsiding like waves after a storm. ". . . Don't believe he brought me this far to leave me . . ."

Bebe Moore Campbell is the author of Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad (Ballantine). She is working on a novel.

COPYRIGHT 1990 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group