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Beverly Smith, a chubby ten-year-old, paused. She had forgotten the words again. I wanted to shout out Easter day is here. Why couldn't she remember her speech? Even I knew her six-line speech.
Instead of saying here, Beverly stuck her fingers in her mouth and twirled her thick, uncombed plaits with her free hand. She looked as though she was going to cry, but suddenly she began to giggle, much to the dismay of our Sunday School teacher, Miss Whitfield, and myself. Beverly's completion of her speech was the only thing that stood in the way of my practicing my Easter speech and then joining my friends for a quick game of kickball before twilight covered the colored section of the east side of Little Rock, Arkansas.
It was the early 1960s and we were the only three people left in the Metropolitan Baptist Church, an ash-gray building as big as its name, and the centerpiece of our community of forty-plus families.
I was frustrated. All the other children had practiced their speeches and darted out of the church onto the streets to play before their parents called them in. It was not the kind of neighborhood where whole families sat down for dinner together, like Leave It to Beaver, because in the 1960s, many of the black adults worked two jobs. In my neighborhood, if your own parents didn't tell you to come in, then some other adult would, and you had better obey.
I got tired of looking at Beverly, so my eyes moved to the wooden boards with black slip-in numbers listing the hymns from the previous week and the total attendance of Sunday School. I could hear the laughter and shouts filter in through the open windows of the church. From the voices I could tell my peers were playing the popular game of hide-and-seek, where the seeker sang, "Honey . . . honey . . . b . . . bar . . . b . . . bar . . . b. I can't see you see . . . see you see. Last night, night before, twenty-four robbers were at my door. I got up, let them in, hit 'em in the head with a rolling pin."
Miss Whitfield had saved me for last, because I had the longest speech: twenty-two lines. A speech that long was usually given to kids in the sixth grade, and never to an eight-year-old. I had memorized each line the first day I received the typewritten speech.
As Beverly started over and once again struggled for the words to her speech, my thoughts wandered to the upcoming Sunday. As my eyes left the wooden boards and moved toward the empty pulpit, I thought how proud my mama and daddy would be when I stood before the congregation and said my speech in my new Easter coat. Easter Sunday was the one time during the year I could count on Daddy being at church alongside my mother.
In my fantasy, church members would marvel not only at my presentation but at my new coat as well. They would question where the coat had come from and how my parents could afford such extravagance with three children. Little colored boys from my neighborhood were lucky to get a new shirt and possibly a clip-on tie for Easter or Christmas.
With a little coaxing from Miss Whitfield, Beverly finally finished her speech. I quickly jumped from the pew, raced to the front of the church, and said my speech in record time, every word perfectly clear and correct.
"That's wonderful, Lynn, but slow down a little on Sunday. Nobody's going anywhere until you finish." Miss Whitfield smiled. I nodded and smiled back, taking note that my accuracy had removed the anguish her face had shown during Beverly's struggle.
Easter Sunday 1964 finally arrived. After my bath, I raced into the tiny room I...
