What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage

everything. The resulting reconciliation got so rowdy that one of the altos told the first tenor that Joyce was running a
three-ring circus
over in the fellowship hall, and the name just stuck.
    “The only problem,” Joyce said, “is that we got a new pastor about six months ago. Reverend Smith was so old, he didn’t care what we did as long as we didn’t burn the place down, but he finally retired and now we’ve got Reverend Anderson and his wife, Miss Gerry, and I think she’s going to be a royal pain. They came from a big church in Chicago where he had put together this giant youth program, but now they’re here and even though
he
hasn’t said anything to me,
she
keeps telling me how much they really want to channel the church resources into the more traditional areas of Christian education and missionary outreach. When I ask her about the youth program they had in the city and whether or not it could work here, she starts talking in tongues.
    “That’s one of the reasons I want to go independent and open my own center.” Joyce leaned toward me again. “I know the Circus is helping these girls and I’m not about to let Gerry Anderson mess it up by making them read Bible stories about obedience and chastity when they want to talk about domestic violence and birth control.”
    I looked at Joyce with her eyes shining and her voice full of the urgency and passion of
the cause
and I remembered how much I liked growing up with her and Mitch. In most houses, when the kids wake up late at night and the grown folks are still up talking in low tones, the discussion is about money or trouble. In our house, it was about the design and distribution of a handbill, the best place to hold a meeting or stage a rally. I’d stand in the kitchen doorway and watch them until one or the other saw me and sent me back to bed. I remember feeling lucky because I lived in a house where people didn’t just fuss about what was wrong with the world. They tried to
fix it.
    Joyce finished her tea and her story at the same time and Eddie’s truck pulled into the yard like he’d been out back listening for his cue. He had his hair tucked under one of those multicolored knit hats that the Rastas wear and he was bringing bad news. Last night, while he was dropping me off here after we ate, somebody broke out two windows in the front of his house. He wasn’t here but a few minutes, so either somebody just happened to see us leaving or they had been watching the house. They didn’t take anything, but he’d spent the morning cleaning up and replacing windows.
    “Who do you think did it?” Joyce said. I was trying to imagine who would shatter the calm of such a perfectly peaceful place.
    “Don’t know,” said Eddie with a graceful shrug. “But I will.”
    Something in the way he said it chilled me. He must have felt my reaction because he turned to me with a smile that successfully distracted me from anything but the whiteness of his teeth in the middle of that beard.
    “How you doing?”
    “I’m fine,” I said, glad he couldn’t read my mind.
    “Good.” He nodded and turned back to Joyce.
    “So how’s Eartha and the baby?” Eddie lifted the hood of her car and peered inside.
    Our news wasn’t much better than his. There was still no word from the missing mama and the hospital hadn’t called yet with any more of the baby’s test results. Joyce said she was giving them another hour and then she was just going to drive back over there and be a pest until they told her what was what.
    We made a strange little threesome, standing there looking at each other, trying to figure out what else could go wrong with this day, then the phone rang and Joyce went to answer it. Eddie leaned back against the truck and smiled directly at me for the second time that morning.
    “I have a message for you,” I said, suddenly remembering.
    He looked at me, still smiling. “A message? From who?”
    “From that kid at the liquor store