God Only Knows

by Xavier Knight

  The humiliation of her young life had been the rare chance she had taken senior year, when she finally revealed her attraction to the only relevant party: Maxwell himself. The recall of that day and of the uncomfortable look in his eyes as she had stood there feeling tall, skinny, and flat-chested, now had Julia’s eyes welling with tears.

  Forcing herself to meet Maxwell’s stubborn stare, she controlled her tear ducts and knew that not even a glimmer showed in her eyes. “I’m a child of God, Maxwell,” she said, her tone sincere but flat. “I don’t hate anyone, and I greatly respect your accomplishments and status in this community. This board needs your contributions.”

  “It’s my privilege to serve,” he replied, extending a hand. As Julia reluctantly accepted his handshake, he gave a thin smile. “It may take some time for us to warm to each other professionally, I guess. Julia, I’m really sorry about —”

  Julia raised a hand. “We were kids,” she said. “Let’s worry about the children of today.” She looked away as she said, “Good night, Dr. Simon.”

  5

  What did you say?” Cassie intently stepped on the heels of M.J.’s Nikes as she pursued him across the floor of his bedroom. “Say it again, M.J. I dare you to disrespect your mother a second time.”

  M.J. pivoted suddenly, his naked barrel chest level with Cassie’s line of sight. “Alls I said, Mom,” he replied, his arms crossed rebelliously, “was that you need to chill. You makin’ too big a deal out of this Dante stuff.”

  “Oh, really?” Cassie reached forward and shoved her big boy, a move so unexpected that M.J. actually lost his balance. When he landed against his bed, Cassie relished the chance to look down on him. “Dante has been convicted twice of drug possession, and he’s under suspicion now, right now, for attempted murder! You cannot be in his company anymore, I forbid it!”

  M.J. began to rise from the bed.

  Cassie spat out her words. “Don’t even think about it.”

  M.J. bristled but stayed seated. “That murder rap is bogus,” he muttered, looking all about the room in order to avoid his mother’s glare. “Everybody I talk to says so, not just Dante himself.”

  “Oh, so you’re tied into the hood grapevine now, are you? M.J., your father and I tried to do the balanced thing by sending you to C.J. We could have saved money and sent you to Fairmont, or we could have paid through the nose to put you in Alter or Miami Valley, but we knew all those would limit your contact with other black kids. C.J. was a good compromise, we thought.”

  “So what are you sayin’?”

  “I’m saying, we can’t seem to shake you of this fascination with the hip-hop life, life in the street that leads nowhere. Will you please let this go, and just keep doing the right things? Don’t make me take away your car, because I will do it.”

  “I do all the right things, Mom, just admit it.” M.J. shrugged into a T-shirt before lying back on his elbows. “Good grades, athletic scholarships coming at me from all directions, no pregnant girls showing up on my doorstep . . . what more you want?”

  “No more rides with Dante,” Cassie said. “I mean it.”

  “I don’t get it,” M.J. replied, his eyes narrowing slowly. “I thought you and Dad was going to ream me good the other night after that cop dropped me off, but you ain’t said ‘boo’ since. I know you and Dad have been all lovey-dovey since he came back home, but he seem like he don’t even know about it.”

  Cassie bit her lower lip and turned away. She hadn’t raised the issues around Detective Whitlock’s visit for a good reason —she had no intention of involving Marcus in any of this. She had bet everything on M.J.’s desire to avoid the subject with his father, and it was clear that bet had paid off. With Marcus away on a business trip for the next two days, Cassie saw this evening as her chance to strike.

  “Your father and I,” she said, her eyes on M.J.’s Chaminade football team portrait, “had to talk about all that the past couple of days, to determine the appropriate reaction.” Her confidence stabilized, she turned back toward her son. “We’ve agreed that we don’t want to overdo a punishment; you haven’t done anything wrong yet except keep bad company. So as long as you pay your own speeding ticket and tell Dante that you can’t hang with him anymore, all is forgiven.”

  M.J. remained back on his elbows, eyes full of barely suppressed amusement. “If it makes you all feel better, you’ve got a deal.”

  “Promise me before God, M.J.”

  “I promise,” he said as his cell phone sprang to life with one hip-hop ring tone or another. Winking, he grabbed it from his nightstand. “Later, Mom.”

  Cassie stepped into the hallway, closing the door shut behind her and feeling a complete absence of peace. He literally thinks he knows everything. God had blessed M.J. with so much success, it seemed her son believed he was above the rules of the universe. If Cassie didn’t revoke his access to the Toyota Highlander they’d purchased for him, she was sure he’d be riding the streets with Dante even sooner than she liked to think. But how would she explain that punishment to Marcus?

  Cassie felt her teeth grind involuntarily as she realized she would have to take drastic action first and figure out how to handle Marcus later. Hers were not a mother’s natural, general worries for a son’s welfare. A very real, specific monster lurked out there, and Cassie alone knew of his existence.

  “If I don’t get what I want,” Pete Whitlock had said before driving away that first terrifying day, “I start with the low-hanging fruit. Whether he’s with Dante or not, I can have M.J.’s story end like the daily tragedies you see on every night’s local news.”

  “Headed toward bed in here?” Cassie forced a smile as she popped into the twins’ spacious loft room. There were two extra bedrooms upstairs, but to Cassie’s pleasant surprise, Heather and Hillary had insisted on sharing this one. Each one had her own twin bed, desk, and iMac computer on opposite sides of the room, but they shared everything and often sat up well past bedtime giggling and gossiping like the preteen girls they were.

  As Cassie took a seat at Hillary’s desk chair and watched the girls change into their pajamas, she quizzed them informally about their respective homework assignments, potential boyfriends, and the next day’s after-school activities —soccer for Heather, Chinese club for Hillary. As she encouraged them to climb into bed, kissing cheeks and tousling hair, Cassie thanked God for them. Fraternal twins —Heather looked like a carbon copy of Cassie at twelve while the taller, more big-boned Hillary was an even mixture of Cassie and Marcus’s features —the girls embodied the type of relatively carefree, confident youth that had escaped Cassie. As a biracial child in 1970s Ohio, her very identity had seemingly been a radical concept.

  Back in the hallway again, she prayed as she did every night that God would protect the girls from the demons that had complicated her young life. Demons that had arisen again to stalk her and those she loved.

  The doorbell surprised her, then filled her with dread as she tiptoed down the steps, trying to decide whether to even answer it. Pacing back and forth in her foyer, she found her hands clasping, felt the involuntary craning of her neck as she looked heavenward. How can I pray, she asked herself, when I don’t want to hear God’s answer?

  6

  The doorbell rang two additional times as Cassie tried to calculate the likelihood that Whitlock had already returned. She had specifically not told him about Marcus’s trip, so showing up at nine o’clock would normally be a bold move. But then, Whitlock hadn’t sounded too threatened by the thought of confronting her taller, bulkier husband.

  “I don’t have to do it this way, Cassie,” the detective had said that day on her porch. He continued, lighting a new cigarette at the same time. “As an officer of the law, for me, the honest course would be to file Lenny Parks’s testimony that he picked you and his sister up from the Christian Light campus nearly an hour after the game was over, and that you were clearly out of sorts. Disheveled clothing, blood on several of you . . . and t
hat he never really thought your story that you’d been attacked by a stray dog made sense. That’s enough there to reopen the investigation, you see.”

  Cassie had done her best to keep a poker face, had said it sounded like a long leap from that testimony to the idea that some girls with no criminal records —before or since —could have harmed a spunky boy who’d been taller than all of them.

  “Oh, Cassie,” Whitlock replied, his eyes rising with a chuckle, “I’ve been in law enforcement too long. I saw the way you tensed up at the sound of my brother’s name. That was all I needed to confirm you were involved. Now, either you can do what’s right and confess everything to me, or I’ll start the legal process in earnest. It’s real easy, you see. Even if the court ultimately rules that the statute of limitations has run out on a criminal prosecution, my family still has recourse in civil court.

  “Do you have any idea how expensive it’s been for my mother to keep Eddie alive, if you can call his existence living? Trust me, once I prove the criminal case, even if you escape prosecution, you’ll be on the hook for millions of dollars.”

  On the inside, she’d hemorrhaged with rage, but Cassie kept her face impassive as Whitlock crossed his arms and leaned in. “So whenever you think about telling your big, bad hubby or anyone else about my visits —because there will be more —just remember the alternative.”

  The sudden ring of her home phone jarred Cassie out of her flashback, and she rushed to the kitchen and grabbed a cordless unit. “Hello?”

  “Well, thank God. I was starting to worry about you and the kids. I remembered you saying Marcus would be out of town this week.”

  “Julia?”

  “Yes. Does my voice sound any different to you?”

  Cassie frowned. “There’s an echo.”

  “That would be because I’m outside on your porch. Hello, can you let me in? I don’t have all night.”

  Chastened but relieved, Cassie held the phone and hustled back to the foyer. Once she had opened the door and let Julia in, her friend paused at the foot of the front stairwell. “Hey, have to pick up Amber from my father’s in a bit, but where are your two princesses?” she asked, looking up the steps.

  “Finally heading toward bed, ‘Aunt Julia.’ You’ll have to catch up with them this weekend.”

  “Okay. I know my black prince is still up.”

  “Hmmph,” Cassie replied, waving a hand dismissively toward the basement door. “He’s down there, but enter at your own risk.”

  “He’s probably on the phone with some silly little hottie,” Julia said, grinning. “I’ll check him out Sunday at church too. Girl, do you know how blessed you are to have a teenager, especially a boy, who still goes to God’s house on Sundays?”

  Shutting her front door, Cassie rolled her eyes as her friend led the way into the kitchen. “Yeah, my life is all peaches and cream, Julia.”

  Julia took a seat at the large kitchen island as Cassie opened her refrigerator. “At this hour, I’d offer a drinking woman wine, but I know you’re too pure for that. The usual, orange-pineapple juice?”

  “Save it,” Julia replied. “I’m not sure I’ll want you serving me anything when I’m through with you.”

  Cassie poured herself a glass of juice, her nostrils curling with annoyance at her friend’s self-righteous tone. “What have I done now?”

  “Cassie, it’s about what you didn’t do. A promise you made about where you’d be last night?”

  “Oh, no!” Cassie slammed her glass down. “The board meeting. Forgive me. It totally slipped my mind, really.”

  Julia crossed her arms. “Mmm-hmm. When’s the last time an appointment to close on one of your properties slipped your mind?”

  “Julia, come on.”

  “Look, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I was disappointed. I really could have used some moral support there last night. Have I mentioned that Maxwell Simon actually showed up?”

  Cassie frowned playfully. “Ouch, I’m sorry. Was it as awkward as you feared?”

  “It was worse.” Julia’s shoulders rippled with laughter. “Last night was one of those times where God showed me it’s only by His grace that I’m in a leadership position. Strip away the outer layers, and I’m still the same insecure bookworm who spent years tormenting you.”

  “Water under the bridge,” Cassie replied, offering Julia her own glass of juice. She and Julia hadn’t really become friends until sophomore year of high school, when they were in the same geometry and Bible classes —classes that for the first time did not include any of Julia’s other black friends. By then, though, they had already developed a hidden bond dating back to a night they rarely discussed.

  Julia accepted the glass, her eyes on the refreshing liquid as she said, “Well, your absence last night can be water under the bridge as long as you make next week’s meeting.”

  Cassie hadn’t had time to technically weigh all the issues, but her tormented soul told her she had to cut to the quick with her best friend. “I can’t serve on the board, Julia. It just won’t work.”

  “What are you talking about?” Julia crooked her neck, her eyes zeroing in on Cassie with concerned fervor. “We discussed this, Cassie. You know how much saving Christian Light —and, more important, rebuilding it with a socially progressive mission —means to me. It’s the main reason I agreed to leave Chicago and return home in the first place. The need is great, and everyone who serves on this board can help transform the very heart of Dayton.”

  God, forgive me. Cassie wasn’t ready to ask God for guidance yet, but she at least needed to confess what she was doing to Julia. “This is your dream, Julia, not mine. I respect it —really, I do. And I’ll write the first check to your campaign, you tell me the amount. That’s all I can do, though. The agency is growing faster than I realized, the girls are in more activities every day, and, well, you know it’s going to take me a few months to really rebuild my marriage with Marcus.”

  Julia huffed. “You think I’m not aware that you knew about all those factors weeks ago?” She stood, sliding her glass of juice away after just two sips. “What else has changed?”

  “Your friend here,” Cassie replied, “has just had to accept that she’s human. I can’t keep saying yes to every request in my life. Please respect my decision.”

  Julia squinted at her friend. “The other day, when you joked about being expelled when you were pregnant with M.J., are you seriously harboring grudges over that? Is that it?”

  “We’ve talked about this, it’s nothing new.” Cassie leaned forward on the island, gathering strength for her story and again praying for real-time forgiveness. “Neither of us really enjoyed our years at Christian Light. You were made to feel like you didn’t matter, and I spent half my time chasing off white boys —and some of their fathers on the teaching staff —who wanted the intrigue of a black girl with white features mixed in. To be honest, I was dumbfounded when you decided to come back and run that place.”

  Julia nodded. “I know, but you understand the value we got out of the system, right?”

  “No, trust me, I get it from your standpoint,” Cassie replied. “If you’d attended Dayton city schools, you might never have embraced your Christian faith, and I know you feel there’s a greater chance you’d have gotten into trouble with pregnancy, drugs, or alcohol.

  “But for me, Julia, Christian Light wasn’t much of an improvement. I grew up in Centerville; I wasn’t dodging any great societal ills by attending Christian Light. And as you know, the hypocrisy I saw in our teachers turned me off Christianity. It took staring down the barrel of teen motherhood to get me to accept Jesus.”

  “I know, I know,” Julia said, coming alongside Cassie and throwing an arm over her shoulder. “I understand. You respect what I’m doing, but you’re not feeling it for you.” She sighed, an odd show of momentary weakness from the strongest woman Cassie had ever known. Julia turned Cassie toward her and held her by the shoulders. “Well, old friend, it was J
esus alone who got me through the loss of my mother and through that disaster of a marriage I survived. Looks like with you out of the picture, He’s confirming that He alone will help me figure out how to save Christian Light. And survive Maxwell Simon while I’m at it.”

  They shared a laugh, then fell into a warm, back-rubbing hug. As they stood there in her kitchen, Cassie’s humanity got the better of her and she whispered, “Julia?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you ever think about Eddie Walker?”

  Cassie felt her friend freeze in place, heard the breath go out of her. She wondered for a minute if she’d unmasked herself, whether Julia’s next words would be an inquisition about where the question came from.

  “Every day,” came the answer finally, Julia’s whisper just above the volume of Cassie’s.

  As they separated, Julia held tight to Cassie’s hands. Peering into her friend’s eyes, she said, “We should never try to forget what happened. It’s perfectly normal to think about him. I think we’d be less than human if we didn’t.”

  Cassie was embarrassed at the wetness materializing around her eyes and nostrils. Wiping at her face with one hand, she used the other to lead Julia toward the foyer. “Sometimes I think that’s the real reason you took the job at Christian Light,” she said. “To make up for what we all did.”

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” Julia replied insistently. “And we couldn’t have done anything more for him.” As they arrived at Cassie’s front door, she released her friend’s hand but touched her shoulder lovingly. “God works in mysterious ways, girl. Do you think we’d even be friends without Eddie’s role in our lives?”

  They embraced for another hug, and Julia insisted they pray. Cassie felt new tears roll as her friend’s caring, protective exhortations rang softly in the foyer. “Father, give Cassie peace that you are still her transforming source of power,” Julia said as she closed. “She is fearfully and wonderfully made in your image, never let her forget that. We pray your grace and mercy in the lives of Cassie, Heather, Hillary, M.J., and Marcus. Amen.”