Rhythms of Grace

by Marilynn Griffith

  Ron’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he kept swallowing it down, that love, trying to carry on a conversation. It was hot in there, but he kept on his jacket.

  I took off my shoes.

  He closed his eyes then and I knew that he was praying. I wanted to, but I didn’t know what to pray. I’d been so sorry for so long that I didn’t know what to be sorry for. I just wanted to sit here with Ron and look at his eyes.

  “Put your shoes on, Birdie,” he said, taking off his jacket. “Please.”

  I heard him, but by then I didn’t see my shoes. I saw Mama and Jeremiah and Miss Eva’s dead son who had fallen in love with a white girl and drowned in the shallow end of the public pool. A pool where if you looked real close when you were under the water, right near the bottom, you could still see the words WHITES ONLY, words that people said northern towns didn’t have. I saw Ron’s fiery hair and his generous eyes. I heard his steady, silent applause for my every achievement, desired his earnest love that my mother said would be the death of me.

  Mama, I think I’m dead already.

  And before I left this world for good, I only wanted one thing: to be kissed by a man who loved me, a man who loved God. Before tonight, I’d accepted that it would be enough for the man to love God, but now it wouldn’t have been enough. Jeremiah would have never kissed me like he had kissed that cheerleader. I wouldn’t want him to kiss me now anyway. There was only one man I wanted to do that.

  I only had to ask once.

  It was beautiful, that kiss and all the ones that came after. We laid there, quiet, knowing there’d probably be no more of this. Perhaps that was best. He got up and went to the door. He even got my purse.

  “I don’t want to sin against you, Birdie. Let me take you home.”

  That’s when I began to sing.

  7

  Brian

  I wanted to play the djembe when my mother died, to beat it up high and down low: palms, knuckles, the sides of my hands. I wanted to strap it on my belly and go barefoot by the pulpit. I wanted to scream.

  They wouldn’t let me.

  Not that I could blame them. I’d gone a bit crazy by then, the kind of crazy that I was always scared of. Strange even. Not that it surprised anyone. Ron still came around, gave me our secret handshake, shrugged his shoulders when people raised eyebrows at me, told them, “Oh he’s all right. Don’t be like that.”

  But I wasn’t all right. I hadn’t been. Not for a very long time. Not since a Sunday in my junior year when Mama was too tired to come to church and I came alone. For the first time, alone. The deacon gave me a thin smile at the door. The whispers that I’d always thought I’d heard before, the ones that Mama told me were my imagination, echoed in my ears like screams.

  “Eva’s down sick, they say. What is that child going to do now?”

  “Chile, I don’t know. He’s always been a bit grown, but everybody needs a mama. Now that’s a fact.”

  “Mama? Please. Eva ain’t that boy’s mama. Look at him with red hair and those crazy eyes changing all which of ways. He looks more like that white boy they bring than he does Eva. Naw, that boy ain’t none of hers. I remember the Sunday she brought him in, still wrapped up in a blanket from the hospital. I kept waiting for somebody to say something, but nobody never did. Some girl got in a mess with a white boy, most like. You know how that goes . . .”

  I don’t remember much else about that Sunday, but I’ll never forget those women’s words. Never forget sitting there and thinking that everything I was, everything I knew, was a lie. Although it cut me deep, the news was almost a comfort since I’d always known that something didn’t fit, that somehow I did not belong.

  One of the Africans who taught me the drum—there were four of them, from Ghana, Congo, Senegal, and Mozambique. One of them led a song with the other men, a sad song of a lone warrior who hunted, fought, and died alone. Sometimes at night, I still play it on my belly, still remember what the tallest of them said to me when we were done.

  “An African with no land is like a never healing wound. An African with no people is like a ghost.”

  At the time, I’d been afraid of his words, but a time came, after Eva’s funeral, when I was all alone with no people, not knowing where I’d come from, that I welcomed those words, that I became an apparition seen only at night, red-eyed and weaving through wisps of smoke.

  I met X then. Not the famous Malcolm of the same letter, but an overgrown boy who thought himself a revolutionary. X wasn’t much older than I, but on the street we were decades apart. He led two lives, middle-class days with his mother and street nights with his father, who lived two blocks or so away from me. Two blocks doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was far enough away to be a whole different neighborhood, another world.

  The first time I followed him there, I remember how the rosebushes ended and the window bars began. I wasn’t sure at first what that meant, but I learned fast. Since Eva left the house to Ron and me, people thought I had money. Sometimes I had some cash back from a financial aid check or something, but there wasn’t much to speak of. Nobody from the church came by anymore to see if I was all right or if I was coming back to church. They all seemed relieved to be rid of me. The feeling was mutual, I guess.

  Ron still came around, but his nose was wide open for Zeely, and I got sick of hearing about how much he loved her, how much he loved God. If he wasn’t gushing, he was preaching at me, and it all got too much to bear. Didn’t he see that I was dying? I saw it when it was him. I pressed my face to the window and watched for his mama, always came to get him after. Nobody was watching on the wall for me. Nobody until X. What I didn’t know then was that he was watching so that he could take me down, not pull me up.

  Joyce was the one person who never changed, never preached, never asked any questions. She and Miss Thelma from across the street would come and cook for me and clean the house. Joyce would drill me on Latin conjugations she’d taught me years before and sniff my breath for alcohol. When she found the scent—and she often did—she said nothing. Only kissed my cheek and turned away. Like X, my life was split between day class at Wright State in Dayton and nights drowned in forty-ounce increments and card games I didn’t remember.

  X had a younger sister too, half sister, I think. She always looked scared, like something was going to fall on her head. She looked like I felt. I tried to be nice to her, but the other guys treated her bad. His daddy treated her worse. That was when I started realizing that place probably wasn’t the best place to be. As usual, I thought too long and ended up in a mess. I often wonder how my life would be now if Joyce wasn’t there with her strong hands to save me from what would have happened.

  Maybe God was still watching over me after all.

  8

  He called me a punk. That’s how it started. Went on about me and Ron and how I would always be soft no matter how high I got. Said I’d never have heart enough to do something big, be somebody real.

  I got my jacket then, a gold silk that all of us wore with our names sewn on the back, and went for the door. I didn’t have to take this. Things were growing thin between us by then, fraying at the edges. I wiped the beer from my moustache and shook my head. They’d moved on from drinking in the past few months: weed, coke, crack.

  They were getting crazier and crazier. They’d held me down one night when I was drunk and held my nose shut and put a pipe in my mouth. I thought I was going to die. I probably should have. At least I wouldn’t have been back here again.

  “I’m going.” My hand was on the door. So close to escaping the whole mess.

  X waved a hand at me. “Go ahead and go. Where you going? To your mama’s grave? Oh, that’s right! You don’t have no mama. No daddy either. Nobody wants your crazy—”

  My fist crashed into him. Knocked him off the chair. He became all the prying eyes, the school reports that had landed me in Joyce’s class, all the labels tagged to me, weighing me down.

  Distant.

>   Antisocial.

  Deficient communication skills.

  Withdrawn.

  Angry.

  Dangerous.

  Mixed?

  Mixed up.

  For the first time, I became all of those words, all those things that people saw in me that made them turn away. The way they looked at me when I tried to get my real birth certificate, told me that the adoption was closed, that there were laws now and I had to have the birth mother’s permission to have the file opened. That made me laugh. Why would a woman who didn’t want me care whether I had my records.

  She wouldn’t.

  She didn’t.

  Nobody wanted me, I thought as I slammed into X again and again.

  He was laughing at me. “Go ahead. Finish me. It’ll be the end of you too. I already called the police.”

  Fists in midair, I stopped, looked at his eyes, this boy-man who’d said he’d be my family, be my friend. “What?”

  “Yeah. Somebody tipped on us selling over here. Pointed you out as coming and going. They’re supposed to do a sting tonight. When they come, I’m going to be the boy from across town caught up in addiction. The boy beat down by his vicious, crazy dealer. So come on. Keep it coming. It’ll be more convincing.”

  I looked around at the other guys, all leering at me now. I hadn’t noticed that none of them had moved to break up the fight, that they’d moved away from us instead of toward us. As I took in the room, I could see why. Everything around had my fingerprints on it. There was the pipe they’d forced into my mouth, cigarettes I’d smoked, bottles I’d drank from . . . The room was spinning and they were laughing at me, all of them except for that little sister, who really wasn’t so little, but she always seemed like it.

  “Go to the back,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “Go to the back and run.”

  For once in my life, I didn’t ask any questions. The guys swarmed me: punching, kicking in every direction. Somebody came at me with a needle, but I slipped through them and into the filthy kitchen, out the back door.

  Behind me, I heard sirens, the crash of front doors, feet pounding down the back steps, fear running in every direction. Not wanting to be caught up in the herd, I made a quick turn back toward the rosebushes. I looked up and saw the cross atop Mount Olive somewhere over the crest of the hill. If I could reach it, something told me I might make it.

  Tires peeled behind me.

  Maybe not.

  “Get in!”

  It was Joyce, wearing a Santa hat and red gloves. I climbed into her yellow Camaro and closed my eyes as she pulled away. A stack of Bibles pinched my side and the backseat smelled of turkey and gravy. It was Christmas Eve. I’d somehow forgotten. Lost track of the days over the break.

  “Thank you.”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes were fixed on her rearview mirror and the police coming up behind us. Joyce pulled over as easily as she’d pulled off, as easily as she told the officer that I was one of her students. Didn’t he remember that I’d served him at the Law Enforcement Appreciation dinner. Yes, I attended Wright State. On a scholarship even. No, I didn’t need a breathalyzer. I didn’t know anything about any drugs. We were going to hand out dinners to the needy, take toys to the children in the projects behind the Charles C. Merry Christmas to you too, Officer. Merry Christmas to you too.

  By the time my heart stopped racing, we were over the hill and passing the church. I turned back in my seat and said a short prayer, fixing my eyes on the cross.

  Just below it, sitting on the roof, I saw something else. Someone else.

  X.

  And he was waving.

  PART 2

  HARMONY

  2005

  9

  Grace

  I should have buried it. I was good at that. So far I’d buried my father, my husband, and myself. It would have been best to bury what the package and its contents would resurrect. It would have been easy.

  Instead, I stabbed at my front yard with my fingers, raking back the top layers of the soil. The young weeds gave up with a tug. The others, only among my good plants, of course, played tug-of-war with me. With the last one in my hand, I sat back on my heels, panting. Praying about bitter roots and old hurts.

  I tossed the last weed on a pile of others like it and opened the envelope on the ground beside me. Hands shaking, I began to read.

  Diana Grace,

  I pray this finds you well. I have been better myself, but I would never admit it in person. I led Zeely’s dance class last week and the ladies moved with courage and spirit. No one danced like you though. I don’t know if anyone ever will. I know that you are hiding there in that empty house full of memories, but I am mourning too. Mourning the loss of you. I’ve included the notebook you kept after leaving Ngozi. It’s taken me all these years to find it, but it was worth every second. Read it. Read the teaching contract that I’ve also enclosed. My school and my students need you. Let me know when you will arrive. If you ever loved me, please come.

  In Christ’s service,

  Joyce Rogers

  Principal, Imani Academy

  P.S. You dance in my dreams.

  I hugged my knees close to my chest and closed my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t come. I’d had no tears at my husband’s funeral either. Some people thought that callous of me, though they’d never say it to my face. Even my mother, who’d never liked Peter when he was alive, seemed disturbed. “You should show some emotion,” she said. “Even if things weren’t the best between you, cry or something.”

  Something was what I chose and not because things were bad between us either. Things just . . . were. Peter was a good man, strong and steady in his own way. We had some things in common: a love of good books, long trips, and fine wine. Faith was not something we shared. I’d even debated over having his funeral in a church, but it felt right. And now with a dirty envelope in my lap and dandelions in my hair, I wondered if anything would ever feel right again.

  I heard a car pull up behind me. I forced myself to stand, just before a kiss landed on my neck. Strong arms circled my waist.

  “I waited for you. You didn’t come,” he said.

  An uninvited tear slid down my face. I clutched the envelope to my stomach, not knowing quite what to say. Explaining to Malachi Gooden, my boyfriend-fiancé or whatever he was, never quite worked out the way I planned. Like my mother, he was a fast talker.

  “I forgot.”

  It wasn’t true exactly. Before the mail came, I’d flat ironed my hair and put on my good girl skirt. My shoes were sensible but sexy and my eyelashes curled. I’d forgiven all the times Mal had canceled on me and grabbed my wedding notebook, grateful that he’d taken the time to finally set a date.

  Then, the mailman came and here I was, bushy haired and barefoot, wondering what would happen next.

  He came in closer, his smooth cheek against mine. “Grace? Are you all right? And what are you doing out here anyway? Pulling weeds? I told you I’m paying someone for that. He just hasn’t made it over—”

  “I’m okay.” I shook a leaf out of my hair, no longer shiny and straight, but curled tight and held back with a scarf from a vintage store in Beverly Hills. I’d packed it away with some of Peter’s things, but this afternoon had sent me digging through my house. And myself.

  Malachi stood up too, for once speechless at the sight of me. “Are you going to a costume party or something? Some neo soul club?” He stared at my feet, decked with toe rings instead of their usual safe French manicure.

  “I’m not going anywhere today.” I turned from him, anxious to get the envelope inside the house, under something. I needed somewhere to hide myself too before Diana showed up, wings and all. Mal would hate her. Peter had too. Grace was easier to deal with. Peter had been the one to suggest that I go by my middle name. In my heart, I would always be Diana, even if it had taken until now to admit it.

  He stepped over my piles and tools and followed me inside. It was time for this. If he
was going to marry me, he had to know it all. I really wanted to run to my bedroom and bellyflop onto my bed, but that would be too easily misconstrued. Malachi spent his nights as a youth pastor and his days teaching junior high. Sometimes I thought their hormones rubbed off on him. I certainly wasn’t up for playing octopus tonight. There were other things to be done. To be said. I put the package in a basket by the door and headed into the kitchen. While I forced a mango through the juicer, Mal riffled through my mail.

  “Please don’t do that.” I spoke quietly, but firmly, the way I did with my students.

  He went on, picking up another piece of mail, a postcard this time, in response. I closed my eyes. It was an invitation to lead a group of children in a dance piece at the Black Cultural Festival on the riverfront. “I thought you were done with this?”

  It was my turn not to respond. I poured myself some green tea from the refrigerator and stirred in the fresh mango juice. It was Mal’s favorite and I should have offered him a glass, but it’s hard to be hospitable when someone is looking through your mail. He put down the postcard, but kept what mattered most—the envelope with my old notebook inside.

  I sat down, my drink on the bar between us. “I thought I was done with it too, but evidently God isn’t done. He’s not done with a lot of things.”

  My bare feet had left footprints, I noticed. Only the toes showed up, like a young girl on tiptoe. Perhaps that’s just what it was. I grabbed the envelope and pulled. My boyfriend’s shocked look made me smile. “I’m not who you think I am, Mal. Nobody is. You know me as Grace, but in this envelope is Diana, a part of me that I have silenced for a very long time. The part of me that’s missing.”

  It must have been his turn to surprise me, because he sat down, right there in my dirty footprints on my kitchen floor. He was wearing his favorite pants. Mine too. He didn’t seem to care as he motioned for me to join him on the floor.