Miracle on Magazine Street

A Miracle on Magazine Street.
Coliseum Place Baptist Church, directly across the street from Andrew Jackson Elementary.
A church with spiral wooden stairway that kids stormed up and down on, a ground floor that was said to have been used to hide Confederate horses and men, and a pipe organ.
An old, red brick church with history and a tall steeple that was eventurally blown down in a hurricane.
It's no more. First went the steeple. Then the whole place burned down.
My grandmother, Emma, went to Coliseum for years, sang in the choir, and probably dreamed of being the church organist. But that job went to Mrs. Waller, and that's probably a good thing.
There was an electric pump for the organ in modern times. But wouldn't it be great to have been the boy who pumped the bellows before technology stepped in to ruin the coolness?
Our apartment on Magazine Street was directly across from the school, a block from the church.
Andrew Jackson was where I got chicken pox and got evaluated (for something) by Mr. Thorne. He met with me once a week for a while, asking me a lot of questions about my family. How I felt about things.
About the future. His visits were nice. He listened.
How could I tell Mr.Thorne the real stuff? About picking roaches off the wall of our bathroom with a rubber band gun. About the on again, off again parent fights. About needing new glasses. About any of my reality?
The family rule: Never let outsiders know what really happens in your family. They will never understand. They might take you away.
My mother especially stressed this when there were belt marks and bruises on my legs.
"Bobby, you show people those marks, and they may put you in a home."
Mr. Thorn got the "Leave It to Beaver" version of my life, I lied about fishing trips my father and I never took. A thick and meaty lie. It was all fabrication. And I wondered if he really believed it all.
I did good. According to mom, Thorne estimated my I.Q. at about 135, and the teachers backed off a little.
Somehow the punish work never eased up much.
Report cards from the period read: Conduct - Unsatisfactory. Robert does not work well with others.
Robert makes poor use of time and materials.
The bottom line: Me writing endless copies of the mutiplication tables.
One weekend, I had put off doing the punish work to Sunday afternoon. When my mother got wind of it, she told me that I would stay home from the Sunday night service at Coliseum and write and write...
Off she went to church, and there I was. Alone, and no church, and no watching Mrs. Waller play the pipe organ.
She would slip off her shoes to play those deep notes on the pedals with only stockings on.. I'd watch it all, never realizing how erotic the whole thing was to me.
Something had to happen.
I've always used reason to my advantage.
I began to think how pleased God would be for me to go to church. Faith, that's what I needed!
Faith! God would do my multiplication tables!
I prayed. God listened.
I would trust Him to deal with my multilication tables, laying out lots of paper, sharpening a couple of pencils with a kitchen knife.
Off I went to church.
Things went well until my mother saw me making my way to sit by Mrs. Waller.
"What are you doing here?" "What did I tell you?"
Mom then got the story of God doing my work for me, the sharpened pencils and everything.
I was trusting God. How could she find flaw in that. A miracle on Magazine Street.
"Bobby, do you really believe that?" I knodded.
"We'll see."
Mrs. Waller was in fine form. And then there was the walk home. It was quiet....real quiet.
We were in the kitchen. The pencils, the paper....blank. It was all there. No miracle.
Mom didn't say a whole lot. But she made a cup of coffee, and then she sat down by me and began to write.

1 X 1 = 1
1 X 2 = 2 .....

It didn't hit me right then, but Mom was part of God's miracle that night. Faith, it works.