The Penny Read online

  This thing that had been born on the day of the grass reed grew into many afternoons, a series of quick whispers and giggles in which Aurelia let me in on details of her family. I felt like I had known Eddie Crockett and Aunt Maureen a long time before I met them. Aunt Maureen, who’d raised Aurelia from a baby after her mother had taken off, who wouldn’t let you in through the front door before she tried to feed you. Aurelia’s daddy, Eddie Crockett, who played trumpet music sweeter than Sarah Vaughan could sing.

  That morning as I made the detour from the A&P, the sun already blazed so hot you wanted to stand under a tree and do nothing. I hadn’t thought about it being Sunday until no one at Aurelia’s duplex answered the door. From the porch I could hear a trumpet running scales, the notes as light and sweet as the early-morning dew that had fallen on Mama’s laundry because she’d never taken the time to bring it inside. I stood for a minute, listening, before I rang the bell again and pounded so hard that the screen rattled. If Eddie Crockett was alone in the house practicing, he wouldn’t hear me—I already figured that.

  I heard boots tramping and the door swung open just as I was about to leave. Eddie Crockett stood with his trumpet in hand, his fingers entwined among the valves, his black hair with waves that lay over his forehead like they’d been pasted on. The stairwell still smelled of hotcakes. “Well, bless my soul,” he said. “Look who we’ve got at the door again. You come to see Aurelia?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t you know it’s Sunday morning? Sunday mornings, she gets all cleaned up and goes to church.”

  Aurelia had talked about the Antioch Baptist Church plenty to me; I’d passed it before, one of the prettiest churches I’d ever seen, across Goode Avenue on the corner of North Market, three blocks away from where the trolley off-loaded its passengers. It was built from Missouri clay bricks and chunks of limestone, rough blocks that met like right-angled fingers, like the corners of the building itself were interwoven, praying hands. On its east side, the church stood square, a castle turret against the sky. On its west end stood an archway and a broad wooden door where wedding parties gathered to throw rice, and brides floated down the steps in clouds of tulle to waiting getaway cars, a fine contrast of white nylon netting and dark skin. Every so often, Aurelia would talk about the messages she heard in church. She would say how the words lightened her heart, how they lifted her up higher than this world.

  “You got time to wait for Aurelia, Miss Jenny?” Eddie Crockett held the screen open for me with his trumpet hand. “You’re welcome to, if you want. They’ll head back just as soon as they’re done with the benediction and the supper they’re serving to the folks who go there hungry.”

  “I don’t really.” Hugging the bottles of soda pop against my chest, I was thinking that, any minute, Daddy might come home and find me gone. I declined Mr. Crockett’s invitation, feeling dismal because I’d snuck away and come so far and risked so much for nothing.

  “Well, sorry you missed her, child. You know she always loves it when you got the time to come around.”

  I stood still, waiting for him to raise the trumpet to his mouth. I loved the way he held it when he played, like it had been a part of him ever since he’d been breathing.

  He grinned, lifted the mouthpiece to his lips, wailed on his horn some riverboat sound, a tune I didn’t know. Something started singing inside whenever Aurelia’s daddy played his horn for me. I could still hear the sound of it, the notes big and warm and quick, even after I crossed Sarah Street three blocks away.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t pass Aurelia in that church, knowing she was close by, with me having so much to tell her. With the way Daddy acted about us leaving, I never knew when I’d be able to get over here again. I hid the grocery bag in a tangle of honeysuckle that clung to the irregular slabs of brick and moved with stealth from window to window, leaning up over the stone sills, trying to get a look inside. Every window I looked through was too dark, an impenetrable mosaic of blue and green and red glass. I was looking through pictures of ancient stories, the saints’ long hair and sinuous robes, circlets of amber behind their faces. Then, all of a sudden, I got to a clear patch.

  Later I would see that I had looked through the crystal wing of a dove, hovering over a manger.

  A pulpit stood at the front of the pews, its wood as polished and whirly as the sateen in the choir’s robes behind it. A purple banner that read HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER hung above the choir members’ heads.

  The singers rocked and clapped beside a man whose face was so dark he looked like he’d been burnished with Daddy’s bootblack. Aurelia had told me once that his name was Reverend Monroe. He was a husky, short man, with hair that poked from behind his ears like clumps of kettle corn. As he gestured, the sleeves of his black vestments flapped like pennants in the halftime show at the Missouri Tigers football game. With every line he hollered, he swung his fist and shouted that he was throwing punches at the devil.

  Sweaty people crowded the sanctuary, some of them applauding and shouting Amen every time the man said words about Jesus, some of them fanning themselves with cardboard pictures of lambs (“Smith’s Plant Nursery. Negro Owned and Operated” the notation read. “Our Dedication to You. If we can’t make it grow in your garden, then you don’t want it growing anywhere.”), others with their palms uplifted and cupped like they were trying to catch rain. Their pleading faces made me think I’d come across something too personal for me to see.

  When I finally spied Aurelia, she was clutching the pew in front of her and her lips were moving in almost the same shape as Eddie Crockett’s when he played his horn. Her cousins, Darnell, who I’d met at school, and Garland, who was much younger, flanked her on either side.

  Garland fidgeted with a button on his suit sleeve. He wouldn’t leave it alone. He kept twisting it tight and letting it go, twisting it again, until the threads must have split because the button flew off his arm and popped someone in the back of the head.

  Aurelia’s aunt, who’d been swaying with her fingers knit together over her chest, reached down without hesitation and laid Garland a good one, a sharp swat on the behind. Garland straightened up, just like that, and started flipping pages in the hymnal as if he were old enough to read. What surprised me most was the smile she tried to hide after she’d gotten him, as if she treasured his antics but couldn’t dare let it show. I’d seen Daddy smile when he struck and it wasn’t anything like that. He smiled like he’d be happy to kill you.

  But then, a sharp smack on the behind didn’t seem like much of a punishment to me.

  Just as I poked my hand into my pocket to make sure the penny was still there, my eyes traveled overhead again to the window across the way. There, in a mosaic of golden glass over Aurelia’s head, stood the image of a sheaf of wheat in a field. Maybe it was me rubbing the penny, thinking about the wheat in the window and the wheat on the coin beneath my thumb, that made Aurelia glance my way. All she could see through that piece of dove’s wing was maybe my eyebrow, but suddenly she whispered something to her aunt and sidestepped Darnell. Next thing I knew, here she came, finding me outside, standing looking in the window.

  “Girl, what you doing here?”

  “Looking to find you,” I said.

  “You come on inside, then. You’re gonna make me miss it.”

  “Make you miss what?”

  “We got us a good place today, right beside the new Christians. That’s the best seat in church when everybody starts confessing their sins.” She grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

  I saw she wore loafers with brand-new pennies in them. I pointed toward her feet, “That’s what we have to talk about,” but she was too busy dragging me inside to hear.

  The heat was intolerable. Darnell moved over and made room. Garland slammed the hymnal shut and stared up at me like he’d never seen anybody with a white face walk into his church before. Then I realized maybe he hadn’t. Maybe I was the first one. I was the only person at Antioch Baptist wearing
pedal pushers, too.

  “Hey, kid. How are you?” I asked, giving his head a scrub with my knuckle. When I whispered to Aurelia, “I just want to tell you something important that’s happened,” her aunt glared down at me and, for a second there, I thought she was going to pop me one just the same as she’d popped Garland.

  The windows, which could have blocked my view forever if I’d kept trying to peer through them on the outside, glowed with life and fire now that light shone through. A glass man in the window beside me stood with his arms outstretched for a hug (the thought of Daddy reaching toward me that way made my stomach queasy) and his cape was so red with the sun that you could almost taste the color. A cherry red, a ruby flash. A red better than a cinnamon stick.

  At the front no one showed off, the way Mrs. Crawford did when she bellowed the National Anthem before the fireworks went off over the river on the Fourth of July. (Jean and I called her Mrs. Crawfish after that because, when she hit a loud note, she wagged her arms like a crawfish waggles its claws.) The music at Antioch was straight bluesy choir, voices blending smooth as bees as they sweated and danced and swayed.

  I’d never seen so many people leaning from side to side or smelled so much pungent wood and perfume. “You’ve got a seed of greatness in you,” Reverend Monroe bellowed with such forthright enthusiasm in his voice that, had I been anybody else and prone to jumpiness, I might have run away. His eyes radiated kindness, and his plainspoken manner made me listen instead. “You’ve got a seed of victory planted by God inside of you.”

  I already told you how I kept hearing whispers about greatness in my head. I’d be in my bed at night, after Daddy left the room, and I’d think about it so hard that I’d get a heavy tangle in the bottom of my heart. I’d hold on to that feeling so hard, hoping it would make everything else go away.

  Someday you’re going to do something great.

  But I always assured myself I was stupid to believe that. There could never be much good in me, I thought. Not as long as Daddy tells me I’ll never amount to anything. Not with the way I let Daddy do those things to me.

  I looked over at Darnell, figuring maybe the reverend was talking to him. But, “Do not be afraid, you will not suffer shame,” the man said, his sweet, kind eyes centered on mine. “Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth.”

  If you only knew.

  My shame will never go away.

  It’s my own fault I’m dirty and ruined.

  My knees started to get wobbly, hearing these things and daring to talk back. I sat down, still clutching the pew. Neither God nor the preacher, either one, could know the remorse I felt inside.

  I held on to the penny in my pocket for dear life. I couldn’t share the story about it with just anybody. It felt too precious; something about it made me want to keep it to myself. Except, telling Aurelia about it seemed different. But just when I thought it would be okay to show it to her—This is it, Aurelia, this is the reason I’m here—I saw she was waiting for me, hanging on to some basket that she didn’t show any sign of passing along.

  “What?”

  She jiggled the basket at me. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Aren’t you going to put that in the collection? Isn’t that why you got it out?”

  “No. Not this.”

  “Then why do you have it out?” She rattled the basket a second time.

  “I wanted you to see this penny. That’s all.” But then I remembered Mama’s money, the change from the groceries, in my pocket. I fished for coins and dropped a quarter and a dime into the basket so she’d leave me alone and hand it away.

  Reverend Monroe was talking right to me. He said something that made me forget about money changing hands. He said, “The LORD saves his anointed; he answers them from his holy heaven with the saving power of his right hand. Those who look to him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame.”

  I wanted not to be ashamed that my daddy didn’t think much of me. Nobody had ever made God sound like he was real and like he wanted to protect me. I’d only heard Mama talking about things God didn’t want you to do, like turn somersaults in a dress.

  I wanted my life to be like Aurelia’s life, where people said kind words to you when you walked in the front door and it was safe to go to your room and close the door. And where hope followed you down the street like music, even if nobody was standing there playing the horn.

  All of a sudden, I realized that me standing here in this church had everything to do with finding the penny, too. If I hadn’t found that penny, I wouldn’t have gotten a job. And if I hadn’t gotten a job, I wouldn’t have come over here to tell Aurelia about it.

  Every time anyone said something about the heavenly Father to me, I figured that, like Daddy, God didn’t think much of me either. But the way Aurelia’s preacher was talking about God, he made me think maybe God could be different from Daddy, somebody strong who believed in me, who might be willing to listen to my side of the story.

  Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the penny anymore—I was thinking about what was going on inside of me. My heart started hurting so bad that I thought it might burst open. Grace Kelly believed in Jimmy Stewart when nobody else did. Now Reverend Monroe kept saying that Jesus believed in me.

  How could anybody believe in me when I was always telling lies?

  He kept saying how, if you believed in Jesus, he could make the stains inside you go away.

  The stains from what I let Daddy do had soaked deep, and nothing could fade them.

  The ache in my heart grew into something much bigger than anything I knew how to put a name to. The only thing I had come here to do was tell Aurelia that if I hadn’t paused for a few seconds and picked up that penny, nothing about my life would’ve changed. I got the chill-bumps up my arms. If I hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t be standing here now. For the first time ever, I felt something gentle take my soul in its hands. For the first time, I forgot to listen to the taunts inside my head.

  Maybe because the Crocketts stood beside me. Maybe because I held the penny in my palm. Or maybe because I had a new job or because I’d heard Aurelia say she felt like she was walking on air when she came out of this place, or because I was just too crazy to stop believing in possibility.

  I decided to do it when that Antioch preacher encouraged people to come to the front and pray with him. He called it the “prayer of salvation.” In spite of all my skepticism, after I’d heard those electric words, and thought how I’d like to have my life move smooth like Aurelia’s, and had seen that preacher orating like he wanted to hand me his whole heart in his hands because he knew what was going on inside me, I wouldn’t have stayed in my seat for anything. I remember the heat in my ears as I walked forward, my legs moving of their own accord. When I prayed the words that Reverend Monroe prompted me to pray, my insides seemed to expand with every word. I invited Jesus into my heart, although I can tell you right now I had no idea what I was getting into. I asked him to take over my life and help me do the right things and help me trust in him because I sure wasn’t doing very well trusting myself. I asked him to show me what he wanted to do inside me to make me great, because if something didn’t happen to make that obvious, then I sure wasn’t going to figure it out.

  And when Reverend Monroe stopped praying and the music started up again and people started chatting and shaking hands and hugging around me, I kept praying a little longer. I added my own parts that I wouldn’t tell anybody else about. I asked Jesus to protect me just like Reverend Monroe had said he would. I told him how I knew it was my fault and that I was ashamed of being so dirty and that I could handle all the hitting in the world if he would just help me do something to stop Daddy from coming to my room at night.

  I opened my eyes to a whole bunch of Antioch Baptists waiting in line to congratulate me. I felt drowned in love and sweet perspiration and the smell of lemon ValMor skin-lightener. “You’ve made a jo
yous decision, child.” The softest hands I’d ever known cupped my face. “The angels are singing now up in heaven.” And I felt like singing right along. After all that, we ate a potluck lunch with all of them and I walked out of that place and headed down the steps to hug my A&P groceries against my chest, feeling like I’d been bathed inside, cleaned up and polished to a gleam and fresh-smelling like soap.

  The Crocketts walked with me to the streetcar stop. I can tell you I was walking high the same way Aurelia said she walked high whenever she came out of church with an answer to her problems.

  “I got a job just because I picked up a penny,” I told them. “A real job. That’s the reason I got that penny out to show you, Aurelia. It all happened because of that.”

  “Girl.” Darnell took the groceries from me so he could carry them. “You tell the biggest stories I ever heard.”

  “It did. It got me a job.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Prove it.” I’d learned from that very first day on the steps at school that Darnell was always skeptical.

  And just like I’d known she would, Aurelia became my champion. “What do you know, Darnell? You don’t even know how to make an ironing board stay standing. And you talking like you’re the authority on everything in the world.”

  So I told them the whole story, about the penny beside the streetcar tracks and the dairy truck and the Elvis record and the robber—all of it. I told them about the Grace Kelly movie and Pete Mason giving chase and the man from the box office saying, “You must be one special young lady.” Then I told how Miss Shaw had called my house on the party line.

  By this time, I’d pulled the penny out of my pocket for the umpteenth time and was showing it around. Darnell, who was carrying my groceries in one muscled arm, scrubbed the back of his neck in disbelief. “I don’t trust a word of it.”