by Renée Watson
Maria doesn’t listen. She follows them. “I want to see him. I want to see him!” She runs out of the house. I try to get her to stay. She thinks she’s going to see Ricky as she knows him but I know that the moment someone dies, they don’t look the same.
• • • • • • •
Restoration Baptist Church looks different whenever there are weddings or funerals. Today the altar is full of flowers and there is standing room only. Hundreds of people are here. Pastor Mitchell even came back early from his trip to say good-bye to Ricky. People are outside in the parking lot waiting to get one last look at Ricky.
Pastor McGee is standing at the pulpit hollering into the mike. “Don’t worry about Ricky. He’s in a better place!” He is dripping with sweat and even though he has a handkerchief in his hand, he doesn’t use it. “Did you hear what I said? Ricky is in a better place!” The church says, “Amen,” and the organist follows Pastor McGee’s lead, like suspense music in movies. “That’s why we are not sad today. This is not a funeral. This is a home going! We are not mourning. We are celebrating the life of dear Ricky.”
I look at Ricky’s mother. Tears have smeared her makeup. She doesn’t look like she’s celebrating. Pastor McGee continues to preach. “My dear sister, fear not, for you will see your son again.” He steps out of the pulpit and walks over to the family. He grabs Ricky’s mother’s hand. “For the Bible says in Revelations 21 that when we get to heaven, ‘God will wipe away all tears from our eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away!’ ” He lets go of her hand and she collapses into the arms of her boyfriend.
“Oh yes, my sister, you will see your son again. And his body will be brand-new. It will not be marred with bullet wounds! It will be new … brand-new. And you will be new with him … worshipping God forever and ever. Yes, this is the promise to them that believe!” Pastor McGee walks back into the pulpit and lowers his sweaty palms like a conductor, ordering the organist to soften the music. He talks slower. “Young people, if you want to see Ricky again you’ve got to get your life right. If you want this joy I’m talking about—this joy you see in the faces of the saints, in the hope that we have in Christ Jesus, you must be born again.”
Pastor McGee stops talking. He just stands in the pulpit looking down at the flower-covered casket that is stretched in front of him. “You never know when death will come. And sometimes it comes and takes the one you least expect.” He wipes his brow for the first time with the handkerchief in his hand. Pastor McGee looks sad for a moment. His eyes focus on the casket; then he shakes his head like an Etch A Sketch erasing the sorrow. “Saints, we must not be angry or bitter. I say even to those young men who took his life, that there is love and grace and salvation for you.”
The church says, “Amen.”
Danny bends his body into itself, his face cupped in his hands. I put my hand on his back and rub it, but I know this is no comfort. I know that the images in Danny’s head need more than my sympathy. I know that he will never forgive those boys. I know he will never forgive himself.
After Pastor McGee finishes preaching, two men in black suits walk to the front of the church. They slide the flowers that sit on the casket to the right side and lift the left section of the casket. Cries and sobs spill out of Ricky’s family and some of them gasp, as if they didn’t know he was in there. As if they thought he was just asleep.
Danny and I get in line behind Maria. We stand there for a long time. Maria is holding up the line. She is putting pictures in Ricky’s casket and kissing him and crying like a child throwing a tantrum. Someone escorts her out. When it is our turn to look, I just stare at the carpet and at the shiny wheels that hold the casket up. When I look back at Ricky’s weeping mother I remember sitting in that same spot. I wonder if I ever will again. I also wonder why we have to wait till we get to heaven to have our tears wiped away.
I don’t realize that Jay is at the funeral until we go outside. We are all waiting for the family to say their last good-byes to Ricky before they carry the casket out. Jay comes over to me and Danny. Danny barely looks at him. Jay says hello and the three of us stand there. Six men carry Ricky’s body out. When it passes by us, Jay looks away. He isn’t crying like Danny is, but he grabs my hand. Not like he’s done before, when he’s trying to be romantic. This time, he grabs my hand like he needs something to hold on to. Like he might fall if I don’t hold him up. He is squeezing my hand tight, so tight I couldn’t let go if I wanted to.
AS WE FORGIVE
• • • • • • • • • • •
Serenity Evans
Journal Entry
“Forgive one another.”
—Colossians 3:13
Every time I wake up, I remember that Ricky is gone. Each new day makes it more real. Grandpa says Danny got a wake-up call. Ever since Ricky died, he’s been paying close attention to Danny. He’s started having men’s night on Fridays. Danny, Grandpa, and Ivan hang out in the garage fixing cars and talking. Sometimes they go to the movies or out to eat.
Today, Ivan and Erica are joining us for dinner. Grandma made gumbo. She calls us to the dining room and we all come to the table as fast as we can, our mouths watering, stomachs growling. This is the first day since Ricky’s funeral that I am truly hungry and want to eat.
Danny is the first one to sit down at the table. Ivan taps him on his shoulder and tells him, “Let the ladies be seated first. Pull the chair out for your sister.”
Danny does what Ivan tells him without grumbling.
Once we’re all seated and eating, my grandma gets to telling stories about Ivan when he was our age. “You sure have come a long way.” She laughs.
“You got that right,” he says. “Remember when I skipped your class and forged my mom’s signature on a note that said I’d been sick?”
“Yeah. I knew your mom didn’t write it because you misspelled stomach flu,” Grandma says.
Danny asks, “How did you spell it?”
Ivan shakes his head in embarrassment. “Instead of F-L-U, I wrote F-L-E-W.” We all make fun of him. Erica is laughing the hardest. “Hey, I was only in the sixth grade. I wasn’t the best speller.”
Grandma adds, “You weren’t the best liar either.” She wipes the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “I could always tell when Ivan wasn’t telling the truth because he’d start scratching his head.”
“Good to know,” Erica says.
Grandma and Ivan keep swapping stories about how mischievous Ivan was. I wonder if maybe years from now, Ivan and Erica will be remembering how Jay and Danny were and if they will be saying what good men they’ve turned out to be.
When I’m finished with my gumbo, Danny asks, “You want more or are you done?”
“I’m done,” I tell him. He takes my bowl into the kitchen with his.
Even though Grandma made peach cobbler for dessert, we’re all too stuffed to eat any right now. We go into the living room and flip channels until we all agree on what to watch. Grandpa is half asleep in his favorite chair and Grandma isn’t really paying attention to the television. She’s mostly reading the paper.
Erica whispers to Ivan, “We should get going. We have our appointment at the flower shop at nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Nine o’clock?” Ivan isn’t whispering. “I have to go to work. Why can’t we go in the evening?”
“Baby, I told you about this last week.”
“Erica, you did not tell me the appointment was at nine o’clock.”
“Yes, I did.”
Ivan and Erica go back and forth about this for a while. They are trying to whisper, but eventually they start talking loud and go into the kitchen, and the conversation stops being about the time of the appointment and starts being about other things.
I get knots in my stomach and my heart is doing somersaults. Grandma is just reading the paper as if she can’t hear them arguing. �
��Aren’t you going to stop them?” I ask Grandma.
“They’re fine,” Grandma says.
I listen. Back and forth they go until Ivan says, “I don’t know. Maybe you did tell me.”
“I can reschedule it if you want,” Erica says.
And then they start talking about another time to go and Ivan tells Erica that he doesn’t mind if she goes with one of her bridesmaids or Grandma. He trusts her. She has good taste.
My heart is still and the knots in my stomach unwrap themselves.
Ivan and Erica come out of the kitchen. “Sorry, guys. Prewedding quarrels,” Erica says.
Grandma smiles. “Every couple has them.”
And just like that it’s over, and Erica and Ivan are watching TV with us again and our bellies have made room for Grandma’s peach cobbler and we wake Grandpa and eat dessert together in the living room.
After Ivan and Erica leave, we all go to bed. I fall right to sleep, but then my dreams take me back to my old house, to the kitchen, to my momma and daddy arguing and fighting, to my momma’s frozen eyes, the gunshot, and my daddy sitting in his car, dead. I wake up sweating and crying and I am afraid that if I go back to sleep, I’ll dream again, so I get out of bed and go downstairs.
I sit on the sofa in the living room, wrapped in a throw blanket. I turn the TV on and turn the volume down real low. So low I can barely hear it. Nothing good is on anyway. Just long commercials about treadmills, diet pills, and acne creams.
The Bible on the coffee table is opened to the scripture Pastor McGee read at Ricky’s funeral. Revelations 21. The scripture about waiting till we get to heaven for peace and for our tears to be wiped away. I keep seeing Ricky’s mom. And my mom. And I keep thinking about all the tears I’ve been crying lately. And I want to throw the Bible on the floor, rip out its pages, and watch them burn in the fireplace too. Why do I have to wait for peace? God is cruel.
Grandma comes out of her room and walks toward the bathroom. “Serenity, baby, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I—I just.” I can’t tell her. I can’t tell her how I don’t understand why she keeps praying and going to church. I can’t tell her that I want to forget every scripture I’ve ever remembered and take back every prayer I ever prayed because God isn’t answering them anyway. My momma, my daddy, my friend all gone.
“Are you all right, baby?”
“I—” I can’t say these things. Not to a woman who lives and walks by faith. I can retell Grandpa and Grandma’s testimonies by heart. I can’t tell them that I think God has forgotten about my generation. “I don’t feel good,” I say.
“Well, turn the television off and go get in bed, sweetheart.” Grandma puts her hand on my forehead. “I hope you’re not coming down with the flu.” She takes her hand away.
I walk upstairs to my room, get in bed, and turn on my stomach. I don’t want to see heaven tonight.
• • • • • • •
Sunday morning starts off like it always does. Sizzling bacon, scrambled eggs, and waffles waking my nose, telling me it’s breakfast time. Telling me to hurry down before Danny eats it all. But I ignore the smells today and I plug my nose with willpower.
Grandma knocks on my door and when she comes in, I want to yell and say, this is my room! Turn off the light! Leave me alone! I am not going to church today! I am never going back! From now on I will spend my Sundays reading or watching TV, or drawing in my sketchbook, or writing in my journal. Anything but going to church.
“I’m not feeling any better,” I tell Grandma.
“What hurts?” she asks.
“My stomach.” And my heart.
Grandma leaves the room and comes back with a can of ginger ale. “This should help.” She puts a plastic bin by my bed in case I vomit. “I would stay but I have to sing today.”
“It’s okay, Grandma. I just want to sleep anyway.”
“We’ll come straight home after service,” she promises. She leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
When I hear the car pull out of the garage, I get out of bed and listen to my CDs. I play the same CD three times, skipping the same two songs. I am so bored. Staying at home isn’t as fun as I thought it would be. There’s nothing on television on Sunday afternoons.
I decide to finish working on my presentation for English class. I haven’t touched my half since before Ricky’s funeral, and Sommer called yesterday asking when we would get together to glue everything on the poster board and practice.
I take the handouts Mrs. Ross gave us on Maya Angelou and underline the important parts. Mrs. Ross says that’s a good note-taking skill. Underline the key points and use those to write an essay. I underline the facts that stick out most to me: Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Her mother and father divorced when she was three, and she was sent with her brother to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. I underline how she’s published over twelve books and how she has been in plays and movies and how she speaks not only English, but French, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Ghanaian Fante.
After I underline all that, I start to write the essay. But then I get bored and so I try to find something to watch on TV, but there’s still nothing on. I decide to call Jay. He’s the only person I know who’s not in church right now.
Jay answers on the second ring. “Danny?”
“No, it’s me. Serenity.”
“You’re not at church today?”
“I’m sick.” I lie again.
“Oh. Well, I hope you feel better.”
“Thanks.” I don’t really have much to say to him. Guess I just wanted to hear his voice.
We talk for a few minutes and then Jay tells me he has to go.
“Okay,” I say. “Talk to you later.”
We hang up and I go back to writing my essay.
I’m on the second page when the doorbell rings. I go to the door and look through the peephole. Jay is here. He is holding a plastic grocery bag in his hand. I don’t know what to do. I can’t let him in. I can’t let him see me like this. I am wearing sweats and a T-shirt and my hair is wrapped in a scarf. He rings the doorbell again. “Just a minute!” I take off my scarf, run my fingers through my hair, and shake my head to make my hair fall into place.
When I open the door Jay steps in and gives me a hug. “Sorry you’re not feelin’ well.” He holds the bag out to me. “I got you some orange juice from the corner store.”
“Thank you.” I take the juice into the kitchen and pour a glass. “You want some?”
“No. It’s for you,” Jay says. He sits at the dining room table. “You look good for a sick girl.”
I smile.
Jay looks at the pile of papers and books on the dining room table. “Man, even when you’re sick you do homework? You’re hard-core.” He picks up my report and starts reading it.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“Well,” Jay says. He rereads the paper, and when he puts it back on the table, he says, “It’s all right.”
“All right?” All of my words are spelled correctly, I have made sure all my facts are from the class handouts, I have quotes, and I even talked about what some of her poems mean to me. “What do you mean it’s all right?”
“You did good. I would just add more about her. Not just her work,” Jay says. Who does Jay think he is? He barely comes to class and he’s telling me how to write a report. He picks up the class handouts Mrs. Ross gave us on Maya Angelou’s life. “Look, you don’t even talk about the good stuff.”
He points to the third paragraph on the handout and starts reading, “When Maya Angelou was seven, she moved back with her mother. A few months later, her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her. When Maya told what happened, her uncles beat the man to death. She became mute for almost six years, believing that the power of her words led to someone’s death.” Jay clears his throat and then shows me the handout, l
ike he wants me to know he’s not making it up.
He keeps reading out loud and I read along with him. “After returning to live with her grandmother, she found a close friend and teacher who helped her rediscover her voice.”
I read the last line out loud with him. “She began to speak again in her early teens.”
“Why didn’t you put any of this in your report?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“I mean, I like her poems but I like them more ’cause she’s not just writing about stuff she don’t know. She’s writing because of what she’s been through. People probably thought she wasn’t gonna be anything, but look at her now.”
I take my pen and underline the paragraph we just read. “You’re right,” I say. “Writing about her awards and the languages she speaks is kind of dull.” I pick my essay back up and look it over. “I’ll add this stuff. Tell how she took all that pain and made it into something.”
I look at the picture of Maya Angelou that’s on the bottom of my handout. She is smiling and there is no sadness in her eyes. Jay says, “That’s why I don’t let stuff get me down. Everybody got bad stuff in their life, you know? Don’t mean it’s always gonna be that way,” he says. Then he scoots back his chair. “I better go. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I know your grandparents don’t like me.”
“They like you. Who told you that, Danny?”
“No. I just know.”
“That’s not true. They’re just strict. But they like you.”
“Do you?”
I answer him before thinking and boldness I have never felt before comes over me. I lean in close to Jay and say, “Yes, I like you a lot.” And then I kiss him. Maria is right, kissing is better than the best meal you’ve ever had. And Jay’s lips are perfectly kissable.
When my lips stop kissing Jay’s, he stands up and walks to the door. He smiles at me and kisses me once more, a soft peck on the lips. “I’ll see you later. Hope you feel better.”