A South End Sunday Morning

(An excerpt)

The 1400 block of Lawrence Avenue, a dirt road, usually had no semblance of being paved, but a citywide election was approaching, so the street sported a new, oily topcoat. An earthmover had grunted slowly down the road one week earlier, filling in potholes and leveling the surface. Trenches had been cleaned and scooped out on either side for runoff from the rain. The roadbed, freshly scraped and covered with tar and gravel, stretched for five hundred yards. Scores of multicolored row houses edged up to the trenches as far as their dirt sidewalks would permit. Daylight splashed the tops of houses, spilled over onto sleepy Southenders in their beds, and then sprinkled the soft, black road, warming its viscous surface. A dog crossed the street intermittently sniffing the morning dew and poking its nose into the smelly petroleum base, but otherwise, Lawrence Avenue slept quietly.

A lone rooster dutifully crowed from atop an empty, backyard coal-shed he had commandeered for the last four months. Summer sunrises came as early as 4 a.m.  for East St. Louis in this, its All American City year, and a rambunctious cock could sound off with fairly good assurance only he welcomed the dawn. 

Folks in the South End had been warned about keeping farm animals on their property, but most ignored the warnings and the local precinct committeemen only winked at the infractions. So, here and there along the avenue would be a clutch of chickens. Further down the street three penned hogs were lazily starting their day.  Everyone on the block knew the family near the corner that hid a calf in their shed, and hardly a yard existed without a vegetable garden, or a stand of corn. 

Southenders were slow to forget their Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi roots. Most heads of families had grown up on farms and plantations in the south, coming to East St. Louis during the expectant years to look for good-paying jobs. Farm habits learned early were hard to break. So, the South End landscape was a kaleidoscopic blend of city and country, especially up and down Lawrence Avenue. 

On this Sunday morning, Rev. Timothy had awakened and dressed himself in his row house at lot 1434, long before the rooster had moved on its perch to crow. The Reverend sat toward the front edge of his living room couch, slightly hunched, deeply absorbed in scripture reading. He had been sitting there for nearly three hours now, and the sunlight filtering through meshed curtains covering the window to his left, lit only the area where he sat.

On one side of the living room, shadowy against the morning light, chairs had been arranged in two errant semicircles. The remaining rickety, mismatched furniture, washed and polished for the morning worship service, stood defiant against the sootcovered wall paper and worn linoleum floor that testified to the meanness of the room –no piece more boldly than an upright piano occupying the corner opposite the Reverend’s couch.

The piano, a sparkling, mahogany piece with large mirrored panels surrounding the upper case, had come to the Reverend because of his marriage to Cora.  Cora’s Aunt Jessie had given it to Timothy’s fledgling congregation, thinking to help her niece’s husband get established in something respectable. For Jessie, a job on the killingfloor of Armour’s meat packing company was common, not respectable, even though Timothy had held the job steadily for the first fifteen years of his marriage to her niece.  Worse still, Timothy had been laid off from Armour for more than a year now. Jessie held scant esteem for an out-of-work packinghouse worker turned cab driver, but when Timothy heard his call to the ministry, she had said to Cora, “At least that’s somethin’ respectable. It’s about time that man did more than chase around after women and cause you upset.”

Timothy had welcomed Jessie’s gift. He was not foolish enough to think Jessie had given it out of affection for him, but he didn’t care. The piano was easily the most valuable piece of furniture in the house. What is more, its presence transformed the dilapidated structure at lot 1434 into a special place. No other house on the block boasted a piano and Cora’s spirited, rag-time-style playing re-created hymns that only added to the mystique. When the Reverend’s wife struck up a melody on Sunday mornings, the street would come alive to its thumping tempo. Some of the neighbors listened from inside their houses, or seated on their porches, but several, especially the children, streamed into the Reverend’s front yard for the services. Few congregations were so approachable and as unpretentious as Timothy’s church-house. 

Looking across at the piano and into its mirrors, Timothy nodded approval of the room and of the image seated before him. He was a pragmatist. He knew his physical appearance and charisma could be definite drawing cards for his church, and so he was very particular about his looks and clothes.

The Reverend was thin, graying – a handsome man of 40 years. Perhaps it was his full cheeks that caught the church sisters’ eyes. These and a granite-like, squared chin, gave him a look of solidness, unlike so many other thin men. His unmarked face was a rich, brown color. Thickset hair sat slightly back from his forehead, the same color as his moustache, but not nearly as brittle or cultivated. He was not tall, but sitting, his height made no difference and standing, he gave off an air of authority that belied his height. Dressed as he was in his best white, long-sleeved shirt and tie, and framed by the sun’s rays, he appeared saintly. His lips moved as he read, but no sound came from the room except when his fingers flicked the frayed Bible pages.

The Reverend waited patiently for his church people to come clicking their way through the gravel on the newly oiled road. This was to be only their third meeting. Someday they would have a proper church building, he knew, but this morning he sat reading and reworking the sermon that would be delivered in the robust style he had learned from years of tutelage in the Baptist churches of the South. 

Had he looked to his right, he would have seen Cora. She sat near an unlit, coal stove, using it as a platform for all the paraphernalia needed to comb her youngest daughter Tina’s hair. Dressed in a red housecoat, Cora busied herself making little squares of hair that she swatted expertly with greased fingers in preparation for braiding. The sleeping child sat on the floor between her mother’s legs, head leaning against Cora’s thigh.

From this position Cora yelled gentle admonitions to the other five children stirring in the back part of the shotgun house. “Yawl better start some more water heatin’ back there,” she told them. “And Kenny, you git that foot-tub out from under the sink so your sister can take a bath when I finish her head.”

Had the Reverend looked, he would have seen evidence of all he heard, but he did not look up. He continued reading, knowing Cora would prepare Tina and the others for the morning service. Cora knew her job. He kept to his own. 

Timothy’s job as Pastor of the newly established church, assured him one-half of whatever amount was raised in the weekly offering – never a great sum. This money added to what he got from driving a cab two nights a week, plus the government’s ADC check and commodities, just barely met the family’s needs. At times though, Timothy came to the end of the week feeling as spent as when he had worked killing cattle at Armour’s. He often thought about driving a cab full time, or looking for some other job altogether, but he loved his church work and showed a flair for it. “I’ve found a place now, Cora,” he had told his wife shortly after accepting his call. “Thank God, I know I have!”

Timothy got up from the couch and moved to the cotton print curtain hung over the doorway between the front room and the room where Cora sat. He drew the curtain closed sharply, isolating him from the activity on the other side. “Keep the kids quiet, Cora,” he snapped. “Just keep the kids quiet, okay? I’m trying to read.”

Cora did not speak to the harshness in her husband’s voice, but glared at the drawn curtain instead. The comb remained still in her hand for tense moments before she returned to her work, tears welling in her eyes. She disliked these times when Tim wouldn’t look at her, when all he would do is bark a command from some lone corner of the house. “He’s no more readin’ that Bible than a man in the moon,” she whispered to herself. “He’s just sulkin’, sulkin’ like a little baby because of last night.”

Cora did not want to play happy family for the people who would be coming to the house this morning. She wanted to be eighteen years old again and back in Aunt Jessie’s house where food was plentiful and everything was bright and new, where the mirrored piano was just one of the many play toys she had grown up with and where “Auntie” had always made things come out alright.

Back then when she had announced her plans to marry Timothy, her aunt had said, “Why you wanna marry some no ‘count meat man, Honey? He won’t ‘mount to nothin’!” But Cora loved Tim and had left Jessie’s comfortable house on the other side of town to follow him.

That was sixteen years ago and now Cora directed her frustrations at the little sections of hair she had been twisting into plaits. Tina squirmed under the suddenly intensified assault with the comb, and Cora shushed the child softly, calming herself in the process.

Wesley Robinson McNeese, M.D.

Office of the Dean

1st Place