Beverly, who was a few years older than her stepmother. In their black dresses and big, black church hats with silk ribbons tied into bows, the twenty or so women of the Missionary Society took up the first two rows. My grandmother stood among them, raising holy hands. Back in the old days, when the church was just getting started, Brother Morrisohn and my grandmother, my mother’s mother, had founded the group, which later became the fulcrum of the church’s social activity.
Sister Elaine Morrisohn, his fair-skinned widow, sat weeping among her dark sisters. She was the youngest member of the Missionary Society and that was mostly because she had been his wife. It was rumored that Sister Morrisohn had lived a life of singular wickedness before meeting and marrying Brother Morrisohn.
Beverly Morrisohn, his daughter, was not in attendance—although I had spotted her briefly at the final night of his wake. She wasn’t much to look at, a round-faced woman with her hair done up in an ugly bun. A nonbeliever, Beverly had worn pants to her own father’s wake. No wonder she and Sister Morrisohn hadn’t been on speaking terms for longer than the sixteen years I had been alive.
I played to comfort his widow.
Watch out, ushers, I’m going to make them shake today. I’m going to make them faint. Watch out!
I played so that they would remember Brother Morrisohn, benefactor and friend—Brother Morrisohn, the great saint, who had put the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters on the map.
My fingers burned over the keys. Remember him for the pews and the stained glass windows! Remember him for the nursery!
Remember him for the piano he bought me!
Now the tilting hats of the women of the Missionary Society were my target. I aimed my cannon, fired. Musical shrapnel exploded in the air. They jerked back and forth, euphoric. They raised their sodden handkerchiefs toward heaven and praised the Holy Spirit, but it was I who lured them into shouts of dominant seventh—Hear That Old-Time Gospel Roar Like a Lion! It was I who made them slap their ample breasts through black lace.
Remember Brother Morrisohn. Remember!
The choir was swaying like grass in a measured breeze as I caught the eye of Peachie Gregory, my secret love, singing lead soprano. Though I seldom dreamt about her anymore, I would marry her one day. Peachie winked at me and then hammered the air with her fist. It was a signal. Play like you know how to play!
I did. I hit notes that were loud. I hit notes that didn’t fit. Then I pulled the musical rug out from under them. No piano. No piano—except a strident chord on the third beat of each measure backed by whatever bass cluster I pounded with my left hand.
Peachie gave me a thumbs-up. I had them really going now.
Laying into that final chorus like I had thirty fingers, I joined them again. I was playing for Peachie now. She kept hammering the air. I kept touching glory on the keys. The celestial echo reverberated. The whole church moved in organized frenzy—the Holy Spirit moving throughout the earth.
I was so good that day. Even Peachie had to admit it.
Was that my sin? Pride?
At graveside, I hurled a white rose into the hole. The flower of my remembrance slid off the smooth surface of the casket and disappeared into the space between the casket and the red and black walls of earth. Suddenly, the widow collapsed beside me. I caught hold of her before she hit the ground. My skinny arms and the meaty black arms of the Missionary Society steadied Sister Morrisohn on her feet again. She was not a heavy woman. She smelled of blossoms sweeter than the rose in her hand.
“I don’t want him to go,” she wailed.
“The Lord taketh the best, sister,” my grandmother said. “He lived way beyond his threescore and ten.”
“Amen” and “Yes, Lord” went up from the assemblage.
“His life was a blessing to all,” said Pastor, just beyond the circle of Missionary Society women that surrounded Sister Morrisohn. “Yes, but I don’t want him to go,” wailed the widow.
My grandmother, that great old-time saint, had one arm across the widow’s back, massaging her. “Throw the rose, child,” my grandmother urged.
My own arm had somehow gotten trapped around the widow’s waist and I couldn’t snake it out of there without causing a disturbance as my grandmother’s bell of a stomach had pressed the hand flat against Sister Morrisohn’s ribs. Peachie Gregory watched it all from the other side of the hole.
“Throw the rose.”
Sister Morrisohn clutched the flower to her chest. “Can I see him one more time?”
“You shouldn’t, child,” replied my grandmother.
Sister Morrisohn said, “Please,” and the August wind blew aside her veil revealing her ears, each of which was twice pierced—before she had accepted the Lord, of course. “Please.”
My grandmother finally gave in and pulled away, muttering to herself, “Lord, Lord.” She crunched through the gravel in her flat-soled funeral slippers to Pastor and commanded him in a loud conspiratorial whisper to open the casket one more time.
“Amen” and “Yes, Lord” went up from the assemblage again.
When the groundskeeper, a burly man with a patch over one eye, leaned in to pull the levers that raised the coffin up from the hole, Sister Morrisohn took my hand and walked me over to the edge of the shiny box in which Brother Morrisohn lay.
His hair was neatly parted. His lips were fixed in a taut line. He had an expression on his face like a man dreaming about childhood. Sister Morrisohn fixed her husband’s dead fingers around the white rose. When she stepped back from the box, I stepped with her.
“Tha’s all?” said the man with the patch over his eye. A hand in a dirty work glove rested against the controls. “Y’all finish?”
“Yes,” said my grandmother. “You may lower it again.”
The man snorted, “Church folk.” As he set to work lowering the casket, he mouthed what may have been obscene words but we couldn’t hear him for the singing:
We are marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion,
We are marching upward to Zion, that beautiful city of God
I ushered Sister Morrisohn into the hearse already loaded with sisters from the Missionary Society. The widow squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Elwyn. He really cared about you. Your music meant so much to him.”
“Thank you. I’m glad.”
I remained by the door of the hearse because Sister Morrisohn yet held my hand. Should I tell her that Peachie Gregory was waiting for me, that we had planned to stop off at Char-Hut to finish our grieving over french fries and milkshakes? How does one break away from the recently bereaved?
I averted my eyes and in a sudden move wrenched my hand from her grasp. When I dared look again, the hand that had held mine was brushing at tears.
“Don’t forget about me, Elwyn.”
Strange music
