by Lisa Samson
I think he reached into a bag of chips or something because the crackling of cellophane tickled my eardrums. “You think?”
Maybe he unwrapped a candy.
“Sure. You want me to pray with you right now?”
“Nah. You got some kind of list going there?”
“Yep. I keep you on for a week, unless you call back with an update.”
“People do that?” He crunched in my ear now. Definitely chips.
“Absolutely. I have a nice-sized list of regulars.”
“Okay. Put me on your list.”
“Gotcha down, Butch. Feel free to call back anytime.”
“Thanks. And if I tell my mom I’ve got some prayer lady praying for me, she might not be so worried.”
Make that under twenty. Definitely under twenty.
“Well then,” I said. “I’ve got you on the list.”
“Thanks, Prayer Lady.”
“God bless.”
“Yeah, uh, you too.”
And he hung up.
I pulled the receiver away and stared at it. At least he wasn’t some crank, obscene caller. I hate those more than anything.
PRISMA
LOVE EQUALS TIME. That’s why I’ve never bought a store-made loaf of bread in my entire life! If you can’t get down in the dough and work it until it’s silky and satisfying, well, what can you do? My mother started teaching me to bake when I turned five, and I still lift my eyes up every day and tell her thank you. Honest to Pete, that’s the truth. And you know me and the truth.
I don’t know why I went into domestic service. Not many options existed for a woman like me back in those days. Always I told myself something extra-ordinary lay in wait beneath my exterior, like a hard kernel of corn needing only some high heat to turn it into something usable, something explosively unique and wonderful, like a Ph.D. in medical research and the cure for cancer or maybe even the lecture circuit for medieval history. But I graduated from Dunbar High, speaking fancy because my mother told me I wouldn’t get anywhere if I couldn’t be understood. I took some abuse from my schoolmates over that, but I don’t regret it. Yes, Mama knew. But my schoolmates were bona fide African-American for the most part, and I’m a Heinz 57 human. Years ago I stopped looking back into my ancestry because the Lord knows, if I find one more race, a scream the likes of a factory whistle might rise from my lungs and, unable to work its way from my mouth fast enough, might just blow the top right off my head. That’s right, clean off, like a dandelion head. Pop goes Prisma. My mama was black with a little something Irish on the side. And Daddy, a white boy with a bit of American Indian, Jewish, and all sorts of other things blended in for good measure, really confused things for me. Maybe too much, I think.
But for utter certainty, we weren’t the most popular family in the neighborhood. My parents sought to fit in, Mama told me, but after a while gave up and lived their lives as best they could, providing a stable home for myself and my younger brother, Tony, who died in Korea.
If the Lord didn’t whisper the name “Prisma” in Mama’s ear, I’d be shocked. Because that’s what I am … a human prism. I am neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, although I am a female, praise the Lord. At least I can claim something. And God did make us second, which means He practiced already.
O, Lord, You know I’m just teasin’. I love You, Lord.
So, years ago, without the money to go to college I only had a few options, and I figured I’d go where it was the most luxurious, the most warm. I worked at several homes in Guilford before Mr. Summerville built our house, and when these stone walls started accumulating, looking straight out of fifteenth-century England, I began living out of a suitcase.
The memory of my interview with Mr. Summerville, the way we started debating about the Orioles and the Yankees, still brings on a chuckle.
I never met a kinder man than Mr. Summerville. He sponsored my entire college education, got me into Johns Hopkins University during the days when skinny young multiracial women still “knew their place.” On the day I graduated he merely sat next to my parents, in a black coat, sunglasses, and a bowler. Mr. Summerville always wore a fedora. He refused to take any of the credit so that my day of glory be seen as a feather in Charles Summerville’s cap. But he wanted to witness my triumph, and his presence calmed my nerves. He treated us to Haussner’s restaurant afterward. We all got stares, I don’t mind saying. But we also got sauerbraten and spaetzle, and a piece of strawberry pie crowned the occasion. Thin as a noodle in those days, I ate two pieces.
Never heard a word about it in the papers either! And everything Mr. Summerville did was in the papers, unless it was his private business, and he considered anything on 724 Greenway Avenue his private business. It may not be the end of the world there on Greenway, but Mr. Summerville thought so, and I vowed to make sure it always felt like a real, honest-to-goodness home. Mrs. Summerville, sure as fog in the morning, had no training for such a task, and I don’t believe she ever really forgave him for his fib, really. At least Mr. Summerville never saw it that way. Of course Leslie festered her own lie, but she never told Mr. Summerville. She never told me. Silly me just happened to open the wrong piece of mail one day!
Libby Lee Strawbridge deserved to die the way she did. Alone and dissipated. I try not to even think about the emotional havoc that woman’s mother must have wreaked. It amazed me Mrs. Summerville turned out as well as she did. She sure loves those kids.
I stopped at Haussner’s yesterday on my way home from church. Not that it’s really on the way, truth be told, but certainly worth the extra drive! Two napoleons, three éclairs, a strawberry pie, and a box of lemon bars accompanied me home. Sharing the lemon bars would be the Christian thing, but I stuck them in the freezer in case the women of this house ever decide to go on vacation.
I know the Bible says “Do unto others,” but so far, I haven’t brought that lemon bar part of my sin nature under submission. Some folks have a sweet tooth. I have a sweet fang.
That Oprah girl tells people on her show that writing thankful lists at the end of each day brightens their lives. I find that a fine idea. It would be even finer if she said just whom we should be thankful to, but I guess I won’t write a letter of complaint because Jesus knows what He does all over the earth. So today I give thanks to God for: fine baked goods, the fact that Mrs. Summerville still drives, the check sent out from the Days of Summer Charitable Trust today to that Romanian orphanage, and oh, Jesus, help those poor children, good knees despite my heft, and Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
My lifelong companion.
“Lord, how much longer do I have here on Greenway?”
My, the stars burned clear this evening.
“Do you really think your work is done here, My girl?”
“Nope.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“I miss my family. I miss my son.”
“He’s doing just fine. You raised him right. He knows Me, and he talks to Me all the time.”
“They miss me.”
“I know.”
“Well, what about it, Lord? Will my time ever come to be with my family?”
“Just who is your family, Prisma, My girl?”
I smiled into the heavens. “I know what You’re saying, Lord.”
“I know you know.”
“I love You, Jesus.”
“I know you do. You listen with your heart, My girl. You’ve always been tender.”
“Thank You, Lord.”
“Just awhile longer.”
“All right, Jesus.”
“And you know that I love you, too.”
“I certainly do.”
See, me and Jesus straightened out that fact years and years ago.
Lark
THE AROMA OF THE DAY MY FATHER DIED permeated my life for good. Like the converted carriage house I rented after Bradley, one of the places Flannery and I haunted until I bought my little house-which-is-no-more. Horses deserted that place at least fifty y
ears before. Despite the new plaster walls, new wooden floors, bathrooms, bedrooms, and kitchen, the day I moved into the apartment upstairs I still smelled horse. Not unpleasant, it just reminded me of the muscular beasts that worked the farm for over a century, without complaining, content to do their job, well rewarded with good oats, water from the spring, and a gallant run over the most beautiful fields in Maryland.
My dad was like that. He worked hard and good. After he made his fortune, he hired John Drexler to “run the Whole Darn Thing” as he called it at Summerville Machine Parts. And then he went around and “saw fit to do good,” and I’m not talking giving to the opera either, which he did, because Mother found herself on the board for a while.
“Seeing fit to do good.” That’s what Prisma always called it. And I’ve scoured my Bible for years in search of that saying because I know it’s in there since Prisma speaks in Bible terms frequently. Prisma is a God-fearing woman, but she fears Him in her own way. She believes that religion is about loving the One who made you and obeying Him because of that. I remember her telling me in my childhood, “Lark, you love Jesus because of who He is, and you don’t give to God to get. You commit your life to God because He is love and His ways are best, not because you need a list of dos and don’ts to get by or want to escape hell-fire and damnation. It’s about redeeming the time.”
Oh, Daddy. I miss you.
I wished I had listened sooner to Prisma about love and commitment and honor and optimism and all the things she tried to pass on down to me, all the things my own mother never quite managed to say.
Why did I ever leave my parents’ church? Daddy, not your strict-Christian type, I’ll admit, came back every Sunday with a clear spiritual insight that led eventually to the Days of Summer Charitable Trust. I remember it vividly. The sermon had been on the widow’s mite, a story, I’ll admit, I’ve come to love more with each passing year. And Daddy got out of the Bentley, slipped into his private den, and shut the door behind him. Prisma knocked an hour later, real soft like she did with Daddy, and said, “Sunday dinner, Mr. Summerville.”
“Just put it in the icebox, my dear.”
I sat on the couch. Eleven years old, leggy, toothy, and reading Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and getting grossed out over the entire book the way it talked about menstrual periods, bust development, and all, I welcomed the diversion. “He’s not joining us, Miss Prisma?”
“Honey, he and Jesus are in deep conversation. I’ll guarantee it.”
Nobody knew my father like Prisma. Not me. Not Mother. Not Newly.
I think they truly loved each other, Daddy and Prisma. In a different land, a different time, and under different circumstances … well, who knows? I could be wrong, and it isn’t something I’d ever say out loud.
And nobody at Stoneleigh House loves and worships Jesus like Prisma. The day she ushered me into the kingdom, ten years ago this past April, she wept. Her tears, and not just the feeling of a cleansed heart, helped me understand what a truly joyous occasion it was.
Prisma took over Daddy’s funeral arrangements. It reaped her the only real fight with Mother I ever heard. Loud and long and enough to frighten me, a woman in her early thirties. Prisma Percy stood there with her arms crossed, her golden eyes glowing inside a crucible of pain and loss, and she stood strong and firm against a formidable adversary. “Mrs. Summerville, he told us both expressly as he was lying there in that hospital bed that he wanted to be cremated! You can’t go and bury him whole! I won’t allow it!”
Mother barked back that Prisma had nothing to do with it, she was only hired help. But Prisma wasn’t put off, even though neither of us ever heard Mother bark before.
“I was his best friend.” Prisma’s retort, very quiet, stunned me. And my mother raised her hand in the air, her palm flat out, and opened her mouth. Then she froze. Her face, still and expressionless, like a statue of Diana, lost all color. I dropped the teacup I was drying as I stood in the kitchen door, my black funeral clothes absorbing the quietness of fresh death. Neither my mother nor Prisma even jumped at the sound, they just stared at each other, both thinking and thinking and not speaking.
Finally Mother’s flat hand turned into a pointed finger. “Fine then. But you’ll watch that casket being shoved in the oven, Prisma. You’ll watch it with your own eyes. I won’t have him going off all by himself.”
I watched Prisma nod.
“I’ll be there, Mrs. Summerville.”
Oh, Daddy.
He realized as he lay dying that even before he knew the Savior, God’s hand guided him. He wished he’d loved Christ earlier, but he praised God for preserving him from a wasted life. Lives all around were changed because my father invested in humanity itself.
And then Jesus’ love shone like a warm beam into his heart, and He ushered him home to heaven not long after. But I have to wonder if Jesus hadn’t entered his life a long time before that due to the promise of faith, if sometimes we beggar down our very beliefs by making faith more complicated than God does.
After Prisma introduced me to an honest-to-goodness living Christ, I really started listening to Father Charlie’s homilies. Why two years of such insightfulness washed over me like oil across cellophane, I don’t know. And Father Charlie’s influence still bolsters me to this day. There’s another person filled with a working, beautiful faith in God. A bold faith. A walk-out-on-the-street-during-a-gang-war kind of faith.
Prisma loves Father Charlie, and even before the house burned down she’d visit St. Dominic’s every once in a while. But then, Prisma always accompanied Mother to our sports games and concerts. Talk about a mismatched pair yelling and clapping there on the hard wooden bleachers!
Fact is, Prisma has always been there, for all of us. She could have gone on to a professorship somewhere, but she chose to stay on Greenway. I’ll tell you this much, Prisma Percy made my father the great man he was. Without Prisma Percy there to make a home for him, he might have become just another rich, overachieving workaholic. Moreover, she kept a finger on the pulse of heartache all over the country. She had papers delivered from cities everywhere, and when checks arrived from Days of Summer to pay for an operation, open a school, buy a pair of shoes, or feed a neighborhood for Thanksgiving, it was all due to Prisma Percy’s heart and her ability to do fine research.
Talk about your true working woman!
And she’s not worried about how she appears either. I love that about her.
But even now she stays on, baking bread and rolls and subsisting on her small domestic salary and banking the stipend she gets from Days of Summer. Prisma has never taken kindly to change. My father proved himself a wise man by hiring Prisma. A very wise man.
I feel him beside me a lot. Or rather, I’m always aware of his legacy. And I fall so short of it. Why couldn’t I have grown up to be like him?
Flannery
“UNCLE NEWLY?”
“Flannery! How are you, Buddy?”
“Great.”
“Enjoying Starbucks, are we?”
“Love it. Well, it’s not art, but it’s not a bad way to make some money for the summer. How’s your new girlfriend? Oooo-ooooh.”
Silence.
“Come on, Uncle Newly, tell me everything. I saw you guys go into Barnes and Noble.”
“She’s lovely, Buddy.”
“As lovely as me?”
He chuckles. “Nobody is as lovely as you.”
“Okay, just checking. So am I going to get to meet her soon? Are you going to bring her around to Greenway?”
“And give her the fright of her very life? Not on your life, my dear. Not on your life.”
What a crackup!
“So when’s our next date, Uncle Newly?”
“How about this weekend?” Only he says it “this weekend.”
“Let’s go out to the shooting range.”
“First pool. Now guns. Really, Buddy, what are you trying to do to me?”
“Get you to br
oaden your stuffy horizons.”
“I’m only thirty-six, dear. How stuffy can I really be?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.”
Another chuckle.
“I’ll meet you in your lobby at noon on Sunday, Uncle Newly.”
“I’ll see you then.”
That man cracks me up! If I had to paint Uncle Newly, I’d make him Navy Blue on the edges and Puce, Magenta, and Sky Blue tie-dye in the middle.
Lark
MARSHA FORTENBAUGH WOULD TELL ANYONE she’s been my best friend for eleven years now. The type of woman who calls private parts by their anatomically correct names, Marsha views life, and God, at face value. In fact, it was Marsha who invited me to St. Dominic’s in the first place after we met at the mall on Flannery’s eleventh birthday. Having saddle shoes fitted for her first year in private school, I was a bit put off to begin with. I had always resisted Daddy’s offer to pay her way at Roland Park Country Day School, a place I could never in a millennium of millions of years have afforded on my own, but I finally agreed to St. Dominic’s Parochial. She was learning some pretty unsavory things with bananas at public school, and I wasn’t about to let my pride send Flannery down the path of sexual experimentation, not to mention relativism.
I may be a hermit type, but that doesn’t render me unintelligent. I know what relativism really means. And I know what it really does.
It was that kind of stuff that landed me in trouble in the first place.
Any woman who tells you the sexual revolution freed women to call the shots is an idiot. It just gave men the opportunity to use us with even less responsibility than before.
I remember explaining it all to Marsha, right in the middle of Stride Rite. Flannery started to get involved with eyelinered fillies on the cusp of losing their virginity before they even started their periods. I felt radical and reactionary, one step away from asking Jerry Falwell out on a date, and I stumbled over my words and apologized, and I finished up with, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe I’m wrong about it all. Maybe I shouldn’t try and shelter my daughter like this. I mean, you can’t choose their friends, can you?”