Unlikely Angel

by Ashley Smith

  “Want a beer?” he asked, holding his up. Then he stepped to my left, reached his arm over the counter, and lit that burgundy candle next to the picture of Paige and me using his pink lighter.

  “No, thanks,” I said. I didn’t want beer—I sure wasn’t going to sit back and party with him. All I wanted was God right now. I wanted to make God smile, like it said in my Purpose-Driven Life book. That’s what I wanted.

  Brian Nichols walked over to the toilet and sat down on top of the lid. I figured he was still more comfortable staying at the back of the apartment in a room with no windows, but at this point I began to think the police really weren’t coming. I was amazed, totally amazed, that none of my neighbors had heard me scream. Or maybe someone heard me but then thought it was nothing. I didn’t get it. I was screaming my lungs out. Oh well, God, I trust you. This is your thing in here.

  Leaning back on the toilet, Brian Nichols was only a few feet away from where I sat on the vanity stool in front of the sink. The toilet was to the right of the sink, and all the way to the right, against the wall, was the bathtub. He stared straight ahead and took swigs of his beer. He really did look pretty relaxed. “He’s just done that ice,” I thought, “which is going to speed him up. And now he’s drinking beer to slow down a little.” As long as he stays mellow like this. Just let him stay calm and not start acting crazy.

  Back when I was getting messed up on ice twenty-four-seven, I used to try and slow myself down. Not with beer, though. With Xanax. Mack and I had discovered Xanax about two months before he died. He smoked pot every day, and once he found Xanax, he started taking that pretty much daily too. Mack was angry. He was moody. He was always looking for something to take the edge off. And I was going to do whatever he did. That was just the kind of wife I was.

  On Friday nights Mack and I would rent a limo with a bunch of friends and go out drinking and doing drugs—lots of times taking both ecstasy and Xanax. The combination made me feel free to do whatever I wanted, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Mack was a lot of people’s hook-up for ecstasy. A guy we knew went to Atlanta to get it and then distributed the pills to a few people to sell; Mack was one of them—so we were pretty popular. The first time I met Mack we were at a party at a friend’s house, rolling on ecstasy.

  After Mack died and I dove hard into ice, I would do Xanax with that too. I would crank my body way up on ice, then slam it into reverse with Xanax. I did it all the time. I sped up. I slowed down. Up and down. It was amazing I lived through all that. I could already count three people I knew who had died that way—mixing up drugs.

  Sitting on the vanity stool now, I felt a wave of gratitude to God come over me. For a second I couldn’t believe I was sitting here—that I had actually made it this far. I mean, I wasn’t dead. I was here in this apartment and in my right mind. I wasn’t crazy from those drugs and off in some loony bin somewhere with permanent brain damage. For some reason I was still here. It was amazing to me right then. Aunt Kim always said I had nine lives. Now if I could just make it out of this apartment. If I could just have another chance to do things right. If you’re willing, God, you can bring me out of this. You can get me out of here so I can raise Paige and live for you. I’m ready to do it. I want to do it!

  Brian Nichols turned to face me, leaning forward over his knees with his beer in his hand. He started asking me questions, and our talk snapped back and forth to different subjects.

  “What do you think about outer space?” he asked.

  What? Outer space? I don’t know, buddy. Maybe you’re from there. “I don’t know,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him.

  “What do you think about the war going on in Iraq?” He looked me in the eye and waited.

  At least I could kind of answer this one. “The guys who go over there and protect us and die for our country—they’re really brave. And we should be a lot more grateful to them.”

  “Did you play any sports in high school or anything?”

  “Yeah,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me. “I played basketball in high school. I started on varsity in ninth grade and went to Duke University basketball camps and all that. I did the whole nine. I was going for a college scholarship, but then I got burned out on it.”

  I thought back to what my grandpa used to say after I graduated from high school and started running with those drug dealers and shoplifting: “You’ve thrown it all away! We’ve pulled for you and spent thousands of dollars on you and given you everything to succeed and you’ve thrown it all away!”

  I could remember sitting in my car before my games my senior year and rolling joints in my lap so I could smoke pot on the way to the Lakeside High School gym. Either that, or I would go to this one friend’s house and sit on the back porch smoking; then I would drive over to the gym and dress out. My justification was that I scored more points when I was high—I was relaxed and giddy and just played better, I thought. But then again, my attitude was really poor. College scouts would come, and I would just freak out on the refs who called fouls on me. The scouts probably thought, “Well, what happened to her? She wasn’t like this last year.”

  “Yeah,” Brian Nichols said, sipping his beer. “I played football in college.”

  That made sense—that he had gone to college. I knew by the way he was talking that he wasn’t some hard criminal off the street. He spoke well. Even in asking me about the Iraq war, he seemed concerned about what was going on in the world. He seemed like he knew what was going on in the world—definitely more than I did.

  “Are you a born-again Chris tian?” he asked. He had set his beer on the floor and now was smoking one of his cigarettes.

  “Yes, I am.” I was leaning forward on the stool with my elbows on my knees. “I asked Jesus into my heart when I was seven.” This was good that he had asked me about God. I knew this was good. He had a church background, so I was going to connect with him on it right here.

  “I was in church with my grandparents,” I said. “My mom—she was a single mom until I was almost twelve; and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was growing up. They lived right across the street for a while in the same apartment complex, and I would just go on over there after school or in the evenings or whenever my mom wanted to go do something or was working late. ‘Go walk across the street to Mema’s,’ she would say. ‘Be a good girl.’ I was the only grandchild who didn’t have a daddy around.

  “So I went to church with Mema and Papa every Sunday—it was this little church in a pretty bad part of town. My grandpa was a preacher. He preached all over Augusta —that’s where I lived. He was the headmaster at the Christian school where I went for a long time too. Anyway, this one Sunday, I was sitting there with Mema and Papa listening to some preacher, and he was talking all about hell and everything, and it just scared me to death. So I went up to Papa afterward and said, ‘I don’t want to go to that fire place. I want Jesus in my heart.’ And he took me into a back room and prayed with me to receive Jesus in my life.

  “But I got away from God for a long time,” I said. I leaned over and reached across the counter for my cigarettes; they were near the guns. Brian Nichols handed me the pink lighter. The ashtray was between us next to the sink, on the edge of the counter closest to him.

  “I mean,” I continued, lighting my cigarette and taking a long drag, “I tried to do the God thing in high school—that’s when I left Christian school and started going to public school. I still did my Bible study every night and went to youth group at this big Baptist church where I went with my mom and step-dad and my aunt and my cousins. But then I got away from all that, you know, and just started doing my own thing—I did things my way.” I stopped for a second to smoke and ash my cigarette. “I mean, I got into drugs and everything.”

  I was thinking about my daddy now and some of his struggles. I was wondering how much of the whole drug thing was genetic. I remembered back when I would freak out on ice, and Paige would be around, and I would
get so scared: “God, what if this really is hereditary and it’s already in her bloodline? And now she’s seeing her mama do it and it’s just going to be this terrible cycle I’m dragging her into.”

  What made me fall into it so hard? Really, I just liked the drugs —how they made me feel. I tried pot for the first time at a party when I was drunk, and I threw up everywhere. But a week later I was at it again. And soon I got my first bag and practiced rolling joints and then started smoking all the time. I was totally relaxed on the stuff and loved it. I skipped my last class at school for fifty-two days my senior year to go sit with this guy I knew and smoke pot in his room with the window open. And suddenly I had all these new friends—the cool people. Before that, I was so locked into basketball and my family I didn’t really have any close friends.

  And I didn’t think my family wanted to see the loneliness. We were a totally close-knit family—my grandparents, my mom, Aunt Kim, Uncle David, and all the spouses and kids. Everybody came to my basketball games and stood on the sidelines screaming for me. I knew they loved me. But this loneliness in me—they didn’t seem to see it. Or the exhaustion of all that discipline: Basketball. Exercise. Cleaning the house. Cooking dinner and helping with my little brother and sister. I just burned out. I was tired of being what I thought everybody wanted. Tired of trying to be perfect. And now I had some cool friends to do stuff with, and we were having fun—or what I thought was fun. But then it just got bad—with cocaine and drug-dealer friends and getting in trouble and, later, failing out of Augusta College after that first semester. Just bad.

  “So I got away from God,” I said to Brian Nichols. “But now I want him more than ever. I want him to be proud of me. I want to get my life right—you know, get it on track. I’ve got to get it on track for my little girl.”

  “Are you a born-again Christian?” I asked him now, propping my elbow on the counter. I wanted to know. I assumed he would say yes, but I wanted to ask. He had asked me, so now it was my turn.

  “Yeah.” He put out his cigarette, then picked up his beer and took a swig. He didn’t say anything else.

  “Well,” I said, “that means you’re my brother in Christ, and I’m your sister in Christ.”

  I was trying to get him to identify with me on this. Whatever he would let me in on about himself, I was going to find the points we had in common and emphasize those—make those points huge. See, we’re just alike. That’s what I wanted him to keep hearing in his mind.

  Then he said: “I think there’s a demon inside of me—but I’m a child of God.” Whoa! What? What does he mean? That’s freakin’ nuts. How could the words demon and child of God be in the same sentence? How could a child of God have a demon in him?

  I was confused, but I could see he was wrestling with himself. He kept shifting—leaning back, then sitting forward. I said, “You need to ask God for forgiveness for what you’ve done, and he’ll forgive you. That’s what the Bible says.”

  I could see anxiety coming up in him. His brow was lowered. His head was bent toward the ground. He’s fighting. He knows what he did was wrong, but he knows the Word of God says he can be forgiven. He’s just got to believe that. He’s got to believe in forgiveness right now.

  “I’ve got this demon in me,” he said again. “Just—I need to get it out of me.”

  I thought back to the way his eyes looked when he first came into the house—when he took off that baseball hat and told me who he was: “Now do you know?” he had said, opening his eyes wide and staring at me with that awful expression on his face.

  I had looked into his eyes then, and I could see something really bad was happening inside of him. He did look as if he could have a demon in him. But now, sitting on top of the toilet in my tee shirt and those short pants after his shower, he looked different. His eyes looked different. He looked sad and afraid—but human. And this was after doing the drugs, which seemed strange to me. Those drugs always made me look crazy, especially in the eyes —just revved up and out of my mind. But not him. He looked more human now than he had all night.

  “It’s spiritual warfare,” he went on. Okay. I know that term. Aunt Kim uses it. “I feel like God and Satan are fighting—fighting to take me. One or the other.” He was looking at the wall straight ahead of him, squinting, and his face was really tense.

  God and Satan fighting. That was serious. That was no joke. I understood that —all the back and forth. Just like what happened with me over those drugs: Satan saying, “Just this once won’t hurt.” And then God saying, “You can stop. I’m here.”

  I thought, “God and Satan are fighting in this apartment right now. Right here in my bathroom. They’re fighting over this guy. God’s trying to tug him one way; Satan’s trying to tug him the other way. Which way will he go? What will he choose? He’s just got to stop running. He’s got to stop running and turn himself in.”

  12 pressing

  My people—people of my color—they needed me,” he said now. He was rubbing his eyes with his hands, sitting forward over his knees. “They needed me for a job, and I had to be a soldier for my people.”

  I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I just smoked and looked at him. I thought about what he had just said. He was talking about being a soldier when he first came into my apartment, and I thought he was flipping out. Now, I thought, maybe I could address what he was saying here and try to relate with him about it and make some kind of connection. If people of his color needed him, then somewhere he was dealing with prejudice. How could I assure this guy that I wasn’t looking at him and feeling prejudice toward him? I had to get him to trust me.

  Something popped into my head right then—something I had seen at the mall when I was on my way to work at Express just the other day. I can’t tell him that. I felt really bad about what had gone through my head at the time. I felt ashamed—and I thought it might make him mad. Should I tell him this story? I want to tell him. I want to try and get him to see who I am.

  “Let me tell you this story about what I saw the other day,” I said. “And—I want you—just, please don’t get mad at me. Because I thought something really hateful about this black guy I saw, but I want to try and explain what I really felt so you can know more about who I am.”

  I reached over and ashed my cigarette in the ashtray between us on the counter. He didn’t say anything. He just watched me.

  “So I was on my way to work, and I saw this young black guy walk out of the mall, and he was holding a cup in his hand. He was holding a cup, and he took a sip of whatever it was, and then he just threw the cup down in the parking lot and walked off. Well, I got pretty ticked about that, and I thought this really bad, just evil thing about him. I wish I hadn’t thought it, but I did.

  “Then, not three seconds later, another black man, maybe in his late thirties or early forties, walks out of the mall, sees the same cup, goes and picks it up, and puts it in the trash. And I thought, ‘Okay. Now there’s a real man.’

  “I don’t know why I thought what I did about the first guy. Maybe I was harder on him because he was black, but I honestly didn’t think I was. The point is, he was just acting like he could trash the world and let somebody else pick it up. And that’s exactly what happened—somebody else came and was responsible and picked it up. It wasn’t a color thing to me. I was looking at those two guys and thinking about their actions—I was trying to make my judgment on what they did.”

  I stopped talking and glanced over at Brian Nichols. What did he think? I couldn’t tell. He looked past my head and said nothing. He shifted where he was sitting on top of the toilet and leaned back. I wanted him to know I wasn’t looking at his color and judging him by that. I mean, I wasn’t perfect. I did think that evil thought about that guy. But I hoped Brian Nichols saw what I meant. I was trying to make my judgment on what they did.

  “I’ve got a plan,” he said. He was leaning forward again now, with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced together. The khakis were pulli
ng around his thighs and riding really high up his shins. His beer can sat on the floor in front of him. “I’ve got this plan—it’s to rob a bank.”

  No. He’s got to stop. He can’t do that. He’s got to turn himself in.

  “I’m going to rob a bank,” he went on, “and I need your help.”

  Well, that’s never going to happen. I’m not getting in trouble like that. I know what jail’s like, and there’s no way.

  “Whoa, dude!” I said. “I’m not helping you rob any bank.” Was this why he asked me earlier if I’d ever shot a gun? So I could help pull off a bank robbery?

  I thought for a minute about the guns sitting behind me on the counter. What if he picked one of those up and threatened to blow my head off if I didn’t agree to help him? It could happen. And if it did, I thought, I would just have to deal with it. Really, if I helped him rob a bank, I might as well let him go ahead and kill me right here because I would just get killed in the robbery anyway. And then what would that look like? Killed robbing a bank with someone I didn’t even know. Not happening.

  “But you’d be set for life,” he said, looking me in the eye. “You’d be set.”

  Is he crazy? What makes him think he’d ever make it out alive to live off the money? “Look,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I’m just not helping you do that, okay?”

  He turned his head away and stared down at the beer can. To me, he looked even more exhausted than when he first came into my apartment. His skin looked like it was sagging under his eyes. I could see the lines in his forehead. He seemed depressed—just really down. Had my response brought him down even more? I mean, I wasn’t robbing a bank with him. And he must’ve seen I wasn’t going to move on that.

  I was working on another cigarette now and looking at that picture of Paige and me up on the counter. Suddenly I felt my face flush and tears come up.