Just Gone

by William Kowalski

  I’d always thought that when it was my time I would go peacefully. Death was part of God’s plan, and I didn’t feel it was my right to fight against that. But in the end I didn’t feel ready to leave, either. So I told him, “Go ahead, do what you can. Any time I have left, I will give to the children of this city.”

  I went under the knife. When I woke up, there was less of me.

  I was at home for a long time afterward. Recuperating, they call it. Getting better. A young nurse came by every day to check on me. Mostly I just slept. I could barely get out of bed in the morning.

  Going to the shelter was out of the question. I was angry at myself for being so weak. Why had I bothered to let them save me if I was going to spend the rest of my days in bed? I had to admit it was my own fear that made me want to keep living. I was ashamed of myself, I truly was. My life was a beautiful gift. I always knew it was not mine to keep forever. And here I was clinging to it like a jealous little girl, not wanting to let go. Had I learned nothing?

  It’s true what they say. We come into this world toothless, blind and scared, and we leave it the same way. If we’re lucky.

  One night, late, I heard sirens. That’s nothing new around here. But they stopped just a few blocks away. I can tell the difference between fire trucks, police cars and ambulances. These were fire trucks. Outside the window, the sky was red. Something close by was burning.

  I put on my coat and went out into the street. People were running. I could only manage a slow walk. But I forced my feet to keep going. I knew it had to be the shelter. I just had a feeling.

  I was right. When I got there, it was in flames. There was a crowd in the street. Every person in the neighborhood was there. I had always had a hard time getting volunteers to help out at the shelter. But when it came time to watch it burn to the ground, there was no lack of people to watch.

  I got as close as I could. Linda Mae Johnson ran the place now. I looked around for her. She recognized me first and came running over.

  “Oh, Mother, it’s terrible,” she said. “Must have been that old wiring. By the time the firefighters got here, it was already too late.”

  “Where are the children?” I asked. “Are they safe?”

  “I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I looked for them before I ran out. But I couldn’t see them.”

  “Girl, what are you saying? Are they still trapped inside?”

  “No, Mother. They’re gone.”

  “How many were there tonight?”

  “Ten,” she said.

  “What about their mothers?”

  “There was only one had a mother,” she said. “The rest were on their own.”

  “But where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Linda Mae cried.

  I could hear the sound of a woman screaming then. I stepped over the hoses and past the firemen until I found her.

  “Where is my baby?” she cried. “Where is he? Someone took him!”

  “Now, sweetheart,” I said, “what are you talking about?”

  “I woke up and saw the flames,” she said. “I could see a man taking the children out. They were all following him. I tried to catch up, but they were just gone. He had my baby in his arms!”

  “What man?” a policeman asked her. “Can you give me a description?”

  “He wore these raggedy old clothes, and he had a floppy hat on,” said the woman. “He took them all! He kidnapped them!”

  A fireman came up to the police officer. He was covered in soot and breathing hard.

  “There’s no one left inside,” he said. “We looked everywhere.”

  “Then what happened to those kids?” the police officer said.

  At that moment there was a great roar, and the roof of the shelter fell in. A shower of sparks exploded up toward heaven. I could see the flames reflected in the clouds. It looked like Judgment Day.

  “I know where they are,” I said.

  The policeman looked at me strangely.

  “And who are you, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Never mind that,” I said. “I need to talk to Sergeant Kosinski.”

  “Sergeant Kosinski is not here,” said the policeman. “He’s probably home in bed.”

  “Wake him up,” I said. “I need to talk to him. Tell him it’s Mother Angelique. He’ll come.”

  The cop looked at Linda Mae.

  “You’d better take your mother home,” he told her. “She’s not well.”

  “She’s not my mother, exactly,” said Linda Mae. “She’s more like everyone’s mother.”

  “I know where those children are,” I insisted. “Get me Sergeant Kosinski.”

  “All right, all right,” the cop said. He spoke into his radio.

  “Don’t you worry, daughter,” I told the upset young woman. “Your baby is safe. Someone is watching over him.”

  “Why did he take him from me?” she screamed. “Why?”

  I knew the answer to that, but I didn’t tell her. I knew if I looked at this young woman closely, I would see the signs. Maybe it was the needle. Maybe it was the pipe. Maybe there was a darkness inside her that only the man in the hat could see.

  “His will be done,” I told her. “Have faith. All will be well.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. Few like her ever do, it seems.

  “Ma’am, if you know where those children are, you’d better tell me right now,” said the young policeman.

  So I told him.

  And then I went back home and waited. I sat in my chair by my electric heater, and I watched the sun come up. Soon, I thought, I will meet him. The man I had waited my whole life to meet. The good man I thought I would never find.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was some hours later when my phone finally rang.

  “Hello, Sergeant Kosinski,” I said.

  “How did you know it was me, Mother?”

  “I know everything,” I told him. I decided not to tell him I had caller id now. When someone thinks you have special powers, it’s best to let them go on thinking that. “Did you find the children?”

  “Yes, we found them.”

  “Where were they?”

  “In the board-ups. Right where you said they would be. How did you know, Mother?”

  “I have my ways, Sergeant. Are they all right?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “Thank God for that.” And then I waited to hear what else he had to tell me.

  “There was someone with them, Mother,” said the sergeant. “A man. A very strange man. He was pretty badly burned. He’s in the hospital now, asking for you.”

  “Asking for me? I’ll be right over.”

  “How are you going to get there?”

  “Same way I’ve gotten around my whole life,” I said. “My own two feet.”

  “You just wait right there, Mother,” said Sergeant Kosinski. “I’ll send a car for you.”

  I guess old age does have its privileges after all. I rode to the hospital in style, in the front seat of a police car. Sergeant Kosinski was waiting for me in the lobby.

  I had not seen him in some years. He was younger than me, but not by much. Once he had been a strapping young man, six feet tall with blond hair. But time works the same magic on all of us. Now the sergeant had snow on the roof, and his face was worn with care.

  We looked at each other and smiled. Just two old warriors near the end of the battle, wondering if they had managed to do any good in the world.

  “You’re looking well, Mother,” said Sergeant Kosinski.

  “None of your sweet talk, now,” I said. “Take me to him.”

  “Right this way,” he said. He led me to the elevator. Then he walked me down a long hallway. Another policeman was standing guard over a room. We went in.

  A man lay in bed, covered in bandages and wearing a hospital gown. My eyes had started to get bad by then. I could not see his face clearly. I needed to get closer.

  “Can he hear anything?” I asked the nu
rse.

  “He’s in and out,” she said. “Don’t talk to him too long.”

  “He was wearing some old clothes when we found him,” said Sergeant Kosinski. “He must be a bum or a homeless guy.”

  “He’s not homeless,” I said.

  “Do you know him, Mother?”

  “I know of him. And I think he knows of me.”

  “He was in the board-ups with the children, just like you said. We thought he kidnapped them. But the kids said he was only feeding them.”

  “Did he have anything with him?” I asked.

  “Like what?” Sergeant Kosinski asked.

  “Like a couple of beat-up old suitcases,” I said. “One black, one white.”

  A strange look came over Sergeant Kosinski’s face then. He went out for a moment. When he came back in, he had a suitcase in each hand. He set them down on the floor.

  “This one,” he said, opening the white case, “was full of canned food. The kids were all eating when we came in.”

  “I see,” I said. “And what about that one?”

  “The black one? There’s nothing inside,” Sergeant Kosinski told me. He made a move to open it, but I stopped him.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

  “But Mother, there’s nothing in it,” he said.

  “That’s what you think,” I told him. “Some things cannot be seen with the eyes, but they’re there all the same.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Sergeant Kosinski.

  “Do you go to church?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Every Sunday.”

  “Then you know just what I mean,” I said.

  Sergeant Kosinski shook his head.

  I came closer to the bed and looked at the face of the man who lay in it. I had not seen him in many years, but I knew from the old rat bite on his cheek who he was. For a moment, time played a trick on me. I imagined he was still that same sweet little boy, glowing with light.

  “Jamal?” I said. “It’s Mother Angelique.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jamal moaned softly. He turned his head and looked at me. His eyelids fluttered.

  “Mother,” he said. “That you?”

  I didn’t know whether he meant me or his real mother. I took his hand.

  “It’s Mother Angelique, Jamal,” I said. “You remember me? You came to me when you were just a little boy. You were wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and some ratty old sneakers. I gave you a shirt that had number eleven on it. You remember?”

  Thirty years had gone by since those kids had walked into my shelter for the first time. But I knew he remembered. He smiled—or tried to.

  “I remember,” he said. “I never forgot you.”

  “I’m so sorry things didn’t work out with Mrs. Mingus,” I told him. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know she was so mean. I hope you can forgive me.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. He squeezed my hand. That was all the answer I needed.

  “Jamal, I looked everywhere for you. You were just gone. I was afraid you were dead.”

  “I was with him,” he said.

  “With who?”

  “Him who saved me,” Jamal said. “Him who got me out of that place.”

  “And now you are him,” I said. “Is that right? Is that how it works? It gets passed down from one to the other?”

  He nodded. His lips were awful dry. I asked the nurse for some water and a straw. I held it for him while he tried to drink.

  “The kids…all right?” he asked.

  “Thanks to you, yes, they are,” I said. “How you ever managed to make it to the board-ups with these burns is a miracle. You just rest now, honey. You’re gonna be fine.”

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’m done here.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “You’re a young man. You can bounce back.”

  His breathing was light and fast. To tell the truth, I did not believe my own words. I knew he was not long for this world. I could smell the fire on him.

  “Jamal?” I said. “I gotta ask you one more thing.”

  He opened his eyes again, then closed them.

  “Chantay’s baby boy,” I said. “Was he with you?”

  “Yes,” Jamal whispered. “I had to take him. Otherwise…”

  “You were worried Chantay wouldn’t be able to take care of him.”

  “She…couldn’t,” he said.

  “I know, baby. She came to see me. I saw what she had become. That baby must be a grown man now himself. Where is he? What’s his name?”

  “M’kwon,” said Jamal.

  “What a beautiful name. He must be a fine man now. Is he, Jamal? Is he a good man?”

  Jamal nodded.

  “I taught him everything I knew,” he said. “He’s out there now, doin’ the work.”

  “Then he is a good man indeed,” I said.

  Jamal did a strange thing then. He reached out and touched me in the place where my breasts had been removed. I was so shocked, I didn’t do anything. Except for the doctor, no man had ever touched me there.

  “I know you been sick,” he said. “And I know you been losin’ your faith. You wonder if you made a difference.”

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  “You gonna get better, Mother. You got more work to do. The world needs you. You got a long time yet. Don’t give up.”

  I took his hand in mine and sat with him for a long time. His breathing got lighter and faster. Then it just stopped.

  The nurse called some doctors, and they came rushing in. They tried to save him, but I knew it was no good. Jamal had left this world.

  Sergeant Kosinski and I went out into the hall.

  “What happened in there?” the sergeant asked. “Who was he to you, Mother?”

  I figured Sergeant Kosinski had a right to know. So I told him the whole story, going back to the day I called him from the shelter saying I had two kids who had lost their mom. He just shook his head.

  “The longer I live, the stranger things get,” he said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Life is a mystery, Sergeant. And what I’ve learned is that it’s not up to us to solve it. We just have to live the best we can in the time we’re given.”

  “Amen to that,” he said.

  “Take me home now, please, Sergeant Kosinski,” I said. “I’m very tired. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jamal didn’t have any id. No driver’s license, no social security number, nothing. He had no criminal record either. They even checked his fingerprints. If it wasn’t for me, they never would have known who he was. The police tried to find someone who was related to him, but they couldn’t. Heaven only knows what had become of Chantay by then.

  So I told them I was willing to make arrangements for his funeral. Otherwise, he would be listed as John Doe and buried in an anonymous grave. That would have been too cruel. He deserved better than that.

  I decided to have him cremated. The flames of the mortuary finished what the fire in the shelter had started. I received his ashes in an urn.

  Then I contacted the new minister of my church and told him I wanted to pay for a service in his memory. I also wanted his ashes to be placed in the cemetery. Jamal needed to have a proper religious burial. I didn’t know if he had belonged to any religion, but I knew he and I believed in the same things. That was good enough for me.

  “Was he a member of our church?” the minister asked.

  “In his own way,” I said. “He did a lot of good work. He was well known throughout the city.”

  “Really? What was his name? Maybe I knew him.”

  “You might have heard his street name,” I said. “Jacky Wacky.”

  “That doesn’t ring a bell. Sounds more like a drug dealer,” the minister said.

  “Far from it,” I said. “He was the opposite of a drug
dealer. Tell me, Reverend, were you ever homeless as a child?”

  “Homeless? No,” said the minister. “We never had much, but we always had a roof over our heads.”

  “Then you were one of the lucky ones,” I told him. “If you had been homeless, you would have heard of Jacky Wacky. The children still talk about him sometimes. He’s what you might call a legend.”

  “Well, if you want to pay for a service, that’s fine, Mother,” he said. “How many people do you think will be there?”

  “Maybe just me,” I said. “So keep it short and sweet.”

  I put a notice in the paper about the funeral, in case anybody else wanted to come. I didn’t use Jamal’s name. I had them print the name people would know him by. I figured there would be at least some folks who would know who he was.

  I wasn’t expecting too many people. But on the day of the service, there were lots and lots of people. They ranged from the very young to middle-aged men and women. There were even a few very old folks. They filled up the pews and stood along the walls. The minister looked surprised to see so many. It wasn’t just Jamal they were there for. It was for whoever had come before him, and whoever had come before that.

  After the service, I stood with the minister by the door. The people filed past us and shook our hands. They were all different kinds of people, from all walks of life. Some of them had become successful. I could tell by the way they were dressed. Others lived humble lives.

  I did not need to ask who these people were. I knew that at one time all of them had been homeless, hungry children. And the man they knew as Jacky Wacky had found them and fed them. They had come to pay their respects to the man who had saved their lives.

  And each one of them seemed to know my name too.

  “Thank you, Mother Angelique,” they said. And “Bless you, Mother Angelique.”

  I felt my heart grow a little bigger with every word. Suddenly I understood what Jamal had been saying in the hospital.

  He was right. I had been losing my faith. In my line of work, you don’t often get to see your labor bear fruit. You help somebody out and then you never see them again. I never cared about being thanked. My work was its own reward.