Love's In Need Of Love Today Inside the rickety structure of the Hightower Church of Christ in Our Lord, James Green was absorbing the waves of energy that came from the shouts, hums, claps, stomps and moans of it's congregation. He went there with his grandmother every Sunday morning from 8:00 to 12:00 in the afternoon; and on every Sunday he would be caught up in the rapture of Pentecostal church ritual. The service itself, an improvisational array of bible readings , testimony, prostlethyzing and exhortation through song, could have such an effect that just sitting through it could exhaust a person, but not James. He took it all in like an electric current: constantly jumping up and down in his pew, getting up to dance and clap in the aisle whenever he had the holy ghost and shouting " AAAMEN!" whenever the preachers wife or one of the deaconesses sang a song in front of the church. Most of the conflicted hip-folks(the repentant doped up and drunk Saturday night partygoers and the hoodlums who came only because their grandmothers dragged them in a last ditch attempt to save their souls) couldn't stand him; but the deaconesses, the big and beautiful women who consisted of the churches backbone, understood. Before church, they would spot him in the lobby and each give him a gigantic hug, the kind where you can feel a persons entire energy. At the potluck socials after church, they would give him extra helpings of fried chicken mashed potatoes and greens. To them James and his grandmother Virginia were part of their extended family that they felt the need to take in. The reason that Virginia went to the church in the first place was because of her daughters losing her battle with drugs, of which James was a casualty via his brain damage at birth. Most of the congregation didn't blame her as much as they blamed that no good hoodlum Ronnie Thompson, but it didn't take away the cosmic pain that Virginia had in knowing that her daughter had inflicted pain on her, her own self and her child. So for the past 13 years she was a loyal member of the church, sitting in the back row, holding James's hand and clapping along in her white gown; which in itself was a nod to the spiritual mothers who had been the bedrocks of Pentecostal churches past. After church ended, everybody went out the side door to the parking lot, where Deacon and Deaconess Baines were frying ribs and bringing out fish that they had cooked the night before. Pretty soon most of the congregation brought their plates out, and the back lot became the epicenter of a movable and majestic feast. As James moved around to shake everybodys hand and give the pastor a bear hug for "a grrreat service!!" Virgina looked at him and started to reflect. " He was a good boy", she thought " Couple of behavior problems but nothing out of the ordinary for a boy of his faculties and conditions". Most of the time James would be in his room or in the basement listening to gospel records, only coming out to do chores when asked. He was afraid to go outside because the street hoodlums saw him as an easy mark. So everyday the school bus would drop him off right in front of Virginia's house where he ran to the door as fast as he could, afraid of even the millisecond of a possibility that me might be targeted by thugs. " Goo-ooo-d sermon " he said to Virginia while mowing down a chicken wing. " Yes, baby." " We gonna go home? " " We gotta go to the store first." After they finished eating they went up a quarter of a block up a hill to Martin Luther King boulevard to get some milk and cookies at the Local Rite Aid. MLK was a calm, quiet, almost prosaic place on Sunday afternoons; with most of the pawn shops, gun stores and drug dens closed and the gangster element deep in slumber. By now most of hilltops residents had been used to the chaotic pathos of street gangs and had timed their lives around their rituals, doing their business in the morning and not even thinking about going outside at night. After spending an hour reading her soap digest while browsing through the store, Virginia looked at the time and realized that she was going to miss her Touched by an Angel reruns, which to her was was nothing short of sacrilege" lord have mercy, James we gonna miss Della! Go outside and wait for the bus while I pay for these groceries" she said while hurrying to the cashier. James had been at the stop for barely two minutes when a milky brown liquid vomit colored 1977 Coupe Deville stopped right in front of him. Out came six teenage boys wearing green sweats and hoodies, and a large black man wearing a green tweed suit and a gold brimmed hat. The boys surrounded James, trying to make the most scowling expressions that their little cherubic faces could as the man strutted towards him with a 38 millimeter in his hand. Their matching green oversized sown polyester outfits that their mothers bought them at Walgreens and their green spray painted Nikes gave an aura as menacing as spongebob squarepants. But to James, they were cause for extreme fear. " Today shock G's" said the old man " We are going to do our first robbery!" " YEA!!!!" said the boys in unison " Now we are going to do this robbery, to prove who owns these streets!" the man said while pointing his gun at a petrified James. " That's right!" " We are gonna show this punk fool that nobody messes with us" he said while looking up and pushing his chest out " we are the Shock G's , the real hilltop mob! " yeah, the motherf*cking mob!" As they boys drew closer to him and took turns slapping him upside his head, James started to run. He turned up into the back alley that separated the rite aid from back of a soul food restaurant. Cornering him in the dark shades and the putrid, rotted pig gut smells of the alley, the man put the gun to James head. " Where's your money, n!gga" he said with a snarling lip curl. " aiiiiiiii." said James, too frightened to speak " what?" " aiiiiiiiii." " you retarded n!gga?" Just as James was about to respond the man was tackled from behind and pushed to the ground to the ground. Virginia had summoned all her energy that she had to bowl him over. " Jesus Christ help me lord Jesus help me lord, you are not gonna kill my GRAND BABY!" she said while wailing at him with her pocket book " so help me ( whack) god, you (whack) are ( whack) not ( whack) going to hurt my grand baby!( whack) you (whack) low down dirty( whack ) son of a b!tch(whack)" . Frightened of the whole situation, James ran home as fast as he could, screaming at the top of his lungs. Fuming, she took a step back and searched for her mace, and just as she was about to drown his face in a sea of violent hot peppers and toxic chemicals, he turned to face her, which stopped her cold. The man who was robbing James went by the name of Ronald G Thompson. He didn't have the same perm that he had 16 years ago and his face was scarred, but she could recognize him from his oblong lantern jaw, buck teeth and oversized goatee. Upon seeing this she just stared at him, angry but too stunned at the present revelation. " Ronnie" she said, with the words barely coming out of her mouth. " Ms Green"? he replied. " Boy" she said while grabbing James " this is Tinesha's baby. You were gonna rob your own son" As he stammered to come with either a denial or explanation, the boys, all of whom were fatherless, turned to him with sad little puppy dog eyes, fearing that their leader was a microcosm of their own flawed parentage. " wait ...wait... tinesha was a ho, I'm telling you... yeah..yeah.. she was f*cking everybody around the block" " You evil sonofab!tch" she said " you took my baby away from me you knew that she didn't know her knees from her elbows about sex, she didn't know nothing about the real world till you turned her out and got her hooked on them drugs" " what --what ... what you little n!ggas waiting for? jack her! I said jack her!!!!!" "Get your little asses home or I'll swear to god I'll smack the black off of all of you" she said to the boys which caused them to scamper away like defiled little church mice. In that dark, musty alley, Ronnie and Virginia stood in front of one another; him with a curling lip smirk , her with an angered twitching scowl ."I swear to go you are the sorriest motherfu*ker on the face of the earth." she said " a 45 year old man wearing some fake gators and a three piece suit that you can get at Value Village for 9.99." " why you trying to mess with me lady, I'm just trying to hustle, I'm just trying to make mine and run these streets." "Streets? Your streets? What streets? White folks run these streets, you dumb bastard. they just let your a$$ do whatever you want cause you only mess around with black folk." " I'm tired of your mouth b!tch", he said as he pointed his gun toward her, but a entirely strange occurrence happened, or at least entirely strange to him. Previously, whenever he pulled his gun at people they cowed in fear. With that gun women gave him sex, mothers gave him money, little hoodlums to stupid to see how much sorry middle aged man that he was gave him respect. But in that little alley, this 60 year old church lady was laughing him. For two minutes she sat on a stack of garbage cans, nearly doubled over while a 38 was pointing directly to her face. " B!tch , what's wrong with you." " My god, boy you are the sorriest bastard on planet earth. First you come up to me and my grandson with a bunch a little boys you call a gang but the only reason you have them around cause your a$$ is too broke and ugly to be a pimp and now" she said, with her laughter breaking her train of speaking " now....now.......you are trying to put a gun to my face without knowing good and hell well how to take the safety off." " Oh yeah?" he said defensive and higher pitched voice, than his ( assumed) thug baritone " Yeah? well I was just playing! now im really gonna take it off." he said as he fumbled with the lock " I got it, yeah .. I almost got it." "Turn the lever left" "Why you ain't running for the police, b!tch." "Because you humor me. " "Got it" he said, while pointing the gun at her. " Now im gonna make you pay, for your mouth." but she remained unfazed, " you don't even know how to shoot a gun , do you" she said in a low, monotone voice. " T..t..try me " " Go 'head and shoot. " " I...iii,....im gonna." " What's stopping you. " "I....ii...iii...." " Why you nervous? You the motherf*cker with the gun" ".d...don't tempt me." " What you waiting for" What Virgina had saw was that in the way he had pointed the gun, showed that he had never shot a gun, didn't know how to shoot one or understood what happens when a gun gets shot. He had pointed the gun at her on an 150 degree angle, with the butt close to his face, not knowing how a 38 violently jerked backwards when discharged. So when he shot at her, the gun went straight back towards his face, causing him to lose two of his teeth and knocking him to the ground. Virginia came unglued, rushed toward him, and grabbed him by the neck " You think a gun is gonna intimidate me, boy? I done worked for the Black Panthers! I saw more guns in a week than you have seen in your god damm lifetime. You think a measly little 38 is gonna bother ME!?" " Lady, leave me alone." " I have suffered for so long, I lost my baby, my child. And THIS is what I suffered for? I done cried and prayed and cried and prayed because of YOU! I swear to god I'll.." Just then the line cook came into the alley with a baseball bat " Allright folks, break it up, have your domestic problems else where." "But?" " I said break it up?" As Ronnie was explaining his plight to the cook, Virginia walked away from the alley in a state of maddening bemusement. She got home to see that James had left the door open " Baby, i told you to lock the doors in my house!" she said. But there was no reply. She checked her room, where they would usually watch Wheel of Fortune together, but he wasn't there. She tried checking the kitchen, because she knew he loved to eat, but he wasn't there either. She checked the living room, where he loved to look at her old Ebony and Jet magazines, but there was no sight of him.. Turning to the basement door she opened only to see pitch black, which paralyzed her with fear. She willed her legs, paralyzed from fright, down the steps, with every nightmare scenario running through her mind. Halfway downstairs, she pryed a silhouette of a body swaying back and forth, only faintly visible by the crack of light that came out of a basement window curtain. She started to break down on the bottom of the steps. Not my baby, Lord Jesus, not my baby, she thought. I know he can be a burden and he done been through some things, but he is the only thing i got in this world left. Lord, I'll give up coffee, give up sweets, I'll give away half my income , but please, please don't take my baby. I cant live without my baby. please Lord Jesus please Lord Jesus pleeeeassse Lord Jesus pleaaaassse Lord Jesus pleaaasase lord. With all the energy she had left for that day and half of the next one, she willed her arm to the light switch, used her right index finger the turn on the light, to see James in a lounge chair, alive but quiet, swaying with his hands in a praying motion. "GOOD GOD ALLMIGHTY" screamed Virginia " DONT YOU EVER SCARE ME LIKE THAT AGAIN ! " I'm sorry grandma, I'm all right iiiii....i..i'm allright" he stated as got up and started to try and clap frenetically " god will fix it!" " Yes he will baby, but you got to have some light in here" she said as she opened the window curtain. "You ain't praising right if you ain't got no light. God loves light." " God'll fix it." he said over and over again, as she wiped the caked stains of white and red over his face. " amen baby, now hold still while I clean your face" " He gotta fix it!" he said " Why cant he fix it? " " fix what, baby?" " uhh..iii...uhh..ii " " That's allright, baby. that's allright" as she finished going over his face with a hot cloth. " That's allright."
Copyright © 2003 Brotherman |