Free Tambourines to Glory by Langston Hughes Page A

smoking, but no more. “I wonder if we’ll fill the upstairs?” asked Laura.
    “Try them Lucky Texts,” Buddy advised.
    “I’ll have to spring that deal on Essie by surprise,” said Laura. “I better not do it the first Sunday night. I want a little peace for the dedication.”
    “You got enough on your program for the opener. Save the Bible luckies for next week,” Bud counseled. “Start your shot in the arm on another go-round. Get up there on the rostrum now and lemme see how you look.”
    Laura mounted the stage. They had rented an enormous golden curtain as a background for the chorus.
    “I’m gonna get me a red robe to wear up here,” said Laura, “and a purple one to change off. Essie’s so big, let her wear black for sin, or white for goodness.”
    “Baby, you would look gorgeous with nothing on,” cried Buddy from the back of the auditorium. “And when that spotlight strikes you …”
    Essie came panting in and looked around the vast playhouse. “They did clean it up right nice for us, didn’t they? And the rostrum looks wonderful with that gold velvet drape. But I miss our Garden of Eden.”
    “Adam’s here,” said Buddy, pointing a thumb at himself, “and yonder’s Eve.”
    Laura laughed, but Essie wilted silently into a folding seat at the back and went into a pause, a heaviness in her heart. The other saints were bustling around inspecting the place, and Deacon Crow-For-Day proudly placed the Bible on the rostrum which Buddy eventually brought down to the stage. Birdie Lee emerged from the bathroom and set up her drums, took out her sticks, and rolled a jolly gospel roll. Whereupon, in the darkened auditorium, Essie came to life and cried, “Amen!”

20
STRONG BRANCH
    N ow in their new apartment, they each had big, beautiful bedrooms. Essie slept alone. Laura—well, there were men’s coats hanging in Laura’s closet, and male pajamas in her laundry—not for sleeping—pajamas with a red B embroidered in silk on the jacket pocket. Naturally they belonged to that big
black
Negro (which is what Laura called him when she got mad—otherwise he was
dark brownskin)
by name of Buddy. Buddy said he liked the shower with the glass doors in the bathroom, which is why he often slept at their place, just so he could get up in the morning and take a shower.
    Essie said “Huh!” at that one.
    Water! Wonderful water, cleanliness next to godliness! Buddy was clean, teeth shining, nails polished, Sugar Ray’s Barber Shopgiving his hair a gleam. Sharp-moving like a boxer, like a beast. Tiger of a boy! Coconut eyes, hair which crackled sometimes when Laura ran a comb through it. For Laura, who had never touched the Holy Grail, Buddy was the nearest thing to such a vessel.
    “I thrills when I touches the Bible,” said Essie.
    “I thrill when I touch that man,” grinned Laura.
    But it was in their new apartment in the late watch of evening that an unsmiling Laura often poured too many drinks. And it was in the late watch of evening that she occasionally talked too much—or rather too freely, for she always talked. But especially on nights when Buddy was not there, she would go to the case in the pantry and pull out another bottle if the built-in cabinet in the living room was dry. In the day, before services, Laura seldom, if ever, drank. But nighttime, with Buddy off somewhere, the hours were so long!
    Essie, being a sleepyhead, seldom kept her company. Essie’s new Beautyrest mattress in the big cool bedroom in the new apartment was too comfortable! Besides, she had her books to read, slowly going through the whole Bible, plus Howard Thurman with his rolling sentences concerning Jehovah God, and Norman Vincent Peale telling people how to behave themselves easily. But sometimes Laura would start one of her glass-in-hand talking jags early, before Essie turned in, and it was hard for Essie to be so impolite as to go to bed in the middle of an exposition. When Laura was even just a little