Holy Ghost Corner Read online

  Charmayne bit her lip to stifle a snippety retort. What kind of “boutique touches” could you add to a 7-Eleven? But Charmayne wasn’t about to alienate a major client. Instead, she waved Mother Washington ahead while pushing the door open. Glodean put a foot in the store but jumped back when the shouting music came on.

  “What a racket!” she said. “You ought to cut that out!”

  Charmayne wrinkled up her nose as soon as she laid eyes on Miss Queen Esther Green. “What you doing here, Queen Esther?” she said. “Cleaning the toilets? Emptying trash cans?”

  Queen Esther cut her eyes at Charmayne, but with a “Sorry, Father” opted to let the scripture be her answer. “Do not speak to a fool,” she said, “for he will scorn the wisdom of your words. Proverbs 23:9.”

  With that, Miss Queen Esther picked up a folder of invoices and bills to be paid, and headed back to Theresa’s office.

  “Mother Washington,” Theresa began, fighting to keep laughter out of her voice. “I’m glad you’re here. Your new hat has just arrived.”

  Whatever she thought of Glodean, any customer who ordered three hats worth $1,500 apiece—all designed to her exacting specifications—had to be coddled. “Let me open the box and you can try it on.”

  Theresa pulled at the second, sealed-up box on the floor, which seemed awfully heavy. Using her pearl-handled box cutter, she slit it open and peeled back the tissue paper. All three women peered down at the hat inside, which was covered in outrageous flamingo-pink feathers. It had a crown that would have swallowed an average woman’s head and a hard, upturned brim sure to stand out a good eighteen inches from the wearer’s face.

  With a mighty heave, Theresa managed to get the big box onto the counter, then slit the sides so she could slide the hat out.

  “Oh my, my, my!” Glodean exclaimed, reaching out for her new hat.

  “I need to help you put it on,” Theresa said evenly, estimating that the hat had to weigh at least twelve pounds.

  It took some doing to maneuver the hat, which was like a three-foot sail, onto Mother Washington’s head. Two months before, when Glodean had special-ordered the hat, describing it down to the last detail, Theresa was still hard-pressed to visualize it. The hat was so extreme—so bizarre and extravagant, and so pink—that she simply could not fathom how it would look on somebody’s head. And now Theresa found it downright unsettling to see how very well Mother Washington wore it.

  “I love it!” Glodean said, spinning around to see the back of the hat so quickly that she lost her balance, as Theresa reached out to steady her.

  “Oh yes, that’s some hat,” Charmayne offered.

  “Umph,” Glodean continued, with a smug, tight smile on her face. “No other woman will have a hat like this—or even anywhere close to it—at our district’s next Annual Conference.”

  “I believe that,” Theresa said.

  Glodean started out taking small, careful steps, trying to figure out how to walk in the huge hat. Growing bolder, she eased into her signature stride—a slow, barely perceptible booty-swinging sway that never failed to turn some preacher’s head and make the man resort to mopping his face with a handkerchief. She was in such a deep zone studying the hat that when the door beeped and the shouting music came on, she jerked and toppled onto a rack in the Holy Ghost Corner, sending an entire display of stockings inscribed with “Jesus,” “Saved,” and “Praise the Lord” tumbling all over the floor.

  With arms stretched out wide to hold on to her hat, Glodean managed to right herself and back up onto a precarious perch at the edge of a table full of lap cloths. The cloths were wildly popular among the ultra-modest ladies at the Holiness Church, who liked to keep their knees covered during services.

  “Here, Mother, let me help you,” Theresa said, rushing to straighten out the hat on Glodean’s head. Hearing all the commotion, Miss Queen Esther came running out of the back of the store, tightly clutching one of her bottles of anointing oil. She glared at Charmayne, who made no move to help her pick up the fallen rack or the packets of hose.

  Struggling to keep her dignity, Glodean gave Charmayne an imperious wave to signal that it was time to leave. Charmayne carried both their purses to the cash register, where Glodean handed her the mammoth hatbox as if she were her personal maid. Then a hush of anticipation fell over the store as Theresa, Queen Esther, and the new customers all waited to see just how Glodean was going to navigate out the door.

  “I hope you can drive with whatever it is you got on your head,” said the man who had just arrived, tilting the crooked dark shades on his face toward the hat. Tapping his white, red-tipped cane on the floor, he sniffed the air, adding, “Lawd ha mercy, you a fine thang, ain’t you, girl. And you don’t even look as old as you is, do you, baby?”

  Glodean sucked in air through clenched teeth and bore her eyes right through his shades. “I,” she said, “I am Mother Glodean Benson-Washington, wife of the Right Rev. Sonny Washington. And you, and this, this . . .”

  Glodean couldn’t even find words to describe the man’s companion. The woman’s hair, despite her obvious maturity, was combed in three thick, coarse, steel-colored braids; and she was passing off a blue-flowered housecoat as a dress, accessorized with navy blue knee socks and yellow jelly sandals. Strangest of all was her mouth, which was filled with the most peculiar and conspicuous false teeth Glodean had ever seen.

  “Looka here, Miss High-Siddity-Preacher-Wife-Woman,” the woman slurped out through those teeth. “You just needs to get and gone on ’way from here, ’fore I have to forget I’m a lady and whip yo’ butt. ’Cause don’t no-body talk to my man, Lacy here, like that.”

  “Let it go, Baby Doll,” the man said soothingly. “We here to get you a treat. I ain’t in no mood to peel you off nobody today.”

  Baby Doll calmed down and slurped out, “Yes, Big Daddy.”

  Charmayne couldn’t believe that woman had called Mr. Lacy, who was a little, skinny red man with a face full of freckles, “Big Daddy.”

  “Charmayne,” Mr. Lacy called out with authority. “Take this woman on away from here. She has almost ruined what started out as a beautiful day.”

  Charmayne had kept silent ever since Mr. Lacy and his girlfriend had entered the store. She knew he was blind, and he hadn’t heard her, so how in the world . . .

  “Baby girl, when you gone figure out that I have other ways of knowing who is around. Remember, I been knowing you since your mama, Ida Belle, went into labor at the Soul Family Picnic, and had you ’fore any of us could get her in the car to go to the hospital.”

  Charmayne wanted to snatch that cane from Mr. Lacy and beat him with it. Why did he have to tell that old tired story in front of the Bishop’s wife? She had spent the last twenty years of her life trying to rid herself of those project roots and, even worse, project people. And here he was dredging up that mess.

  “Charmayne, let’s go,” Glodean snapped. “You drive us back to Fuquay-Varina.”

  Under her breath she muttered, “Talking about ghe-tto . . .”

  “Yes, Lawd. We’s talkin’ ’bout ghetto,” Mr. Lacy’s girlfriend said, as he tugged at her arm to forestall any trouble.

  “Come on, Baby Doll,” he urged.

  Only by tipping her head to one side could Glodean fit her hat through the door. Queen Esther and Theresa watched from the window, amazed as she managed to twist herself gracefully into the car. Despite her initial difficulty at maneuvering in the hat, Glodean managed to climb up in her car like that overblown pink thing was a natural part of her head.

  “Get out of that window looking country like that,” Mr. Lacy admonished them.

  “Lacy, we looking country, ’cause we country. Plus, she started it,” Queen Esther said. “Didn’t nam-nobody tell that heifer to come up in here, dragging that jacked-up Charmayne Robinson with her, like she did. Why, that—”

  “Theresa,” Mr. Lacy interrupted, “I want you to meet someone special. This here is my boo, Baby Doll Henderson. B
aby Doll, this is the baby girl I’ve been telling you all about—the one with the store.”

  Baby Doll grinned, dabbing at some loose saliva, and said, “Girl, it show is good to meet yo’ self. You know Big Da . . . I mean Lacy, here, got nothing but love for you. And that’s sayin’ somethin’. ’Cause I know you know, Lacy here don’t take to everybody easy-like. Whole lotta people in Durham he’d just as soon cut with a straight razor if they so much as blink at him.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Baby Doll,” Theresa said politely. She had seen a few of Mr. Lacy’s women over the years, and every one was memorable, to say the least. But this one, without a doubt, took first prize.

  “That your real name, honey?” Queen Esther asked, about to bust with that and the second question running through everybody’s mind.

  “Yes, it’s the name on my birth certificate, signed at the old Lincoln Hospital right here in Durham. My mama named me that ’cause when she first saw me, she thought I was a big, pretty, brown baby doll.”

  “I see,” Queen Esther said carefully, searching Baby Doll’s face for evidence to support her name and coming up empty. “So,” she continued. “Tell us how you met up with Lacy.”

  “Oh, that’s a good story,” Baby Doll answered beaming. She sucked back saliva to clear her mouth a bit. “See, I was waiting on the bus in a rainstorm, trying to get back to the homeless shelter before nightfall. And Lacy here, with his sweet self, pulled up and said he would drive me home.”

  “Excuse me,” Theresa said incredulously. “Did you just say that Mr. Lacy offered to drive you home? In a car?”

  Mr. Lacy, who had been “watching” them, tapped his cane on the floor and said, “I offered her a ride. That’s all you bad-tailed busybodies need to know. Now get out of my business.”

  “Then, when we get to the shelter,” Baby Doll went on, “Big Daddy said he didn’t think somebody as sweet as me should be there, so he took me to his home and I’ve been there every since. Got me a job cleaning offices, and I am just so happy. I got a job, a home, and a man. ”

  “And now that Baby Doll has got me,” Mr. Lacy said with such love and tenderness that it clutched at Theresa’s heart, “I’m gone get my baby something pretty to put her teeth in. See, they ain’t normal false teeth and sometimes they hurt her mouf, and she need to take ’em out. But she need somethin’ to put ’em in—especially when we out in public.”

  “Yeah, Lacy right,” Baby Doll added. “See, my nephew’s girlfriend’s baby daddy work at that hippity-hoppin’ store for the young’uns, where they makes all the gold teefs and stuff, and them fronts or teeth grilles these chirrens stickin’ up in they moufs. And when they makes the fronts, they makes molds of the teefs with this real light yellow, clay-lookin’ stuff. The molds, they look like false teefs, but not all the way like false teefs.”

  Baby Doll gave them a big grin to fully display her “false” teeth, which were a putty yellow, or the exact color used to make the molds of teeth. “That boy who make ’em, did ’em for me for free.”

  Queen Esther tried not to say, “I see what you mean.” But it came out before she could stop it.

  Mr. Lacy cut his eyes at her because he knew Queen Esther knew better.

  “I have the perfect box for Miss Baby Doll’s teeth, Mr. Lacy,” Theresa said softly. She reached under the table and found the cutest plastic box—perfectly sized. It was bright red with tiny metallic flowers stamped on it in blue, yellow, and green.

  “Here, Miss Baby Doll,” Theresa said, as she put the box in her hand. “This is a gift from me.”

  “Thank you, baby,” Baby Doll slurped with a big grin on her face. Then she slipped her teeth into the box, snapping it open and shut a few times, and shaking it to be sure that they were secure. “Perfect,” she mumbled through her gums, before putting the teeth back into her mouth. “I can get the teefs in and out of the box right quick. That’ll do me some good when I have to take a meal.”

  Watching Baby Doll perform her ritual with the teeth, Theresa could practically hear Queen Esther trying to form her mouth to ask about the connection between the speed of getting teeth into and out of a box and eating food.

  Feeling their eyes on her, Baby Doll got uncomfortable for the first time since she’d entered the store. “I can’t eat good with my teefs in my mouf,” she started to explain. “They real stiff and just for decoration, so my mouf won’t look all sunk down in and bad.”

  Then she stopped, remembering that while these folks were nice, they might be a little bit uppity—and that not a one of them, including her Lacy, had ever gone hungry or not had a decent place to sleep in their entire lives. She was being stared at by some folk whose needs were so well supplied that they couldn’t even imagine not being able to get some real false teeth.

  “You folks is blessed and you don’t even know how much you is blessed,” she told them. “I know I am—I even used to be crazy until this evangelist lady over at the shelter prayed with me until I got healed of being out of my mind.”

  “Hmmm . . .” said Queen Esther. “So why haven’t you come to church, Baby Doll? To be healed of that kind of craziness is a miracle, and you need to finish what was started and get saved. You and Lacy here need to come on back to church. You need to let the Lord know how much you appreciate your new life.”

  “Queen Esther,” Mr. Lacy snapped. “Does everything with you always have to start and stop with Jesus?”

  Queen Esther looked Mr. Lacy dead in the eye and knew that he could “see” her. “Yes, Lacy. Everything in this world starts and stops with Jesus.”

  Mr. Lacy squirmed just a bit under her glare, then sighed and reached out for his girlfriend. He knew Queen Esther was right but he wasn’t ready to give up making home-brewed spirits for his brother’s illegal liquor house. And he was making a killing selling Virginia’s state lotto tickets out of there, too. All that would have to stop when he took that long walk down to the church altar.

  “You ready?” Mr. Lacy asked Baby Doll.

  Baby Doll took his arm and made to leave, but then stopped mid-stride and turned to face Theresa. “I’m a good cleaning lady. You think I could work for you and keep your store all nice?”

  Theresa was still processing what Baby Doll had been telling them about being blessed and prayed out of being crazy. Her first inclination was to say no, but something in Baby Doll’s eyes made her think of the verse in Matthew about the sheep and the goats, when Jesus said that doing for the least of them was doing for the Lord.

  “Look, I ain’t no criminal and I show ain’t no thief,” Baby Doll was saying.

  “You come to church on Sunday and to Bible study on Wednesdays, Miss Baby Doll, and I’ll hire you to clean up on the weekends. That sound fair to you?” Theresa asked.

  Baby Doll was hesitant at first, then stuck out her hand and said, “Deal.”

  “Come on, baby,” Mr. Lacy said. “I think we need to hop on the bus and get on over to Kmart. You gone need some church clothes and a few extra things for work. You have to look nice when you working at a fine establishment like Miss Thang’s.”

  “Ooooo, Lacy,” Baby Doll slurped out, cooing. “You show is a good man. Handsome, too.”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” was all Mr. Lacy said, as he hurried the two of them out the door, excited about having some extra money to take his woman on a shopping spree at her favorite store.

  Watching them head out together in the dusk, Theresa was hit by a wave of loneliness. It was disheartening to watch Mr. Lacy carry on over Baby Doll like she was Gladys Knight, when the woman wore her hair in three braids, had on some yellow jelly sandals over dark socks, and didn’t even have real false teeth. Yet Theresa—a prosperous businesswoman, with a retailing degree from Eva T. Marshall University, whom everybody agreed was nice-looking and goodhearted, if a little prickly sometimes—couldn’t find a man who truly wanted her, never mind treat her like she was God’s best creation since sweet potato pie.

  For all her success
at work, Theresa felt like a failure at life. Before she could help it, a tear slipped down one cheek.

  This time, Queen Esther caught it. “Who are you to question God’s ways in your life, Theresa?” she admonished. “Baby Doll has the same God-given right that you do to be loved and treated with kindness and respect by a man. And you are wrong—just plain wrong—to measure yourself against her like that.”

  “I know,” Theresa began. “It’s just that—”

  “It’s just nothing,” Queen Esther interrupted. “Why—”

  Before Queen Esther could launch into a full-blown lecture, the phone rang, four, five, then six times. When the machine picked up, the caller audibly clicked off, and then a minute later, the phone started ringing again.

  “Who’s that calling over and over?” Queen Esther demanded, punching the speakerphone button.

  “Theresa, where are you?” asked an angry male voice.

  Queen Esther definitely recognized that voice. Cutting her eyes at Theresa, she snatched up the receiver and thrust it at her.

  “Hello,” Theresa said, avoiding Queen Esther’s glare.

  “Why are you still holed up in that store?”

  “Uhhh . . . did I forget something?” Theresa murmured.

  “You certainly did,” said Parvell Sykes, the owner of the voice. “You know that I’m waiting for you.”

  “Oh . . . where am I supposed to be?” Theresa asked gingerly, a little shocked that she’d forgotten her dinner date. She’d been seeing Parvell on and off for a couple of months but had found herself making excuses when he pressured her to see him. He was what most people would consider a “catch”—a wealthy and successful real estate agent, fifty-two years old, single, and an assistant pastor at Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church. But Theresa found that she just didn’t like the man.

  “You were to meet me at the Washington Duke Inn,” Parvell was saying. “We set this up ten days ago because this was the first night you weren’t ‘busy’ with some stupid little goings-on.”