“Later, I’ll tell you later, when there’s time,” Diane said, and she shook herself some more.
The woman who was old enough to be Counsel Smith’s grandmother was Maude Townsend, a blind woman who lived at Claridge Towers on M Street Northwest, an apartment house for old people and the disabled. On the day the House of the Solitary Savior burned to the ground, Maude was waiting outside Claridge Towers with Anita Hughes, the newest and youngest member of the group.
After Maude and Anita were in the car, Vivian said, “Standin out there like that yall looked like two sportin ladies on the corner waitin for some gentlemen. I had to look twice to make sure I was at the right address.” The four laughed.
“I ain’t lookin for no man,” Maude said after they were on 11th Street. “Thas all finished. All I want is some more Jesus.” Maude, too, was one of the original members of the Gospelteers. She was seventy-eight, and of the dozens and dozens of her people who had been alive when the group sang that very first Sunday at the House, not one was now alive.
“But you sho right about that sportin stuff,” Maude said. “You wouldn’t believe what that place done turned into. Claridge was such a nice place when I first moved in.” She leaned back in her seat and crossed her ankles.
“I keep telling her that she should move out, find someplace else,” Anita said. As she often did the night before the group sang, she stayed with Maude. “John and I will help her find a place.” John was the man with whom she lived, a gentle country man who was in his last year of medical residency at Howard University Hospital. Anita was twenty-five, in the second year of studying for a biology doctorate. She sang gospel because she felt that was the only way she could speak to God.
“Every senior citizen buildin in this city done turned bad,” Maude said. “The only thing to do is to just pick up and move back down South. I got two friends that done that and they say they shoulda done it long ago.”
“Oh, Maude,” Diane said, “I been back South and you ain’t gonna find it no different.”
“She right,” Vivian said.
Maude said nothing. Her head was turned to the window. In one hand she carried her tambourine. On the wrist of the other arm she wore a watch, but it was the type for sighted people, and aside from being a pretty thing on her wrist, it was not any good to her unless someone with eyes looked at it and told her what time it was.
Vivian found a parking space on S Street, between 10th and 11th. Maude walked with her arm through Vivian’s, and Diane and Anita walked behind them. Not until they had reached the corner of 10th Street did the three sighted women notice that a policeman was not allowing traffic to continue on down 10th. Once on 10th Street, they could see a crowd of people on both sides of the street and the fire trucks about midway up the block. And when they got closer, they could see Reverend Saunders and his wife, their heads high above all the others, even the firemen who hurried about them. Counsel, for once, had been early and he stood beside the couple.
Counsel told them what had happened, and the three women could see that not one part of the small building had been saved. As he spoke, a mood of utter sadness swept over the four women. They did not think very much of Reverend Saunders’s work, but they did not believe that anything bad should ever happen to any of God’s houses.
“Well,” Counsel said in a voice only Vivian could hear, “that’s one excuse for a piano I have won’t have to coax some life into again.”
Vivian watched the reverend’s wife clinging to her husband, her face buried in the shoulder of his coat. There was a general stench of burnt wood, and above the murmurs of the crowds on both sides of the street, Vivian could hear the water falling through the charred skeleton of what was left of the church. She watched the water rain down and flow with black debris over the sidewalk into the gutter and the street. People stepped back from it. She could see clear through the church now into what had passed for a backyard. Now and then, a small burst of dark smoke would escape from the structure and dissipate a few feet above it. The busy firemen spoke to each other as if they had all been raised together from birth.
Reverend Saunders turned around and took note of the four women. He shook their hands and he thanked them for coming. And then the members of his church came up to the women and they, too, thanked them for coming. Most of the members were women who were nearly as old as Maude. Vivian could see that most of the women had been crying and it tore into her heart. From program to program, she never remembered any of them except in some vague way, and whenever she happened to meet one of them in any other place on any other day she was never able to recall from where she knew them.
The firemen were now packing up to leave, rolling up the fire hoses and taking off their suits. The fireman who seemed to be in charge came to Reverend Saunders and said a few final words to him, then he went back to helping his men. The sun was at the top of the sky. In a voice loud and undeniable, Reverend Saunders asked his people to pray and everyone on both sides of the street fell silent. Some of the firemen would occasionally stop what they were doing for a second or two, but for the most part, they continued on.
When the prayers were done, Reverend Saunders asked the Gospelteers to sing one song.
“Vi, I feel ‘Amazin Grace’ in my heart right now,” Maude said. The four women locked their arms and began to sing, and again the people fell silent. And though he did not usually sing, Counsel joined the four women.
“We gonna build us another one, Sister Slater,” Reverend Saunders said when the hymn was over. “And I hope yall will come to sing at the dedication.” His words still had a touch of that boastful quality. He turned back and took a few steps toward what was left of the church, and his wife, her arm still in his, followed. “Everything is a sign from the Master,” he said to no one in particular. Vivian could see, for the first time ever, that he was no longer a young man. “And maybe tomorrow or the next day, I’ll figure out what it is.” His wife had not said a word the whole time.
The group now had a few hours before the program at Holy Tabernacle. Counsel had parked near Vivian’s Cadillac and he walked the four women to the car. Though none of them was very hungry, they decided to go to the Florida Avenue Grill, because Anita’s aunt was a waitress there. Counsel told the women he would meet them at the church. Vivian warned him not to be late and Maude, teasing, told him not to bring one of his women along.
The second assistant pastor and a deacon at Holy Tabernacle greeted the Gospelteers just outside one of the dressing rooms in the basement just off 14th Street. The hall was crowded with groups going in and out of other dressing rooms and offices being used as dressing rooms. Vivian could see Counsel at the end of the hall, where he was conversing with a young woman in the corner.
That Sunday was the last day of a month of festivities inaugurating the new head pastor, Reverend Melvin Ritter, the son of the last pastor, Reverend Louis Ritter. The older man had turned over most of his duties to his son a year before, and he began spending most of his time at a home he and his wife had bought in North Carolina, where he had been born and raised and where God had called him. Six months before he had gone for a walk in the dark and drowned in the river that bordered their property.
Upstairs, the old man’s son was speaking to those assembled in the church, and he was telling them about his father and the river. There were speakers installed in just about every ceiling corner of the building and the son’s words rained down on the people in the basement hall and in the rooms.
As the Gospelteers got ready in their dressing room (they were to be the third group to sing, after the Watchers, and Jesse Mae Carson and the Heavenly Choir), they remembered the day a year before when the old man had been preaching and had seemed to lose his way. The women and Counsel and members of a few other groups had been waiting in one of the back halls that led to the church when they heard the old man grow silent. At first they thought the speakers had malfunctioned, but they heard him breathing loudly. Then he said, “Mother,” which was what he called his wife.