Sweet Potato Jones

by Jen Lowry

  “Oh, Daddy,” I sobbed against Ray, “I can’t take this. Maybe we can call Maize out, somehow. We’re the running kind. They’ve never met the likes of us.”

  But that hadn’t worked so far. Not a soul had turned up any information about him. He hadn’t shown up for school on Friday, and we’d spent the next three days combing the streets full force with about forty other godly people. The police had been circling the street with the flyers, but they had no information to share, either. Informants weren’t talking. Daddy must have his back against the wall.

  “Bell and Bean can’t go on the street again. I’ve decided.” Daddy spoke firmly.

  But I was soon to be eighteen, and I could be their legal guardian then. I would quit school and work full time. I could do it. Somehow.

  “Sir, you know that Sweet Potato and I are prepared to raise Bean and Bell.”

  Ray rubbed my arms, and I collapsed against him. He put his arms around me and led me to the pew, but that was the last place I wanted to park. I didn’t want to sit near the backstabbing traitors.

  “What you want and what is best for them are two different things,” Daddy answered. “She has to finish school. She will be the first Jones with a diploma, and that is mighty big. She has to finish out this year. That is best for her.”

  “Don’t talk about what is best for me. Like you knew how to raise us. Don’t you sit here and try to tell me you think I’m incapable of taking care of them youngins,” I spit out at him.

  Pastor came in with the counseling tone. “I don’t think that’s what your Daddy is implying at all. You’re still in school, Sweet Potato. You have to graduate. Ray has already signed up for the Army and will be leaving soon. Mrs. Sunshine said that she would take them, but we already have the room at our home. Patty doesn’t work. She does all the pastoral care as my wife to assist me in the ministry. And even though that takes a lot of her time, she would have the proper time to devote to the children. Mrs. Sunshine has the Soul Food to keep up all day and night. We are the perfect place. God has provided.”

  “Tell God to bring Maize back, if He’s providing,” I cried.

  Ray let out a sigh. He knew we were facing an impossible situation. “God is working through this as we speak.” He hated to meet my gaze.

  Ye of little faith, the girl of a soon-to-be preacher man.

  “Daddy, let’s go on back to the motel. I’ll keep the kids while you go off searching.”

  “No. We checked out. And I’ve got something else to tell you, too.”

  I was defeated. My match was over. I was learning some tennis language, since it was strange requirement for all of us project and homeless kids to learn how to play tennis at The Dream. I was at Love-40 on a match point. No chance of a comeback.

  I knew what I had to do. I knew how to run, too. After I found Maize, I would take the kids and never look back. Daddy would never be able to find the four of us. This was a big world, and I could get lost in it.

  Daddy was more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him. “I want you to listen to me, now. I want you to hear all that I have to say. I’m going to try to get it out the best I can.”

  His hand was outstretched to mine—those strong hands I’d always admired. But I didn’t reach for him. I clung to the only lifeline that meant anything to me now, my Ray. And I knew that when I ran, I would have to leave him in the dust, too. For my family, I would have to sacrifice it all. Ray would wait for me to get the kids settled and safe. I knew he loved me that much. I might not ever understand the reasons why he did, but I knew he would understand if I ran. God would make way for us. I had to get Maize and the kids back first.

  “It’s not your fault that Maize did this.” Daddy shook his head. His eyes were strong, despite the way his voice was shaking.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, as I sunk deeper down into the ocean depths.

  Nothing he could say would ever convince me otherwise. I was Maize’s best friend, and I’d let him down. Running off on some date with Ray, working to be close to Ray. He’d distanced himself and lost his way. I hadn’t been there to hold him close, to ease his panicking heart. So, he’d found a haven on the street. Lord, those Reapers better be good to him.

  What was I even saying?

  Daddy exhaled. “It was mine. It’s as simple as that. I own it.”

  He opened one of the folders he had with him. I was sure the first one held the copies of his giveaway receipt. This was something different entirely. I watched as he flipped through the pages. “Daddy! What are you doing?”

  He sighed. “This place was never meant for us.”

  “What? We ain’t staying? That’s what I tried to say to you and Maize before. Do you remember when I begged you to leave, and you told me to go to sleep? If you would’ve moved when I said, Maize wouldn’t be in this death sentence. I said to you that we might as well go on now and save them the heartache later. The longer we stayed, the harder it was for Maize to breathe. I can barely gather up the oxygen it takes now, and for the life of me, Daddy, I don’t know how I’m going to make it after this.”

  My voice broke, and the tears were on the ready. “I don’t think I can live if he doesn’t come back. Not after this.”

  “I ain’t letting that happen no more. There’s something I never told you, Sweet Potato. That I ain’t never told anybody.”

  He passed me a folded-up document, and I flipped over the blue paper to find a deed to some farmhouse. Marigold Jones’s name was typed on the first line.

  I frowned. It was strange to see Momma’s name on a paper. “What is this for, Daddy?”

  He pushed it closer to me. “Just look at it, will you?”

  I did as he asked, scanning it, trying not to focus on her name, because it was hurtful to see it printed there. But then I saw something else. In case of her death, her inheritance would pass to her oldest child.

  “I don’t understand this, Daddy. Ray?”

  I handed Ray the paper. He read over it all and folded it right back up, shaking his head. I could feel his heartbeat and his body tensing. What was this all about? We didn’t have time for this now.

  “I couldn’t face it, Sweet Potato. So, I put it away, and I ran. I grabbed you youngins and swore I’d never been able to touch my feet on that land. That was ten years ago, and now all it has done is grown and grown. And I’ve done this to you for what? For my own prejudices.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders. “No more. It stops now. I stop now. I’m done.”

  “Daddy, what are you talking about?”

  Was he trying to say that we had always had a home to go to? That he’d taken us all around the desert when the promise land was right down I-95? I couldn’t take that. Just like I bet Moses couldn’t take the truth when God denied him that land at the end of his journey. Daddy couldn’t have made us believe we didn’t have a roof over our head. For what? Was he plum out of his mind? I’d believed I was in some dream. Now I knew it for sure. But it was turning more nightmarish by the second, and I wished somebody would wake me up right quick before I lost it.

  “I was. And maybe I still am. Them Parkers hated me. They disowned Marigold when she ran off with me, because they said I would ruin her and wouldn’t provide right by her. For that, I never forgave them closed-minded people. I didn’t want nothing they had. I didn’t want their charity.”

  He wrung his hands in front of him like he was cleaning out a dirty dish rag.

  “Charity? That’s not charity, Daddy. When her parents left her their possessions, that was her right. And then it was our right. Regardless of what color we are or whether we ever met them people before in our life. So, what you are trying to tell me? That in the heart of all of this, we’ve had a home? For how long? How long you been carrying this paper around?” I could hardly get the words out. It was inconceivable.

  “After your Momma died and I had to go down to the social services office, the news was waiting for me there. T
hey’d been looking for us. Apparently, lawyers of them people had already contacted Marigold before. That was how she was able to score so much cash, which became the death of her. It’s not like I gave her money to buy drugs with, Sweet Potato.” He shuddered, and a look of disgust crawled across his face.

  “Those people were our family. That was Momma’s people, and I don’t care how you looked at them in the past. They were who they were. They meant something to her. It hurt her to walk away. She told me so.”

  I couldn’t help but say everything that was on my mind now. How could Daddy have done this to his own flesh and blood?

  His voice was defeated. “We could’ve been making it the whole time. Done the whole time on the farm instead of tramping the road. Now, I have to tell you, because this here farmhouse and all that land will go to you on your eighteenth birthday. It was all left to the first grandchild. It’s out of my hands now. Here.”

  He handed me the papers and turned from me, his shoulders slumping.

  “What? You think this is a bad thing? You think this is wrong? I can see it on you. Daddy, wake up. We’ve lived in every filthy, rat-infested, deserted, desolate place possible because … because of your pride?”

  But this wasn’t about pride. This came down to family, our family. And Daddy had let me down. Yet again. Pedestal knocked down. Toppled.

  “Pride is a hard thing. I couldn’t go to that farmhouse down that long, dirt road and see them workers out there in them fields. Most of them migrants being taken advantage of. I bet them Sunday-dressed fools sat up in that two-story house, looking out their windows, imagining themselves still in them slave days. I couldn’t go there.”

  “Who’s been caring for the place all this time, Daddy? It would have been our responsibility to take care of our momma’s home.” I shot him a glare. He’d lied to us all these years, convinced Bell that we had a purpose for the Lord. I couldn’t go there.

  “There’s a caretaker there. Mr. Steele Watson. He contacts me through the services we use from time to time, giving updates on the property. It seems that it’s done well under his care. Just like Marigold had wished it.”

  “Wait—and you’re saying that she wouldn’t have wanted to go back there? To raise us kids in the place where she grew up, instead of them slums in Charlotte? She loved to sell those vegetables with her daddy at the roadside stand. She loved the land, and the smell of cut grass, of fresh plowed field dirt. She told me.”

  “That’s not the life I envisioned for myself.” He refused to turn around to me. He spoke so quietly that I thought I’d missed it.

  “Excuse me!” I wailed to his back. “You stopped her? You wouldn’t let her go home?”

  Oh, God. Please let this not be true. That meant Daddy could’ve sent Momma over the edge. Her crying all the time. She’d probably found out her family had died off, and she had a chance to take us back, but Daddy had stopped her, holding us all back.

  “We were more than farmers. We could’ve had our own restaurant, the two of us. She could’ve been a Mrs. Patterson, if only she would have tried.” His voice trailed off, mixing in with my broken sobs.

  “Daddy, please tell me that this life you’ve dragged us through for the past ten years has served some greater purpose than your pride and inability to forgive.”

  There’d been so many times where I’d felt overcome, rejected by society, but I had held on to one true constant: Daddy loved us. Now … I wasn’t too sure. I knew nothing about Daddy. That meant everything I had built up was all a lie.

  He came and sat down beside me, his knee touching mine. I flinched like I’d been scorched by a hot iron.

  “It’s not as simple as you make it out to be, Sweet Potato. I’d had a hard life on a farm with my own family. You don’t know that about me and my folks.”

  He wiped away tears with the back of his sleeve. “I never told you nothing about me. You don’t know your daddy’s raising, and I couldn’t risk you there with the workers to be taken advantage of in a bad way.”

  “But, Daddy. You’ve taken advantage of us. You’ve stolen a life of peace we could’ve had. It couldn’t be that bad on a farm. Hard work, I’m sure. But don’t you think walking these roads has been harder for us than breathing? And now Maize is branded to the street. Do you think it’s going to be easy to bring him out? You throw those precious children away like a bag of trash, like they mean nothing to you.”

  His voice rose. “You think it’s been easy for me to watch you all? Bell and Bean are babies. Maize and you are tough, but those two are just babies.”

  “No, Maize isn’t tough, Daddy. That’s where you’re wrong. He’s scared. I was the one driving them on with the hope and the happily-ever-after stories—Neverland and Peter Pan. You were Hook the whole time, stealing our hopes and collecting them in your treasure box while I was trying to give them faith in our darkness. You’ve pulled one little string and started the fray. I’m unraveling now, and I know if this is getting me like this, the rest of it will dissolve.”

  I didn’t even want to find out how Bell and Bean would take this. I should’ve shielded them from nothing and told them the harsh, cold realities of the world, without flashlight fantasies. Told them how their momma preferred the crack pipe over lullabies in the rocking chair. I did that for them. I held them when they were tiny babies. I never told them, but maybe I should have—how their momma died in a fit, a convulsion of suffering after all of her organs shut down, how she’d let out tiny gasps of breath like puffs of smoke from a train stack. Should I tell them now that their daddy was a liar and a con? Oh, God. Not Daddy. Maize first, then my two babies, and now Daddy. My whole family was forsaken. Cursed.

  “When I ran, I didn’t think it would be for long. I thought I needed one place to get away from her demons, but wherever I moved, her evil spirits followed me. I lost me with every mile we took, and the more I lost myself, the more you had to step up. How you ever going to forgive me, Sweet Potato?”

  “Stop talking about me. What did you tell the kids out there?”

  Was he going to tell them the truth, the whole story from beginning to end? And if and when he did, what would be the fallout from it? I was sure I was going to be the one to pick up the pieces, which meant I had to find a way to deal with this myself.

  “Preacher Anderson helped me trace it all today and make some much-needed calls. That’s what we’ve been doing, and now I know how we must proceed. I’m done now.” He rubbed his hands across his forehead.

  “You are done with us, Daddy?” I braced myself up against the high-backed pew.

  “Done with this life. Marigold would kill me if she knew I was this stubborn and this stupid. She would be so ashamed that I’d let you live like this because I didn’t want to face she was gone. She’s gone, Sweet Potato.” He was trying to convince me. “She never hated me for not wanting that life. She knew my scars and wouldn’t have dreamed of forcing that kinda life on me. So, you think I pushed her over the edge. That wasn’t me, Sweet Potato. She made her choices. Her own way. I loved that woman, and I love you youngins with all I have left.”

  It was my turn to shake his shoulders. “You can’t say you love us now. It’s too late to love us. You had years to show us you loved us, and what did you do? You hid us from what was rightfully ours? A normal life! Oh, God. The pain we’ve felt. I saw it sucking the very life out of Maize, and I know you weren’t blind to it, either. You tell me now you ain’t felt this on us? That you didn’t see how Maize was about two feet tall?”

  He interrupted me. “How are you ever going to forgive me for this, Sweet Potato?”

  “Don’t talk to me about forgiveness. You’re a liar. You stay away from the kids and me. I don’t want you to look at us, talk to us, call us yours ever again.”

  I wanted him to have a future of guilt for all that he’d done to me, to us. How dare he do this and think he was in the right all this time? To think because he was our father, he
could lead us out into the desert, when we could have been slurping on sweet honey?

  He was right. It wasn’t my fault all along. I was the innocent victim this whole time. It was all him.

  “I can’t do this alone.” I put my hands against my cheeks, trying to hide the evidence of my tears. What was the use? I’d been crying for days.

  “You’ll never be alone.” Ray took my hand and led me to the back bedroom.

  “What am I going to say to them?” I choked. My feet stumbled again, and he steadied me.

  He answered, “I don’t know, but it will somehow work itself out for good. Say that when you don’t know what else to say.”

  If I could pull some of the strength from him and wear it like armor. If I didn’t have Jesus and Ray Patterson …

  When he opened the door, I let my gaze fall on their faces. Bell was in the twin-size bed that she had claimed when we first came here to stay for our week-long retreat. She had her drawstring bag sitting beside her. Her little, white earpieces were stuck in her ears, and the music was up so loud I knew she was listening to Mahalia Jackson. Bean was staring at me, biting his lip. He was on the other twin bed—the same one I had slept in the week before, when I thought we were blessed to have such friends. Conspirators that would steal my children right from under me. That was probably the plan all along. Come to find out you never knew people, really.

  I picked up Bell’s iPod to lower the volume and sat down beside her, reaching across to pull Bean to me. Ray sat down in one of the swivel desk chairs and put his hands on his knees, bracing for the storm approaching.

  My life had always been like a tornado. Unpredictable. Scary. Violent. Touch-and-go. Oh, sweet children. Precious, innocent children. I closed my eyes and saw visions of them in the trucker seats, scarfing down pie with Maize, singing in the choir, break dancing. No memories from before Newport News, because we had never really lived before this. God, show me their future. I squeezed their hands before I started. I could see love. Protection. Care. Provision. I could envision that for them, because that was all I’d ever prayed for. I didn’t ever think that I wouldn’t be the one to be their lead.