Read Online Second Sunday by Michele Andrea Bowen - Free Book Online

who sashayed and purred and read
     W. E. B. Du Bois all in one heaving breath.
    “
The Philadelphia Negro,
his book on the slave trade, his autobiography, and of course,
The Souls of Black Folk.
”
    “Of course,” he answered with a taste of surprise in his voice.
    “Rev. Wilson, don’t be too shocked that a woman who looks like me reads Du Bois. I’ve read Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes,
     Anne Petry, and Zora Neale Hurston, too.”
    “I’ve never read any books by Zora Neale Hurston,” he said. “Are they good?”
    “Her books are very good. I’ve always loved the way she writes about people like me. You know it’s near to impossible for
     me to find myself in a book, ’less it’s about me cutting up my old man or being on welfare or something like that.”
    George smiled again. He was beginning to like this woman despite all of that sex-kitten foolishness she had thrown his way.
     She gave him the impression that her feet were planted firmly on the ground, and she had what he always called “the genius
     of the folk.” George couldn’t help but wonder why this delightful woman had been working so hard to get next to him. The way
     she’d acted at church and when she’d first come into Pompey’s didn’t fit with the way she was right now.
    “Tell me, girl,” he said in a smooth and mellow voice. “Why are you so intent on
pre-tending
like you want to get next to me?”
    “Well,” Sheba thought, “this man is smart and perceptive.” Neither Rev. Patterson nor Rev. Clemson had caught on to her, and
     they were very worldly men.
    “Miss Lady,” he said, “don’t try and play me for a fool. You’re up to something. And I’d appreciate your respecting me enough
     not to keep up this game, now that you know I’m on to you.”
    Sheba was in a tight space on this one. She couldn’t break the women’s confidence, but she didn’t want this man to think she
     was one of those women who shamelessly chased after preachers. She took in a deep breath and blurted out words that had quietly
     and surprisingly settled in her heart.
    “I want to come back to church, and the only thing holding me back is finding a church home with the right kind of pastor.”
    “I see,” George said. “So, you have been checking out all the pastors coming through Gethsemane, huh?”
    She nodded.
    “And, uh, what kind of competition am I up against for this job?”
    “None,” Sheba said flatly.
    “None?” he asked.
    “None,” she repeated. “The two men they interviewed before you weren’t nothing but trouble. The first one was a jive-time
     jackleg preacher. And I don’t know what possessed that man to wear his hair like he did.”
    George raised one eyebrow.
    “He was bald at the top—had a great big clean circle in the middle of his head—and then had an Afro that wrapped around the
     bottom part. That half-moon Afro had to be about this big.”
    Sheba held her hands four inches away from her head.
    “Sounds to me,” George said, trying not to laugh, “that you all got clowned.”
    “Big time,” Sheba answered, smiling back at him, and then frowned.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “Yeah, I was thinking about the second man. He could preach real good but when you got close up on him, he was just like Christmas
     tree lights hung in a dirty window with raggedy drapes.” She suppressed a shiver, recalling just how dirty and raggedy Clemson
     turned out to be.
    “Finding a good man to pastor your church has been hard on you, huh?”
    “Finding a good man to pastor this church is like trying to find a lot of money laying around in a greasy paper bag in an
     old parking lot.”
    “That’s pretty bad,” George said, thinking about what Theophilus Simmons had told him about Gethsemane and its internal politics.
     Then he added, “Man, that’s a good church. But right now, it reminds me of a fine woman at a party full of thugs. Like that
     fine woman, Gethsemane needs a righteous brother to come in