Divine (10 page)

Grace took another bite of chicken and shook her head. She was lucky her aunt and uncle hadn't kicked her out. No matter how she viewed herself back then, the reality was clear. She'd been wild and rebellious. The summer before her eighteenth birthday, her attitude had been terrible—especially toward her aunt.

One night she had a visit from Lindy, a girl her age who lived at the end of the block. . . .

***

"Let's take the train into the city," Lindy suggested. "I met a guy there." She was smacking her gum, and her mascara was thicker than usual.

"I don't know . . ." Grace sucked at the inside of her cheek. Going into the city could mean trouble for two girls alone at night.

"Live a little, Grace. Come on." Lindy was black, like her. The two of them shared hairstyles and clothes, and both turned heads wherever they went. Now Lindy's eyes shone with excitement over the possibilities that lay ahead. "This guy told me about a place where we can make a lot of money—" she looked over her shoulder to make sure Grace's aunt couldn't hear—"fast money."

Grace had a pretty good idea where girls dressed like Lindy might make a lot of fast money. The idea scared her, but at the same time she didn't want to spend another night with her aunt and uncle. Finally she tossed her hands in the air. "All right. But if it feels dangerous, let's come back."

Lindy rolled her eyes. She took hold of Grace's hand and shoved her in the direction of her bedroom. "Get ready. Hurry up."

While Grace was dolling herself up, she thought about what she was doing. Maybe it would be exciting out on the streets at night. It was a way out of the house, and if it brought in enough money . . . well, then in time she could leave and start life on her own.

But when they got downtown to the place where the guy was supposed to meet them, there was Jay instead. He spotted them and revved the engine of his bike. With a nod in their direction, he pulled up, parked his Harley, and approached them. "You ladies look awful young for this neighborhood." He was a white guy, and his face was covered with hair. But his eyes—kind and warm and deep and blue—would haunt Grace until the day she died.

When they didn't respond, he spoke louder. "I said, you ladies look awful young for these parts."

"What's it to you?" Grace stepped up to him, chin raised, voice defiant. "We can do whatever we want. Age doesn't matter."

"Actually, it does." He straightened, and she guessed he was well over six feet tall. "It matters because once you start working these streets, you leave one of two ways. Hard and old and used, an old lady at thirty."

Lindy smacked her gum and gave Jay a sarcastic look. "And the other?"

He leveled his eyes straight at her. "In a body bag."

Something about that image had snapped Grace's cool exterior. She turned to Lindy, struggling to stay in control. "Maybe he's right. Who needs the street stuff? Let's go home."

"That's my good girls." He crossed his arms and smiled. "Go home and don't ever come back."

Just then a car screeched to a stop a few feet away. There were four young guys inside—one white, two black, and one Hispanic. They were loud and drunk, and they hooted at Grace and Lindy. "Hey, girls, wanna take a ride?" The driver honked his horn, and the other three burst out laughing.

"The ladies aren't working, fellers." Jay planted his hands on his hips and took three strides toward the earful of guys. "Be on your way."

"Wait!" Lindy ran to the car before Jay or Grace could stop her. She looked over her shoulder once. "I'm going to do things my way. You can come or you can go home, Grace. Your choice."

Grace looked at Jay, and there they were again—those amazing eyes.

He lowered his voice so only she could hear it. "Anyone ever tell you about the Bible? about a God who loves you and wants to be your friend?" He nodded at the car and at Lindy, who had already climbed into the backseat with two of the guys. "God wants more for you than that." His voice was soothing, like healing oil for the cracks in her soul. "Believe me. Come on."

The driver of the car yelled at Grace, "You comin' or not?"

Next to him, another guy was peeling off twenties from a pile in his hands and handing them to Lindy. "Come on, pretty friend." He held the bills up. "Plenty to go around."

Jay took gentle hold of her arm. "I'll take you home. Let's go."

She looked at Lindy and the guys and then at Jay and back at Lindy one more time. Then she took a step in Jay's direction, just one single step. And it was a step that changed her life. Jay helped her onto the back of his bike, and for the next forty minutes she clung to him as if she were clinging to the only hope she had. She had no reason, really. Nothing to prove he was honest or that he really wanted to help her.

But when they reached her aunt and uncle's house, they stayed outside and talked. Jay was twenty-two, a few years older than her. He was part of a motorcycle group that called themselves Christ's Motor Angels. They rode through the worst parts of town a few evenings each week looking for people who needed a way out, people like Grace and Lindy.

"Usually we bring 'em home, give em a little tract about salvation in Christ, and leave it at that," Jay told her. He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of his Harley. He had on a cut-off T-shirt.

Grace saw a tattoo on his shoulder that read
All or nothing.
She looked hard at it and ran her finger over the letters. "All or nothing?"

"That's what God wants. Give Him our all or give Him nothing." He shrugged. "Pretty simple."

Something about Jay stirred strange, mysterious feelings in Grace's heart. He was a rebel—or at least he looked like one. That meant her aunt and uncle definitely wouldn't approve. They were straitlaced and went to potluck dinners. Sunday services and Wednesday church nights. A motorcycle man— even a motorcycle man for Jesus—would never be acceptable to them.

Maybe it was that or the way he made Jesus seem so real. Whatever it was, Grace couldn't get enough of Jay Johnson. At the end of the night she told him yes. Not yes to the sort of question most men asked, because Jay wanted nothing sexual from her, not at all. Rather she told him yes about Jesus. Yes, she wanted to be cleansed from her sins, and yes she wanted a relationship with God and yes—most of all yes— she wanted a Savior.

When Jay started to leave, he turned to her and grinned. "Can I call you sometime?"

And Grace said yes to that too.

Jay called her the next morning, and after that they were inseparable. She told her aunt and uncle about Jay's faith and that he was the nicest guy she'd ever met. But still they were suspicious.

Her uncle pulled her aside after meeting Jay for the first time. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Doesn't look like your type, Grace."

"He's a Christian, remember?"

"So you've said. Still ... I'd keep a close eye on him."

Her aunt was even worse, saying only a few words to Jay and making it obvious by her expressions that she didn't approve. A week later Grace found out why. "White guys want one thing from black girls, Grace."

"Are you kidding?" She was furious at her aunt. "That's a horrible thing to say! All my life you've taught me that color doesn't matter and it's wrong to be judged because of your race. Color this and color that." Her voice was louder than she intended. "How dare you think Jay's like that just because he's white." She anchored her fists on her hips. "Maybe
you
should stop judging people by their color."

Her aunt backed off then. "I'm sorry." She made her tone calm again. "I ... I guess I didn't see it that way."

After that, her aunt and uncle gave Jay more of a chance. They didn't like motorcycles or beards or tattoos. But after a month they liked Jay. He had that way about him. At the end of their first year of dating, two things happened that Grace would remember all her life.

First, Lindy overdosed on drugs on the very street where Jay had first found us. She'd been making money as a prostitute, hiding the fact from her parents. The double life caused her so much pain inside that nothing helped ease it—-not even Grace's pleas. Finally—as it did with so many girls who sold their dignity—the desperation drove Lindy to drugs, and the drugs killed her.

The second thing was that Jay Johnson asked her to be his wife. "You're young, but I don't need another year or five years to know you're the one for me." He had been so careful with her, kissing her only once in a while and never asking more of her than what God would've allowed. Now he merely cradled the side of her face with the palm of his hand. "Please, Grace. Marry me?"

She couldn't answer him. Not because she had any doubts, but because the emotion in her heart had spilled into her eyes and down along her throat, and she couldn't talk if she'd wanted to. She threw her arms around him, her wonderful prince. And when she found the words she whispered them into his muscled chest, "Yes, Jay, I'll marry you."

Jay was a mechanic by day—and a good one. He made enough money to pay for a beautiful church wedding. Most of Christ's Motor Angels had attended and filled up one side of the pews, while her aunt and uncle and their nicely dressed conservative friends filled up the other.

"I don't think anyone's ever had two more different sets of guests at a wedding," Jay told her as they danced in the church hall after the ceremony. "But you know what?"

"What?" The hall might as well have been the queen's ballroom, because Grace had never felt more like a princess.

"It's good for them." He leaned in and kissed her forehead, showing the tenderness that had marked their relationship. "Because people can't be judged by their clothes or their hair or their skin. But only by the way they love Jesus."

It was a good motto, one that drove Jay back onto the streets to rescue young girls even after the two of them had settled into a house and begun experiencing the thrill of married life. And it was thrilling. Night after night, knowing the safety of Jay's arms, the height of his passion for her. And days spent working at Patty's Preschool down the street, coming home to make dinner. Pot roast was Jay's favorite. He'd come into the kitchen, kiss her on the mouth, and pull her close. It didn't matter if he smelled like sweat and grime and car grease.

She would've stayed in his embrace forever.

A year after they were married she was pregnant. Jay was in the hospital room when Emma was born. She had light brown skin and enormous blue eyes, a perfect mix of the two of them. Emma was the name Jay picked out, so it was the only name Grace ever considered. Because Jay was the best man she'd ever known. The best person. If their daughter had half his traits she'd be an angel in her own right.

The first time Jay held their daughter, he had tears in his eyes. "God is so good!" He nuzzled his face against hers and looked into her eyes. "Daddy's going to be here for you, baby. Forever and ever. I'll protect you the way I protect all little girls."

But it wasn't to be.

Three months later Jay was out with two other Motor Angels when they ran across a frightened teenage girl and a gang of guys hassling her on the street. Grace was never quite sure what happened that night, but the police figured that Jay and the others pulled up and tried to scare the guys away.

Only this wasn't just any group of guys they were messing with. It was a pimp and his cronies, the ones who ran the prostitution ring along that entire city block. Whatever happened next, the pimp ended up pulling out a .45 and shooting two of the Motor Angels dead on the spot.

Jay Johnson—hero and prince, father and husband—had been one of them.

***

Grace poked her spoon into the chicken and beans, and she realized that her cheeks were wet. She was crying, so caught up in her own memories that it was like they were happening all over again.

When the police officer had knocked on her door late that night, the night Jay went out with the Motor Angels, Grace knew. She had known it as surely as she could hear her infant daughter suddenly wailing in the other room.

Jay was dead.

She tried another bite of the chicken and beans, but the mixture was cold and it struggled on the way down her throat. Enough. She pushed the bowl back, and her eyes found the photo that had hung on the wall every day since she and Jay were married. The one that would hang there until she died. It wasn't a traditional wedding photo, the kind most people had with the white dress and dark tuxedo and floral bouquet.

Rather it was the two of them on Jay's bike, him with a leather jacket over his suit coat and her with her wedding dress hiked up to her knees, her arms tight around Jay's waist. It was a picture of everything he'd meant to her. Because that was how he'd rescued her in the first place, on the back of his bike. And that was how he wanted to take her into the future. Him leading the way, telling her more about Jesus every day and always finding time to live out the things he told her.

"Jay Johnson ... I miss you," she whispered, and a few fresh tears blurred her vision. "If only you were here."

Grace stood and put the bowl of mush in the sink, washed it down the disposal, and returned to the photograph once more. If only there was a way back to yesterday, a long string of yesterdays.

She wouldn't go back to the day Emma left home and moved into Charlie's place or even back to the days before Emma started taking drugs. She would return to that evening when Emma was three months old. This time when Jay Johnson kissed her and told her good-bye, she would grab him by the arms and beg him to stay. Because if anyone ever needed a Motor Angel it wasn't the strangers on the street.