Praise to Death

Ayanna Lonon // senior short story

ANew Comer

First, it was the sound of wind chimes. Every Sunday, it rains in the sanctuary.

Then the bass drum, cymbals, snare. The piano, the keyboard, a holy alto saxophone. The choir.

We all know the words. We lift our opened hands; try to soak up drops of God. Bow our heads, pray, sing, cry in the presence of strangers. The choir sings a canon, the key changes, and He turns it up. It starts to thunder and you have to choose to stand and dance or sit still.

Some of us know better than to cower in God’s presence because we’ve begged him to show up, some of us are afraid to be seen with Him in public, but everyone in the Church house is so caught up on how Odelia died.

I think that Church is just as good a place to die as any.

I met Miss Odelia on the second Sunday of June when I was a first time visitor. She was the head of the welcoming committee and it was just me and her in the visitor’s lounge after service, drinking coffee, eating bacon and toast, discussing where we’d been and what we’d seen. She mostly listened, and I mostly talked about the Church where I grew up in South Carolina. She told me she hoped I’d stick with 1st Methodist, and I did in the end because it felt like home.

So I didn’t know her well, but I’d known women who wore hats like hers. Some women know that you don’t dance because you caught the Spirit, but that you catch the Spirit because you’re willing to dance and I think she just met God where she knew to find him.

I think she must have checked beneath the bass drum, between the cymbals, behind the snare. She probably looked along the piano keys, above the keyboard, around the sax, trying to find God.

Then, the wind chimes again.

The Devil in the 4th Pew

Even Jesus had more pride than Odelia. She was prone to act a damn fool. It was always such a performance. She wore these big custom Church hats with netted veils and ribbons and polyester flowers. Then she’d go and sit in the third row so no one behind her could see nothin but that hat. You couldn’t even hear the sermon or the choir if you sat behind her because you’d start to wonder “how come that hat ain’t heavy ‘nough to put a notch in that boneless chicken neck she got” or “why don’t that hat ever fall off when she’s up stomping and cluckin?”

Well let me tell you, I ain’t never known no good lady to die in Church. I ain’t never heard of nobody doing it at all, and I wouldn’t believe Odelia’d done it ‘cept for I was sat behind her on first Sunday and watched it happen.

Since the first time she showed up to 1st Methodist, I dreaded every moment of that damned circus actthe stomping, the hollering; it was a mockery of my religion. I’d been sitting in the same spot on the fourth row every Sunday for seventeen years and she, on her first day, sat in the third. Every Sunday, a different hat, bobbin and tiltin, but never falling off.

On the first Sunday of July, when that hat started to really lean to the side as she stomped, clucked, fluttered, I thought I might get to witness a miracle. And when the brim of the hat was touching the blade of her left shoulder, I sat up straight to bear witness. And when I saw that she wasn’t gon’ reach up to catch it before it fell, the Hand of God pulled me to my feet. The way feathers fall from eagles overhead, the way leaves are wisped to the dirt by the wind, I saw that hat drift to the floor. I hunched over the pew to pick it up, to smell the sweatband, run my finger along the brim, clutch the big blue thing to my chest; it was worship.

I expected to see that her head had been coneshaped, sharp and pointed at the top. I thought she might be bald at the center or even better, she’d have a hole that she had to cover for fear of people reaching in and snatching out her brains. But when I stood back up and looked, she was laid out down beneath the pews. It was just me and her daughter, looking at her, waiting for her to get up and dance again.

She didn’t get up though, and on my way to Church second Sunday, I passed Gloretta Phillip’s nephew’s pawn shop with the “WE BUY DEAD PEOPLE’S THINGS” sign on the door and six big-ass Church hats in the window.

The Daughter’s Eulogy Church has always been a stomping ground for the women in my life. My Aunt Sherly used to tell me stories about my grandma running laps around their old Church during praise breaks. She said that my grandma would make her run too, dragging her along by the wrists, and when she got pregnant with my mother, she ran with one hand holding my aunt’s arm and the other hand holding her belly. It’s really not hard to believe if you ever saw my mom during a praise break.

I have these memories from when I was only bout two or three years old of my mama dancing up in the Church house. And the dancing wasn’t like when she and my daddy moved slow around the kitchen with Erykah Badu counting their steps. And it wasn’t like when she held me by the arm with one hand, twirling and twisting me, whooping my behind with the other. It was like she was trying to shake something loose that was grabbing at her ankles to keep her on the ground.

There were things from her past that she wouldn’t talk about with me. Sometimes I would try and get her to tell a story about her childhood, and she’d turn stone-faced, silent. Some days, she woke up and it was clear there was something on her mind, affecting her body, making her voice weak and her feet drag, but she wouldn’t never tell nobody what was the matter. She’d just wait til Sunday came around to tell it to God. I’d watch her sing and pray and stomp that devil near to dust. After Church, her Spirits would be so high, her feet hovered over the ground- more of a glide than a walk- though she never managed to hold on to that borrowed strength. She just couldn’t keep herself afloat on her own.

But since I was bout two or three years old, I believed that if my mama stomped hard enough to shake that devil at her feet loose, she could fly.