Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist has sat just west of 77th and Jeffery Boulevard since the real Jews first let dark folks on these blocks fifty years back. Deep Down wanderers brought the Mount with them from Mobile County, Alabama, or some such burning place, so this is really Mount Calvary Second Baptist, too many words to get in before crooning an alleluia and interrupting the mission. The church used to be a rickety wood frame worship-shack blending in perfect with the houses leaned sideways by lake wind, siding smudged orange-brown by the burn of the wicked city’s July sun, same as the Rothschild Liquor store across from the church parking lot. That old mud-weed lot where the Cadillac hearses parked whenever one of the Section C heads who sit under haberdashery and Easter brims passed on from this world to that better place prepared for them in the Kingdom.
But that old Deep Tuscaloosa–style shack didn’t shine sufficient for the Good News. So Reverend sent me to the alderwoman’s main ward office in the old Gold Medallion cab, carrying five large from Calvary’s tithe right after Mayor Harold died. Handed the flock loot over to that elected bag lady in exchange for eminent domain over half the row of homes just east of Jeffery, and the mud-weed lot too. City crashed down them shacks that used to line 77th long before they swore in Gomorrah’s new king. Then the church board started passing around a second collection pot on the second and fourth Sundays. They called it “the building reserve special blessing fund.”
“Give what you can, Church,” Reverend told the flock then. “Know times is rough for folk round here right round now, but sacrifice is remembered eternal—and remember, you sacrificing for the One who gave the greatest sacrifice, who made that path into Glory with His own blood. If you can’t give to build up a new place for celebrating Him, there’s still gon be a place for you on the Path, Church. I promise it. Still gon be a place for you in His new house. Somebody say amen.”
Before hardhats started pouring foundation to the new temple, Reverend had to pay out six weeks’ worth of bingo proceeds to the bag lady, just so she’d change the title to this block of 77th Street to his name. Original paperwork claimed the Lord, or the Mount itself, or the flock, as the new church land’s owner. “Naw, that ain’t right,” Reverend moaned back then. “All deeds got a price, Moral.” Then he pointed me toward the bags of bingo gold, and watched as I piled them into my cab’s trunk.
So the Church got to building its shining palace on the north side of 77th Street, foundation laid by the sacrifice of the flock, bricks stacked by the real big-time loot kicked back from DC in ’93, after the reverend sent us around in the bingo vans and the hearse to collect all the living and dead souls, bring them on back to the rickety old shack to cast rightful vote for our good brother, slick Willie C. That honorary deacon on the Mount never would have sat on his high throne not for the tireless work we put in here in the city, and the new church never could’ve afforded its masonry not for the deacon’s big payback.
Like the reverend say, “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad: for great is our reward in the Kingdom. That’s from the Good News, Church.” No trouble understanding that sermon, not even in my dwarf ears.
Today the wood pews in the Mount shine with fine finish, and you can’t hear the high heels clicking as the Section C women prance about the vestibule cause this plush red carpet stretches front door to black angel choir bandstand to swallow the sharpest points. Drywall towers above us, spackled to match the floor, with stereo speakers built behind and up into the ceilings, too, so no matter whether you’re sitting in row J on the second balcony or downstairs in the toilet stall, you hear his sermon in surround sound. My sweet Lord Jesus, don’t forget those holy shining basement bowls below the Mount, porcelain from Taiwan with the automatic power flush, and the perfume shooting from vents as stall doors open and close. Just enough mist let loose so you never smell your own shit, no matter gaping nose holes.
Even if you arrive late to the eleven thirty and find the Mount packed through to the balconies with blue-black city souls, and you end up sitting in the last row of main floor pews—even then, you still see the reverend’s pockmarked skin turn orange as he spews the Good News in front of a thousand furs and brims and palms and heels stomping. Last summer, Reverend had me install this camera here over the back row, lens set to beam him to the four movie screens at each corner of the service. Lens don’t leave the podium until Reverend Jack’s calligraphy-mustached grill crackles from his microphone as he dances one of his glory circles and drops the main point. I strung the camera cord up to stretch past the Mount’s balconies and the rafters, just like he told me, and now this wire carries the sermon and the sight of its pinstriped deliverer out for broadcast someplace way beyond the flock.
“What we doing on this good day here on Mount Calvary?”
“Celebratin’!”
“All right then, y’all hearing me. Only one thing that word could mean after how I just told it to you—‘I celebrate man.’ You celebrating the Lord God sending His One Son in man form just to sacrifice that human life so that the souls of we men would be forever saved. If you bring manifest, Church, then you celebrating the Good News. See how warm that makes you, just saying it. I know it makes me warm. Say it with me together, Church, and feel the shower of His Glory. Celebrate the Good News… Celebrate the Good News…”
“Celebrate the Good News!”
“Well all right then, Church. You been hearing about this fellow Teddy Mann all about the streets, ain’t you? If you ain’t heard, Church, then best time you listened in close. You come in here on Sunday morning and you feel sanctified bout the way of your souls, sacrificing your time for the One—”
“Amen,” the church sister squeals short-throated on her cane.
“Yes siree, Reverend—” the drummer boy in his clean green fatigues answers before he two-stick slaps his cymbals.
“Amen,” some Low End woman in the first balcony says before stomping square heels together.
“Sing his name on high now, Church. But the minute you step back outside them oak church doors, we ain’t on the Mount no more. You back in the world, Church, and it ain’t so warm. Not with that icy wind whipping up from the concrete. Even your Mah-shall Fields wool ain’t fine enough to keep you covered out there. Ain’t nobody praying to Him at the liquor store counter, no sweet virgin voices humming hymns by the lotto machine. Ain’t no Good Book studying in the battlefield, out there as one man spills his brother’s blood over the wages of sin, Church. No Reverend Jack preaching the Word over the rivers of pain and lakes of broken glass. Them folk don’t even know the Good Lord out there in the concrete world, do they, Church?”
“No sir,” Deacon Nate responds. “They don’t even know.”
“Or maybe they got the facts all switched up. Cause out there, I hear children who look just like your good children talking about Teddy Mann like he himself is the Lord God Almighty. Say Teddy be making rainwater fall out the sky; Teddy, he feeds us with the warmth of his crack glory. He brings smiles to faces flush of ashy worry and worn wrinkles. Teddy do so it, cause he’s the king of 79th Street, that concrete path. Folk swear they see him walking on top of the pond down by the Highlands. Strutting with the ducks just before he goes and turns that same water into wine, multiplies the fishes and loaves, cures the leper, and raises the dead. Breaks my heart to hear folk talking like so, Church, but I go on and listen to them desecrate and blaspheme Jesus’ holy name. These are my people, even when they lost in their confusion. I know this place, don’t I, Church?”