Child of Gilead

by Douglas S. Reed

  Maybe Mama wants to hear a truth about going to God for and by yourself. Or maybe she wants a truth that speaks of a Man of God, who is not part of the church… perhaps somebody amid The Madness who could be a blessing.

  Who knows? Religion and church stuff get kind of complicated.

  ∏

  There’s a stranger, an Old Man, sitting on the steps of our home.

  He’s short and sort of skinny. The Old Man is dressed in faded jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker. He has a salt-and-pepper goatee that’s nicely trimmed—looking kind of cool, kind of gangsta. He seems OK, except for a scary, kind of nasty, jagged scar by his right cheek. And the old man has eyes that are strong and steady. They grab hold of Mama and me, never letting us out of his sight.

  The Old Man, this stranger, has a switchblade that he’s using to slice an apple he’s eating. He flips it and I can hear the click as it closes. He reaches for a large duffel bag set by his feet. He places the switchblade inside and then takes a small white hand towel from the bag’s side pocket. The Old Man wipes away a bead of sweat trickling down from the top of his shiny, bald head. Then, after neatly folding the towel and tucking it away in his back pocket, the stranger finally says, “Good afternoon, princess.”

  “Good afternoon,” Mama says, politely but kind of cautiously.

  With mischief in his eyes, the Old Man then asks, “Do you still know me?”

  Without blinking, Mama studies the Old Man. Then real cool-like, she says, “Of course. You’re from the old candy shop. You were friends with my father.”

  ∏

  Mama needs to talk to the Old Man alone. I want to stay, but I know better than to ask. Mama doesn’t like the idea of me getting too familiar with grown-ups. So, I make my way up the stairs to the second floor. But I stop halfway and take a seat on the steps. I lean forward and peek through the wooden banister. I’m being nosy. The large sliding door to the living room is open enough for me to spot the Old Man on our couch. Mama walks up to him carrying drinks on a tray. She hands one to him and then takes the other glass and walks over to her seat on the windowsill. I watch them as they sit quietly, sipping on their iced teas.

  Mama watches the Old Man take a long swig of his drink. Finally, she says, “I remember how you would sit in the back of the candy shop on your stool, just watching everything. Sometimes, you would take a broom and sweep, but you never said a word to anyone. Kids were afraid of you.”

  The Old Man laughs, “That’s the way your father wanted it. He thought it would keep trouble away.”

  I know what’s coming next—silence. Because whenever there’s talk of Mama’s father, something happens: a dead, lifeless stare falls across my mama’s face. Kind of like a mask of shame and disappointment. But Mama doesn’t hide behind that veil for long. She eventually speaks up, although it’s real quiet-like, “That was a long time ago.”

  It looks like the Old Man is going to rent out the apartment. I listen to Mama remind him of the rules about staying at our house: no smoking, no loud music, no pets. Pretty basic stuff like that. Mama doesn’t ask him a whole lot of questions like she’s done with other houseguests. I don’t hear her ask him, “Where have you been?” or “Where do you plan to work?” or “Who else do you still know out here?” Mama is just accepting this man who she knows from the old days.

  And the Old Man has no questions for her. They’re getting reacquainted without words. It’s kind of weird. They sit there almost like it’s the Quiet Hour. Mama waits for the Old Man to finish his drink, and then says, “Let me show you to your old apartment.”

  ∏

  They called my grandfather the Candy Man.

  He was an ex-soldier who, after The War, came to own a candy store in that place Mama now calls The Madness. He married a woman from the Island of the Sargasso Sea. Everybody called her the Pretty Lady Dame. The Candy Man didn’t live all that long. He died a few months before I was born. Mama doesn’t share many stories about her father. Mama only talks of how he was a quiet man. Strong. But she doesn’t mean the diesel kind of strong because he wasn’t a really big man. I can tell that for myself from the few pictures Mama has of him around the house. Rather, Mama says, Candy Man was strong because he knew his place in the world. He stayed in his lane. Kind of like knowing the path that you’re supposed to be on and not letting anybody knock you off course. There’s not more to share with you about the Candy Man. It is what it is.

  I’ve gotten used to the mystery that Mama has allowed the Pretty Lady Dame and the Candy Man to become. I’m just grateful and lucky that they graced the earth. I don’t know if much of who I am is because of my grandparents. But I can say that much of what I have is because of them. This house is theirs—paid in full. That means Mama can make life for me nice with the money she earns from her job. And then the money we get from tenants is just gravy.

  Still, I guess you can say that not knowing much about my grandparents makes part of me a mystery too. All I know is that I’m the son of Hannah and a father unknown. Since that’s not much, I can add that I’m the grandson of the Pretty Lady Dame and of a man they called the ‘Candy Man’, who owned a candy store in that place Mama calls ‘The Madness’. Doesn’t sound like much of a story.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Hannah stands quietly outside the Boy’s bedroom and waits patiently for her son to fall asleep. It does not take long. Assured that the Boy is sleeping, Hannah walks downstairs to the room where she spends her Quiet Hour. She finds her seat on the windowsill’s ledge and gazes out onto a starless night sky. Hannah thinks about the Old Man who has come back. She remembers how he had left ten years earlier, without so much as a goodbye. At the time, she didn’t give his departure too much thought. It had been a time of change. Her father had died, and a little boy was about to be born.

  And so years passed, and Hannah had never asked her mother, the Pretty Lady Dame, whatever became of him. Still, there were times when she thought of the Old Man, and of those days when he sat quietly and peacefully in the rear of the shop. He was their soldier, a protective spirit over the store.

  Hannah remembers how the children of the neighborhood feared the soldier because he never smiled. But Hannah, the little girl, knew that was not so. The soldier had a smile that seemed reserved only for her. Hannah would see it during those times she would spend alone with him in the stillness of the candy shop’s back room while her father or the Pretty Lady Dame tended to business out front. His smile was easy and always subtle. It was one, Hannah remembers, that had a feeling of kindness behind it.

  Hannah thinks back upon the smile, and how she often sought to steal a conversation with the soldier before her mother or father finished their business out in the front of the shop.

  Who are you? Where are you from?

  Why does princess want to know?

  Because to my friends and me, you’re a mystery.

  If I told you I’m not from this place, and I told you I’m from somewhere far away, would that satisfy you and your friends?

  Then we’d ask, ‘Don’t you miss this place that’s far away from here?’

  Well, princess, I will tell you there’s nothing for me to miss. I like where I am. But maybe I’ll go back one day, to the place that’s far from here and reclaim what’s mine.

  Hurry, tell me more…

  But the soldier never did. The mother or father would rejoin them. Or someone would come into the shop to buy something. The soldier would go back to what he was doing, cleaning or restocking the back room. Or he would simply return to sitting on his stool and watching over the store. Hannah would no longer hear him call her princess. He would call her ‘Hannah’, if he called her anything at all. And the little game they played would be over too. No more asking questions that were never answered. The truth would remain outside her grasp.

  Hannah can’t help but smile to hersel
f. Not much has changed over the years. The Old Man is still a mystery to her, but he has returned, bringing a veil of solace and protection that is comforting to her.

  And Hannah knows—that this is good.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Curtains dance by an open window and awaken me from sleep. It is still early, but I am eager to get out of bed and do what it is all us children like to do—watch the bizarre and secretive doings of grown people.

  The house is silent. I walk up to Mama’s room. The door is open, so I glance inside. Mama doesn’t move. She is fast asleep. I make my way downstairs.

  In the kitchen, there’s a battered door. It opens to a narrow set of creaky stairs that lead down to the ground floor. At the bottom of the steps, I can see the slender hallway and the door to the Old Man’s apartment. I sit there at the top stairwell in the shadows, staring at his door. I hear voices coming from his apartment, so I take a step or two further down the stairs. The door to the apartment slowly opens and the Old Man slips into its crack. He studies me with those fierce eyes of his. “Come here,” he says.

  I do as I am told and walk to the bottom of the steps. The Old Man peers down at me and asks, “What are you looking for?”

  “I thought I heard voices.”

  The Old Man pushes open the door just a little more. “It’s just the TV.”

  He says it like it’s something I should have known. The Old Man opens the door a little wider and I see that it is indeed the TV. He’s watching the news. On the screen, I see a story about people wildin’ in some country far away from here. There’s news about bombs being dropped. There’s news of destruction to people’s homes and buildings. They show bloodied children laid out in the hospital, crying for their mamas. There are no images of any soldiers dying, just those of innocent kids getting hurt.

  I point to the TV screen and ask the Old Man, “What are they fighting about?”

  The Old Man doesn’t say anything right away. I guess there’s no easy answer, so he takes his time to respond. But finally, he says, “Well, one side believes they are protecting their people from terror. The other side thinks they’re rightfully fighting a country that’s been oppressing them for years. However, they’re really battling about something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re fighting over whose God is more powerful.”

  The Old Man is confusing me, so I ask, “Isn’t there just one God?”

  “That’s what people believe. But religion has come down to being nothing more than a fight for people to prove ‘My God is better than your God’.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would people be fighting about God? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “They’re fighting because they’ve forgotten what the purpose of religion is.”

  “Which is?”

  “To help people to understand.”

  “That’s it? Religion is meant to help people understand. Understand what?”

  “It’s meant to help us understand why we are here. To help us understand our destiny. But there are a lot of different religions, each believing they have the one true answer to that simple question—‘why are we here?’ So, people fight to impose their views on everyone else.”

  “What’s wrong with there being different paths that get you to the same place… to God?”

  “Any grown-up who says that is speaking as a child. They’re taking a position that’s simply meant not to offend. They know there is really only one truth, but no one knows what it is. So they talk of many paths. But you know, even if there were many paths, the question still remains: who is God?”

  “It sounds so confusing, even a little scary.”

  “Life is like that at times.” The Old Man nods in the direction of the steps. “You should go back upstairs. You don’t need to concern yourself with such thoughts. You’re just a child. Just know that your mama will work hard to never let anything bad happen to you. She lives to protect you from the bad things of this world.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The Old Man sends the Boy on his way. He watches the child ascend the stairs and step into the light of an open door. The Boy disappears, leaving the Old Man to fix his stare on the darkness that has returned to the passageway. He hears a woman’s voice call out to him.

  “You are capable of doing what I ask?”

  The Pretty Lady Dame appears, sitting atop the same steps in the shadows.

  “I’ve said it many times before, . You can’t transcend who you are.”

  “So, if you’re a victim, you’ll always be a victim? Poor? Disenfranchised? There’s no hope for you? You’re forever assigned that role?”

  “I talk of my true nature. I speak of the things I do that make me who I am. I talk of acknowledging that part of man’s nature that allows him to hunt, to kill even. You, though, speak of labels. You talk of the roles people allow themselves to be assigned by others. The essence of who you are does not come down to a label placed upon you by others. It does not come down to their single-word definition of you. But I suppose if you go through life accepting their labels and go through life acting poor and disenfranchised, if you always act like a victim, like you’re the sheep, then that is, in truth, who you are.”

  “This is not a family of victims. This is not a family of sheep. That is why I come to you.”

  “What about forgiveness. Are you not capable of it? Doesn’t your religion teach you that?”

  “My religion teaches me many things. But I only honor those things that satisfy my aims. Not the things that do not. Let my enemies go to the Candy Man for love and forgiveness. That is what he believes in.”

  “And that is a sign of weakness?”

  “Yes. I want someone strong who can put the fear of God in evil men. I want them to get on their knees and beg for their lives. Then I want them to know that their kind don’t win.”

  “So, you can live with the thing you’re asking me to do?’”

  “Yes. But you still haven’t answered whether or not you will do what it is I am asking.”

  “As I’ve told you before, I am the hunter. This is who I am. And so, I will do what you’ve asked.”

  Nothing more is said. The Pretty Lady Dame vanishes, and all that remains is Old Man and the truth of why he has returned to The City. “I will confront evil men who dare to cross my path and teach them—‘their kind do not win’.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  The Pretty Lady Dame lives in exile. There’s no other way to put it.

  Pretty Lady Dame left the City shortly after I was born, and never returned. Rarely do we speak by the phone, and never do we stay in touch by email. We simply communicate through words written on a page, usually a little note in a card. If it takes a couple of months between letters, so be it. The Pretty Lady Dame is old-school like that.

  Normally, I don’t have much to say. And neither does the Pretty Lady Dame. It seems as though we write to each other out of courtesy. Like we’re playing the roles assigned to us in a movie—the attentive grandmom and the dutiful grandson. The Pretty Lady Dame will write and ask the usual stuff, “How is my little warrior doing?” or “Are you behaving yourself?” I write back telling her that all’s good, and that, of course, I’ve been on my best behavior. I’ll tell her a little bit about school. Pretty Lady Dame ends every note telling me that she misses me and that she can’t wait to see me again.

  But there’s no telling when that will be. Mama and I don’t take a yearly vacation to see her. I have only spent time with the Pretty Lady Dame on one occasion, and that was three years ago, when I was seven. It was summer and Mama took me to visit her. The Pretty Lady Dame lives on a tiny island out there in the Sargasso Sea. It is always hot, and it is clean. It is pure—like a little piece of heaven on Earth. There’s not much to
do out there, but that’s OK. My routine that summer was this: wake up late, eat lunch, go to the beach, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, wake up late, eat lunch… you get the picture.

  It’s not a bad life because the people are friendly and the beaches are so beautiful, with crystal, clear blue waters and pink sands. And the Pretty Lady Dame lives in a small pink cottage with a white roof that overlooks the sea. The view from the Lady Dame’s home is spectacular. I remember there were many days when I would sit alone with the Pretty Lady Dame, just gazing out to the ocean. She’d never sit beside me, always just slightly behind, and over my left shoulder. We wouldn’t say much. We’d just soak up the beauty of it all. Most days, the turquoise water was calm, and I’d sit there alongside the Pretty Lady Dame watching the waves gently breaking against the outer reefs that dot the coastline. But some days, the sea would look furious, and you could no longer see the reefs because the white caps from the waves hid them. One day I said to the Pretty Lady Dame, “Why does the sea seem so angry?”

  The Pretty Lady Dame said nothing. She didn’t offer up an opinion of her own. I assumed she hadn’t heard me. The Pretty Lady Dame is a woman of few words. That is something I came to learn during that visit. Often times, we’d sit in silence when she drove us across the island or when we sat around the dinner table, just she, Mama and me. So not hearing her speak right away didn’t surprise me. But she was sitting so close that I knew she had to have heard me. And there was something about the silence that was too long and awkward. Almost like she was refusing to acknowledge me. So, I glanced over my shoulder, and I could see that she was looking my way. The Pretty Lady Dame was staring through me with that look—the same one I see in Mama whenever she talks about her father. It’s a look that I’ve come to fear because it’s a look devoid of love. It’s all disapproval. If I was brave, I would have asked, “Why do you look at me that way? What have I done for you to look at me with such venom?” But I didn’t ask. I don’t want to live with a truth that tells me my own blood hates me. I’d rather live with my own truth. So, I told myself that the Pretty Lady Dame had something else on her mind. I didn’t ask the question again. I just let the moment go and let the question fade away