Plenty Good Room

by Cheri Paris Edwards

  Well, will wonders never cease! Tamara mused, continuing to watch Sienna from the corner of her eye. Not only does she seem to know gospel music very well, Tamara thought, but also she can sing, I mean really sing!

  Like Sienna earlier, Tamara was now observing the entire service with curiosity. Once the large ensemble choir finished, the young people in the junior choir sang, and then she and Sienna contributed their offerings as the men’s choir sang. Then the large church choir assembled again to sing its selection for the day.

  This time Tamara clapped her hands while she rocked in her seat with the upbeat melody. Then, still flushed with exhilaration from the praise offerings of music, Tamara stood with the rest of the congregation when the selection was over. She watched Minister Walker stand, smiling broadly at them from the pulpit.

  Cringing inside when he asked the visitors to come to the front to be recognized, Tamara hoped no one would point her out as a newcomer. It was a long walk to the front of the church. Lowering her head when she noticed a quick glance or two shoot her way, Tamara was thankful no one said a word, and even more grateful when the minister moved on to the morning prayer.

  With her head bowed, Tamara closed her eyes and listened intently to the minister’s baritone voice as it filled the room: “Lord, let us learn to love one another, just as Jesus Christ loved us. Let us strive to follow God’s word, to live righteously. It is truly just as the choir sang so well a minute ago: ‘I never seen it, Lord . . . never seen a righteous man or woman forsaken.’ O Lord, we just want to live good lives, Lord God, to thank You for all You’ve done for us . . . Lord, every day we want to represent You in a manner that will make You proud.”

  “Amen,” said the deacons.

  He continued, “We know that we just can’t do enough to thank You, Lord . . . There’s nothing that we could do that would be enough to thank You for giving us Your son, Jesus! Jesus, who loved us so much that He willingly shed His blood for our sins. Jesus, who was still able to love those who had treated Him so cruelly . . . O Father, we remember His words: ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Father, today we pray, Lord, that You will open our hearts and let us see past our own hurt and the things that people have done to us that were unfair, and let us begin to forgive them as You forgive us.”

  As the minister spoke, Tamara began to feel a strange stirring inside, and she knew that it was not her nerves this time. Then, without warning, her eyes began to prickle wetly. Surprised by this uncommon public display of emotion, she was unwilling to give in further to the unfamiliar sensation.

  The minister continued to pray, his voice quieter now: “And, God, teach us to be loving with ourselves, because once we truly learn to walk in love for ourselves, it is always much easier for us to love others. Once we can accept our own failings, because, yes, while we wish we did not, we do sin. In fact, God, sin is our ever-humbling error; it is what makes us human; sometimes sin is what brings us back to our knees and to You when we get too haughty.

  “But the wonderful thing about You, God, is that You continue to love us despite our sins. And so, Lord help us to learn to love ourselves as well. Lord, we just thank You today for all of our blessings, and we magnify Your name O Lord, and we love You and praise Your name.” The minister raised his head then and said loudly, “C’mon, church, say amen!”

  “Amen,” said the congregation in unison.

  With another wide smile he added then, “Thank you so much for coming out today to praise the Lord and to hear His word! You all may be seated.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Church, today we are going to begin a new teaching, that will last for quite a long while, I’m sure. This is a powerful teaching that every Christian needs to understand: learning how to open our hearts to love like our Lord, Jesus. I really believe you gonna enjoy these lessons, church, ’cause after all, it’s His love for us that first set us free!”

  Love? Immediately perturbed, Tamara squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, thinking, there was that word again! Love? Unconsciously she held herself stiffly erect now, and then purposefully smoothed her navy Ultrasuede skirt over her legs with one hand several times. Then, with a deep exhale, Tamara stopped resisting the moment, relaxed her shoulders, leaned back in the cushioned blue velvet pew, and, with her head and heart now in a dither, listened intently to the minister’s words.

  25.

  Street Walker

  Whew! I sure wish I’d worn my comfortable flats today . . . It feels like I’ve been walking for hours, thought Tamara as she again looked pensively at her raw heel. She eased back into the plastic-covered booth of the small diner at Fifty-fifth and Aberdeen, where she was finishing a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

  “Ow!” she said, squirming uncomfortably and then sliding away from a large, jagged tear in the vinyl seat that had just pierced painfully into the small of her back. Tamara sighed then, determined not to give in to frustration, even though it had been a long day already, and she had not yet accomplished what she’d come to the city of Chicago to do.

  Massaging the sore place in her lower back absentmindedly, Tamara stared out of the big plate glass window. Chicago was huge. Never in her life had she seen so many African-Americans all in one place. As soon as she pulled onto the expressway leading to the city, that’s all she’d seen: all sorts of black people, everywhere! Even more amazing, the few whites that she did see seemed quite comfortable living among all these diverse-looking people of color.

  The trip up had been mostly uneventful, thanks to Jayson’s great directions along with his warning about the busy Dan Ryan Expressway. Just as he said, the fast-moving highway proved to be hectic and challenging for her. The traffic moved incredibly quickly. Overwhelmed at first, she’d gotten caught in the wrong lane and missed her exit. Carefully moving from lane to lane then, she managed to get off on the next exit ramp and, through pure luck, found her way here by maneuvering through the city.

  Tamara could tell that Jay really wanted to accompany her on the trip when she had told him yesterday of her plans to visit the city. Clearly worried that such a big city would be too daunting for someone as timid as he believed her to be, he’d even intimated that the journey might be dangerous, in an effort to convince her to change her plans.

  Earlier this morning he’d even stopped by, and his handsome face was somber and full of concern as he’d repeated over and over, “Tamara, you don’t need to go up there by yourself.”

  Proudly Tamara thought, Well, Jayson I’m here now, all in one piece and no worse for the ride. I just wish I didn’t have to walk right now, though, she thought with a wry smile, tentatively attempting to slide her foot back into her shoe and wincing when her almost-raw heel touched the hard leather. Her throbbing foot would not weaken her resolve, though. While it would have been nice to have Jayson along, she really needed to do this alone. There was no way Tamara would explain to him her motivation for being here, and even if she did, chances were that he still wouldn’t really understand anyway.

  The pain in Tamara’s foot faded into the background of her thoughts as soon as she reached into her bag and tugged out the manila folder containing her research information. She opened it and searched quickly through the papers inside once again. Today’s trip to Chicago was certainly a fishing trip, since all her research efforts before today had netted her only a small amount of information on Maurice Lewis III.

  Though Tamara knew that the man had lived in the central part of the state for a while, so far she’d been unable to link him to anyone locally. Maurice was not mentioned at all in the state computer data, unlike the Bailey family, whose involvement in the system helped her get information about them. She just would not accept that she’d reached a dead end, though; she continued slyly to ask questions whenever she could, and amazingly had actually run into a couple of people who claimed to have known Maurice.

  These contacts told her that Maurice had moved to Chicago on his own as a teenager. At eighteen, he was too old to be conside
red a runaway exactly, but he had still been young enough to make lousy choices and end up getting involved at that early age in some unsavory street activity. There was, in fact, little possibility of finding him through career information, either, since Maurice Lewis III had an aversion to working a regular job, instead choosing to use various sorts of hustles throughout the years to make his living.

  She checked her notes once more and then closed the folder. This street was his old hangout, where he allegedly ran numbers, which to her understanding meant he ran some sort of gambling game. Though the idea of finding the man with such a small amount of information seemed far-fetched, Tamara fought the feeling that she was on a wild-goose chase.

  Nonetheless, she took one long swallow of her coffee before tearing a piece of the stiff white napkin and placing it gingerly in the back of her tender heel, which had resumed its throbbing again as if anticipating the painful walking to come. With a quick, sure touch she turned on her cell phone and then pushed it back down into her shoulder bag, laid a five on the speckled Formica table for the coffee, and squirmed out of the booth.

  The icy wind took Tamara’s breath away when she stepped out of the door. Much too cold to stop and pull on her leather gloves, she stuck her free hand into her shallow pocket and proceeded hurriedly toward Fifty-Second Street.

  A brick building occupied the corner, with its two dingy windows looking out on both streets. An old red-and-white-striped pole by the door hung adjacent to the cracked black letters spelling, “The Corner Shop.”

  This was the place Tamara was looking for. Anxious to escape the frosty day, she quickly squeezed the cold metal handle of the door hard, causing it to fly wide open. “Whew!” she said under her breath, relieved to feel the rush of heat greeting her just inside the shop. Behind her the bitter wind blew the heavy door, pushing it closed with such a loud bang that she jumped.

  Glancing around the room, Tamara hoped her mask of composure hid the inner anxiety she was feeling right then. The oddly shaped space was almost triangular. Three barber chairs, all occupied, lined each wall. A few men waited in chairs, aligned in two closely-spaced rows in the narrower portion of the room where she now stood.

  Tamara realized she might be grasping at straws when she decided to pursue the lead she’d gotten from the skinny, round-eyed waitress in the diner about this old barber shop. However, the business had been located in this same spot in this neighborhood for years, and hair shops were known to be one of the hubs of the African-American community simply because so many came and went during the day. That would seem to be especially true of those like Maurice Lewis III, who were always looking for a captive audience because they had something to sell.

  Unsure exactly how to begin her investigation of sorts, Tamara turned to a dark-skinned, scowling man sitting in the chair closest to where she stood, and asked rather timidly, “Excuse me . . . do you know Maurice Lewis the Third?”

  The man’s frown deepened. “Maurice Lewis the Third, you say?” He rubbed his salt-and-pepper beard and said the name once more, “Maurice Lewis—let me see . . . Wait a minute . . . is you talkin’ ’bout Three?”

  The barber nearest to them was a robust man busy with a client, but he stopped cutting hair abruptly and, turning an intense stare her way, growled, “Three, huh? Who are you, asking ’bout Maurice?”

  Tamara lost her voice for a minute, feeling more than a little intimidated by the huge man with his rumbling voice and intent, glaring look, but she knew there was no turning back now. And so, gathering her wilting courage, she cleared her dry throat and replied in a small but firm voice, “He’s my cousin.”

  The man’s eyes looked huge to her as he roared, “What did you say, girl? You gotta speak up, now! It’s noisy in here!”

  Ignoring his distracting appearance, Tamara gazed at him steadily, forcing her eyes away from the slicked-back hair and his large gold-ringed fingers he held clasped over his substantial midsection. Again she cleared her throat and repeated, louder this time, “I said, he is my cousin.”

  Resolutely she tightened her lips then, offering no more information. Intuitively she knew that this was not the place to try to offer her full explanation for wanting to locate the man. She sensed that others in the shop were now staring at the two of them, and now the steamy warmth inside the shop, combined with her anxiety, caused beads of sweat to moisten her forehead. In fact, Tamara’s discomfort was mounting quickly, and all she wanted to do now was to get some information about Maurice Lewis III and get out of this place.

  The man chuckled ruefully as he gave her the once-over from head to toe with his large-eyed gaze. “He’s yo’ cousin, huh? Girl, I sho’ didn’t know ole Three had any ‘cousins’ look as good as you do, gal. Yeah, I remember him. Three, that’s what we called him. In fact, we used to always tease him, ’cause whenever you said his name, the brotha had to add on ‘the Third,’ like he was some sort of prince or king or somethin’!”

  He focused his round eyes on the barber working next to him and asked in his booming voice, “Now, tell me, Malcolm, how can you be the Third when you don’t know who yo’ daddy is, number one, and so you don’t know who the heck is Maurice the first and the second?”

  Everybody in the shop began to laugh raucously at his comment.

  The barber turned and looked back at Tamara and asked without a trace of a smile on his face, “And how can you be his cousin, little girl, when you come here callin’ him Maurice and everybody knows his name was Three? That’s what he expected folks to call him.”

  Tamara’s cheeks grew hot and she wanted to turn and run on her throbbing heel from the dusty room. But remembering how far she’d traveled to gain this information, somehow she managed to stand her ground, replying somewhat primly, “Well, just because you don’t know about me does not mean that I do not exist. I am his cousin, and for your information, I always called him Maurice, and he liked it just fine. Now, do you or do you not know where he is?”

  The barber picked up his clippers again and, gazing at her with raised eyebrows, replied, “Well, okay, then, Ms. Lady! Maybe you ‘is’ his cousin, and maybe you ‘is’ not.”

  “Do you or do you not know his whereabouts?” she asked again firmly.

  “I do not,” answered the man mockingly. “But I’ma try to help you, little sister girl. You can walk down two blocks to Fifty-ninth Street, and on the corner there is a package store. Right inside the door is where that old brotha Benzo Taylor usually hangs out.” He grunted out a hard laugh. “He’s a salesman of sorts, just like ol’ Three used to be; he just might be able to help you. I think they used to run around together, if you know what I mean.”

  She did not know what he meant, really, but smiled anyway, replying, “Thank you for your help.” Immediately her attention was focused on her new destination, and Tamara never noticed the approving looks of the men silently applauding her determined stance, before she went out the door.

  Though it should have been impossible, the cold wind blew even harder now, and she lifted the collar of her wool coat up around her neck, thankful that the pain in her heel was numbed by the low temperatures. Water ran from her icy-wind-assaulted eyes as she struggled to keep them on the buildings so she would not miss the package store described by the barber.

  Tamara didn’t have to look long; in fact, as soon as she neared the next corner, she spotted a man huddled inside the entranceway of the small package store. The small-boned, dark-skinned man was wearing a long, blue trench coat and holding the short end of a lit cigarette between his wind-whitened fingers.

  “Benzo Taylor?” she asked squinting her eyes tightly against the cold.

  Without making eye contact, the man flicked the rest of the cigarette to the ground and opened his coat with one quick motion. Tamara’s eyes widened once she looked inside the flimsy coat, which was lined with dangling watches, rings, and bracelets.

  “Something you want? I got it all right here, baby: gold chains, watches, the finest o
f fourteen-karat—whatever you want, miss, I got it right here,” he said barking out an obviously well-used litany reminiscent of carnies working the small fairs that seemed to spring up overnight in small towns every summer.

  “I—I—I didn’t come here to buy anything,” she said.

  He closed the coat and buttoned it with fingers that were stiff and slow-moving from the bitterly frigid air.

  “What do you want, then?” he asked suspiciously.

  Tamara looked at Benzo hopefully. “I’m trying to find my cousin, and the barber in the shop down the street thought you might know his whereabouts.”

  “Yo’ cousin’s whereabouts? That doggone Dwayne, he shouldn’t be sending nobody to me for no dumb stuff like that. Shoot, I’m trying to make some ends—I ain’t got no time for the bull.”

  “Sorry,” she said. Then, ignoring Benzo’s obvious irritation, she decided to forge ahead, saying, “Maurice Lewis the Third—that’s his name. My cousin . . .”

  The man spun around quickly and stared at the girl with a distrustful look on his face. “Maurice, huh? You mean Three?”

  “Yes . . . Three,” she replied expectantly. She couldn’t miss the look of recognition in his eye when he heard Maurice’s street name, never mind how foreign it sounded coming from her mouth.

  Benzo Taylor searched the girl’s face for a few moments, and then his own seemed to soften. “Come on, girl, let’s go cop a squat somewhere, and I’ll tell you about my man Maurice. Can you buy a broke man a cup of coffee at least?”

  Two hours later Tamara left the small coffee shop for the second time that day. Jittery, she also had a small headache now and could only step gingerly because the heel of her foot was pulsating far too painfully for her to place all her weight on it. To top it off, it was early-winter dark, and the dimly lit street was silent and empty as she rushed, half-limping, to the corner of Sixtieth Street, to hand the parking attendant her ticket.

  “That’ll be fifty dollars,” he said.