Meant to Be: A Novel - Softcover

Whack, Rita Coburn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375758097 ISBN 13: 9780375758096

Verlag: Villard, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Growing up in a blue-collar suburb of Chicago, Patience Jan Campbell struggles to accept her family--including a reflective father, misunderstood mother, and wise aunt--as she searches for love, understanding, maturity, and self-fulfillment, in a spiritual coming-of-age novel. Original. 25,000 first printing.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rita Coburn Whack is a writer, television and radio producer, and on-air radio contributor. She is a two-time Emmy winner. Currently a contributor for WBEZ-FM, Chicago’s public radio station, she is married, a mother of two, and a resident of south suburban Chicago. You can e-mail her at RitaCoburnWhack@aol.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Beginnings

“Jesus!”

Turning around, I was just in time to see old Mother Brock hike her long white skirt above her knees and climb onto the pew.

“He ain’t nothing but a honey!” A white handkerchief held high in one hand waved surrender toward heaven and the joyous shout signaled all of us in the old woman’s path to clear the way. Scooting sideways, I watched her legs, stockings knotted just above the knee, rise above one pew and thump down on the next. The Spirit had “gotten a holt” to Mother Brock and she was pew-stepping, bench-hopping happy, going at it from row to row.

“Walk that bench, Ma Brock,” Essie Tolbert encouraged. “Walk it now!”

Elder Yancy stood. Tall enough to reach the ceiling fans and as dark as the sin he rocked back and forth against, he closed his eyes. His arms, reaching out, trembled over the heads beneath them as he moved in the rhythm of his tambourine.

With a “Hallelujah! Praise His name!” Sister Hattie Jones sailed from the choir stand. Her robe flared, then billowed like a large puff of cotton. Descending, it settled close to her waist, held tight by two balled fists. She swished the robe around her body and headed for the side aisle.

Combing each aisle like a lost traveler, Sister Jones asked folks for directions most Sundays. Eyeballing whomever she felt called, she’d stick her pointed face in theirs: “Will you praise Him? Can you rebuke the Devil? Won’t you give all glory to God?”

I rubbed the piece of paper in my Bible as if it would help me. My aunt Ada always said the church was “the best ground for spiritual warfare,” but I hadn’t prepared to deliver my speech during one of its battles. I’d written my words while Sarah Vaughan’s voice rang clear above the bass, saxophone, and piano on my record player. Then I’d called
Mama Ada, who I’d never witnessed saying more than a quiet amen in the middle of a church service. We went over what I was to say. It had all been calm. Well, that was then, and this was now.

Reverend Tyler stood and the pianist, Mr. Fulton, tried to strike a few solemn chords. But unlike Reverend Tyler, Mr. Fulton was still enchanted. His feet pumped the pedals as his hands played another chorus of “When I Get to Heaven Gonna Shout.” On the risers behind him, choir members cried and swayed; some held each other or fanned those seated.

Reverend Tyler cleared his throat. I swallowed hard against the lump in mine and made my way across the pew, saying “excuse me, ma’am” and “pardon me, sir” as proper as I could in the middle of a holy war. At the back of the church, I was careful to cross over the center aisle since, unlike Mother Brock, I didn’t have a big position in the church and lacked permission to walk down the scarlet carpet that led to the altar.

Behind the glass window of the nursery, a mother seemed not to notice that the diaper covering her breast had fallen.

The infant on her hip, a trickle of milk sliding from the corner of his mouth toward his chin, looked at me from the biggest tit I’d ever seen. The breast, so swollen it stretched the black dots around the nipple until I thought of buttons, pointed at me. I looked away.

Ahead, Hester Cochren, as if sin could seep right through his toothy mouth, eyed the dresses in front of him from the waist down. I thought of the “Jelly, jelly, jelly” song. The pianist hit a few slow chords and seemed like he was praying for calm.

Reverend Tyler, not one to join in these celebrations, held up both hands and said, “All glory be to God.”

As I made my way to the front of the church I met the half smile on Sheila Flowers’ face and thought it was a good thing I wasn’t God. In the middle of all the hoopla I could have made the neighborhood bully disappear, and I knew for sure the entire eighth grade would have less worry and misery.

At the altar, Mother Brock was whispering to herself and taking the privileged center aisle back to her seat. Reverend Tyler’s voice continued to quiet the storm inside the Second Baptist Church of Moleen. I stepped forward and waited for his acknowledgment.

“Let’s welcome Miss Patience Jan Campbell.” The sound of my full name was an embarrassment. “P.J.” would have been just fine. I could just hear Sheila calling me “Patience” in front of a crowd. Reverend Tyler kept going. “Miss Campbell just turned thirteen, and as is our custom, she’s going to come forth and share her favorite verse, with a self-interpretation.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” exclaimed Elder Yancy’s wife.

“Mercy, mercy,” I heard a woman say as I walked up the side steps and over to the podium. I wished my mama had stopped preparing Sunday’s dinner long enough to come. Placing my Bible on the podium, I opened it and read from Ephesians: “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Then I looked into the congregation and spoke.

After my first words, “I think this scripture means that children know every shut eye ain’t sleep and every head bowed ain’t praying, so grown-ups ain’t fooling us or God,” it seemed like a pall fell over the church. Satisfied I had everybody’s attention, I kept going and don’t rightly know what I said, but I finished up with “So nobody should hold a child back from God just ’cause they may be having trouble finding Him.” The air changed again, hot around my face, dry and even more still. It stayed that way, and later when I left the church, I didn’t have to weave around pools of chitchatters. My path was more than cleared. A group of women gathered in the parking lot, shifting hips, straining necks, rolling their eyes to meet the brims of wax flower-burdened hats. One snipped, “You know what the Good Book says, ‘Pride comes before a fall.’ ”

A chorus of “uh-huhs” rose until another soloist stuck her neck down toward me. “Well, somebody better get ready to catch that one ’cause she’s bound to tumble, as big as that chip is on her shoulder.” I forced my head up and was careful not to go any faster than I needed, thinking they should have each taken a hand fan-with perfect family portraits of gussied-up mother, father, sister, and brother on one side and the name of the nearest funeral home on the other-and cooled themselves off. Especially since I knew what they did not. If they craned their necks down a little lower or accidentally touched me, taking that “every child that’s a child of God is my child” idea far enough to lay a hand on me that wasn’t trying to put the blessing of the holies in my bones, Charlie Guss Campbell would walk the streets of old and new Moleen until he found them. Then he’d put his “size 13 triple E’s so far up where the sun don’t shine” they would truly be pleading the blood of Jesus. Humph! I strutted past them biddies looking as high up as they were looking down.

Children of Discontent

By the time I turned the corner, my daddy was done doing what he did most Sunday mornings, fixing on dilapidated old cars that sounded like motorcycles and would be headed to the junkyard by the year’s end anyway. He was sitting in his favorite spot on the porch, so I sat next to him and rubbed my face, fighting the urge to scratch the acne that almost covered it.

“Hot as Mississippi,” he greeted me and I watched him caress the sky...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Villard
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375758097
• ISBN 13: 9780375758096
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 307
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar