Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

“Yes y’ do,” a Sister in the back of the church piped up.

Reverend Sykes smiled. He could look thirty or forty or fifty, depending on how he smiled and for whom. “Like I’ve told y’all before, I’m just a country boy. And in the country when Daddy wanted to get some meat on the table by Christmas , he knew how to get it. You see, ’fore Thanksgiving came around , we’d go out and catch us a turkey. Now you can train a horse to bite on the bit. Train the ox to go the straight and narrow way. But Saints! You can not train no turkeys ! Even the chickens will come when you feed them, and in time, lay their eggs in the nest. All the other birds — the gooses and the sparrows and the chickadees —will go south when the winter comes. And the Lord shows them the way to go north in the spring.”

“Amen,” a few women called out. Doris also said, “Amen,” though a bit late, wondering where he was heading with it all.

“When the raaaain comes pouring down —they won’t try to run and hide. No, Saints! They don’t heed the Lord’s call like the other animals. All the turkey wants to do is follow all the other turkeys! They get so tangled up in one another, that they will push the weak ones on the bottom, but guess what? All the turkeys gonna drown! That’s right. Don’t be a gaggle of turkeys, Saints! Because when the raaain comes—!” He walked back to the pulpit and closed his Bible as if that was all he needed to say.

“Preach it, Brother!”

People were up on their feet, shouting, for they now knew the turkeys were all the sinners of the world and the rain was the Rapture that would surely occur that night. They danced and shouted in the aisles like never before. Doris stood as well, looking to see if her mother had arrived, when she spotted a white lady, standing, her hands swaying in time with everyone else’s. She definitely wasn’t one of the white Pentecostal women who occasionally visited colored churches. This lady had auburn hair, in deep waves that grazed her shoulders like a forties film star’s, whereas saved white women were forbidden to cut their waist-length hair, the straggly ends like dripping seaweed. Those women wore ruffles and brooches from the turn of the century, but this lady was dressed in a smart, expensive-looking suit. Then it hit Doris — the white lady wasn’t a lady at all, but a girl. Olivia Berman, Mrs. Berman’s daughter. Beside Olivia was Doris’s mother, who, despite the commotion, was completely silent. Why was Olivia Berman, a Jewish girl, here?

Everyone else was so caught up that no one noticed that Doris’s mother wasn’t, but Doris could not concentrate. If Jesus had come at that very second she would have been left behind because she wasn’t thinking of Him.

IT WAS nearly one o’clock in the morning and 1962 when they quit their shouting and settled into prayer. Jesus hadn’t come, and the children — up past their bedtimes — began to grumble and yawn. When the last hymn had been sung, the last prayer spoken, and the last “Amen” said, Doris found herself outside, buoyed by the night air, scrambling to find the rest of her family. It wasn’t hard with a white girl around. The rest of the congregation swirled around them, looking at them but saying nothing. There was no ignoring Olivia: her whiteness, her strangely erect posture, her red hair, the abrupt way she had of tossing her head like a horse resisting a rein.

Outside, everything was extremely as it had been. Jesus had not arrived, but Doris wished He had, if only to keep everyone speculating why Doris and her mother had brought a white girl to church.

“You remember Olivia,” her mother said after the service. “She’ll be going to Central.” Her voice was changed, all the music gone out of it and replaced with the strange, overenunciated syllables she used talking to white folks or imitating them. Bernice Yates usually bade each and every Saint a good night, but that night she looked only at Doris and Olivia.

Before Doris could remember to be polite, she said, “Why are you going to public school? What happened?”

Her mother shot her a look. “Nothing happened .”

“It’s okay, Bernice,” Olivia said, lightly touching Doris’s mother’s shoulder.

Doris cringed. Not even her father called Doris’s mother by her first name. Only Mrs. Berman — who paid her mother a paycheck — could call her Bernice.

If Olivia caught the ice in Doris’s eyes, she didn’t let on. “You see, Doris, I got kicked out. I’m in need of some saving myself, that’s why I came here tonight.”

Doris’s mother laughed, high and irregular. “Miss Olivia loves to kid around.”

“I changed my name, Bernice. Livia. Not O -livia. And I’m not kidding around. I came to find out all about Christian salvation.”

Doris watched as her mother looked at Olivia. It was hard to tell whether Olivia was making fun of them. Though Saints were gladdened when anyone became interested in the Holiness Church, this was too much. Jews were Jews, and that was that.

Doris remembered how she’d always thought of how lucky the Jews were: Reverend Sykes had said that whether or not they believed in Jesus, they wouldn’t go to hell like other nonbelievers, because they were Chosen. That would mean heaven would be stocked with nobody but Pentecostals and Jews. Doris thought how strange it would be, getting whisked away to heaven only to find things much the way they were when she used to help her mother clean at the Bermans’: Mrs. Berman with her pincurls whorled about her head like frosting on a cake, little Al and Danny Berman playing the violin, eyes rolling to the ceiling at Stravinsky’s beautiful, boring music. She remembered when Al and Danny quit the scherzo they’d been practicing and started up “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” sawing on their expensive violins as if they were country fiddles. Mr. Berman had let out a primitive yell, thudding something to the ground, the only time Doris had seen him mad.

Olivia Berman offered to drive them home. Doris’s mother said that with her daughters Etta Josephine and Doris now there, the car would be too full, and implored Miss Olivia to go ahead home. Doris’s mother insisted that no, it was not too far for them to walk. That they’d been doing it for years.

SHE WAS the only Negro student in the class, the only Negro in all her classes. And though Mr. Fott, her Honors History teacher, rarely called on her, she was fine with it. She was relieved that he graded fairly, though sometimes he’d comment on her essays with a dark, runic hand: Do you mean Leo XIII believed the state must remain subord. to the interests of the indiv. composing it? Despite his antipathy of laissez-faire policies? At least he didn’t speak to her the way Mrs. Prendergast always did, slowly, loudly, as if Doris were deaf.

On the first day Olivia came to Mr. Fott’s class, she wore earrings like tiny chandeliers and a pillbox hat, like Jackie Kennedy, though no one wore hats to school. She entered minutes after the bell had rung, and though Mr. Fott made efforts to flag her down, chide her for tardiness, introduce her to the class, she rushed straight to where Doris was seated and cried, “ Doris! ” Doris made no move to get up, but Olivia descended upon her in an embrace, then turned to the class in mock sheepishness, as if she could not help her display of emotion. “Doris and I haven’t seen each other in forever .”

That, of course, was a lie; they’d just seen each other three days ago. But before that night at church, Doris hadn’t seen Olivia in years. For the longest time Doris could have sworn she’d heard her mother saying something about Olivia going to a girls’ boarding school. But that turned out not to be true: two or three years ago, at supper, when Etta Josephine had asked about her, Doris’s mother had said, “You know what? I don’t know where they keep that girl? But you know how white folks is. Got family living on the other side of the planet. Hop on one a them airplanes like they going to the corner store.” Then she lowered her voice to a gossipy whisper. “But you know what? Now that you mention it, I do believe she’s in the sanatorium.” Doris hadn’t believed it at the time, and had gradually forgotten about her.