dip into the past but to be hauled up and tossed back in it, don’t get me started. Otherwise I don’t know what to tell him. “You been praying like I taught you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Add your worry to the list. I can tell you this: I asked for your daddy to find someone who would love him and love you and who would replace me when I’m gone.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what? The only thing you can count on is the cycle of life. Anyway, she came in and I believe it’s God’s doing.”
“How do you know though?”
I pause. “I don’t. But I will say that I had a dream the night before he brought her home and there was a woman wearing yellow in it, walking through a tunnel waving, and when Eliza walked in, didn’t she have a daffodil in her hair?”
“I don’t remember.”
“She did. So cheer up. Go in the back and get clean; I’ve got to make these cakes; if you listen, I’ll fill one of them with that blueberry jam you like.”
He heeds, but I can tell when my words don’t take root. Either way, I head out to the garden with its tomatoes, greens and okra, the banks of beets, sweet potatoes and cabbage, and rows of crowder peas, woven through the corn. The yard chickens scatter throughout for seeds and insects. I pass the smokehouse, the well, then the pen, fenced in with zigzag rails. The best hog looks at me with begging eyes, but I point my gnarled finger at him anyway.
WE PILE AS MANY INTO THE CHURCH AS WE CAN FIT and still the doorway is jammed with witnesses. I sit in the first row of course. Jericho walks in next, his maple-wood skin shining in his dark blue suit, his head held high, till he slinks in right beside me. Next is a little girl whose father works the fields, reaching into a basket and sprinkling gardenias at her feet.
The organist presses down on the pedals, and we stand. Eliza might as well tiptoe into the church from the back. Her yellow skin is powdered smooth, and there’s a crown of daffodils woven into her curly bun. I could pick her up with one hand she seems so light, and she sails more than steps down the aisle. The crowd isn’t faking when they ooh and aah. They probably haven’t seen a bride so lovely, probably won’t again. I glance over at her side of the church. Jericho saw them headed in and said without meaning to, “Mama, those folks sho is dignified.” I know they are. Her mother, Cyrile, is a schoolteacher at West Alexander Colored Convent School, one of the first schools for blacks in the parish. She sits next to her son, Eliza’s brother Louis. People tell me he is hotheaded, and I can sense it, that his pale skin is quick to redden, and he fidgets, picking at his fingers even as his sister’s and Major’s hands join. Still his suit is hemmed so fine you can scarcely see the edge of his socks. I don’t like to compare people. It is like slamming God for making petunias and roses, but it doesn’t escape me I was born a slave. I can read some, and I made sure Major finished the fourth grade. But he works the farm now, and Eliza’s family lives at the intersection of General and Christie Roads. They come from the likes of the Doucets and the Chevaliers. And they have been free for as long as they care to remember.
I remind myself I had a dress made for this event, a pastel yellow silk crepe one with a drop waist and a bowtie at the neck, from a store so fancy I had to pay a white woman to make the purchase. I am a heavy woman—even now, the seams of this gown are straining against my sides—but I know I look good. Once I overheard a younger man say as I was leaving the sick and shut-in ministry prayer meeting, “That Josephine could be my mama but she lookin more like a sister.”
Now Jericho’s old preschool teacher stands and walks toward the pulpit, clears her throat, passes a look to the organist. The music starts, and the teacher is unsteady when she joins in,
Three gates in the east
Three gates in the west
Three gates in the north
Three gates in the south
That makes twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
But it doesn’t take long before the song rises from her gut.
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
And I might as well be standing up there with her, patting my hand at my side:
There’s twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
Walk right in, you’re welcome to the city
Step right up welcome to the city
Walk right through those gates to the city
There are twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
When the applause settles, the preacher rises from his chair on the pulpit, walks toward us, his voice bellowing even at the start:
“How many people in a marriage, members?”
“Two,” we’re quick to shout.
“What’s that?” And he cups his ear like he can’t hear us. “Say what?” he asks again. “Three, including Mama? No, no, four? Including brother and sister who still at home? No, not that either, members, it’s just the two of you. And God, and let him be the sounding board, let him be the sole advisor. You tell Janie and Paul a secret about your woman and you go home and lay your head on your pillow and you sleep it away like a bad dream, but Janie still thinking about it, and every time your woman walking by, Paul envisioning your private pain and he breathing in it its own spark of life. No, member. Noooo,” and he allows that word to linger so it escapes halfway between a sigh and a moan. “Nooo. And who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. And virtue’s not something you can buy, is it? You either have it through the spirit of the Lord being implanted in you from birth or you spend your whole life searching. And Major,” he turns to my son wiping the sweat from his forehead, “Major, I think you got it, I think you might be one of the lucky souls on this Earth who found it.” He is nearly singing now, and he lifts his feet one by one into the air and pumps in slow heavy motion down the steps until he reaches the couple. “I think you got it, and when you got it, best to hold on to it with all your miiight.” And that last sentiment is so nearly a song that an ordinarily quiet woman who sang soprano in the choir with me starts clapping her hands and stomping her feet, shouting, “Yes,” slow at first, then faster and faster still. The preacher mingles his own words with her shouts, then he nods at the organist, and with everyone joining, even the children, belts out:
Let Jesus lead you
Let Jesus lead you
Let Jesus lead you
All the way
All the way from
Earth to Heaven
Let Jesus lead you, all the way
I stand too. I can hear my own voice, heavy but sweet, shining above the rest, and I’m keeping time with my feet, balancing on each alternately, and swinging my body when I can manage, singing all the while. Members behind me raise their rattles and tambourines and clamor down the aisle.
He’s
