Abundant Rain

by Vanessa Miller

  Relaxing her head on the air pillow, she allowed herself to remember. As the bubbles swirled, she was swept into the world where she lived, rather than the one she breathed in. Elizabeth was enjoying breakfast in bed, prepared by Kenneth, as he sat with her asking, “So what’s on your agenda today? I was hoping I could hang out with you.”

  She choked. Kenneth hit her on the back a few times before the bacon dislodged from her throat. “You want to spend the day with me?”

  Kenneth rubbed her back. “Not just today, baby. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Ah heck, let’s just spend the rest of our lives together and call it quits when we’re so old and decrepit that no one else will want us. What do you say?”

  Elizabeth pulled herself away from the painful memory of promises too sweet, too endearing to be real. They wouldn’t spend their lives together. They wouldn’t grow old together. She had believed every word he told her back then, but now knew it to be nothing more than lies. How could he guarantee her something he had no control over?

  “Baby, I’m going to run back to you,” he had told her the last time she saw him.

  But he didn’t run back to her. He would never again run to anyone. “Why?” Tonight, she would face reality. Kenneth was dead. That’s the only reason he hadn’t come home. Her fingers gripped the edge of the Jacuzzi. She rocked her head from side to side and cried. “How am I supposed to live without him? I can’t go on like this.”

  Once, she thought she had it all. An MBA, a husband who was the CEO of his own business, two beautiful little girls, and love. At times, their love overflowed. It rocked her world, consumed her. She raked her hands through her hair. “What’s the use of dwelling on the past?” She leaned back against the tub and cried. Tears and sadness had become her friends. She woke up with pain and went to bed with sorrow.

  She was almost a prune by the time she pulled her weary body out of the tub, but she had gotten a good cry. Still, what was she going to do about her predicament? She dried herself off, put on Kenneth’s old terrycloth robe, and walked into the kitchen. She poured some grape juice into a glass and walked back into the living room. She stared at the big rock that Tommy had given her. It was much bigger than the one Kenneth gave her. And, as an added bonus, Tommy was alive. She picked up the ring and escorted it to her bedroom. Tonight she would lay in her four-poster king-size bed alone. She would sink into the pillow-top mattress, close her red-rimmed eyes and dream of the only man she’d ever loved. But tomorrow, something other than dreams would fill her bed.

  6

  He got out of the bed and limped over to the mirror. He looked at the left side of his face. Deep and jagged scars ran from his ear lobe to the cleft of his chin. Old news to him, but frightenly new to everyone who looked at him for the first time. This morning, he couldn’t dismiss his scars. What would his wife think of his face? Would she see him as a monster? Would his children run at the sight of him?

  What was her name? He already knew she was an angry woman. What were his children like? Does that angry woman beat on my children? “Oh, God, please help me remember. If my children are in danger, I’ve got to get to them.” He looked around his meager surroundings. Where would he put two children and a wife? He was living in a small studio. The bedroom, kitchen, and living area were one room. A tattered curtain separated the bathroom.

  He didn’t know what to do. His mind was so jumbled. Well, not really jumbled, it was… well, blank. All he knew was two years ago, when he awoke in a hospital bed, his face was bandaged and his body in a cast. The nurse told him that he had been in the World Trade Center when it crashed to the ground. The doctor promised that after a year of physical therapy, he would walk again. No one could tell him why he couldn’t remember who he was, or when he would regain his memory. They called it amnesia. He called it prison. His whole life was locked up inside his head. Since his mind didn’t seem to be getting an early release, he decided to make the best of his situation. As soon as his bandages were taken off, he asked his nurse to bring him a Bible.

  He devoured it. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow, reading the Word of God helped him to not feel so lost. How could he be alone when he had Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to keep him company? Some days, King David or King Solomon came for a visit. Other days, he sat down for a chat with Apostle Paul. Jesus became his center. Somehow, he filled the hole that had been left vacant in his life with the Word of God.

  He took Jesus to physical therapy with him. His nurse always had a question for him about the things he’d read. One day, Debra Minion asked, “Are you going to pick a name for yourself, or do you like being called John Doe?”

  “Mmh, I really hadn’t thought about it. But if I were going to pick my own name, I think I’d go with Andrew.”

  Debra crinkled her small nose. “Out of all the names in the world, why would you pick Andrew?”

  “In the Bible, there’s a story about Jesus using two fish and five small loaves of bread to feed about five thousand people. Andrew was the one who spotted the little boy who carried the meal for five thousand and didn’t even know it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s just something about Andrew helping out during desperate times that caught my attention. Some of those people were probably lost or torn away from their family.”

  Debra lifted him out of his wheelchair. “You read that Bible a lot, don’t you?”

  He grabbed hold of the walking bars and stretched his legs. Pain etched on his face as he told her, “It gives me comfort.”

  She bent down and positioned his feet. Her long blonde hair hung close to the ground. “Andrew, would you pray for me?”

  He took a labored step, then another. Stopped. Sweat was dripping from his forehead. He was breathing hard when he asked, “Wh – what do you need prayer for?”

  “My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for twelve years. We’ve tried everything,” she told him as a lone tear rolled down her oval shaped face. “We’ve spent all our money on doctors. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs, with two miscarriages, but no baby to show for all we’ve been through.”

  He put her hand in his and gently squeezed. “I’ll pray for you.”

  A couple of months later, Debra came into his hospital room. The grin on her face spanned from Mississippi to Ohio. She told him that she was pregnant, and that she and her husband knew this miracle occurred because of him and him alone. Her husband wanted to meet him and thank him personally.

  He actually didn’t know if he wanted to meet the man who thought he was responsible for his wife’s pregnancy. “Please tell your husband that the thanks belong to God. All I did was pray.”

  “Oh, don’t be modest. You were sent straight from God.”

  Another couple of months passed and the hospital staff informed him that they had run out of funding for the victims of 9-11. He understood. After all, he had been in the hospital for nine months. “Oh, Andrew,” Nurse Debra said with a sigh during one of their sessions. “If only you could remember who you are. Your family might have enough money to pay for your physical therapy.”

  He shrugged. The entire hospital staff called him Andrew now. So, he too, began to think of it as his name. “I will pray about it. God will show me where I am to go. Maybe He will have mercy on me today and lift the cloud from my mind.”

  Debra smiled. “God has already shown me where you are to go.”

  He took his hands off the rails and sat down in his wheelchair. “And where is that?”

  “I have a mother-in-law cottage behind my house. You could live there, and my husband and I could continue your physical therapy. You will walk again, Andrew. I promise you that.”

  “But I have no way of repaying you.”

  “God has already paid us,” she told him while patting her stomach.

  ***

  He had moved into the Minion’s mother-in-law cottage a year and a half ago. Day by day, his body began to recover. He walked with a limp and a cane – but he walked. His
face was scarred, but he reminded himself often that his eyes had not been affected, so he could see. And now today, he had a glimpse of his family.

  He hobbled outside. He needed to share this news with someone. Debra was in the backyard standing at the barbecue pit. Brad and little Brad, the miracle baby, were lying on the lawn chair waiting on the food.

  Debra smiled and waved him over. The Minions thought of him as some kind of lucky charm. They wouldn’t take rent from him for the cottage. Debra told him that since he moved in, Brad received two promotions on his job. Their bills were all paid, and they hadn’t had an argument over money in the last year. So, free rent was just their way of blessing him for blessing them. He tried to explain that he wasn’t the blessing giver, that it was God.

  Debra just smiled and said, “Ah, yes, but God gives His blessings to the people around you.”

  He smiled back at his hostess as he walked over to the pit, but his mind danced over a wicked memory of another barbecue he attended.

  His wife was serving him a plate in their backyard. She had an anything-you-want-honey expression on her face. He thought things might turn around for them. Then he looked at his plate. Charred pieces of pants and suit jackets that looked like some of the things he owned were on the plate. “What’s this?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, you need a fork.” She pulled a plastic fork out of the box and put it in front of his plate. “Eat up,” she told him.

  With a horrified look on his face, he declared, “She burned my clothes! Oh my God! She actually burned my clothes!”

  Debra put the lid back over the steaks and hamburgers and turned to Andrew. “Who burned your clothes?”

  Startled, he looked up at Debra. “Huh?”

  “Your clothes. Who burned them?”

  “Oh, nobody. Nothing, don’t worry about it.” He turned and walked back to his little house. As he opened the door, he told himself, “I’m married to Satan.”

  7

  Determined not to sleep another night with only dreams to keep her company, Elizabeth knocked on Tommy’s door. She waited for him with a smile, and his ring on the third finger of her left hand. What was a woman to do? Kenneth was out of the picture. Doggonit, she needed to know what it felt like to be held again. She had trusted God with her and Kenneth’s life. So much for trust. What did it ever get her? A dead husband and two fatherless children, that’s what.

  Knock, knock. “Come on, Tommy. What’s taking you so long?”

  Tommy opened the door. He quickly tightened the belt on his oriental silk robe. His eyes darted back and forth. “Elizabeth, what are you doing here?” He held the door close to him as he knuckled down on the doorknob.

  She studied him for a moment. He probably doesn’t have anything on under that robe. How sexy. “I need to talk to you. Why are you hugging that door so close?” She pushed him out of the way and barged in. In the living room, standing in front of him, she lifted her left hand so he could see his ring on her finger. “Well, say something,” she demanded.

  He turned away from her gaze, put his head in his hands and shook it. “I really wished you had called before you came over.”

  “Why?” she asked as she scrunched her eyebrows. “I’m here now and that’s all that should matter. I don’t want to spend the night alone, Tommy. I want to stay here with you.”

  He sat down on his sofa and put his head in his hands. “I really wish you had called first.”

  Elizabeth knelt down on the floor next to him. “Tommy? I thought this was what you wanted. You’ve been asking me to marry you for over a year. What’s wrong?”

  Tommy held Elizabeth’s face in his hands. Sorrow filled his eyes. “I love you, Elizabeth. Please believe me.”

  “I do believe you, Tommy. What’s wrong?”

  A sultry voice from the back room of Tommy’s apartment called, “Come back to bed, baby. How long are you going to keep me waiting?”

  Elizabeth’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got a woman here?” She stood up to go to Tommy’s bedroom and check things out as she thought, that woman better have a cold and be hoarse right about now; cause she sounds like…

  She threw open the bedroom door and burst in the room like Miami Vice. Mmph, mmph, mmph, she couldn’t get a break. In Tommy’s bed was some Albino-looking brother, posing as if he were waiting for the clickety-click from one of Hugh Hefner’s cameramen. She was going to be sick. “You have got to be kidding me!” If this ain’t something straight out of an E. Lynn Harris novel.

  She strutted into the room yelling, “Get your nasty butt out of this bed, and get out of here!”

  He/she put his hands on his hips. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, Miss Thang.” He snapped his fingers. “But I will bust your head if you don’t get out of my face.”

  She pulled off her earrings, and kicked off her shoes. Elizabeth couldn’t believe that she was getting ready to go toe to toe over a man she wasn’t even sure she was in love with. But Tommy had asked her to marry him, so as far as she was concerned he was her man; and nobody was sleeping with him, but her. Putting up her fists and poising herself for a fight, Elizabeth said, “Come on wit’ it. Bring it on.”

  “Oh, you don’t want none of me.” He had that sistah-sistah head bob down pat.

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong.” She picked up the glass ashtray from the dresser. That Negro told me he stopped smoking, she thought as she emptied the ashes on boy-toy’s head.

  She leaped on him and hit him with the ashtray again. He was about to swing on Elizabeth when Tommy grabbed his arm. “Nigel, man, you need to go.”

  “Let my arm go, Tommy. You just gon’ let her hit on me like this?”

  Tommy grabbed Elizabeth and tried to pull her off Nigel. She had a firm grip on Nigel’s locks. “Let go, Elizabeth.”

  “No!” She pulled harder. She’d scalp him if she could.

  “Man, you better get her off me!” Nigel screamed.

  Tommy grabbed Elizabeth’s fingers, uncurled them from around Nigel’s hair and pushed her behind him. “I’ll see you later, Nigel.”

  Nigel poked out his lower lip and huffed, “What do you mean, you’ll see me later? Miss Thang over there is the one interrupting us.”

  Tommy picked Nigel’s shirt off the floor. “Like I said, you need to go.”

  Elizabeth stood behind Tommy mimicking him. “Yeah, like he said, you need to go.”

  “I don’t take orders from you!” Nigel told her, then looked back at Tommy and sneered, “Unlike some people.”

  She clenched her fist and got in her wolf-ticket stance. “Boy, I will bust you-”

  “Elizabeth! Let me take care of this, then I will explain everything. Okay?”

  She hit Tommy in his back. “What kind of mess is this? How are you going to explain asking me to marry you when you know you like boys?” She needed this mess like she needed a hole in her head.

  “I got ya boy,” Nigel told her while zipping his pants.

  Elizabeth pointed at him. “You need to get your little confused behind out of here and let me and this man handle our business.”

  Nigel twisted out, opened the front door, then looked back at Elizabeth with a sneer. “That’s all right. You might control the purse strings, but you better believe I control the man. He’ll be back.” Nigel slammed the door behind him.

  Elizabeth looked at her manager, her friend. She looked at the ring that glistened on her left hand. How could she know him so well, and yet, not know him at all? “So is that it, Tommy? You only wanted to marry me because I control the purse strings?”

  He turned toward her, but could not make eye contact. “No, baby, never that. I love you. I’ve never lied about that.”

  She smacked him. “You don’t love me.” She pounded at his chest with her fists.

  When she started crying and slid to the floor, he sat down next to her and just held her. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “How could
you do this to me?” She rocked back and forth, tears pouring from her confused eyes. “You don’t look gay. How can you be gay?”

  “I’m not gay,” he told her as he brushed hair out of her face.

  Elizabeth pulled herself out of Tommy’s arms and looked at him with disgust. “If you’re not gay, explain Nigel.”

  “Elizabeth, I love women. The majority of the time I want to be with women. I want to be with you.” He reached for her, but she pulled away again. “There are occasions when I need something…different.” He shrugged.

  “Something different,” she spat. “Negro, you were with a man! Don’t you have any shame? Do you listen to the pastor’s sermons?”

  “Oh, so did you come over here to have tea and shoot the fat? Where is your shame? What do you think the pastor would say about you coming over here to sleep with me tonight?” He stood and paced the room. “Look, I’m sorry. Just don’t mention the church and what it frowns on to me. Okay?”

  She stood. “Why not, Tommy? Don’t you attend church every Sunday? Didn’t you tell me you were turning your life over to the Lord when you sold your nightclub?”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “Look, Elizabeth. The church is the reason I’m the way I am.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t you blame the church. They teach against this mess.”

  Tommy snarled, “Well they must’ve forgot to teach the deacon who raped me when I was nine years old.”

  Elizabeth’s hands covered her mouth. She shook her head as she moved away from Tommy. “No,” was all she could mumble.

  He thought he had forgotten. Thought he would never conjure up that memory, but here it was again, like a bad dream. Always turning up, always haunting him. Tommy closed his eyes tight. But as he spilled his guts to Elizabeth, he couldn’t stop himself from becoming that nine-year old helpless little boy again.