By the Rivers of Brooklyn (36 page)

Marjorie and Frank made the greatest offer of all: they asked Rose to come stay with them, in their small but tidy spare bedroom, in their neat little apartment on President Street. They are twenty years younger than she is, hardworking people with two small children. And they are willing to take an old woman of fifty into their house for no better reason than that she's a child of God and she comes from home.

She said no. Told Marjorie she was better off on her own, though she can't articulate in what way her cramped dark room with its single bare light bulb, its peeling wallpaper and worn linoleum, makes her “better off.” Perhaps it's just the fact that there's no-one here but her and God. Back in that room after an hour and a half of bus rides and transfers, she makes herself kneel on the hard floor beside the bed, feels the floorboards bite into her knees. The surgery was, in its way, successful, and the radiation, though horrible, is supposed to “make sure” they had got it all. But she can still feel cancer like a dark suspicious man following her home through the night: you don't want to turn and look it in the eye but you always know it's there.

She pictures Jesus, tall as the Williamsburg Savings and Loan building, walking down the streets of Brooklyn in his long white robe, looking into the upstairs windows of houses, passing a hand through the walls to touch this one and that one. The way things are these days, he might skip Crown Heights altogether, she thinks, what with all the fighting and the Negro gangs and all. Or maybe he wouldn't. It's hard to tell, with him. But she sees him very clearly, coming down her street, this wretched little line of sagging boarding houses. His sandaled feet carry him past; perhaps there's a coloured child with a praying mother sick in the house at the end of the street. Or some old saint on her deathbed. It would be so easy for him to miss Rose Evans, with her room on the back of the house and all.
While on others Thou art calling, do not pass me by!

Before she can finish her prayer she feels the familiar tingling in her neck and below her chin, the faint sour taste in her mouth, and knows she's going to vomit. She presses a hand against her mouth and looks around for the tin basin. She grabs it from the nightstand and holds it on her lap with one hand, using the other to hold back her hair as she heaves and retches into the basin. There's little to bring up because she hasn't eaten all day, and she can feel her stomach clenching with the dry heaves as she chokes up a few pitiful mouthfuls of bile. She lays the basin on the floor. It reeks, but she can't find the strength to get up and take it to the bathroom. Instead, she takes a sip of the glass of water that's been on her table since morning; it's warm now but it tastes as sweet as wine in her mouth. She lies down on the bed, drawing the threadbare chenille bedspread up over her, feeling not just exhausted and empty but clean, drained of doubts and fears.

On Flatbush Avenue, two weeks later, Rose sees her. Rose hasn't come here to lurk or snoop around on purpose: she's trying to give that up. No, she came down here because a woman from church invited her for a visit, a good meal, and it's been awhile since Rose has had a good meal. Then, walking back up towards her bus stop, she sees Ethel Evans and a young woman. The girl is fair-haired, tall, wearing a pink suit with a matching hat. Ethel and the girl look into store windows and talk together, their heads close. Ethel puts a hand on the girl's arm.

Rose passes so close behind them she could touch them. She is sure she will stop, will say something. But she has no idea what to say. She pauses just past them, pretends to bend down to pick up something she has dropped. Long enough to hear Ethel say, “Now that would look lovely on you, Claire.”

“Oh, do you think so? I think that would be more Diane's style. I could see her in that.”

Hearing Claire's voice, Rose is riveted to the sidewalk. She turns back and eyes the girl again, hungrier than she was this evening when they put a good hot meal in front of her. She can't get enough of looking at the girl, listening to her. Rose feels like the world has stopped turning, like when Joshua made the Lord stop the sun in the sky. She can stand here forever, watching the daughter she has never known while a pain that has nothing to do with radiation treatments twists inside her stomach.

Rose continues walking, because she has no excuse to stand there any longer, and they're walking away in the opposite direction. She looks back, just once. The tall fair girl, the small dark woman. Well matched, all the same. Claire's aunts have done well by her, anyway, even if her mother hasn't.

Rose wanders blindly, past groups of people on the sidewalk, till she hears singing that, although it's no hymn she knows, she recognizes at once as a holy sound.

Inside a storefront, a crowd of people is gathered, singing, hands raised over their heads. Nobody passing by seems to give them a second glance. Their song flows out into the street and swirls around Rose.

Glory glory, hallelujah,
Since I laid my burden down…

Rose pushes the door open and slips in under cover of the music. Once inside, she sees that nearly all the people there are coloured, with only a few white faces among the crowd. It doesn't surprise her: the music has a dark and vibrant sound that she doesn't associate with people of her own kind, lively though the crowd at the Citadel is. This is like a whole other kind of music, stripped of the blare of trumpets and the pounding of the piano and the clanging tambourine – an earthy, strong sound carried only by human voices rising up and plunging down the scale.

An old coloured man stands up at the front, wearing a red and white robe. His hands are raised; his hair is white. The music does not exactly stop; it lowers to a hum, a murmur, that continues to twist and writhe beneath his words.

“Oh, my brothers and sisters, is there anyone today who has come here for healing? Is there anyone here bound by Satan, caught in chains of alcohol or drugs? Snared in the trap of cancer or tuberculosis? Ravaged by disease, wrecked by despair? Come down, come on down, my brother, come down, my sister, kneel and receive healing, healing, through the precious blood of Jesus. Come now! Come now!”

It is as dizzying as the first altar call Rose knelt for at the Citadel, when she was saved. Now she is answering another call – not to be saved, but healed. They have prayed for her healing again and again at the Citadel, of course. But it was a polite request, something they'd like the Almighty to do if He could fit it into His plans. And if not, Thy will be done. After all, they bury their saints every year, as every church does; they have to hedge their bets. She has never heard them pray for healing as this Negro preacher prays, like it's not a request but a demand, like he has the authority to call down God's power from on high.

She is kneeling at the front, but strong hands pull her to her feet and she stands before the minister. His black face seems huge and staring; she has never been this close to a Negro man. “And what is your burden, my sister? What do you need deliverance from?”

“I…I have cancer,” she says. “I've had treatment but…I don't think it's really gone. I want to be healed.” He takes a breath as if gathering his energies, and she adds, “And I lost my daughter.”

“Are you saved by the blood of Jesus?”

“Yes. Yes, I am saved.”

“Then be
healed
by the power of the Holy Spirit!” He leans back and brings his hand forward onto Rose's head with enough force to knock her to the ground, but she feels no pain as she hits the floor. Instead, she is flooded with energy, with joy. Around her, she hears voices rising in words that are not words, a melodious babble of sound, and opens her mouth to find she is making the same sounds. Tears pour down her face. Black hands reach out and hold her, and she holds these unfamiliar bodies close.

“Do you believe in healing?” Rose asks the Captain at the Citadel after Sunday evening service.

“Yes, of course, we believe God can heal the sick. We believe He's healing you, Rose.”

“I don't mean a bit at a time, with the surgery and the radiation. I mean all at once, like Jesus did. A miracle. When somebody lays their hands on you.”

He nods, obviously trying to encourage her, but worried, she can see. He'd be even more worried if he knew she'd been to a place called The Miracle Healing Temple of the Precious Blood, but he probably guesses it's something like that. After all, she's not likely to have had hands laid on her by the Methodists or the Episcopalians, is she?

But Rose's inner certainty is unshakeable. She does not go back to the doctor or the hospital. No more radiation; she is free from the stink of vomit and fear. She does return to the Citadel, for awhile, to those kind friends who helped her and prayed for her. But her real life now is at The Miracle Healing Temple of the Precious Blood. Despite the garish name and the ugly storefront, despite the black faces and the unfamiliar hymns, Rose belongs there. She stands to testify there and the voices rise around her like waves.
Amen, sister! Glory
hallelujah! Preach it, preach!!

And she does preach it. She lays aside the neat black Army uniform for a dazzling red and white robe. She stands at the front of the small shabby room beside the Reverend Vernon Peters, the kindly old man with the authority of an apostle who healed her. Here, Rose shines; she is incandescent. She can lay hands on someone and pray for their healing, and see in their eyes that God has touched them.

Other things slip away. Not just the Citadel, not just cancer. She no longer feels like she wants a drink at the end of the day, a feeling she has battled for years. She no longer has to restrain herself from walking past Jim and Ethel's place, looking for Claire. Her one glimpse of Claire was a gift from God, a message that her girl will be all right. All Rose has to do is keep serving Him. And she has found the place to do it.

CLAIRE
 
BROOKLYN, JULY 1956

C
LAIRE LIKED TO TAKE
long walks on warm weekend afternoons. She looked in store windows, at the fronts of houses, trying to imagine her mother walking here thirty years earlier. She had asked Aunt Ethel about her parents only once. In her aunt's vagueness and discomfort, Claire had all the answer she needed. Aunt Ethel obviously had no idea who Claire's father was, and just as obviously she hadn't thought much of Claire's mother. She had hinted at numerous, nameless “men friends,” but come up with only one name: an Italian fruit-seller named Tony Martelli.

It was foolishness, really – one name in a borough of two million people, one man among probably dozens her mother went out with. Claire knew it was foolish to pause at every fruit store she passed, to check the proprietors' names on the signs. Foolishness was something for which she had little tolerance, in others or, especially, in herself.

So when, after a year of long walks, she passed a fruit store in Williamsburg with the name “T. Martelli” over the door, she made herself walk past, not looking back. Claire told herself she had seen nothing important, nothing that mattered.

The next day, Sunday, she went with Aunt Ethel to the Methodist church. Claire enjoyed the services there. There was none of the fervent emotional baggage that was attached to Army services at home. No testimonies, no shouts of “Hallelujah!” or “Praise the Lord!” It was quiet, dignified, decorous. A person could go to church there and not even have to think about whether she believed in God.

After Sunday dinner she went back to the fruit store, which was closed. She told herself there was no need to come back here, yet the next Saturday she found herself walking down the same street. This time she saw a middle-aged man behind the counter. She went inside and bought a bag of peaches.

The man behind the counter was burly, red-faced, with black hair turning to grey. He was loud and friendly with three neighbourhood children who each went away with an apple. Then he turned to her.

“This is a good choice,” he told her as he rang up her purchase. “Redhaven peaches. You like Redhaven peaches?”

“I suppose so,” said Claire. “Back home, the only peaches I ever saw came out of a tin. I thought they grew on the tree that way, tinned.”

T. Martelli laughed, a big warm laugh. “Yeah, I can just see that. The canned-peach tree.” He looked up from the cash register, lowered his furry eyebrows. “Back home, eh? Where's that, where's back home, young lady?”

“Um, in Canada, a place called Newfoundland,” Claire said.

He laughed again and pointed at her. “You see, I was right! I knew you was from Newfoundland. I knew some Newfies, years ago. Well, I still know some, we got a few right in this neighbourhood.” Now she got the bushy-eyed stare again. “You never knew a lady name of Rose Evans, did you? Years ago, years ago. You ain't related to any Evanses, are you?”

It was that easy. Two million people, one year of long walks, one fruit store, one middle-aged Italian man, and Claire had found, at the very least, someone who once knew her mother. Maybe she had found more than that.