Have a Little Faith: A True Story Read online

  And he had one congregation.

  We were both lifers.

  And that, I figured, was all we had in common.

  Life of Henry

  At the same time I was growing up in the suburbs, a boy about my age was being raised in Brooklyn. One day, he, too, would grapple with his faith. But his path was different.

  As a child, he slept with rats.

  Henry Covington was the second-youngest of seven kids born to his parents, Willie and Wilma Covington. They had a tiny, cramped apartment on Warren Street. Four brothers slept in one room; three sisters slept in another.

  The rats occupied the kitchen.

  At night, the family left a pot of rice on the counter, so the rats would jump in and stay out of the bedrooms. During the day, Henry’s oldest brother kept the rodents at bay with a BB gun. Henry grew up terrified of the creatures, his sleep uneasy, fearful of bites.

  Henry’s mother was a maid-she mostly worked for Jewish families-and his father was a hustler, a tall, powerful man who liked to sing around the house. He had a sweet voice, like Otis Redding, but on Friday nights he would shave in the mirror and croon “Big Legged Woman,” and his wife would steam because she knew where he was going. Fights would break out. Loud and violent.

  When Henry was five years old, one such drunken scuffle drew his parents outside, screaming and cursing. Wilma pulled a.22-caliber rifle and threatened to shoot her husband. Another man jumped in just as she pulled the trigger, yelling, “No, Missus, don’t do that!”

  The bullet got him in the arm.

  Wilma Covington was sent away to Bedford Hills, a maximum security prison for women. Two years. On weekends, Henry would go with his father to visit her. They would talk through glass.

  “Do you miss me?” she would ask.

  “Yes, Mama,” Henry would answer.

  During those years, he was so skinny they fed him a butterscotch weight gain formula to put meat on his bones. On Sundays he would go to a neighborhood Baptist church where the reverend took the kids home afterward for ice cream. Henry liked that. It was his introduction to Christianity. The reverend spoke of Jesus and the Father, and while Henry saw pictures of what Jesus looked like, he had to form his own vision of God. He pictured a giant, dark cloud with eyes that weren’t human. And a crown on its head.

  At night, Henry begged the cloud to keep the rats away.

  The File on God

  As the Reb led me into his small home office, the subject of a eulogy seemed too serious, too awkward a pivot, as if a doctor and patient had just met, and now the patient had to remove all his clothes. You don’t begin a conversation with “So, what should I say about you when you die?”

  I tried small talk. The weather. The old neighborhood. We moved around the room, taking a tour. The shelves were crammed with books and files. The desk was covered in letters and notes. There were open boxes everywhere, things he was reviewing or reorganizing or something.

  “It feels like I’ve forgotten much of my life,” he said.

  It could take another life to go through all this.

  “Ah,” he laughed. “Clever, clever!”

  It felt strange, making the Reb laugh, sort of special and disrespectful at the same time. He was not, up close, the strapping man of my youth, the man who always looked so large from my seat in the crowd.

  Here, on level ground, he seemed much smaller. More frail. He had lost a few inches to old age. His broad cheeks sagged now, and while his smile was still confident, and his eyes still narrowed into a wise, thoughtful gaze, he moved with the practiced steps of a person who worried about falling down, mortality now arm in arm with him. I wanted to ask two words: how long?

  Instead, I asked about his files.

  “Oh, they’re full of stories, ideas for sermons,” he said. “I clip newspapers. I clip magazines.” He grinned. “I’m a Yankee clipper.”

  I spotted a file marked “Old Age.” Another huge one was marked “God.”

  You have a file on God? I asked.

  “Yes. Move that one down closer, if you don’t mind.”

  I stood on my toes and reached for it, careful not to jostle the others. I placed it on a lower shelf.

  “Nearer, my God, to thee,” he sang.

  Finally, we sat down. I flipped open a pad. Years in journalism had ingrained the semaphore of interviewing, and he nodded and blinked, as if understanding that something more formal had begun. His chair was a low-backed model with casters that allowed him to roll to his desk or a cabinet. Mine was a thick green leather armchair. Too cushy. I kept sinking into it like a child.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked.

  Yes, I lied.

  “Want to eat something?”

  No, thanks.

  “Drink?”

  I’m good.

  “Good.”

  Okay.

  I hadn’t written down a first question. What would be the right first question? How do you begin to sum up a life? I glanced again at the file marked “God,” which, for some reason, intrigued me (what would be in that file?), then I blurted out the most obvious thing you could ask a man of the cloth.

  Do you believe in God?

  “Yes, I do.”

  I scribbled that on my pad.

  Do you ever speak to God?

  “On a regular basis.”

  What do you say?

  “These days?” He sighed, then half-sang his answer. “These days I say, ‘God, I know I’m going to see you soon. And we’ll have some nice conversations. But meanwhile, God, if you’re gonna taaake me, take me already. And if you’re gonna leee-ave me here’”-he opened his hands and looked to the ceiling-“‘maybe give me the strength to do what should be done.’”

  He dropped his hands. He shrugged. It was the first time I heard him speak of his mortality. And it suddenly hit me that this wasn’t just some speaking request I had agreed to; that every question I would ask this old man would add up to the one I didn’t have the courage to ask.

  What should I say about you when you die?

  “Ahh,” he sighed, glancing up again.

  What? Did God answer you?

  He smiled.

  “Still waiting,” he said.

  IT IS 1966…

  …and my grandmother is visiting. We have finished dinner. Plates are being put away.

  “It’s yahrzeit,” she tells my mother.

  “In the cabinet,” my mother answers.

  My grandmother is a short, stout woman. She goes to the cabinet, but at her height, the upper shelf is out of reach.

  “Jump up there,” she tells me.

  I jump.

  “See that candle?”

  On the top shelf is a little glass, filled with wax. A wick sticks up from the middle.

  “This?”

  “Careful.”

  What’s it for?

  “Your grandfather.”

  I jump down. I never met my grandfather. He died of a heart attack, after fixing a sink at a summer cottage. He was forty-two.

  Was that his? I ask.

  My mother puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “We light it to remember him. Go play.”

  I leave the room, but I sneak a look back, and I see my mother and grandmother standing by the candle, mumbling a prayer.

  Later-after they have gone upstairs-I return. All the lights are out, but the flame illuminates the countertop, the sink, the side of the refrigerator. I do not yet know that this is religious ritual. I think of it as magic. I wonder if my grandfather is in there, a tiny fire, alone in the kitchen, stuck in a glass.

  I never want to die.

  Life of Henry

  The first time Henry Covington accepted Jesus as his personal savior, he was only ten, at a small Bible camp in Beaverkill, New York. For Henry, camp meant two weeks away from the traffic and chaos of Brooklyn. Here kids played outside, chased frogs, and collected peppermint leaves in jars of water and left them in the sun. At night the counselors added
sugar and made tea.

  One evening, a pretty, light-skinned counselor asked Henry if he’d like to pray with her. She was seventeen, slim and gentle-mannered; she wore a brown skirt, a white frilly blouse, her hair was in a ponytail, and to Henry she was so beautiful he lost his breath.

  Yes, he said. He would pray with her.

  They went outside the bunk.

  “Your name is Henry and you are a child of God.”

  “My name is Henry,” he repeated, “and I am a child of God.”

  “Do you want to accept Jesus Christ as your savior?” she said.

  “Yes, I do,” he answered.

  She took his hand.

  “Are you confessing your sins?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Do you want Jesus to forgive your sins?”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned her forehead into his. Her voice lowered.

  “Are you asking Jesus to come into your life?”

  “I am asking him.”

  “Do you want me to pray with you?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  It was warm outside. The summer sky was reddening to dusk. Henry felt the girl’s soft forehead, her hand squeezing his, her whispered prayers so close to his ears. This surely was salvation. He accepted it with all his heart.

  The next day, a friend of his got a BB gun, and they shot it at the frogs and tried to kill them.

  APRIL

  The House of Peace

  I drove the car slowly under a light spring drizzle. For our second meeting, I had asked to see the Reb at work, because knowing what to say after a man died included knowing how he labored, right?

  It was strange driving through the New Jersey suburbs where I’d grown up. They were provincially middle-class back then; fathers worked, mothers cooked, church bells rang-and I couldn’t wait to get out. I left high school after the eleventh grade, went to college up near Boston, moved to Europe, then New York, and never lived here again. It seemed too small for what I wanted to achieve in life, like being stuck wearing your grade school clothes. I had dreams of traveling, making foreign friends in foreign cities. I had heard the phrase “citizen of the world.” I wanted to be one.

  But here I was, in my early forties, back in my old hometown. I drove past a grocery store and saw a sign in a window that read “Water Ice.” We used to love that stuff as kids, cherry-or lemon-flavored, ten cents for a small, a quarter for a large. I never really found it anywhere else. I saw a man emerge licking a cup of it, and for a moment I wondered what my life would be like if I’d stayed here, lived here, licked water ice as an adult.

  I quickly dismissed the thought. I was here for a purpose. A eulogy. When I was done, I would go home.

  The parking lot was mostly empty. I approached the temple, with its tall glass archway, but I felt no nostalgia. This was not the prayer house of my youth. As with many suburban churches and synagogues, our congregation, Temple Beth Sholom (which translates to “House of Peace”), had followed a migratory pattern. It began in one place and moved to another, growing larger as it chased after its members who, over the years, picked more affluent suburbs. I once thought churches and temples were like hills, permanent in location and singular in shape. The truth is, many go where the customers go. They build and rebuild. Ours had grown from a converted Victorian house in a residential neighborhood to a sprawling edifice with a spacious foyer, nineteen classrooms and offices, and a wall honoring the generous benefactors who’d made it possible.

  Personally, I preferred the cramped brick building of my youth, where you smelled kitchen aromas when you walked in the back door. I knew every inch of that place. Even the mop closet, where we used to hide as kids.

  Where I once hid from the Reb.

  But what stays the same in life?

  Now the Reb was waiting for me in the foyer, this time wearing a collared shirt and a sports coat. He greeted me with a personalized chorus of “Hello, Dolly”:

  “Helllooo, Mitchell,

  Well, hellooo, Mitchell,

  It’s so nice to have you back

  Where you belong…”

  I pasted a smile on my face. I wasn’t sure how long I would last with the musical theater thing.

  I asked how he’d been doing. He mentioned dizzy spells. I asked if they were serious.

  He shrugged.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “The old gray rabbi-”

  Ain’t what he used to be, I said.

  “Ah.”

  I felt bad that I had interrupted him. Why was I so impatient?

  We walked down the hallway toward his office. At this point, in semiretirement, his hours were strictly of his own choosing. He could stay at home if he wanted; no one would object.

  But religion is built on ritual, and the Reb loved the ritual of going in to work. He had nurtured this congregation from a few dozen families in 1948 to more than a thousand families today. I got the feeling the place had actually grown too big for his liking. There were too many members he didn’t know personally. There were also other rabbis now-one senior, one assistant-who handled the day-to-day duties. The idea of assistants when the Reb first arrived would have been laughable. He used to carry the keys and lock the place up himself.

  “Look.”

  He pointed to a stack of wrapped presents inside a doorway.

  What’s that? I asked.

  “The bride’s room. They come here to get dressed before the wedding.”

  He ran his eyes up and down the gifts and smiled.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?”

  What?

  “Life,” he said.

  IT IS 1967…

  …and the houses are decorated for Christmas. Our neighborhood is mostly Catholic.

  One morning, after a snowfall, a friend and I walk to school, wearing hooded jackets and rubber boots. We come upon a small house with a life-sized nativity scene on its front lawn.

  We stop. We study the figures. The wise men. The animals.

  Is that one Jesus? I ask.

  “What one?”

  The one standing up. With the crown.

  “I think that’s his father.”

  Is Jesus the other guy?

  “Jesus is the baby.”

  Where?

  “In the crib, stupid.”

  We strain our necks. You can’t see Jesus from the sidewalk.

  “I’m gonna look,” my friend says.

  You better not.

  “Why?”

  You can get in trouble.

  I don’t know why I say this. Already, at that age, I sense the world as “us” and “them.” If you’re Jewish, you’re not supposed to talk about Jesus or maybe even look at Jesus.

  “I’m looking anyhow,” my friend says.

  I step in nervously behind him. The snow crunches beneath our feet. Up close, the figures of the three wise men seem phony, hardened plaster with orangey painted flesh.

  “That’s him,” my friend says.

  I peer over his shoulder. There, inside the crib, is the baby Jesus, lying in painted hay. I shiver. I half expect him to open his eyes and yell, “Gotcha!”

  Come on, we’re gonna be late, I say, backpedaling.

  My friend sneers.

  “Chicken,” he says.

  Life of Henry

  Having been taught to believe in the Father, and having accepted the Son as his personal savior, Henry took the Holy Ghost to heart, for the first time, when he was twelve years old, on a Friday night at the True Deliverance Church in Harlem.

  It was a Pentecostal tarry service-inspired by Jesus’ call to tarry in the city until “endued with a power from on high”-and as part of the tradition, people were called to receive the Holy Spirit. Henry followed others up to the pulpit, and when his turn came, he was swabbed with olive oil, then told to get on his knees and lean over a newspaper.

  “Call him,” he heard voices say.

  So Henry called. He said “Jesus” and “Jesus” and then
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” over and over, until the words tumbled one into another. He swayed back and forth and spoke the name repeatedly. Minutes passed. His knees began to ache.

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”

  “Call him!” the church members hollered. “Call on him!”

  “Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-”

  “It’s coming! Call him now!”

  His head was pounding. His shins cramped in pain.

  “JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus-”

  “Almost! Almost!”

  “Call him! Call him!”

  He was sweating, choking, fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Finally the words were so tumbled and bumbled that it didn’t sound like “Jesus” anymore, just syllables and gurgling and mumbling and groaning and saliva drooling from his mouth onto the newspaper. His voice and tongue and teeth and lips were melded into a shaking machine, gone wild with frenzy-

  “JelesulsjesleuesJesuslelelajJelsusu-”

  “You got it! He got it!”

  And he had it. Or he thought he had it. He exhaled and he heaved and he almost choked. He took a big breath and tried to calm himself down. He wiped his chin. Someone balled up the wet newspaper and took it away.

  “How do you feel now?” the pastor asked him.

  “Good,” Henry panted.

  “You feel good that He has given you the Holy Ghost?”

  And he did. Feel good. Although he wasn’t really sure what he’d done. But the pastor smiled and asked the Lord to protect Henry and that was mostly what he wanted, a prayer of protection. It made him feel safe when he returned to his neighborhood.

  Henry ingested the Holy Ghost that night. But soon he ingested other things, too. He started smoking cigarettes. He tried alcohol. He got tossed out of the sixth grade for fighting with a girl, and soon he added marijuana to his list.

  One time, as a teenager, he heard his mother talking to relatives about how, of all her children, Henry was the one, he had the heart and the temperament. Her little boy was “gonna be a preacher one day.”

  And Henry laughed to himself. “A preacher? Do you know how much of this stuff I’m smoking?”