Free Tambourines to Glory by Langston Hughes

our aim was to save them
lower
down than us?” asked Laura. “You done got on a mighty high horse of late, Miss Essie. I hope you don’t be riding for a fall.”
    Having the last word and already at the door, Laura withdrew, breasts higher than ever, head higher still.

19
GOD’S MARQUEE
    “N ot quite a year,” said Laura, dusting off the Bible preparatory to evening services, “and already we got a little church and a big apartment. Soon we gonna have a big church. Essie, I signed the lease on that old showhouse today.”
    “It look mighty rundown to me.”
    “They gonna paint it up, turn the stage into a rostrum, and put our names in big lights outside where it used to say J OAN C RAWFORD IN T HE L OVES OF P ASSION , or some such jive. We’re gonna fix up that big room down under the stage for the robing room. And you and me’ll have dressing rooms down there, too, when they get ’em built. But I guess I can robe with the choir at first—except we ain’t gonna call it a choir no more afterwe move. We gonna call it the Tambourine Chorus, and our church the Tambourine Temple.”
    “Which was whose idea?” asked Essie.
    “Buddy’s,” said Laura. “He’s an idea man! We’re gonna get two pianos, one on either side of the stage—rostrum—and everybody in the chorus will have a tambourine.”
    “I bet Birdie’ll buy herself a new set of drums.”
    “She’ll pay for ’em herself, too,” said Laura, “much as she has to run to the toilet during services. That woman must have had a busted bladder once.”
    “Birdie Lee had a hard life before she come back to Jesus,” said Essie.
    “She’s one of your stray cats for true,” said Laura.
    “ ‘Our church has no doors,’ you stated yourself out there on that corner, Laura.”
    “There comes that little old varmint of a Birdie Lee now,” said Laura. “Look, she’s heading straight up the side aisle, I’ll bet toward the bathroom.”
    “Birdie’s always ahead of time for services. Good evening, Sister Lee.”
    “Good evening, all. I’ll see you in a minute. When you got to go, you got to go!” Birdie disappeared behind the Garden of Eden and down the back hall.
    “Birdie’s being cute,” said Laura. “And she never did buy one of my bottles of Holy Water yet.”
    “Birdie ain’t so simple,” said Essie. “She knows the score.”
    “Look, people coming already. Why don’t you raise a hymn, Essie, while I go back and make myself a pot of coffee. I neglected to eat my supper tonight.”
    “Out riding?”
    “Yes, out riding—in my Cadillac.”
    Laura disappeared as Sister Essie went down on the floor level to shake hands with the folks who were coming in. “Sister Jenkins, howdy! … Mrs. Longshaw, how you been? … Brother Bullworth, good evening to you! … Deacon Crow-For-Day, come in! … God bless you, Sister Jones.”
    “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a fortress of glory divine! …”
    On the day when they moved their church into the renovated theatre, as soon as their numerous members got off from work almost everybody turned out to help, and Deacon Crow-For-Day carried the Bible. Laura carred the rostrum in her big new Cadillac with Buddy driving. Essie took the bus up to the old reconverted theatre which, sure enough, had their names up in great big lights: THE REED SISTER’S TAMBOURINE TEMPLE with the possessive in the wrong place. Nobody noticed that. Besides it was day-dusk so the lights were not yet on.
    “God’s marquee,” said Buddy, “with your name on it—Reed. You’re a businesswoman, kid, runner-up to Rose Meta—without having to bother with heads.”
    “I once thought of going into the beauty business,” said Laura. “Never could get the capital. I’m glad I didn’t now.”
    “You’d of been a beauty,” complimented Buddy.
    “Sweet daddy, I’d kiss you if we wasn’t in front of the church.”
    One thousand seats, and each seat bottom folded back. A balcony that used to be for