One of the Good Ones

by Maika Moulite

  “You’re going to miss it all,” Derek says quietly, snapping me out of my reverie.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Your eyes have been shut nearly the entire ride, and we’ve just left. You’re going to miss the whole trip if you keep that up.”

  I look out the window and see cars whizzing past. Trees line the street here and there like uniformed soldiers stationed a few feet from one another. There’s not much else.

  “How’d you know my earphones aren’t on?” I ask Derek.

  “Oh. Well. Your homeroom was right next to mine this year. You’d always sit on the floor waiting for your teacher to get there before class started and talk with your classmates with those big headphones you’ve got over your ears. But as soon as that guy Quincy would sit down next to you and try to get your attention, your music was suddenly too loud for you to hear anything he said. Besides. You’re always observing. It’s the actress in you.”

  I say nothing but try not to smile. I’m surprised he noticed.

  * * *

  A few hours later, we’re nearing our exit and Genny tells us that we’ll be arriving at our first place soon. She’s chattering excitedly about nothing, and I can tell she’s anxious. It’s one thing to be driving along I-55, but a whole other to get to the inaugural stop on Kezi’s list. We are really doing this.

  My own palms are sweating now. All these weeks and months without my sister have passed so slowly, each day dragging along as time stretches further and further away from the last moment I saw her, spoke to her. Will I one day forget the sound of her voice? Will I be able to remember the sparkling sound of her laughter only when I’m secretly tuned in to her now-dormant YouTube page, crying alone in my bedroom?

  Genny exits the highway, and we see a sign that says Welcome to Springfield, Illinois. Soon the car is slowing, and we have finally arrived. I look out the window to see a modestly sized motel with its windows boarded up. The pale pink paint that once covered the establishment has chipped into a million tiny splinters of neglect.

  We all pile out of the car and stand in front of the building. A faded sign on what appears to be the front door reads Ms. Ebony’s Bed & Breakfast.

  “Are you sure we’ve got the right place?” Derek asks as he looks up at the building, using his hand to shield the sun from his eyes.

  “That’s what Kezi has here on the list,” Ximena says, double-checking the journal in her hand.

  Genny opens up the small backpack that she brought with her on the trip. She rustles around in it and finally pulls out a familiar light green colored paperback, the Green Book. The pamphlet is filled with oversized sticky notes, and Genny flips to a pink one with a big number one scrawled in the top right-hand corner. My heart flutters at the sight of Kezi’s handwriting, and I feel my throat close up. As I look away to collect myself, I admit that a tinge of jealousy has washed over me.

  Why does Genny get to hold on to some of the last written notes that Kezi left behind? I know I was reluctant about joining this road trip but, now that I’m here, I’m being forced to come to terms with the fact that my relationship with Kezi was even worse than I thought. All this time, our bond had been stretched so tight that it was at the brink of snapping altogether, and I never once stopped to acknowledge that, to do my part to keep it intact. And it was my fault. Whenever Kezi mentioned her birthday or graduation plans, I would brush them aside, because I didn’t think we had anything in common. Deep down I always hoped that maybe when we were older we would really get to know each other. That we would have more time. But as we stand staring at this decrepit building, I realize that I have unwittingly signed myself up to feel guilty over and over again by coming on this trip. My punishment for being a terrible sister.

  Genny clears her throat, and I’m forced to look at her. Kezi’s favorite sibling.

  “Don’t forget to record,” Genny says to me. I stare at her for a few seconds and then remember that we are supposed to be chronicling our trip on Kezi’s YouTube page. Genny, Ximena, and Derek wait as I walk back to the car and retrieve Kezi’s old camera. I hold it gingerly in my hands, remembering how she’d worked so hard to be able to buy it. Soon, I’m standing beside them again with the camera ready to go.

  Genny looks down at the sticky note in her hand and reads aloud. “All right y’all. We are standing in front of Ms. Ebony’s Bed & Breakfast. This used to be the go-to motel for any Black person stopping in Springfield during the Jim Crow Era. Victor Hugo Green, the creator of the Green Book, wrote that it was his hope that someday his guidebook would no longer have to be published because Black patrons would be welcome everywhere. And once the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, things started to change. Unfortunately, many of the businesses that were once thriving beacons in the community shut down, since their patrons were now able to frequent the once whites-only establishments. Less than five percent of the businesses in the Green Book remain open today.”

  “So...if this place is out of business, where are we gonna stay?” I ask.

  “Clearly not here, Happi,” Genny says. “It’s a history lesson.”

  “Yup. Kezi definitely organized this road trip,” Ximena says with a tiny grin. Derek nods silently beside her.

  “No doubt about that,” Genny replies. “The hotel we’re actually staying at isn’t too far. I recommend we all get a full night’s rest, because we’re going to head out pretty early tomorrow morning. We have to make a quick stop before we continue on our trip.”

  “Quick stop where?” I ask. I do not want this little excursion lasting any longer than it needs to.

  “Mom wants us to visit Aunt Leslie and Uncle Clyde on behalf of her and Dad before we get to St. Louis.”

  “Uncle Clyde. Uncle Clyde. Why does that name sound familiar?” Derek asks.

  “He’s the uncle with that super hardcore church Kezi told us about,” Ximena reminds Derek. “He’s married to her mom’s younger sister.”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty...conservative,” Genny says.

  I snort. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

  “Look, it’s not my idea, believe me. I tried everything to get us out of it, but Mom wouldn’t change her mind,” Genny says. “I’ve consoled myself by thinking about Aunt Leslie’s cooking though. You know how good her peach cobbler is! We’ll just have to put up with Uncle Clyde for a few hours and then we can eat some delicious food. It’ll be our prize for dealing with his ass.”

  I look at Genny skeptically. I hope she has enough snacks in her bag for all of us, because we’re going to be sitting in those pews for at least four hours. Once Uncle Clyde gets up on the pulpit, nothing short of Jesus Himself can take that man down. People could start passing out from hunger, and he would say that it was the Holy Ghost manifesting since he was doing the Lord’s work. I hate Uncle Clyde’s church. I hate Uncle Clyde.

  But I keep my thoughts to myself as we all climb back into the car. I turn around in my seat and watch as Ms. Ebony’s Bed & Breakfast shrinks farther and farther away. It’s hard to imagine it as a once prosperous guest house. But as I continue to watch it fade into the distance, I think about what it must’ve been like. Families pulling up to the front steps with their bags after spending hours on the road. Ms. Ebony coming out to greet her guests and whipping them up a warm bite to eat. How did they feel, when she or her descendants closed her doors for the last time once business slowly trickled away and then dried up?

  I sigh and face forward. I nestle my headphones into my ears, but this time I let the music play, hoping the sounds will drown out the whispers of Ms. Ebony’s hopes and dreams that are now nothing more than lingering ghosts haunting the cobweb-filled halls of her legacy.

  18

  HAPPI

  SUNDAY, JULY 29—

  3 MONTHS, 12 DAYS SINCE THE ARREST

  JASPERILLA, MISSOURI

  We’re going to be in and out.

/>   That’s what Derek said when we entered Mount Zion Baptist Church this morning. But that was three hours earlier, and we’re nowhere even close to being “out.” Even Genny, who is normally the spokesperson of good behavior, is fidgeting in her seat.

  “Dang this man can talk,” I grumble as I scroll furtively through my phone. I have been glued to the comments popping up on the first video we uploaded, from our stop in Springfield on this ragtag adventure.

  Wow, what a terrible way to start a road trip

  You can do it I guess?

  RIP

  Good luck y’all

  Kezi’ll love this; can’t wait to see you on the road

  RIP

  What’s the point of visiting all these spots if none of them still exist

  Kezi’s videos were better

  Genny leans forward to look at me pointedly, but I don’t care. This is just disrespectful at this point. I can’t believe people come here every Sunday to have their time wasted like this. Well... I guess it’s not really wasting time, since there’s not much else to do in Jasperilla, Missouri.

  “And that’s why we have to listen to the Lord!” Uncle Clyde booms particularly loudly, I’m sure to wake up the members of the assembly who are now slouching in the pews. “Because when we don’t, we fall into temptation.”

  The chapel is stiflingly hot this Sunday; the room almost wiggles seductively like a mirage. The men shift in their suits, pulling at collars and neckties for any sort of reprieve. But the congregation is largely women, like most churches around the country, who depend on the stalwarts to pay their tithes and keep the lights on. The handheld paper fans flap in front of the faces of the older ladies in the audience, a stand-in for the hands that are normally in the air waving hallelujah. Sweat drips from beneath the brims of their violet, aquamarine, goldenrod hats. But it’s too warm to focus on the sermon, let alone enthusiastically praise the Lord.

  Derek is sitting to the right of me. He’s been facing forward silently for the last thirty minutes, but I’m fairly certain he’s sleeping with his eyes open. Ximena is on my left with her cell phone in her hand, flipping it over and over in her palm. She doesn’t turn it on though. The elderly lady behind us already tapped her on the shoulder once to tell her to “put it up” after catching Ximena checking the clock on her home screen for the fifth time. (Ximena didn’t have the years of honing her reflex skills to hide toys in church like a PK—a preacher’s kid—like me.)

  “Now, sexual sin is a sin against the soul!” Uncle Clyde bellows directly into the mic. “Just look at the youth of today.”

  Oh hell no.

  Ximena freezes in her seat and stops fidgeting with her phone so suddenly that I instinctively reach forward to catch it because I think it’s about to fall. But the phone isn’t making its way to the floor. Instead, Ximena’s fingers are curled over its edges like a Venus flytrap ensnaring some unlucky insect. Her knuckles are bulging from how tightly she’s holding on to the device, her skin stretched so far that it looks a stark white.

  “All this LGBT-alphabet-soup is the Enemy’s doing. And as stewards of Christ, we must help them to find the light, to bring them back to the natural order of things.”

  I’m used to people dumping all types of garbage like this. It’s customary to have at least one guest pastor a month come through my parents’ services and meditate on the right and wrong way to live. How to raise your kids. Who to vote for. Why wives should submit to their husbands. They range from the insidious preachers imploring believers to “hate the sin but not the sinner” and the more militant screamers promising hellfire and suffering for those who don’t “live right before the eyes of God.”

  Back in the day, these evangelists had free rein to speak on whatever they wanted and would often fall on the subject of sex—when to have it, who to have it with. But lately, my parents had heavily “encouraged” their guests to discuss less divisive topics instead. They didn’t think such negativity would be good for business in a major metropolitan city with lots of young people to convert. Whether they saw it that way or not, they had rent to attend to and salaries to pay. The speakers might have shifted in appearance from wearing suits and pocket squares to ripped jeans and leather jackets, but it was the same message. The same beliefs lived in the shadows and dictated church politics. Rumors of the choir director moving in with his boyfriend, for example, led to him being replaced, quick.

  I don’t care for anybody to tell me what I can and can’t do with my life, or where I’ll be headed when it’s all over. But I’m ashamed to say I’ve kept my thoughts to myself when I’ve sat in these pews. Their admonishments feel wrong deep in my very core. Yet I’ve never stood up and denounced the hate they spread on Sundays. As Ximena shifts in her seat beside me, I realize how my silence hurts too. How it shouldn’t have taken this for me to understand that.

  Ximena shakes, not from fear or being on the verge of passing out from this heat. It’s from anger. She didn’t sign up for this, and I hate that this guy is related to me, even if it’s by marriage. Genny’s hand is pressed on Ximena’s knee, squeezing it almost as tightly as Ximena is gripping her cell. Even Derek is awake now. He’s squirming around like a little kid who has to use the bathroom. He leans forward to look past me at Ximena, who is feverishly whispering with Genny and, again, I have the feeling that there’s something I’m missing.

  “If we love our children the way that we say we do, then we have to speak to them plainly. It’s our responsibility as parents and as Christians to save their souls from eternal damnation!”

  Ximena is a spring that’s been wound too tight and catapults to her feet. In one smooth motion, she slides past Genny and steps into the center aisle of the church. There’s nothing and no one who can stop her as she makes her way to escape. It’s like all the heat in the building has been channeled into Ximena. And then she’s at the exit, loudly swinging open the doors of the church, letting them fly until they’ve collided against the wall with a BANG as she leaves. More than a few congregants turn in their seats to watch her go. I already hear the whispers rippling through the audience, a rustling of wagging tongues and flapping lips at the girl with the short hair who couldn’t take what they believe to be the truth.

  “We’re leaving. Let’s go,” my sister says, leaning over to me and Derek. But I am already on my feet, been ready to peace out. It shouldn’t have taken me witnessing someone I know be attacked to stand up against this. Genny practically trips over herself to chase after Ximena.

  “There isn’t a speck of doubt in my mind that my parents are going to hear about this,” I say to Derek. He nods. “And I don’t care,” I add.

  We grab our things and dash after them.

  * * *

  We are silent for a long while as we sit in the car with the A/C blasting its cold air over us. To cool us off. Bring back the humanity they tried to strip away. I see the outline of Ximena’s teeth as she works her jaw, her nostrils flaring with each deep inhale and exhale.

  “I’m so sorry,” Genny says finally. Her voice is too loud in the quiet car, too big.

  “It’s not your fault,” Ximena says.

  “No, but he’s family. And I feel responsible. I should’ve just told Ma we couldn’t make a stop at Uncle Clyde’s church.”

  “Look. It’s fine. It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that, and it won’t be the last. But being around that shit doesn’t get easier.”

  The look on Genny’s face is understandably fury. There’s something she wants to say, but she’s stopping herself. Maybe it’s because I’m in the car. We’re practically strangers after all.

  Just as Genny is about to start speaking again, the phone rings. Or more like blares—the volume is still on the highest setting from our very secular singalong when we were on the way to church this morning. We collectively jump. Genny quickly answers to stop the commotio
n.

  “Hello?” Genny says, motioning for us to be quiet. It’s Mom, she mouths.

  “Jemima Genesis Smith, what the hell has gotten into you?!” Mom’s voice booms louder than the trap beats we were playing earlier.

  “Damn, word travels fast,” Derek whispers to me in the back seat, and I nod in agreement.

  “Mom, you weren’t there. We had to go.”

  “Had to go? For what reason? I told Leslie that y’all were going to attend the service and then go over to her and Clyde’s place to have dinner afterwards. How do you expect to go there now after barging out of church like that?”

  “Ma,” Genny says warily glancing at Ximena. “Can we please talk about this later? You’re on—”

  “No! We’re going to talk about this right now. I need you to explain to me why you would leave like that in the middle of Clyde’s sermon. Do you know how disrespectful that is? And I don’t need anybody saying that I ain’t raised you all the right way.”

  “Look, if it makes you feel better, we aren’t going over to Uncle Clyde’s house anymore anyway. We don’t want to. And we’re already running behind because the sermon was so long.”

  “That’s not going to cut it, Genny. You need to have a proper excuse for why you all left the church the way you did, because—”

  “I left!” Ximena says raising her voice over my mother’s.

  You could hear a pin drop in the car right now. No one raises their voice like that to Naomi Palmer Smith and lives to tell the tale.

  “I tried to stay, Mrs. Smith. I really did. But I couldn’t just sit there and listen to him say all those hateful things!” Ximena’s still screaming at my mom as she wipes furiously at her face, like she’s trying to shove the traitorous tears that stream down her cheeks back into her eyes.