“Pick up some dirt and put it inside the can,” Mama repeated, like this was a regular everyday activity that any idiot would know. “Make sure you stomp it down and close it up so the dirt don’t fall out.” Mama figured this little trick would make the cans weigh more, and we’d get more money. But when we handed our trash bags over to the recycling man to get weighed, he picked up a bag and a pile of dirt spilled out. It looked like we’d spent the day at the beach.
“Lady,” he said to Mama, “you can’t pull that shit over here. I’ll pay you for these, but don’t come back here no more.” He weighed the cans, then subtracted 30 percent for the dirt and handed Mama eleven dollars and thirty-five cents.
“Damn crackers trying to keep us down,” Mama muttered to herself as we left. “Don’t matter how hard you work, no one gon’ give you a chance.”
By the time we got home that afternoon, we looked something sorry. We were sweaty, hungry, and covered in dirt. Our neighbor Miss Cynthia, who was sitting on her stoop, must have sensed the desperation because she called out to Mama, “Y’all going to church tomorrow, Mildred?”
“No, ma’am,” Mama answered. “I do my talking to Jesus at home.”
“You know,” said Miss Cynthia, “they got a real nice food pantry over there. They like to help folks out. Sometimes they even give you a little help with the rent. I’m just sayin’, with you taking care of all those children by yourself . . . Hell, I been over there to get a few things from the pantry from time to time, and I got a man.”
Mama told me and Sweetie to go on inside, then she sat down with Miss Cynthia to get the lowdown on all this food the church folks were giving away for free. I hate to say Mama was scheming on the Lord, but before she found out about the food pantry the only religion I heard about at home was when Mama told me I better pray to Sweet Baby Jesus she don’t whoop the black off my ass. The day after she talked to Miss Cynthia was a whole different story. Mama was up bright and early, telling all us kids to put on some gotdamn clothes so we could go to muthafuckin’ church.
Greater Springfield Baptist, a big red-brick building with white columns, was catercorner from where we lived. Every Sunday we’d see folks heading to worship: ladies in their good wigs, girls in pretty dresses, boys with hard-soled shoes and fresh haircuts. If Mama had known about the free food giveaway, we’d have found religion as soon as we moved in.
Mama told us to get dressed that morning, but she didn’t say “nice.” So we rolled into church looking raggedy as hell. We slid into the back row, Sweetie with her dirty flip-flops hanging off her feet and me in cutoff jean shorts and a pale green boy’s T-shirt decorated with a picture of the Incredible Hulk. I looked around and quickly discovered that this was not regular church attire. The lady beside me was decked out in a purple dress, matching purple shoes, and a big-ass purple hat with all kinds of feathers and leaves and flowers decorating the top of it. It looked like she was wearing a gift basket on her head.
At the pulpit the preacher, dressed in a brown three-piece suit and dripping sweat, was yelling at the congregation like we were a bunch of bad-ass kids. “God tells us in his Fifth Commandment to honor thy mother and thy father!” he hollered. “I said HONOR thy mother and father!” He held his Bible high over his head, like it was raining out and he didn’t want his hairstyle to get wet. “Now, brothers and sisters, what does it mean to honor your mother and father? Does it mean you gon’ run out and buy your mama a brand-new color TV set?”
Beside me the lady in purple started to laugh, her bosom, covered in baby powder, jiggling like a bowl of Jell-O. “Oh Lord, I’d like that!”
“NO!” yelled the preacher, his voice bouncing off the walls of the church and right into my eardrums. “The true meaning of honor has nothing to do with the giving and receiving of material goods. It’s about respect and obedience! Do you hear me? Respect and obedience. O-B-D-ence.”
It felt like hours that I sat there watching the pastor wave his Bible in the air and yell. After a while, I looked over and was stunned to see that my three brothers were all knocked the fuck out, sound asleep with their eyes closed and heads rolled to the side. How can they sleep through this scary-ass shit? I wondered. The preacher was hollaring about eternal damnation and the white-hot fiery furnace of hell. I was more terrified than the time I watched The Amityville Horror on Mama’s little black-and-white TV.
When the preacher was done yelling, everybody except my sleeping-ass brothers stood up to sing. His Eye Is On the Sparrow. Even Mama knew the words. And then—Praise Jesus!—it was finally time to eat. My brothers stretched and rubbed their eyes as we made our way downstairs to the church hall, in the basement. The room was filled with long tables and church sisters wearing white aprons over their Sunday clothes, dishing food onto paper plates: crispy fried chicken, turnip greens, homemade biscuits, and macaroni and cheese. “Thank you Lord,” I said, as I shoved a chicken leg into my mouth. “Thank you for all this good-ass food!”
After dinner all I wanted to do was lean back and take a nap. But Mama had other ideas. It was hustling time! She took me by the hand and dragged me over to speak to the pastor, who was standing near the doorway talking to the lady in purple and her husband, who was half her size.
“Look real sad,” Mama hissed at me as we walked over. “Pretend you is lost.”
When our turn came for time with the pastor, Mama spoke in a voice I’d never heard before, high and tight, like a little girl. “Pastor,” she squeaked, “I got five kids I’m taking care of all by myself.” When she said this, she pulled me to her chest and gently kissed the top of my head. Her tenderness startled the shit out of me, and I could feel myself go as stiff as a board in her arms. From across the room, my brothers were pointing at Mama and laughing so hard at her bullshit that Andre squirted milk out of his nose.
“We really struggling,” Mama continued, without missing a beat. “I sure could use a blessing.” The preacher looked down at me and then pulled Mama off to the side so they could talk in private. I watched him take her hands in his and the two of them lean forward in prayer. I don’t know what those two talked about, but as soon as we got home from church Mama had an announcement.
“We all getting baptized!” she said.
“Who?” asked Dre, looking up from where he was kneeling by the front door practicing his lock-picking skills.
“All y’all.”
“Why?” asked Andre.
“’Cause I said so,” explained Mama, cracking open a beer. “We joining the church. Now don’t ask me no more questions. Jesus don’t like that. Didn’t y’all listen to a gotdamn word the preacher was saying?” She raised up her hands as though she was testifying, only she had a cigarette dangling from her lips. “O-B-D-ence!” she hollered. “That’s how you niggas is gonna get to heaven.”