It would’ve been better for Mom to just take a knife and stab me in the heart than for me to see the disappointment lingering in her eyes.
“Damn, can y’all find somewhere else to fight?” Sara groggily croaks.
“We’re sorry, sweetheart. Just go back to sleep,” Mom croons.
“Naw. I’m awake now.” Sara shakily pulls herself up in the bed, small and shrunken.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
Mom purses her lips but doesn’t respond. She smooths the edges of the bed and stands up to fluff Sara’s pillow like a parent dealing with a cranky child. Their friendship makes even less sense than mine and Lebanon’s. Though we haven’t had anything resembling a friendship in decades. But more things than love bind people together, secrets and lies make just as hearty a bond as love. Perhaps it’s the wonder of having an unlikely companion, someone who mirrors your opposite in every way. All the places in which we feel we lack—perhaps we’re drawn to someone who has what we crave in abundance. Sara is hard. Mom is softer. Sara is quiet. Mom speaks her mind. There are ways in which Sara seems resigned to the atrocities of the world; Mom rebels against them. And as I sit in this room smelling of disinfectant and dying flowers, I see Layla and Ruby in fifty years. The terrifying wonder of friendship and family embodied by the two women in this room who hold vast secrets I doubt we’ll ever know.
“Close the door,” Sara orders. I walk over and do her bidding. Sara reaches across Mom and opens a drawer. She grabs a tin decorated in roses, opens it, and pulls out a small plastic bottle of Jim Beam hidden under a stack of yellowed papers. She paws and twists until Mom gently takes the bottle, opens it and passes it back to Sara.
After taking a couple of gulps, she looks at Mom. “What y’all goin’ on about anyway?”
“Nothing you need concern yourself with,” I answer.
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you. This is grown folks’ business, boy.” She takes another swig and looks at Mom. “You was always too easy on him.”
“Yeah, guess she should’ve been more like you as a parent,” I retort.
Her face twists into an ugly smile. Stale, tawny light in the room gives her eyes a hellish look. “Oh, so you’re here about the boy or something about him. That’s what you were arguing about? I swear, he’s been a pain in my ass since he came on this earth.” She takes another drink. Half of the bottle is already empty.
“Sara, settle yourself,” Mom orders.
“Ain’t no point in hidin’ anythin’ now. I’m dyin’. You ain’t gonna be on this earth a lot longer either. Secrets, all this shit. It eats you up till you nothin’ but bones. I’m just bones now. Just bones.”
“Don’t pay attention to her,” Mom says as she tries to take the liquor away from Sara, who tries to valiantly tussle, to keep her good friend Jim. After a minute, Mom manages to snatch the bottle away and stuff it in her purse.
“I hate you,” Sara slurs her words and unsuccessfully grabs for Mom’s purse.
“No. You don’t. Forever and to the end.”
Sara’s face softens for the briefest moment and a thin sheen of tears shimmers behind her brown-black eyes. “I should’ve stayed in Tennessee. I found someone there. Jonas loved me, but don’t nothing last for me. I can’t ever be happy.”
Rocking back and forth, she murmurs, “He was there and he loved me and we was a family.”
“Was Jonas Lebanon’s father?” I ask Sara.
She shrinks back into bed.
“Jackson...leave this be,” Mom cautions.
“Better off he knows, that someone knows—” says Sara.
“Sara, answer the question. Was it this Jonas guy?” I ask again, pressing for answers to secrets concealed in whispers and knowing glances among our mothers.
“Sara, we keep this to ourselves. For the good of everyone, you owe Naomi that. You owe yourself. You owe me!” pleads Mom, the earnest fear in her voice rattles something deep in me, but the need for the truth, closure for Lebanon, pushes me to know. Maybe that’ll help him. Knowing his father could free him in a way my friendship, my protection and my fear have been unable to do.
“Sara, you need to tell someone. Your son needs to know about his father. Even now, it’s not too late. It’s okay. Maybe you’re not clear on who it is, maybe you need to backtrack, think hard about who you were with at that time. We all have secrets. We all have shame.”
I speak to Sara like a member of my church who needs to unburden but doesn’t know where to begin. Someone who believes what they’re holding in could destroy them if they revealed what it is they’re hiding.
Sara’s lip quivers. She closes her eyes and her mouth moves but utters no sound. Is she praying? I’ve never seen her do anything resembling prayer, but could this be it? Could this be her breaking point?
I press on, “Was Jonas Lebanon’s father? Can you tell me that?”
Sara’s mouth ceases to move and her eyes open. Tears leak from them. “No, foolish boy. My father was his father!”
Those five words don’t register with me at first, or rather the horrific gravity of what was said doesn’t register. I glance at Mom. There is no look of shock on her face.
“You knew this? You knew about Lebanon’s father?”
“Why did you say anything, Sara?” Mom hisses.
“I deserve some peace. I do,” she answers.
Mom looks past me. She smooths her dress and folds her hands in her lap. “I didn’t want you to know about this. About the hard things, son. About things I had to do or things that happened long ago. Things I never even told your daddy.”
My chest thumps with the regularity of a poorly dribbled basketball. Insane heat burrows its way to my stomach.
“Sara’s father was... He did things to her,” explains Mom. “So, myself and Naomi set out to get Sara settled in Tennessee, but Saul, Sara’s father, found out. And we protected our friend.”
“He was a bad man. He was gonna kill me. He was a bad man so got what he got.”
Sara looks as far gone as Mom. Like they’ve both been sucked back in the past.
“What does that mean? Got what he got?”
Mom finally meets my eyes and I know the answer. To save a friend, a sister, Ms. Naomi, Sara and Momma killed a man. They killed Sara’s father.
The friendship between Sara and Mom never made sense, but it does now. And though Mom tried to spare Lebanon the pain of his true parentage, though Sara in her own toxic way tried to drown her memories in liquor, though Ms. Naomi remained the sweetest soul somehow, all their children wound up continuing their dysfunction, reliving their sins. And now too their grandchildren are paying the price.
Mom’s arms encircle my waist and hug me. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you or Lebanon.”
“John 15:13, Mom. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’”
Sara tugs at Mom’s dress. Wiping away tears, Mom sits on her bed and hugs her. It started low at first, like a gurgling murmur, then sobbing, then wailing, forceful and relieving. A nurse opens the door to check on the commotion. Mom is rocking Sara, comforting her. “It’ll be okay. Hush now. It’s over and it’ll be okay. God’s got you. Got us.”
With easy and experienced grace, the nurse closes the door to allow us the private moment, the one forty years in the making, the one where Sara’s hard shell cracks and shatters and perhaps something human is left for the small time she has remaining on this earth. The sobbing turns into moaning and deep uneven breathing as Sara falls back asleep.
Holding Mom close to me as we exit the room, I hear my name softly called from behind and turn around to find Dr. Savoie near Sara’s hospital room door.
“I thought that was you,” she says triumphantly. “I have someone asking for you and here you are. Isn’t that someth
ing?”
“We were just finishing up a visit. It’s so good to see you, Dr. Savoie, but I should be getting Mom home. It’s getting pretty late,” I respond trying to extract myself. All the knowledge I have, all the things I must fix and say and do, I can’t shoulder another burden right now.
Not today.
“Oh, well this shouldn’t take long. I’d consider it a personal favor, give you half off your next flu shot.”
Dr. Savoie chuckles, then smiles, hopeful and genuine. I’d be a horrible pastor saying no to someone like that, someone who can heal the people who come to her. I guess it’ll take only a few minutes. I can give someone who needs me, who still believes I have something to offer, a bit of my time. I turn to Mom.
“Don’t worry about me, Jackson. I’m just gonna sit here. Me and the Good Lord have much to discuss.”
I kiss her damp cheek, salt from her tears mixes with her magnolia perfume.
Two minutes down the hallway, Dr. Savoie and I walk through the glass-encased bridge connecting the hospital to the next building. I seek out the tops of skyscrapers miles away, eyes full of electric light. I know exactly the path we’re taking.
I could do it blindfolded.
“I know you were getting ready to leave. That’s not lost on me, Pastor, but we have a new resident and she was insistent on talking to you.”
“I understand,” I say and try to smile easy and calming.
The front station, painted in a cheerful light blue, holds two nurses, both of whom glance up at us and quickly return to the paperwork piled up on their respective desks. Walking past the large, ornate, gold lettering of The Lazarus House, pictures of the smiling residents decorate the walls surrounding the sign. Centered below it, a bigger framed picture of myself, the hospital CEO, the mayor and other politicians. All of us smiling, all of us looking like we’re good people, and all of us with secrets we’d love to bury underneath the dirt we ceremoniously dug up with silver shovels. Perhaps we thought building a wing on the hospital as a haven for the elderly would help us barter our way into Heaven and make up for our other shortcomings.
As we come to a room, a woman with dark brown skin and soft wrinkles sits in a chair rocking back and forth. Her face is familiar and in my head. I try to place her: a member from my congregation, one of the people I’ve served meals to at Pacific Garden Mission, someone from the neighborhood.
Who is she?
The radio plays Mahalia Jackson who reverently sings “Lord, Don’t Move the Mountain.” Her voice baptizes the dusty air. Few know this song now. Mom used to sing this when she cooked meals for my dad before he came home from work. The song she hummed the night after the police came to tell her my father, her husband was dead. I still remember the pristine voices of the choir at Calvary Hope Christian Church singing it at his funeral as I bawled on the front row, Lebanon’s arm around my quaking shoulders.
The woman in the chair grins at me like an old friend and I easily reciprocate. I feel at ease in this room with this woman and I don’t know why, but now I want to help her, do whatever it is she asks.
“Pastor Potter, this is Thorolese Myllstone. She said she knows you.”
CHAPTER 13
LAYLA
We’re not going to be at my father’s office long so I don’t turn on the heat. Brown icicles that are my fingers turn on the computer. Elder Alma was here. Dad’s office is only ever this tidy when she cleans it. Otherwise, it’s a manageable disaster. Papers, books and dust.
Tim stands near the door and listens for what I assume is anything unusual. This old place always makes groaning noises, but I’m used to every one. I know every crevice and turn. I don’t even need the lamp to know my way around, but the light is a comfort.
It takes about ten minutes to buy two tickets to Memphis for a morning flight leaving in a few hours from Midway Airport. It takes even less time to email my boss and explain why I need a few days off work for a family emergency. I said I’d need only three days; that I’d be back by Thursday. Take the time you need, Layla, my boss, Veronica, emails me right back.
I pray I’ll be back by Thursday, that Ruby will be okay, that Lebanon will back off and let her be in peace. Me and Ruby could get an apartment together in Beverly or Hyde Park. Argue over which paint goes best on the walls, which couch fits the space. Take walks. Argue some more. Get coffee. Live our lives. Together.
I knew taking time off from work wouldn’t be a challenge. In the nine months I’ve been at Myers & Solomon, I’ve signed new accounts, impressed clients. I’m the first one there, the last one to leave. I prove myself constantly. I have to. What’s the saying? You have to be twice as good to get half as much. I don’t know if that’s even true. I just started working with that mentality and never let up. I swallow the backhanded compliments about how articulate I am, because in the end, most of them mean well, they’re just not experienced with black people, like the people I went to college with, like Christy.
It takes longer for our tickets to Memphis to eke out of the printer than it did for me to purchase them. It’s funny, but I’ve never been in my father’s office without him in it. I never roam around or touch his things. This room is his sacred space, hallowed. I don’t feel completely at ease here, but it’s the only place with a computer and working printer so my options are limited. I sure as hell wasn’t going to buy these at home with Dad breathing down my neck. Next to the computer there’s a yellow pad that has only three lines written on it. He wasn’t “touching up” like he said this morning. He barely started on the damn sermon! My suspicion about Dad is once again correct.
His old Bible, the one in tattered shambles, fastened with duct tape and prayers, sits in the middle of his desk. He’s the only one who touches the ancient, ratty thing. He treats it as part of him. It doesn’t stop me from picking it up and holding it over the garbage can, but my hand still grips it tight and refuses to let it fall.
Tim has that look again, the one he had in the kitchen as I argued with my father, as we exploded at one another.
“I was just kidding.”
“No, you weren’t,” he says.
I put the Bible down just as a piece of paper falls out and onto the ground. An old newspaper clipping along with the paper lie at my feet. Grabbing them, I glance at the dog-eared piece of paper first, and then I focus on the words.
Good Morning Church,
I want to talk to you about two things this morning: Grace and Mercy. How the Lord uses those things to mold us, if we let them.
I’ve spoken about this before. I’ve taken you from the Old Testament to the New. But in all that back and forth, I didn’t want to admit things to myself, didn’t want to disclose things to you all. If you knew me, saints, really knew me, you wouldn’t think me fit to stand up here. You wouldn’t welcome me into your homes; give me your trust like each and every one of you do.
God’s mercy is such that it covers the sins we cannot even speak of, the things we’ve done which we’ve never told our families, things we can’t admit to ourselves. And in that mercy, in the deep and dark, we reach for God and He extends His hand back and pulls us up. God’s mercy and grace sustain us even through our own shortcomings, through this life, and the one that is to come.
Saints, God’s mercy is sufficient as to cover a multitude of sins: lying, bearing false witness, murder. And, I’m ashamed to say I’ve committed each one of these sins. I’ve lied to my church family, but most horrific of all, I’ve lied to my wife and children.
On a cold night in January, there was a boy named Syrus Myllstone.
My eyes blur over the rest of the page.
“...killed Syrus Myllstone”
“...let Lebanon King take the blame”
“...stepping down as Pastor of Calvary Hope immediately”
“I beg forgiveness from not only you, but my loving wife, Joanna, and my chi
ldren, Layla and Jackson Jr....”
The clipping folded within the paper confirms my father’s confession. The words murder, guilty, and the names Lebanon King, Syrus Myllstone and Holden Walters stab the backs of my eyes.
The discovery of this horrid information sets my hands trembling. Tears escape, salty atomic bombs that streak the old ink. Words, once seen, cannot be unseen, and the idea of my father seems as disfigured as the smudged ink of the article.
“What is it?” Tim asks. I pass him the sermon and the article and he reads them.
“Tell me it’s going to be okay!”
“Layla, I—”
“How can I leave now? What am I supposed to do? Turn him in?”
There are no words that will make it alright. There is nothing real and permanent. I poked and prodded and ended up finding out something about Dad, something I could’ve never imagined. If I tell someone, if I speak to the cops, like the ones outside of Ruby’s home, they’ll haul Dad away, from mom and J.P., from Grandma Violet, from me. There’ll be television reports and newspaper articles. Our church would probably never recover from that kind of scandal. My father, the murderer.
Everything is in a thousand pieces and those pieces are shattered into a thousand more.
RUBY
An old man keeps staring at me across the aisle. He’s not dangerous. After living with Lebanon, I know dangerous. This man is just curious—and lonely. We’re making our way out of Illinois. Deep, deep into a rabbit hole to the country and I’m Alice. The one in the book. Not my mother. I’m never her. Not a victim. Not a martyr.
White and green, a highway sign declares the bus has reached Effingham, Illinois. Miles down, on the right shoulder of the highway, a big white cross stands among brown grass, barren trees, concrete and asphalt. It’s one bright thing among dead things.
Three or four people linger below the cross, capturing pictures, instant flashes of light dance around their bodies. An old finger the color of a tree root grazes my shoulder. “It’s a tourist attraction,” the old man offers. “The Effingham Cross, they call it. Supposed to be the biggest cross in the US, I think. Maybe people feel some way bein’ round something so big and godly. Maybe they feel blessed.”
Saving Ruby King Page 21