Embrace Me

by Lisa Samson

  Man, I’m so mean to Rick. But it’s just so easy. He sets himself up like nobody I’ve ever seen.

  “You’ve been going down to Shalom a lot, spending time with all those little kids. Lella’s gone and we both know she’s not coming back. And you’re in love with Augustine.”

  “What?”

  He shuffles his feet a little. “You are, Val. Admit it.”

  “He’s taken that vow, Rick. I just love him like a person. I’d be a gigantic, colossal, slobbering idiot to let it go farther than that. Get the message, Rick?”

  His face reddens. “Yeah, Val,” he whispers. “I get it. You know, I thought there was more to you. That underneath the rough exterior and the tough talk there was somebody kind and good.” He looks down at his shoes. “I won’t bother you again.”

  Dear Valentine,

  It’s been just lovely here with Aunt Dahlia. She’s hired workmen to come in and do the house over with ramps and they’re making the dining room my bedroom. I’ve decided to stay for the rest of the off-season. Aunt Dahlia, despite her talk about Uncle Joe, is so lonely. I feel needed.

  You’ll never believe it, Val, but I’ve been fitted with a decent set of prosthetics that I can control with my shoulder muscles, and I can now steer myself around in a motorized wheelchair. I’ve been given, as they say, a new lease on life! The only thing missing is you.

  Aunt Dahlia says she’d hire you to come and live as my aid if you’d be agreeable.

  Other than that, not much is new. I was considering whether or not I should go back on the road to earn my keep here at Aunt Dahlia’s during the off-season, but she assured me she’s financially able to care for me and would love to do so. She said the companionship far outweighs any inconvenience and she doesn’t feel like I’m an inconvenience at all! I still have yet to make up my mind, however.

  But I wonder how you’re doing? Please write me soon. I long to hear from my dearest friend Valentine.

  I do wish you’d come! Aunt Dahlia and I have such fun and you would too. We could go out to eat, to the movies, even on vacations together. We’re already planning a Caribbean cruise!

  Yours always,

  Lella

  An aid? Lella, you’re my friend. I did all that because I love you, not because anybody paid me a dime!

  I feel sick, like someone just propositioned me for sex or something.

  Oh, Lella.

  A Caribbean cruise? The movies? Going out to eat? Eat what, Lella? Mashed potatoes and gravy? What are you thinking? What are you thinking?

  How can I go back on the road without you? Display myself like that without you displaying yourself like that? I’ll be like the twins! We didn’t swallow light bulbs or regurgitate keys or twist ourselves into pretzels, we were just freaks, Lella. FREAKS!

  The door of my sideshow life closes behind me. Locks and bolts crash into place, soldered together by a situation beyond my control.

  I press the tears back and rush out the door. I’ve got to get out of this room. I’ve got to get to the lake. I’ve got to sit and think. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go back on the road. I’ve got nothing anymore. No place to go. No future. Nothing.

  Go! Peter says.

  Yes, John agrees.

  I slam the front door behind me, my coat open to the breeze. My skin burns. I burn.

  A woman walking her dog gasps as I pass.

  The dog rears up, tail wagging, and he jumps against me. I fall backward, landing on my rear end in the grass.

  “I’m so sorry! Bibbers! Leave that poor woman alone!”

  My scarf! I forgot my scarf! I grab at my neck, no scarf. No scarf!

  I scrabble, gaining a bewildered stance, pressing my hands on my cheeks.

  The only way to the lake is through the town square and beyond.

  Oh no, I can’t do this.

  Go to the lake. Get to the lake, the words resonate within me. Bartholomew? Peter?

  Jesus?!

  No, surely not Him.

  So I hurry. I quicken my pace with long strides.

  “Oh, my gosh!” a man says. Then looks away, ashamed.

  Dear God, please don’t make this like a movie where the beast gets pelted with eggs and trash because people don’t understand and when they don’t understand they get scared and do all sorts of things out of character. I mean, there they were, hanging around the general store, caring for their neighbor, and all of a sudden a beastly person walks by and out come the pitchforks.

  Okay, that thought helped.

  “Mama! She’s so ugly!” A little girl points to me. “What happened to you, lady?”

  The mother’s eyes open wide, beautiful brown eyes under finely arched brows. “Rebecca!”

  She turns both of their backs on me.

  But still stares and quick intakes of breath burn me as I burrow through the lunchtime crowd, and why did it have to be lunchtime? Each gasp strips something away from me.

  “Look! It’s one of the freaks!” A teenage boy reaches out his hand as I pass, makes contact with my shoulder, and pushes as hard as he can.

  I lose my footing, watching him as he looks at his fat girlfriend in triumph.

  “Oh!” I gasp, reaching out.

  Everyone leaps away as I fall a second time, my spine scraping down the brick ledge beneath the window at Java Jane’s.

  The lake! The lake! Just think about the lake. That’s all.

  Forget where you are.

  A young girl tugs my coat as I make it to my feet yet again. She stands with two of her friends. She’s crying. My heart melts.

  “Don’t cry for me, sweetie. Cry for all these people who are frightened.”

  Resolved by her compassion, I chart my course, looking neither to the right nor to the left, passing through the square, finally turning onto Lake Shore Drive. Only a mile or so more.

  My feet feel like lead. I pass the souvenir shops, still closed. Posters of perfect women in bikinis holding up suntan lotion, bleaching in the front windows, perfect, perfect women, selling something. The Dairy Queen. Joyce’s Juicy Burgers. A small walk-in clinic only opened during the season. A Candy Kitchen. Josef’s fine dining. Barnacle Bill’s Seafood. They all slide by, these places of the normal, the perfect, as I hurry forward, the wind against me.

  I stumble a third time, landing in the gravel at the side of the road.

  A car pulls over as I gain my feet, rubbing my road-burned palms down the legs of my sweatpants.

  “Lady! Are you all right? I saw you take that tumble.”

  I lift my face to him. “I’m okay.”

  “But your face. Did you fall on …”

  “I’m deformed!” I scream as he leaps from his car. “I’m deformed! This is me! Get out of here. Leave me alone!”

  The tears bite again.

  No. No, no, no!

  “But your knees … and your forehead.”

  The fall ate through my sweatpants. Blood drips down from a gash amid the abrasions. “Please!” I wail. “Leave me be.”

  “But you need help.”

  “I’m almost home.” I lie. But then it doesn’t seem like a lie. “Please. I’ll be all right.”

  He pulls out a handkerchief and wipes the sweat from my face. He places it in my hand. “Please. Let me help you.”

  He looks like a nice young man. Sandy brown, curly hair, kind eyes. “I’m Robbie Fraser. I live on the lake. I can take you out there if that’s where you’re going.”

  “No. I can’t. I’ve got to walk.” I wipe my forehead. Blood imprints the white cotton.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” I want to yell at him like I yell at Rick.

  He tries a few more times to convince me, but finally, shaking his head and looking like he thinks he failed me, he gets into his car and drives off.

  I press forward.

  The handkerchief!

  I tie it around my face. Bless you, Robbie Fraser, for lightening my load.

  I stumble onto my do
ck and facedown I beg God to come. Please, if You’re only in my face just once in my whole life, God, let it be now.

  Do not forsake me.

  I turn over, lifting my face to the sky.

  There’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

  I have held you in the palm of my hand. I have held you in my arms since before you were born.

  I will never let you go.

  Father, forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing. Jesus, take away my sin.

  I can only feel and feel and feel, the verses from my childhood pouring into my head as I stare into the sky, the midday sun on my face, watching it as it begins to travel through the deepening blue.

  I give up, Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit.

  “Val?”

  “Augustine.”

  “Jessica saw you tearing through the square a little while ago. I called Charmaine. She’s taping for Port of Peace and said I’d probably find you here.”

  I sit up and I grab his hand, holding it to my heart.

  “Val. What’s going on? You’re hurt. Your knees—”

  “I was black inside, like tar. I’ve festered unforgiveness for years. Do you realize the ugliness of my face simply reflects who I am inside? I’ve been so mean to you.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? You were burned.” His tone is tender.

  “You know what I mean.” I look out over the cold waters of Lake Coventry. “Baptize me.”

  “Right here?”

  “Yes. Right now. Finish this thing. If you don’t do it, I’m going to jump in the lake on my own and hope something takes. I’m that desperate.”

  He sits for several seconds and says, “I won’t fail you again,” and unlaces his boots. As he takes off his leather jacket he mumbles, “Oh, Jesus,” over and over again.

  I remove my shoes and my coat.

  “Take off your socks too. You’ll be glad they’re dry. Do you have an undershirt on under that sweater?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take your sweater off too.”

  He removes his flannel shirt, folding it and laying it atop his jacket. He slips off his dime store watch and tucks it in one of his boots. Our skin raises up goose bumps. “Ready?”

  Somehow, it all seems rather utilitarian, talking of socks and whatnot. Shouldn’t we have just waded in without a thought, the Spirit taking such windy control we hadn’t a thought for socks and whatnot? But it’s mid-March.

  We both gasp as we wade into the frigid lake.

  “Oh, Val.” He gathers me into the crook of his right arm. “Oh, Val. Just embrace me as I lower you into the water. It will be all right.”

  He touches my face and his eyes rest on me. He kisses my forehead, holds my nose shut with his bandana, then says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father …”

  And under I go, the cold waters swallowing me whole. His arms supporting me.

  “And the name of the Son …”

  Yet another time, and into the waters of the lake my tears spill.

  “And the name of the Holy Spirit.”

  I feel like I’m under for minutes. Years of tears gushing from my eyes and my body. Can a body cry? I die. As He died. Disfigured upon a cross.

  He had no form or comeliness.

  He died in ugliness, on display.

  The holy freak, the Son of God, raised up for all the world to see, to laugh at, to mock, to despise, even to feel sorry for.

  Augustine’s arm tightens around me and he lifts me out of the waters.

  He holds me in his arms, crying hot tears onto my face. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.”

  Okay, it may not have been like the scene of a movie, but I was happy for the dry socks.

  “You rode on your bike?”

  He hands me a helmet. “I knew it was urgent. And I’m not in shape to go running to the lake these days. It’s gonna be a cold ride.”

  He climbs onto the Harley and I climb onto the seat behind him.

  “You know, a friend of mine, years ago, said he wanted a motorcycle someday. Well, he wasn’t a friend. In fact, he was my enemy for years.”

  “He’s not your enemy any longer?”

  “No. I’ve forgiven him. At least I think I have.”

  Augustine twists the throttle and we head back to town.

  Being forgiven is good, but forgiving is something even holier.

  I think John would agree with that.

  NINETEEN

  AUGUSTINE

  There’s a verse in the Bible about God doing more than we could ever ask or think. That’s what He did for me there at the lake with Daisy. For it was Daisy I baptized last week.

  She went down into the water as Daisy and came up Valentine for real.

  “I don’t deserve any of it,” I said to my mother on the phone, finally having garnered up the nerve to tell her who Valentine really was.

  “Of course you don’t. But you needed it. And God knows what we have need of before we even ask. He gave you the double-portion of redemption you needed.”

  “I’ll still have to ask her forgiveness. I’m sure of that.”

  “Of course. It’s going to be harder on her than it will be on you.”

  “I was hoping—”

  “She’s feeling all clean and neat right now, and you’re going to drag up the muck she doesn’t know is still there. But after that, and who knows how long it will take her to work through it, she’ll be free of the grime. And so will you.”

  Spoken like a true prophet.

  When I left Philadelphia and returned to Mount Oak, I didn’t hold much of a clue as to how it would work out. I felt somewhat like Abraham, blessed to be a blessing, called out of Ur. Only I was called back to Ur, I guess. Okay, the analogy falls flat if you take it across the board.

  But to Mount Oak we came. Rachel, Jessica, and Justin in Rachel’s little pickup truck with a small U-Haul trailer, me on my bike.

  On the second day we were in Mount Oak we came upon the Laundromat at the end of Oakly Road. Upon inspection it seemed to be in good shape structurally, and the price was right. Thirty thousand.

  Half of my remaining savings gone in one day.

  With the plumbing redone and some work on the electrical system, hauling away the old machines, replacing the broken windows, adding kitchen appliances—used ones at that—another ten left my bank account.

  I look around me now. We still need new floors and some paint these years later. But my account is emptied.

  Now, I have no idea how many people I wounded with my avaricious messages at Elysian Heights. But I knew of the Rabinskis. Linda hadn’t been assigned to a wheelchair yet when I went to the hospital and anonymously paid off most of her medical bills. She is now, though. And I visit her as Augustine from time to time. But really it’s Drew who needs to see how she’s doing.

  It started small. Fixed-hour prayers, helping people with housework and yard work and homework, getting jobs to pay the bills and keep the place going. Then a money order started arriving for a thousand dollars each month. Monica thought she was being sneaky. But the Slade, Kentucky, postmark told the tale. I always act like it’s such a mystery and she loves it. She knows I know, and it’s a nice little game we play. Elysian Heights put us on their missions’ roster after the New York pastor arrived and sends a check every month thereby cementing my belief that God, not man, created irony.

  I quit my job as a short-order cook at the Waffle House about a year ago when the homework program really took root and my visits around the neighborhood used so much time, not to mention that our neighbors, realizing there was something missionlike going on, began to expect a sermon on Sundays.

  I guess I really am a pastor.

  But if I was a real, bona fide pastor, I’d probably take exception to that definition being placed on someone like me. They’re a bunch given to exact terms, and who can blame them?

  We’re having a wedding to
day, by the way, in the little rundown park nearby. The ordination still comes in handy. After the ceremony the bride and groom want us all to paint the swing set and put some new boards on the seesaws. They invited the Hoovervilles to come down too. Personally, I think that’s going a little too far, but hopefully they’ll behave themselves. They’re a pretty ripe bunch out there.

  So maybe we’re all a bunch of failures in the eyes of the world, and sometimes I feel that way all on my own. But a wedding’s taking place today and the weather is fine.

  We are on a bit of a holy high, I admit. The warm day, the dry grass, the orange and yellow paint, the beautiful bride with long brown hair curling down her back, and the groom with a recent short haircut looking ten years younger than a couple of days ago. The kids from all over the neighborhood stand on the sidelines and giggle. The glaring white gown sewn by Charmaine blows in the breeze.

  And the food. Valentine made up three huge serving tins of pan-fried chicken. Add to that her mashed potato casserole, fresh green beans, a huge pan of Mandarin orange raspberry spinach salad— covered with some kind of dressing she said she just put together using what Blaze had on hand in the kitchen—and we feast like Romans. Hey, I’m obeying the spirit of the law here. Joining in the celebration with the couple is what’s most important today.

  Justin is looking a little guilty—he’s the ascetic of us all, but I tell him sometimes we have to accept God’s lavish gifts as they come and we shouldn’t put ourselves above His goodness. As long as you’re not saying that about a Mercedes or a yacht, I think it’s sound theology.

  Miss Mildred’s peach cobbler sits beside a homemade wedding cake brought by the bride’s cousin, an extraordinarily large redneck, a term by which he describes himself, who likes to bake.

  There’s just no telling, is there?

  Bobby fills up his plate fuller than he should, but I don’t have the heart to say anything.

  “Bobby, if you don’t eat every bite of that, you’ll have to go through your flash cards twice on Monday,” Val says.

  Val, because the bride asked her to, spoons up the mashed potato casserole, her dark pink scarf in place. She’d planned on just dropping off the food.

  The neighborhood people are onto her though. The kids call her, “The nice lady with the scarf.”