Till You Hear From Me: A Novel

by Pearl Cleage

  I turned around to see Wes Harper striding up the aisle. He stopped right in front of me. He was shameless, with that big, fake smile, but at least his presence here meant everything was going according to plan. So far, so good.

  “Got room for one more?” he said.

  “Of course,” Miss Iona said. “Sit right here, Wes. We’ve got to leave Ida B on the aisle since she’s introducing the Rev.”

  Wes stepped over me carefully and sat down between us.

  “Do we need to save a place for Mr. Eddie?” I said, looking around like I didn’t know he wasn’t coming. Miss Iona did, too.

  “He’s not coming to service,” Wes said, looking concerned. “He said he was going to lie down for a while and come over to Paschal’s later.”

  I feigned concern. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Wes said. “I’ve got my phone on vibrate in case he needs to get me.”

  Miss Iona clucked her tongue in fake exasperation. “I told these old fools they need to quit ripping and running around the way they used to.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him, too,” Wes said. “But so far, I haven’t had much success effecting a slowdown.”

  “Don’t worry,” Miss Iona said. “Your father is as strong as an ox. Don’t let his lean lines fool you.”

  Wes smiled. “I never do, Miss Iona.”

  Then somebody tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around to say hello, Wes turned his smile on me. “I want to apologize about the other night,” he said. “That wasn’t quite the way I’d envisioned winding up our evening.”

  Is there another word for shameless?

  “We’ll have to do it again sometime,” I said. Maybe right after Hank Lumumba helps us blow your cover and stop this shit once and for all. I tried to calm down. I knew I hadn’t said it out loud, but I’m sure God doesn’t appreciate that kind of language in his house even if it is all in your head.

  “I’d like that,” he said, but then the organist hit the opening chords of the processional hymn and the choir came marching down the center aisle in their best Founder’s Day robes, so I stood up with everybody else and sang along the best I could. The Rev was sitting in one of those big chairs on the pulpit next to Rev. Patterson, and if there were any hard feelings between them, you couldn’t tell it. Looking over at me staring up at him, the Rev gave me a nod and I nodded back. Was it ever going to be right between us again?

  The service proceeded according to the bulletin, but my mind wasn’t on it. Just before the offering, the Rev left the pulpit quietly and disappeared, something I had never seen him do. Before I could figure out why, the usher came to tap me on the shoulder as the choir started singing the offertory hymn. I just hoped I could get through my introduction without bursting into tears. As I stood up, the usher leaned over and whispered to Wes that he should come, too. There was a phone call for him.

  Wes looked surprised, then concerned, but we followed the usher through a door at the side of the altar that led to the small pastor’s room. He opened the door and there stood the Rev and Mr. Eddie. I had no idea what was going on. In the sanctuary, Rev. Patterson was encouraging people to give generously, but when the usher closed the door, it was suddenly silent. Wes looked even more confused than I felt.

  “What’s going on?” he said, sounding annoyed.

  “Why don’t you tell us?” the Rev said, cold as ice.

  Wes looked at his father. “What’s up, Pop? I thought you weren’t coming?”

  “Let me ask you something, son,” Mr. Eddie said, and I was relieved to see he looked just fine. “How stupid do you think we are?”

  Wes took an involuntary step backward. Mr. Eddie’s tone was hard as a diamond drill bit.

  “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wes stuttered a little.

  Still in his robe, the Rev looked even bigger in this small room. “We know it’s you, Wes. We know what you’ve done and we know what you were trying to do.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “That’s not what your assistant told me and Hank Lumumba.”

  “Hank Lumumba?”

  I was surprised at Wes’s reaction to his name. I was surprised, too. I thought Hank was down at Tybee celebrating Valentine’s Day.

  Mr. Eddie nodded. “He’s over there at the Rev’s talking to Miss Cassidy right now. Had some conversation with young Estes, too. Both of them seemed to have a lot to say to Hank once he told them what we already knew.”

  Wes’s face was an angry mask. “And what do you think you know?”

  “Let’s give Hank a call and you can ask him,” Mr. Eddie said, turning to the Rev. “You don’t mind if me and Wes miss part of your sermon, do you, Rev? Me and my son got some talkin’ to do.”

  “I understand,” the Rev said, taking my arm gently. I was standing there staring at him and Mr. Eddie with my mouth open. Had they known all along? Why hadn’t they told us?

  When we came out of that room, the big usher was waiting outside. The Rev nodded and he took up a position at the door. Mr. Eddie could talk to his son as long as he needed to. Wes wasn’t going anywhere until Mr. Eddie said so. We could hear the choir singing.

  “Pass me not, oh gentle savior,

  Hear my humble cry.”

  “You knew?” I said.

  He nodded. “Hank told me the way they were going to come at me would give him the best chance to cut them off at the pass here and in a lot of other places, too. That’s why I did that fool interview. To make them think I was ripe for the picking.”

  “You did that whole tacos and sangria thing on purpose?”

  He nodded again. “Sometimes you have to show them what they want to see in order to get them to show you who they really are.”

  My mind was whirling. “You always knew Wes was working for them?”

  “We found out just after you got here. I had to tell Ed, but Hank said it was too dangerous to let you in on it. In case things went awry, they didn’t want the Obama people anywhere near this.”

  I smiled at my father. “I was a Dunbar person before I was an Obama person, remember?”

  He smiled back because he knew exactly what I meant. Before I knew anything about politics, I knew the smell of my father’s aftershave lotion, the gentle touch of my father’s hands and the strength of his arms, the sound of his warm private laugh and of his voice singing to my mother in the quiet of our late night house. Before I knew the words to “We Shall Overcome,” I loved the gentle way he’d lean around the front seat to tease me about my latest crush as Mr. Eddie guided the car down the road to wherever black folks needed somebody to stand up and be counted.

  In the sanctuary, the ushers were bringing the offertory trays forward for Reverend Patterson’s blessing. It was almost time.

  “Lying to you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” the Rev said as the congregation sang the last verse of the offertory hymn.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Never do it again.”

  “You’ve got a deal, daughter.”

  Then I heard Rev. Patterson introducing me and it was my turn to introduce the Rev. Miss Iona’s words were ringing in my ears: Now’s your chance. Take it!

  So I stood on my tiptoes and I put my arms around my father’s neck and I hugged him as hard as he was hugging me back, and there we were, family strong and freedom high.

  “Ready, daughter?” the Rev said.

  “Absolutely,” I said, and when we walked out together, the congregation burst into applause like they were seeing us for the first time and Miss Iona clapping as loud as anybody.

  “Brothers and sisters,” I said, “my father is a man who needs no introduction, especially here at Rock of Faith Community Church.”

  “Amen,” said a room full of people who had known me all my life. “Amen.”

  “I grew up in this church, in these pews, in this pulpit, pretending to preach while my dad was upstairs talking to somebody or downstairs tapi
ng that old furnace together so folks would be warm when they came to church on Sunday morning.”

  A collective chuckle. They all knew even the fieriest sermon didn’t make up for cold feet. I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I really wanted to say about my father. When I looked over at him, he nodded as if to say, Go ahead, daughter. You’ve got the floor!

  “A few days ago,” I said, figuring if I just started talking, something would come to me, “I was thinking about what I could say about my father this Founder’s Day morning that you don’t already know—or that I won’t get into trouble for telling!”

  Another little laugh from the congregation. They were with me wherever I wanted to go and I felt myself relax a little bit.

  “While I was trying to figure it out, Mr. Eddie said something that stayed in my head. Mr. Eddie said that sometimes when we have true greatness in our midst for a long time, we get used to it. Sometimes we start to take it for granted and forget to even acknowledge the people we should be thanking each and every day of our lives.”

  People were murmuring amen and nodding their heads at me.

  “Because they are the ones who brought us here; the ones who stood up with us and for us. The ones who made us brave because they had more than enough courage to go around. The ones who never doubted for one minute that we could get this country to live up to the promises it had made.”

  “Teach, Lil’ Rev!” somebody called from the back. I was on a roll!

  “The ones who believed in us even when we faltered. The ones who brought us here, to this amazing moment, and said, ‘Here. This is your country now. Make something out of it!’”

  “My Lord!” said old Mrs. Bailey, sitting with the Ladies Usher Board in her best white uniform. “It’s our country!”

  “And while you’re at it, make something out of yourself!” I said, feeling the Rev behind me, but afraid to look at him again since I felt myself getting a little emotional. “That is my father’s gift to us. The chance to live as free citizens of our own country, and for that, on behalf of all of us here, and all of us whose names we don’t even know, I thank him and I honor him here this morning!”

  The congregation applauded enthusiastically and then almost in a wave, they all stood up and kept clapping. Miss Iona stood up, too, and I could see tears on her cheeks even from up here where I was standing.

  “Amen!”

  The Rev finally had to wave at them to sit back down and when they did, I watched Miss Iona dabbing at her eyes and I decided she was right. Confession is good for the soul.

  “But I was raised to believe that truth is the light,” I said. “So let me admit that it’s not always easy to be a great man’s daughter.”

  “Amen!”

  “It’s not always easy to get a word in when so many people have so many urgent messages to convey, sometimes messages of life and death, when all you’re trying to do is show off a perfect history exam or model a new dress or introduce a thoroughly intimidated prom date.”

  That earned another chuckle. My father was notorious for terrorizing the brave boys who dated me in high school.

  “It’s not easy when the meetings run so long that I’d fall asleep downstairs, trying to wait up for my dad, and not realize he’d arrived and carried me to bed until I woke up in the morning and heard him laughing with my mother in the kitchen while he whipped up some of his famous French toast.”

  When I said that, suddenly I could see the whole scene: me in my little girl bathrobe, my mother with her hair pulled up in a ponytail, my father in his shirtsleeves and a great big apron my mother had tied around his waist. Just the three of us for one private moment and it was so precious that of course I wanted more. We all did. But that’s not who my father was, and I had never understood it more clearly, or respected it more deeply, than I did standing there that morning, thanking him for giving up more than anyone would ever know because he had the work of history to do, and it couldn’t wait.

  “It was in this church that I learned my father never belonged just to me. He belonged to all of us.”

  “Amen! Teach!”

  “He didn’t change my diapers because he was too busy changing the world.”

  “Amen!”

  “He didn’t come to my dance recitals because he was somewhere refusing to dance to any tune but his own.”

  “Yes he was!”

  “He didn’t make it to my high school graduation to hear me give the valedictorian speech …”

  A collective groan of sympathy, but I didn’t need it.

  “Because a kid in Savannah whom he’d never met had been arrested and his mother called the Rev for help.”

  “Yes, Lord! Who did she call?”

  I could see my father nodding and smiling. “Teach, daughter!”

  “But none of those disappointments matter, because he’s here today and so am I, and so are all of you. Brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends, it is the honor of my life to present a great teacher, a great leader, and the best father anyone could ever have, my daddy, the Reverend Doctor Horace A. Dunbar.”

  Then everybody jumped to their feet again and the Rev hugged me and stepped forward to bring his Founder’s Day message, but in the front row, Miss Iona caught my eye and gave me a discreet thumbs-up in her green leather Michelle Obama gloves. Well done, Ida B. Well done!

  FIFTY-FOUR

  On the Right Side Again

  “YOU SURE YOU CAN’T HANG AROUND A LITTLE LONGER?” THE REV SAID as I got ready to go to the airport the next afternoon. “Black History Month is almost over and we could really spend some time together.”

  “Every month is black history month now, remember?” I said, glad I’d been able to convince him not to come to the airport with me. Airport good-byes are crazy now with all the security restrictions and the lighting is horrible. Besides, we’d had our moment and, once we got home, we also had that marathon talk I’d been waiting for all my life. Everything was right between us.

  Miss Iona called to say good-bye and let us know that Hank had told Wes he’d get him a fair shake with the Justice Department if he would tell what he knew about the efforts to illegally purge voter lists all over the country and Wes was singing like a bird. For Mr. Eddie’s sake, I hoped he wouldn’t get jail time, but it was out of my hands. Flora called to say we could do our WEGA transition interview when she’s in D.C. next month to look at houses and I’ve already got a few in mind to show her. Until then, I sure had other things to think about. Like finding a job. I had some prospects and Hank had even given me a couple of good leads, so things were definitely looking up.

  “Don’t give up on the White House,” the Rev said. “Now that I’m on the right side again, who knows what might happen?”

  “I guess you’re right about that,” I said, and a part of me still hoped it was true. After all, it wasn’t March 1 yet. I had another week or so to picture myself walking to work in the West Wing before my self-imposed deadline ran out.

  “Have you had a chance to talk to your mother about all this?” the Rev said, reaching for his coat to walk out to my car.

  “Maybe you can do that for me,” I said. “She’s headed this way.”

  “What do you mean headed this way?”

  “She’s going to be the director of the Women’s Center at Spelman.”

  At first he just looked at me and then he threw back his head and laughed so loud the dishes rattled in the kitchen. You could have knocked me over with a feather. If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand my parents.

  “Aren’t you worried about her coming back?” I said.

  “Worried?” He laughed again, not quite as loudly, then took out his big white handkerchief and dabbed his eyes gently. “You know why she took that job, don’t you?”

  “It’s too good an opportunity to turn down?”

  He shook his head slowly, grinning from ear to ear. “She can’t live without me.”

  So there it was. I knew suddenl
y without a shadow of a doubt that he was right. I wonder if my mother knew it, too. “Then I guess the only question left to answer,” I said, grinning back at him, “is can you live without her?”

  “Daughter, I wouldn’t even try!” he said, and hugged me so hard I had to catch my breath, which was fine with me. I can breathe anytime. Soul mates indeed.

  “Ready, daughter?”

  “Ready,” I said, and then realized I had left my briefcase upstairs. That was a sign, as if I needed one, that it really was time to head back to D.C. I was getting careless. In my world, forgetting a briefcase is like a cowboy forgetting his horse: unforgivable. “Oh, shoot, Rev! Hang on a second!”

  I heard my phone ringing in my purse as I dashed up to my room. “Get that, will you, Rev?” I called back over my shoulder.

  But the phone kept on ringing as I grabbed my briefcase and looked around to be sure I hadn’t forgotten anything else. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how to answer it, I thought. No one knew better than I did that technology wasn’t the Rev’s strong point.

  “Just push the button in the middle,” I said, heading back downstairs, but the Rev was just standing there staring at the caller ID.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “You’ll want to get this one yourself,” he said, handing me the phone. “I think a friend of mine wants to talk to you.”

  “Hello?” I said, wondering why he was being so mysterious, and then the voice on the other end said the most beautiful words in the English language.

  “Miss Dunbar? Will you please hold for the president?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you and love to my husband and constant collaborator, Zaron W. Burnett Jr.; to my daughter, Deignan; my son-in-law, Will; and my grandchildren, Michael, Chloe, and Bailey. Special thanks to Kris and Jim Williams, their children and grandchildren, Jilo, Abeo, Osaze, Hasina, Ife, Sydney, Sean, Ayanna, Tulani, Tatayana, James, Kylett, and Cabral; and to my West Coast family, Zaron W. Burnett III; Meghan, Skylar, and Griffin Underwood. Thanks also to Miz Johnsie Broadway Burnett, who wanted to know what happened to Brandi; to Lynette Lapeyrolerie, Glenda Hatchett, Walt Huntley, Cecelia Hunter, Ingrid Saunders Jones, and Jimmy Lee Tarver for their friendship and support; and to Dr. Beverly Guy Sheftall, Founding Director of the Spelman College Women’s Research & Resource Center for her vision. Thanks also to Ron Gwiazda for taking care of business; and to Bill Bagwell, because a deal’s a deal.