Alfalfa, astragalus, B-complex . . .
Joyce continued as she turned a little more, almost facing me. “The body is a temple even when the altar has been abandoned. Sex is church. Worship. And you know what happens when you take a woman to church. She wants more. Much more.”
I got up. Whether she was talking about me or someone else, I didn’t want to hear it.
She motioned for me to sit down.
I took my seat, shocked by what she said next. “I tried to tell him about her before. He said there was nothing to it. Do what you can, Red.”
Red. Ron. Not only did he know about Lottie but he had the nerve to be talking to Joyce about it behind my back?
And to think I gave him my car.
I straightened, expecting Joyce would cut the conversation short. She kept talking while looking me right in the eyes.
“Yes. The main thing I need you to do is pray. This is all heading somewhere and only the Lord knows where that is. She could do a lot of damage. Especially now. You know what I mean. I love you,” Joyce said before hanging up.
And then with a slow deliberation that made me crazy, she rearranged her desk, then clasped her hands.
“Is there something I can do for you?” Her lips curled, but not into a smile.
There were a lot of things I could have said: Stop talking about me, be honest with me. My answer surprised us both. “Fire me.”
She looked away. “You don’t mean that. I’m doing all I can—”
“You’re doing too much. Calling Ron about me? Come on. We’re not kids anymore. He’s got his own problems. I don’t need him to fix mine. You either.”
Joyce tapped her computer mouse. A document appeared on the screen. She hit a few strokes on the keyboard. Another tap of the mouse. The printer hummed. She eased up from the chair, retrieving the document from the printer. “Sign here. Have your things out today. Tell Grace to take over the class until I find a replacement.”
I wadded the paper into a ball. I didn’t want to quit. I just needed some understanding. “Don’t tempt me, Doc. I don’t have to be here—to take this. I could have stayed where I was.”
“Maybe you should have.” My former teacher walked around to the front of her desk and sat down on it with her ankles tucked beneath her.
She pointed to the file cabinet, the bottles on it. “Olive leaf extract. Hand me that, please.”
I obeyed quickly, watching as she dropped two capsules into her palm and swallowed them dry with little effort.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Any of it.”
She stared over her glasses at me. “No, you were right. Your coming to Imani was a mistake, both mine and yours. You thought you could change me—”
“That wasn’t it!”
She held up a finger. “I thought the students would change you.”
My voice betrayed me. “They did change me.”
“I know. You’re worse. Before, you thought you knew everything. Now, you’re sure you do.” Joyce put down the bottle and pressed her palms into the desk.
More analysis? Everybody wanted to shrink me.
“That’s not it at all. Perhaps I’m still adjusting from the aptitudes at the college level to the aptitudes here.” It was my dissertation voice and it sounded as wretched and false to me now as it had back then. Some things couldn’t be defended, my motivations among them.
Joyce grabbed a dictionary from somewhere on her desk and flipped quickly through the A’s. “ ‘Aptitude . . . Talent. Capacity for learning.’ There is no adjustment needed for that. These students have the same aptitude as the ones you taught at State. It’s your attitude that needs adjustment. You think this job is a joke. And it shows.”
A vein popped at my temple. This was too much. “It shows? You want to see my lesson plans? My student files? I know more about them than their probation officers, than their parents!” If I’d known I’d be the defendant instead of the judge, I might have prepared better. As it was, I was going down in flames. I felt a little sick.
“That’s just it. You know everything about them, but you don’t know them. It sounds the same, but it’s worlds apart. As far as life is from death.” Joyce retreated behind her desk. The leather headrest hissed a little as her head pressed into it.
Death. What did Joyce know about it? Everything I loved died. Everyone. “They don’t need me to be their friend, Doc. They need tools. Resources . . .”
Joyce cupped her face between her fingertips. “Is that all I gave you? Resources? If so, I’m also to blame.”
That knocked the wind out of me somehow, like someone had hit me with a wrecking ball. I stood and leaned onto the file cabinet, trying not to think of all that Joyce had given me. Her voice echoed across the years in spite of me, refusing to be silent.
You’re brilliant. Better than just going to college. Good enough for a doctorate.
I stared down at my shoes, tracing the square toe with my eyes, traveling back over the path of my life. Those simple words had survived all my failures, all my hurts. There had been good books and great learning; Joyce had given more than that. She’d taught us all to believe. The one thing I’d been trying to forget.
Her words moved across my forehead and settled around my eyes. I held onto the file drawer to steady myself in case it was a bad one. Tension headaches, my doctor called them. Ron had them too. Joyce’s bag fell from its perch.
I caught it, but lost the contents. When I bent down to retrieve her things, the floor was thick with secrets.
Joyce’s eyes never left me as I took in the view: seven pill bottles, upended and rolling in different directions, peppermints, wig adhesive. The fattest vial read DCOP. Dayton Clinical Oncology Program. I knew that stamp all too well. I shoved everything back into the bag and put it back on the file cabinet. I tripped over my feet on the way to my chair. She’d told me to sit down. One day I’d learn to listen, even when I didn’t feel like it.
Joyce’s voice cracked. “You got it all?”
I stared at her, hungry for some evidence to disprove the theory I’d just seen outlined on the floor. As my gaze skimmed across her—a tendril of arm, a slip of neck held high over two bony hollows that were her cheeks—my eyes widened, choking on something familiar. My knees buckled even though I was sitting down. “Cervical? Ovarian?”
“Blood now. Leukemia. I had it in both breasts before you came. I made it through that. I hoped you would get in the yoke with me, take some of the stress.”
I leaned way forward, almost off the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me? You said you were sick before, but not this. Never this. I would have—”
Joyce shook her head. Slowly. “You would have what? Made the budget meet? Searched for new teachers? Bailed students out of jail? No. If I have to tell you to do something, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”
The past five years tumbled through my mind like dirty laundry. Meetings I’d missed. Memos I hadn’t read. The summers in Africa. That irritating urgency in Joyce’s voice. I’d lost all the women I dared to love. This couldn’t happen again. “How long?”
Joyce crossed her legs. “Not long enough for us to waste time discussing it. I picked out my casket last Christmas.”
I slid to my knees.
“It’s that bad, even if I’m just starting to look it. My bottles of friends over there have been a great help, but things are speeding up. Or maybe I should say slowing down. I’ve been running forever, it seems.”
I was in the right position to believe, but when I looked up at Joyce, I didn’t see the healing I was praying for. I saw her in a casket.
She frowned. “Don’t look at me like that, Brian. I’m just dying. You’re already dead.”
39
Ron
My office looks down from the tenth floor of Freedom Tower, home of the courthouse, City Hall, and as of six months ago, Bentek and Associates, founded by Mindy’s father, my current employer.
From my desk, I can see thi
ngs up here that are easily missed on the ground: a businessman leaving the homeless shelter with a small boy, wiping his breakfast on the back of his sleeve; a woman wearing clothes out of season, her whitewashed shoes mended too many times. Things that make me watch and pray, speak into my voice recorder; add to my list of things to do. Things to be.
“Inquire about volunteering at homeless shelter. Stop.”
It hurt sometimes to look down from Freedom Tower and see hungry confusion instead. After so many years, the fee of testimony was still required to live free in this town. Now more than ever.
Even I wasn’t immune. I had a stack of wedding invitations on my desk to prove it. Though I wasn’t starving or homeless like some of the people passing by below, I longed to be free. I knew though that by freeing myself I would be sentencing many of those people to a life of bondage. God had made a way for me, created hands to pull me out of that house on the hill. Though I didn’t like it or want it, I’d been put in place for such a time as this. The pages in front of me were proof of that.
Lottie’s complaint against Brian.
Why she’d come to us—to me—I wasn’t sure. Despite an internship in criminal law, it wasn’t what I or my firm was known for. I’d tried to downplay it to talk her off the ledge, but the others had stoked the fire, hoping my friend would easily burn. He had it coming, they’d said. A bigmouth who had finally showed his hand. I wondered how much Bentek had to do with this—Brian was his nemesis at city council meetings. And no matter how much I squirmed, pleaded that it wasn’t my specialty, they didn’t budge. In a town like ours, there were no specialties. The family doctor often served as dermatologist, gynecologist, and every other “ologist” needed. It looked like things were about the same for lawyers, outside driving to the next town.
So here I was, trying to do my job, love my friend. The hardest part was Lottie. She’d been thorough: pictures, witnesses, everything. When she showed up, I hardly knew her either. No makeup or short skirts. She played the victim well, but she played the gardener better, planting a seed of doubt so deep that even I found myself wondering. A lot had changed. I wanted to say that I knew how far Brian would go, what he would do, but I wasn’t sure.
Are you talking about yourself or him?
Probably both. At one time we’d boasted that we knew the other as well as ourselves. These days, that wouldn’t be saying much on my end. Still, there had been all those messages from Lottie when I’d gone to Brian’s house. Things he’d said about her months before. A picture she’d had taken of them at a club.
Little things, bones and teeth.
Skeletons.
They tumbled out of closets at the oddest times, stacking odds and threatening jobs, friendships, lives. And then there was God, who’d caused even the dry bones to dance before me.
My assistant’s voice came through the speaker, just as I lowered my head to pray. “Sir, there’s a Mr. Mayfield waiting to—Sir! Wait! You can’t—”
I heard the door burst open behind me. I lifted my head and looked out the window, watching a pigeon on the ledge take flight. Free as a bird. “What took you so long?”
“Why are you in my business?” Brian’s words were cold. Cutting.
I’d wanted to talk to him, but not like this. “Maybe if you’d handle your business a little better—”
“Don’t even go there, okay?”
Brian was next to me now, and I looked up to see his anger dissolve as his eyes roamed over what was spread out on my desk: Lottie’s pictures, obviously taken moments after the incident; another snapshot of her looking like a wholesome art teacher in a long denim skirt; Grace’s name and number scrawled on another piece of paper.
The truth must have hit him like a bullet. He collapsed into the chair behind him. “I didn’t do this. You’ve got to know that.”
“We can’t talk about the case.”
“I just need to know that you believe . . . in me.”
“Always.” But I knew he could see things behind my eyes. Questions. That seed of doubt I was battling to uproot.
My receptionist’s voice came through the speaker. “Mr. Jenkins? Call for you. Line two.”
“The little woman?” Brian rarely mentioned Mindy Bentek or the wedding plans he and I no longer discussed. He stood and started to pace.
My finger lingered over the blinking light, then pushed another button instead. “Can you take a message please? Yes, I know she’ll be disappointed. Tell her I’ll call her at lunchtime.”
I turned to him, swallowed hard. “Let’s get it over with. You didn’t come here to talk about the case. This is about Joyce. You’re mad and we both know it, so let’s just do it.”
“Why are you all in my business? Calling Joyce about me. And did you know that she’s dying? Did you?” Brian’s words were sharp again, but they were cutting both ways.
I got up, looked him eye to eye, something few people dared to do. “Your business came to me. And about Joyce, yes, I knew. I saw she didn’t look well and I asked. It took a lot to get it out of her—”
“Whatever. You can call her, gossiping about me, but you can’t call me to tell me something important. You haven’t changed.”
“And neither have you.” I was amused for a second, but just as quickly, I returned his hardened look and held up both hands. “You done?”
“I guess.”
“All right. I have an appointment waiting, so I’ll make this quick. First, I called Jerry regarding the case I’m working on.”
Brian just glared at me.
He wasn’t putting it together. This was starting to feel like charades. I swept a hand over the pictures on my desk. “Read between the lines.”
It suddenly registered on his face. “Why would she come to you? You don’t even do that kind of law.”
Okay. He figured it out. That was as far as I could go. It was my turn to be quiet. “I can’t discuss this with you.”
“Bentek is probably loving this. They’ve got it in for me over here, a lot of those guys. I go to the city commission meetings and ask questions they don’t want to hear. They’d love to smear my name.” Brian moved toward the door. When he reached it, he looked back over his shoulder. “There’s no way out for me on this one. We can’t legally prove we’re related so you won’t get off it. Don’t go down with me. Save yourself.” He paused before turning away. “Just let me fall.”
I closed the distance between us and put my hand on his shoulder. “If you’re innocent, I’ll do what I can to prove it.”
Brian put his hand on the door, but I didn’t let go of him.
“But if it comes to that, we’ll both fall,” I said. “Together.”
“You don’t have to, you know. You could just walk away.”
I did it before. We both have. My grip faltered. “I know.”
40
Monique
After two weeks the school’s media ban had been lifted and I saw things I’d never seen in a classroom before: headphones, crazy clothes, and chaos. At first, I’d been a little scared and taken my place at the front of the class, never daring to look back, but each day brought me back another row until I could see the vacant eyes of my peers. Their faces were blank, unconcerned. Though I knew I’d have to move back up sometime, switch to another school, today I just wanted to blend in, to be someone other than the math teacher’s daughter. Once people heard my name called the first time, everything changed. I could see it on their faces. So I raised my hand fast, never allowing any teacher to get to my last name.
This math class wasn’t a class at all for me really but some kind of community service hour where I’d tutor students studying to take the proficiency test. My schedule—peer tutoring, leadership seminar, Latin—still read like Daddy was hoping for Harvard. I wasn’t. I’d tossed that dream out the window on the way home from Rose Hill. Now I wasn’t sure if it had ever been my dream in the first place. Now, I just wanted to fit in, to belong to something.
The c
lass filled. The purple-haired girl I’d seen the first day sat beside me. She had her phone back and took it out frequently to text someone. Finally, she looked my way with what I mistook for a smile. Like a fool, I grinned back.
She leaned back from me like I had the plague. “What you looking at, Moesha?”
“Nothing.” I said, fingering my new braids, vowing to judge smiles more carefully next time. She’d have to try a lot harder than that to offend me. I’d been the only black student at Rose Hill for two long, lonely years.
My dad came in next, which I wasn’t expecting, followed by a dark-skinned woman in a pink suit and matching shoes. I knew without asking who she was. My mother had told me about her many times. This was Zeely, the woman my father had planned to marry instead of my mom. The woman I’d kept him from by being born, the woman I was still keeping him from. And she looked so good that I didn’t know whether to hate her or ask her for fashion advice. At the sight of her, any hopes I’d had of our family holding together slipped away.
A coat brushed against my face as a tall boy with freckles shoved into the desk beside me. I turned away before he had a chance to blast me. These kids were so rude. I opened the math book I’d been given, turned to the section for the day.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling the book down.
I swallowed hard; now close enough to really see him, especially his eyes gold in a ring of green.
My daughter’s eyes.
I gripped the desk.
I’d never known the boy’s real name, so I hadn’t been lying when I told everyone that. We’d talked online for a while, biding time until I’d made it to Testimony one weekend to meet relatives. He’d had a party that, despite the other people there, I eventually realized was planned to celebrate me alone. After that night, I’d never seen or heard from him again. He had deleted his MySpace and changed his cell number.
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