Before I can work out how to respond to Pastor’s comment, he’s moved on. “We’ll talk more this week,” he commands. “God sent you to us, Leroya. And right on time. We need your voice, your power, your influence. They’re going to cover for their own. They always do. We won’t let them get away with it this time. We need you to tell our story. Call my office tomorrow, you hear?”
His tone of collusion doesn’t feel right. I’m a journalist, not an activist. But then again, I may need his help and connections to get to Justin’s mother, and I know better than to try to parse the nuances here anyway, so I just smile.
Pastor Price grabs Momma’s hands in his. “I’m praying for your mother, praying hard. And the ladies’ prayer group is headed to the hospital to see her this afternoon. Sister Marla’s a strong woman.”
We nod in agreement and gratitude, and Momma gives an overly detailed update about Gigi’s condition. Meanwhile, I watch Shaun duck away to the other side of the lobby, where he discreetly drops a $20 bill in the tithing box. The gesture pinches my heart. I know full well that he doesn’t have twenty to spare. I gave him a hundred bucks last week so he could pay his phone bill.
“How’s he doing?” Pastor Price has followed my gaze, his concern plain. “He doing okay with the moving job?”
After a year of struggling to find someone who would hire him, Shaun finally landed a job with a local moving company, thanks to Pastor Price, who knows the owner.
Momma stands a little straighter. “He’s fine, fine.” She’s quick to remind everyone of this and then move the subject along. She does it whenever anyone dares mention what happened to Shaun. It’s “family business,” akin to an NSA document stamped CLASSIFIED. But we never discuss it with one another either. We don’t talk about why Shaun lives at home, or the crushing debt, or the fear and resentment that cling like a shadow to our entire family.
“We’ll see you next week, Pastor,” Momma says. I can tell she’s happy for us to slip away.
There’s a sharp chill in the air as we step outside; the temperatures have plummeted even since this morning, so now December feels like December, cold and gray like it should be. It’s a comfort when things are as they should be, which is why I don’t mind when my ears turn numb almost instantly. Momma dashes off to a women’s auxiliary meeting in the annex next door, while Shaun and I, compelled by good manners, are forced to linger on the vast stone staircase, flocked by people I haven’t seen in years, showering me with praise.
“Look at you, beautiful girl. You’ve done so well. Ms. Sandra is so proud.”
“I watch you all the time.”
“You’re the best thing on the TV.”
It’s overwhelming to be in their favor like this.
Shaun shifts restlessly next to me as Ms. Nettle, whose mothball smell nearly bowls me over, is delivering a lecture about how I need to do a story on her grandson’s new business, a mobile barbershop he’s started in a converted RV.
She clearly knew better than to talk to me while Momma’s around, let alone ask for a favor, since Ms. Nettle is Momma’s sworn enemy after she blackballed us from getting into Jack and Jill when Shaun and I were younger. Ms. Nettle, who’s descended from one of the first Black families to settle on the Main Line and the original members from when the organization was founded in 1938, held sway over who was worthy of being admitted into the local chapter back then. When word got back to Momma that Ms. Nettle said she and Daddy weren’t “professional enough,” Daddy’s response was, “Who cares, why do you want to hang around with those bougie folks anyway?” But Momma’s pride never recovered from the slight.
“Can I steal her away, Ms. Nettle? I’m taking my big sister to lunch.” My brother rests his skinny arm on my shoulders. Shaun’s polite in a way that makes me wonder if Momma is watching, listening.
“Well, this is a first!” I tease, in mock surprise. Then I lean over and murmur a thanks for the rescue.
“No, seriously, I want to take you to lunch. Let’s go to Monty’s Fish Fry. Old time’s sake.”
It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been to Monty’s, even though it used to be our Sunday place, all the Wilsons starched and shined, and packed into a booth after church before heading to the Broad Street soup kitchen to serve Sunday dinner to homeless veterans. Suddenly, there’s no place I’d rather be. The comfort of cornmeal-breaded mackerel and four-inch-deep dishes of mac and cheese beckons.
“Let’s do it.”
Once we’re situated at the yellowed Formica table, plates piled high after serving ourselves at the buffet, greasy fingers pulling at fish bones, I take Shaun in, searching for a sign that he’s okay. Of all the worries I have on a constant loop—Gigi’s health, Momma and Daddy’s finances, the end of democracy—I worry the most about my baby brother. He’ll always be that to me. He arrived two days after my seventh birthday and I just knew he was my present—a doll come to life. I carried him everywhere. I used my allowance to buy him his first Lincoln Logs and LEGO sets, and when he decided his freshman year at college that he wanted to major in architecture and design skyscrapers, I was so proud to have inspired his dream.
Shaun’s okay, baby girl. He’s gonna be a-okay. Gigi’s voice is a whisper in my ear.
Shaun is dousing his plate in hot sauce, oblivious.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? The music? Yeah, this is the jam.”
Shaun starts snapping his fingers and shaking his head along to “Return of the Mack,” which blares from a speaker bolted into the corner of the restaurant. “Seriously, I love this song, man. The nineties! Those were the good old days.”
“Rodney King? O. J. Simpson? That wasn’t the greatest decade for us. There was also your Arsenio Hall haircut. We don’t need to go back there.”
“Ah, man, you tell me what decade was good for Black people. I’m talking about the music, sis. Biggie. Tupac. Wu-Tang. And besides, my haircut was fresh. Why you tryin’ to clown with your Tootie bangs anyway.”
I flick a piece of cornbread at him. “So how was the Landry move yesterday?”
“It was fine, if eight hours of backbreaking work carrying boxes down five flights of stairs is your thing. The woman watched us like a hawk, like we were going to make a run for it with a forty-pound box of her precious china. What really kills me is you show up in work gloves and sweats and these people treat you like you’re a moron. I swear she was talking to me extra slow like I have two brain cells. I wanted to be like, You want to see my SAT scores, bi-atch? But whatever, it’s a paycheck, man. And with Mom and Dad at each other about money all the time…”
“Dad still on Mom about selling the house?”
A dark cloud passes over Shaun’s face, and I’m sorry I pressed the issue.
“Yeah. She’s in denial about it,” he adds.
Of course she is, that’s Momma’s way. How can she face losing our home, the house that has been in our family for three generations? Great-grandpa Dash bought it in 1941 with $8,000 cash he carted to the bank in a brown bag and handed to a banker who said, “Look at this Negro with a bag full of bills. How’d you get all this money?”