The Wages of Sin

Tizzie was already old and faded when I met her, her memory was unreliable and her thin, frail body was wearing out rapidly - she'd had two strokes and one heart attack but still refused to leave the little house on the lane where she'd been born and raised her sons and daughters, faithfully tended her garden and bred goats.  Likely as not, she would die there, people said, but still each day she with the sunrise and worked til it set.  Nana sent me to check on her several times a week and we usually stopped to pick her up and bring her home from church each Sunday - she would be waiting on her veranda in what my grandmother called her best go to meeting clothes - a plain black dress, stocky heeled hook and eye shoes, and a veiled bonnet, her Bible tucked under one arm and a basket of flowers in the other.  Uncle Len had made her a cane which she carried but steadfastly refused to actually use so one of my brothers was sent to take her arm and lead her down the steps and into the old Lincoln.  Another would help her out and escort her to her regular seat, always first on the aisle in the very front pew where she could see and hear James clearly, pretty much her only concession to her age and delicate health and definitely not (as I'd heard my grandmother suggest albeit not unkindly) because she still enjoyed making an entrance.  She had been, I learned, an aspiring actress and model in her much younger days, had even made it to New York City for one memorable summer as an intern at The Neighborhood Playhouse - according to legend, had even studied however briefly with Martha Graham - before giving up the dream of stardom and returning home sadder but wiser, broke, cynical, a little lost and a lot pregnant.  She'd been drawing water from the well when she miscarried, might've died but for Rowena's passing by.  It was a tragic and painful final ending to her bright expectations - The saddest service I've ever attended, my grandmother told me one Sunday afternoon in The Memory Garden, Just ain't natural to outlive your children no matter how you come by 'em.


The small but vocal wages of sin crowd took a different view, of course.  The more Tizzie refused to repent and be saved, the more they labeled and shunned her, no easy accomplishment for a tiny island community so closely knit and dependent upon one another.  It was not until James preached a fiery and passionately Christian sermon on tolerance and stone throwing that they backed down - he didn't name names, but as Lillie remarked, They know who they are.  After that, the wagging tongues were shamed into an uneasy but effective silence.


Tizzie buried her child and went on with her life.  She eventually married one of the painters who had come to renovate a summer house, moved back into the little house on the lane, had four more children.  Her life had not been easy and when it was her time, she took her bows and let go gracefully, content that she had done her best and that a new audience awaited.