JESUS AND THE LADIES OF THE BEAUFORT HOME 

JESUS AND THE LADIES OF THE BEAUFORT HOME

Alice says, "When I die I want to hear that hymn--you know the one, o Jesus I have promised"??? but I don't, and neither does she, and since dying looks like it's getting pretty friendly, I walk the halls of the Beaufort County Home, and look for a song for my mother-in-law???s funeral. Alice suggests Stella: "She knows everything, or thinks she does," Alice says, in her powdery sigh of a voice, and sure enough, Stella thinks she does. But she doesn't after all, so Stella sends us to Lillian, whose voice is like a ghost of a bird, and who can't remember, and who "doesn't love the Lord like I should; maybe you should try Emma. She's devout". So we do, and Emma remembers all the words, "but I don't have any breath in me uh-tall anymore, so go ask Lucille, she can pick it out on the piano". But Lucille has had visitors, and she is wore out, and looks it, disappearing into her sheets like water in sand. We give up. I go back to Alice and sing what I think may be the tune, and she smiles but shakes her head, and then there is Stella, in the hall with a portable phone, beaming like she's just found Jesus, which is not exactly the case. What she's found is her friend Evangeline, who apologizes for her voice, "because I am old as paper now, and just rose from my nap" but she's wrong, her voice is like glass, like honey, through the phone lines. She sings clear enough both Alice and I can hear her: "Oh Jesus I have promised/ to serve you all my days/ be thou forever with me--" she sings, and her song is a prayer that carries Alice to sleep, a soft place where she is gathered up and comforted.