Four Spirits

  “Don’t nobody move,” Christine said.

  Frozen behind the counter, Arcola said, “Don’t nobody even think ’bout moving.” She looked at Charles and tried to flash her smile, but her face seemed to be cracking.

  Gloria said, “Let’s all hold hands.”

  When she reached out and took Cat’s hand, she could feel how unsteady Cat was on the stool; on her other side, Gloria took Christine’s. Cat’s hand felt boneless; Christine’s was long and hard. Mr. Parrish snapped his hand into Christine’s, as though he was catching a fly. He had to tell Arcola to step forward, so she could be part of the chain. Gloria hoped maybe Arcola would be a little protected from the dogs behind the countertop.

  Though she couldn’t open her mouth, Gloria made her voice box hum. Christine heard her and began to sing off-key “We Shall Overcome.”

  Everybody joined in: “We shall overcome;we shall overcome someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome someday.”

  Gloria saw the first megaphone man pass the horn to an older man.

  “This is Captain Reese.” He spoke rapidly. “Your time’s up and we’re gonna have to come in there and clear y’all out. If I was you, I wouldn’t let that happen. I’d walk on out now at the end of your song while I was still walking.”

  On the other side of the plate glass, Gloria saw the newspaper-reading man take a radio telephone out of his satchel. He turned a crank fast and began to speak into it. He was standing on the edge of the street, looking first one way, then the other. A clump of blue-uniformed policemen were pushed up around the door. The dogs were standing stock-still, not straining, just barking over and over, like they were bored.

  On Twentieth Street, somebody stopped his car, tried to back up. Horns were honking.

  “I don’t believe that was even a minute,” Mr. Parrish said.

  Gloria felt the sweat in Cat’s hand, in Christine’s.

  A command was given, and the dogs were suddenly all lunge, fangs bared, and the door opened back and three policemen burst in at once. They entered with the noise of a tornado.

  When a policeman grabbed Gloria by the shoulders, she let go of Cat’s hand, and, quick as a wink, Gloria crashed against the floor.

  “Go limp, go limp,” Gloria heard Christine yelling through the noise of attack, but Gloria snugged into the quiet space between the stools and the counters, out of the way, so she wouldn’t be stepped on. She was small enough. Blue legs hurried past her, and one of the boys down at the other end crashed to the floor.

  Clubs whacked stools and the counter. The shouting clanged like metal voices. Somebody else squatted down beside his stool to hide. A policeman kicked the squatter in the chest till he unfolded and sprawled out on the floor. Everywhere shiny shoes were scuffling and kicking.

  Christine was down on the floor, covering her head, but she was calling through the noise, “When they touch you, go down. Go limp.”

  But Mr. Parrish was holding to the edge of his stool with both hands, and they had skipped him, maybe because he was older, with gray in his hair. Everybody else was down now, and Gloria hoped Arcola was hidden behind the counter. Everybody else sprawled on the floor. They were like a carpet of bodies. Some were protecting their heads, and the police were kicking and kicking, and some were hitting shoulders, heads, ribs with their brown clubs.

  “I like to see ’em like this,” one policeman chortled. He was bent over, and she read his name on a bar:LEROY JONES.

  He straightened up. “Tell ’em to pass those ’lectric cattle prods now.”

  “Y’all like joy juice,” another said. People were bleeding, and Gloria closed her eyes, but still she heard the whacking of the billy clubs, and groaning.

  “Nigger white girl!” somebody said. Somebody was talking at Cat. “Little princess on her throne.” Was it LeRoy Jones? Gloria wasn’t sure. Now they all sounded alike.

  “Get in the floor with ’em or get yourself out of here.”

  Clear as a bell, Gloria heard Cat’s voice. “No.”

  Then Cat was jerked off the stool, and Gloria saw her hit, headfirst, and her neck bend abruptly sideways.

  “I’ll shock your white ass same as theirs!” one of them yelled. And he rammed the prod into Cat’s thigh. “Yankee bitch!” he yelled. “Tough girl, tough girl,” he hollered. And he touched her in a new place.

  Christine jumped to her feet. “Stop it!” she yelled. Christine was standing up, yelling in their faces. “She can’t feel in her legs! She’s crippled!”

  “You next, nigger,” and he tried to thrust the cattle prod at Christine.

  Quick as a majorette, Christine grabbed the shaft of the prod, twirled it, and rammed the electric end into the policeman’s stomach. Almost as fast, the sound of a gun went off, and Christine’s blue dress was covered with blood, all over the front. The jacket and her white blouse, too, and she was sinking sideways.

  Gloria couldn’t help herself; from safe between the stools, she reached out toward his genitals, her hand was in the air. And then she stopped. She wouldn’t.

  Mr. Parrish was standing up, he was holding up his prayer hand. “Stop,” he shouted. “In the name of Jesus, stop!” Gloria saw blood, like an exploding rose, bloom in the palm of his hand.

  Then the dogs came in. One of the dogs crouched just in front of Gloria, and a rain of smoking grease showered down. Arcola! The dog yelped and then sprang over the counter. And another dog crouched and leapt fluidly over the counter. His long dog chest and stomach blurred past Gloria’s eyes as he rose.

  Out on the street, a white boy with nubbins for fingers pressed his hand and nose and agonized lips against the glass as though he wanted in. Gloria closed her eyes.

  THE BULLHORN VOICE SAID,“All right. All right. Y’all done good. F.B.I.’s here. F.B.I.’s ready to look at these nonviolent colored people.”

  Gloria saw the gray satchel of the newspaper vendor swinging before her eyes.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Let’s carry these people out of here.”

  Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors

  HOLDING EDDIE AND HONEY BY THEIR LITTLE HANDS, TJ led the boys from the parked car toward Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors Church. He registered the poverty of this church, an abandoned shoe box house, with a crude pyramid made of plywood mounted on the flat roof as a steeple. Not even a cross on top. When TJ and the children passed inside, he saw a cross on the altar table. The cross was two rusty concrete rebars wired together.

  Because the aisle was narrow, Agnes and Diane walked behind TJ and the boys. This was Charles Powers’s old church, and it was at his mother’s request that the service would be here.

  Of course the people would burst the seams of the building if they all tried to crowd in here, but it was way early now, and TJ knew people would not shove in but stand all around, in the churchyard and in the gravel streets. They would sort themselves out in the slots between the houses, all of them mere cabins or a few shotgun houses as poor as this one converted into a church. This early, only a few people sat inside scattered on the backless, gray-painted benches.

  Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors. Here the windows were not the color-infused glass shattered at Sixteenth Street. Here the glass was simple window-pane, painted thinly with house paint, a checkerboard of many rectangular colors. TJ appraised the workmanship. The paint on the glass—red, yellow, blue, frank colors—had been applied with care. Nothing slapdash. The bristles of the brush had left their straight, vertical marks, and through these narrow streaks in the colors came the sunshine.

  The coffins had already arrived. Four of them. Closed, thank God. Against his will, TJ saw again the little Korean girl, coffined only by the steep sides of a ditch, naked with most of her body burned black and crisp by a flamethrower. Her straight black hair, her forehead and open eyes were untouched. She wore her hair in bangs. TJ closed his eyes, but eyes open or closed, he could not bring down the shade on that memory. From behind, Agnes was touching him. Maybe she’d seen him
flinch his eyes closed, tight as a fist closing. Maybe she thought he flinched at the sight of the four coffins. Agnes had known all four of them from night school—Christine Taylor, Arcola Anderson, and their friend, the crippled white girl, and her fellow student Charles Powers.

  The coffins matched, each upholstered in gray cloth, and TJ wondered which was which. He saw a boy holding to the end of one coffin. He had his arms around it, as well as he could get them around it. His cheek rested on the gray cloth, and he was crying sideways onto the upholstering. His mother stood there sniffling, one light-toned baby up in her arms and three others, a girl about nine and two little dark fellows whose hands were held by their big sister. Somebody had given the little boys, younger than Honey, tiny green bow ties to clip under their chins. TJ touched his own bow tie. The mother was fighting back her tears, but the boy, maybe seven or eight, who embraced the coffin wore his pain on his face. His tears flowed unabated, and TJ’s tears began to flow in sympathy.

  “I believe that must be Charles’s family,” Agnes whispered and nodded. “Here’s Gloria.”

  TJ was startled: Gloria had green eyes like a white person. She said the coffin next to the Powers family was Christine’s. TJ didn’t sob, but his eyes wept steady streams of tears.

  Gloria stood beside TJ and Agnes and the children. All of them looked at the coffins, the pulpit, and the altar table where four red roses stood in a brass vase in front of the pulpit. No other flowers. On the table, a white cardboard sign folded like a tent read: “Memorial donations accepted for Freedom Groups.”

  Sitting off to the side were four white people. Two young ladies, and a man who looked like a movie star, all tan, with wavy light hair. A broken-down, work-weary white man, not too old, old before his time, took a wrinkled handkerchief from the side pocket of his shabby suit and blew his nose.

  “After you’ve gone up,” Gloria said, “I’ll introduce you to Cat’s brother. He came back home from the Peace Corps for the funeral, and her father.” She spoke sympathetically but businesslike. “And that’s Stella. She was a teacher, with us.” Yes, TJ had seen her through the classroom window that hot night before he was beaten.

  Somebody began to play the piano softly. TJ was surprised the church had a piano. When he looked over at it, Agnes explained that Mr. Parrish had had the piano trucked over from the college. A white man with red hair was playing softly. Five white people.

  TJ thought he’d never heard a white man play so sweetly. He wondered if there were going to be a lot of white people there, but he knew better. Not down here in the Quarters where the street wasn’t even paved, and it having rained last night. Hell, rain or no rain—none of the power would come, he knew that. TJ wished the city would send a representative. Just one official white man.

  “Let’s go on up,” Agnes said quietly, and they led the children to the coffin.

  “This is your mama’s last bed,” Agnes explained to the children. TJ couldn’t say a word. He squeezed the hands of the little boys. Diane began to cry first, and then Eddie and Honey. “She wants you to kiss her box,” Agnes said, sobbing, “and tell her good-bye.”

  TJ let go of the boys’ hands, even though he hated to, even for a second. Though Agnes set Diane free to be with her mama, she kept on talking to the children. Standing behind the younguns, Agnes told them about how in heaven Christine was loving them and would always love them. How they could always find her in their hearts. After a while, Agnes moved closer and touched their shoulders, and told them that their mama had planned ahead for them, planned should anything ever happen to herself, TJ and Agnes LaFayt would take care of them and love them. “And we do,” Agnes said. “Now let’s go sit down, and just think about your mama, and hold her in our hearts.”

  TJ could hardly bear it. He thought he’d rather been beat to death than have this happen. Suffer the little children—what had Jesus meant saying something like that? Then Gloria asked him how was he feeling, and he got his voice again. Her eyes were pretty and kind, even if they were green, and she looked right into him, like she knew how bad he was hurting, and she was hurting too. To TJ, the young woman seemed remarkably calm. Not uncaring. No, she cared.

  TJ knew he looked a sight with the lump still on his forehead, but it didn’t show up as bad as it would have if he’d had gauze on it. His pant leg covered up the swelling on his leg.

  Here came three white people in wheelchairs, and a blind man with a white cane with a red tip. The movie star man, the brother, got up to greet them. He led the blind man up the two steps to the coffin on the far right, and the blind man’s eyes rolled up as he touched the gray cloth and moved his lips. So that was the coffin that held the crippled white girl. One after the other, the brother was picking up the handicapped people out of their chairs, marching up the altar steps holding them in his arms, and letting them stretch their hands down to touch the coffin. Then he carried them back to their wheelchairs.

  The movie star was a compact man, but TJ knew he must be awful strong to tote them so easily. One woman and one man were just thin little people, but one of the handicapped women was plump and wore a tight black dress and a black hat with a few black feathers—she was a fashion plate. After the wavy-headed man got her out of the chair, he had to hitch her up higher, the way you did with something heavy, though it was hard on the back. Dangling in the air, her plump feet looked swollen where the black patent leather high-heeled shoe cut into her hose. Long ago, TJ had watched how feet dangled, when he gave up his white buddy. When somebody pulled him away from TJ’s chest, hitched Stonewall up in his arms, and carried him away to put in a bag.

  Suddenly TJ sobbed convulsively. And there was Agnes’s arm around his shoulders, and he made himself stop for the children’s sake. He wished he’d worn his army uniform though. Even if it was a bit tight now. He looked again for the feet of the plump, crippled white woman. There she was, in black, sitting in her shiny wheelchair. Her feet were pale and clean, rising like biscuit dough around the curve of her black pumps.

  The fourth coffin had to hold the young woman, Arcola Anderson, but her folks weren’t here yet. Still the pews were starting to fill up with the early birds. The piano man kept playing, softly and well. It was comforting to know who was inside which coffin. TJ’s gaze traveled up the two steps, and for a moment he dwelt with each of them: the young man, Charles Powers, on his far left, with the wet spot where the little brother had cried; then Christine; then came the pulpit surrounded by three chairs covered in threadbare red velvet, and on the other side, it was Arcola Anderson, and then the white girl, Cat, inside the coffin on the far end.

  Starting to get hot, TJ thought, and he knew what with the rain last night, it would soon be awful humid, too. Hot as August. Somebody else was thinking the same, because men all around were lifting up the windows. Raising the painted windows was like taking off a mask. Now anybody could clearly see how run-down this neighborhood was, and TJ felt ashamed that it was such a poor place. He and Agnes had a good house in a former white section, not a Quarters house. Still, he glimpsed some zinnias or marigolds here and there around somebody’s doorstep. Nothing like Agnes’s expensive dahlias, all shapes and sizes, looking like fireworks and sparklers in front of their porch.

  Straight through an open window, a honeybee flew in. It buzzed directly to one of the roses on the altar and disappeared for a moment into the heart of the red flower. TJ nudged Agnes. “Lookie,” he said.

  They were sitting close together now, what with the crowd congregating, and he could feel Agnes’s side expand, almost like a chuckle.

  “I know,” she said. “Here they come.” She did chuckle, just once. Three more bees flew in, straight to the altar. Each bee had its own half-opened rose. All through the service, TJ would watch them, how they crawled around the petals, ducked inside, fretted the golden centers with their feet.

  “They say your heart got four chambers,” TJ whispered to Agnes.

  She just smiled and nodded, clasped his h
and.

  Now he took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped his forehead of the sweat and his cheeks of his tears. Over the wound on his forehead, he just patted tenderly. Every child there, even the tot in Charles Powers’s mother’s arms, was well behaved and nicely dressed, but they seemed sealed in grief and pain. Heat and humidity and the smell of dying leaves had already invaded the church.

  To help the time pass till the service, TJ made himself think the words to the melodies the piano played.

  When he started feeling faint, he took out the individually wrapped peppermint pinwheels from his pocket and gave one each to Agnes, Diane, Eddie, and Honey. Agnes had Honey stand up and sit between them. Now each child sat next to an adult. From inside all their mouths, TJ heard the peppermints clacking softly against their teeth and small slurping sounds.

  The church was full before Arcola’s parents came in. Her father burst in like a steam locomotive. He ran down the aisle and threw himself sobbing on his daughter’s coffin. His wife tried to lead him away, and Gloria went up to help, too, pulling gently at his shoulders. Finally Gloria leaned her face down next to his ear and whispered something long. Then he straightened up, and Gloria calmly led the parents to a reserved space close to their daughter’s coffin; TJ watched them settle across from him and his. The man had lost his only child, and God had given three to TJ, all in the same hour.

  I, Gloria

  I WATCH THE REVEREND MR. LIONEL PARRISH, MY BOSS, come in behind the altar, through a little door I never noticed existed. Appropriately, it is a “Christian” door, one with a raised cross in the upper portion, and below it, two sections suggest an open Bible. From the outside, the minister enters dramatically, with a flash of the ordinary world behind him. I remember that day when the face of Christ was blown away and the ordinary sky presented itself. Mr. Parrish’s right hand is done up in a big white bandage, which all can see, and Mr. Parrish uses it to wipe his forehead. All can see the sign of recent violence, but I see the splatter of blood blooming out of the bare palm when, at the White Palace, he raised his hand in prayer. From my safe place between the stems of the stools, I saw the bullet enter his raised palm. Now the gauze bandage is pristine white, and I must focus on this place and this time.