God in Wingtip Shoes

by Yvonne J. Medley

Genres: African American; African American Christian

Synopsis

Drowning in self-hatred and doubt, Reverend Daniel Judah Harris, who is having a hard time dealing with certain temptations, makes a discovery about his past that causes him to contemplate suicide and turn away from God.

Release date: April 24, 2012

Publisher: Urban Christian

Print pages: 253

Sample

“If you can’t get with this ... then keep your money in your pocket and go to hell!” he said. He worked the congregation like a poised stripper at The Players Club. A slight remorse tried his stance, but he fought it. Life and death angled on his shoulders. He let silence notarize his conviction. The congregation hushed when the threat of hell thundered from the pulpit.

Earlier, the offering baskets had swept through a third time and fingers had grown weary.

Reverend Daniel Harris was on his perch surrendered to the hymn—On Christ, the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sa ...—when he eyeballed the laziness of his faithful followers. That’s when he flew to his crystal podium and dangled a little damnation in front of their deliverance.

And so he allowed his scorn to blanket the congregation. Then he smiled. A cloud lifted. Reverend’s smile was toothy and soothing—and sexy. Relieved, the congregation forgave him for his blunt statement because he was only trying to make a point. So, like a child forced to acknowledge wrongdoing, the faithful accepted his chastisement and responded with upturned purses and emptied pockets of amens. Thankful, Reverend Harris rewarded the congregation with a song.

He looked over at his choir director and gave her the high sign. Even from a distance, she caught sight of his green-apple eyes gleaming in her direction. She understood.

His eyes were beautiful. His buttercream tint, his brown, wavy hair and curly lashes, his manicured fingernails and his round behind—everything on the reverend was beautiful. He looked over at her, beamed his smile, and said, “Have the choir sing something grateful, Sister Cherry.”

Sister Cherry pulled her aging body to attention like a general. She motioned the mass choir, robed in royal blue and frosty white, to do likewise.

Forest Unity’s musicians operated on one accord. It was the fruit of their labor. Sister Cherry and the music director, Brother Elroy Sallie, privy to rumblings in the inner-circle pipeline, signaled to each other that the song to sing would be the Yolanda Adams hit, “The Battle Is the Lord’s.” The first delicious chord rang out. Forest Unity’s favorite songbird, and the Reverend’s bride, Lori Sparrow, emerged from a curtain of royal blue pleats. Her musical testimony folded into the orchestra’s intro. Cymbals tingled, piano keys rippled, and organ chords rolled, while a wide, wispy brush danced atop a circle of drums. Emotions stacked clear to the church’s vaulted ceiling.

“What is God’s message to you today?” Lori asked in her opening monologue. She sautéed it with a stirring Toni Braxton-type moan as she was known to do. It touched off a multitude of spiritual orgasms. Limbs went limp. Bottom lips loosed. Eyelids blinked in slow motion. The reverend fought the droop of his own eyelids to steal a satisfying glance at Lori’s lips and a flashback of the night before. She caught it. She understood. She threw back a sexy switchblade smile. Just then, she resembled a soft, chewy Butterfinger, and he felt famished.

Focus! his inside voice demanded.

Lori kept her petite honey-hued body in the corner of his eye and sang, “This battle ain’t yours ...” Then she shut her eyes and belted the rest to the congregation, “... It’s the Lord’s.” The choir cosigned in chorus. Reverend Harris supped on the music ministry.

Unplanned, he spied the usual string of young women sandwiched up front. He sighed. Weekly, these women advertised firm thighs and perky bosoms like sacrificial chicken parts on sale. His brow drooped. I really don’t feel like it today, he thought. Then his glare boomeranged toward the pew that supported the sanctified mothers of the church, seasoned church ladies who chomped on the chance to give these brazen young hussies a lesson in self-respect and decorum. He chuckled because man-hunting was a year-round sport. He blinked the meaty images from his brain to refocus on his loving members as a whole. They boasted more than 1,300-strong even on Super Bowl Sunday—a coup for a young pastor enjoying his first major appointment. “Thank you, Lord,” he whispered.

The sopranos chimed the chorus in perfect pitch. Their serenade came sprinkled with soft hallelujahs. He surveyed his faithful congregation and thought, I know you’d do anything for me, saints, but I wonder if you really know that I’d do anything for you. His sentiments tumbled in his mind like socks in a dryer. And together, we’re gonna make God sit up and take notice of the glory we’re gonna give Him. This is supposed to be our dream together.

The singing mellowed to a collective whisper, but the offering collection wasn’t finished. Deacon Winston gave Reverend Harris the high sign. Reverend Harris forwarded the high sign to Sister Cherry, who signaled the choir to revive another round of the chorus. This time it climbed an octave. Lori came in with a fresh round of her solo.

The congregation blew a gasket. The Holy Spirit swept through a succession of women threaded throughout the sanctuary. Mother Esther, young Tasha Gold, and three other women sprang to their feet as if yanked by a string. Hands flew up, and their bodies snaked like accordions. Tasha’s torso trembled as she mumbled godly praises just before her body hit the carpet. She wasn’t the only female lying prostrate on the floor. Attentive lady ushers, decked in winter crème, rushed to the scene to keep their bodies modest beneath huge fire-red cloths.

The Holy Spirit touched the men too. One brother, a short, stocky man, didn’t look agile in the secular sense, but the Spirit caught him, and he sprinted around the sanctuary like Simba. And Sister Cherry, a reserved, soft-spoken senior citizen, directed the choir with such passion that she perspired heavily in her robe and nearly lost her raven wig-hat.

A teary-eyed Reverend Harris floated down from his pulpit. He combed the base of the three-tiered altar and glided down the center aisle. All the while, he crooned sentiments of the main verse into a cordless mic clipped to his pinstriped lapel. He was beautiful. He harmonized with his wife as part of a private message that said to her, Yes, I understand that God will make everything all right.

Anyone still in command of his or her voice also filled the space with song. The deacons marched like soldiers, collecting the wicker baskets teeming with money. Then, one by one, each man disappeared through an opened side panel along the pulpit. It led to the pastor’s study. They’d be sequestered long after sunset, accounting for the money.

“The Forest Unity Church of Baltimore,” Reverend Harris predicted from his heart, “will be command-central for God’s work. We’re gonna make Baltimore sit up and take notice. You with me, Church?” He preached and picked members to whom he’d serve his personal eye-to-eye. Everyone’s heart screamed, “Pick me, pick me!”

Approval from his trusted members washed over him like the soapy waves of a bubble bath. During Reverend Harris’s three-year tenure, the feeling had grown mutual between the two. And to most Forest Unity members, the reverend was God in wingtip shoes.

Each one of Reverend’s personal glances sent electric shocks of glory through the arteries of his privileged supporters.

“Amen?” he shouted to confirm his prophesied future of political power and prosperity. The congregation gave back a resounding “Amen.”

Returning to the pulpit once more, he stood solid behind his crystal podium and gradually the space before him tunneled. Every earthly body evaporated from his awareness. His green eyes grazed the church walls as the choir now crooned, “I Need Thee Every Hour, I Need Thee.”

Judgment hung low, he thought. He studied the majestic stained glass windows. Most bore gold plaques nailed beneath their frames. The plaques bore witness to dedicated saints who sustained the church decades ago, saints now transitioned into glory. The saints seemed to weep. And he wept dry tears in tortured silence. A prayer of intercession rolled through his head. I can’t let foreclosure happen to this church—I can’t let it happen to your saints who put their faith in me. My God, where did that money go? Lord, you’ve got to step in. I’ve got to do what I said I was gonna do ... What you told me to do.

The reverend stood there gazing into the past of this historic church that shepherded much of Baltimore’s northwest side. Its pillars were cemented during the civil rights’ struggle of the fifties and sixties. Pint-size patent leather T-Straps and shiny Buster Browns wore thin the burgundy carpet in its foyer. Its pews were the perfect place for community organizing and juicy gossip. The walls of its sanctuary cradled the cries of babies and nursed them on current events.

“You got ta be twice as good ta get half as much as they got in this world,” Reverend Charles A. Wicker, Sr., had preached from the pulpit. He stood tall and invincible, protected only by the piety of his long, black flowing robe. The sweat on his shiny brow bore the evidence of his heart’s conviction.

“This altar was built to sustain hope and make it tangible,” Reverend Wicker often shouted. “God will see to it that you only have success and not failure,” he’d preach, “if you place your faith in Him.” The children listened because the church was the only place where their hope fed their potential.

During the late sixties and seventies, the same church members who toiled beyond sundown in the kitchens of white suburbia or pushed brooms down busy hallways or clutched the sidebar of garbage trucks before sunrise also tutored children and college students in Forest Unity’s fellowship hall—because the schools saw no need to challenge colored kids. Forest Unity offerings paid overdue gas and electric bills and halted evictions.

But the eighties drew apathy, and personal struggles retreated behind false pride. The church walls stopped cradling babies. None came. While the old warriors hung on, young families either left the church or relocated above the Mason-Dixon Line in search of new opportunities. Then the nineties ushered in. The Reverend Charles A. Wicker, Jr., a seemingly healthy man in his fifties, dropped dead, right there on the altar. Only ten years prior had he taken over the reins when his daddy died.

Fast-forward to now.

Reverend Harris simmered in his thoughts, Because of me, Forest Unity stands pregnant with new birth and excitement. His eyes glazed—and confirmed, Its walls swell with bounties of new flesh.

Reverend Harris felt the music massage into his body once more. His head swayed to its rhythm as he begged internally, You said you’d neither leave me nor forsake me. Ain’t that right, Lord? Ain’t that right?

He looked at the congregation and said, “Amen, Church?” And the church said, “Amen.”

“Dern! That fine little boy sho’ can preach!” Sister Cherry whispered into a lean.

“Oooooh, Sister Cherry, you sho’ right about that,” Mother Hayes chuckled back. They grinned and giggled like two seventh-graders sharing a dirty little secret about this adolescent charmer standing before them.

Both women, planted on the front pew, were part of the sanctified seven; the matriarchal pillars of the church, the prayer warriors with seasoned shoulders on which to lean. They were the uplifters who knew all about life and what it could do to a body’s soul. They sat decked out in their white-on-white communion steward outfits. Like a one-two punch, the two matriarchs whispered and primped at their white lace collars. They patted their white Dixie cup hats bobby-pinned to stiff hairdos. And they took a moment to fan out their white ankle-length skirts. When the two refocused on the sermon, they zipped back to their holy shouts and hallelujahs. They never broke rhythm.

And that’s what the church ladies, young, old, and middle-aged, had to say about fourteen-year-old Daniel J. Harris. “Little Rev” is what they called him. When Little Rev shouted, flung sweat, and sprinted across the pulpit, every woman swallowed whole like a stray dog devouring a discarded foot-long. Because there was no denying it; there was something sensual about this fine young boy spouting off reams of biblical wisdom with such authority.

In between Sunday services, the sanctified seven, clad in white, waited on him and coddled him. It was the same as serving the Lord. They tiptoed around and busied themselves about his sleek adolescent body mass. If they could have, they would have nursed him. And Daniel was groomed by The Reverend Tommy B. Graystone, aka Big Rev, the pastor of The Bible Deliverance Church of God. Daniel was groomed by Big Rev to accept the brown-skin service the sanctified seven lovingly rendered. It was his due because of his God-given gift. “Let the flock serve God by serving you, son,” Big Rev often instructed.

Now, when it came to the young girls—upfront and crammed into the second pew just for an up close view of their preaching buttercream Blow Pop—what else is a teenage boy to do? Daniel obliged them to do whatever they promised to do to earn his attention. Such favor was hard to come by, even for mature saints, and this favor was priceless. All that favor might have been considered a sinful pleasure if Daniel (or Little Rev) were of common man-boy status. But he wasn’t. And so, he was taught to never allow his mind to go there. It wasn’t supposed to.

To manage it all, Daniel only needed to seek forgiveness and repentance. In the pulpit, a separation of temporal and divine was paramount. One’s earthly failings must neither compete with nor contaminate one’s godly gift. It’s a pastor’s duty, even for one so young, to do what it takes to lead his sheep to the throne of grace without flawed or pesky interruption.

“Don’t ever mix the Spirit with the flesh, boy. That would be blasphemous,” Big Rev told him, right up to and through his manhood. And so, in exchange for the power to preach, Daniel learned to manage his life and to keep contradictions locked behind their appropriate doors.

“Lawddd, that boy sho’ can preach,” said Mother Mattie Tawny, whispering in her sister’s ear. Mother Lucille Spears (everyone called her Cille for short) leaned in and whispered, “You sho’ right about that, sista. But what he gonna do with all that gift?”

Mother Lucille’s comments intermingled with her amens and sermonic hums to her little Daniel’s rhythmic praises from the pulpit. The sisters sat on the opposite end of where Mother Hayes and Sister Cherry sat. The entire pew was draped with the sanctified seven. All were fashioned in their white-on-white polyester that cradled the tops of their necks and flowed past the thick of their ankles. Their heads were crowned with the Dixie cup hats, and their legs had been poured into white opaque stockings hours before. Well earned bunions molded the curve of their nursing shoes, which had been meticulously polished white.

The first gathering of The Bible Deliverance Church of God’s four-day revival made the Lord, Himself, sit up and take notice. The praise had risen to a fever pitch in its first twelve minutes. This pleased The Reverend Tommy B. Graystone because it confirmed his decision to try out his young protégé. After all, a fourteen-year-old preacher was a sight to behold, especially one who fired up a crowd like Daniel could. Big Rev’s ample brown body, draped in purple and gold glory, rested on the pulpit’s mercy seat. He feasted on the fever of his flock, courtesy of his protégé. Daniel produced a spiritual spectacle, and spectacles drew crowds. Crowds drew money. And The Bible Deliverance Church of God always needed money.

Earlier that evening before the revival service began, Big Rev told Daniel, “You’re gonna do fine this evening. The Lord’s showered you with a gift, boy. You’ve got favor!”

“Yesss, yes, sir,” Daniel said. Big Rev caught him off guard with such a bold statement. He gazed into his mentor’s eyes and smiled, not really understanding the full meaning of this gift Big Rev was incessant about. The two stood face-to-face in the pastor’s study that used to be a dusty, dingy stockroom. If either of them looked hard enough, no matter how diligently the church ladies scrubbed it, they could spy a speck or two of sawdust, hinting of its former self before conversion.

Big Rev primped at the seams of his heavy robe, making sure it hung on his frame just right. He inspected his image staring back at him through a cloudy full-length mirror mounted on the brick wall. It confirmed his grandeur. Daniel watched and studied and filed it in his memory bank. Warm surges of his future tunneled inside his chest. His eyes hazed when he tried to assign the sensation to a likeness. Perhaps it was like being cradled in the arms of one of his great-aunts as a lap-baby. Or maybe it was like the time, when he was six or seven, and his mother chased down the Mr. Softy Ice Cream truck to buy him his favorite—chocolate/ vanilla swirl, two scoops.

That day was a scorcher, he remembered, and she had burst onto the steamy sidewalk, shoeless, and wearing nothing but a thin white slip under a flinging tattered robe. Everything jiggled as she ran. The image was also bolted to his brain along with Mr. Softy’s paralyzed glare and ridiculous grin as his mother approached the truck. Daniel remembered his anxiety, fearing that Mr. Softy would pull off before she got there. He didn’t pull off. He never pulled off—if he saw her coming. She returned, panting and glistening, to hand Little Daniel his cone. Then she mounted him on her knee and didn’t take her happy eyes off him until he devoured it, lick by lick. She squeezed him and fussed over him all the while.

Pure delight was an understatement for that moment and for this moment in the pastor’s study. A moment where only pastors could commune and attend to one another; a moment when what they said was private, like father and son, and no one else mattered.

Daniel prayed as hard as he could that Bryan or another one of Big Rev’s eight children wouldn’t come barging in. Big Rev and his wife, Millie, had four boys and four girls. Big Rev did everything perfect, Daniel felt.

Satisfied with his own appearance and proud of the lesson he was giving, Big Rev pulled Daniel from behind his towering presence and positioned him in front. Daniel’s youthful, slender reflection materialized between the old mirror’s cloudy streaks. Like a proud daddy, Big Rev primped at the boy’s powder-blue corduroy suit. It was perfect.

“You’ve been blessed with a burden, boy,” Big Rev spoke as he fussed over his prodigy—his surrogate son. “Those people o. . .