by Neta Jackson
When I finally got my tongue untangled, I’d said something lame, like, “It’s more complicated than that, Philip.” I could tell he was frustrated, but he didn’t say any more, just pulled his London Fog over his head and injured arm and made a dash for his car.
I’d slept badly, confused by my own feelings. Lying in the dark, I’d tried to remember Lee’s gentle kiss that day in the car after the closing on the six-flat and the teasing as we’d splashed in the fountain at Millennium Park. But as I fell asleep, it was Philip in my dreams, twirling me in the rain beside the Fountain of Three Graces where we’d first met in Montpellier, France.
But by the light of day, my head cleared by two cups of strong coffee, I knew it wasn’t just my feelings for Lee that kept me from being able to say “I forgive you” to Philip. I wanted more from him than just “I messed up.” I wanted him to admit he’d been wrong to not welcome my mother into our home, wrong to lock me out of the house, wrong to cut off my phone and credit cards, wrong to disappear with our boys without telling me where they’d gone. Frankly, I wanted him to grovel.
“Gabby! Happy belated birthday, girl!” Jodi Baxter plonked herself down in the chair beside me and gave me a quick hug. “You got my message, right? So sorry I wasn’t here to help celebrate your birthday. I’d love to take you out for lunch, just you and me. I know it’s kind of last minute but—” Jodi stopped and frowned at me. “Are you okay, Gabby? Don’t tell me you had a rotten birthday.”
I made a face. “I didn’t have a rotten birthday, but I’m not okay.” The praise team looked as if they were just about ready to start. “Can’t talk now.”
The sax player, a fine-looking young black man with a trace of a Jamaican accent, spoke into his mike. “Praise the Lord, church. Can we all find our seats? Except don’t sit down yet, because we’re getting ready to praise the Lord! Most of you know this song by Percy Gray, and if you don’t know it, you should! Ready, one, two . . .”
As the keyboard, drums, sax, and electric bass launched into the first praise song, Jodi grabbed me and pulled my ear close to her mouth. “Then we are definitely going out to lunch together, no excuses.”
I let it go till later. I’d made a big deal with the boys about going for a bike ride this afternoon, now that I’d “borrowed” a bike, but the thunderstorm last night had left a light drizzle in its wake this morning. If the rain stopped . . .
The words to the gospel song began to work their way into my thoughts. When trouble’s around me, I can go to the Rock . . . The sax was wailing lustily and the praise team headed into the vamp: “Jesus, my waymaker . . . strong tower . . . heart fixer . . . I can go to the Rock!” Again and again we sang, “I can go to the Rock!”
I had to smile. Nothing like God confirming what He’d been trying to tell me about building on Christ the Solid Rock.
The sax player—his name, Jodi whispered, was Oscar Frost— then read the morning scripture in his slight Jamaican accent. “From Psalm 91 . . . ‘He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ ” Oscar laid aside his Bible. “Are you trusting Him, church? Are you resting in His shadow? Are you living in His shelter?” He adjusted his saxophone and nodded to the woman at the keyboard, launching into another song.
“God is my everything! . . . A shelter in the time of storm! . . . God is . . .”
A shelter. The word flashed like a neon light inside my head. I’d been glad to get out of the Manna House women’s shelter when I’d finally found a place of my own. But there was something about that word that touched a tender place in my spirit. I still needed a shelter, a safe place for my broken heart to be mended. The scripture and the songs were obviously talking about finding shelter in God, the Solid Rock Who cannot be moved. And I am drawing closer to You, aren’t I, Lord?
But if I was honest with myself, what I truly missed was that safe place of having a man’s arms around me, my knight in shining armor, making me feel he would protect me from any storm or dragon or danger or evil that threatened to snatch me away.
The way Philip used to make me feel.
The way Lee wanted me to feel—if I’d let him.
But something was holding me back. That Voice in my spirit. Wait. Wait, Gabby. Let Me be your everything.
The boys were not interested in riding bikes in the drizzle, which looked like it might keep up all day. So I sent them home with Josh and Edesa and met Jodi at The Common Cup coffee shop on Morse Avenue near the church.
The coffee shop was typical—small tables that wiggled, customers sitting by twos or alone working on their computers or reading, a tiny library of books in a back corner with a couple of overstuffed chairs. We each ordered a large, fresh bagel and cream cheese with our coffee and found a free table near the front window.
Jodi had brought me a birthday gift—a beautiful leather-bound journal. “To write your prayers in,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know about you, but I often write my prayers to keep my mind from wandering and making to-do lists!” She made a face as if embarrassed. I envied the way her medium-length bob swept her shoulders. Jodi had soft brunette hair, bangs that brushed to one side, and warm brown eyes—the kind of pretty teacher I imagined third-grade students would all be in love with.
I opened the journal reverently. “Write my prayers in this? My prayers are way too discombobulated for such a nice book. Right now all I’ve got is a scribbled prayer list.”
Jodi laughed at my big word. “Doesn’t matter. Write your prayers anyway, they don’t have to be fancy. It’s a good thing to do because later you can go back and see all the prayers God has answered. Try it. I double-dog dare you!”
We both laughed at the childlike “dare.” But two bites into our bagels, I was telling Jodi about my triple birthday surprise yesterday—first the table Philip had sent me from the penthouse, then the nearly new Schwinn Lee Boyer had tried to give me and that I’d finally accepted as a loan, followed by Philip and the boys showing up with my favorite double-fudge birthday cake and eating pizza “as a family.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s . . .” She seemed at a loss for words.
“Exactly.” I rolled my eyes. “Really nice. Really, really nice.
Except, given the fact that I’m separated from Mr. Husband, and Mr. Lawyer washed his hands of me when I wouldn’t leave said husband for him in the middle of a crisis, and both of them are jealous of each other—all this birthday niceness is killing me!”
“They’re fighting over you, that’s what.”
I snorted. “You think? Now that I’m forty? That’s a laugh.”
Jodi leaned forward and laid a hand on my arm. “Gabby, what do you think about Philip asking for forgiveness? Are you—can you—I mean, do you see any hope of restoring your marriage?”
I breathed out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Is he truly sorry? Or just sorry things got so messy for him. Would anything be different? He’s . . . well, he has been different since that beating. Maybe it made him think about how self-centered he was, how stupid he’s been! But I don’t know. It would take a lot of work to rebuild trust again.”
“And Lee?” Jodi was probing. “Are you in love with him?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I like him a lot. He’s kind and sweet and, have to admit, it’s very nice to have someone treat you like you’re the best thing that’s ever walked the planet, especially when you’ve just been rejected by someone else. But”—I toyed with my half-eaten bagel—“he’s not interested in talking about God or coming to church. Treats my faith like a quaint hobby or something.” I eyed her sideways. “Tell me, Jodi. Did you get the last man on earth who loves you and loves God?”
“Oh, Gabby.”
Unbidden, tears welled up in my eyes. I pressed a napkin to my face. “I’m so confused, Jodi. Last night in bed, I was thinking about Lee, remembering the time he first kissed me.” Had I told Jodi about that?
I was glad the napkin was pressed to my eyes so I couldn’t see her reaction. “But when I fell asleep, all my dreams were about Philip. The way it was before. When we were in love.”
I was glad Jodi hadn’t tried to tell me what to do—or feel. Instead, she’d just prayed with me right there in the coffee shop, never mind the weird looks we got from other customers, and encouraged me to trust God to make things clear. “Keep reading the Word, Gabby. Keep praying. I really believe God will show you the way through all this in His own good time.”
Kind of the same thing I’d sensed God telling me in worship that morning. Wait. Wait, Gabby. Let Me be your everything.
But as I’d driven home from The Common Cup, I had a moment of doubt. What if letting God be “everything” meant just that? Neither Philip nor Lee in my life? No knight in shining armor? No man to make me feel complete and loved and protected?
That thought was still hanging over my head as I signed in at Manna House the next morning and headed for my office. But I soon got busy making a list of everything that needed to get done before taking off next Friday for our Fall Getaway. Then I reviewed the proposal Carolyn had written up about expanding our after-school program to include neighborhood kids, tweaking it here and there so I could hand it to Mabel Turner at the staff meeting, which started at ten.
Mabel glanced at the proposal and said she’d get back to us with any questions. Next step would be submitting it to the board for their October meeting. We spent most of the staff meeting reviewing the current list of residents—who was new, who still needed a case manager, and the status of residents who were supposedly still working on getting proper IDs, finishing up their GEDs, and diligently getting their names on lists at different sites that offered long-term housing. As usual, some residents were motivated and had something new to check off at each meeting with their case manager, while others just had a long list of excuses.
“And we’re still looking to hire more case managers,” Mabel said. “Keep praying.”
I was eager to get back to work, but Estelle pulled me aside as staff meeting broke up. “Gabby girl. Don’t know what your schedule is like this week, honey, but I’ve got a big favor to ask.”
“Sure, Estelle, if I can.”
“I need someone to go with me when I see Leroy tomorrow. They’re ready to discharge my boy, but he don’t have any place to go. The house, it’s gone. And besides, I wouldn’t let him go back there anyway, not after those gangbangers took him for a chump and made it into a drug house.”
I stared at her, my mouth dropping. “A . . . what? What are you talking about, Estelle?”
She shook her head. “Long story, don’t got time for it now. What I’m needin’ is someone to go with me, be a second pair of ears when they tell me what he’s gonna need, given his mental history and the burns an’ all—you know.”
Well, yeah, I did, sort of. Obviously there’d been a lot more going on with Estelle’s adult son than I knew about.
“Harry usually goes with me,” she went on, “but he’s gotta testify at Fagan’s trial this week. They want him in court every day. So I’m needing a good friend to go with me, thought of you.”
A warm feeling bubbled up inside. Estelle had called me a good friend. She was certainly that to me, but I’d never thought of her feeling that way about me.
“I’ll be glad to, Estelle. Let me check with Mabel, see if I can get the time off. When do you need to go?”
chapter 19
I was nervous when we stepped off the elevator at Stroger Hospital the following afternoon. I’d never met Leroy, hadn’t even known Estelle had a son until the fire that put him in the burn unit two months ago. What would he look like? The burns had covered thirty percent of his body, and he’d had to undergo some excruciating treatments.
Estelle led the way, turning this way and that through the maze of hallways, finally stopping at the closed door of a patient’s room. She took a deep breath, as if preparing herself, then tapped on the door and opened it. “Hello, son.” Her voice was cheery. “How ya doing today?”
A thin, dark-skinned man somewhere in his thirties was sitting in a high-backed, padded chair, facing the window. He didn’t turn around. “Okay, I guess.”
Estelle motioned me to move into eyeball range. “Leroy, my friend Gabby came with me today to see you. Can you say hello?”
Leroy didn’t look at me but mumbled, “Hello.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Leroy.” I wished I’d brought something, flowers maybe, but since he was getting discharged, it had seemed a bit silly. I moved to the window. “You’ve got quite a view here.” Mostly other buildings in the huge medical complex, but at least the sun was peeking through.
“You come to take me home, Maw?” For the first time, Leroy turned his head slowly and looked up at his mother.
Estelle shook her head. “The house burned down, baby. Remember that? Nothin’ there now. But we’re goin’ to talk to the doctor today ’bout what you need when you leave here. Tell me how you’re feelin’, son.”
Turning from the window, I got my first good look at Leroy. I could see the family resemblance. His skin was several shades darker than Estelle’s caramel coloring, but he had the same wide-set eyes and broad forehead. Not a bad-looking young man—except for the puckered, shiny skin along the left side of his neck that continued up along the side of his face. I noticed he still had a pressure bandage on his left arm—and, I presumed, around his chest and left leg under the hospital gown.
I shuddered involuntarily. Couldn’t even imagine the pain and skin grafting that he’d had to go through to come this far.
“Ah. Ms. Williams, you’re here. Good, good.” Two doctors entered the room, one male, one female, both wearing white coats and name badges. “I think we’re ready to talk about discharging our patient in a few days. He’s making excellent progress!”
Estelle made introductions, but I just smiled and stepped aside as they began talking about continuing outpatient treatment. I picked up that Dr. Jameson was a burn specialist, and his associate, Dr. Alena Sanchez, specialized in nutrition and aftercare for burn patients. I tried to pay attention as they talked over Leroy’s head about “decreased sensation” in the burned areas, the importance of keeping the areas moist with skin lotion, regular exercise so the skin didn’t atrophy, how long he’d need to wear the pressure garments, and watching carefully for any signs of infection.
“You’ll be taking him home, Ms. Williams?” Dr. Sanchez asked, her tone kind and concerned. “He’ll need a caregiver for several months, maybe a year. Good nutrition and adequate hydration will be very important for his full recovery.”
Estelle looked distressed and motioned the doctors and me out into the hall. “Look here. I’d take care of Michael Leroy twenty-four-seven if I could, but my housemate and I don’t have any extra room in our apartment. And”—she made sure the door to Leroy’s room was shut—“he needs more care than I can give him. For his mental issues, you know.”
Dr. Jameson frowned. “But I thought he was basically living on his own and taking care of himself before the incident.”
Estelle’s distress was becoming more acute. “He was, he was— but, Lord help me, he probably shouldn’t have been. I didn’t want to put him into an institution, you see, but I never thought . . .” Estelle’s hand went to her mouth, and I could see she was trying hard to stay in control. I moved close to her and took her other hand in mine. She gripped it tightly.
Dr. Jameson pursed his lips. “I see. If he can’t go home with you, we need someone from social services to sit down with us. We may be talking about a psychiatric nursing facility for a while, if we can find an available bed. Dr. Sanchez, could you see what you can set up?”
Estelle walked away as the nutritionist pulled out her cell phone and turned aside, talking rapidly in Spanish for a few minutes. I followed Estelle, just to let her know I was near. Why was she having such a hard time with this? A facility would be a good thi
ng for Leroy, wouldn’t it? He’d be taken care of, get the kind of help he needed, and would no longer be a danger to himself or others. Wasn’t that why Estelle had moved out of the family home to begin with? Because Leroy had “gotten physical” with her during one of his schizoid episodes? Though it was hard to imagine. The man in there seemed as meek as a kitten.
“Ms. Williams?” Dr. Sanchez was calling us back. “We can meet with social services on Thursday at ten. Is that all right with you?”
Estelle was quiet on the way home, her head turned toward the passenger-side window, and I didn’t pry. Hopefully she’d tell me what was going on when she was ready. I dropped her off in front of Jodi and Denny’s two-flat in the Rogers Park neighborhood, where she shared the second-floor apartment with Leslie Stuart. “ ’Preciate it, Gabby,” was all she said before she walked slowly up the steps to the front porch, shoulders slumped, and let herself in.
We had our third house meeting at the House of Hope that week, which we moved to Wednesday night in deference to Josh, since Tuesday conflicted with the men’s Bible study that met at Peter Douglass’s home. “They’ve stolen our name,” Jodi once complained to me. “Calling themselves the Yada Yada Brothers.” Both names sounded kind of silly to me—I mean, yada yada?—and I’d told Jodi as much. After which I got a five minute etymology of the word yada, which supposedly was a Hebrew word that appeared in the Old Testament hundreds of times and meant something like “to know and be known intimately.”
Who would’ve thunk it?
Mabel met with us again, but we spent most of the time listening to Precious moan and groan about Sabrina sneaking off to see the Big Bad Dude who got her pregnant in the first place. “I’m ’bout ready to call the po-lice and get him arrested for statutory rape,” she fussed. “She still a minor and he twenty if he a day! But she say if I do, she jus’ gonna run off again with him, like she did before.”