SINGATHON.

.

I will lift up my eyes to the Lord…

Well. In a minute I will, not quite yet, because---I’m late, very late, and what I’m doing right now is maneuvering my way as respectfully as I can past the chanting green jeans with the cowboy boots. I’m averting my eyes from the flushed face with the blonde mustache, his prayer book held high at an angle, silver chains jingling at his wrist, sucking his gut in and holding his breath as I pass, as though I smell bad, when all I am is tardy.

Psalms ricochet from the rooftop. The church reverberates with song. I could hear it outside, as I rushed up the steps, past the giant, red-and-white banner:

Heal Your Soul Singathon.

Public Invited.

Refreshments.

Church officials might be celebrating the turn out. Me? I’m cursing the narrowness of the rows, and the intransigence of people’s knees. I bump my oversized purse past lips, glossy and red, open in praise. I struggle in silence past a bow-tie with kaki pants, a bosom with glass beads, past hairy legs and sandaled feet, a lilac shirt and a heart on a nylon thread, past a little pink girl with a one-legged doll.  A human chain has sprung into action with linked arms swaying, praying, ignoring me, pretending I’m not doing what I’m doing. It’s hot as hell, and I’m sweating---which I never, ever do.

The singing subsides. The human chain unlinks. The pastor is saying something out front, but I’m looking for my seat. A dropped jacket turns out to be a boy in plum-colored pants and shirt folded on the floor at his parents’ feet. I step over him, whamming into his head with my purse, not stopping to apologize---denying the Lord His due as the minister talks until, at the point of losing all faith, I find a space.

I sit, pop immediately back up to genuflect before our haloed Virgin Mary smiling in shades of blue and gold, then drop again onto my Coke-stained, canvas chair.

            I’m rustling through my purse for my glasses. My “jailor keys,” as Harold calls them, clunk to the floor. “Damn,” I grunt, because now I have to crouch down and poke around between the chairs. “Shit,” I heave myself back up---no longer an easy thing to do---and pull my notebook, my chunky wallet, and all the Safe Buys and pharmacy receipts that have married and multiplied in there, from the interior. Still, my glasses elude me. 

The minister is urging silent prayer.

I wrap my arms around myself, shut my eyes tight, and rock slowly back and forth.  Beneath the silence I intone, “Cleanliness is next to godliness. Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today. Do what you would be done by. A stitch in time”—and I heave the promised breath of relaxation, by force, into my ribs.

I feel a hush. People staring.

I freeze. Cease and desist, as authorities would say. 

A mountain of a woman is looking at me, made of chocolate, wrapped, like a gift, in floral silk. Disks swing from her ears. Hoops dangle from her arms. Her hips were built to bring forth a nation, her bosom to nurse giants, her hands to rip evil tidings asunder. She’s smiling.  Ever so gently she lays her fingers on my arm, “Let it be, sister,” she says. “Listen to Violet and let it be.” 

I close my eyes.

I open them, and Violet is no longer there. 

They are singing, “blessed are those who come...”

So, if I were to tell thee, Virgin Mother, about my life, I’d say that, in the larger scheme of things, I shouldn’t complain.  I’m working at the Post Office until they close us down. Our kids have grown, so Harold and I watch the news while we eat. It’s like going back to school, Harold says, child broadcasters telling us what to think. I chart the names of the failing politicians and most threatening countries on paper, so I can distinguish them from the ones we support. They mean well, broadcasters do, but you can’t rely on them, because their criteria for good and not-to-be-trusted change with the channels.

After work, I pick my husband’s meds up at the pharmacy. I stop by Safe Buys every evening because he needs his vegetables fresh.

On birthdays, I stop at the corner for flowers. Lilies are Harold’s favorite. Twice a year, I go for my own check up at Dr. Miller’s.  I’m fine, thanks for asking.

Each and every August, I pack our Honda and drive us to the Sunny-Side Inn for a weekend by South Bay.  That’s our biggest treat. It’s a habit we started when Sammy and Carol were babies and the Inn was still news. 

And once a week I play cards with the girls.

So it’s good. All good stuff really, as Susan would say.

That’s it, then.

There’s a woman in the last row, rocking her baby under the softest blue shawl, singing the hymns. I recognize her. She worked the post office shift after mine until a few months ago, but she left because her husband got the Big C. when she was pregnant.  She’s pretending she’s just praying, but I can see the baby’s tiny fingers and that patch of boob peeping out beneath the shawl. I figure nursing in church is as good a way as any to begin life—and better than most.

 I watch the worshipers: Clean. Combed. Lucky looking.

Because you can ask your friends for a ride to work, or the drug store, when you really need one. You can go to the movies, or book group, with Helen Barnes or Rita Bland on the nights Harold has help. You can even ask your best friend, Suzy, to watch Harold if you have to. But she has problems of her own. Her son is still serving in Iraq---God knows what he’ll be like when he gets back---and her mother-in-law needs round-the-clock care.

It’s not as though you can ask anyone to heal Harold’s disease, or make him walk again, when even the doctors can’t do that!

It’s not as though you can ask Helen or Rita to guarantee your children a life of wellbeing---just wellbeing, for C – sake, not any of the endless list of things they’ll need, such as:

that their partners will never leave them;

that they’ll never be lonely,

that they’ll find peace for their already aching hearts and broken souls;

that neither they, nor their children will ever be sick, but will die smiling in their beds of old age,

that this wounded world, dotted with joy like hope on a battle field, will heal once you are gone, because that is your legacy to them.

You can’t ask your friends for any of that.

So here you are then. Singing. In church.