Pil­grim was her name and she lived up to it. They called her Miss Grim. She hat­ed stu­pid, and stu­pid hat­ed her. She walked in­to church, one brown sock up, one black sock down, up the aisle, up to the chan­cel and pul­pit, gri­mac­ing. “What chupid­ness I see­ing here?” she cried.

On the white wall be­hind the pul­pit stood Christ. With open arms. Long fair hair and white skin. “God don’t like stu­pid,” she grinned. Then turned and sat down.

“All dem African woman. Look at dem, nah. Wor­ship­ping white man. You see how stu­pid we is.” She mum­bled through­out the mass. “Black like sin!” she grum­bled. “And they wor­ship­ping white. What white have in it?! Even Fa­ther, like he beh-beh, do­ing same thing.”

She was the most dis­liked con­gre­gant. She was al­ways up to some­thing. She did not seem like a re­al Catholic. She seemed to be a Bap­tist. Dur­ing the re­ces­sion­al, the clos­ing hymn, she thumped her breast, stamped her heel, brought raw pow­er in­to the church. It was too much, this spir­it. It over­awed the civ­il con­gre­ga­tion.

She took a bus, one sock up, one sock down to Chai’s Hard­ware. They said that Chai Is The Man. That hard­ware had every­thing. Nails, grav­el, post-box­es, panties, gum, mos­qui­to nets, laced cur­tains, gal­va­nize buck­ets, milk of mag­ne­sia, pot­ted plant, BRC wire, Cafenol, U-shaped nails, poster paints. You name it, Chai had it. “I look­ing for brown paint,” con­fid­ed Miss Grim.

“A lit­tle paint turn the dev­il in­to a saint,” cried an at­ten­dant.

Miss Grim si­dled past this shopfloor po­et. He was too stu­pid for her. She found the shop lad­der and climbed it. She climbed high up a para­pet of packed and cramped shelves. Packs of post-box num­bers, gay nod­ding toy pups, minia­ture lamps, sacks of gold glit­ter. She found it. A lit­tle yel­low-and-black tin of brown­ish peach lac­quer. Her eyes did not twin­kle at her find. They gri­maced. “I go fool them chupid peo­ple. You can’t talk truth to chupid­dees. You have to fool them. They too ig­no­rant for truth. Fool them good, damn fools, and make them hap­py!”

Miss Pil­grim stopped go­ing to Sun­day Mass. She now opt­ed for the ear­ly morn­ing Trid­i­um, Tues­day, Thurs­day and Fri­day mass. “Is white man, they like. I go show them.”

Each day, as Mass end­ed, Miss Grim of­fered not her co-con­gre­gants the sign of peace. Nor did she her­self go in peace. She slipped to the back of the chan­cel, knelt on the bare stone, raised her hand, and in the half-dark, soothed, with the ends of her moist fin­gers, the solemn face of Christ.

Come Lord Je­sus,

Cov­er me with Your Pre­cious Blood,

And fill me with Your Holy Spir­it.

I love You Lord Je­sus,

I praise You Je­sus,

I thank You Je­sus.

I shall fol­low You every day of my life.

Amen.

At the end of each Trid­i­um, the holy face of Christ grew less white. Brown­er and brown­er. Less pale. Peachi­er and peachi­er. But no one no­ticed it. Not even the Fa­ther or the al­tar boys. Or the acolytes or ush­ers.

In sev­en weeks, be­tween the Memo­r­i­al of Saint Justin the Mar­tyr and the Feast of Saint Mary Mag­da­lene, the face of Christ had turned brown. And Miss Grim left it at that. She could not go for dire black. That would be too shock­ing. She would be found out. You had to fool the chupi­dees lit­tle by lit­tle, get them to ac­cept what they would not oth­er­wise ac­cept, by fool­ing them un­der their very nose, stroke by stroke. And fool them just enough. Brown was good. Black would be fa­tal.

None of the con­gre­gants dis­cov­ered Miss Grim’s sac­ri­lege. Right in front of their eyes, she had des­e­crat­ed and es­caped. If you don’t know, you don’t know. What don’t kill does fat­ten. But, white or brown, the re­sults were the same. Some prayers went unan­swered. Some were an­swered. Some an­swers were de­layed. Some an­swers were quick in com­ing. Some an­swers abat­ed for long and would nev­er come. Just like med­i­cine, or ton­ic or shandi­lay or black sage or shin­ing bush.

But one lit­tle ketch-tail sprig­gy-foot child dis­cov­ered the impi­ety. Jan­ice Bel­mon­do. She was autis­tic. She saw the white be­hind the brown and one sab­bath day, in the mid­dle of Mass, she leapt from her moth­er’s lap, where even at the ripe age of six­teen she sat, and cried. “Look, Ma. Je­sus get brown!”

“What?”

The Fa­ther turned. To watch the por­trait of Christ. What? “Je­sus get brown. Brown, brown, brown. Nasty brown.” The autis­tic teen hopped and screamed.

Brown? What brown? The con­gre­gants snapped to at­ten­tion. Brown? Nasty brown? What was the child yap­ping about? Her brown moth­er, Ruth Bel­mon­do, tried to lash her daugh­ter’s mouth with the strap of her arm. But the child grew cholic, rag­ing, ramp­ing about as if she had caught the spir­it. Some­thing not of the church.

Miss Grim rose. “Get thee hence, Sa­tan!” she cried.

But Sa­tan did not leave the child. It urged on her pro­fan­i­ty. “Nasty brown!! Nasty brown! Nasty brown Je­sus!”

Boldon, the bon­go drum­mer, lift­ed the child bod­i­ly in­to the air, tot­ed her in­to his car, and to­geth­er he and Mrs Bel­mon­do drove off with her.

What non­sense the child cry­ing? Poor thing. Poor Mrs Bel­mon­do. Poor woman. Al­ways try­ing her best. The Mass re­sumed. No one, not even Fa­ther, the lay min­is­ters, the novices, the ush­ers, had wit­nessed the change from white to brown. Miss Grim smiled wicked­ly. “That is how to keep them!”

Wayne Kublals­ingh