The sermon ended, and so did my speculations. The singing was about to begin. The choir assembled, and then, as they were about to start, we heard a loud, off-tune voice, too straw-like to be called a tenor, rise from the back of the church.

Oh Lord,

Oh Lord,

Oh Lord,

I’m saved again.

We all turned to see who it could be, and it was Ben Daisy, his shirt now cleaned and pressed, his hat back on his head, singing as loud as he could while his sister stood beside him, crying tears of joy and sharp embarrassment.

After that, Mama was revered. Everyone could see Ben Daisy was cured. He was the first man down the road at dawn, heading to the fields. He helped out the reverend at church. He stopped drinking altogether. He only went to Culver’s to pay the few cents he could, to settle his debt for all the corn whiskey he’d drunk in the past.

The others came out of Culver’s back room and began to take the cure with Mama, too—Otto Green Leaf and Birdie Delilah, and even Pete Back Back, whose shirt was still wet from his never-closing wounds.

Ben Daisy was truly a new man, anyone could see, and Reverend Harland dedicated a special sermon to it that next week.

“The psalms tell us that the Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” Reverend Harland said. “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. The psalms tell us to sing to the Lord, as Ben Daisy has done, with grateful praise and make music to our God. For the Lord delights in those who fear him and who put their hope in his unfailing love. And he sends his word to melt the snow; he stirs up the breezes, and the waters flow.”

Afterward, when everyone had surrounded Mama to congratulate her, Ben Daisy pushed through the scrum of people, and hooked his little finger into Mama’s and shook it—a queer offer of thanks, I remember thinking.

“You done it,” he said with a wink. And then he sighed, “I can’t wait to tell Daisy all about this.”

Mama looked taken aback, but then she smiled and said, “I’m happy for you.” She did not ask me to note that exchange in her little book, not yet.

Ben Daisy was cured right before Pinkster. Pinkster was what the old ones celebrated, the ones who had been alive for slave days here in Kings County—so ancient they seemed to me then, as old as the hills all around us. They all spoke in that strange singsong accent of old New York. They had celebrated Pinkster when they were young, and their hips still moved, and it was a queer kind of pleasure we all took, to make sure they could still celebrate it in their old age.