Embrace Me

by Lisa Samson

  “Beautiful day, Val!” Gus yells.

  He’s right. The trees might just be budding on a day like today, the bare branches fooled by the warm breeze coming up the Gulf Stream. Lella and I have been sitting on the front porch all afternoon. “January. Go figure.”

  “I’d take you for a ride but I’ve got to get Leon up to the health department. Wanna go out later?”

  I laugh and laugh.

  He zooms away with a friendly wave of his hand, a throaty rumble of Harley engine, and a puff of blue smoke from the tailpipe.

  “What do you think of that?” I ask Lella. “Sometimes he seems so exuberant. Like too much. I think it’s an act.”

  “Oh, surely I don’t. He merely seems thankful for the blessings he’s been given.”

  I pull back and look at her. “You really think that? I mean, he’s living in a rundown Laundromat for goodness sake.”

  “I really do, Valentine.” She scratches her chin by rubbing it on her collarbone.

  “Well, if anybody should know, it would be you, the eternal optimist. How much longer ’til your aunt gets here, Lell?”

  “Any second.”

  The woman’s got an internal clock like you wouldn’t believe.

  In between my fingers I arrange the folds of the vest I’m embroidering for Rick and get back to work. I jab the needle so deep into the fabric I impale my own finger underneath.

  “Crap!” I mutter. I suck on my index finger.

  “Oh dear, Valentine. You poor th—look, there’s Aunt Dahlia!”

  A bossy, yellow vehicle with no business here shoulders in like it somehow pays the rent. The occupant leans forward and hands the fare over the backseat.

  “So what’s she like, Lell?”

  “Very, very sweet. Just like my mother was.”

  Dahlia starts to yank what looks like a heavy suitcase out of the backseat. I jump off the porch. “Hang on a sec, I’ll get that!”

  My stupid face scarf flutters against my neck.

  She looks up and smiles with full, bright orange lips, baring large, snaggled teeth. “You must be Valentine.”

  “Right. Let me get that.”

  She pats her hair—a cellophane shade of bottle brown, cut into a short pageboy like you see on drawings of medieval guys.

  Lella wiggles on her chair as I set the bags on the porch.

  Dahlia climbs the steps on four-inch stripper shoes with ankle straps.

  “Aunt Dahlia! Why, look at you! I wouldn’t have recognized you out in public.”

  “I’m a free woman, Lella Denise!” She holds her arms out, swaddled in a bright orange velvetlike sweater with lots of fringe, and twirls in a circle.

  I reach out and circle a hand around her waist as she almost topples off her high heels.

  Lella laughs. She’d clap her hands if she had them. Instead, she shoots off those eye sparkles as her aunt leans down and folds her into a bright orange hug.

  Dahlia leans over to me. “Joe was such a mean old coot. And tighter than my grandmother’s girdle, honey. Oh, my! The minute the coroner told me he was gone, I went off on a shopping spree.” She elbows me lightly in the ribs. “Bet you can’t guess what my favorite color is!”

  Darn it, but I have to laugh.

  “And Joe hated orange. I even bought an orange brassiere!”

  The noise of squealing tires pulls me away from Dahlia. Augustine hops off his bike. “I need to use the phone. Pronto!”

  “Go on back to the kitchen.”

  I follow him in.

  He dials 9-1-1. “Hey, it’s Augustine from over at Shalom. We need an ambulance over on Montgomery Street near the Primitive Baptist Church. Guy’s been stabbed. Was left naked in the street. Yeah, I moved him and ran in to call. I’ll get right out there.”

  He hangs up. “I know they’ll tell me to stay on the line, but I can’t leave him there. I need a blanket.”

  In the living room I grab one of Blaze’s afghans. “Let’s go.”

  We rush across the porch. “I’ll be back, Lell!”

  I hop on the back of the bike and we ride a couple of blocks. The guy lies on the grass by the road, Augustine’s leather jacket over his nether regions.

  “Here.” Augustine lays the blanket over him. “Help’s on the way.”

  “Oh no, man. I can’t go in.” Longish brown hair lays in limp strands over his forehead and cheeks. His sharp, shiny nose catches the sun.

  “You’ve been stabbed.” Augustine turns to me as he reaches under the blanket with his bandana, applying direct pressure to the stab wound. “I swear, Valentine, I was riding along and I thought it was this bedsheet in the road and I almost ran over it, but I swerved at the last minute and it was this guy, this naked white guy.”

  “How does a guy end up naked in the street? In Mount Oak?”

  “It’s our local gang. One of their trademarks. After they stab a guy, they strip him and throw him in the street. He’s pretty lucky to even be alive.”

  The guy groans again.

  Yeah, some luck.

  But Augustine is on fire with grace. He glows.

  The man groans. “Naw, man. Not the hospital.”

  Augustine, sitting on the ground next to him now, still applies pressure. “You’re gonna die if we don’t get you there.”

  “I’m gonna die anyway.”

  “No, you’re not. And you can take that as a promise. What’s your name?”

  “Garth.”

  I sit down, stealing looks at the grizzled, gray, gracious man named Augustine, a naked, bleeding man between us. I take Garth’s hand in my own.

  Augustine nods at me. “It doesn’t take much, does it, Val?”

  I lean out my bedroom window picturing the disciples at the Laundromat. “You know,” I say in my mind, “sometimes acid is thrown in your face. And sometimes it’s grace. Both leave you changed somehow. Don’t ask me how it works. If I analyze it, it might go away.”

  The disciples still don’t say anything back, even in my mind.

  The apostle John looks sympathetic.

  He’d understand Augustine’s vows. Poverty, chastity, and obedience.

  Doesn’t that just figure? Thomas must be thinking.

  I hold back a laugh. Yeah, it all just figures.

  So what are you going to do with all this? James would ask if he could speak.

  I feel a bit different now, I admit. Like I want to be with him. Oh, not in that way, but you know what I mean. Maybe I shouldn’t keep him at arm’s length like I’ve been doing. Maybe he’s right. Maybe there’s more than just romantic love.

  Peter looks like he thinks that’s a good thing.

  That’s it. I’m ordering my own icon.

  I jump online and find one with Jesus and all twelve disciples, only it’s not the Last Supper like Augustine’s. Jesus is washing their feet.

  Aunt Dahlia brought in ribs from Love’s Rib Room. She minced up a rib and mixed it into the mashed potato side dish. Augustine’s the only other person who’s done that sort of thing for me. Lella told her right up front that I feed her, and Dahlia didn’t try to shoulder into the job.

  I enjoyed the ribs.

  I figure a walk to the dock will do me good. Lella and Dahlia are already asleep after sitting down in the living room with Rick for a rerun of CSI. I sit with my legs dangling over the water.

  The edges of the lake catch the rays of moonlight, outlining the far shore in silver. Someone’s chopping wood across there. In the middle of the night. Funny what people do when they can’t sleep.

  It turned cold again this evening.

  The stillness around me, no breeze tonight, coupled with the staccato chop of the woodcutter connects me to the world.

  “Valentine?”

  A hand rests on my shoulder.

  “Hey, Charmaine.”

  “Two a.m. again.”

  “Yep.”

  Bundled up in down jackets, scarves, hats, and gloves, we could be twins.

  “Yo
u okay?” she asks.

  “Better than ever, I think. Or at least better than in a long time.” I lean into her. “Nope, I think better than ever.”

  “That’s good, honey.”

  “Why are you awake?”

  “Oh, Mama was walkin’ around and when I finally got her settled back in bed, I just didn’t feel like sleeping. I was hoping I’d find you sitting here, so I took a chance.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, it’s like this. We all need to be known for who we really are.”

  Uh-oh.

  Thank goodness she continues to stare out over the lake, as do I. I’m not the type to endure that eye-to-eye intense look-at-me conversation.

  “I agree, Charmaine.”

  “I heard you singing the other night at the concert and my suspicions were confirmed.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “I know who you really are, Valentine. Or rather who you were. And I do mean were.”

  “At least you realize the truth of that.”

  I remain silent, gaze locked on the new night, a night of fierce, sparkling calm.

  “You’re going to make me come out and say it, aren’t you, Daisy?”

  “I’m not Daisy.”

  “Not Daisy, or not Daisy anymore?”

  “Never again Daisy. Daisy’s gone. She was destroyed and there’s no hope of a resurrection.”

  Charmaine grabs my hand. “What happened, Valentine? Who did this to you? Who burned you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Charmaine. You know who I was. I loved you back then when I was Daisy. You were the only person who made sense, who lived just like she spoke. I still love you. You have to know I love you more than you could bear if you just knew.”

  Charmaine begins to cry. I’ve never seen Charmaine cry. She’s just not a crier. “I won’t make you tell me, Valentine.”

  “I may never want to. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that.”

  “It’s okay.” She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and wipes her eyes and nose. “I’m just sorry you’ve had to go through all of this. I’m glad we’re back together now though. Those years must have been tough. All alone and all.”

  “I made it through.”

  “Well, we all make it through, Valentine. It doesn’t mean it was good.”

  “That sure is the truth.”

  We sit in the chilled night air. Charmaine reaches into her pocket and takes out two pieces of chocolate wrapped in foil. “Here.”

  I chew mine up fast. She savors hers as the moon barely moves across the sky.

  “So what now?” she asks later.

  “What do you mean, what now? Just because you know, Charmaine, doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to come out of the closet.”

  She barks out a laugh. “Fair enough. Well, maybe it’s just enough that you know I know.”

  “I figured you were onto me a long time before this.”

  “You were right.”

  “When did you get an inkling?”

  She waves her hand. “Oh, I thought you might be Daisy the first night on the dock.”

  “Really?! What gave me away?”

  “Your speaking voice. Even with the bitter edge you’ve got now, and the change in pronunciation because of your lips, Valentine, you can’t change the tone. I’m a singer. I notice these things.”

  “Bitter edge?” I stare at her and begin to laugh. She joins in.

  “I guess this is all okay,” I say. “I know you can keep a secret.”

  “That’s for sure. I’m the queen of that.”

  ELEVEN

  DREW: 2003

  The sun climbs onto the saddle of the valley’s horizon, illuminating the strata of rock in front of us as we stand outside the visitors’ center at Sideling Hill. A massive cut opened up this ridge in 1983 to make room for I-68.

  Layers of rock in a U-shaped semicircular pattern speak of 350 million years of formation according to one of the displays inside. My brethren at the seminary I attended would have had the proverbial field day with that kind of dating. Some people spend their whole lives trying to prove otherwise. Me, well I don’t know and I never did really care. But I learned to keep my mouth shut about that.

  Hermy’s gleeful. “That dark stratum near the top is coal and shale.” And he proceeds to point out shale, sandstone, igneous, and combinations thereof. He’s disappointed when I suggest we hit the road.

  I don’t doubt God made all this. I never have. And it stands to reason I never will. I just wish He could control His people like He does the great earth. Particularly me.

  The wind slices through our clothing as we climb once again into the car.

  We pull into the coffee shop at the Best Western in Cumberland for a quick breakfast and a hop onto the Internet. I map the journey, we eat eggs and home fries, jerk back some coffee, and head back into the Allegheny Mountains.

  I let Hermy drive. The car devours I-68 and 79, though Hermy rarely exceeds the speed limit by more than five miles an hour. God bless West Virginia’s seventy miles an hour. You can say whatever you want about the state, but it doesn’t micromanage its populace, and face it, at the end of the line, people are going to do what they’re going to do.

  I’m living proof of that, which is saying something. A lot of people are dead proof of the very same adage.

  It’s afternoon now, we’ve managed I-64 and have entered Kentucky. According to Hermy we’re in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

  “Thirty-four hundred miles of cliff-line around here, man. Pretty amazing. You could rock climb practically your whole life and never have to repeat. But you’d want to. Some of the places are that good.”

  “Good camping then, I’ll bet.”

  “Sure. You like just heading out with your tent?”

  “Yeah. I do.” No church growth books this time, though.

  It’s almost time to see her. I’ll be there in ten minutes and twenty-one years. We pull into one of Natural Bridge State Park’s parking lots and use the bathroom at yet another visitor center.

  The room smells barren, of old leaves left for spring cleaning.

  “I’m going for a quick hike,” Hermy says. “That okay with you?”

  “Take your time.”

  I breathe in, grasping the slip of paper with my mother’s address. I pull my notebook out of my rucksack, sit on the john, and start to write again.

  Well, Father Brian, I thought I’d give you a little more info on my mother. Maybe it’ll make the rest of this glurge easier to understand. My twelfth birthday, it all began.

  My father refused to speak to my mother for almost two weeks after the debacle at the party. He’d flown out of town the night before my birthday, leaving a small gift-wrapped box on my nightstand.

  “Don’t open it until tomorrow. You’ll be a man soon, Drew. And a man needs something to be accountable to.”

  The next day, I opened it up. A gold wristwatch.

  So it was time I was accountable to, not God like my mother always said. Well, well. My mother took me down past Charlotte to an amusement park. That day we rode every roller coaster at least three times. We ate corn dogs and funnel cake for birthday cake and our skin burned to the red of a hard smack. We loved every minute, laughing and running from attraction to attraction. She gave me a skateboard and the Bible I used to preach from until I left Elysian Heights.

  Three days after that, my father, having returned from his trip, pulled me out of chess camp and told me of the accident. The car over-turned down a steep incline. According to him an oncoming vehicle swerved over the line and my mother jerked the wheel to miss the car. And down she went, flipping over and over, the car igniting.

  Closed casket. No viewings.

  Hey, but at least I had that watch.

  On my sixteenth birthday he took me out to dinner in DC where we lived permanently by then and told me they actually believed her death to be a suicide. Yeah, he was that calculating. I’d started asking que
stions about her death, why I couldn’t find anything about it in the papers from that time period, why it seemed like it almost didn’t happen. He said he’d been trying to protect her reputation. She’d actually run her car into a tree. He made me assure him I wouldn’t say anything to anybody. And of course I didn’t. I loved my mother.

  I look down on my wrist and check the time from a simple Seiko. My gold watch was damaged in the flood and I didn’t care to get it fixed.

  Hermy’s going to be a while, I guess. At least I hope so. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

  Back to the real story, then.

  Daisy showed up to tape the first episode of Faith Street with a garment bag protecting a purple suit. She pulled it out. “Isn’t it great?”

  “Oh, Daisy.” I held it up by the hanger. “Purple’s Charmaine’s signature color. This will never do.”

  She reddened. Then smiled. “Mother’s idea.”

  Behind her, Trician shook her head, but didn’t say anything. I believed Daisy.

  Daisy faced her mother. “What should we do?”

  “I’ll be right back. I saw a gorgeous mustard-colored dress in the window of Ivy and Rose. Hopefully it won’t be too small.”

  Trician hurried off on her high-heeled, pointy pumps. Her toes must have looked like electrical wire all twisted together. Honestly, there wasn’t one thing about that woman that didn’t turn my stomach.

  At least my father never micromanaged me like she did Daisy.

  I honestly kept looking for a bright spot, something that wasn’t so grasping. Daisy told me her story was true. Trician grew up with nothing, alcoholic mother, distant father who spent all his time at the factory, then at the bar in the evening. Daisy said she looked it up and she figured Trician had some disorder where a person can’t connect emotionally to people. It seemed pretty right on.

  “You look nice.” Daisy snaked her hand through my arm. “Nice haircut.”

  “You think?” We looked at my reflection in the window leading into the office of Port of Peace Assemblies of God.

  “Please, you’re gorgeous, Drew.”

  I knew she was overdoing it. I was not gorgeous. I could have listed at least a dozen imperfections to my outward person. But the hair sat right. A little longer on top, short on the sides and in the back, like some intelligent Oxford student. No red-haired Howdy Doody on this show. I felt a softening toward her, but I shoved it down. The show was the thing. We had to retain our focus.