by Daniel Black
The man calmed. “What’s my name?”
“Huh?”
“My name. Do you know my name?”
Legion searched the far corners of his brain but found nothing.
“Aaron. If you wanna know.” He sighed. “I know yours. At least I cared enough to ask.”
“I cared, too. That was the problem. I just couldn’t”—Legion huffed—“let you love me.”
“Why not? Was there someone else? I mean, come on, man! I risked everything to spend time with you. Don’t I deserve to know something?”
“You do.” Legion almost blurted the truth but quickly bridled es tongue. “I just don’t have anything else to say about it. Except that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am.”
“Is there something I don’t know?”
Legion wanted so badly to trust him. And emself. “Yes. There is.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble or something?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what is it?”
Their eyes met.
“Just trust me. Please. I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved you. It just wouldn’t work. But it hurts so bad.”
Aaron touched Legion’s hand again. “I would’ve given her up for you. I’m telling you I would’ve.”
“But you didn’t know me! How can you say that?”
“I know what I felt when we were together.”
The feeling returned, like a sudden breeze. Legion’s only hope was to change the subject. “Did you marry her?”
Aaron nodded. “Yep.”
“Are you happy?” Legion hated the question once he asked it.
“I suppose so. She’s a good woman.”
Legion nodded. “Good for you. Good for her.”
“Yeah. Yippee.” Aaron twirled his right index finger in the air.
“Listen, I know I don’t have the right to ask this, but I need your help.”
Aaron laughed. “Wow. Just like that. You blow me off and ask for my help?”
“I didn’t blow you off. I just … can’t tell you everything. But I need you. This is important. Really important.”
Aaron sighed.
“It’s about my father. He’s in trouble.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. That’s the point. He was accused of something he didn’t do, but they arrested him anyway.”
“Where? Here in Atlanta?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he accused of?”
Legion paused, afraid to tell the truth. “Murder.”
Aaron’s eyes bulged. “What? Murder?”
“Yeah. They accused him of murdering that rich white lady in Buckhead.”
“What! The Dupont woman?”
“Yeah. That’s her.”
“Why would they accuse him? Did he know her?”
“Well, sort of. It’s a long story. But right now, he needs some help. Some legal help.”
Aaron shook his head, then said, “I’m sorry, man, but I can’t help you. We’re overwhelmed at the office right now, and I can’t take another case.”
“He needs someone. Someone really good. He’s in bad trouble. I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”
“You know what I want.”
Legion shuddered. “I know. But you’re married now.” It was the best e could think to say.
“Meet me here again tomorrow night and I’ll give you my answer. If you don’t come—”
“I’ll be here.” Legion cracked the door to leave.
“Do you need anything else?” Aaron mumbled.
E did. The Family did. But e didn’t want to do it. Not tonight. Still, e slammed the door and lowered es head. Es feelings were not the point. It was what the others needed. It was always what someone else needed. E hated being a trash receptacle, a living container for others’ meaningless, momentary pleasures, but if it had to be, it had to be.
When Aaron was satisfied, he presented forty dollars and said, “I’m not paying you for this. You know that, right? We’re just helping each other out.”
Legion nodded and rammed the twenties into es back pant pocket. After exiting the car, e mumbled, “Thank you,” then vomited across the sidewalk as the Mercedes disappeared into the night.
Chapter 13
At sunrise, wrapped in a dirty white shawl of mourning, The Comforter sat facing east atop a hill in Piedmont Park. Rays of sun warmed her troubled face as she attempted, once again, to hear the voice of God. But she heard nothing. It had been a long time since their exchange felt so one-sided, as if God were angry and pouting. She passed the night staring at stars, sure that the answer for Lazarus lay encrypted among them, yet there had been no revelation. Clouds shifted occasionally, blocking, from time to time, the stars’ brilliant glow, and by dawn The Comforter knew God wasn’t going to help her. She would have to conceive this one herself; nothing was ready-made. She’d gone to the zoo as an act of initiation and she’d have to go again, but at least now she knew there was nothing to find among the stars, nothing to discover, nothing to be revealed. Her task was to create, to read the signs, to interpret the wind, to extract understanding from a merger of variables that, under normal circumstances, made no sense. The last time she’d been left to her own devices, her brother lay on his deathbed. He was seventeen, she was twelve. She prayed, but the heavens went mute. Then she figured it out. As soon as she stopped asking for a miracle, she was able to invent one—and her brother rose with no traces of illness. She’d have to do it again, she presumed, without knowing exactly what, this time, she should do.
None of this, however, diminished her faith. She knew who she was. She’d been The Comforter all her life, even as a child, weeping with adults in the midst of loss and rubbing bellies of beasts panting and dying on the roadside. Others’ pain nourished her, not because she enjoyed it, but because it revealed her significance. She’d been a strange child, her mother had said, one who spoke so rarely others thought her deaf and dumb. Truth was, she saw and heard things invisible and inaudible. She spoke of communion with relatives long dead, and hugged anyone who would allow her. Anyone. Anytime. Sometimes, from the kitchen window, her mother watched her embrace trees like real people. She spoke to them and from her vocal inflections they seemed to speak back. One rainy afternoon, she announced their names. They all had names, she said. Some were older than others, but none were nameless. Her mother said nothing. She stared at this child she had borne, shaking her head slightly, wondering where she’d come from. If she’d have asked, the child would’ve told her.
She’d named her Gloria Patri—they called her Glory B—because the child’s birth had been unusually quick, just as she’d hoped. Water gushed between her legs at midnight, and by 1:00 A.M. the pretty little girl lay suckling as if starving. She seemed in a hurry to arrive, so her mother welcomed her and vowed to let her be. Each Sunday, at Christ Temple AME Church, her child’s name rang throughout the sanctuary as the pipe organ lifted it higher, higher until she knew God had sent something marvelous.
Now little Glory B stood before the living room window, introducing her mother to friends and life-forms she’d never considered.
“That one’s Majesty,” she said, pointing to a tall evergreen. “She’s pretty old, but not that old.”
Her mother chuckled.
“That one’s Princess.” She waved enthusiastically to a trusted comrade and playmate. “She’s the biggest, but not the oldest.”
Rain blurred their vision, but Glory B continued.
“The little one over there by the streets is Dawn. She’s pretty shy. She’s the youngest. She’s afraid of the dark, but she loves the morning.”
Glory B spoke of birds she knew personally and ants she’d fed for years. She’d run a mean squirrel out of the yard weeks ago and forbidden his return, she boasted. Her mother listened attentively, praying for a clue as to what to do with this child. Glory B turned and hugged her, and energy like a fever consumed them both. She
would never know fully the child she’d birthed, but the name she’d given made the angels sing.
Glory B’s mother told her, at seven, that she was The Comforter of the world, sent to love people’s wounds away. She smiled and nodded, believing her mother’s mantra: I wouldn’t never lie to you. Her father’s word was far less reliable—he’d meant well, but, without a father of his own, he hadn’t done well—so her mother alone had loved and affirmed her bizarre behavior long before anyone else discovered it. Each time she praised her daughter’s spiritual traits, which only God and she admired, the child’s confidence grew until, within her heart, Glory B knew she’d been sent by The True and Living God to mend a broken world. Her desire was to repair what others carelessly trampled. Born in Detroit’s poor district, she’d groomed no dreams of husbands or children or riches. She wanted no relics of this realm. Every earthly thing she’d ever known was ragged or dilapidated or secondhand, so she built her hopes on things unseen. Her mother sent her, at eighteen, to care for an ailing aunt in northwest Atlanta who was too sick to care about a teenager’s development. But the aunt loved Glory B and appreciated her efforts. She called her The Comforter, as her mother had prophesied years before, and Glory B took the name as a descriptor of her function on earth. So The Comforter cooked and cleaned until the day her aunt passed away. She’d enrolled in school—North Atlanta High School—but had never gone, and when the aunt died The Comforter thought she’d have a decent living from the woman’s insurance policy. Come to find out, though, she’d left everything to a no-count son no one knew about. He resurfaced, of course, to collect his inheritance, although he missed the funeral, and within six months he was as destitute as ever. Without The Comforter’s knowledge, he sold the house for cash, leaving her surprised when a white couple arrived one day with all their belongings. They gave her a week to get out, and with nowhere to go, she ended up at the homeless shelter in the West End. It wasn’t so bad, she thought. At least she was dry when it rained.
Now, some twenty years later, she found her spiritual family, her real family, and sought to help them however and whenever she could. The day she arrived, her warm embrace massaged every soul and she knew she was home. She’d spent years trying to make a life, begging schools to take her although she had no record of academic achievement—she loved knowledge, not homework—and working one menial job or another, though never making ends meet. Even cheap apartments wanted first month, last month, and security deposits, which, if she’d paid, would’ve left her with nothing. She learned firsthand why Jesus had said, “The poor will be with you always.” He was right. So The Comforter quit the game and decided simply to live. There was always a shelter here, a bridge there, that would take her, and once she learned the rhythm of the streets, where to find food and warmth in winter, she settled into a life more glorious than any she’d had. Truth was, they needed her, people of the street, because many carried trampled hearts they could not heal. She worked overtime most days, rebuilding people’s self-worth and teaching them how not to measure success in material terms. That’s why she understood Lazarus so deeply. He’d wanted release from the fangs of financial fortune, and, though it had cost him dearly, he’d chosen life over death. Now Death sought its revenge, but The Comforter was prepared, with all her might, to send Death back to its place of darkness.
“It can’t end this way. Not now.” Her head rotated, east to west. “He’s all we have. We need him. And he’s one of yours.” She frowned at the sky. “Send me an answer or at least a sign. I’ll do whatever you say.” She studied the tops of trees and saw robins at play. “Sing me a melody, Great Winged Ones, to calm my anxious heart.” Her hands anointed her chest. She hadn’t cried in years, but she felt it coming. In the distance, she beheld a small boy and a dog. She smiled. Perhaps his innocence would never end, she thought. Perhaps that tall white man near him had fixed his life to avoid setbacks and traumas. Isn’t that what daddies do? Especially white ones?
She rose and made her way to the zoo. It didn’t open until nine, so she reclined for two hours beneath a congregation of dogwood trees in nearby Grant Park. She dozed and awoke just after nine thirty. As she approached the entrance, she joined a line of anxious children waiting to tease and gawk at animals they’d only read about. Her shawl usually made others avoid her, yet now she wanted to blend in, to conform to the world so that her motive might go undetected. So she lowered the wrap to her waist and tied it there, creating a white sash that complimented her pastel skirt and pink, soiled blouse. Her shoes were tattered black boots—holes in the sides, scuffmarks galore—but she hoped no one would notice. Unlike other indigents, The Comforter knew how to become all things to all men, to speak with tones and syntax public officials respected, then, seconds later, rejoin vagabonds as if she were one of them. Which, of course, she was.
The zoo attendant’s smile solicited her own, and, after paying her last twenty dollars, she glided through the entrance. There would be a revelation today, she believed. The animals would tell her. They knew things. They sensed things. Ancient cultures taught that animals held secrets to human life, and not just human life, but abundant life, and if humans could humble themselves and listen to animals they could prosper. Animals have extrasensory perception, The Comforter believed, and thus could tell the future. And that’s precisely what she needed to know.
She consulted monkeys first. They pounced about energetically, though frustrated, it seemed, to be caged at all. They swung from tree limbs and other makeshift structures until The Comforter whistled and gathered their attention. A few stopped and stared. She tried, with all her might, to read their eyes, to listen to what they might say, but she heard nothing. One large female sauntered over to the gate and looked as if she might speak, but suddenly, when other viewers approached, she turned away. The Comforter moved on.
Lions and tigers lounged in abject silence. The Comforter pleaded her case, but the massive felines lay about, without care or concern for Lazarus’s cause.
Pink flamingos, however, elicited hope. They rushed to the fence, yelping excitedly, Don’t give up! It will be worth it all! Fight on! She heard it clear as her own voice. It was soprano squawking, brash and bold, full of optimism and assurance. Deep, dark, penetrating eyes, like black marbles, lured her into their world as flamingos chirped and fluttered frantically. They knew her. They recognized her. They felt her spirit. They sympathized with those like her who desired to but could not fly. She nodded. These were her people, her soul mates. They saw what others missed. Their lives were governed by perspective, by the big picture, and hence mundane things did not confound them. Theirs were God’s eyes, moving to and fro unobstructed, seeing both the wonder and woes of an imperfect world. Perhaps, The Comforter considered, their willingness to share was their cry for release, their hope for freedom from the bondage of human captivity. The more she stared, the louder they screeched until thousands of long, flappy tongues encouraged her onward. One promised she’d win, another that her faith would not return void. A third said The Family would be sustained. That’s what she needed to hear—that whatever she tried would work. The chaos of voices now soothed her consciousness and confirmed why she’d come. Her spirit heard every ululation and gained strength to continue believing—mostly in herself. Involuntarily, she clutched the wire cage and melted to the ground as love issued from her heart. One might’ve thought her ill or deranged, but The Comforter had discovered what the ancients knew: Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Human and beast alike. Soon the flamingos quieted, and she gave thanks, waving sweetly as she walked away.
The zoo buzzed with excitement. Vendors sold hot dogs and hamburgers for outrageous prices, and children laughed and screamed about their exotic experiences. The Comforter sat at the edge of things, in an aluminum chair resting before a small, rectangular plastic white table, and let her appetite take shape. Eating only once a day, she’d learned to limit portions and desires such that, most times, her spirit fed her when the
world would not. But today her body yearned for physical nourishment, the call of a heightened animal instinct, and she didn’t fight it. Yet with no money, she didn’t know how to satisfy it, either.
The answer came when a large group of children rose to leave the food court. Their chaperones beckoned them at once, reminding them to tidy areas and empty trays. The Comforter noticed untouched burgers and fries headed to the trash, so she intercepted red plastic trays, presumably as an act of public service, and clandestinely syphoned food into hidden places beneath her shawl. Later, lounging on a shaded bench, she ate in sublime peace. That children were allowed to waste food and, by extension, money troubled her and made it impossible to imagine a healthy, honorable nation. The distinction between blessed and spoiled blurred in her mind, and she wondered when God was going to take from the rich and give to the poor. Or if God were going to do it at all.
A frail but ebullient child of no more than eight assumed the bench next to The Comforter and said innocuously, “Hello.” Full-bodied blond hair danced in a ponytail at the crown of her head, and bangs that practically touched her brows shifted every time she blinked. It was the child’s bulbous eyes, beaming from her head like headlights, that caught The Comforter’s attention, so she swiveled and said sweetly, “Hello to you.”
The girl smiled. “I just saw the lions. I like lions. Did you ever see The Lion King?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”
She frowned. “You never saw The Lion King? Everybody’s seen The Lion King.”
“Well, I haven’t. Sorry.”
“Where do you live?” She peered deep into The Comforter’s eyes.
“Pretty close to here, actually.”
“Where exactly?”
She hesitated. “Downtown.”
“In an apartment? My uncle lives in an apartment. He’s in a band.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am. He sings, too. My mom doesn’t like his music, though. She says it’s not wholesome.”
The Comforter cackled.