The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “Thank you, your honor,” Willow said. “May God bless you with perfect peace.”

  The judge just stared at Willow. He tried to smile, then fastened down his emotions and found his gavel.

  “Court is adjourned.”

  An Alien At Home

  When the federal magistrate decided not to send the case to a grand jury, the state closed its case against Willow as well. That they waited so long, explained Willow’s relatively long stay in jail. But she simply saw that legal tangle as the reason she was able to minister to so many women whom she would not have met otherwise.

  Though Willow was released after just over two weeks, Anna Conyers proceeded to tell her story. Not searching for fame, Willow was uncomfortable about this. More difficult still was the way some people began to look at her, even people in her own church, people who had long known about Willow’s ability to see with more than her physical eyes.

  Colleen O’Dell had been attending the Oak Tree Church for a couple of years. She and Willow had talked a few times, generally after Willow delivered some kind of prophetic word for Colleen. But the publicity, and the hard reality, of Willow’s sacrifice, seemed to flip Colleen into a kind of repulsed hero worship. It seemed that she wanted to gaze upon Willow, but only from a distance. Perhaps it was fear that Willow’s condition was contagious. That’s how it felt to Willow.

  Willow had said a few words of thanks from the stage at church, the next Sunday morning, taking a moment out of the Christmas season celebrations. During the milling, socializing time after the service, Colleen approached Willow where she stood with her mother, a cup of coffee in hand. Colleen wore her dark brown hair short and straight, combed over to one side. Her head was unusually wide, especially in relation to its height and her petite frame. With Christmas around the corner, she wore a tight red turtleneck under a bulky sweater with a Nordic pattern and holiday colors.

  “Willow—oh, it’s so good to have you free again,” Colleen said, her effusive tone embracing Willow even as Colleen stayed a yard away. She stood shaking her head, eyes fixed on Willow.

  “I’m glad to be free,” Willow said, chuckling slightly. She watched Colleen nervously, not sure what the younger woman wanted.

  “I just... I mean... I’m so... it’s just.” Apparently, Colleen didn’t know what she wanted either.

  One of the people close enough to hear this odd exchange was Andrew Ferguson. He and Willow had met but had never had an extended conversation. She knew very little about Andrew, except that he was a tremendous worship leader, recently working his way into the Sunday morning rotation for leading the band.

  To Andrew it looked like someone needed help, though he couldn’t tell who needed it most. He stepped up next to Colleen. By the way he put his hand on Colleen’s shoulder, it seemed that they knew each other.

  “It’s like having a real celebrity in the church,” Andrew said, looking from Colleen to Willow and back. His voice lacked the awe-struck quality of Colleen’s. Willow thought he was probably just trying to extricate his friend from an awkward moment.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Colleen said.

  Claudia had been monitoring all of this closely, maintaining her privileged place as the celebrity’s mother by leaning closer to Willow, but also looking a bit confused. In her mind, Willow had long been a celebrity in that church.

  Willow tried a playful evasion. Looking at Andrew, she said, “But you know how it feels to be up front in a big church like this.”

  He nodded in long sweeps up and down, the canned light just above him defining the swells of his wavy golden hair. Andrew’s light blue eyes, blonde eye lashes and pale skin betrayed his Scottish roots more articulately than his name.

  “It’s a funny thing,” Andrew said, turning more serious. “We’re not doing any of it for ourselves, so other people will look at us, but people are looking at us. It’s unavoidable. It leaves me feeling obligated to sort of pretend I don’t know that they’re doing it.”

  Willow liked the way Andrew turned the awkward encounter into a real discussion. “Add to that all the teaching we get about the importance of honoring each other,” Willow said, focused on Andrew, “and it gets even more complicated.” She paused to make sure Andrew was with her, not certain of the other two women in that little circle. “So we must be obligated to allow ourselves to be honored, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

  Andrew chuckled. He was beginning to feel like he and Willow were sharing an inside joke. But he tried to respond to the external conversation. “Yes, exactly. How can we encourage people to honor each other and then refuse any kind of honor aimed at us?” He laughed openly. Clearly this was not a deep concern, but something he had put some thought into before.

  Willow caught herself looking at Andrew and wondering how old he was. She even checked his finger for a wedding ring. Then she blushed when she realized what she was doing. Andrew noticed the blush.

  “I’m not embarrassing you, I hope.”

  Willow laughed, a laugh that started out uncomfortable and then let loose. “No, that’s not it. I’ll have to tell you later something that just crossed my mind. I’m embarrassed to say it here.”

  Andrew glanced at Colleen and Claudia, thinking he didn’t have any idea what Willow was talking about. He tried once again to rescue the conversation.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said to Claudia.

  “Oh, I’m her mother. I’m Claudia Parker. I just moved here from Kansas a couple months ago. I didn’t know she was fixin’ to get arrested.”

  The stamina with which Andrew maintained a smile in the midst of such an odd introduction, impressed Willow. She was starting to let go of her guilt at checking out his looks and his marital status. She watched now to see how well he handled her mother’s unique presentation to the world.

  “Yes,” Andrew said, after only a second of hesitation. “And you must be very proud of her. I mean, she could have been arrested for lots of worse things.” Andrew didn’t really look like he was trying to correct Claudia’s attitude, still just keeping it light, with his twinkly grin.

  At this point Willow was noticing how white his teeth were. Again she blushed. But Andrew was focused on Claudia now.

  Claudia was nodding, but with some reserve, as if she knew she was supposed to agree but wasn’t so sure about her own position on the propriety of a woman getting herself sent to jail, where all manner of wicked things could happen to her, and while she has an elderly mother to take care of on the outside. Certainly, Andrew had no idea of the roots of her worry, buried in years of relatives leaving spouses and children to fend for themselves, while going to jail for doing some fool thing. Claudia didn’t enlighten him.

  Willow caught Colleen looking at her, when she glanced away from Andrew for a moment. She thought she detected a bit of jealousy in the tight lips and narrowed eyes she found aimed in her direction. Colleen acted as if she had been caught, looking away suddenly and erasing the concern from her face. She misunderstood Willow’s gift enough to believe that Willow was reading her mind. An internal survey of Colleen’s mind would have found her trying to erase every thought, so there was nothing for anyone to read there.

  In fact, Willow was too befuddled to even care what anyone else there was thinking, even Andrew, who looked like a man trying to survive until someone came along and rescued him.

  A couple of old friends broke into that circle of distrust and gave Willow greetings and hugs, opening the door for everyone else to escape. But, even as Willow finished the second hug, one from Martin Boyle—a very large man who could have patented his bear hug—Andrew caught her eye and nearly winked, his mouth and cheek twitching very slightly as he smiled and waved goodbye. He was towing Colleen away from the scene. Willow tried to return that winking look, but felt that she had failed. And she had to turn her attention to Wendy and Martin, introducing them to Claudia.

  Out of everything that happened in church that day, the intriguing encounter with A
ndrew was the thing that stayed with Willow the longest and the most intensely. And it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling that lingered.

  Dancing with Daddy

  For a woman whose father left when she was four years old, one of the most profound experiences of Willow’s adult faith involved accepting God as her father. And, of course, she didn’t settle with grasping the concept, or even weeping through a heartfelt revelation of the fatherhood of God. She developed a life-long experience of meeting, knowing and living with God as her father. In recent years, this included frequent daddy-daughter dances.

  Sometimes, when Willow reclined in her living room, the last sunshine of the day contained in an orange or pink rectangle climbing the wall toward the ceiling, she would begin to smile the satisfaction of a person on vacation with no one to look after and nothing to accomplish. In the cinema of her mind she would see large gentle hands reaching for hers, and the music would begin.

  Instead of the sweep and swirl of her lover’s embrace, she would enter the warm wrap of her Father’s arms, her own girlish grip entwined around his waist, his stomach a pillow for her tired head, her smile slightly bent where her cheek met the soft warmth of his shirt. Without remembering when she had stepped onto them, she would feel his powerful feet lifting her childish ones, balanced atop sandals whose straps her toes could clutch. Then she could lean back, his hands taking hers, and there she would find kindness radiating from eyes looking down at her, satisfaction sunning her.

  Willow could certainly explain possible psychological reasons that this dancing with her daddy was therapeutic. She could have noted the importance of learning to allow God to take the lead in her life. She could have explored the obvious, that to dance requires being close. Everyone needs to be close to God. But Willow felt no need for such intellectual justifications. As far as she was concerned, her father in Heaven simply liked to dance with her. And she took that very personally. She liked to dance with him too.

  That Sunday afternoon, just before Christmas, Willow sat alone in her living room, the fire on low as the early December twilight set in. She didn’t bother to turn on any lights, she was feeling that gravitational pull inward, toward her father. And he wanted to dance.

  The living room faded away and a large ballroom took its place in her conscious mind. Willow could see him standing there waiting, as always. She had learned not to slap herself with a guilt trip about not going to be with him more often. Such self-scolding served no purpose that suited him; and she finally discovered a few years back that it didn’t suit her either. She focused, instead, on being glad that he was always there for her.

  Reaching her left hand up into his right, she looked down at his big feet, stepping her small girlish feet onto his. For these daddy-daughter dances, Willow always started out as a small girl, though she often grew up some as they swirled and as they spoke. Her father loved to dance, but he also loved to talk to her as they danced. She had come to expect that he had something particular to tell her when he called her to dance, as if some things could be best understood in the unison rhythm of their swinging bodies.

  Resting her head below his chest, where she could hear his heart beating softly behind the angelic music, Willow let him do most of the work. She liked to ride along, especially at first, absorbing his pace and timing, before stepping her feet down and matching his stride. Today she looked up at his face while she was still riding on his powerful feet. In this heavenly dance, such a pose would not strain her neck. She wasn’t forty-seven there.

  He smiled down at her, of course, and his loving eyes seemed to drink her. In those eyes, she knew what love was.

  They danced like that for some time, though minutes make no sense in that place, in those times alone with God. Part of the time, he was humming the tune as they danced, harmonizing with the invisible musicians. Once, he let her see a band of angels playing for them, but that distracted her, so he didn’t always show her.

  As Willow began to touch the floor with her feet, feet that were older and more independent now, she began to hum as well. In her life on Earth, she knew she was not a talented singer. In that ballroom, however, she sang like a song bird. Harmonizing with her father was soothing and exciting at the same time.

  By the time she was able to look into his eyes without tilting her head back, as if she were a teenaged girl, she was ready to talk. He usually waited for her to decide when she was ready.

  “What are you thinking?” she said, asking him the question that only the most secure lovers can ask each other on this planet.

  His smile stretched a bit and then he answered. “I was thinking about the way you suddenly realized that your heart was awake in a new way.”

  “You mean when I was talking to Andrew?” This wasn’t really even a question of clarification, rather more of a transition, as she prepared for this particular conversation.

  “Yes,” he said, and he hummed for a little while.

  “I did notice that I was noticing him,” she said. Though they both knew that phrase could have provoked a laugh, Willow’s level of self-consciousness with her father was so low that she felt no obligation to acknowledge what they both knew. They already both knew what they both knew.

  “Have you figured out what changed?” he said.

  Again, Willow knew he was aware of her lack of conclusion on that subject. This was one of those questions that implied she had better keep looking for an answer. But the feeling was not the weight of obligation, or the push of performance, but the jump of a promise. He had something he wanted to show her.

  Then she opened the eyes of her heart, and saw the truth. “Something happened when I talked to Lila,” she said, remembering that last night with her cellmate.

  “You were focused on other things, so you didn’t notice how a hunger was uncovered by that conversation,” he said, continuing to twirl her around the room.

  Willow’s smile grew, and a laugh broke out. His revelation of her new freedom made it more real, with permission to enjoy it. She had been learning how her father loved to see her enjoy things—everything he put in her life. She knew she hadn’t done all she could in that direction while incarcerated, but she knew she would do better the next time she got arrested.

  The father began to laugh loudly, his uncorked humor rocking his dance steps until he stopped and just collected Willow into his arms as she spun to a stop. Instantly, she knew he was laughing about her assumption that she would certainly be in jail again.

  Her father explained his laughter. “If you’re gonna be in jail again, I’ll have to throw you in there myself. That old worm, the Devil, doesn’t want you in there healing people and setting them free.” And he laughed harder. He had fully enjoyed her time in jail.

  When they both stopped laughing, and she began to swim in the ocean of grace there in his beaming eyes, Willow knew that they had gotten off topic. She wanted to know more about that hunger awake insider her now.

  Her father responded to her desire. “You will know now what it is to be attracted. But that doesn’t mean that you’re obligated to do anything about that attraction. Men who see it awake in you will want to do something about it.” He seemed to stop abruptly.

  Willow knew he had stopped at exactly the point where she connected the awakening desire in herself with vulnerability and the threat of the opposite sex. As if her heart had been denuded of its covering, a flap of skin opened in her chest, over her rapidly pulsing organ, she discovered the girlhood fear that had lived in place of normal sexual attraction. The father pulled her close and covered her naked heart with his. And he did not let go.

  In this world, all embraces must come to an end. But Willow was not confined to this world at that moment. And the hug that she received from her father had no end to it. It began and it remained. He remained. He was the skin on her chest, the cover for her heart.

  Christmas Gifts

  Willow remembered very few Christmases from her childhood. She remembered her years of Chri
stmases with her mother as if they were consolidated into only three or four years. She had no conscious memory of her birth father being present during the holiday, but she had tapped into pieces of such memories in healing prayer times. She had discovered then why she didn’t remember the Christmas before her father left. She didn’t want to.

  Now, for the first time in her adult life, Willow was preparing to share her Christmas with her mother. Claudia nearly shook with nerves each time the subject arose. Willow was getting the impression that her mother feared that Christmas would awaken animosity between them and that Willow would leave her again. She had an inkling of what prompted this in her mother, but wasn’t sure how, or whether, to address it.

  Over the years, Willow had developed a few traditions around the holiday. These included the Christmas pageant at the Oak Tree Church, the celebration of the generic winter holiday at the library, and giving little gifts to people she brushed past all year, such as Ciara, at the coffee shop.

  For the past three years, Willow had celebrated the waning hours of Christmas Day with an old woman she had met more than a decade before, who had no remaining relatives with whom to celebrate. At one hundred and one years of age, she had outlived her only son, as well as two husbands, three sisters and even a pair of grandchildren. Gretchen Holmgren could count on receiving a call during Christmas Day from her nephew in Pennsylvania, but the rest of her holiday consisted of the activities of the convalescent center in which she now lived.

  Before Gretchen’s son died, Willow had invited him and Gretchen to her house for one of her packed home Christmases. She didn’t host that every year, but rotated the big day with a few friends, including Annetta. This year was Annetta’s turn to host a few dozen folks, mutual friends of Willow’s and assorted relatives of her own. Claudia was the first relative Willow had towed to one of those grand parties.