Godspeed
Had she not been sitting in the red leather recliner with her head pressed between her knees she wouldn’t have noticed the beginnings of the run in her stockings. She’d kicked her tan patent pumps off near the door because she loved the plush feel of velvet carpet, even if it was this rusted-blood color, and had hoped that sinking her toes into the softness might steady her nerves. She pursed her lips and pushed her head further toward her feet. She was trying to calm herself down and she’d read somewhere that the head between the knees caused the kind of deep breathing which could help restore peace. But, she thought that she must have gotten that wrong because bent over like that she could barely catch her breath at all.
She stared down at her feet again. These were supposed to be the good ones she mused. It had been the demo of nylon hose being run over by a car and stretched between twin models on opposite sides of the room that had gotten her. She should have known better. As she stared seemingly transfixed by the small tear that had begun because her big toe nail needed a trim, she tried to remember if her clear nail polish might be in her purse.
“Yvette will be back in a minute,” she said aloud. “Yvette will have something to fix this.” Ephesus pulled herself into an upright position and lay back against the white doily some old mother must have hand-knitted for Bishop Mitchell. The run in her stockings wasn’t the thing that needed fixing. She groaned. Yvette, her assistant, wasn’t the fixer. She wanted to get out of this church. She wasn’t up for preaching this funeral. Ephesus was half-ashamed and half-relieved that she’d allowed herself a moment of honesty. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t in control of herself and she wasn’t hearing from God. The combination was foreign. She put her hand up to tug on a few of her locks and could hear her mother, “Get your hands out of your hair Ephesus, or you’re going to be bald like your Uncle Bert.” The memory of her mother’s voice seemed to help calm her a bit.
“Mama, I wish you were here,’ she sighed into the humid air, “then you could speak for me this morning.”
Yvette came in then with hot tea and a cold towel and didn’t know whether to call on God or Aurora, Ephesus’s mother. However, God finally won out. She looked at Ephesus laid out in the chair like a deflated balloon and started another prayer.
“Help her, Lord. Just help her, Lord,” she muttered as she walked over to the big pressed-wood conference table and set down the tea. Then she took the wet cloth and bent in front of her friend. She began to stroke Ephesus’s wrists with the cloth and sing along with the choir,“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.”
There would only be one other song before Ephesus would be summoned to the pulpit, but that one would go on for a while. The Fortnight Church of God by Grace Choir would see to it. The choir was used to singing for funerals, but never one this sad. Bryan DuBlaim was dead and his remains were being serenaded one last time. Bryan had lived only seventeen years when his grandmother found him dead on her back porch the previous Sunday morning. Mrs. Iris DuBlaim had been on her way to Marion County Memorial Hospital and then to church. She was stopping by the hospital because she knew several of the nurses on the maternity ward and hoped they’d let her up to see her new great-grandbaby even if it was the crack of dawn.
Della Brogden had called just before midnight to tell her that Tiana had given birth to a baby girl. She’d almost choked on the bitterness of her tears when she had to tell Della she didn’t know where Bryan was or when he’d be coming home. Mrs. Iris DuBlaim or Miz Du, as everyone in Fortnight called her, had given up on keeping track of Bryan. She couldn’t keep up with all his many friends, especially since she’d had her long distance phone service disconnected. Bryan had run up a bill of almost four-hundred dollars and she’d had to dip into her savings to pay it. It broke her heart again to think about it. She’d just finished cursing her daughter Helene for dying and leaving her such a wild child to raise when she found his body.
Small and thin, with skin like a wrinkled brown paper sack and hair that was as much black as gray, Miz Du recalled clearly everything she’d done that Sunday morning. After checking to make sure she’d turned off her stove, she’d poured the rest of her coffee into her dieffenbachia plant—the one right next to the kitchen door. Next, she’d smashed her green rain hat on to her head. Then she’d taken her keys from the counter in her left hand and grabbed both her purse and the newborn diapers she’d bought on sale with her right. Because of the way the big bag of diapers was swinging, at first Miz Du didn’t see Bryan. She’d managed to turn around, lock her back door, and take at least two steps forward before she saw him sprawled on the edge of the porch.
It was after seeing Bryan that her memory got foggy. Although, she did recall not needing those jackleg paramedics to pronounce him officially dead, any fool could see her grandson was not in that body lying on her porch. Miz Du had called for Ephesus right away and in between episodes of wrenching wails and weary calm had begged Ephesus to deliver Bryan’s eulogy. Ephesus hadn’t been prepared for the request. Everybody knew her mother was the one to preach a funeral, but Bryan rarely darkened any church’s doorstep and had, in fact, haunted all the clubs and liquor houses from a young age. So Aurora would have preached the funeral, but she wouldn’t have tried to sugarcoat such a quick and hard life. Aurora always said the worse thing to do was to try to preach somebody into heaven who had no business being there. Miz Du hoped that Ephesus, being a younger, softer version of Aurora would cut Bryan some slack.
Ephesus knew that burying young people was always an ordeal. Bryan was three months shy of graduating high school and two more from his eighteenth birthday so his passing was a shock to the rest of the young folk who believed they had their whole lives in front of them. His death messed with their sense of immortality. However, the teens from South Marion high weren’t the only ones crying and shaking and promising God they were going to do right this time for sure. Bryan had run with rough crowds since he could run, and the rough people had all come to pay their respects as well. Ephesus had seen several people trying to sneak drinks, and smokes, and only the Lord knew what else in the parking lot behind the church when she’d driven up. Of course, not all of the sneaks had been the rough crowd. She recognized quite a few of the “just about to be,” and the “of course I am,” born again when they raised their car trunks, even in all the rain, and leaned way in like they were looking for the spare tire.
Back in the sanctuary a soprano hanging from the rafters by a high C broke Ephesus out of her reverie. Suddenly, she remembered why she was in the Bishop’s office feeling ragged and confused. Just minutes before Ephesus had been fulfilling her duties as the presiding minister. As she’d marched in the front of the funeral procession, she’d kept looking back to see if Dr. Hall was holding tightly enough to Miz Du. The old woman looked like a flower out of water drooping along beside the doctor, and he was dragging all ninety pounds of her as if it was one hundred and ninety. The rain had dictated they start the march from inside the vestibule instead from outside the church as was customary. Miz Du had requested that they not go in until it was almost time for the eulogy. She’d said she couldn’t sit there the whole time staring at her only grandson’s closed coffin. Aurora had warned Ephesus that the old lady would probably faint and to make sure there were ushers poised to catch her.
They had only made it as far as the first few pews when Ephesus looked back for Miz Du, and turned forward only to march straight into a man’s arms. Although he only slowed her down for a few seconds and their contact was brief, Ephesus was stunned. Somehow, her feet kept walking and though she tried to stop herself she looked back again and this time it wasn’t poor Miz Du’s face she searched for. Her eyes met Malcolm’s and once they did, he had the audacity to smile! A word came into her head she hadn’t used since college and Ephesus quickened her pace, willing Dr. Hall to drag Miz Du a little faster. She reached the mourner’s bench and waited until Miz Du was seated. Then she turned in her four-inch heels walked in front of the green metallic casket that was centered before the pulpit and stretched out her hand to it. She leaned in for the obligatory prayer, nearly overcome by the scent of hybrid roses riding along on the sweat and humidity, mumbled something she’d never recall for Bryan, and exited the sanctuary through the Deacon’s Corner door.
Yvette who was seated just behind Miz Du had risen and walked as quickly back down the aisle as she could manage and from there out of the front door. To the observant onlooker they executed the leave taking as if it were practiced, but there was nothing routine about Ephesus leaving the church minutes before her she was supposed to preach. Yvette had grabbed some poor soul’s umbrella, which had been leaning by the front door, walked around the outside of the church to the Pastor’s office, and found Ephesus crumbled forward in the chair wrinkling her suit, examining the run in her stockings, and thinking about not thinking about Malcolm Mitchell.
“Phe,”
using her nickname name Yvette called to her when she saw Ephesus’s distress,
“It’s almost time for you to go out there. Don’t let seeing Malcolm upset you
like this. I saw him and Weasel . . . I mean Lisel walk in just ahead of you
and I didn’t have time to warn you.”
As intended, Yvette’s dig at Lisel Mitchell brought the tiniest of smiles to Ephesus’s face.
Ephesus began to drink her tea and had downed only a few sips before Bishop Mitchell knocked on his office door. Yvette strode across the room and cracked the door an inch.
“Hey, Yvette,” Bishop whinnied, “Is everything alright? It’s time for Minister Cooper. Is she okay? She flew past the pulpit like bat out of whack, and when she didn’t come back, I thought I’d come and see if I could help put her on the right track.”
Most people found the Bishop’s tendency to rhyme almost as annoying as his propensity for gossip.
Yvette knew he would like nothing more than some he-said, she-said to take back to folks after the funeral, so she blocked his entrance into the room.
“Everything’s fine Bishop Mitchell . . . Minister just has a little female trouble she has to deal with.” Yvette giggled to imply embarrassment and watched understanding dawn on Mitchell’s face. “Give us five more minutes and she’ll be on her way.”
A disappointed Bishop Mitchell reached in his left front pocket for a well-worn handkerchief and dabbed at his temples.
“I thought maybe she saw my son and was upset.” Malcolm Mitchell Sr. grinned at Yvette and wiped his forehead again.
“No, no Bishop Mitchell,” Ephesus pulled the door open wide and stepped up beside Yvette. “As Yvette said, I had to straighten myself up a little and I am ready to go. Yvette, could you get my Bible and my notes?”
Yvette smiled, noting Ephesus had no evidence of her miniature meltdown left, except for a few creases in her suit. The man who once upon a time would have been her father-in-law extended his arm towards Ephesus, she took it. Then all three headed down the hall toward the sanctuary.
Ephesus Elizabeth Cooper was a short woman, but she walked like she was tall. It came from being the only diminutive person in a family of giants. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Her mama’s mama had been short. She’d died when Ephesus was a small girl and so Ephesus knew that only from the many pictures of June Blackshear standing a head and half of a shoulder shorter than all her grown-up children and her husband.
Ephesus was famous in town for her walk. Many people even said it was the way she walked that stopped her from getting a man, like she was the Queen of Sheba and everyone should bow or get back. The way her head and shoulders laid back and let her hips take the lead had made many a man from Fortnight to Fayetteville step away when it seemed like opportunity was knocking. Her walk was made even more infamous and complicated by her shoes. Almost every shoe in her closet was at least four inches and very expensive.
Some of the older folks said the fact that she never combed her hair was the other reason she couldn’t get a man. Ephesus had an imposing head of what some people called “dreadlocks” which she kept pinned up or tied down most of the time. When she had first begun to come home from college on breaks with her hair matted up on purpose she’d kept the Clip ‘N Cut juicy with gossip for nearly two years. Then the hairstyle caught on with several of the other young folk in town and it wasn’t a strange thing anymore. Still Ephesus’s “locks” trailed the back of her knees when they were free and it always surprised people to see all that hair. She routinely had to stop people from touching and feeling it without permission.
Pony-tail swinging and round hips swaying was how she re-entered the church and climbed into the pulpit. She stopped at the center seat—the one that looked like a throne. As she sat, she gathered the mass of hair bound by a black silk cord, and moved it around in her lap so she could play with the ends. Yvette stepped in front of her and placed her matching leather note pad and Bible on the podium and then resumed her position with the congregation just behind Miz Du.
If people were aware of Ephesus’s tardiness they didn’t seem to mind. The faints and the fallings had already begun. But when Ephesus saw Miz Du doubled over in grief she began to chastise herself. She had some nerve making this thing about her, she thought, when poor Miz Du was grieving her only grandson. Ephesus scanned the room to see who else might genuinely need her support. She was looking for Tiana, Bryan’s fifteen-year-old girlfriend.
Several young girls from the high school were being led out of the church, overcome by the heat and the grief. If nothing else Bryan had been a charmer. No one could meet him when he was in form and not walk away smiling. Even the teachers at South Marion who hated it when Bryan made it to school were amazed by his intellect. Bryan could show up at school one or two days a week and still make decent grades.
Some of Bryan’s football team from Junior High were squeezed into one pew and their old jerseys, tiny black ribbons pinned to their left sleeves. Even most of the folks from the rough crowd looked sad, though too practiced at burying the young to cry. A few of them were looking as intently around the room as Ephesus, searching for something or someone. When Ephesus looked to the right, she saw Malcolm on the front row of the Deacon’s bench. He was staring hard at her; she unconsciously gripped the bundle of locks in her lap began twisting the end of one of them and stared right back at him. She wasn’t going to let Malcolm think he could intimidate her.
They might have gone on playing the ocular game of chicken if Malcolm’s wife Lisel hadn’t leaned almost into his lap to whisper in his ear. Ephesus rolled the ends of one or two of her locks rapidly between her fingers in a practiced way. When their eyes met, Lisel didn’t have the decency to look away and neither did Ephesus. Ephesus began to congratulate herself on having remained relatively calm during the whole exchange. This was the first time in more than a decade she’d been subjected to the presence of both her ex-fiancé and her ex-roommate. Ephesus did what her mother called pulling the Blackshear out of her genes and smiled very politely at Lisel Mitchell.
She would never remember whether Lisel smiled back because just then a strange man came down the aisle of the church and walked over to Miz Du. The old lady looked up through sheets of tears and began to shake and cry even harder. She tried to stand, but the stranger eased her back into her seat and got down on one knee and took both her hands in his. After a moment, Dr. Hall who looked somewhere between offended and relieved, slipped over so the man could take a seat next to Miz Du.
Ephesus tried to remember if Bryan’s father was still alive. She had heard Miz Du, say Bryan’s mother died of AIDS when he was a young child and people didn’t think women got the disease. But this man didn’t look like he could have been Bryan’s father even if he had been a teen parent. But it was at that moment that Della Brogden began screaming and Ephesus moved from curiosity to indignation. She didn’t mind loud grieving but she detested false sentiment. Della knew full well she couldn’t abide Bryan, she’d chased him down the street with a .38 caliber pistol when she found out Tiana was pregnant. Now, here she was screaming and rolling out of her pew. And it wasn’t going to be an easy roll. Fortnight Church of God by Grace was a large building, but it still had wooden floors and no central air. Everyone in the building was moist, if not sweaty, and Della looked wet. This meant that scraps of paper, dust mites, loose change, and bits of piedmont sand were going to do their best to stick to her as she twisted around on the floor.
Ephesus forgot about the strange man because it took three ushers, two men and one woman, to get Della out of the church. The two men had to hoist the load while the lady tried to keep a super-sized white handkerchief over Della’s knees. This was extremely difficult because the cloths were only meant to cover those slain in the spirit, not those possessed by one.
It was then that Ephesus finally saw Tiana, who’d been sitting near the door, wipe her own tears with the back of her wrist and follow her mother and the ushers out of the sanctuary. It seemed that none of the other Brogden children showed up to say good-bye to the love of their little sister’s life. As the choir took Della’s performance for their cue to sing another twelve verses of Amazing Grace, Ephesus wondered who was watching the baby, and rolled another one of her thick locks between her fingers.
After a few more minutes and another chorus of the song, the crowd seemed to quiet down and Ephesus saw Tiana slip back inside without Della. She knew it was time to shorten at least this part of Tiana’s and Miz Du’s misery and signaled the choir director to end the song. Then, she stood and assumed the pulpit. She swung the mass of hair back around her shoulder, bowed her head and sincerely asked God to forgive her for being distracted and self-absorbed and to grant her access to the spirit of peace. She stood so long with her head bowed that a real hush began to fall on the people. Some were wondering if Minister Cooper had gone to sleep, but those who knew the worth of prayer silently echoed her plea. Even Miz Du stopped her sobbing to stare at Ephesus.
When she raised her head , there was something very different about Ephesus Cooper. She wasn’t distracted or irritated, just focused and calm. When she spoke, even the timbre of her voice was changed. She understood and accepted that the weight of the day had come to rest upon her. It would be her words which would accompany the town’s last memory of Bryan. So neither pounding rain nor remembrances of ancient pains nor even fresh wounds should detract from sending Bryan on his way.
Ephesus’s deep rich voice pealed over the congregation.
“In this place today, some friends and some foes, some lovers and some enemies of Bryan DuBlaim have gathered to bid him farewell. Some of us have come through hell to say goodbye to Bryan,” Ephesus looked down at Miz Du, and the old woman nodded “while the rest of us only braved high water.”
Others wagged their heads and there were several mumbled “Amens.”
“But whatever you have suffered,” this time Ephesus looked at little Tiana and made a mighty effort not to look at the Mitchells, “don’t you dwell only on your own pain and miss the testimony in Bryan’s life or the message in his death.”
Those who’d come expecting to hear a sermon began to get excited and their rustling in the seats grew louder.
“We have lost another young one,” she continued, “a young man full of angst but also a young man full of promise. His was a life marked early on by the death of his mother. But God, who always has a ram in the bush, had his grandmother step in to raise him.”
“Amen!” shouted an old woman who was also caring for her grandchildren.
“ I would be remiss if I stood here today and spoke about Bryan as if he were perfect. He was not. Bryan liked a good time and he liked everyone around him to have a good time.”
At the end of Ephesus’s statement many of the young girls, and more than a few of the older women, nodded their heads slightly and got a faraway look in their eyes. But the women were not the only mourners caught up in memories of Bryan. Several of the guys thought of how they owed Bryan money and one person in the congregation recalled how he owed Bryan his life.
“When Miz Du asked me to stand up for her grandson and offer a tribute I have to admit I was nervous. I babysat Bryan a time or two when he and Miz Du first moved to Fortnight, but I didn’t know him all that well as he got older. When we did have occasion to talk we were usually butting heads because I was chastising Bryan about something or other, and I would always walk away from our encounters a bit frustrated. I would wonder how in the world that boy had talked himself out of trouble again.”
Ephesus smiled and leaned back from the microphone.
“But no matter what Bryan had or hadn’t done, I always learned something from my dealings with him.” Her voice had slipped into a low, southern furrow at the word “dealings”.
“Bryan could make me laugh about anything, and that taught me that, contrary to popular opinion, I can and do indeed like to laugh.”
This brought a collective chuckle from the folks in the crowd who knew her reputation.
“Bryan could make me see the bright side when it looked as though there was none to be found, and I watched him do that with most of the people in this room. I was there the day Howard Lassiter tried to rob the Feed and Seed with that old rusty 30.6 and while the rest of us were wondering if we should be scared, Bryan walked up to Howard, took the gun from his hands, put his arms around Howard’s shoulders and said, “Come on man, I’ll help you pay your rent.”
Ephesus looked out into the audience at Howard who was crying almost as hard as Miz Du. “Howard, you remember how he talked Old Colonel Brogden out of pressing charges and even talked him into giving you a job?”
Howard could only nod his head.
“Oh, yes, you see, Bryan DuBlaim was not perfect, but he had some perfect things he did the brief while he was on this earth. You know, we should all strive to do some perfect things while we are here. And if we can string enough of those perfect things together, then, will our living have been in vain?”
The question hung in he air only a millisecond before the congregation responded to her call.
“No!” Not hardly!” Of course not!” came the cries echoing from different areas of the sanctuary.
The electricity in the air inside the church began to echo that in the storm outside. Folk in Fortnight loved to be stirred. They enjoyed being roused from the day-to-day routine of pursuing survival, if only for a rainy afternoon in an old wooden church. As Ephesus went on she lost the little bit of treble usually present in her speaking voice and the depth of her tone matched the depth of her words. Ephesus was a skilled orator, but she was more than that. People heard her voice and the locks on the gates of their hearts sprang open. For the old folks she called up memories of when their elders ran the world and they still had room to dream. For the young, she connected them to their history and the collective heart of their community in ways they could actually appreciate.
Listening to Ephesus, seeing her standing their just taller than the podium and glowing like King Midas was her personal friend, helped them understand why they left the club, or put down the pipe, or rolled over in bed and still felt empty. Something in Ephesus’s voice, in her demeanor, promised them that they would soon find that thing for which they searched, and finally glow in the possession of their own passion.
For the next half hour the voices of the rain and Ephesus, Ephesus and the rain, drummed the grief and guilt, the anger and the affection from the hearts of the people. Under Ephesus’s tutelage they let go of Bryan DuBlaim and bid him Godspeed.