“Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people, saith your God . . .”
As the adults sing, eighteen fidgety grade-schoolers, each wearing a square white surplice, whisper in the vestibule, waiting to make their entrance. Monitored by their director, Mrs. Knudsen, the children nervously swish green palm branches, shipped specially from Florida. A boy covertly distributes sticks of Black Jack to grinning friends.
Through the glass doors, Saffee stares at the back of the congregants’ heads. It is a fearful thing for Saffee to “perform” like this before the whole church. If she didn’t love the music so much, she could never do it. Her dad and sister are seated out there somewhere. Her mother is not. Everything went wrong this morning. April spilled her grapefruit juice and had to change clothes. Saffee arrived at breakfast wearing her concert attire—a white blouse and dark skirt, topped, of course, by the surplice.
“Saffee!” her mother had exclaimed. “It’s all wrinkled! I pressed it so nice last night; what did you do?” Nels said he thought it looked fine, but Joann pulled the garment over Saffee’s head and set up the ironing board.
After that, Joann fretted for fifteen minutes at the bathroom vanity mirror, struggling to make her newly home-permed hair behave. Battling frizz with her green-handled hairbrush, she grumbled, “What good is going to church anyway? Bunch of unfriendly, snooty people. The only time anyone from church calls is when they want me to bake a cake. Lot of work and no thanks.”
“Joann! We’re late!” Nels said. “What’s holdin’ you up?”
She declared that she would not be going, but Nels insisted.
“Didn’t you hear me? I’m not going!” Nels dodged the green-handled hairbrush as it flew in his direction. Joann slammed the bathroom door. Containers were heard toppling, clattering across the vanity counter.
Nels shook his head and yelled, “Joann, I’ll never understand you!” He took off his suit coat and threw it across a chair.
April looked pale and started to cry.
“Daddy, we have to leave right now,” Saffee insisted. “I can’t be late for the lineup.”
“We can’t go to church without your mother.”
“Why not?”
“People . . . people would think somethin’s wrong.”
“But, Daddy, today’s the Messiah concert. I’m in the junior choir processional. We’ve gotta go.”
Nels reached for his coat and as the three strode toward the garage he muttered, “Can’t figger out what makes yer mother so irritable.”
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain.”
The words, sung by the chancel choir, pulse through the transom above the door. The fugue-like interplay of voice and organ refreshes Saffee, exhilarates her. She presses her face to the glass for a better view of the director. His robed arms beat the air with contagious confidence. His curly black hair bounces with each bob of his head.
Equally animated, the organist, wearing a bright purple suit (she insists she cannot navigate the organ in a robe), commandeers the tiered keyboards flanked by the tall brass pipes reaching heavenward. On the bench she scoots energetically from side to side because her legs are too short to reach the extreme left and right pedals.
“And the glory, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed . . .”
“Everybody! We’re next!” Mrs. Knudsen whispers. “Take your places!” She matter-of-factly holds an opened concert program under various chins, into which some of the children spit wet wads of black, chewed gum.
The organ swells. The double doors open and smiling children spill into the sanctuary, branches aloft. Their young voices combine with those more seasoned at the front . . .
Lift up your heads, O ye gates,
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors,
and the King of Glory shall come in.
Who is the King of Glory?
The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
As best she can, Saffee puts aside the mishaps of the morning and the disappointment that her mother is not present. She sings with feeling, sensing a thrill of kinship with the words, remembering that she had opened the door of her own heart to Jesus when she knelt at the altar a year ago.
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates.”
The joyous words are about Jesus’ entry not only into Jerusalem but also into her own life. For an instant, she sees her mother behind closed gates, confined, imprisoned. Saffee sings louder, pushing the picture away.
A number of flailing palms skim ladies’ spring hats and gentlemen’s heads. April grins and gives Saffee a discreet wave with a white-gloved hand as she passes. Nels smiles too.