Teahouse Of The Almighty
By Patricia Smith

7/17/02, Brockton, MA

Peppermint bites at the back of the teeth,
heat prickles points on an unready tongue.
The solemn eyes of Jesus contemplate from
blacklight: My child, you will conquer the spice.
You will swallow. Every blend, from rosehip
to green, is sharp saccharine and colored like
blood. The menu, scrawled in Sharpie on gray
shirt cardboard, is blotched with smoke, and
anyway nothing has a price. Splintered wood
seats, carved across with curses and two-syllable
prayers, strain to hold the quivering weight of
the devoted and the hard questions poised by
their thirst. Wherever it is not stained or peeled
back, the tile floor is scarred with markered
Scripture—As far as the east is from the west, so far
hath he removed our transgressions from us--all written
from the position of the knees. Men with slow,
rheumy gazes arc over chipped teacups to sip
cleansing and penance, their square serge jackets
bare to the thread and ironed hard. The waitress,
Glorie, is a spitcurled kingdom, ripped too soon
from a southern soil. We got nothing here but real
sugar, thick cream. From a seat near the sweetly
reeking john, a crinkled alto steps out, a choir by
its ownself: I love the Lord, he heard my cry. The voice
is bottom blue and dim-visioned, with pink foam
curlers in thin, Hair Repped strands. It is shucked
peas, northbound Greyhound, heavy peppered
chicken wings in waxed paper, it is the stench
Alabama is apt to conjure in dreams. The voice
belongs to the m’dear of doubledutch muscle, to
every single city’s west side. It wears dusted lace,
A-line skirts hemmed with masking tape, and Sears
Best cinnamon stockings rolled just to the knob of
knees. The woman wails because the heat has singed
her fingers, because a huge empty sits across from
her and breathes a little death onto her skin. I will
take another cup, she says, I believe I will. But turn up
the fire this time, Glorie, make it hot. I ain’t scared of it.
The Lord can’t tell I’m here ‘less I holla out loud.
It is one Sunday in the year of everybody’s hard times.
A cup of chamomile, 25 cents long as it lasts. Toast,
another quarter. Salvation in the meantime? Priceless.

© Patricia Smith. Used with permission of the author.

Copyright © 1997-2004 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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