Abundant Rain

by Vanessa Miller

  Sitting on his mother’s porch, head hanging down, basketball in his hand. “Mama, do I have to go?”

  “Boy, what’s wrong with you? You think Deacon Gridley don’t have more important things to do besides spend time with you?”

  “I still don’t want to go.” He walked down the driveway, kicking rocks and cursing his mother. He contemplated running to the park. He wanted to shoot hoops; he didn’t need anybody to play with. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. Why should he wait on fat ol’ Deacon Gridley to come and hug all on him? The man sweated like a pig. Every time he hugged him, Tommy would have to wipe Greasy Gridley’s sweat off his cheeks and arms. He started walking toward the park and Greasy Gridley pulled his 1969 leaning-to-the-left Oldsmobile in the driveway.

  Grinning, he told Tommy to get in. Why anybody with two rotten front teeth would grin so much, Tommy didn’t know. He just wished Greasy would close his mouth, back out of his driveway, and never come this way again.

  His mother was in the doorway. “Go on, boy,” she shoed him with a wave of her hand. “Deacon Gridley don’t have all day to wait on your narrow behind.”

  Tommy got in on the passenger side and hugged the car door to his side. Greasy’s fat sweat-laden hands clutched the steering wheel. Two days ago when Greasy took him to a baseball game those fat hands had rubbed his shoulder. Tommy didn’t like how that felt. But most of all, he just didn’t like Greasy Gridley. Why his mother thought he needed some grown man he knew nothing about to pal around with him was beyond understanding.

  They pulled up in Greasy’s driveway. Tommy didn’t know why, but he started sweating. “I thought we were going somewhere. Why are we at your house?”

  Greasy smiled. “I’ve got something to show you inside.” He got out of his car smiling as he walked up the drive. “Come on, boy,” he said, when Tommy hadn’t budged.

  Tommy silently prayed, “God, please don’t let this man put his hands on me.”

  But God must not have been listening. The minute Tommy got out of the car and walked into the house, Greasy was squeezing his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” Tommy ran to the bathroom, locked himself in, then pulled the switchblade out of his pocket. “Praying didn’t work. I wonder if slashing will do the trick.” He cut the knife back and forth in the air a few times, then put it back in his pocket.

  He stepped out of the bathroom. Greasy said the surprise was in the den. Tommy walked to the den holding his back pocket. They sat down on the sofa. Hot dogs and popcorn were on the coffee table. Greasy pointed to the TV. “Baseball. We can watch it here.”

  “Why we gotta watch the game on your TV? Why can’t we drive to the game like before?”

  “I didn’t want to be bothered with all those people. I thought we could just relax here.” The words were innocent enough, but the hand that touched his thigh and lingered was not.

  Tommy jumped up. “Don’t put your sweaty hands on me no more.” He started reaching for his switchblade.

  Greasy threw his hands up in surrender. “Hey, little man, be cool. I didn’t mean no harm. Come on and sit back down.” He patted the sofa. “Let’s watch the game.”

  Tommy hesitated. He wanted to slit this sucka’s throat just on GP, but his mama would start tripping again; Raving about how he was a juvenile delinquent and was going to end up just like his daddy. Sometimes he wanted to ask his mother, if his daddy was so bad, and she was so good, why in the world did she lay down with him?

  He didn’t want to think about all the drama with his mama right now. So he forgot about his knife and sat back down. He liked baseball, but Greasy grabbed Tommy and hugged him tight. Real up close and personal.

  “Let me go.”

  “I just want to hold you for a minute.”

  Tommy tried to reach for his blade but couldn’t move his arms. “Please let me go.” Tears rolled down his face.

  “Don’t be so fidgety, I’m going to let you go. I’ve got something to show you first.”

  Tommy tried to push Greasy off of him. When the weight of the man wouldn’t budge, Tommy screamed. He screamed several times that afternoon.

  Tommy looked away from Elizabeth as he finished his story. “He told my mother that he wanted to help us. A single woman couldn’t possibly raise a boy up to be a man without some help.” He made a disgusted grunt. “He took me to a couple baseball games, and to the YMCA to play basketball.” He shook his head. Tears ran down his face as he turned back to Elizabeth. “I never told anybody this story before. But you need to remember this, Elizabeth, it was the deacon of my church who took me to his house and showed me what disgusting old men do to innocent little boys. So yes, I did say that I was turning my life over to the Lord, and I’ve been trying. But how can you blame me for having certain urges when the church introduced them to me?”

  “Tommy, you still had a choice. You don’t have to become a part of what was done to you.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we do what we were born to do.”

  Elizabeth walked over to her friend. The tears on her face were no longer for herself, but for the child that had been tainted. For the pain and the shame Tommy had carried all these years. She hugged him and allowed him to cry on her shoulder, as she thought about injustice and broken spirits. She thought about Kenneth and how he was taken away from her. She shook her head in disgust. God should have protected them from it all. Reality struck her like an overdue bill.

  “I guess the great Watchman in the sky failed to look after you too,” she told Tommy as her tears dropped onto his lap.

  ***

  At home, Elizabeth sat on the floor in the middle of her living room. She lived in the Sandstone development with Kelly Price and other well-known celebrities. That fact had always made her proud. Tonight, she didn’t care. Tommy followed her home and asked to come in, but she refused. He finally gave up and went back across town to his apartment. Elizabeth felt numb and sick to her stomach at the same time. The only thing that comforted her was the silence, the fact that she was all-alone in this big house; no one talking to her, no one asking her questions.

  Despite herself, she laughed at the irony of it all. The quietness and loneliness of this place was the reason she decided to marry Tommy, but he was too confused for her. So now she longed for silence once again.

  “Oh, Kenneth, why’d you have to leave me?”

  She could see Kenneth lying in bed with her. Telling her how much he loved and needed her.

  “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 grabbed at her heart. Tears freely rolled down her face as they had so many nights before. “I’d say you’re a liar, Kenneth. You, Tommy, and all the rest. Nobody ever means anything they say. They’re just words.”

  “You’ve got to go on. You’ve got to do the work the Lord has anointed you for,” Nina would tell her, as Elizabeth lay frail and dying inside in that miserable hospital room a couple years ago. Many people from her church in Dayton told her that Kenneth had encouraged them to be better Christians. For that she was glad. She only wished that someone could tell her how to get over this empty feeling. “This is not the program I signed up for, Lord!” she screamed at her Savior.

  Ring, ring. Elizabeth’s hands went to her head. She hated that telephone. People were always calling at the worse times. She stood and walked the distance to the telephone, now feeling the weight of an enormous headache.

  “Hi, Elizabeth,” Nina said.

  “Oh, how are you?”

  “I’m well. I’ve got a few projects that I’m working on, but I called to check on you. Is everything all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Okay. Let me put it this way. Tommy just called me. He said that the two of you just had some kind of blow up.”

  Elizabeth massaged her temples. “
Did he tell you what the blow up was about?”

  “No he didn’t. But he did tell me that you just wrote a song called “Masquerade”. In the song you make comments about hurting, and being empty, but not being able to talk to anyone about it. Elizabeth, you do know that you can talk to me, don’t you?”

  She was fuming. “Tommy is making a big deal over nothing. It’s just a song, and besides, he needs to worry about his own problems.”

  “Why don’t you come home for a little while?”

  “My home is in Atlanta now, Nina.”

  Silence filled the line, as if Nina was trying to find the best way to say something to her friend. “But your children are in Dayton. Your mom has had them for three months now.”

  “I know that.”

  “They miss you. They get upset when you leave them. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Mind your own business, ” she told her friend, then hung up the phone. She walked toward her bedroom holding her head. “I need some sleeping pills.” She took six at one time the other day. Maybe she would finish off the bottle tonight.

  “I’m a wreck.” She sucked on her bottom lip and threw her hands in the air. “Couldn’t You have looked out for my family? Oh, God, how do You expect me to keep going? Every day is a struggle for me. Three years hasn’t changed anything. I still wake up wishing for death.”

  She found the pills. Tightened her grip on them. “I go to bed hoping that I will just stop breathing. How can I take care of my children when I am so messed up?”

  She sat down on her bed, picked up the phone and dialed her mother’s house. Erin answered on the first ring. “Hey, baby how’s it going?”

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Why are you calling? You bored or something?”

  Elizabeth had had all the disrespect she could take. The older Erin got, the worse her mouth became. “Now look here, young lady, I’m not up for your mess. So cut it right now.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Why are you upset with me, Erin? You know I’ve been on tour.”

  “Well, go back on tour. We don’t need you,” Erin said, then slammed down the phone.

  Elizabeth clutched the phone to her chest and sobbed. “I can’t do anything right. Even my children hate me.”

  She pulled herself off the bed and went to the bathroom to fill her glass with tap water. Sorrow enveloped her as she looked at the pills in her hand. No one would miss me.

  She opened the pill bottle and poured the contents in her hand. She walked into her bedroom, and through tear soaked eyes, she stared at the life-size portrait of her husband. “If only I could be with you,” she said as she swallowed the pills.

  Now peace would come. She was sure of it.

  Brogan, Elizabeth’s angel had his back against the wall. Literally. Two massive demons with outstretched fangs were whupping on him like he stole something. Brogan kept hoping that Elizabeth would pray – prayer gave him more power. He would have been able to stop her from taking those pills if she had just prayed before taking them. But demonic forces were blocking him from helping his charge because he didn’t have the strength to fight them off.

  8

  He woke up panting. “Aha, aha, aha!” He frantically searched the room. Something had happened to his family. Just what, he was not sure of, but something had gone terribly wrong.

  Nathan, Kenneth’s angel stood at the head of Kenneth’s bed. He had been there most of the night massaging Kenneth’s temples; bringing back to his remembrance the things he should never have forgotten.

  He had been plagued with nightmares. Always something following, or tracking him in his sleep. He had gotten used to scary images visiting him at night, but this dream was different.

  He threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. “Aaarrrh!” he screamed as the sudden move jarred his injured leg. He struggled to get on his knees despite the pain. “Lord, my God, something is wrong. I don’t know what has happened. Please, Father God, look in on my family. And Lord, please help me to remember where I belong. My children need me.”

  They need Me more.

  “Then go to them, Lord. Be to them what I cannot.” Getting off his knees was a slow, painful process. As the pain seared through his body, he wanted to scream out loud. He sat on his bed and felt an incredible need to cry for himself and his family. Years of unshed tears brimmed in his eyes. He tried not to release them. “Buck up,” he told himself. Then he saw one of his daughters. She was so excited. Couldn’t have been more than five years old.

  “Daddy, you’re home!” His daughter ran toward him.

  He put his briefcase down and knelt to pull her into a tight bear hug. “Yes baby, Daddy’s home.”

  He let the tears flow. Oh, how he wanted to be home. Needed to be near his children. They were in trouble, and he was lost in the labyrinth of his mind.

  A knock at his door pulled him out of his thoughts. “Come in.”

  Debra stepped into his small quarters. “Hey, I just stopped in to check on you.”

  Silence.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He wiped his face. “Everything, but nothing that I can fix.”

  “Andrew, is there anything that I can do? You know that Brad and I would do anything for you. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  Debra was a good person. She had helped him in his time of need, but only God could help him now. Still, he told her his troubles. “It’s my family. Something has happened to them.”

  She plopped down on the bed, eyes wide, mouth open. “I don’t understand, Andrew. You don’t remember who your family is, how can you know they’re in trouble?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t tell you, but for quite some time now, I have been having more frequent flashbacks. I know that I have a wife and two little girls, but I still don’t know who they are.”

  “Andrew, that’s wonderful news,” she said cautiously. “But if you’re only seeing flashbacks and you still don’t know who they are, how can you know they are in trouble?”

  “God speaks to me through dreams. As I slept last night, I saw my wife and my children. They were falling off a… a cliff. I tried to reach out to them, but I was too late.”

  Debra lightly put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Andrew. God will take care of your family.”

  “There’s something else,” he told her, looking away. “My wife. I’m worried that she might have done something to my children.”

  9

  She couldn’t even kill herself right. Tubes were in her arms. As she awoke, she started to pull them out, but her attention was drawn away from the tubes in her arm to the wall. Several poster-size messages were hung around her hospital room. One of the posters read:

  Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trials that come to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, and if you suffer with Him, you will also reign with Him.

  Elizabeth turned from that poster to read yet another: For I wreckon that the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.

  “What glory can come from my suffering?” she spat the question in the air. She turned away from the offending poster and saw two more plastered on the opposite wall: For I have been young and I have been old, but I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor His seed begging bread.

  The other read: A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

  She closed her eyes, determined to shut God out. Wasn’t it enough that she had failed to kill herself? She was still alive, still breathing. Couldn’t God just leave her alone and let her suffer through this the best she could?

  “So, how’s our patient today?” a too cheerful nurse in a Sponge Bob smock asked as she walked into the room.

  Elizabeth kept her eyes shut, hoping she would take the hint and go away.

 
No such luck. “I’ve got some medicine for you, Mrs. Underwood. You need to sit up so you can take it.”

  “I don’t want it,” Elizabeth told her without opening her eyes.

  Still too cheery for Elizabeth, and probably the rest of the depressed world too, the nurse said, “Oh, but this will make you feel better.”

  “What part of I don’t want it don’t you understand?”

  The nurse stood her ground. “Doctor’s orders. Now open wide.”

  “I said no! Do you speak a da English? No, means no!”

  “Whew, what’s up with all that ‘tude?” Nina said.

  Elizabeth glared at Nina as she stood in the doorway of her hospital room. “Did you put all these posters on my wall?”

  “Michael made the posters. I helped him put them up.”

  “Take them down.”

  “I can’t. You’re going to have to speak to your brother about that.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “If you’re not going to help me, why did you even bother to show up?”

  Nina walked over to her bed. The nurse left. “I’m here because I care about what happens to you. Now look, I’ve got to get back to Dayton tonight, but before I leave, we’re going to talk about some things.”

  “I don’t want to talk right now, Nina. I’m mad, and I want to stay mad.”

  “Be mad, that’s okay. But it’s no reason to try and kill yourself.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” she lied. “I just wanted to sleep. Maybe sleep forever, I don’t know.”

  Nina bent down and hugged her. As Elizabeth embraced her friend, she began to sob. “What happened to me, Nina?”

  “Oh, the same thing that’s happened to us all; Life.”

  “Mmh, ain’t that the truth.”

  Nina moved a chair closer to the bed and sat down. “It’s more like a kick in the head.”

  They both laughed. They reminisced on days gone by. They talked about how unsure they were of this Christian walk in the early days, but they had been able to see the work that God had performed through them. They talked about the changes in their lives. They laughed some more, and then Elizabeth began to cry.