What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage Page A

the Head Negro in Charge. Excuse me.
Negress.
    “All right.” Joyce decided to be cool. “I’d like to know why the Sewing Circus meeting was canceled.”
    “Postponed,” Gerry said. “The Good Reverend wanted me to make it clear that the meeting has only been postponed until we reach a meeting of the minds.”
    Joyce just looked at her.
    “And I’m sure that such a meeting can be reached, aren’t you?”
    “I hope so,” Joyce said. “I think we have to do more for our young people, not less.”
    “The Good Reverend couldn’t agree more.” Gerry nodded enthusiastically as if now convinced that they were on the same wavelength. “As you may know, at our last congregation, the Good Reverend created a youth program that became a model for churches all over the Midwest. We had over two hundred young men actively involved in a program of Christian education.”
    “Where were the young women?” Joyce said.
    Gerry glanced sharply at Joyce and then modified her expression to convey her disappointment at the lack of understanding reflected in the question. “The Good Reverend saw our young men as a top priority, both as part of his calling and personally.” She lowered her eyes briefly and her voice softened a little. “One of the reasons this congregation is such a blessing is that it allows us to remove our Tyrone from the evil influence of the city and bring him to a place where God’s majesty is evident all around us.”
    Too bad, I thought. They came all this way so Tyrone and Frank could find each other.
    “The Good Reverend is an expert on the kind of outreach work you’re trying to do with the young women in this community—”
    “I thought he was an expert on programs for young men,” Joyce said sweetly.
    Gerry ignored her. “And what the Good Reverend has found is that what these children need is a straightening of their overall Christian values. They are already overstimulated and confused by all the terrible
sex
material aimed at them.”
    She got that right.
    “The last thing they need is more information about those kinds of things.”
    “What kinds of things?”
    “The things those brochures were talking about.”
    “And what things were those?”
    “I don’t think we have to play games here, do we, Sister Mitchell? I think we both know what I’m talking about.”
    I felt like I was back in Atlanta listening to people talking in tongues, trying not to say
HIV.
Joyce took a deep breath and her voice was very calm.
    “They are ignorant,
Sister
Anderson. They need information about everything, but especially about AIDS. Their generation is dying faster than anybody else because they don’t know how to protect themselves.”
    “Abstinence.”
Gerry’s voice carried the righteous conviction of people who still think the best way to combat any galloping social ill—drug abuse, sexual irresponsibility, teenage pregnancy—is to simply advise those undisciplined few who are tempted to
just say no.
    “It doesn’t work,” Joyce said. “We’ve had four new babies born in the last six months to girls who are still not twenty years old.”
    Gerry’s voice cut in like a hot knife through butter. “Weren’t all of them active in the Sewing Circle?” I wanted Joyce to reach across the desk and slap her, but she didn’t. Joyce is nonviolent.
    “Yes.”
    “So I guess your method isn’t so surefire either, is it,
Sister
Mitchell?”
    They looked at each other across the desk and then Joyce said slowly, “No, I guess it isn’t surefire at all, Sister Anderson. It’s probably many things, but surefire is definitely not among them.”
    Gerry looked pleased. “Well, see there. We agree on a lot of things after all.”
    Joyce smiled suddenly and stood up, extending her hand. “I appreciate your time. I’m sorry Reverend Anderson couldn’t join us, but I’m looking forward to his message on Sunday, so I can’t really be disappointed, can I?”
    “Praise God!” Gerry got to her feet