When I’d seen her in the parking lot this morning, she’d been neither haughty or guarded. She’d smiled at me with her soul wide open and nothing to cover it. She’d mentioned once that she prayed early in the morning. Today it must have done her good.
And maybe me too.
I couldn’t wait for her to come to the classroom with all that truth on her face. Maybe for once I’d see all of her, not just her faith and her strength, but her pain. Her need. Still there was the chance that she’d switch up at the last minute and arrive all-business, like nothing had happened between us that night at dinner and all the days after. For her, maybe nothing had.
Probably not. Her smiles might have been a gracious way of covering the awkwardness, the pieces that didn’t fit. As she’d pronounced to the man selling newspapers that night, there would be no compromise for Grace. And not for me either.
Though I was feeling less and less confident in the pot-bellied statue on my dresser or the altar to the ancestors beneath my bed, I wasn’t planning on running to Sunday school anytime soon. Still, I found myself reading the Bible more and more. I stayed up most nights now, studying the passages that Grace read before school or during her breaks. She always left it open on her desk and highlighted the good parts bright enough for me to see from a distance.
She probably knew that I was reading the Scriptures from some of the comments that I made. I wondered now if I wasn’t playing a game of my own, making her think I could be what she wanted, what she expected. Perhaps it was best to disappoint her now and tell her all the other sacred texts I stayed up with too, tell her how we might have really made something of this if she hadn’t thrown the gauntlet down:
Jesus Christ is my God.
But she had thrown it down and I wasn’t willing to pick it up. Praying to an unknown deity was one thing. Yielding to Jesus Christ was another.
And yet, I had to wonder why I’d never taken the “altar of the ancestors” out of its box, why I’d never been able to repeat the words to the libations at the ceremonies I’d attended. Something restrained my lips from forming a prayer to the gods that others promised would give me peace. Did the “fear of the living God,” as Eva had always called it, still live somewhere in me? Somewhere deeper than all my pain and anger?
The thought of that and the thought of her gave me another kind of fear, a fear of losing control. There is still some vein of faith deep inside me, but I dared not mine it now. Maybe once I found my mother I could face God. By then, I’d have the right questions to ask. Or maybe just the wrong answers to the one question always at the center of everything: Why?
I checked my Palm Pilot for the day’s lessons, willing myself to calm down. This was a dead-end street, this thing with Grace. She had no obligation to leave her safety and jump into the chaos of somebody like me. But I wanted her to. I wanted it so badly that I’d spoken her name before falling asleep and again when I’d opened my eyes this morning. Only one woman’s name had ever slept on these lips before and then only after years of marriage. I’d known Grace for what, a month?
I hadn’t felt swept up like that since my first read of Ralph Ellison. I could still remember the stab of those first lines.
I am an invisible man . . . a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Invisible. I realized in my first read of that book that this was my greatest fear—being invisible. The thought that when I died, my mother, wherever she was, would not press a hand to her throat and hold on to her neighbor’s elbow saying, “My son. He’s gone.” But rather that she would go on talking, choking me down, blotting me out as though I’d never been at all. Though everyone around me proclaimed my accomplishments, in the end Ellison’s narrator knew me best. Or at least I had known him best, until Diana Grace returned.
When I’d seen her this morning, she reminded me of a singer, someone on the hundreds of album covers I had at home. Vinyl jackets swept through my mind: brown-sugar eyes, melted ice cream, polyester hips. Minnie Riperton? Too sweet. Thelma Houston? Close. Same body for sure. I couldn’t help but smile when it finally came to me: Angela Bofill, angel of the night. And in Grace’s case, angel of the day.
“That’s her. Straight up,” I said to the spider fern on my desk as though it was listening.
The plant wasn’t listening of course, but someone else was. The door creaked open behind me, and I clenched my fists. How long had she been standing in the hall? Was she feeling as awkward and anxious as me? Why didn’t she say something?
Calm down.
Her footsteps stopped right behind me. Too close. She smelled different today. Overpowering. I’d cataloged the scents. Patchouli. Clary Sage. I turned to face her. As I did, two slim wrists plunged into my neckline. Braids brushed my face. I knew without looking at the face that it wasn’t Grace at all. It was Lottie Wells.
“What’s the matter, baby? You forgot old Lot now that there’s fresh meat on the block? You never call me.” She went for my neck, attaching like a vacuum until I managed to pull her away.
I flung her arms from my shoulders, and nudged her back. “Act like you’ve got some sense.”
Lottie pulled at my shirt again.
This time I pushed. Hard. Probably too hard, but she barely budged. She was worrying me now. “Get off me. And stop calling me too. I know that’s you hanging up all the time.”
Lottie pressed herself onto me, her arms around my waist. “You don’t fool me,” she said. “You want me.”
I sighed. Why had I ever dated this woman? These types were always more trouble in the end than I could see at the beginning. I generally enjoyed dating a few times a year, like eating Thelma’s burritos. Now I wished I’d never taken the first bite. I had to hold her off with one arm, while moving toward the door.
She lunged forward and clawed at my arm as I stepped aside, leaving her to sprawl on the floor. What a mess. I felt bad not helping her up, but I didn’t dare touch her again. I didn’t need any trouble. “Enough. Please go.”
Lottie scrambled to her feet. “Never,” she said, just as Grace walked in.
I had to close my eyes. I wanted so bad to see Grace, but not like this. I watched as her eyes swept the scene—Lottie’s sideways skirt, the button missing from my sleeve. The mask lowered over her face. Her eyes repeated the word spoken a moment before—never.
32
Grace
There’s something in my belly. I can feel it fluttering, like a butterfly.
Diana Dixon
I didn’t watch while Brian scrubbed pink lipstick off his hands. It wouldn’t come off easily—for either of us. My faith wanted to believe all things, to bear all things, but my mind wasn’t having it as he arranged his shirt and wiped his hands before approaching the office where I’d retreated.
“Come in.” I sounded cold, like Joyce before an expulsion.
Brian inched toward me, pushing around the kiln to get to my desk. “What’re you reading?”
“The usual.” I held up a squat paperback with a neon pink cover titled The Message. He groaned. He probably wondered how many Bibles one woman needed.
From the way my hands trembled as I turned the pages, maybe I needed a few more. Brian kneeled beside my desk.
“That wasn’t what you think. She came in and jumped all over me . . . At first I thought it was you—”
My lips tightened into a smile. A fake one. “You don’t have to explain.” But I want you to. I really want you to. I just don’t think you can.
Brian sucked his teeth. “There’s nothing to explain. I just didn’t want you to think I was—like that.”
My false smile twisted to one side. I let the book, the Bible, slip from my fingers as I stood, staring into his eyes.
“Uh-oh,” he whispered.
He’d gotten that much right.
“In your own words, it will be a rough day, so let’s get t
o work. I brought some of the books we discussed the other night.” I took my tote from the back of my chair and dumped a stack of paperback classics onto the table.
Brian nodded as he found his feet and went to his own desk. “Right. Thanks.”
“Oh, and Dr. Mayfield?”
“Yes?” His eyes lit up.
“If you’d like, I can loan you some foundation to cover that thing on your neck. The students have enough to gossip about as it is.”
A few minutes later I hid in the bathroom, beating myself up for having gone out with Brian at all. How could I have been so stupid? Malachi was right about one thing. A single woman wasn’t safe, not even in the workplace.
Brian’s words reverberated in my mind: I thought she was you.
Not wanting to think about it anymore, I went back to the classroom, straight into the office. I took a deep breath when Brian wasn’t there. And then, smelling of almonds and honey, he was there. I acted as if he wasn’t.
He pressed into the desk as though his arms were his only support. As he did, a patch of red crept over his buttoned collar.
He touched my arm. “You ready to get started?”
I jerked away, heart pounding. Suddenly I was somewhere else. He was someone else. Someone dangerous.
“Grace! Are you afraid of me? Come on now. We talked for hours the other night.”
What a waste of time. “I remember.”
“Do you? Look, I realize you don’t know me well, but that wasn’t what it looked like. I promise.”
I didn’t respond.
He crossed his arms. “We’ll talk more later. Let’s just get through the day. Here’s what we discussed. The history lesson? I do it every year. I know you said we’d be doing it today, but we can do it later. If you’re still working with me, that is.” He placed a stack of papers on my desk.
He made his point. And it was my fault too, mixing business with pleasure in the first place. I adored Joyce, but this had been an unwise placement from the first. Now I had a choice: sit at this desk and sulk or do my job. It was difficult to consider either without knowing what was really going on. If it was something mutual, consensual, it was none of my business. But if it was something else, something violent, then that changed everything. Maybe I should have asked Lottie to stay, let Brian explain . . .
Perfect love casts out fear.
Though I loved the Lord, I wasn’t so sure about this one. I’d taught on that verse before, using fishing line as a prop. Cast meant to throw far, like a fisherman pitching a line. I’d have to fling my suspicions all the way back to Cincinnati to get through this. A woman had to have some common sense. I’d learned that the hard way.
I watched through the doorway as Brian mounted a timeline of the Middle Passage, the longest and deadliest part of our ancestors’ trip to the New World. The display was laminated and colorful like most teaching aids, but intricate in its detail. I looked closer at the words beneath each image. Brian’s firm hand and block letters gave him away as the artist.
I walked hurriedly to the doorway. “You made that?”
He smiled cautiously at my presence. “I like visuals. Helps them to remember.”
I nodded, remembering the morning’s events. Some visuals were unforgettable. “What about the hands-on project you put in the lesson plan? Aren’t you going to do that too?”
Brian’s smile widened. “I didn’t think you were up to it. Help me move the desks. If we work fast, we can still pull it off.”
Once the desks were out of the way, we rolled a giant poster across the floor. A life-size ship. Dotted outlines indicated the slaves’ positions. From the looks of it, Brian had drawn that out too. Incredible.
I stepped close to it, careful not to rip the shiny paper. “I’ve never seen such a big poster.”
“Go ahead, walk on it. It’s laminated.”
With one step, I was transported to the cramped quarters . . . women huddled with their infants, men sandwiched together in ways that brought them shame. Such closeness and no bathroom. It hurt to even think about it, and yet I must, we must. This town was confused enough as it was.
I covered my mouth, then turned to Brian. “What now?”
Eyes wet, Brian leaned over and rubbed his hand down the length of one of the outlined bodies. “Now we put the desks on top.”
I fell in place beside Brian, pushing the desks across the room. I tried to be wary of him, but as the time to start class grew near, my passion for the lesson displaced my fear.
He climbed on top of some of the desks. “This is the deck. We’ll pack the kids in the ‘hold’ below. Head-to-head. Just like it was. Do you remember the Swahili from Ngozi?”
“Some.”
“Good enough.” We rehearsed the words, with Brian explaining the meanings as he went along.
After testing the hold to be sure, I held my breath. The ship, scaled from an actual slaver, was quite convincing. I remembered my earnest tears after reading the ship scenes in Roots. I’d thrashed and wailed, balled up in knots. I’d carried on until my mother took the book away, declaring it too much for a nine-year-old, especially one with such an overly emotional personality. That had only brought more tears and a secret copy I left in my desk at school.
Even now, Mom dismissed my passionate nature as a defect, a problem. “Please don’t start it. Don’t get yourself worked up. Anger killed your father, you know. Anger and pork chops,” she’d say on the phone when the conversation reached a conflict. Only in dance could I release the emotions restrained first by my mother and later, my husband. My version of art “wasn’t acceptable.” They’d both made that very clear. A young lady, a good wife didn’t wipe up the floor with herself or do poetry readings in the bathroom. A good woman sat still and quiet, rotting in her own skin.
The two of them had interpreted my creativity as something sensual. Sinful. My mother had even implied that my free spirit caused the theft of my womanhood. “You have a slutty way about you,” she explained. How an overweight teen with braces and glasses could look slutty I still didn’t understand. Peter too had scolded me for being “too friendly” with people. He encouraged me to be detached, uninvolved. Like him.
Even now, there were times like this morning when I had to run to the bathroom whispering Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” under my breath, running from the beast lurking in my own skin. Until now, until seeing Brian again, I’d always been able to force down the monster when it resurfaced, to keep myself calm. Safe. But now it was harder, watching as he strapped a set of drums across his shoulders, his eyes lit with the same fire, the same beast of emotion lurking behind his gold-green eyes.
“You’re getting into it, aren’t you?” He patted the biggest drum in the front a few times playfully, then tapped the smaller ones on the sides.
I looked at the door, not expecting this. “You still play?”
He unbuttoned his sleeves, folding them up to his elbows. “I’ll let you answer that when I’m done. The question is, do you still dance?” His palms molded to the drums’ canvas. In seconds, the air filled with his pulse, extending through his hands—and into me.
The beat tackled my senses. I might have forgotten most of my Swahili, but my body remained fluent in rhythm. Still, I really hadn’t planned to dance. I wasn’t dressed for it. I hadn’t prayed about it. I crossed my legs, sucked in my stomach.
Hold it in, girl. Hold it in.
He hit the drum with the heels of his hands and backed up to face me. He gave three short beats before starting in hard and fast—the signal for the solo I’d never danced.
He hadn’t forgotten.
I wanted to ask Brian to stop, but his eyes were closed and my feet were already moving. My slip-on shoes were replaced with the cold floor under my bare feet. As the drums talked back and forth, male and female, I shuffled forward. Shimmied back. I rose and fell.
Brian was sweating now and swaying too. Crouched low, he played each note truer than the last. His arms
were stronger now than they’d been all those years ago. His soul was bigger too. I danced on, slowing as the female drum screeched to a climax. The full-bellied male drum called back, daring her on. Joyce’s voice whispered in my head. Head up. Shoulders back. Now let it go . . . I leapt at the crescendo, landing in a sweaty heap, cradling my knees.
Unexpected applause poured in through the doorway as the drumming broke off and Brian and I crashed through the surface of ourselves. I was shocked, vulnerable, and quite speechless.
Brian had no such problem. He wiggled out of his drums and climbed onto the nearest desk. “Habari Gani!” He welcomed them in Swahili, continuing in dialect for several sentences before pausing. The students looked to me for help.
I translated. “Welcome! You have been sold or captured. You belong to me. Do not try to escape.” I pulled back a chair. “Ladies enter here. Boys there.”
Brian waved the boys to the other side.
The logistics proved more difficult than anticipated. One girl was as tall as she was wide, and another seemed a little too eager to be sandwiched between her classmates. I motioned for Brian to move things along. The beauty queens were wilting and the boys were plotting to crawl over to the girls’ side.
He relented and directed the kids back to reassemble their seats. “Think about what you just experienced. You’ll be writing about it at the end of the period. Who will be our griot today?” Now warm and red-faced, Brian freed his top button and stroked his beard.
My eyes widened. I tried to get his attention, but several students were already waving their hands. One in particular found the sight of Brian’s neck so funny that he twisted around in his seat to smack hands with a friend behind him. He was doubled over with laughter.
Brian didn’t look as if he found anything funny. He pointed at Sean. “You. On your feet.”
All the class laughed then.
Brian reached for a yardstick in the chalk tray at the board. He tapped it on the floor, demanding silence. He pointed to Sean again. “Come on, Mr. Griot. Tell us what we learned yesterday.”
Rhythms of Grace Page 17