by Daniel Black
A somber silence settled.
Legion saved the day. “Well, there’s one less tonight!”
The others howled and slapped palms joyfully. From a cardboard box Legion extracted Styrofoam carryout containers and passed them around. They were warm and heavy, and everyone wondered whence they’d come, although no one asked. It would’ve been rude and, anyway, they didn’t care. They simply appreciated the meal and the effort. Even more than before, when they opened the containers their mouths dropped with delight.
“I don’t do nothin’ shabby, baby!” Legion declared. “Only the best for the best!”
Each container held a rib-eye steak, a fully loaded baked potato, semi-cold broccoli, and a dinner roll.
Elisha huffed, “I don’t know how you do it. I just don’t get it.”
“You ain’t got to ‘get it,’ baby. Just enjoy it!”
The Family roared. Like ravenous hyenas, they tore into the precious meal, talking the while about judgmental people and negative energy in the world. Their laughter purified toxic exhaust fumes from above and cured Lazarus’s worry that, by being among them, he’d done the wrong thing. All he’d wanted was to know life—uncluttered, unadorned, unmasked—but it had cost dearly. That’s what had touched him about those caged black men. The longing in their weary eyes. Their search for a world, a home, where they were welcomed and assumed righteous. Where others knew they didn’t take and rob because they were thieves but because someone had stolen their inheritance. Instinctively they knew their birthright had been auctioned away. Yet they refused to believe they were nothing. In their souls, they knew God had granted them (and every man) the right to shape their own destinies. Their real crime was believing they, too, were the sons of God. And for that presupposition America had made them pay. If they had only believed they were inferior, if they only could have swallowed the myth of their futility, they could’ve been free.
Elisha relaxed and gave thanks for the opportunity to cover Lazarus. It had pained Elisha at first, he had to admit, to sell everything his mother left behind, but now, staring at the man who’d fed him one starving Thanksgiving Day, he knew he’d done the right thing. There was nothing left to secure his future, no past he cared to remember, so he’d learned to live in the present. Tomorrows became unforeseen glories, unanticipated wonders, for which he was always grateful but never expectant. He’d traded tomorrow for the guarantees of today, so with each setting sun he believed he and God were even. When, in radiant splendor, the sun rose again and teased his soul awake, Elisha laughed at the mockery of God’s consistency. Each living day became an adventure, the end of a contractual agreement between mortal and immortal, so Elisha loved and gave until, at night, he closed his eyes, sure that he’d seen the beauty of God’s daily display. Elisha liked life this way. Disappointments were rare when one surrendered expectations, so he learned to live without them. Whatever happened while the sun glared from above was all Elisha cared about. Hope became a distant thing, a mere theoretical notion, which sounded good but hardly delivered. Elisha was glad to let it go. He felt lighter, freer, clearer that, at some point, a man negotiates for the peace of life he can handle. The other pieces belong to another more or less bold soul who, out of circumstances, decides to live in the now or the yesterday or the tomorrow. Elisha settled for the now, and suddenly each day became a tapestry of wonder and possibility. It was enough for him. The future belonged to someone else.
Like Cinderella. All her life she’d envisioned herself as beautiful, the dream of a prince who’d trade his entire kingdom for her hand. Lost in Jane Eyre and Louisa May Alcott novels, she’d spent her teenage years constructing a future of elaborate ball gowns and magical castles set in verdant fields of lavender and yellow wildflowers. Like those on the scarf. Each day of Lazarus’s bondage she toyed with the fragile cloth, having made it a memento of a time that had never come. Some days she unfolded it delicately, as if it might fall apart, and spread it upon the center of Lazarus’s bed, rubbing it ever so gently and dreaming, once again, of herself as a romance novel’s heroine. The prince was never black in those books, but he could be, she decided, at least in her fantasy, so she lay next to the scarf, fingering it as she might Lazarus’s hairy chest, and wept occasionally for the life she’d never have. Her stepfather had called her a whore at twelve, and that was the only prophecy that had come true. Yet she still believed in dreams. That’s why she kept the shoes. The day would come when she’d ride in a beautiful carriage and onlookers would wave with awe and envy. She’d be headed to the great coronation where she and her prince would be crowned sovereign rulers of a kingdom—king and queen of an age of peace and harmony. It would come. Someday, somehow, it would come. As long as she believed.
And she did believe. Even as a rotten-toothed vagrant, she believed. On rainy days, when travel was stymied, she played dress up beneath the freeway, exchanging one worn outfit for another, dancing, ballroom-style, with an invisible beau her mother would’ve approved of. Cinderella even lifted and pinned her limp, scraggly hair eighteenth-century bouffant style, with strands hanging from the right and left temples, and, if she had it, she applied lipstick of any color and enough sky-blue eye shadow to make others retreat in fright. Yet, in her mind’s eye, her real dwelling place, she was the epitome of loveliness, the keeper of womanly beauty and splendor. No one could tell her otherwise. The red shoes reinforced the fantasy, sparkling now just as the day she’d received them, and deep in her heart she awaited the moment the world stood still to honor her. Whether there’d be a ball she wasn’t sure, but there’d most certainly be a moment, and tomorrow or in the next millennium she’d be exalted and take her rightful throne. It didn’t matter that others didn’t believe. Or that she was older than most beauty queens. It only mattered that she believed and as long as she believed, life rewarded her with newfound joy each day.
The past, however, belonged to Legion. E’d wondered, all es life, not about es future but about es conception. What was God thinking? What had been the plan? How do you put two people into one flesh? E’d never been angry with God about it; e’d simply been unable to figure out God’s motive. Weirdo, freak, faggot, punk, sissy, queer … e’d heard it all but nothing explained who e was. Or what e was. That’s what e wanted to know. There had to have been a plan, some idea God had about es life and its mission. There had to have been a hope in God’s heart that perhaps someone so different could do a very different thing, that someone so strange might alter the course of the universe in some unimaginable, unthinkable way. But what was it? It had to have been something. Legion refused to believe es construction a joke, a heavenly prank, a divine sarcasm for all the world to see. God wasn’t so cruel as to enjoy such mockery, was He?
Of course not. So Legion spent innumerable hours, sometimes days, running scenarios of God’s original intent yet still unable to conceive something absolute. The scenarios let Legion re-create emself—or at least ponder multiple selves—until the day, finally, when God surrendered and answered es questions directly. Having been forced into Sunday school, e remembered the story of the world’s beginning, how God spoke everything into existence—trees, animals, a firmament in the midst of the waters—but e always believed people misread the text. At least the other part of the text. The part where God created man and woman. As a child, Legion knew of es difference. Es father never let em forget it. But e recalled Reverend Proctor reading the first chapter of Genesis, and, as a kid, e thought the scripture was about em: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Couldn’t them be one person? Couldn’t God have put His own image, the totality of God’s self, into one being? Like Legion? Then, later, when this being sinned, the selves were separated, divided, estranged forever. But in the beginning, they might’ve been one. In the same flesh. Male and female together. There could’ve been one creation, one perfect self, and Legion considered that perhaps, in em, God had sent humans a reminder of what they�
�d once been. Yet when, with unbridled excitement, Legion posed the possibility to es father, a quick backhand made Legion know es daddy didn’t agree. Or even appreciate the idea. So Legion never mentioned it again. But e never forgot it, either. It was one clue, one precious hint, to the puzzle of es existence. If only e could find other pieces. Legion read the rest of the Bible, in es teenage years, after having been put out by both a father and an aunt, but nothing complemented the Genesis account. And after God failed to testify on Legion’s behalf, to tell es father—indeed the world!—that e’d been sent holy and complete, Legion stopped searching. But e always knew, deep in the recesses of es being, that e was special. E just couldn’t figure out why God wouldn’t admit it.
Only The Comforter traversed Time. They had once been lovers, she and Time—beautiful, intimate, personal companions—who bore nakedness and vulnerability unashamed. On any given day, The Comforter dwelled deep in the past or the faraway future, beholding things and people who explained what the present cannot. The relationship was difficult to sustain, however, because Time was insensitive. It didn’t care what The Comforter felt; it was committed simply to observations and revelations. Its real love was Truth, and, once she discovered this, The Comforter surrendered and said they could be friends. Time agreed. Since then, they’d all become companions—Time, The Comforter, Truth—and whenever one had a need the others shifted heaven and earth to meet it. Like the time, at thirteen, The Comforter found herself pregnant. She knew the moment it happened, the instant life attached itself to her life, and fear consumed her like a fever. Her mother’s disappointment would’ve been unbearable, so she never told her. Her father was nowhere to be found. At thirteen she owned nothing, not even her own thoughts, so she knew the baby couldn’t come. She loved it in her heart, more than anything she’d ever known, but she couldn’t keep it. There was no way. She’d been foolish to invite it, she knew, so the pain of sending it back was hers alone to bear. The boy, hardly a year older than she, never knew. He was kind and timid, sweet in his own way. They’d been playing tag in the empty lot between their dilapidated houses, and during one run, boy chased girl behind the house and, when he caught her, he touched her shoulder sensually and the girl looked into his eyes and asked for more and he consented. She’d never felt a boy’s touch before. Now she couldn’t get enough of it. Within seconds, he was inside her, though not aggressively like some bestial thing. Rather, only at her request did he move deeper, deeper toward her center, as her thick, heavy breathing confirmed his righteousness. At the end, she whispered, “Thank you”—not for the sex but the touch. Now she knew its power, its summoning ability, and she also knew she’d conceived something she couldn’t keep.
Time nurtured her. Truth, however, lacked sympathy. You should’ve known better, Truth said. But she didn’t. She’d spent a childhood being sheltered, which bred in her an insatiable desire to know herself. Yes, she’d asked the boy next door to touch her and of course he obliged. She didn’t know he would plant seeds within her that would bloom without permission. He didn’t know, either. She could tell from his naïve expression when seeds burst forth, rushing to fertile soil. He almost apologized—he did so with his eyes—but he didn’t know what he’d done. She discovered it six weeks later and asked Time to undo the act, to return the child to the Land of Souls. At first Time seemed reluctant, but then it consented. Cramping and bleeding accompanied the transition, but Glory B had no right to wail, she believed, since she’d done a very unwise thing. Still, she never forgot the life within her life, and she promised one day to invite her daughter back. It had been a girl; Glory B had seen her in a dream. And now, as an adult, Glory B saw her again sometimes, smiling and skipping among the clouds, waiting to return. There was no regret. No blame. No sorrow. Only anticipation of a Time-promised, Truth-confirmed reunion.
Chapter 29
Once meals were consumed, Lazarus wiped his mouth with his right palm and said, “We got a long way to go, y’all. This is only the beginning. I’m out, but I’m not free. Not yet. I might not ever be.”
They nodded.
“We have to believe!” The Comforter said. “The last word is never a human word. Never! Let Spirit speak!”
The Family grunted. They tried to conceal doubt behind silence, but in wayward eyes doubt moved about, cloudy and unsure. Even in the dark it was visible, shifting to and fro, causing one to blink repeatedly and another to stare into the purple distance. They wanted to believe, to mirror The Comforter’s confidence, yet limited to one realm alone they didn’t know what she knew. They knew only what they knew, so they fought to trust her completely. Some won; some didn’t.
* * *
“I gotta meet the lawyer in the morning. Trial’s in six weeks.”
“Six weeks?” Legion blurted. “So soon?”
“High-profile case. That’s what they said. Normally it wouldn’t happen before six months, but this case isn’t normal.”
“No, it’s not,” Cinderella muttered.
Sympathy and sorrow laced her voice. Her and Lazarus’s eyes met briefly, long enough to reignite feelings smoldering in her heart.
“They wanna charge somebody quickly and bring this case to a close. That’s what my lawyer said. Show America its system of justice works.”
“But it doesn’t!” Legion protested.
“Doesn’t matter. They need to act like it does.”
The Comforter lifted her hands, feeling the energy in the air. Something was coming. She sensed it. The wind confirmed it.
Cinderella asked, “Any leads yet?”
“No. Nothing,” Lazarus said.
The blare of a siren drowned their voices. Afterwards, with squinted eyes, Elisha declared, “We’re missing something.”
The Comforter nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s right.”
Each rummaged memories for something ignored, abandoned, forsaken, yet there were no revelations.
Joining hands, The Family stood in The Upper Room and, one by one, offered prayers of thanks. More than usual, each pleaded with God to lead them, keep them, and protect them from harm. Legion asked for sight and clarity, even if it cost es life. Truth was it already had.
When Lazarus awoke the following morning, everyone was gone. It was as though, overnight, they’d been caught up in the rapture. The world was still, quiet, pensive. It frightened him initially, such ubiquitous silence, but then he saw a rat dart into the sewer and knew the apocalypse had not come. Perhaps The Family had left in order that his sleep might go uninterrupted. Whatever the reason, he couldn’t consider it now. He had to meet his lawyer and devise a way to save his life.
Cloaked in the only good clothes he had—semi-used brown slacks and a yellow and white pin-striped shirt—he marched downtown from The Upper Room like a real American citizen, as if his homelessness had been a mere social experiment from which he’d been released. Yet his shoes and hair gave him away. No self-respecting resident walked about with crusty toes protruding from dilapidated brogans and dreadlocks swinging in fountains of nappy disobedience. Still, his aim had been the look of confidence, even if he wasn’t, and he felt as if his goal had been achieved. “Sometimes you have to will a thing into existence,” his mother used to say. “Don’t wait for it to come to you. Go get it.” Lazarus hoped he was doing precisely that.
Approaching the corner of Peachtree and Eighth, Lazarus paused, winded. The appointment was for 8:00 A.M., and he didn’t want to be late. The office was three blocks away, so if he persevered swiftly he’d be on time. Sweat had not begun to roll, but it had gathered at his forehead and armpits, so Lazarus exhaled repeatedly, trying to cool his body temperature so as not to enter the office disheveled. Yes, he was homeless, but he didn’t want to seem so.
“Mr. Aaron Freeman, please,” Lazarus announced at the security desk. The officer frowned, not because he hadn’t heard him clearly but because Lazarus’s articulation contradicted his appearance. So Lazarus repeated himself, overenunciating every syl
lable, mocking with joy the man’s insulting assumption.
The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Third floor. Room fifteen.”
“Thank you,” Lazarus sneered, and smiled. “And might your day be bless-ed.”
At room fifteen he knocked lightly.
“Come in.”
Aaron was semi-distracted with a client on the phone. Aaron’s lifted index finger pardoned him and pointed for Lazarus to have a seat.
The office felt cold and official. Legal documents lay about in no particular order, and the smell of expensive coffee made Lazarus believe Aaron had probably been there all night. His baby-blue and white paisley tie was loosened, complementing a navy-blue pin-striped suit. Fatigue reclined in his eyes. They sagged slightly, those big brown puppy dog eyes, as if, overnight, he’d lost weight. Yet his countenance sparkled like a dazzling stone. Lazarus wondered if this was Aaron’s natural exuberance or if, this morning, some prescription might’ve helped.
Minutes later, Aaron said, “Okay … right … sounds good.… Let’s touch base again in a day or two … can that work?…” (Long pause.) “Good, good … talk to you later.” Then he pressed “end” on his iPhone and sighed. “All right, Mr. Lazarus. I’m all yours. Let’s get to work.”
From beneath a pile of papers he extracted a yellow eleven-by-fourteen legal pad, and prepared to write. Suddenly he laid the pen down and grabbed his coffee mug, swallowing its last bit of vigor.
“You a coffee man?”
“Nope. Never have been.”
“Well, I am. Most days it’s about all I get.”
Aaron chuckled. After setting the coffeemaker to brew another batch, he resumed his seat and continued, “This isn’t going to be easy. They have a dead body, an assumed motive, and the best lawyers in the country. But I still think we can beat it. We just have to put our heads together and come up with something.”