By the Rivers of Brooklyn (42 page)

“You're strong. You're a good person.” He smiles, and it transforms and gentles his whole face. “See, this time it can't be about anyone saving anyone. We can be here for each other. That's all.”

Diane reaches her mouth up to his, and only as they're kissing does she realize he's not talking as if this is a one-night reunion fling. He's talking as if they have time, a future together. When they stop kissing, she's going to have to tell him how impossible that is. And it's too bad, because she sees now that he's absolutely right, that she wasn't meant to be either the girl locked in the tower or the knight on the white horse, that nobody can be anyone else's saviour, or else that everyone is.

She puts her arms around Mickey, lets her hands slide up his back, remembering the scars he used to have there, as if her fingers can still feel them. And he moves his hands on her back, as if searching for hers.

ROSE
 
BROOKLYN, JUNE 1977

T
HE
P
RAISE
T
ABERNACLE
C
ATHEDRAL
of Miracles, Reverend Rosamond Maranatha, Pastor, Come Expecting a Miracle, sits between the Lamb of God Hairstyling and a boarded-up convenience store. Above the Tabernacle Cathedral is Madame Yvette Tarot and Palm Readings. Clients who take the stairwell to the second floor will find Madame Yvette's rooms on the right. On the left, a similar set of narrow rooms is home for the Reverend Rosamond Maranatha, who climbs these stairs four nights a week after prayer, praise and healing services in the Cathedral below.

The Cathedral used to be a 99-cent store, but after her original church home, the Miracle Temple, closed down, Reverend Rosamond and some followers from the Miracle Temple congregation worked together to gut out the store and cover its cinderblock walls with a coat of vivid pink paint. One of the members built a small platform at the front of the room, and they took up a collection to buy seventy-five folding chairs. With that, the Praise Tabernacle Cathedral of Miracles was in business.

There are services on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, and pretty much all day on Sunday. Reverend Rosa, as the people call her, preaches at every service and heals the sick. Reverend Rosa is distinctively different from most of her congregation, all of whom are black. She is an elderly white woman who wears robes of vivid green and gold, or pink and purple, or red and white: she owns several sets of vestments. They're about all she does own, though. Reverend Rosa is not getting wealthy off the people of Crown Heights.

She has a one-room bedsitter with a hot plate. A picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hangs above the iron bedstead. The Tabernacle Cathedral is a very Protestant church, but there's something about the vividly coloured, exposed, bleeding heart of Christ that appeals to Reverend Rosa, born Rose Evans long ago in another world. She has only one other picture on her wall, a faded snapshot of a blond girl about ten years old.

Most evenings, Rose does not cook on the hot plate in her room but goes down to the end of the street, to the Western Cafeteria, which is as much a cafeteria as Rose's church is a cathedral. She sits at a corner table and orders a bowl of soup, Today's Special, and watches her neighbours come and go. She reminds herself to feel love and compassion for the boys who come in cursing and swearing, obviously hopped up on drugs. The Tabernacle Cathedral has had several break-ins, but the collection is rarely more than twenty dollars on any given Sunday and Rose gives the money to Gavin Bennett to take home right away, so nothing is kept in the church. Nothing of value except a stack of Bibles and the folding chairs.

Loving people is the hard part of being a minister, that and thinking holy thoughts all the time. The easy parts are wearing the robes, singing, preaching, healing and casting out demons, all of which Rose enjoys. She also likes performing both weddings and funerals, though, as she frequently tells people, funerals are best because those poor souls have no more troubles ahead of them.

Ten years ago, Rose wrote away to a place that advertises in the back of magazines, and they sent her a ministerial license. She chose a new name to go on the license, to signify a new start. Rosamond reminds her of a flower opening, something new budding out of the simple and overused name
Rose
. And Maranatha means The Lord is Coming. Rose devoutly hopes He is. She preaches this hope weekly, telling people that the earth is the Lord's harvest field and it is ripe for the picking, that if they want to be plucked from the fire they must come, kneel, lay down the burden of sin and take up the cross.

All the childhood years of Army sermons have soaked into Rose deeply, the Bible words she hated learning, the unlikely hymns her mother chose as lullabies.
There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins
. The words and rhythms are forever part of Rose now, rooted so deep that years of unbelief and drink and even shock treatments didn't budge them. She can't recall her mother's face but when she stands in the pulpit and raises her hands to heaven, the words of Revelation come rolling out of her:
And I John saw the Holy City, coming down
out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. Amen, amen, Jesus. Come on down.
Come on down and take us out of this hellhole.

Rose walks down her street. Winos and drug addicts lie in doorways; gangs of teenage boys hang out on the corners. Spray-paint graffiti messages scar the buildings. On the corrugated steel door drawn down over the front of the Tabernacle Cathedral, one message reads, “Jesus Saves!” which is encouraging. Another reads, “Fuck the Rich.”

She goes upstairs to change into her robe and fix her hair, mostly grey now and worn in a tight curly perm. Hairdressers, like Lamb of God next door, specialize mainly in straightening the hair of black women who want to look more white, but the girl there is an old friend and is always happy to do Rose's perm and rinse. She's chosen the pink and purple robe tonight, and feels stronger, more Spirit-filled, just standing there in it.

Downstairs, Gavin Bennett is rolling up the big metal door and unlocking the church entrance. He is a handsome, broad-shouldered young man in his early thirties, and Rose is ashamed to admit to herself that she has felt stirrings of carnal desire for him. At seventy-plus, she expected to be over all that kind of thing. And for a black man, too. Gavin Bennett is a Spirit-filled young man, a powerful preacher, with a nice little wife and two fine babies. The congregation sees him as Rose's successor, the same way some of them once saw Rose as Vernon Peters' successor. Reverend Peters turned against Rose in the end, not ready to hand over the reins. Rose can understand that with her mind, but her weary body feels all too ready to give over, to let Gavin take over the preaching and the healing.

Tonight, the worshippers trickle in. The regulars: Sister Andrews with her knitted pink and blue hat, clutching her battered Bible; Sister Phelps, vast as a mountain, enfolding people in her gigantic embrace; Brother Ashe, his long thin face sour as if he's sucking a lemon. Children swirl around Rose's feet like a shallow river.

Rose, Reverend Rosa now, holds hands, puts her arms around people. As she moves into the room she starts to sing. Quickly, Gavin Bennett joins her with a deep chocolate baritone that takes the music and lifts it up to someplace above where ordinary music can go.

Oh-o you can't stand up, all by yourself
You can't stand up alo-o-one

Rose is on the platform. She can't stand up alone, but she can stand here, supported by something that might be the Spirit or might just be the spirit of all these hungry, needy, faithful people believing her, listening to her, loving her. Their voices, their hopes, carry her like a tide. Gavin Bennett climbs the platform to stand beside her as she moves the congregation into another song.

The service is long, exhausting. Rose preaches for forty minutes about Jesus who will heal them, Jesus who will mend their broken hearts. They sing some more, and then there are the prayers. A knot of women comes to the front to be healed. Young Missy Elliott comes to pray that the Lord will touch her womb and take away her barrenness. Like Sarah, like Hannah, like Elizabeth of old, she wants a baby. Rose prays over her, thinking that maybe she should tell Sister Elliott that having no baby can be God's blessing. How can you raise a child in this city, on these streets? How can you walk past the gangs, the graffiti, every single day and know what that baby will grow up to become – and still rejoice? Of all the choices Reverend Rosamond has ever made, the one she's certain was good and true – apart from kneeling at the altar the night she was saved – was sending her baby Claire home to Annie.

Rose lays on the hands and prays for the healings. Some nights she feels energy tingle in her palms, as though she is drawing from a great reservoir of power and channelling it through to those who need it. Other times, she feels only like a woman praying, begging God for mercy and not sure if he hears. Tonight is one of those times. When Sister Andrews looks in Rose's face and says, “Reverend Rosa, I been to see the doctor and he says it's cancer,” Rose's heart falls. She has told these people a hundred times that God can cure cancer because God cured her. But she has buried them, too, saying the funeral rite over the same people for whom she's prayed. God loses more than He wins when the doctor says it's cancer.

Rose wants to be upstairs, in her own rooms. This might be one of the nights she goes into Huldah's room for a cup of tea. Huldah – known to the world as Madame Yvette – likes to sit back and put her feet up after a hard day reading the cards for people. Sometimes she and Rose compare notes, talking about their day's work, which is not altogether different. Once Rose finished a cup of tea and passed it back to Huldah. “Can you read tea leaves?” she asked.

Huldah looked down in the cup and frowned. “No, don't do the tea leaves,” she said, shaking her head.

This surprised Rose. Surely if you had the second sight, it would work no matter what tools you used? But Huldah said no, it wasn't like that. Rose still wonders if that's true or if Huldah made an excuse, not wanting to say what she saw in Rose's cup.

When the service is over and everyone has left, she gets ready to go. “You watch out there, Reverend,” Gavin says. “Those boys are soundin' nasty out there. You better wait for me and Sheilah.”

“I've only got to go out this door and in my own door,” Rose says. “It's not two seconds. I'll be fine.”

And she would have been fine, really, if she'd been content not to interfere. The circle of boys is not directly in front of the door; they are standing in front of the Lamb of God. One looks up as Rose exits and says, “Hey, you better watch yourself, bitch!” but his tone is perfunctory, as if he can't be bothered to make a real threat. Rose ignores the language: she has been called worse, in fact said worse, in her own day. When she gets to her room she will say a prayer for these boys, so lost and lonely.

Then she hears the cries. “Help me! Help!” A girl's voice. From the middle of the circle.

“Get her out of here. Get the fuck out of here,” one of the boys says to the others, glancing back at Rose.

“What's she gonna do, man? You scared of that old bag?”

“Shut up, man. She could call the cops. Shut up!”

“Help me!” Then a cry, as if someone has been kicked.

Rose doesn't want to be involved. There are fights on these streets all the time. The struggling knot of boys and whatever, whoever, is in the centre now move away, down past the Lamb of God. And Rose, who should be glad to get quietly up to her bedsit, who dragged herself through a service of preaching and healing this evening because the Spirit left her to stand up all by herself, now feels the Spirit enter into her. She pulls herself up to her full height, five foot six, and hears her own voice crying out, “You! Stop! Stop what you're doing, this minute.”

“Stay out of it, bitch!” one of the boys calls back, almost kindly. He could be the son of one of her parishioners – though surely he would have called her Reverend, wouldn't he? Most of the boys do, even the ones she knows are smoking the dope and holding up stores for money.

Instead of taking his advice, Rose runs down the sidewalk after them. “Leave that girl alone! Let her go!!”

“Yeah? You gonna stop us, preacher lady?” So someone does recognize her. Rose has caught up to them now; the boys tower over her. She catches a glimpse of the girl pinned struggling in one boy's arms: a black teenager with her shirt torn away, terror on her face.

Rose's next impulse races ahead of her thoughts: the words are out almost before she knows what she will say, but they feel right, for if the Devil is anywhere he is here. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave this girl alone!”