“What
pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”
from “Ode
on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats
Every
Wednesday night and Sunday morning, Aunt Yvonne entered the holy roller church
and became a saint. She sang, shouted, clapped, and danced her praises to God
in ecstatic abandonment. Her efforts, combined with other saints who had
gathered for the service, moved the earth. The floor jumped with divine
revelry, assuring that even those small bodies wanting to sit still, unnoticed
amid the unfamiliar passion, also swayed to the rhythm of the tambourines. The
shouts and singing and powerful pounding piano held enough strength to testify
to the awesome and infinite presence of a terrible God. At times it seemed as
if the roof would blow and lift all within directly to paradise. No one tired
as the service meandered to its unclocked conclusion. I thought the saints
would march until judgment day.
MamaGran’s
Methodist church wasn’t nearly as enticing or entertaining.
The woman
wearing sensible shoes and Aunty Vonne’s Sunday dress danced in the seat next
to me, punctuating the sermon and the songs with calls on Jesus for help with
an unvoiced affliction. Her tambourine kept the primeval rhythm against her
hand or shot its bells in the air with a well placed, “Help me, Jesus!” Because
I’d adjusted to the heady ambiance and the familiar stranger next to me, I no
longer jumped out of rhythm. Until, without warning, the tambourine flew by my
face and my hand, of its own volition, grabbed it from the air.
I hadn’t quite registered my acquisition before the strange Aunty Vonne next to me leaped from her seat to sprint up the aisle. “Yes!” she shouted to unseen spirits in the low rafters. Her face glowed with pure joy and I dared not disbelieve in that moment that she had indeed been touched by holy fire – but I still would not concede its location.
With eyes
closed, she tap-danced a quick dash to the steps of the altar, kowtowed towards
the cross, hugged her arms about her body, and began a slow turn towards the
congregation. The saints reached a crescendo as my aunt’s joy slowed to a moaning
song, hummed to a tune I’d never heard from my aunt. When she turned her face
in my direction, the light illuming her face burned into my memory. It was not
joy but I couldn’t call it sorrow; it was too peaceful. The sisters took up her
rhythm from the pews, the mothers from their corner. Children sat surprisingly
silent, men were struck dumb. The music was suspended as the women moaned their
wordless sorrowing song. The cry seemed to rise up through the cracks in the
floorboards, growing from the dirt just below. How did they know? Where had
they learned their unrehearsed tune? It was clearly older than anyone present,
than anyone I knew.
As suddenly as she’d started, my aunt threw up her hands, raised her face once more to the rafters and shouted a final, “Help me, Jesus!” Then she walked painfully down the aisle to the seat beside me, limping on arthritic feet. The preacher started a prayer and the choir responded with a song but my aunt did not reach for the tambourine I held. Her body swayed to the rhythm of the new song and her hands clapped and her feet danced where she sat. Her mouth smiled but she let me keep the tambourine. It wasn’t long before my hands found a rhythm I invented for myself. I could hold Aunty Vonne’s tambourine and even play some music but I could not hold her faith nor sing her song.
