The Exorsistah

by Claudia Mair Burney

  I silently prayed. Lord, why is all this junk happening to me? I tried to stay out of Ray’s face. I didn’t eat too much or ask for much. If I could have, I’d have gone invisible up in that piece.

  And then I heard the sweet voice of the Holy Spirit say to my inner self, I didn’t make you to be invisible.

  Tears stung my eyes. A blanket wrapped around my soul. But my business with God wasn’t done.

  I wish the demons I see were invisible. Because it feels like it’s too much responsibility. Francis peeped me out. I am just a girl. I’m afraid I’m gon’ disappoint him, and now Milla and her mama. I don’t wanna do that.

  Then God went silent on me.

  I thought about Mama. I didn’t even bother to ask God again if she was still there like Jamilla was. If she was, she sho’ was hiding underneath the voices that came screaming out of her and the way she tore at her own flesh.

  He had never answered that one. None of the times I prayed about it.

  I heard the sound of footsteps and straightened my back, which had been curved in prayer. I ran my hands through my hair and gave thanks for Penny Pop’s generous flat-ironing hookup.

  I turned around and saw Francis.

  “Hey,” he said. His smile was wide like nothing in the world beat seeing me in church.

  I said a silent “talk to you later” to God, and stood to greet him. “Hey yourself.”

  “I was worried about you. I wasn’t sure you’d come back. I was sorta mad at myself for letting you get away.”

  “Nope. Still here.” I didn’t feel ready to tell him about Jamilla yet. I still needed to think. And pray.

  “I’m glad you didn’t leave me.” He smiled, but his mournful eyes betrayed him. He had bad news. A sistah wanted to burn rubber bustin’ up out of there, but those golden eyes? I couldn’t resist them. I chilled to get ready to hear the worst.

  “W’sup, Francis. What now?”

  His face sobered to match his eyes. “I’ve got some news. Do you want to sit back down?”

  “I take my bad news standing up. Makes it easier if I have to take off running.”

  Again, Mr. Touchy-Feely took my hand. I resisted pulling it away, because I was starting to enjoy it. I waited for the gauntlet to fall.

  “No need for you to run, Emme. Just make a little concession. For Father Miguel. No big deal at all.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “He wants proof of your identity before you can stay here, and to do a criminal background check.”

  Despite my doubts and questions, I had felt the comfort of God’s presence in the sanctuary. Now panic washed over me. I could feel my pulse throbbing in my ears. I shook my head wildly. Yanked my hand away from his. “Uh-uh. Can’t do it.”

  He let me go without a fight. “Emme, he said it would only verify whether or not you’ve committed any crimes.”

  “I haven’t committed any crimes.” I marched toward the front of the church with his voice shadowing me.

  “He won’t turn you in to the foster care system. What would be the point if you only have a month before you age out? He just wants to make sure you’re a safe person. He’s sick, Emme. He’s here alone quite a bit. Sometimes I work a lot—especially at night—and only Mother Nicole is here to look out for him. He’s entitled to be cautious.”

  “Mother Nicole is a tough woman.”

  “I agree, but … ” He caught up with me only because I had to stop stepping long enough to open the door. He grabbed my hand. Again.

  “Let me go, Francis. Why are you always touching me?”

  “I’m sorry. I hold hands with the people I care about. I hold Mother Nicole’s hand all the time.”

  “I’m not Mother Nicole. I don’t want you holding my hand.” Well, I didn’t at that moment.

  “No problem, Emme. I won’t do it again.”

  “Look, I can’t stay here and let ol’ dude get me all messed up.”

  “Foster care is better than the streets. Think about all the hustlers out there, Emme. You’re almost six feet tall and cute as all getout. You think all the wrong people aren’t going to notice you?”

  Well, I couldn’t speak to that.

  “But that’s not an issue, ’cause you won’t be going into foster care. He owes me. If he hurts you, it’d be like hurting me. He might be nasty, but he ain’t tryna do me no serious harm. Will you trust me?”

  “He owes you what?”

  “It’s—”

  “Complicated,” I said, sighing. “You said that.”

  I started wondering what the heck was up with him and Father Rivera. How long had they known each other? In light of all the priest scandals in the news, I wondered if Francis knew a bad secret and was using it against Father Rivera.

  Dang. I can’t be diggin’ no blackmailer.

  Shoot. How whack was a sistah’s thinkin’ gon’ be? I suspected he was a lil’ thug back in the day, but he seemed crazy cool now. Then again, how much did I know about him?

  I needed to turn around and get back inside that sanctuary alone to pray some more. But I couldn’t do that now that Francis was all over me.

  I stepped out the door and sat down on the steps at the entrance to the church and rested my face on my palm. All the fight in me was slipping away. “I don’t have my ID, Francis.”

  He plopped beside me on the steps, sitting much closer than he had to, in my opinion. I started thinking Francis might be diggin’ me more than I realized. He acted like it was natural for him to almost sit on my lap.

  “Where’s your ID, Emme?”

  “It’s at Kiki’s house. In my purse.”

  “Who’s Kiki?”

  “She’s been like a mama to me. A spiritual mama. I left my purse and jacket and the few clothes I had at her house.”

  “In Ann Arbor.”

  “Of course in Ann Arbor.”

  “I’ll take you to go get them. I’ve got to pick up some equipment in A-square. I was supposed to go this Friday, but I’ll call the cat and tell him I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

  “I can’t go over there, Francis.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Something went down yesterday. And now our friendship is over. Tell the old man I can’t get no ID until my birthday.”

  He pondered what I said. Then he spoke carefully. “Emme. That’s not an option. You have to do the background check or leave.”

  “I guess I’ll leave.”

  “And I’d have to go with you, and that’s not practical for me right now.”

  “I’m not asking you to go nowhere with me.”

  “I’m not letting you wander off all willy-nilly. You’re not being reasonable. I’m offering you safety. Food, Emme. If I need to, I’ll buy you clothes if you don’t want to get your stuff, and even give you money, but you need your ID. Just go back for that.”

  “I can’t.”

  He sighed like he usually does and raked his hand through his Blacktino curls. “What happened at Kiki’s that was so bad you’d give up a safe place to say?”

  “There don’t seem to be safe places for me in this world.”

  “Come on now, girl. You’re smarter than you’re acting.”

  “More than one way to be unsafe, brotha.”

  We were gridlocked, and I wasn’t moving.

  Francis forced a cleansing breath out and relented. “I came here as suspicious as you are. I didn’t do well in foster care, either. Some of it was my fault. I was angry with my mother for dying on me. Blah, blah, blah. I ended up here, and he didn’t turn me in.”

  He crooked his neck and gave me a sidelong glance. He needed me to do this for real. For all his flexing in the house earlier, the good reverend trumped him. His hands were tied. I could tell.

  “Did you have to show him some ID?”

  He chuckled. “I had to do more than that! But it beat living on the streets. If I hadn’t have come here, at the rate I was going, I’d be dead or in prison right now.”

 
I flicked a narrowed suspicious gaze at him.

  He sighed. “Yeah, Emme. I spent some time in juvie. I got busted for car theft when I was sixteen. I was a dumb kid, living fast and loose because I hated foster care, God, and for a while my mother—who, in my messed-up mind, abandoned me. Her last wish was for me to come here, and I refused, mostly because I didn’t know what I’d be gettin’ myself into. But I met Mother Nicole. She was friends with—” He took a deep breath. “She was good friends with Father Miguel. She helped me deal with him.” He turned the full gaze of golden-flecked compassion on me. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to you?”

  I hugged my arms to myself, even though it was warm that evening. The thought of Ray and what he did chilled me. But Francis had shared his war story with me. He deserved at least one of mine.

  “Kiki is what you call super-morbidly obese. She’s a pretty big girl. Over five hundred pounds. When she got to five hundred, she could hardly walk. She can take two or three steps, and then she has to stop and rest. It’s a monster on her knees and joints.”

  I looked across the parking lot. A couple of kids were playing in front of a house in the projects. Made me happy to see them so abandoned to play. I couldn’t remember the last time I had fun.

  “I met her about six months ago. I had run away from a foster home because some joker tried to put his hands on me, and I don’t mean he tried to beat me. I was at Barnes and Noble that time, and I saw this lady, early in the morning, sitting on one of the chairs reading a book called The Cloud of Unknowing. I thought the title sounded interesting, but I didn’t want to disturb her. You know how it is. You try to do everything you can so people won’t notice you.”

  “Right.”

  “But she says something, and I look up from the book of Sonia Sanchez poems I was reading. And she starts talking about the book like she heard me think that or something. I figured maybe she was just nice, and I went over to the chairs and sat by her. We ended up talking for three hours. She told me to come to her house and gave me her address. Later on I walked over there, but check this out.”

  I could feel my heart race thinking about what happened next.

  “I get there and this dude answers the door. Her husband, Ray.”

  “One of the men who hurt you.”

  “Did you see that when we prayed?”

  “A little. You said his name when you were upset after we left Walgreens, but I figured you’d tell me about him if and when you were ready.”

  So he wasn’t always pushy. Good.

  I nodded, and got back to my story. “So I’m at the door and I ask for Kiki, and he takes me upstairs. He asked me how I knew his wife, and I told him I met her at Barnes and Noble. The thing is that was all I said. I didn’t say I met her this morning or anything.”

  I look at Francis, hoping he’d believe what I’d say next. “Bro’, I’m serious, I get in her room and she’s laid up in this big bed. She knew exactly who I was. Greeted me. Told me to come in and sit down.”

  “That’s nice, Emme. I’m glad you trusted her.”

  “That I trusted her isn’t the tripped-out part. Francis, she hadn’t been out of that bed except to go to the bathroom or putter around the upstairs of her house in over a year.”

  His eyes widened. “Daaaaaaang, girl. Are you tryna tell me she could bilocate?”

  “I don’t know. But it happened as sure as I’m sitting here with you now.”

  He narrowed his eyes, brow furrowed. “Maybe you’re not sitting here right now.” Then he started his Twilight Zone theme song imitation.

  Cracked me up. “You’re stooopid, boy.”

  “That’s an amazing story. But you still didn’t tell me what happened at her house that made you jet like you did. I mean, I can imagine. You don’t have to go into details if you don’t want to.”

  I stared back at the children for a few moments, wishing God would give me a little rest and some unburdened playtime. Those unforced rhythms of grace Francis read about in the car.

  “I went to live with Kiki that same day, and it was cool for a long time. Ray was missing a lot of work tryna take care of her, and their insurance wouldn’t pay for her to get treatment or a nurse or nothing. Ray was glad to have my help. Kiki was great. She covered me with prayer the whole time I stayed with her. The system never found out about me. I was able to do housework for her and her husband, and they fed me and gave me sixty dollars a week. I mostly bought books and little personal stuff.”

  “What happened, Emme?”

  “Her man got too familiar. He …”

  “Put his hands on you, and you don’t mean beat you.”

  I nodded.

  “How many times has something like that happened to you?”

  “Four.”

  He shook his head. “Amazing. That’s how many I saw when I … you know … what happened to us in Denny’s. I saw four faces, and I knew they were the men who’d hurt you.”

  “I wish God would show one of us how to prevent that mess from happening. You know? I try to push each incident out of my head. Out of my heart. But they’re still there like a big ball of sorrow stuck in my heart. They don’t go nowhere, Francis. I don’t care what I do.”

  I’d never admitted to a guy how that stuff affected me. The only person I’d ever opened up to about it had been Kiki. If I thought telling Francis would be a liberating experience, I was out of my mind. It only released more pain.

  For a moment I thought I was gonna hyperventilate. My hands started shaking, and to stop them, I buried my face in them. “Oh man. Oh man, oh man, oh man.” My whole body started shaking. I tried to hold it in, but even trying to speak my words came out with sobs. I choked out, “I’m sorry.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. Whispered, “May I please hold you, Emme? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  All I could do was nod and let it all out. He pulled me into his arms right there on the front steps of the church and I willingly went to him. I didn’t care who was watching.

  If I had a raft, I could have floated away on the waters coming from my eyes. And Francis soothed me. Murmured prayers in my ear. Ran his hands through my hair and spoke blessings to me. Told me I was lovely and virtuous and clean in God’s sight.

  “Chiara, El dios le bendice y le guarda. Sonrisa del dios en usted y el regalo usted. Mirada del dios usted por completo en la cara y hace que usted prospera.”

  I laughed through the veil of my tears. “What did you just say, you crazy man?”

  “I said, ‘God bless you and keep you. God smile on you and gift you. God look you full in the face and make you prosper.’ At least I think I did. I may have said something crazy or awful to you. I’m still working on my Spanish. Sometimes I learn bad things to pretend I’ll say them to Father Miguel when he goes off on me. And of course, sometimes I don’t know what the heck I’m saying because I rely too much on Google translator.”

  A very undignified snort exploded out of me, despite my tears. Francis’s gentle voice said, “Can I wipe your tears away?”

  I nodded, and his hands came to my face, and his thumbs smoothed my tears away. He had the rough, calloused fingers of a guitar player, and I wanted him to play more music for me. He brushed a stray lock of my hair out of my face, and I liked his touch. He spoke in sweet, soothing tones. “I’ll talk to Father Miguel and get him to hold off a few days. We’ll get your stuff, Chiara. Kiki’s husband won’t be putting his hands on you again. I promise you that.”

  I took a chance and laid my head on his chest, and he rubbed my arms with such gentleness I cried even harder.

  “I can’t go back there.”

  “Yes, you can. Don’t you miss Kiki?”

  “I don’t want her to know what happened. It’s better if she thinks I just left.”

  “Come on, Emme. You don’t believe she’ll think you left for no reason.”

  “I don’t care why she thinks I left, as long as she doesn’t think it’s the reason it was.”
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  “Did she know about the other guys?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think she’ll put two and two together?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I prayed that God would keep it from her.”

  “The same God who gave her a charism to bilocate to a lost lamb so she could help her?”

  “Well, if He did all that, maybe He can make her bilocate over here and bring me my purse instead of me going over there.”

  I felt the vibrations of Francis’s laughter against my cheek. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Don’t make me go over there, Francis. Okay?” How could I tell him that even if Kiki did know what was up, the thought of catching so much as a glance at Ray repulsed me.

  “We need to get your documents, Emme. I want you to be able to stay here without giving Father Miguel more ammo to pelt you with. Or me, for that matter.” He squeezed me. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

  The way he said it was kinda provocative. “Are we still talking about the same thing? ’Cause the way you all hugged up with a sistah, and now you’re talking about …”

  Francis stiffened. I glanced up to see what he was trippin’ about, thinking maybe I was out of line for questioning whether or not he was flirting, when I heard the old man’s voice.

  “Well, well, well. Don’t you two look cozy? I’m beginning to see why it’s so important to you for her to stay here, Frank.”

  I pulled away from Francis’s embrace. I got ready to go off on him, for real, then I thought about the Stations of the Cross. I didn’t see a single station that said, “Jesus cusses his accusers out.” I bit my tongue.

  Francis, however, did not. “It’s not what you think. She was upset, and I was comforting her.”

  “I’ll bet you were.”

  Francis stood. Stepped up to the old man. I didn’t know if he was gonna smack Father Rivera, or what. He must have paid attention in preschool, because he used his words and his inside voice. “I know what we were doing, but even if we had done something wrong, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

  Francis definitely had something on him. And I wasn’t diggin’ that about him.