She frowned. “Let go of it, mister.”
I let go of the plate and watched her heap it with macaroni and cheese. From the hurt look in her eyes a minute before, I knew a speech was coming. I hoped she’d make it short. She was even cuter when she was mad.
“Have you ever made your own plate in this house? I take care of my guests. Even the ones who don’t want me to.” Greens chocked with ham hocks came next, then black-eyed peas and a chunk of cornbread. She set the plate on the table, turned back toward the stove to make a smaller plate for herself, and then followed me to the dining room.
My prayer was simple, all I could muster while reaching around the sunflower centerpiece and holding her hand. Thanks for the food and the friendship. I could have easily added forgiveness, but that was an unspoken verse that blessed all our times together. When we lifted our heads, we looked at each other for a long time. Too long.
I pulled back my hand and went for the cornbread before I lost it totally. It was scratch with a little Jiffy mix, I could tell, the best kind for crumbling. I mixed it with my greens and doused it with hot sauce, while Zeely shook her head.
After my first mouthful, I was shaking my head too. It was so good that I had to pause for a minute and let it sink in. A lesser man might have cried. In our little dinners together, I’d always made the greens. It’s a wonder she’d eaten them at all.
“Girl . . .” I grabbed the hot sauce again, trying not to talk with my mouth full. “This is crazy good. How’d you get the greens so tender?”
My eyes started to water from the hot sauce before she could answer. She disappeared, only to return with a glass of blue Kool-Aid, my favorite. I took a gulp. Perfect.
She acted like it was nothing, but I knew she was pleased with my reaction. If she only knew.
“I washed the greens seven times. Mama used to put hers in the washing machine, but I’m not up for all that. A pinch of sugar in the ham water. Vinegar too. A splash of olive oil—”
I held up both hands. “What? Slow down, girl. A pinch of this. A splash of that. This isn’t the Food Network. I need a recipe!” I pulled a paper towel off the roll in front of me. She’d known I would need them.
“Recipe? Can’t help you there. You’ll have to come over and watch next time I make them.”
My fork froze in midair. I’d like to watch her do anything. Breathing even. “I’d be honored.” I noticed that the plate in front of her was untouched, her silverware still arranged. “Aren’t you eating too?” “I’ll eat it later. I took Dad his already. I’ll send most of this home with you. The rest will last me the week.”
She was sending most of it home with me? It’d been way too long since I’d been over. Mindy considered it generous if she got up to bring me a glass of tap water. I probably needed that now to cool me down and not because of the hot sauce either.
“Oh, I get it. You’re trying to fatten me up while you stay fine. Make me sleepy with the food while you know all the answers. Hmmm . . . sneaky, but I like it.” I took another bite.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh be quiet. I don’t need a strategy to beat you. I can do that all by myself. Besides, you never gain weight. You thickened up some since high school, but it looks like all muscle from here.” She squeezed my bicep to accentuate her point.
And destroy any remaining cool I had.
I pulled off another paper towel and mopped my brow. We both went quiet as if knowing a time-out was needed. I wiped my lips next, never taking my eyes off hers.
Zeely shot up from her chair, a saucer in hand. “Ready for the cake?”
Nice save.
I pushed my half-full plate aside and reached for the game. “No cake yet. It’s game time.”
She rubbed her hands together. “It’s on now. I’ll try not to be too rough. This time you’ll realize that I can take you.”
My body settled into the chair. On nights like tonight, I wished she’d take me forever.
17
Jerry
It’d been a good weekend, but a long one too. Work, school orientation (other work), work, church, work, church concert, and now there were a few hours to sleep before going to my second job.
I tossed my keys onto the table and headed for the recliner instead of the bed so I wouldn’t be so comfortable that I’d oversleep. That definitely wouldn’t be a problem in this chair. I lowered myself into it gently, hoping it wouldn’t choose tonight to break completely. As I sank into the threadbare seat, my ex-wife Carmel’s face floated before my eyes. Too tired to blink her away, I meditated on the face of the woman who I fought with so often now, wondering where things had gone wrong between us. We hadn’t married under the best circumstances, but we’d loved each other once.
Maybe we could love each other again.
Maybe not, if her new boyfriend had anything to do with it.
Every time I thought we could work things out, Carmel pulled another stunt, leaving me with my finger on the trigger. A stack of bills teetered on the coffee table, anchored by the fattest envelope, the one weighing heaviest on my mind. Another of Carmel’s tricks, authorized without my permission, but left for me to pay for.
A frustrated sigh brought me deeper into the recliner. It creaked beneath my weight. It was hard to believe that three years ago I’d been a sportscaster, coming home each night to a happy wife and a house full of custom-made furniture tailored to fit my large frame. That was before for the new baby, the old bills, the mess we couldn’t clean up . . .
The birth of little Justice had shaken us in ways I didn’t expect, especially Carmel’s faith in my love for her. Like a man in midlife crisis, she went over and over the details of how we’d gotten together and whether I would have married her if she hadn’t been pregnant.
“Be honest,” she’d said, and so I was. Big mistake. Everything that had been an obstacle became a wall, and before I knew it, I was back in Testimony, broke, divorced, and unable to offer any explanation. Carmel moving home too and taking up with a doctor from the hospital she worked at was just extra. She said it was for the best, and at times I believed her, but my life was wearing thin.
My patience too.
I picked up the thickest letter from the bottom of the pile and slit the seam with a toothpick. The pronouncement was the same one I’d find on the other letters, with the same urgent, red type. The phrase that summed up my life:
Overdue.
One flip landed it back on the pile, now scattered across the table. I was overdue all right: overdue for a blessing; overdue for a nap. The latter came without invitation, cut short by the whir of a Pontiac fan in my driveway. I sat up and wiped my mouth, ashamed and awed by how quickly sleep came upon me these days. How deeply. I knuckled the grit from my eyes, trying to remember the schedule. It wasn’t my night, I knew that much. Not that it would mean anything to Carmel. It never did.
A fist pounded against the door. When I got up, my eyes caught on my 7-Eleven uniform draped over a chair a few feet away. I’d stayed awake during the concert tonight. I’d promised Ron I’d go months ago and I was trying to do better about keeping up with friends. This was as far as I could stretch without sleeping. Any longer and I’d have to call in.
Again.
I cracked the door. “Who is it?”
Four rhinestone-covered nails curled around the door. They were worn at the edges and long overdue for a fill, but from a distance, they caught the light from every direction. My ex-wife stood in the doorway with a baby on her hip. She looked almost as tired as I did.
“Here,” she said, pushing the little girl into my chest. She lifted a leather tote inside the door. “There’s enough milk and diapers in there to hold her a few hours. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
I tugged at her sleeve as she turned to go. “Come inside and let’s take turns. Seriously. I’ve hardly slept in two days. Let me sleep for two hours and I’ll let you sleep for two . . .”
My voice faded but Carmel’s response was like smelling s
alts. For the moment, anyway.
“You don’t get it, do you? In two hours, I have to be at work and pretend I’m happy that some fourteen-year-old is having a baby. Tell her that everything will be all right.”
The baby wailed, startled by our loud voices.
“And it won’t be all right, but it’s all I got. I’m sorry, Jerry. I never meant for it to be like this for either of us.” Carmel tightened the belt of her jacket and marched to her car.
I stared behind her until she pulled off. Another cry brought me back to reality and back inside the house. I patted the baby’s back. “I never meant for it to be like this for you either, little mama.”
I closed the door and rested on it, the baby’s head under my chin. After a few tickles, we headed for my bed with the diaper bag in tow. With a prayer of thanks for family, for legacy, I called in to my job and prayed for as much sleep as I could get. Somehow, I had to get this girl to lie down.
18
Brian
The muzzle of a nine-millimeter swept an arc over us and back again with every word the gunman spoke. The floor was hard under us and cold, but we lay still. My thumb was pressed to Grace’s lips, her head against my chest. The police were pulling in now, we could hear them outside.
The boy waving the gun seemed desperate. We heard him pop the ammunition out and back in again.
Grace didn’t speak, but her tears soaked my shirt. That took me over the edge I was already peering over, made me want to sweep the guy’s legs out from under him. I slid my hands from under her head. Just when I was going to make a move, the other boy flicked a lighter. Sean McKnight. The kid who’d almost cost me my job and now maybe my life. It was too late, but maybe he’d come to his senses.
“What are you doing, man! Turn that off.”
The light flickered off. “This isn’t how you said it was going to go down. No guns, remember? I want out,” Sean said with a strained voice.
It was all I could do to keep quiet. Now Sean wanted to use his head, when he was about to go to jail? For all the difficulties Sean and I had gone through, I hated that things had come to this.
“Shut up,” the gunman said. “Don’t worry about getting out. You ain’t getting in. It’s staying alive you got to be worrying with now. Just follow us and keep your mouth shut. What’s that lady’s name? The principal—”
“Nobody. She’s nobody to you,” Sean whispered. As police flashlights lit up the room, Sean and I locked eyes.
“Police!” The shout came from the hall. The doors creaked open, flooding the room with light.
As the boys started to run, I grabbed for the gunman’s leg. Once he was down, I tried to push myself up, but someone yanked me back. Grace. She was stronger than she looked. A policeman rushed past us and finished the job, clicking the handcuffs on the gunman in a flash.
She sagged in my arms, her words rushing out in one breath. “Thank you, Jesus.”
I shrugged before pulling my new co-worker to her feet. I still wasn’t feeling the God thing, but I’d almost said the same thing myself. What Grace didn’t know—Joyce always omitted it from her new teacher invitations—was that several teachers in the district had been critically injured by students, one even killed. At Northside High, once the suburban school of choice, a twenty-five-year veteran teacher had been gunned down after school for giving a student a failing grade. Imani’s own vice principal had broken his arm breaking up a fight during summer school and retired soon after. Last year had been a rough one for the school district, and this year might not be much better. And yet, here was Grace, standing tall with her Jesus.
One of the detectives I knew from around town gave me a quick nod, pointing out Joyce gathering parents together across the room. He’d gone to Imani himself.
“She wants to say a few words to the parents. I’ll give her five minutes to clear the room. Will you keep her straight?”
I nodded, turning to tell Grace what was going on, but she and her mumbled prayers had already blended into the crowd.
My emergency faith melted away as I watched amazed while a few parents righted their clothes and gripped the hands of their children and stayed five more minutes when everyone else had run out as quickly as they could. The five minutes was long gone now as Joyce had done a quick dash to the parking lot and guided three more parents back into the cafeteria.
“Thanks for staying. I know it was scary tonight, but I’m glad you saw what happened tonight. This is exactly why this school is needed,” she said. “We have to reach these kids. Help them discover their destinies.” Joyce marched by, waving for me to follow.
I frowned, but followed, righting overturned chairs as I went. The detective gave me a tense look, but I held up a hand asking for a little more time. Joyce couldn’t be anything, anyone, other than herself.
Neither could Grace, whose flowery scent still mingled with my sweaty one. Instead of leaving like I’d thought, Grace had joined Thelma in helping some of the older people to their cars while Joyce dealt with the media. There was talk of giving rides to those who’d missed the last bus, but I talked both ladies out of that, leaving it to the police and myself, if necessary. Lottie was nowhere to be seen.
I tuned out Joyce’s weary optimism as she talked to reporters. Instead, I watched through the doorway as a policeman walked Grace to her car. I’d liked to have done it myself, but she walked on without looking back. Despite her ripped dress and bare feet, she still made me shift my feet. I even thought of my late wife, Karyn. “You can’t run from God forever,” she’d said to me before she died. As Grace’s pitiful excuse for a car pulled away, I wondered if she hadn’t been right. For the first time in a long time, none of my philosophies rang true.
Tonight it’d been me calling out to God in the darkness. I’d been in dangerous situations before, some worse than this. Tonight though, I’d wanted—needed—God’s help. And I’d gotten it. Where that left me now, I wasn’t sure.
“Get off me!” someone yelled in the hall.
I turned and saw Sean McKnight struggling between two officers. Earlier, I’d put in a word for him, probably only because of Joyce. The officer, my former classmate, didn’t say much, but he kept Sean behind the others being hauled off to jail. I hoped Sean, only seventeen, would get time in juvenile detention instead of being tried as adult. I clutched my gut, sore from the kicks and prods of the crowd. The sight of a student in handcuffs, even a kid who refused to live up to his potential, turned my stomach. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t save them all. Joyce couldn’t either. I signaled to her one last time to shut it all down. She ignored me.
“Dr. Mayfield and I will stand with this community to make changes one child at a time. We were all afraid tonight, but we all stayed, we all prayed. Things come against us, but we will prevail. This will be a good year.” Joyce spoke softly, but I knew that she meant every word.
We all walked to the door together. I reached out and took Joyce’s hand, which, unlike Grace’s, felt like a child’s against my own. I felt her body rest against me as the school door closed behind us. After locking it and giving the key to the officer, I kissed her cheek. She’d been doing this a long time and for all her love, all her patience, she was tired. I was too.
I offered to drive Joyce home but she refused, opting instead for a police escort following behind her. I reached for my car keys, slipped into my remaining pocket hours earlier.
Was that tonight? I wondered. A satin tag fluttered to the ground as I pulled out my keys. Once I was inside the car, I read it. Slowly.
Virtuous Woman. Size 16.
19
Grace
Morning air poured in my car window on the way to church. Though Testimony was landlocked, the breeze had a salty taste, like tears warmed with the last fever of summer. Or maybe my own tears still lingered on my tongue. Home after the mess at orientation, the tears I’d been waiting on for so long finally came. I wanted to believe that it would be the last cry for a while, that toda
y was truly a new day, a fresh mercy.
You are a new creation.
I kept driving, past Zeely’s empty driveway—she’d left hours ago to sing in the choir at first service—past Imani Academy and right up to Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church. I did a quick scan for a black Jaguar. It wasn’t there. I only had the questions to battle with as I climbed the church stairs, only the words in my head that had robbed my sleep:
You can’t help those kids.
That man doesn’t want you. Nobody does. Nobody ever will.
Who do you think you are?
God knew who I was, what I’d been through. He knew who he’d created me to be. He’d be with me through this, whatever this was.
Are you sure? He left you once.
“No,” I whispered as I took hold of the church door. Whether I understood it or not, God had been with me.
Even then.
I took a seat three rows of hats back from the pulpit. Mount Olive looked different: padded pews replaced the wood benches and shag carpet blanketed the once bare floor. A new organ even jazzed up the old songs. Still, something, everything about the place was painfully familiar. The hurt I’d buried years ago in the downstairs choir closet crawled up through the floor and into my soul. Each word from Reverend Wilkins hit the rewind button on my life, leaving a confused teenager in a woman’s body.
“Everybody has a cross—a place where something died. Sometimes we run away before the resurrection. Sometimes we linger long after the body is gone.” The Reverend’s voice boomed from his slight frame.
I studied the cross above the pulpit. It looked the same from the front as it had from the youth choirstand where I’d sat on my last visit. My eyes waded through the suits and sequins to the bus stop outside, the scene of my destination, the debut for which I never arrived. The bus had come eventually and dropped off its passengers. If only I had been one of them . . .
Don’t play that game.
Rhythms of Grace Page 11