by Nancy Rue
Jasmine still waited for me to nod her on before she continued. “I got me a lotta ‘help’ in middle school when I discovered pot. I didn’t actually start usin’ meth till I left home when I was seventeen. If you could call it home.”
“I know that too,” Mercedes said.
“I had so many ‘stepfathers’—my mama never did marry none of them—and some of them abused me, only I didn’t even know it was abuse. I just knew I couldn’t stand it, so I did the drugs to keep it from hurtin’.”
I didn’t want to look at Mercedes. I somehow knew she’d be nodding in empathy.
“Them drugs, they turned me into somebody else,” Jasmine said. “And that person kept choosin’ to use. And there wasn’t no rehab or jail could stop me, ’specially when my relatives stopped bailin’ me out. They was all drunks and users, but, like we learn in NA, I had the disease.”
Jasmine caught her breath, as if this was the most she’d ever spoken at one time in her life. Or the most anyone had ever listened. I thought she was finished, but she looked at Mercedes and said, “You the first person ever looked out for me.”
“I didn’t give you nothin’ you needed,” Mercedes said, though she couldn’t hide the pleasure-flush in her cheeks.
“You didn’t do it all the time—you had your own problems.”
“You know I did.”
Jasmine turned to me. “But if I was gettin’ in trouble, she be the one to hide me. There always be somethin’ real in Mercedes.”
“You lyin’, girlfriend,” Mercedes said. “You didn’t trust me—you didn’t trust nobody. None of us did.”
Jasmine shook her head. “But sometimes I didn’t know what else to do but follow you—even if you was headin’ off a cliff. So—” her eyes filled again—“I followed her to your house, Miss Angel.”
That moment alone could have carried me for a week, but it didn’t have to. I had the day they all got ID cards and gazed at them as if at last they had proof they were people. The morning Hank asked them to prepare the elements for her to consecrate for communion and they handled the bread and juice like Old Testament priests. The afternoon they took a peek outside themselves and complimented me on my eyebrows.
“Yeah, I’m pretty faithful with the tweezers,” I told them. “I figure it’s the cheapest way to keep from looking like I live hand to mouth.”
Yet when Desmond said to me later, “You used to be rich, didn’t you, Big Al?” I said in all sincerity, “I’ve never been as rich as I am right now.”
We all needed those moments to shore up the hours when Geneveve’s blood tests came in from the free clinic—thanks for being on top of it, people—and she had to go on major antibiotics for chlamydia. When Mercedes pitched one of her signature fits because Geneveve didn’t do her dishes and it escalated into a two-day offensive. When Jasmine had to call Nita in the middle of the night to talk her down from the crazy tree.
Those were the times I was reminded how close they still were to West King Street, literally and figuratively—and never more so than the Thursday afternoon I dropped by and found them with a male visitor in the kitchen hocking down a turkey sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in days, which, going by the way his wrists bones stuck out and his eyes sunk in, he hadn’t. A colorless woman sat next to him, arms flung across the table, facedown between them in a puddle of murky drool. I knew the look of passed out versus sleeping. She was the former.
Mercedes was immediately on the defensive. “This wasn’t my idea. I told them, ‘Don’t you give him none of the food that people meant for us.’”
“They was starvin’,” Jasmine said. “How many times did you go beggin’ for your breakfast?”
“Sherry ain’t starvin’—least not for food. We don’t need that here.”
Geneveve put herself between the two of them. “We didn’t know what to do.”
“I knew,” Mercedes said, jaw set.
“Yeah, you knew,” Jasmine said. “You knew nothin’.”
“Okay, okay.” I put my fingers to my temples as I found myself doing at least ten times a day. “We’re going to have to sort this out. Let’s start by giving your friends a to-go bag, all right?”
“Ain’t no friends a mine,” Mercedes muttered.
“Huh. Everybody was your friend when you needed a fix,” Jasmine said. “Now you all particular when somebody need somethin’ from you.”
“Stop!” Even I was startled by the sternness in Geneveve’s voice. “We got to figure this out together, now.”
Mercedes snapped her arms into a fold. Jasmine choked back tears. I held up both hands and said, “I’m just here to moderate.”
One more thing I’d never been very good at. One more thing I was Nudged to do.
I told Chief about it when he came by that evening to deliver a pair of riding gloves someone had donated for Desmond, and lingered at the side door until I offered him a Coke. As always, I asked him where Hank was, and he told me she was “somewhere doing something,” so I decided it was okay. And then I told myself I was ridiculous for even thinking about it.
“What’d they come up with?” he said.
Thank goodness one of us could stay focused for seven seconds. “Oh, about the homeless couple?” I put the iced soda in front of him on the bistro table. “There really wasn’t a simple answer. I tell them it’s the Jesus thing to do to feed the hungry, but then there’s the question: Do you feed everybody or just the people you think are going to change if you do? And are you taking a chance by feeding people who might drag you back to where you came from?”
“No rule about it in the Bible, huh?”
Again I looked for cynicism, and again, I just found curiosity.
“It sounds like there is when you read the gospels. Everybody who came to Jesus hungry, he fed. Maybe ‘came to Jesus’ is the operative phrase. I don’t think this guy today was coming for spiritual food—and yet Geneveve and them weren’t really after that either when they came to me. At least not that they were aware of.” I squinted at Chief. “Did I just talk myself around in a circle?”
“I wouldn’t use that argument with a jury. How did these people find the place, anyway?”
“That’s what I asked the women, and all three of them swore they haven’t had any contact with anybody from the old neighborhood. The thing is—but I didn’t say this to them—I’m afraid they’re going to come back with half the homeless on West King, and we’re going to have to open up a soup kitchen.”
Chief took a long drag of his Coke. “I don’t think it’s wise to diversify too much at this point.”
“I was just kidding.”
“Were you?” Those eagle eyes looked past my laughter. “You didn’t say, ‘We’re going to have to call the cops to keep them away from the house.’ You went immediately for, ‘How are we going to feed all these people?’” He picked up the glass again. “I think you just answered your own question.”
“Okay, I have to do something, but it can’t be at Sacrament House. So—what? Do I do it someplace else? I can hardly handle what I’m already dealing with.”
“Get somebody else to do it. You’re good at that.”
“Have we met?” I said.
“Did you fix that house up by yourself? Invent Narcotics Anonymous? Deck Desmond out in a full wardrobe?”
“Okay—I get the point. So do I just walk up to somebody and say, ‘You ought to start a homeless shelter. If I can take in prostitutes, surely you can put up a few bums in your guest room.’”
“The way you go after people, yeah, somebody would probably do it.” I saw Chief’s eyes twinkle before he pulled out his cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” I said.
“Nobody. I’m checking my calendar.”
“For …”
“You got all those
people working on the house how?”
“I don’t know. We started doing it, and people just kind of showed up. I like to think they caught what the Holy Spirit was doing—which I know totally turns you off, but it’s—”
“November twenty-seventh. A week from this Saturday.”
“What’s happening that day?”
“We’ll be feeding the homeless in the plaza.”
“We.”
“You and I and whoever else jumps in.”
“And what are we feeding them?”
“Whatever we can get donated. Bagels. Coffee. Some fruit.”
“Is that, like, legal? I mean, how do we make sure we’re not breaking some city ordinance, which I am apparently very good at.”
“Classic.”
“What? Oh—yeah—duh. Why do I keep forgetting you’re an attorney? I think it’s the ponytail.”
“There are a couple of judges that don’t like it that much either.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It’s—I don’t know—it’s classy, it’s you.…”
It’s time to shut up.
I went to the junk drawer and grabbed pad and pen. When I came back to the bistro table, Chief was making notes on his phone.
“I’ll take care of the permits,” he said. “Hank’ll probably help get donations. If it’s about food, she’s all over it. Woman never met a sauce she didn’t like.”
Hank. Yes. Keep remembering Hank.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“We need to get people there.”
“So—I send out an email to the homeless?”
“Cute. Anybody who’s hungry will find us. We want to get the word out to the people we want to pass this job onto.”
“Fliers,” I said. “How cool would it be to put one of Desmond’s drawings on it?”
“Very cool.”
“So the twenty-seventh. That gives us …” I looked at the calendar on the refrigerator and frowned. “Did you realize that’s Thanksgiving weekend?”
“That’s why I picked it. This place will be packed with people looking for ways to show how grateful they are for what they have. We need to get them before that dries up and they start Christmas shopping.”
I did catch the cynicism this time, but I had to admit I shared it.
“I’m still not seeing exactly what this is going to look like,” I said.
“It’s going to look like what it looks like,” Chief said. “Is it on?”
I stared at the hand he held out for me to shake, and I only wanted mine in it if he wouldn’t let go. I had to do something about this or I was going to make a major fool out of myself, lose two friendships.…”
I could have gone on, because that wasn’t the Nudge talking, that was me.
I tapped his hand lightly and put on the best daughter-sister-buddy grin I could muster.
“Oh, it’s on,” I said. “It’s definitely on.”
But what was on the next morning at the Galleon would have to be me confessing to my friend that I was attracted to her man. I needed her to know that I wasn’t going to do anything about it so she knew there was no need for concern.
Ugh. If it was going to sound as lame to her as it did in my head, maybe I should just get over myself and not say anything at all. Yeah. That was a better idea.
And then I walked in the door, and Hank looked up from her whipped cream and said, “Now if that isn’t a cat-that-ate the-canary expression, I’ve never seen one.” She nodded at the empty chair. “Come on into the confessional, Al. What’s up?”
“I really like Chief,” I said.
For Pete’s sake, I sounded like a thirteen-year-old in the middle-school girls’ restroom.
“He’s good people,” Hank said. “Sit down. I ordered you a muffin.”
“No, I really like him.” I dropped to the edge of the chair. “But I just want you to know that I’ll deal with it, and I don’t want it to come between you and me because for one of the few times in my life I have a friend I respect and trust. I don’t know where I’d be if you hadn’t come to my door and told me I could ride a Harley. Okay—I’m getting off track. I’m not going to try to take him from you. And I know I’ll get over it.”
Hank was staring at me blankly. “You’re really bad at this, did you know that?”
“I’ve never had to do it before.”
“No. I mean you’re really bad at knowing a romantic relationship when you see one—and you’re not seeing one.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m not going to pursue Chief like that.”
“Neither am I.” Her blank expression cracked into the grin she could no longer contain. “Al, I’m married. To Joe D’Angelo—whom you’ve never seen because he wouldn’t go near a Harley if it were the last mode of transportation out of here in an evacuation. Chief is my riding buddy. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. Zilch. Nada.” She raised her naked left hand. “I don’t wear a ring because I ‘outgrew’ it.”
The layers of things I’d just exposed about myself dropped on me one by one, and I just sat there under them. Hank’s eyes were shining.
“So—you have a thing for the Chief. He’s not seeing anybody.”
“Tell anyone and I’ll cut your heart out. It wouldn’t go anywhere anyway.”
“Why not? He’s kind of a hunk.”
“He’s an old hunk—the man’s got to be, what?”
“Sixty-two.”
“He’s almost as old as my father would be. And I know he doesn’t feel anything for me except some kind of fatherly thing, so I don’t need to get all strung out over something that’s never going to happen. And besides all that, I stink at relationships with men—swore off them years ago—and there’s no reason to think I’d be any better at them now. I have way too much to do anyway, so I don’t have time to invest in somebody … would you please say something?”
“I was just waiting for you to finish talking yourself out of something you obviously want.”
“I don’t even know that I want it. Maybe I want what some people have, I guess—but that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to get it.”
“You don’t think people have good relationships with their partners?”
“You probably do. I’m sure you do. I’ve just never seen it at close range.”
“You’re talking about your parents.”
I grunted. “Now there were some role models for romance. Not that I saw much of them.”
“You didn’t go on vacations with them, that kind of thing?”
“I was seen with them only when it was important for me to be seen with them—and that became less and less important the more I developed a smart mouth.” I looked at Hank’s drooping eyes. “Don’t start feeling sorry for me. It wasn’t like in the movies where the little rich girl longs to be with her glamorous mother. Frankly I didn’t find her all that interesting. I had Sylvia.” I shook myself out. “How did I get off on that?”
“We were talking about you wanting a relationship with Chief and convincing yourself you aren’t capable of having one.”
“I’m not, Hank.” An unexpected lump rose in my throat. “I feel like an idiot even telling you now.”
“It stops with me. And for what it’s worth, I think you are far from an idiot.”
“It’s worth a lot,” I said. “You have no idea.”
Hank brushed the crumbs from her hands. “Then let’s get to work on this plaza project.”
“Chief already told you? And you wonder why I thought you were living with the man.”
She grinned and twisted in the chair. “So—Patrice. We have a proposition for you.”
Fifteen minutes later the Spanish Galleon had agreed to donate twelve dozen bag
els and ten dozen muffins in exchange for advertising on the flier that the Galleon was just a block from the plaza. And I was feeling less like the middle-schooler with the hopeless crush. Now that this plaza thing was real, I had to put my focus there.
Desmond tried to hide the fact that he was delighted to be asked to apply his artwork to the flier, but he was transparent as a piece of cellophane. He went immediately to “Mr. Shots’” house and came back an hour and a half later with several drawings for me to choose from. I chose the one picturing myriad hands, scanned it, and with him hanging over my shoulder like a persnickety boss, added the text.
“Dude, that is professional,” Desmond said.
“Not yet—I forgot to have you sign the graphic. We have to scan it again.”
“You want me to sign it?”
It was one of those rare instants when he sounded like the child he was. I held my breath so it wouldn’t go away. Which, of course, it did, when he said, “I’ma sign it ‘Desi.’ That’s what the women call me.”
“What women?”
“My women. At school.” He patted his palm. “I got ’em right there, Big Al. Right there.”
I made a mental note to ask Chief to talk to “Desi” about “women.” For now I said, “Just so you know, I won’t be calling you that. I am not, nor will I ever be, ‘right here.’”
I tapped my own palm, and he slapped it happily.
“Ain’t nobody got you right there, Big Al. Not Barnum and Bailey. Not Mr. Chief—”
“Barnum and Bailey? Are you talking about Bonner?”
“Dude with the sunglasses?”
“Yeah. Desmond, you are a trip.”
He grinned his grin—and we were safely away from his rendition of the men in my life.
For the next five days, while Hank got together enough food for a football team and Chief did his attorney thing and procured the permits, the women of Sacrament House tried their luck at making cookies to contribute to the cause. Jasmine insisted her grandmother had taught her how, and I didn’t inquire whether this was the same grandmother who’d filled her with Jack Daniels before she tucked her in. That became obvious anyway after the first few batches—which would have made excellent hockey pucks—but they continued to try.