Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Clareese Mitchell, who leads the church choir, is enduring pain and irritation during a service because she is menstruating. She curses the church council for decreeing that they must wear white. Clareese is angry with the men who run the church as they refuse to listen to her. She is also disgusted with Deacon McCreedy, who appeared at the hospital where Clareese is a nurse and invited himself to her home. He ate her cooking, asked her to sing for him, and then sexually assaulted her. When Deacon McCreedy reached under Clareese’s dress, however, he discovered that she was on her period and reacted with anger and revulsion, leaving without a word and continuing to shun Clareese. Clareese is cross-eyed and still unmarried, and when Pastor Everett jokes about finding husbands for the ladies of the congregation, she feels that she is being mocked. She also wonders if being married might have protected her from McCreedy’s assault.

During the portion of the service when the members of the congregation testify, Clareese is at a loss about what to say. Sometimes she witnesses what she considers to be miracles at the hospital where she works, but her most memorable interaction that week was with a man named Cleophus Sanders, a former blues musician who lost his leg in a construction accident. Clareese is very religious and is often chastised for trying to proselytize to patients at the hospital. Clareese met Cleophus when he told Clareese, who was attempting to preach to Mr. Toomey, the man who shared Cleophus’s hospital room, to leave the man alone. Clareese was offended, but Cleophus laughed at her, and Mr. Toomey complained that Clareese’s religious talk was making it difficult for him to watch television. When it’s Clareese’s turn to testify, all she can think to say is, “Pray for me” (40), before returning to her seat. Clareese leads the choir in the hymn “Every Knee Shall Bow, Every Tongue Shall Confess,” acutely aware when it finishes that Pastor Everett is unimpressed with her as a choir director, certain that “he thought of her as something worse than a spinster, because she wasn’t yet old” (41).

Pastor Everett asks Clareese for help, having prepared her by asking her to bring her telephone from home. Clareese resents that he demanded this of her without considering that it was her only phone and without so much as asking about her well-being. As she listens to the sermon, which uses call-waiting as a metaphor for ignoring God’s call, she thinks about the call she made to Mr. Toomey on Wednesday. When a patient is in her care for a week, Clareese makes it her policy to call them “to let them know that Jesus cared, and that she cared” (43). Mr. Toomey passed the phone to Cleophus, who was offended that Clareese called the white Mr. Toomey and not him. Clareese explained that she doesn’t call her patients from home until they’ve been with her for a week. Cleophus played some music for her over the phone, a recording of him playing the blues, and Clareese was ashamed to admit that she liked it but knew that she should be truthful.

As Pastor Everett’s sermon continues, Clareese is disdainful at the excited crowd, noting that they are more interested in gimmicks, like the phone, than in scripture. Clareese remembers how, after that phone call, she decided to go into the hospital, which she rarely does on her days off. She was certain that God was telling her to speak to Cleophus and invite him to bring his musical talent to church. Cleophus suggested that he would go if God spared his knee from amputation and then afterward, he would take Clareese out. However, Cleophus teased Clareese and made her angry. Clareese gave him a Bible with the church’s name and number inside. Before she could leave, Cleophus asked why there is so much suffering in the world if God exists—particularly things like illness that aren’t perpetuated by men. Clareese got angry and yelled at him. She left, and although she heard Cleophus fall to the ground trying to follow her, she didn’t look back.

Clareese has been put on leave for a week and referred to the hospital’s psychologist because of the incident, and she worries about whether she’ll have a job on Monday. As Clareese worries, she is surprised to see that Cleophus is sitting with the congregation with his guitar. Clareese knows that he is there for her and disapproves because, “it was God he needed, not her” (53).