Water Music

Ladies

JUST OUTSIDE THE SANCTUARY, A SLAP STINGS THE METAL LADIES-ROOM DOOR. Her soprano sugars my ears: “He doesn’t know what happened to it yet.”

A low sigh: the alto, her bookend in the first row of the church choir. “The baby?”

I hear the flick, flick, flick of steps on the linoleum. White patent-leather heels pair up in the stall next to me. “Yeah, get a dime out of my pocketbook? Get me a pad? The doctor said I’d hemorrhage,” Mrs. Bird says. They never pay attention to the girls they share their secrets with.

I hear the dime drop in the dispenser’s slot and then the clicks of the knob turning. A cardboard thump. The mysterious white machine doesn’t dispense candy or gum or Cokes or any of the regular things. We snicker at it.

“Here, but hurry up. We have to get our robes on,” the alto says and hands a small white box under the next stall’s door. I see it.

The silver pronged handle of the scalding hot-water tap squeaks. Soaping up, inspecting my hands, I turn them over and back, over and back, till they’re good and clean.

Sanctuary

Brother Bird, the choir director says, “Please turn to hymn number 136, ‘Are You Washed in the Blood?’ Ladies: verses one and three. Men: two and four. Together on the chorus. All rise.” His wife, the lady in the bathroom stall, sings open-throated, swaying in her gold robe. The clearest, most beautiful soprano, she leads the ladies, who have scarlet collars round their long-stemmed necks. I think of yellow-gold leaves floating on the notes of the hymn.

I stand and share the hymnal with Nancy Bean in the balcony. She holds one side, me the other. We love to sing. The hymn’s notes in the key of A—which I learned has four flats from Miss Lee, the church pianist—hover between the wooden floor and the acoustic-tiled ceiling, and then they swirl through the balcony where the teenagers sit in the front rows below us, round and round the body of the ear-phoned man recording the service for the shut-ins with a TV camera, and into the soft petal ears of Miss Dessa, who interprets in sign language for the deaf folks up in the front pews.

The women sing the high parts of the chorus, men the low echoes: “Are you washed? Are you washed? in the blood? in the blood? In the soul cleansing blood of the lamb?”

After the hymn is over, my coins ting in the copper collection plate that a deacon passes down our aisle, but I hold back a dime and keep it in my change purse.

Sermon

“Moses says to cast stones at the adulteress unto death,” Brother Healey tells us during the message. “Stones thump her flesh and her bones,” he says in a scary way. “‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ is a Commandment we all know by heart.” Nancy Bean and I are listening now. “Man stones us. God judges us. In our heathen world today, man has ceased casting stones. A new generation says they are free to be me, to be who I am, man. To do whatever I want. To commit sin with no consequences. What score is God racking up for you, man? I say,” Brother Healey asks us, like he knows a secret.

Nervous teenage snickers fall over the balcony rail and land on the old ladies’ hatted heads. Nancy Dean and I bump shoulders and look at each other feeling our sins. The lace overlay of my church dress scratches her arm, and she itches it.

“One man is standing up today to make a public statement,” Brother Healey declares, and we are speechless. Whispers stop all around us. “Mr. Forrest Powell is publicly rededicating himself to his marriage. He got down on his knees and tearfully confessed to me, in my study, that he has committed the sin of adultery. If you ask for forgiveness for your sins, then Jesus will forgive you. He will cleanse you with his blood, I told him. Mr. P. will be rebaptized immediately following the Invitational hymn.”

Gasps go bang, bang, bang on the deaf ears in the front row. Miss Dessa’s mouth is a big “O.” Her hands are folded in her lap. She hears just fine.

Tommy Healey, the pastor’s son, who has his arm round Jenny Davis, high fives his friend Dave Frank behind Jenny’s back. They don’t seem to care that we are in the row behind them and can see them.

The choir director says, “Let us all rise for the Invitation and sing hymn number 581, ‘We Have Heard the Joyful Sound’.”

Nancy Bean and I stand along with the rest of the congregation. Brother Healey turns from the pulpit and ascends the side steps past the choir to the baptismal pool above them, where the water purrs behind a crimson velvet curtain and a glass partition that’s a foot tall. We sing all four verses till the end: “Jesus saves! Je-sus saves.” Everybody sings the first Jesus saves like it’s an exclamation, the last one like it’s a statement of fact. Miss Lee thumps the final chord and ends by playing a flourish that runs up the treble notes.

“Please be seated,” Brother Bird says.

The rake of curtain eyes over its metal rod rouses the sheepish basses and tenors and stimulates the congregation like a K-mart backscratcher. Wide-eyed altos and sopranos quiver. Nancy Bean laughs softly and pokes me in the side.

We look at the soprano lady, the Choir Director’s wife, Mrs. Bird. She turns to her friend, the alto, and gently raises one finger to her lips in what might be a sneaky way. We giggle. I scribble a note on the order of service and hand it to Nancy. “Is Mrs. Bird who Mr. P. had to get re-baptized for? Yes or No. Circle one.” She circles yes over and over.

Mr. Forrest Powell is standing in the white pool, in four feet of water, up to his waist, where a wet ring, looking like it’s a flotation device, darkens his white baptismal robe. Brother Healey, dwarfed behind him, raises both arms: “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” He reaches up and puts a white handkerchief over Mr. P.’s face to cover his eyes and his nose and mouth and supports the back of Mr. P.’s head with his other hand.

Mr. P. is tilted back, off his feet, until his whole head is under the water. He struggles at first like water has gone up his nose. He can’t keep his arms crossed over his chest. They wave about helplessly under the water, like worms of white watercolor paint. A splash leaps over the glass partition. The tenors and basses duck. But Brother Healey never lets Mr. P. go. When he yanks him up, out of the water, by the back of the neck, that handkerchief is still in place. Brother Healey baptizes grown people all the time. It is nothing unusual to see adults lose control of themselves underwater in the white pool.

Mrs. Bird, our beautiful soprano lady, slumps in her chair. The crimson silk collar round her neck slips, tightening.

An echo of the last hymn’s chorus moves in waves round the sanctuary: Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

We stop to use the bathroom on the way out of the sanctuary. I check my change purse for the dime. “I want to see what was in that white box,” I tell Nancy Bean.