Midnight Without a Moon(26)

“Has she lost her mind?” the note read.

I pushed back a chuckle. Laughing was not allowed in church, especially on Wednesday nights, and especially while Reverend Jenkins was reading. We had only begun having Wednesday night services since the beginning of the year. We were Baptist, and Baptist folks usually went to church only on Sunday.

All. Day. Long.

But Reverend Jenkins had made a covenant with the Lord that year and promised to be holier, like the folks at the Church of God in Christ. So he added Wednesday nights to the torture of our church attendance.

Reverend Jenkins’s voice boomed from the pulpit: “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’”

I snapped to attention. The preacher always seemed to say just the right words at just the right time. That was exactly what I felt like: a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep before my shearer. And I couldn’t even open my mouth to defend myself.

I responded to Hallelujah: “She lost her mind a long time ago.”

“Queen, too?” Hallelujah wrote back.

When I first read the note, I giggled, imagining he meant Queen had lost her mind like Ma Pearl. Of course, in my opinion, she had. But I scribbled back, “No. Queen gets to go.”

Hallelujah mouthed, What? He lowered his head and wrote.

I suppressed a smile when I read “The way she hates school!!!”

I wrote back, “Don’t be surprised if she drops out at 16.”

“What did Mr. Carter say?” Hallelujah wrote.

The scrap of paper was out of space, so I flipped through my Bible—?the Bible Reverend Jenkins had given me for my twelfth birthday—?for another. I scribbled, “He said we’d talk about it later.”

“When?” wrote Hallelujah.

I shrugged and wrote, “Don’t know. It’s been 3 days already.”

I had never known Papa to lie to me. But that’s exactly what I had begun to fear he’d done. I couldn’t believe he had sided with Ma Pearl to keep me out of school.

Hallelujah wrote, “You think Preacher could talk to Miss Sweet?”

I didn’t want to tell Hallelujah what Ma Pearl really thought of his daddy. “That boy ain’t nothing but a educated fool,” she’d say of Reverend Jenkins. “Can’t preach worth a lick. Now, Reverend E. D. Blake over at Little Ebenezer, that’s a preacher.”

Reverend E. D. Blake wouldn’t know a Holy Scripture if it came and sat at the table with him and offered him supper, I wanted to tell her.

I wrote back, “She’s made up her mind.”

“Can he talk to Mr. Carter?” wrote Hallelujah.

I groaned slightly and scribbled, “He won’t even talk to me!”

“Still got 2 weeks. Maybe he’s still thinking about it,” wrote Hallelujah.

Two weeks. What if Papa said no? What if I really was forced to quit school with only a seventh-grade education? That was worse than my aunts. At least they all made it through eighth grade. And my poor mama, only sixth. But at least she was pretty enough to have a man like Mr. Pete want to marry her. But I wasn’t pretty like Mama, so I wasn’t expecting someone like Mr. Pete to whisk me off to the courthouse and marry me—?then take me off to Chicago so our children could go to those good schools they bragged about. And I certainly wouldn’t have the opportunity to get myself educated like Aunt Belle. Because I didn’t have the grit to defy Ma Pearl the way she had.

My chest tightened as I wrote, “How will I ever leave Mississippi if I can’t get an education?”

Hallelujah frowned and wrote back, “You will get an education.”

“How do you know?” I wrote.

Hallelujah sighed and scribbled. Then he smiled and handed me the note. It read “Just pray. Have faith. God will make a way.”

“Stop sounding like a preacher!” I wrote back.

Hallelujah grinned at my note. He loved it when he sounded like a preacher, even though he didn’t want to be one. “I wanna be a surgeon like Dr. T.R.M. Howard in Mound Bayou,” he often said. “And I’m gonna be the first Negro to attend that new medical school Ole Miss opened in Jackson.”

I didn’t really care at that point to be the first Negro to do anything. I just wanted to be the first person in my family to graduate from high school.

Hallelujah handed me the note again. “Can Miss Johnson talk to Miss Sweet?”

I wrote back, “She thinks Miss Johnson is stupid.”

Hallelujah wrote, “I think she’s cute.”

I smiled and wrote, “She’s a grown woman. You’re a boy.”

With a sly grin and raised brows, Hallelujah scribbled, “So?”

I wrote, “What do you know? You think catfish-eyed Queen is cute.”

Hallelujah blushed, lowered his head, and scribbled on the paper: “Stop passing notes in church.”

And I did. I was out of paper.





Chapter Thirteen


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24


THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT REVEREND JENKINS forcing us to go to church on Wednesday night was that he fed us afterward. Well, we fed ourselves. Every family brought something to share with everybody else. Like a repast. Except no one had died, unless you count the Holy Ghost, who was killed the minute he set foot in Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church.