Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  I know I was feeling cross, but it was just because I was more confused than ever.

  I sat on the porch for a while. It was cool out there, so I went back inside. I went in the kitchen to fix a bite to eat—opened the refrigerator door and stood there looking to see what looked good. Nothing did. I wasn’t hungry.

  Finally, I just plopped down in my recliner and let go. “Just show me, Lord!” I said and opened my Bible where the bookmark was. Nothing I read spoke to me, and my mind just kept rambling, going over again all the troubling things I could imagine. What if I did take a job like that, what would I do with my house? Rent it? Renters don’t take care of a place. I couldn’t just go off and leave it. I dared not sell it; it was the only security I had for my old age. No, I could not leave my house.

  I leaned forward to lay the Bible on the end table, but the recliner popped up and the Bible fell on the floor. I got to get Elijah to do something about this chair, I told myself. Everything I kept filed in the pages of my Bible had fell out, and as I was gathering up all them little keepsakes, my eyes fell on a little scrap of paper with the lines of a poem on it. It was a poem I planned to frame and hang in my kitchen but had never got around to doing it. I read the words again:

  Only one life, ’twill soon be past;

  Only what’s done for Christ will last.

  I sat back down to ponder about that. So far as I could tell, I was living by those words. I tried to do everything, not just church work, for the Lord’s glory. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt, well, unsettled, you might call it. I fingered that scrap of paper and asked the Lord if he was trying to tell me something.

  Well, I was soon to find out. Without much faith that anything was going to happen, I spread my old King James on my lap, and it opened right at Isaiah 6. That’s the chapter where Isaiah has a vision of the Lord in the temple and he overhears the Lord asking, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Isaiah told the Lord, “Here am I, send me.”

  I tell you the truth, my heart commenced to pitter-patter. I can’t tell you how many times I had read that chapter before—and heard many a sermon on it—but never in my life had it shot an arrow straight to my heart! At my age, was I supposed to tell the Lord, “Here am I, send me”?

  I read on until I finished that chapter, but I didn’t remember a word I’d read. All I could think about was that question: “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”

  Well, I was in no frame of mind to answer the way Isaiah did.

  Somebody was at the door, so I got up and answered it. It was the postman with postage due on a letter. I had to find my pocketbook and dig in that bottomless pit for the four cents to give him. By the time I did that and put on my glasses, I saw it was a letter from Percy Poteat. I was fit to be tied. That no-count, good-for-nothing moocher—just like him not to put enough stamps on a letter to send it all the way.

  I opened it and read what he had to say. Said he had got married in Oregon to a widow with grown kids, and that he and his new wife were riding his motorcycle back east. Said he wanted to show off his bride to the people in Live Oaks and could they stay at my house a few days.

  The nerve of that guy! The last time I’d seen him, I’d sent him packing so he wouldn’t break up Beatrice and Carl. For some reason, all her life long, Beatrice had been crazy about Percy Poteat. Then she met Carl. They were about to be married when Percy showed up on his Harley-Davidson. He had run through at least three wives and was looking for another. I tell you, all he wanted with Beatrice was a good cook and housekeeper. I knew I had to put a stop to that, so I did.

  When Beatrice found out, she shamed me pretty bad about sending him packing—not because Percy was any threat to the way she felt about Carl, but because she was concerned for Percy’s soul. Carl had been talking to him about the Lord, and they had both been praying for him, but before they got anywhere with Percy, I had caused him to hit the road.

  Well, I’d never felt good about that. I knew Jesus died for him same as me, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about Percy being lost—I just wanted him to get lost! I figured it would ease my conscience if I agreed to let him and this new wife freeload here at my house for a day or two. To my credit, whenever I thought about Percy, which was only once in a blue moon, I did pray for him.

  I put the letter away and plugged in the vacuum cleaner. If there is anything I’m allergic to, it’s a vacuum cleaner, but I was in no mood to sit around chewing the cud about the Priscilla Home offer. I would get the house all cleaned up, and then maybe I could relax and pray.

  Far into the night I was working like there was no tomorrow, finding more things to do than the law allows, but that question the Lord was asking was worse than a fishbone stuck in my craw. I couldn’t get rid of it. I tried to tell myself that it was just a coincidence that the Bible fell open at that chapter, but it didn’t do any good.

  After I’d done everything I could think to do, the ironing, the mopping, and cleaning out the utility room, I climbed up on a chair and washed off the top of the refrigerator. That was always the last thing that ever got done at my house, since the top of the fridge is the last thing anybody will ever see, unless it’s Clara when she stretches her neck. Like I always say, housekeeping is something you do that nobody notices unless you don’t do it.

  I put all the cleaning rags in the washer and turned it on, heard the clock strike 2:00 a.m., and stood there thinking. With that question “Whom shall I send?” hammering away in my head, I decided that this thing was not going away until I got something settled once and for all. I plopped down in the recliner.

  Of course, I was wore to a frazzle, so I just told the Lord I would appreciate if he would make it perfectly plain to me what he had in mind for me, and I’d do it. “I’m here if you want to send me,” I told him, but I can’t say my heart was in it. I would have to be absolutely sure before I made a move, so I asked for a sign. “By chance you want me to take that job,” I said, “for starters, what say you tell me what to do with this house?”

  What I am about to tell you is hard to believe; it knocked me out of my tree! The very next day, about noon, Pastor Osborne drove up in the driveway. When he opened the door and pulled the seat forward so the two little boys could pile out the backseat, I went around to the passenger side and lifted Angelica out. I shook my head; that little car was not fit for a family. All three of the kids made a beeline to the backyard to see Elijah, who was working in my garden. They loved that man to death.

  The pastor sat on the glider while I went inside to fix him a glass of tea. It made me mad the way the deacons were dillydallying about giving Pastor Osborne a raise. Now that he had taken on three children, the church was not paying him enough to keep body and soul together, much less buy a decent car.

  I brought the tea on a tray with one of my fried apple pies and set it down. “Pastor Osborne, when my ship comes in, I’m going to buy you a four-door. You need a four-door.”

  “Well,” he said, “we could sure use one, but Betty and I are content with what we have. In fact, we’ve never been happier, Esmeralda. All those years we waited and thought we’d never have children, and then the Lord gives us three. It’s one of those answers that’s ‘exceedingly abundantly above’ all we asked for or imagined.”

  We talked about the mission trip the young people were going on and about Boris Krantz, who seemed to be working out good as youth director. He told me Boris was helping Horace, the sheriff’s son, who wanted to be baptized. If my guess was right, Lucy Mangrum, the Spanish teacher, had her cap set for Boris. Well, she was a fine girl, and he’d be lucky to get her.

  We could hear the children squealing, having a good time.

  “I reckon Betty has her hands full now,” I said.

  “Loves every minute of it. She’s had to throw away a lot and stuff every nook and cranny in the house to make room for the children and us, but she loved every minute of it.”

  “How’s it working out?”
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  “Fine. The boys and Angelica have bunk beds in the other bedroom. It’s a small room so it’s crowded in there. As the children get bigger, it won’t be long before we’ll have to do something. We thought when the time comes, we would ask our landlord if he would build another room onto the house. I talked to Elmer down at the hardware store about how much an addition like that would cost, and he said if the landlord laid out that kind of money he’d go up on the rent. Elmer said we’d be better off to look for a three-bedroom house if we can afford it. Maybe we will, sometime.”

  My mouth dropped open. “A three-bedroom house?” He nodded. “That is, when the time comes. Betty and I are already praying about it.”

  Without giving it another thought, I knew what I had to do. I asked him, “How’d you like to have my house?” He laughed. “Yeah, right!”

  He thought I was joking.

  Before I left town, it was all settled. I put my furniture in storage, and the Osbornes planned on moving into my house the following week. They would pay me the same rent they’d been paying for that little cracker box house, and I had their first month’s rent in my pocketbook. The Willing Workers agreed to look after Mrs. Purdy, and Horace said he’d see to it Elijah didn’t lack for anything. Of course, Horace had caught that HIV virus from Maria, so the chances were he wouldn’t outlive Elijah. But I figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. The good news was that Horace had made a turnaround and was living for the Lord.

  Well, I couldn’t believe I was actually on my way to North Carolina in my old Chevy loaded with all of my stuff, as well as clothes, sheets, towels, pillows—anything the Willing Workers thought we could use at Priscilla Home. I felt about as happy as I did the day Bud and me got married. Of course, that day, we thought we had a future, that we’d have children and grow old together. When he stepped on that mine in Vietnam and come home so wounded he was not his self, our dreams was over and done with.

  I didn’t cotton to the idea of leaving Bud back there in the cemetery, but before I left, I went up there and told him good-bye and that I’d be back. I knew he’d want me to go.

  If I’d had good sense, I would’ve been scared about what lay ahead, but right then I was making good time around the curves and up the hills, singing God’s praises at the top of my lungs.

  2

  It wasn’t easy finding Priscilla Home. The last ten miles were on a dirt road, the Old Turnpike, which twisted and turned, worming its way up the mountain. It was about as wide as a narrow-gauge railroad track, one you wouldn’t want to meet a car on, much less a pickup truck with a hillbilly behind the wheel. The mountain laurel was budding on both sides of the road, and the overhanging limbs formed a green leafy arch decorated with a dusting of snow. For April, the weather was cold, with a sky holding on to winter.

  When I finally saw the sign THE PRISCILLA HOME, I heaved a sigh of relief and turned in at the drive. Set among a forest of giant trees was a big white house with a lawn set off with a rock wall all around. On the porch were a dozen or so women sitting in the rockers or on the steps, bundled up against the cold, most of them smoking. I tooted the horn, but no one waved. The drive went around to the back of the house, and seeing the door to the first floor, I pulled up there and stopped. By the time I got out of the car, a young woman was coming out. Must be the director, I thought. Looked to be around thirty. Not much to look at, although she wasn’t making the most of what she did have. I’m no fashion plate myself, but I try to look decent. She had on jeans and a Carolina sweatshirt, which was okay, but her hair was a mess and she needed some makeup.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “You must be the new resident manager.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Ursula Sloan,” she said. “Director of Priscilla Home.”

  By then the women had come through the house and were spilling out the back door. Most of them were young, and I knew they must have been curious about me, but their faces didn’t show it. They all had the same hangdog look about them.

  “The ladies will bring in your accoutrements.”

  I didn’t have a clue about accoutrements, but the women were ready to help me unload the car. “Most of this stuff is for the home,” I told them and proceeded to separate boxes and bags from my stuff.

  Many hands made short work of unloading the Chevy. The director told the women to take my things upstairs to the second floor and put the rest on the third floor. “You can put your car in the garage next to mine,” she told me. I looked at a long van parked next the dumpster. “We don’t have room for the van in there,” she explained. “That’s my apartment above the garage.”

  Ursula waited while I parked the Chevy, and then I followed her inside. We entered a first floor room full of chairs and tables with a fireplace and mantel. “This is the day room,” she told me, “and adjoining this room is the craft room, laundry room, and a downstairs bedroom with bath for visitors. Your quarters are on the second floor.”

  This Ursula talked fast like a Yankee, so I knew she wasn’t from North Carolina. I followed her up the steps, and at the head of the stairs on the left was the kitchen, where a couple of women were cooking something in a big pot. We turned right onto a short hall beside the staircase leading to the third floor. One box of my stuff was at the end of the hall before one door, and Ursula was fumbling with keys to open another door labeled “office.” The hall led into a parlor, and while she was trying to unlock the office, I stepped into the parlor to take a look-see.

  That parlor was downright posh with couches, chairs, tables, and lamps—even had a baby grand piano in there. The hardwood floors and solid wood paneling made the room look like a picture out of one of them home decorating magazines.

  In back of the parlor was a small sitting room with a fireplace dividing the parlor from the dining room. I couldn’t get over all that wood in those rooms—the floors and walls with those wide windowsills—you just don’t see real wood with its natural grain nowadays. On the far side of the dining room, the front door opened onto the porch, the porch I saw coming down the driveway, and another door on the right led into the kitchen.

  Ursula found me and led me through the kitchen back into the little hallway. I spoke to the two cooks, and they nodded back at me. In the office Ursula proceeded to tell me, “Your room and bath has one door that opens onto the hall and another that opens into the office. We keep the office secured because the medicine cabinet is in here, and the phone. The ladies are only allowed to use the phone on weekends.”

  As we entered my quarters, I poked my head in the bathroom and saw it looked okay—lots of cabinet space. It was a corner room with windows on two sides overlooking the backyard. Except for the one box outside the door, the girls had placed my things in neat stacks, leaving me walking space in between. The room was furnished with a bed, lamps, an easy chair, and a television on a table. Living in one room would take some getting used to, but having the run of the whole house would help me make do.

  “The ladies have the third floor,” Ursula was saying. “Each room has twin beds, a desk, and a closet. There are a couple of community bathrooms. After dinner you may go up there if you like.”

  “When’s supper? I’m starved.”

  She hesitated, and her glasses slipped down on her nose. With her finger on the bridge, she righted them and spoke in a tight kind of voice. “As soon as it’s prepared. You’ll want to freshen up, so I’ll leave you for now. They’ll ring a bell for dinner.”

  After I had been to the bathroom, I unpacked a few things and was groping around in the closet for hangers when I heard the bell. I ran a comb through my hair, threw on some face powder, and took a look-see in the mirror. I figured I would pass.

  Ursula seated me at a round table with herself and four of the women. After the blessing, everyone filed into the kitchen to be served. I tell you, everybody was morgue quiet. The cooks standing on the other side of the counter before that large pot dished out boiled corn, two roast
ing ears onto each plate. That was all! No butter, no bread, no tea—nothing! I must have looked shocked, because Ursula explained, “Corn is the only thing we have left in the freezer.”

  When we had all received our two ears of corn, we sat down. I introduced myself, but it was like pulling eye teeth to get the women to tell me their names and where they came from. The woman next to me was middle-aged or older and so thin a puff of wind could blow her away. The rings on her fingers were so loose I didn’t see how she kept them from falling off. Said her name was Lenora Barrineau. Said she came from Manhattan. That’s in New York City. For a woman her age, her graying hair was too long, and it did nothing to help that vacant look in her eyes. The hair dragged her face down, if you know what I mean. Handling the corn with those long, thin fingers and mincing each bite made me guess she had been raised fancy.

  Across from me sat a woman wearing an old hunting jacket that seemed to be as much a part of her as her skin. Hers was a face you don’t see anywhere but in the backwoods, because it was a face left over from the Great Depression. She could’ve been forty years old or a hundred—age don’t count living a hardscrabble life. She gave her name as Dora something or other, from Tennessee, and she seemed to be all by herself—apart from the others.

  Ursula introduced the other two women, Linda and Portia, who were roommates. She didn’t name their hometowns; the way they’d been living they probably didn’t have hometowns anymore. They were young—too young to be in a place like this, but I guessed years didn’t count when you had got a tattoo like Portia’s crawling up your neck telling the world to imagine where you’d been and what you’d been up to. Them two could teach me things I didn’t want to know. Linda wore a baseball cap turned backwards on her head, which was something I wouldn’t put up with if I was in charge, not at the table. She was stocky, had a gold bead through her nose, and five or six earrings in each ear.