The Pastor smiles at me, and asks, “Are you enjoying this blessed day?”
I tell him, “Yes, Sir.”
As nice a man as he is, there’s still a part of me that can’t help but wonder if Pastor would greet me and bless me, if he didn’t want to talk to Mama… if I was just some lonely kid… a lost kid. He is just a man of flesh and blood. He’s not perfect. Still, I shouldn’t question his niceness. I should be more perfect. So, I ask Pastor, “How are you doing?”
He gives me a “full-of-the-Lord” type response that makes some people roll their eyes. He says, “I’m feeling blessed and highly favored.” I don’t give such talk much thought. It is what it is. He’s in love with God. So be it. I listen as he tells me how he’s on his way back to the church. Pastor asks me if I’ll be attending the church’s summer camp again this year. I tell him that I’m not. Mama didn’t sign me up.
“How is your mom?”
“She’s fine. She’s upstairs in her studio.”
“Ah, working on her art.”
I should tell him the truth, that’s she’s lost in thought with some old portfolio. But I let what he says go unanswered. Even though he might be able to help her, I don’t tell Pastor about Mama and her sadness. But his smile remains bright. Mama’s unseen presence is enough for him. That I can speak on her behalf, satisfies him. He tells me, “You have a blessed day.”
Pastor leaves, and as soon as he does, the gate to the basement apartment slowly swings open. It’s the Old Man. He steps outside and looks up at me. “Everything all right?” He looks off in the direction of where Pastor is headed. “Was that a stranger?”
I assure him that the voice he heard was not that of a stranger. I tell the Old Man that it was the voice of someone I know. I tell him that it’s the pastor from our church.
The Old Man nods respectfully, but still asks, “So, you’re alright?”
“I’m good.” I feel as though I can talk like my regular self around the Old Man.
The Old Man seems satisfied. He sees the book in my lap, and asks, “What are you reading?”
I tell the Old Man, “Wolf and Boy.” And then I ask him, “Do you like to read?”
“My eyes don’t work as well as they used to, but I like to hear a good story. Tell me about the one you’re reading.”
There’s not much to tell the Old Man, I just started reading Wolf and Boy. Still, I tell him about what I’ve read so far. I tell him it’s a story about a wolf that has brought fear to a village. How everyone lived in fear of this wolf except for one person… a boy.
“Perhaps you can read me your story. You’ll be my personal storyteller.”
He takes a five-dollar bill from his pocket. He leans forward, and in a hushed voice, says, “A little something for each day that you read to me.”
“You don’t have to pay me. Mama wouldn’t like that.”
“Our little secret.”
I take the money and put it in my pocket. It’s just a little something to help buy ice cream when the truck comes around. There’s no harm in that. Besides, we all have secrets. Mama has hers. Now I have mine.
“So, read on,” says the Old Man. “Tell me more of this story, Wolf and Boy.”
∏
Living in the village was a boy, who had lived there all of his life. And yet no one really knew this boy. I mean, he spoke to folks, and they spoke to him. But no one really understood him or cared to. Even his parents were at a loss to understand his ways and his thoughts. So, they mostly humored him. And the boy would lie awake in his bed at night, wondering about his life and why he felt so lost among the villagers. And sometimes, he would cry, and sometimes, he would be angry. But when he heard the call of the wolf on the mountain, right away he knew that here was a voice the likes of which he’d not heard before. Here was a voice that spoke to him of the feelings no one else knew that he had. And lying there and listening with every fiber of his body, he knew he had to seek out this wolf, and know from it, why it cried in the night. Oh, he’d heard the stories of the teeth, the tongue, the eyes so red and burning, but nothing would do except that he had to know that wolf for himself.
∏
“Why are people always so afraid? What are they scared of?”
This is my question to the Old Man.
“They’re afraid of things they cannot see. They’re scared of things they don’t understand.”
“Yeah, but why are they like that?”
“Because the message of fear is everywhere… on TV, in school, and in the church. ‘Don’t eat this, don’t eat that, it will kill you’…’; ‘Children, you better pass the test or you’ll get left behind at school…’, ‘Hey, slave worker, you better conform to the soulless routines of your job or you’ll be fired…’, ‘To my congregation, fear God. Don’t fail in loving Him the way I’ve ordered you, because if you don’t there’s a severe price to pay’.”
“I like the boy of this story. He’s brave.”
“Like you, I imagine,” says Old Man.
“I’m not afraid of anything. Mama says people are not born with the spirit of fear.”
“Your mama has it right. We’re not meant to be fearful. It has no place if you want to survive in this world.”
I ask the Old Man if he wants me to keep reading.
“Tomorrow,” he tells me. “Same time. It’ll be our story hour. Remember, our secret,” he says.
The Old Man quietly goes back inside, leaving me all by myself again. But I no longer feel so alone.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Hannah has a dream.
It is cold—the damp, grating cold of late autumn. Darkness makes a slow approach, as the sun begins to set well past the horizon. Hannah stands in a nearly vacant schoolyard with only a handful of children by her side. Slowly, each child slips away from her care, as they run into their parents’ arms. In the short distance, Hannah sees her father standing alone on the other side of a tall, wired fence. He motions for her to come to him.
The metal fence divides the space between them. The father gives Hannah a warm smile. “I am pleased with you. Do you remember what I told you?”
“Yes, yes, always stay on the Road Less Traveled.”
“Never stray off its path.”
“Yes, I know.”
The father points to a child waiting alone by the school’s red doors. The child sits next to the door, reading a book. The father says, “You left one behind.”
Hannah walks over to a little girl. She is eight years old. Her skin is the shade of chestnut, and she has raven-colored hair that flows, coarse and untamed. Hannah does not know this child, so she asks, “Where did you come from, princess?”
The little girl looks up from her book, smiles, and says, “I have always been here.” Then she nods in the direction of the fence where Hannah once stood. “Your father, what did he say?”
“He was reminding me to stay on the path he told me to.”
“Is that all he said?”
“And that he is pleased with me.”
The little girl returns to her book, but not before saying, “He is pleased because you don’t know the things he knows.”
Hannah is startled by the harsh words coming from a mere child. “I only need to know my father, and that which he knows to be right for me.”
“He wants you to stay like me… a child. He’ll never have to tell you the Truth if you stay like a child. Grown-ups never tell the Truth.”
“Why do you say such things, little girl?”
“Because I see the way they lie every day.”
“Lies? Even here at school, little girl?”
“Yes, especially here at school. This place is just like any place in the world. It’s not a place where they’ll ever teach us the Truth. They won’t teach us what we need to know to be a tr
ue human being, a strong human being. They pacify us. They teach us easy things that don’t really matter. They teach us things that only end up glorifying them.”
Hannah looks to where her father once stood. She wants to ask him if he has hidden the Truth. But he is no longer there. So, Hannah turns to the little girl to tell her that she doesn’t know that of which she speaks. But the young child has vanished too.
Hannah awakes and dreams no more.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
It seems Mama is having a hard time falling asleep. She must be having bad dreams—again. And so, like on those other nights when she can’t go to sleep, I hear Mama go outside to sit on our front steps to take in some night air. That leaves me free to do as I please.
I sneak upstairs to her studio. I am searching for that black portfolio. The one Mama was looking at earlier. I see that it’s set on a paint-splattered chair next to a bare easel in the corner. It has about twenty pages for artwork. I begin leafing through it. I see nothing. Perhaps this is the wrong book. But I keep going, until I notice that there is indeed work about halfway through. It’s not Mama’s work, but the work of a little girl. There is no name on the paper, but the little girl has drawn a picture of her family at a park with grass, but neither trees nor sun. Perhaps it’s during a picnic. I can’t really say. But there are arrows pointed towards each member of her family and labels—Mommy, Brother, Sister, Grandma, and Me.
On the next page, there is a piece of writing. It’s titled, “My Quiet Place.”
My quiet place is in my soul because when I’m mad sometimes, I talk to myself. When I look for a church book I feel very happy because I know that GOD is telling my soul to communicate with me somehow. I know He is watching my every move and listening to every word and thought.
Beneath the writing is a drawing of a girl who is saying with a smile, “I love myself.” Along with the illustration of the girl, is a book with the title All About My Soul. Next to this is a drawing of an open book with jagged lines of pretend words and a heart in the middle of the page.
I turn the portfolio page. There is nothing else, except more blank pages. The little girl on these pages is a mystery to me; just like all of the students that Mama teaches. All I know is that this little girl is like all of the kids Mama teaches—she is from a place called Gilead.
Mama teaches in a school that is in the heart of the projects, the Gilead Houses. It’s a decaying brick city of small houses clustered around one huge tower of a building. I don’t know much about Gilead because Mama doesn’t talk about the place. Mama doesn’t talk about her students. She never says anything good or anything bad. Not to me during the Quiet Hour, and not to her friends. I guess you can say Mama’s silence reveals a lot about how she feels about life there. It’s a place so bad that Mama has to hide to away a little girl’s work up in her studio.
I close the portfolio and place it back where I found it. There is nothing for me to know about this little girl. She is just another mystery. She’s just another lost child of Gilead.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
The Old Man is stirred from his sleep.
There is a rustling of footsteps from the floor above, and then the soft and muted creak of the front door as it opens slowly. The Old Man feels a presence outside his window. When he peeks through the blinds, he sees Hannah taking a seat on the front stoop. The Old Man glances over at his clock and sees that it is late, a little less than an hour past midnight. The Old Man goes outside to join her.
Hannah gives him a warm, though weary, smile as he takes a seat by her side. She says to the Old Man, “I know why you’ve come back. You wanted to see what became of that little girl you used to know.”
The Old Man stays quiet. Hannah then asks, “What did you expect to find?”
“I was hoping to see that perfect smile that I always remembered.”
“Have you?”
“What I see now is a soft smile, a quiet smile.”
“What more were you hoping for?”
“A little joy behind the smile.”
Hannah looks away from the Old Man, choosing to stare up at stars splashed across the night sky. “There is joy in my house. There always has been.”
The Old Man asks Hannah, “Do you remember how you and I used to talk? You were always so full of questions.”
“Questions that always went unanswered.”
This makes the Old Man smile. “What would you like to know?”
“You don’t have answers to the questions I now have.”
“You never know. Try me.”
Hannah shifts uneasily. Finally, she says, “I wonder whether or not we can really protect our children from the bad things of this world.”
“You shouldn’t trouble yourself with questions you know the answer to.”
“My father told me that he could. And I have told my own child that I can. But it’s not the truth.”
“That’s because the truth is hard to accept. You can’t protect your children from the bad things of this world. It’s something you already know.”
“So, should we just give up? Not even try.”
“You never stop trying. The truth is not set in stone. The truth can change.”
“I don’t understand. How can the truth change?”
“People’s idea of God has changed. God was once seen as vengeful and spiteful. Then a new book comes along, and now God is defined by one word—Love. As man elevates his thinking, he redefines the truth.”
“Men redefine the truth in order to justify their own aims and desires.”
“Well, maybe we can just hope for a day when men elevate the way they behave towards one another. That will be their aim and desire.”
“I can’t imagine people ever being concerned with elevating their thinking and elevating the way they act towards one another.”
“Well, you will have to believe they will if you ever want the answer to your question to become, ‘Yes, I can protect my children from the bad things in this world’.”
“That will mean evil no longer exists in the world. It will mean that evil won’t win.”
“Doesn’t sound very likely,” says the Old Man, just as much to himself as to Hannah.
For a moment, the words seem to go unacknowledged, until Hannah asks, “The world will never make any sense, will it?”
“It doesn’t have to. Little children need an answer for everything. They need everything to make sense to them. But as you get older, you come to learn that it’s best not to go around asking so many questions. Maybe it’s time for grown-ups to stop acting like children, always asking, ‘Why? Why? Why? Why are things the way they are?’ Trying to answer the ‘whys’ of life will only aggravate you. In the end, needing to know ‘why,’ doesn’t matter.”
“Sounds like you don’t think life has meaning,” says Hannah.
“I don’t concern myself with assigning meaning. I just try to accept that life is maddening... unexplainable. There’s pleasure. There’s pain. That’s its meaning. Just embrace it. Let it be so. The meaning of life is beyond our understanding. Once we all realize that we don’t know much about anything, there’ll be less pain and heartache.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
There’s a giant tree that stands tall and strong, right in the middle of the park. Its branches are clustered together and stretch out far and wide, letting just the right amount of sunshine burst through its branches and leaves. You can’t feel the blazing heat of the sun. The tree is untouched. There are no names carved into its trunk. Nor is there any graffiti. It is perfect.
The park is a quiet and peaceful place. It’s a perfect spot to just soothe your mind. I think that’s why Mama likes coming here with me. She brings her sketchpad and finds a nice, quiet seat on one of the benches, set just outside
the wire fence leading into the park. The park is a place where she is able to just chill and relax. Mama lets me race ahead. She says I can do so because she has to gather her art materials. But I know Mama is just being nice. She doesn’t want people to think I’m a mama’s boy.
My new friend, Pretty Girl, is by the swing set again. She is the only one in the park. To look at Pretty Girl now, you wouldn’t think it’s the same person. She is swinging high and she is swinging with no fear. When I ride up to her, she smiles.
She wears the same pink and green outfit from yesterday. Still clean, still pressed, still looking almost brand new, but the same clothes, nonetheless. Pretty Girl still has on the cute engraved anklet with the fine diamonds. I point to it, and ask, “Where did you get that?”
“It found me. It was just lying there in this other playground I used to go to.”
“You mean somebody lost it.”
“I like to say somebody left it just for me.”
I want to tell Pretty Girl that nobody would do something crazy like that, but I don’t want to be cruel. Besides, she’s soaring so high now. She may not be able to hear me.
Pretty Girl nods in the direction of one of the park benches. I steal a look around the giant tree, and see that Mama has just sat down. She is flipping through her sketchpad.
“Your Mama’s beautiful.”
Before I can ask Pretty Girl how she knows that’s my Mama, she says, “You look like her. The only difference is, she is sad. You should tell your mom that she doesn’t have to be. Everything is OK.”
Pretty Girl is smart. Someone who, like the Old Man says, seems mindful of things around her. She has Mama pegged right. Mama is a little sad. I want to tell Pretty Girl that Mama hasn’t always been like that. It’s just been a slight change I’ve noticed recently—it’s a sadness that she’ll slip into every now and then. I want to tell Pretty Girl that Mama is usually happy whenever I’m around her. That she always, no matter how sad she may feel inside, tries to smile for me. This is what I want to tell Pretty Girl, but I’m distracted by what I see at the other end of the park. The Thin Man is standing by the park’s back gate. He, too, looks the same as before, his face again hidden by his baseball cap. He keeps very still. He doesn’t have to motion for Pretty Girl to come.
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