Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [29]
The singing started. I sat back on my heels and hugged my knees, humming. Revivals are funny. People get pretty enthusiastic, but they sometimes forget just which hymn it is they’re singing. I grinned to myself and watched the men near the road punch each other lightly and curse in a friendly fashion.
You bastard.
You son of a bitch.
The preacher said something I didn’t understand. There was a moment of silence, and then a pure tenor voice rose up into the night sky. The spit soured in my mouth. They had a real singer in there, a real gospel choir.
SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT . . . COMING FOR TO CARRY ME HOME . . . AS I WALKED OUT IN THE STREETS OF LAREDO . . . SWEET JESUS . . . LIFT ME UP, LIFT ME UP IN THE AIR. . . .
The night seemed to wrap all around me like a blanket. My insides felt as if they had melted, and I could just feel the wind in my mouth. The sweet gospel music poured through me and made all my nastiness, all my jealousy and hatred, swell in my heart. I knew. I knew I was the most disgusting person in the world. I didn’t deserve to live another day. I started hiccupping and crying.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
How could I live with myself? How could God stand me? Was this why Jesus wouldn’t speak to my heart? The music washed over me . . . SOFTLY AND TENDERLY. The music was a river trying to wash me clean. I sobbed and dug my heels into the dirt, drunk on grief and that pure, pure voice. It didn’t matter then if it was whiskey backstage or tongue kissing in the dressing room. Whatever it took to make that juice was necessary, was fine. I wiped my eyes and swore out loud. Get those boys another bottle, I said. Find that girl a hard-headed husband. But goddamn, get them to make that music. Make that music! Lord, make me drunk on that music.
The next Sunday I went off with Shannon and the Pearls for another gospel drive.
Driving backcountry with the Pearls meant stopping in at little country churches listening to gospel choirs. Mostly all those choirs had was a little echo of the real stuff. “Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “Organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure she was right.
Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl; one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I could always tell which one Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week.
“Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.”
Uh huh, yeah.
Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why couldn’t God give me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddamn what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it.
Shannon looked at me sympathetically.
She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have.
There was a circuit that ran from North Carolina to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. The gospel singers moved back and forth on it, a tide of gilt and fringe jackets that intersected and paralleled the country-western circuit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the difference, and as times got harder certainly Mr. Pearl stopped making distinctions, booking any act that would get him a little cash up front. More and more, I got to go off with the Pearls in their old yellow DeSoto, the trunk stuffed with boxes of religious supplies and Mrs. Pearl’s sewing machine, the backseat crowded with