Vivian had gone to the hall door leading into the church and had seen the old man absently flipping the pages of his Bible. He said “Mother” once more, took up the Bible, walked to the edge of the pulpit, and extended his hand, as if for help, to his wife. Only those near him could hear him say “Mother” yet again. She got up from her place in the Amen Corner, came to him, and led him back to a seat behind the lectern and just in front of the church’s choir. Eventually, the second assistant pastor, a deacon, and his wife helped the old man out of the church. The old man’s son had come to help his father as well, but his mother shook her head and pointed to the pulpit. The old man and his wife and one of the pastors and the deacon passed by Vivian. The old man’s eyes gave her nothing, and though they were leading him, she could see that his legs were still strong. His son, who was then the first assistant pastor, went to the pulpit.
“Did you see what Jesse Mae was wearing?” Diane said now. The room was not very big but it was large enough to accommodate two dressing tables, a lounge chair, and a settee. “I tell you: If Jesus gave out seats in heaven accordin to how good a dresser you are, she’d go straight to hell.” She sat at one of the tables and Anita was at the other. Vivian was helping Maude button her gown.
“What did she have on?” Maude asked. “Somebody tell me what that little hussy had on.”
The words of the old man’s son came out of the speaker. He said that the river where his father had died was the same one he had swum in as a boy, and it was the same one where he had been baptized.
“Fur,” Diane said.
“Fur?” said Maude. “You mean a fur coat?”
“No, fur trim, Maude. Fur for her collar. Fur round the sleeves. Fur round the hem a that gown a hers.”
“Everybody in the group wearin gowns like that?” Maude asked.
“You kiddin?” Vivian said. “She wouldn’t be the Queen of Sheba if she let everybody wear what she has on.”
Jesse Mae Carson and her Heavenly Choir had the greatest reputation of any gospel group in Washington. They were wealthy enough to have paid to cut three record albums with a D.C. company. To sell the records Jesse Mae’s great-grandson would set up a table in the lobbies of the churches where they were singing and offer as a bonus a photograph of the group that had been autographed by Jesse Mae herself. Jesse Mae was eighty-eight years old and stood four feet and some inches high. A person had to stand very close and look real hard to find even one line on her face. She hadn’t sung with the group for more than fifteen years, but would stand before the group and, like a conductor, guide the Heavenly Choir through their numbers. She had had eight husbands. “All of them legitimate,” she had told a radio interviewer once. “God,” she said, “don’t mind you havin a vice. He just don’t want you to abuse it.”
“What color is the gowns they wearin?” Maude wanted to know of the Heavenly Choir.
“Blue, I think. Some kinda blue,” Vivian said. When they wanted to tease her, Vivian’s friends would call her Little Jesse Mae or Jesse Mae, Jr., because she had had five husbands, three “legitimate” and two common-law.
Upstairs, Reverend Ritter had finished his remarks and was introducing the Watchers, a group of five men, all over sixty, who had been his father’s favorite. The Watchers set into “Oh, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” As the group went into “Deep River,” Anita suggested that she and Maude go on out and catch up on the gossip as they made their way upstairs. “If we see that hussy,” Maude said to Anita, “just turn me loose. Don’t try to hold me back, child.”
Deep River, my home is over Jordan—
“Ain’t nobody in the world can sing that like them,” Diane said of the Watchers. “I musta heard a hundred people sing that spiritual over the years. And they the only ones to give me the goose bumps.”
“Know what you mean,” Vivian said. She rarely had anything to say about any other group, but the Watchers, being older and male, were not in competition with the Gospelteers. “Me and you might as well make our way too. You got the key?” Diane nodded and locked the door after them. In the hall, Jesse Mae was talking to Anita.
The Watchers sang:
Oh, chillun, oh don’t you want to go to that gospel feast
That promised land, that land where all is peace?
“I know, I know,” Anita was saying. “It does sound nice, but I keep telling you I’m happy where I am.”
Vivian came up and put her arm around Anita’s shoulder. “Still trying to steal you away, huh?” she said to Anita.
“Not steal, Vi,” Jesse Mae said. “Just…how do I say it? Just…entice. Ain’t that right, baby?” and she winked at Anita. It was said that Anita had a voice beautiful enough to lure the angels down from heaven. Gospel groups up and down the East Coast envied Vivian for having her in the Gospelteers, and for more than a year Jessie Mae had been trying to get Anita to come over to the Heavenly Choir. She had sent her copies of her group’s record albums, lists of the churches along the East Coast where they had sung in recent years, and pictures of the group posed before landmarks in other cities and standing with well-known politicians and soul singers and athletes. And with all she sent, there was always a note that ended, “I look forward to seeing you the next time. Forever Yours in the Lord….”
But Anita had never once wavered in her desire to stay with the Gospelteers, and Vivian took heart from this. Some days, as she sat in her office at the Agriculture Department, she would think of Anita arrayed in the pasture-green gown the Gospelteers wore on the fourth Sunday. She would be solo, standing just in front of the other women acting as chorus, and Anita’s voice would take hold of the church and all the people in the church would be telling her to bring it on home, bring it on home, child.
“Oh, Jessie Mae, why don’t you just give it up,” Diane said. “You just gonna have to face the fact that Vivian got you beat on this one.” It sometimes irritated Vivian that Diane, of all people, came to her defense.
Jessie Mae offered each of the four women a practiced smile, a patient smile a tired adult gives a small child who has said one too many absurd things.
“And how is Ralph?” Jessie Mae asked Vivian. “Still handsome as ever? My my my.”
“Yes,” Vivian said. “Still the most handsome in the world. Still the best in the world.” She had told no one that Ralph was dying.
Jessie Mae wished them well with their program and went to be with her group. Vivian and Diane spent the remaining time in the dining hall, sipping tea. The portraits of all the church’s pastors were on the walls, and near the door to the kitchen there was the place where Reverend Louis Ritter’s picture would be one day.
The congregation applauded generously when the Gospelteers came on. Vivian stepped forward and told the congregation that the group would be singing some of the favorites of Mahalia Jackson, and the congregation broke into applause again. Anita would be singing the first songs solo, and the young woman took Vivian’s place in front of the group. She looked briefly at Counsel and he nodded once and began to play. Anita closed her eyes for a few seconds and began to sing as she always did — for God and for her father. Once, as she was singing at the Virgin Mother Baptist Church on Kentucky Avenue, Jesus had come down the aisle and sat down in a pew near the front. He told her that her voice pleased him. He had said no more than that, but she had taken his words to mean that he forgave her for living with John without marriage. And each time she saw her father, who would not forgive her, she wanted to tell him what Jesus had done and said. But she could not create the words. Perhaps the words were in the music, but it did no good, because her father did not come anymore to hear her sing.