Fatal Floss by ACF Bookens

Author:ACF Bookens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andi Cumbo-Floyd

8

The next morning, after staying up way too late watching the Levy men crack us up, I got dressed in a long skirt, peasant blouse, and boots for church. It was the most fancy I ever got, and even for church, I usually opted for pants and a nicer, knit shirt. But today, Mary was making her announcement about Mika’s event, and I wanted to look good for both of my friends.

Santiago headed out about the same time I did to pick up his mom for mass down in Charlottesville, and we made plans to meet back up at his place that afternoon. Santiago had some weeding to do, he said, and he hoped I would keep him company while I sewed. It sounded like a delightful way to relax on a Sunday afternoon.

But first, we had to pump up the church crowd for Mika’s event. Our church didn’t necessarily need much help in getting pumped up. Our organist always brought us in with a rousing old-school hymn, and the singing was rich with hand-clapping that I could, in no way, master. But this was the first time in the over a year that I had been attending that anyone talked about a service project.

It wasn’t that the folks at Bethel didn’t do service projects. They did, a lot of them, including running a Meals on Wheels program out of the church fellowship hall, offering tutoring programs to kids in the afternoons, and maintaining the local community garden. But those things had been established as part of the church community for a long time. Mika’s event was totally new, and I was a little nervous that church members might resent a white lady asking for help. After all, white people had relied on the “help” of Black people for a long time, a fact that all the members of Bethel, besides Mika and I, knew far too well from experience.

What I forgot in my fretting, of course, was that the people of Bethel were generous beyond belief. When Mary made her announcement at the end of the service, Mika was nearly swallowed up in the crowd of folks gathering to ask when they could come to buy yarn, what they could provide for the bake sale, and could she make a note of their yarn bombing projects right now so they could get started right away.

Fortunately, Mary had thought ahead and brought a pad and pen, and she was steadily writing down what everyone offered so that she could distribute information as needed later on. For my part, I stood next to Mika smiling and helping to hold her up against the surge of helpfulness that continued for well over a half hour.

By the time the three of us started to walk to Mary’s house for our usual lunch, Mika had at least a dozen new yarn bomb entries, a page-long list of baked goods, and promises of dozens of purchases from her store tomorrow. She was practically floating down the sidewalk.

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