Gloryland Read Free Page B

she’d raised my mama to love God and to be faithful. Grandma Sara had her own way of talking to God.
    I can still see us in our Sunday finery, which meant clothes that were clean and without patches. Daddy would always wear his one “good” hat and Mama had white cotton gloves she only wore then. If it was hot she’d have her little umbrella to keep the sun off. On a cold winter day, she’d be huddled under a thick wool blanket. Either way she’d be sitting tall and straight in the wagon, Daddy next to her happy as he could be. He was always in a better mood when he was next to Mama. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to figure out ways to get them together so he could be in a better mood.
    The church where colored folks went wasn’t in Spartanburg but a bit outside, so you had to leave the main road into town and follow a little dirt road off to one side. The church was just a wooden shack but it was clean and neat, and everyone going inside it was clean and neat. I remember the deacon sounded like what I thought God must sound like, and the deacon’s wife was as close to the word elegant as my young self ever saw. It wasn’t what she was wearing, it was
something inside her that wasn’t touched by the rest of the week. She was Sunday come to life.
    When the deacon gave his sermon, he seemed to be telling us he could feel what we’d been feeling the week before, but all that pain and struggle was gone now and the struggle and pain ahead hadn’t got here yet, cause this was the Lord’s day and a time to rejoice. I don’t really remember anything in particular that was said in church, but I can’t forget how I felt listening to what was said, and watching people I only ever saw on Sunday.
    The girls always acted like they was all grown up, wearing dresses like their mamas but smaller, and they sat just as straight, behaving respectfully like they should, but the boys were usually squirming on those hard oak benches, struggling for freedom under ironed white collars and shirts buttoned to breathless. Most of them couldn’t wait to get back outside and play. We could play on Sunday afternoons after church, cause usually there would be food people brought to share, and the adults would start talking about news and such. There was no way they could talk and mind where the children were at the same time, so we’d run around like there was no tomorrow, no having to get back to everyday hard work starting before dawn.
    There were Goodloes and Andersons and Browns and Joneses and Washingtons and McCarthys and Smiths, more folks than I can remember the names of, just families having a good time. And it didn’t matter if it was cloudy or rainy, Sunday afternoons were always the one bright time of the week.
    But Sunday mornings we spent indoors. The women with their fans waving at the hot stuffy air, white dresses crackling like a fire when they moved. The fathers stiff as wet sheets left out all night in January, sitting next to their women, their heads bobbing up and down in rhythm to the deacon’s words. I remember the singing . . .
    Do Lord, oh do Lord
Do remember me
Do Lord, oh do Lord

    Do remember me
Do Lord, oh do Lord
Do remember me
Goin way beyond the blue
     
    I got a home in Gloryland
That outshines the sun
I got a home in Gloryland
That outshines the sun
I got a home in Gloryland
That Outshines the sun
Goin way beyond the blue
    While we were singing we weren’t there no more, not in South Carolina, not in Spartanburg, not even in that church. We were someplace bigger than anywhere else, someplace safe and warm and peaceful. The singing went on and on, and sometimes I’d run out of breath for it. Sitting there trying to get my breath back, I could feel I was part of something bigger than my family, bigger than anything I knew. It was a good feeling, how a forest tree must feel being rooted in the ground and all its roots touching other roots, but they all hidden in the ground, and their touching hidden