C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“Amen!”

“For there stands the living Christ, Amen! Yes. I’m gonna tell you a secret now, and if there ain’t nothing else you remember, remember this: Jesus loves the poor, because they suffer, and them that suffer is the only ones that love Jesus, ’cause it’s only when you suffer that you see the truth and Jesus, he’s the truth! You understand? It’s a perfect circle. So why are you trying so hard to not be poor? Jesus said only in heaven is the lion gonna be laying down with the lamb. And this— this ain’t heaven.” He laughed a derisive laugh, then turned to them with a single finger held up in the air as if a thought was newly dawning. His brows were risen high. “But maybe some of y’all think heaven is here on earth, it just ain’t here in Over-the-Rhine. Ooooooh,” he said slow, looking carefully, pointedly from face to face. “Ooooooh, you think heaven is the American Dream.”

“No, Reverend.”

His eyes narrowed. “Now come on, you know what I’m talking about, don’t be looking all innocent. The big old American dream: buy cheap, sell high, forget the past ’cause it’s dead and gone, chew up your brother till he ain’t nothing but crumbs, smile big, dance real fast, fight their wars, and when in doubt, go white.”

“No!”

“You heard me!”

“No!”

The Reverend held his arms wide. “Well, I hear y’all saying the righteous words, but when I look at my brothers and sisters, I got to ask — how many y’all got a credit card burning a hole in your pocket? How many y’all use that credit card till you’re so far in debt that every dollar you make you sending off to some white man like you all are his sharecroppers, and he’s living up in the big house? How many y’all go to work every day and check your black baggage at the door, saying”—and he stiffed up and spoke with a whittled falsetto—“‘Yes, Mr. Smith, I’m just so ashamed of how most black folks behave. It’s truly an embarrassment to the rest of us’…? How many y’all want to leave out the neighborhood and live up in Hyde Park, so you ain’t got to see your black brethren suffering in the city, looking so darn much like … YOU?”

Suddenly the Reverend clapped his hands to his mouth and, with his eyes wide, whispered, “Ooooooh. I get it now. I see. Y’all think Jesus was white. Ooooooh, you think Jesus was white? Children, what part the cross don’t you understand? If you’re in America and you think Jesus was white, then I’m here to tell you today, you don’t understand the cross and you don’t understand the color. If they string you up, if they hang you from a big old tree, if they ASSASSINATE you in the name of your brothers, then: You. Are. Black. Abraham Lincoln? Cracker most his days, black in the end. Young Brother Emmett? Black. All them dead Jewboys scattered through the Southland? Even them, black. Reverend King? Black. Malcolm? Black. JFK? Black. His brother in the kingdom? Black. The great-great-grandfather of my dearly departed wife? That man was black through and through, ’cause even though they all say he hung himself, I’m here to tell you that man was a child of God, and that man was assassinated. Bounty on his head from the day he was born!”

The Reverend stopped his pacing and faced them squarely.

“Listen, now,” he said, “I know y’all think you’re free, but your aspirations are gonna tell if you’re free or not. If the mind ain’t free, the man ain’t free. And if my mind ain’t free, then your mind ain’t free, ’cause we was born just days apart. Days apart. How many thousand years man been on this bloody earth? Slavery was just last week!

“So don’t be living the lie, chasing the dream, thinking some dead Negro done paid your bill. You ain’t earned the right to forget! You ain’t earned the right to live in the greenest pasture! You ain’t earned the right to lay down with the lion when the kingdom ain’t even come! Y’all act like Jesus is dead! Well, let me ask you this: Is Jesus dead in the ground? ’Cause I heard a rumor Jesus done rose up from the grave!”

A woman cried out, “He rose!”

“And how come he rose up out of that dark and nasty grave?”

“Tell me!”

“How come he said, ‘Eat my body and remember me’?”

“Tell me!”

“And how come Jesus is so angry up there in heaven?”

“Tell me!”

“Because my Jesus, my Jesus is the original Negro, and he said, only I can pay the bill, but he ain’t paid no bill for no Easy Street, he ain’t paid no bill for no credit cards and mortgages up in Hyde Park, he ain’t paid no bill so you can forget you was made in the image of God and THE SON OF GOD IS A NEGRO.”

Now the Reverend stopped suddenly, plucked a pink handkerchief out of his suit pocket, and mopped his streaming face, and when he spoke again, his voice was conversational: “Now eventually somebody’s gonna tell you Jesus ain’t had no brown skin. And you know what you’re gonna say when they tell you that? You’re gonna say: If Jesus wasn’t born no Negro, he died a Negro. What part the cross don’t you understand!”

A woman in the corner began to stomp her feet, laughing with her arms raised. “Yes!” she said, and “Yes!” the Reverend said right back, leaning forward at the waist.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said in a voice ratcheted high in exasperation, “train your hearts on Jesus!” Now the whole corner was risen up and dancing and the sprigs on hats shook and there was sweat streaming from armpits and the metal folding chairs were being scraped about on the concrete floor. Tears began to flow. The scrawny youth had resumed his position at the keyboard without anyone noticing, the music once again rolling out in brightly augmenting chords, rising and swelling through the Reverend’s words as he said: “Let us close with the truth.”

“Speak the truth!” they called.

“You ready for the truth?”

“Yes!”

“The black body is a temple!”

“Amen!”

“The white man’s been trying to tear down that temple forever!”

“Yes!”

“God said speak the truth, but America’s asleep, so we got to yell!”

“Amen!”

“Wake them up out of the dream paid for with black blood!”

“Amen!”

“Jesus is the lamb! He sacrificed himself so this broken world would wake up and see the truth! You ain’t sleeping when you with Jesus, children, you’re RISEN, you’re standing in the light!”

“Amen!”

“So stand in the light with Jesus!”

“Only Jesus!”

“Jesus!”

* * *

Marie kept her secret for three years; she held it in her hands. The secret wasn’t fear, though she was terrified when they decreased her hours at the dentist’s office, so terrified she’d taken the news without dignity, dissolving into jittery tears in front of the white man in his white scrubs. And the secret wasn’t shame, even though she’d had to go down to the Ohio Department of Human Services on Central Parkway and withstand the interrogation with the monotone caseworker, then the information session with all the other hangdog applicants, most too ashamed to look up at one another. She left with her first month of paper stamps and a mouth full of sawdust. Write the word “failure” on the contract of her life.

It wasn’t any of that. It was pain.

She’d come home that day from the Human Services office intent on fixing the one thing she could: the apartment. She filled the tub with sudsy water and pushed a scraggly mop over the old wood floors, removed all their clean dishes and washed them anew, replaced lightbulbs, polished their old television, which got three channels, and swept the tenement steps. It was when she went to return the broom to its closet that her hands rebelled, maintaining an iron clutch on the handle. Staring closely as if she could peer beneath the skin to the bone and sinew, she detected a strange, altered sensation — her knuckles felt spongy and swollen, as if packed with cotton wool. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and raised her hands up to see their reflection. Strange that they didn’t look different, though the internal swelling beat with the beat of her inflamed heart. What was this? The strangeness didn’t even have a name. It was like an infant, some newborn version of pain, something too fresh to know.