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Faces of God |
Poppa nearly tripped over his own feet as Sam walked with him back home from their South Chicago Baptist Church. Sam knew poppa's 'walkin shoes blues' wasn't on account of Reverend Brown having told poppa that they won the church raffle for a much-needed new table. "God works in mysterious ways" poppa advised his son with a smile. "Or mebbe yo grinnin when God walks in Miss Terrie's ways?" Sam retorted referring to the shapely woman strolling ahead of them. Sam prepared himself for Whack what quickly followed his sass talk. He couldn't help himself. Even knowing mamma or poppa would always be swift with a lesson to his behind, words would tumble out leaving him barely time to prepare himself. It never really hurt bad. Sam suspected they enjoyed his quick wit even as they scolded the form it always took.
Life had certain regularity to it. Irregularities, like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man down in Alabama a few months ago, came and went barely ruffling the flow of their lives.
Attending their Baptist church was part of the regularity in their lives. Even though he pretended to hate it, Sam enjoyed getting dressed up in his Sunday bests - putting on the brilliant white stiffly starched shirt smelling slightly of bleach which his mother so carefully saved for him all week long. Sam's mother looks as pretty as an angel in her colorful Sunday dress. His father and mother walk just a bit more slowly and regally on their way to church, heartily greeting fellow parishioners. No matter the weather, it was always good weather. "This rain'll bless our flowers wid brighter blooms, won' it" or "This here cold spell sho do make the church feel warm 'n' 'vitn', don't it now?"
At church, Sam's attention would wander during the readings and sermons, but he thoroughly enjoyed the singing. Before long, his shirt is well wrinkled for all the clapping and dancing that accompanies each gospel song. In unison, spirits are raised to the heavens on the joy of song. The troubles of the week are left far below in the earthly realm as the whole church brushes heaven. When Sam closes his eyes and simply feels the thunderous energy within the chapel, he can almost see God smiling brighter than lightning upon him and his family.
For the rest of the Lord's day, the warmth lingers as mamma prepares the meal - humming her favorite hymns while delicious breezes escape from the kitchen to tickle Sam's increasingly empty belly.
By Monday morning, the realities of a hard life are still intruding on the simmering Sabbath pleasures only with difficulty. Mamma is a bit gentler in waking him for school than she is the rest of the week. Poppa has a fresh energy in his step as he heads off to his shoe repair storefront. Sam knows that by Friday, poppas shoulders will be stooped with the weight of collecting payments from friends who can ill afford his leatherwork. Still, they can less afford want of his talent for pulling another few months of life from overworn soles. Poppa seems able to do the same for their owners with a joke or a kind word. He claims this is his secret for managing to pay their bills each month - so long as his customers outlive their shoes, he will have a mighty fine business. If Mr. Daniel, as Sam's mother calls his father when she is feigning displeasure at him, has a weakness, it is for jazz. "Woman," poppa announces as he does every Thursday about this time. "if ah don' stretch my legs ah'll be needin' shoes to fit mah hands, n den hows ah gonna sew mo leather tamarah?"
"Mr. Daniel" - the twinkle in her eye betrayed the pleasure they had in this weekly game - "Ah knows yall headin down to that jazz club. You don' be foolin' this mother's chile wid yo crazy talk. Jes' 'member Sam's birthday's comin' up so don' go tossing all yo money at that nogood barkeep" she called as poppa hopped down the wooden back stairs, making just a bit more noise than he would normally.
Mary smiled after him. If sneaking out to that Jazz club once a week was the worst of the man, she had done well to marry him. She could hardly believe that Sam was almost 10 now. Born right after the war, the years had flown by. She put Sam to bed and closed the curtain that separated his bed from the dining area in their small apartment.
It was almost midnight when that hard knock on the door awakened her from her slumber. Her knitting fell to the floor as she startled from the chair. Cautiously, she whispered at the door "Who dat rappin so late? Yo forget yo key Mr Daniel?"
"Miss Mary? I'ze sorry, but I gots terrible news " She recognized the voice as Mr Tom, Daniel's good friend from down the street. Shaking, she opened the door to him. "Miss Mary, Daniel done got hisself kilt. Hank n Bo got into a terrible fight n Daniel tried to stop em n it come to a terrible end. I'ze sorry, Miss Mary ,,,," Tom began to sob as she felt her knees turn liquid and a bone chilling haze fill the room.
It was now three weeks since that terrible night; two weeks since the confusing procession of somber men dressed in black, dead to the strains of Jazz music which filled the street as they made their way to the gravesite; one week since the last neighbor had come by with a casserole to sit a spell with Mary and Sam. Three weeks of dread shadows creeping silently through the holes in their drawn curtains, causing Mary to shiver as though an evil spirit laughed maniacally across her stony weeping soul. Mamma let Reverend Brown slip quietly in. He whispered of a family in need of a cleaning woman and how he could use Sam's help a bit around the church after school. Sam couldn't make out all of what was said, but didn't much care in any event. He felt he should somehow become the man of the house and take care of his mamma as poppa would have wanted, but he was too young to do more than daydream of how he might be his mamma's hero. His imaginative plans were as substantive as the dust balls that now collected under the furniture in the apartment. They seemed big as they rolled here and there with the slightest air, but disappeared into small dark warts when he would grab one in his hand.
On moving day, Sam struggled with the heavy box of pots and pans clanking within. He tried not to show how his arms trembled with the weight as the muscles of the neighbor men swelled and glistened in time with a drum beat of grunts as they maneuvered the dresser down the stairs. Sam knew it would be even harder getting things up the five flight walkup to their new roost. Sam wondered how the sun could become so much dimmer just eight blocks from the lively home he had enjoyed since the beginning of time.
After a while, the memory of those sparkling days became just vague imaginations. With the only slightly crackled and oversized jacket Reverend Brown stuck under his arm still securely in place, Sam let himself in amid the sounds of radios wrapped in heavy silences that exhaled from adjacent doors. It was dark inside, though hardly darker than it was in daylight. Mamma would be getting off the bus soon, wearily making her way up flight after flight. Sam thought to start some supper fixins for them, but the tired odor of mildew as he opened the cooler door matched the desolation of the shelves within. He trimmed the spots off a few slices of bread, buttered them, spread some sugar atop and placed them on the upper shelf of the oven, ready to be heated when mamma finally, tiredly managed to open the door. She would probably hand him a brown bag of tidbits and drips of fatty gravy straining to leech out through the creases in the wax as she kissed his forehead. Tonight she would eat just a bit less herself. Sam hadn't noticed it at first, or thought perhaps she was making sure her son had a full belly for his schoolwork, or maybe even was well enough fed at her job that she needed no more at home. Sam could sense now it was none of those. It was like some terrible invisible tendrils within her were choking off her life just as the vines outside the window kept choking out the light. He hoped tonight he might come up with some remark to earn him a spank and a smile from her thin lips, but they barely spoke enough now to lubricate his sassy word plays. Soon enough, he would cover her with a shawl as she dozed in the armchair. He would lay himself down on the sofa to ready himself for another day at school.
Sam was almost in high school when she finally passed. In a way, it brought peace to Sam as well. Her frail body was not that of his mother. Sam's mamma jiggled when giggled and swayed elusively as she hummed her hymns. Mamma had made the kitchen knife sound like a snare drum, the table shake like a leaf and her smooth dark skin blur as she cut the greens for supper. Today, Sam got his parents back as he had loved them. While white wooden crosses rooted where they rested, they lived again within Sam. As he sat there on the damp grass, her quiet voice spoke to him with certainty for a last time: "Yo a fine young man n yo made you mamma happy. Yo allays be havin a fine joke wid words, n jokes be fine for a ray o sunlight twixt dark clouds, but God dun give you a sharp mind fo better callins. Yo got to make it on yo own now boy, n God he ha a plan fo yo. Yo gots to seek the trud o dat plan wid dat mind o yors - yo hear me? Yo promise yo poor mamma to make poppa n me proud o yo as we look down on yo from hebben. Be a good man like yo poppa."
After a bit, Uncle George came and put his hand on Sam's shoulder. "We gots to go now, boy. Yo aunt Sally be getting supper ready for us 'n' you know how wimmins get ifn yo make dem vittles dry out in de obben - hooooeee! I don wanna be lissnin t dat muttrin all night. You?" Sam got himself to his feet. After six months, he knew it couldn't last much longer. Aunt Sally and uncle George tried to be quiet enough in their urgent whispers after he had gone to bed, but he knew nonetheless. They couldn't afford this. They tried cutting back and pretending not to eagerly accept what money he could bring them from odd jobs stocking shelves or sweeping barbershop floors or running down the streets delivering flowers while trying not to break the stems or let petals or leaves fall into the cracks and holes of the hot tar beneath his bare feet. At 14, his body was growing fast. His belly demanded more sustenance than Sam tried to limit himself to. Trying to keep his limbs from protruding so far from his clothes just wasn't working any more. Sam's high school expenses, added to George's costs of keeping that brown paper bag he carried about well weighted with the oil that kept him moving through his days, were more than the small family could manage. Worse, the strain was beginning to boil out of George's mouth and erupt from fists into walls and furniture. The strain had also made Sally's tongue too heavy to lift calming words from her throat.
Financial strains and unrest were not limited to that household. In recent years, the sidewalks of the neighborhood had been growing thick with people hoping to escape from those same pressures elsewhere. Sam noticed the changes. The streets he walked sounded and smelled much like uncle George. On the other hand, Reverend Brown's flock had grown as well. Enough that he decided it was high time to have a full time acolyte; one who would take room and board at the church and tend to things. Sam wasted no time moving his few possessions into the basement next to the furnace where a cot was set up for him.
Sam took to his job seriously and began to devour the books scattered about the church as he did his schoolbooks. Alone at night in the building, privacy was a novel experience for Sam. Often enough he would be unable to read because his salty eyes burned and watered from the heat of the furnace or his gut wrenched at the rumblings of rusty fluids flowing through the iron veins of the church. As he learned more of the world beyond the few blocks he called home, those same feelings could find root in him even far from his cot by the furnace. With a genetic talent, Sam became adept at clipping the sprouts of those soul-scarring seedlings where they showed themselves, but the roots refused to die. In remembrances of his father's hearty good humor, Sam sought means to kill those stubborn bitterweeds with the salvation promised each Sunday. He had but to bring Christ into his heart.
Sam just couldn't quite figure out what that meant. He tried to open his inner feelings enough that Christ would magically appear within him and take over to spread warming sunlight that would radiate from his eyes with solemn love for everyone about him. Try as he might, the emptiness within him remained stubbornly unlit. He needed a better sense of just who it was he was supposed to invite in. As he read the gospels of the New Testament, he tried to sense the nature of this Christ who would save him. He figured his boyhood image of a kind of superman blithely performing miracles, raising the dead and feeding the throng with less than would feed a single hungry man, wasn't the Christ who would come a calling. Yet he found more contradictions than he expected. If Christ could do so much so easily, why was He so skimpy with His miracles? Christ could single-handedly defeat the devil in the desert, but resigned himself to the fate of a horrible death at the hands of a small time governor. The Christ who turned out the money changers from His "Father's House" would but call Himself the "Son of Man." Sam got the idea of tolerance and loving your neighbor, but knew he still had to let Christ into himself to really do it right. For all the advice within the Epistles, it just refused to all come together for him.
Sam thought back to the days when God seemed so close as the church rocked with Gospel songs. Was it the song of God he was seeking? Sam skimmed through Psalms, but the fog hardly parted. These were songs to God, but not God's song.
Just as Sam was his father's son, perhaps he needed to know God the Father to get a handle on God the Son. If his understanding of God seemed foggy before, as he read the Old Testament the light almost scattered like embers on a windy night to leave him in total darkness. God the Genius who created the Heavens and the Earth, tenderly creating a beautiful garden for His most loved creations, tyrannically evicts them for being tricked in their innocence. When brother kills brother, He merely sends the murderer away. He almost casually destroys all life on earth but those creatures on Noah's ark to start over. Yet He talks with everyone just like a next-door neighbor. He seems kind of mean when He toys with Abraham convincing him to kill a son just to test his faith. Then He seems pretty much a regular guy to spend a few hours wrestling with Jacob. By Exodus, He seems to have changed some. He is a shy magician appearing to Moses only as a burning bush. He can be a pretty tough Lord - not real quick with the blessings but swift as his mother's swats when He gets mad.
When Sam reached Leviticus, he was excited that he would here learn the secret laws needed to see God's light. Offerings? Rules about crazy things? What's worth what? God is some kind of storekeep of blessings? Deuteronomy sort of got Sam back to thinking about obeying the Commandments and keeping with God's rules, but didn’t really help him figure God out. Then God becomes a vengeful warrior, or maybe a warrior spirit leading his chosen tribes to slaughter their enemies.
Sam finally got back to Psalms and Proverbs where his interest picked up. Sam liked that they seemed to contain hints of how to be a Godly person, but no brilliant flashes of sudden understanding went off in his mind. Ecclesiastes at first sends him into a funk seeming to tell him everything he was trying to do was futile and he shouldn’t be doing it, but he tried to understand the distinctions it spoke of. Sam thought this book was what he was really looking for and resolved to study it hard and figure it all out. Before he did, though, he became entranced with the Song of Solomon as love was very much on his mind at his age, not that he understood what that had to do with God. Sam neglected to return to Ecclesiastes and sort of skimmed through the rest of the Old Testament. God's treatment of the Israelites seems often capricious or manipulative having them wander about various lands, falling into captivity for spells, building and destroying their cities and Temples all the while not bothering any more to appear in person to them as He did in the beginning. Yet eventually, He Himself sacrifices a Son to save a wicked world of its sins against Him and His will.
Maybe it was the tension of the missile crisis spilling onto the sidewalks the hushed urgent whispers he recognized as those of his aunt and uncle. Whatever the trigger, Sam despaired of figuring this all out. Sam, in turn, suddenly spilled all his confusion out to Reverend Brown in such a babel, Sam half expected God to send a lightning bolt between their chairs. Reverend Brown listened quietly for nearly two hours until Sam took a breath, unable to even frame a sensible question. "My, my, my. Jes 15 years old and a head full o more jumbles, rebuses an' questions than I thought could fit in there. I have jes one question for you, though. Why is it you 'spectin to be able to wrap your arms around God an hug Im as though He were jes a man?" With that, Reverend Brown arose stiffly from his seat, and grabbing his coat, said "Ah can smell Mrs. Browns dumplins all the way here. I'll bring you some later. De Lord, he dun gib us many a blessin all 'round us ebbry day."
Sam sat exhausted. All he thought he had learned in his studies began to melt from his mind. Two years of studies and accumulated knowledge of the Bible pooled back into his subconscious. He wasn't sure it brought him any closer to salvation, but at least he didn't feel trapped in an alley surrounded by brick walls taller than he could perceive and nary a star above him twinkling through the gloom. Sam went for a stroll that evening; a first for him. When he returned, a plate with three dumplings awaited him.
During the next few weeks, Sam spent time enjoying his neighborhood. He knew most everyone he passed on the streets, but he started to get to know the trees, flower boxes hanging outside windows, colorful displays beckoning passersby from storefronts, the sounds of life as though each half block had its own melody and rhythm assigned to it. Every now and then, Sam almost felt a click somewhere deep - so indistinct it might be coming from some other world, which occasionally opened a tiny doorway behind his ears.
Sam looked up at poppa as he finished chalking five lines and a circle on the sidewalk. "Thas you, poppa" he proudly announced. "Well, well," poppa replied, "It surely do look like me, tho Ah'm thinkin Ah don look much like it." Sam looked down at his creation for a second and retorted: "imagin not, Ah forgot the big tummy" - Whack!!
Sam was approaching that part of the street that he first thought reminded him of the school marching band - though that wasn’t quite right. It had a sharper tone to it. It was June and the windows were open. Smoke wafted out on an insistant voice made a little shrill by the small speaker of the radio. It wasn’t Dr. King, but some new voice he had not heard before. Other noises intruded to make it hard to follow listening from the sidewalk: Sam could catch only parts
"… These … some quick questions … provoke some thoughts … so-called Negroes … enlightened leaders expect the poor black sheep to integrate into a society of bloodthirsty white wolves, … sucking on our blood for over four hundred years here in America? Or will these black sheep also revolt … another question: When the "good shepherd" comes will he integrate his long-lost sheep with white wolves? According to the Bible when God comes he won't even let his sheep integrate with goats. …
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that no people on earth fit the Bible's symbolic picture about the Lost Sheep more so than America's twenty million so-called Negroes … Elijah Muhammad, a godsent shepherd, has opened the eyes of our people. … The black masses don't want segregation nor do we want integration. … we are a religious group, and as a religious group we can in no way be equated or compared to the nonreligious civil rights groups.
We are Muslims because we believe in Allah. We are Muslims because we practice the religion of Islam. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that there is but one God, the creator and sustainer of the entire universe, the all-wise, all-powerful Supreme Being. The great God whose proper name is Allah. … Islam is an Arabic word that means "complete submission to the will of Allah, or obedience to the God of truth, God of peace, the God of righteousness, … Muslim is used to describe one who submits to God, one who obeys God. … what does the religion of Islam have to do with American so-called Negro's changing attitude toward himself, toward the white man, toward segregation, toward integration, and toward separation, and what part will this religion of Islam play in the current black revolution that is sweeping the American continent today? … religion of naked truth, undressed truth, truth that is not dressed up, and he says that truth is the only thing that will truly set our people free.
… Why, Jesus himself prophesied: You shall know the truth and it shall make you free. Beloved brothers and sisters, Jesus never said that Abraham Lincoln would make us free. He never said that the Congress would make us free. He never said that the Senate or Supreme Court or John Kennedy would make us free. …
. … The black revolution against the injustices of the white world is all part of God's divine plan. God must destroy the world of slavery and evil in order to establish a world based upon freedom, justice, and equality. …
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that the symbolic stories in all religious scriptures paint a prophetic picture of today. He says that the Egyptian House of Bondage was only a prophetic picture of America. Mighty Babylon was only a prophetic picture of America. the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah painted only a prophetic picture of America. No one here in this church tonight can deny that America is the mightiest government on earth today, the mightiest, the richest, and the wickedest. And no one in this church tonight dare deny that America's wealth and power stemmed from 310 years of slave labor contributed from the American so-called Negro. …
Beloved brothers and sisters here, a beautiful here at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, because of America's evil deeds against the so-called Negroes, like Egypt and Babylon before her, America herself now stands before the bar of justice. America herself is now facing her day of judgement, and she can't escape because God Himself is the judge. …”
Sam had been becoming aware of the civil rights movement. Reverend Brown more and more often referred to Dr. King's words of awakening dreams in his Sunday sermons, though the church seemed to be splitting apart despite the messages of progress. The troubles in Birmingham a few months prior were still being discussed here and there. The killing of Medgar Evers just days ago had brought more impatient voices to the arguments. There was tension on the street Sam had never felt before. He asked the man sitting on the stoop beside him who was speaking on the radio. Malcolm X - what an odd name. Sam wondered about a Baptist Church in Harlem so different from his own here in Chicago. Sam had no idea what Islam or Muslim or Allah meant, but from the biblical references, he figured it couldn’t be all that different. That Egypt or Babylon or Sodom could mean anything about his current life, intrigued him. Too, this Islam seemed to promise some answers he had not found himself in the Bible. Maybe he would see what it was all about.