Educational Experience

Chapter Twenty-Four

This one has a shocker at the very end that I didn't see coming 'til I wrote it. There will be another relatively tiny chapter in its wake shortly. Sometimes the characters just know what needs to happen, don't they?

24.

I heard Mike yell, “You’re goin’ down, James!”

So I leaned to look across the WalMart checkout counters where me, the girls, Joie and her girls and three of the pastors were lined up and went, “Yeah, that’s what you say!”

And right beside me, Rev. Stanton looks up and goes, “Y’all just hush! I’m finna show you how we do!”

She’s a big babe, Vivi Stanton—Vivian Stanton, full name. And she can out preach all of the men. When she gets going she looks like Tina Turner throwing a Holy Ghost party up there in that pulpit, wig hat and all. Let me get into that wig business right quick—her whole wardrobe, in fact.

You see, normally, she walks into church in one of those bright colored suits with the matching crown, shoes and purse—if you know any serious church going sistahs, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t care how big they are, they’ve got those perfect suits—there’s even a site called churchsuitsforyou.com to make sure you can find them.

But what amazes me most is how they come tipping in in the highest heels they can stand. I was once told that there are actually rules about those shoes in some church circles—not that they shouldn’t be worn but that they have to be.

The source of that information is kind of suspect, though, as you’ll see. It was this teacher whose husband was a pastor. She came to school in a pencil skirt, high necked, long sleeved button down blouse, pearls and “fetish” heels every single day, no matter how hot it got.

I’m serious. She wore those extreme heels you usually only see on foot fetish sites. They’re not even meant to walk on, those shoes—if you’ve seen them, you know what I mean.

And when one of us kids asked her why she dressed like that every day, she gave us this speech about high heels as part of a sort of “man pleasing” thing a woman should do. The whole speech sort of creeped me out, because she seemed to believe she needed to be perfect for her man and that the world had gone to hell because women no longer knew their “place.”

So when we went to the library one time, I showed some kids the same shoes our teacher had worn in class one time on a site for foot fanciers to prove that I knew what they were really for.

And I was really sorry when she caught us at it, because she had a little breakdown right there in front of us. They had to come take her to the nurse’s office, in fact. I think maybe her husband had told her all that bushwa, you know? And seeing her shoes on those freaky looking women on that Web site was too much for her to take.

I can guarantee you Rev. Stanton had tougher skin than that. And she also knew when to wear what. For the WalMart event, she had on this snazzy sweat suit with Nikes and everything. And she’d tied back her wig and put a headband on, too, to keep it in place. She was one dedicated wig wearin’ sistah, Rev. Stanton. Had a wig to match every one of her Sunday suits. Some Beyoncé long, others kind of prim and proper.

But that night at the WalMart, she was out to beat all of us, so she dressed for a different kind of success.

And I figured she’d probably beat me for sure, since I had the babies in the shopping cart for the race. Let me explain what was going on, so we can get on with it.