God didn’t need my gum. At six years old, I knew He was too busy to be bothered by a piece of Wrigley’s Big Red. But Jesus, I wasn’t so sure about Jesus.
There I was in 1986 at the Aldersgate First United Methodist Church. Third row back from the pulpit, I sat between Dad and Momma. Wearing a ruffled dress and a pair of panty hose that were tinted a few shades too tan for my ivory skin, I sat as still as I could in my “making the family proud position.”
Like I did every Sunday, I looked past the pulpit, past the preacher and focused my attention above the altar. Hanging there on the wall was a half-naked, life-sized, bloody Jesus doll. I tried not to stare, but I could not understand why no one had ever gotten that poor man down. I could plainly see that if anybody needed a piece of Big Red, it was Jesus.
My mouth watered, tingled just thinking about the slight burning sensation I got every time I chewed a piece.
Earlier, before the service had begun, my clean-shaven, suit-and-smile wearing Dad had handed me a quarter.
“Put this in the offering plate,” he said.
“Yes sir,” I sounded off. At first, my plan was to put the quarter in the plate, but as the service went on, I began to think about how a five-piece pack of Big Red cost 25 cents.
By the time the offertory hymn began, I had decided to save my quarter and buy a pack of Big Red. Jesus would understand. Surely, He would. I wasn’t selfish, I would chew four pieces and bring the last piece back to Him next Sunday.
So when Dad passed me the faded gold offering plate, I clenched my quarter in my left hand and tried to pass the plate to Momma. She did not budge. Her peach-painted lips were not smiling. She looked down at my left hand and waited. I sighed, then dropped my quarter and my hope of sharing gum with Jesus into the plate.
At six, I learned sometimes we have to give it away even when we don’t want to.
*************
A few months before my first perm and at the start of second grade, I stood around a ground tarp covered with about 100 pounds of flour. All-Purpose or Self-Rising, I do not know. It was white; it was unbagged; it was flour.
Some 30, five to seven-year-olds stood around the tarp with me. They fought off the sticky Mississippi heat with swimsuits and no shirts. I wore my fuchsia airbrushed t-shirt and my best pair of hand-me-down, pastel shorts with pockets.
A speckled, freckled white skin boy stood across the tarp from me. His name was Billy. He held his chest up. He lacked actual muscle mass, but he bowed his arms out slightly and pretended to have bulging biceps. I loved him instantly.
We were at a fourth of July party. The day had been spent wheelbarrow racing, water balloon catching, egg tossing and scurrying up a greased pole for a flag. The time had come for my favorite game, “money-pitch.” A jar of coins had been collected from the adults. A tarp had been laid. Flour poured, and the coins were sprinkled into the flour.
While I waited for the game to begin, I smiled at Billy. He gave me a quick glance, and then there was a gun shot and “money-pitch” began.
We kids jumped into the mound of flour and started wrestling for buried pocket change. White dust flew. Within a matter of seconds, my fuchsia shirt, brown hair, and flesh were floured, dusted white. I fought to fill my pockets with money. A penny here, a dime there, I could usually feel the weight of the coin before I could see it. My eyes spotted a silver coin that was larger than a quarter.
I pounced toward the coin, but so did my muscled, freckled-covered crush. We met in the middle of the tarp and started rolling, struggling over the 50-cent piece. I grabbed it, but Billy was squirrelly. We went back and forth, all over that flour tarp until his mother stepped into the white pit. Using the grasp only a mother of a son could muster, she pulled him off me and out of reach of my coin. The 50-cent piece was mine.
At seven, I learned sometimes you have to fight for it.
*************
My dad is not a tall man. He isn’t flashy. As a child, he was picked on for his struggle to read. Tenacious and smart as he was, he dropped out of college after three days. “I’ll make my own way,” he declared.
Dad laid bricks. He built houses. He bought houses. He bought an apartment complex. He paid everything off, and then he collected money on his 96 rental properties.
When I was 26, he took me to the Silverstar Casino in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Once inside, he told me to hold out my hand. He began counting out $100 bills into my palm. $100, $200, $300, $400, $500, $600, $700, he placed one more in my hand and said, “There’s $800. Go play. You can keep what you win.”
I wanted to keep it all, so I played nothing. Hours later, he bought my way into a craps game. When it was my turn to roll the dice, I won, so I rolled again and won again. The other players at the table started cheering me on. I watched them place larger bets on me, on my roll.
“Put some money down Angie.” Dad encouraged.
But I didn’t. I kept rolling, kept winning for everyone else. In my head, I was stuck somewhere between I’m gonna and maybe on the next roll. I never bet anything higher than my buy in. Eventually, my luck ran out, and I lost. The dealer took his little stick out and cleared the money off the table.
I patted the hundred-dollar bills tucked safely away in my pocket, and I did not pull them out the rest of the night.
When we were leaving Dad said, “I need the money back. You can keep what you won, but I need the rest back.”
I panicked. “What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Angie, even when you were winning,” he said pausing, “You never bet on yourself.”
One by one, I counted the bills back to him.
Dad put the cash away, and although he is not usually a man who speaks in metaphors, he offered me this one for free: “Darling, a seed isn’t likely to grow if you don’t plant it.”
At 26, I learned sometimes you have to put it on the table.