I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) (16 page)

Next week, Mimi says from the backseat. Tonight's the meal with just the Oak Project girls. They kicked us out of the house so they could set up.

Jade looks at Mimi in the rearview, then at me. It's the name of our ministry, she says. The Oak Project. It's from that verse in Isaiah, about the oil of gladness—

They will be called oaks of righteousness, I say, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor?

Sweet,
says Jade.

We turn into a neighborhood off McCallie Avenue. The houses are two-story bungalows, set close together, grimy, with gaping doors and warped porches. There are no streetlights. We park across from a house with Snoopy sheets hung for curtains. A girl squats on the stoop, while a young woman—older sister? mother?—picks through her hair with a comb. A cop car passes, slowly, its lights turned off; when we get out of the car the air is thick with cooking smells. An elderly black couple is walking arm in arm on the sidewalk next to us.

This is it, Jade says when we cross the street. She's standing in front of a clapboard bungalow with peeling paint, pale yellow in the light of the single bulb above the front door. A strand of small paper lanterns hangs from the porch rail.

When Jade opens the door I see green: the walls of the living/dining room are painted Granny Smith apple. There are no couches, no chairs or end tables, just a small computer desk pushed up against the side of the staircase, with a grouping of thick galvanized metal crosses arranged on the wall above the monitor, and three foldout metal tables covered in paper tablecloths with a fall-leaf print. The tables are set with paper plates, Styrofoam cups, clear plastic utensils. The centerpieces are pinecone turkeys with construction-paper feathers.

Around the tables are gathered women of every skin tone, black and white; mostly large-breasted, full-faced women wearing bright colors and big jewelry.

Whazzup, girls! Jade says.

Three women spring from tables, push back chairs, and run to us, throwing their arms around Jade and Mimi. Two of them hug me, their arms fleshy, their chests warm and soft. The third woman, her hair in cornrows, stands back and looks me up and down.

What'd you do with all our furniture? Mimi says.

Don't you worry about it, says one of the women. You all just sit down and let us serve you.

Why's
she
here? the woman with cornrows says.

She's going to hang with you all tonight, Jade says. We'll see how it goes.

She
ran
down the mountain to get here, Mimi says. I feel her squeeze my hand.

That's some legs she got on her, says a woman in a red velour sweatsuit. Girl, she says to me, you just sit down now and let us take care of you.

The women are neatly dressed. Several are wearing office attire—hose, pumps, silky button-down blouses. None of them look like the poor I imagined helping.

Jade takes me aside. That woman sitting alone, she says, nodding toward a table, lives at the shelter down the street. She's schizophrenic, but lithium keeps her stable, mostly. She likes to write. I want you to sit with her.

Do you mind if I get something to drink first? I'm not feeling very well.

Sit. I'll have Mimi bring you some tea.

I sit next to the woman from the shelter. Her hair is short, the color of rust. She smiles at me and I count three gold teeth. Her knees bounce.

I'm Eummenia, she says to me. It's an African name.

It's lovely. Say it again?

You-
men
-ia, she says. You got kids?

Four, I say. They're with their daddy.

I know how that goes, she says. I got a son named Zerah—that means brightness. He likes to draw. And a baby girl, Tanisha Starr.

Mimi fills my cup.

Do you mind if I put my head down for a minute? I say to Eummenia. I'm not feeling very well.

Niki! I hear Eummenia yell before I pass out. This white girl needs to
eat
!

The Oak Project women feed me. My head is on the table but now I'm looking sideways, my cheek resting on a soft black forearm. I feel long nails stroke through my hair—someone has removed my ponytail elastic—and I watch the platters pass: a turkey breast submerged in cornbread stuffing; glazed ham studded with cloves; pot roast with carrots and new potatoes; collard greens tossed with pearl onions; green bean casserole; sweet potato pie.

Eummenia is rubbing my back, her hand shaking like her knees. You just need something in your belly is all, she says. You just need your blood sugar up.

When my plate is full the women stand back to watch me. I take a bite of stuffing, then put my fork down. I can't eat this, I say. I feel too guilty. I'm pretty sure my kids and husband are eating microwave dinners.

Microwave dinners never killed a body, a woman says.

Plus—I look over at Jade and Mimi—I thought there might be work to do down here. I didn't think I would
accept
anything.

Ain't much of a friendship when only one's doing the giving, Eummenia says.

But I wanted to wash your feet.

Wash all you want, Eummenia says, they'll still be black.

I wanted to see suffering and pain, grief and loss. Something real. I start to cry and the women surround me, murmuring.

She been deprived of the real. She ain't never had a touch of the real, all her life.

We can tell you some things, Eummenia says. If you got the ears to hear.

I lean into her hand making circles through the fabric of my turtleneck, then raise my head to look at her. What is it you write about? I ask.

First question worth answering I ever been asked by a white lady, Eummenia says, and kisses me on the mouth.

After the meal the women push the tables against the walls, and everyone sits in a circle. Niki— the woman with cornrows—takes charge.

We're going to go around, she says, and tell what we're thankful for. Then Danielle's going to read from First John.

Ashley, a teenager with lashes like inky cursive and body glitter sparkling on her chest, goes first. I'm thankful I get to be around all y'all, she says. Cuz at home it's, like, all
negativity
.

An older white woman sitting next to Ashley, her gray hair cut in a shoulder-length bob, says, I'm thankful I made it to another Thanksgiving. And, she says, pointing with the index fingers on both hands to Jade and Mimi, for you two girls.

I'm thankful I live here, says a quiet girl, early twenties. I don't got to worry about getting hit by A. J.

I'm thankful I woke up today, Niki says. She looks down at her nails, which I notice are ripped and yellow, the skin on her thumbs torn raw. And I'm thankful I been off crack eighty-seven days now. She lifts her chin and looks at me.
Beat that
.

I'm thankful I got a job. This from the woman in the red sweatsuit.

When it's my turn I'm silent. Eummenia takes my hand. You just say something you're thankful for is all, she says.

I'm thankful to be here, too, I say. To have made it this far.

Danielle is the woman in the red sweatsuit. The text in her Bible is overlaid with blocks of color: lilac, mint, pale blue, a buttery yellow. She's sitting next to me and I can see the words in First John are mostly pink. The translation is modern, the language edgy and full of slang.
I'm not writing anything new here, friends
.
Whoever hates is still in the dark, doesn't know which end is up
. When she closes the book I see the cover:
The Rainbow Bible
.

Your Bible, I say to her. I've never seen that one.

It's a Rainbow, Danielle says. You want to look at it?

While the women talk about First John, I discover the blocks of color are a kind of topical code. Lilac for passages on
Baptism
, mint for
Salvation
, blue for
Grace
. The pink turns out to be
Love
; the buttery yellow, inexplicably, is
Satan
.

Sin
is orange. I flip to Romans, where I know there will be entire chapters of orange.

Chapter five: when it's sin versus grace, grace wins, hands down.

Chapter six: think of it this way—sin speaks a language that means nothing to you, but God speaks your mother tongue.

Chapter seven: offer yourselves to sin and it's your last free act; offer yourselves to God and the freedom never quits
.

The women start to sing. It's a praise chorus I've never heard, slow and repetitive.
I'm blessed, blessed, blessed
, they sing.

I close my eyes. I imagine the faces of my children, my husband. I pray for repentance, wait for it to fall over me like a benediction.

Blessed to know the Lord,
the women sing.

So you're in, Jade says to me.

It's late, past ten. Jade, Mimi, and I are in the kitchen. The other women are moving the tables back, laying out dessert plates. Mimi is sitting on the counter beside the oven, wearing quilted mitts, waiting for the pumpkin pies to finish warming.

It's your honesty, Mimi says.

Our girls connect with that, you know? Jade says.

Listen, I say, not looking up, I'm no good to any of you.

You're tired, Jade says. You need to crash somewhere.

Can I tell you something? I say. When I was in ninth grade, I went home from a party with a guy I'd met an hour before. Stripped naked, threw myself facedown on his bed and begged him to teach me everything there was to know.

We all have our pasts, Mimi says.

The guy wouldn't touch me. Said he didn't need that on his conscience.

Protection of the Holy Spirit, Jade says.

No, listen, I say. My senior year I shoplifted a swimsuit—on a Young Life mission trip. The store owner caught me. I should have been arrested, but our team leader said,
Doctor's daughter, upstanding family
. When I paid for the suit, the owner wrapped it in pink tissue and tied it with raffia.

No one is righteous, not even one, Jade says.

That's not
it,
I say.
Listen
to me.

Mimi takes a pie out of the oven and slides it onto the stovetop.

I tried to fail a class in college. Eighteenth-Century Poetry. I never read a page or wrote a word. The professor gave me an A anyhow. She said she'd seen enough of my work to know that I would have earned an A.

Mimi holds up a forkful of steaming pumpkin. You've got to try this, she says.

I push the fork away; the pumpkin falls off the tines, makes a perfect circle on the linoleum. I've only had real sex with one man, ever, I say. I might need to let myself just
sin
for a while.

Go for it, Jade says. You'll still be God's girl.

In the living room, Eummenia is swaying in front of the computer desk.

Black woman's what I
am
, black woman's what I
be
, she repeats, a soft, blurry song.

She's writing poetry now, Niki says to me. She needs her meds.

I'll walk her home, I say.

Eummenia leads me to the shelter, The Shepherd's Arms. It's three blocks away, a large two-story house, part brick, part vinyl siding. She climbs an exterior staircase at the back and goes in through a door with an arched transom above it. Warm yellow light in the panes. I've never been inside a shelter. I want to follow her, but don't. Maybe there's some kind of visitor registration at the entrance.

In the front yard is wicker furniture, old and mildewed; also a birdbath and some beaten-down plastic toys. A balloon sags from the mailbox. In the porch light I can see a foil strand of letters hung over the front door:
Happy Birthday!

When I climb the front steps I hear a low moan. In the corner of the porch, beside a trellis with rotting vines, sits a black man in a wheelchair. His skin is so dark I can't see his face until I come close. His hair looks like white powder sprinkled over his scalp. His head keeps tipping, then jerking back upright. He smells like urine.

Oovah, he says.

I sit across from him, on the railing.

You live here? I ask.

His tongue thrusts in and out of his mouth; he clamps his lips around it like it's the reed on a wind instrument and he's attempting to sound a note.

I'm visiting a friend, I say. Eummenia.

The man's body tips sideways, over the armrest on his chair. He pulls a lever and the chair starts to roll.

Dooah, he says.

I push him to the front door and open it.

Inside is a staircase, a room with two couches covered in plastic, and a warped Ping-Pong table. There are pamphlets on a rack beside a telephone. A piece of paper is taped to the wall, with names and extension numbers of residents—so many cross-outs I can hardly read it.

The man in the wheelchair motions toward the phone. I lift the receiver and dial Eummenia's extension.

Where you at? Eummenia says.

Downstairs, I say.

Two black men are sitting on one of the couches, smoking. The old man in the wheelchair rolls himself over to them. They look past him, blowing out smoke. On the other couch, which is pushed into a corner, a white girl is nursing a baby. She's young, a teenager. Her hair is two-tone, light on top, black underneath. She's wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms; her arms are tattooed with shapes that look like jagged mountain ranges.

God, she says. God Almighty.

She looks at me. Fuck it all, you know? she says.

Eummenia comes down the stairs. She's holding a cell phone.

Look at my baby girl, she says. Phone doesn't work but I still got my baby on here.

Eummenia shows me a video clip of Tanisha Starr. She's dancing the way a one-year-old dances—ducking her knees, arms bent out to the sides like wings. Eummenia plays the clip over and over: twenty-three seconds, tiny girl on a tiny screen. She's wearing just a diaper; a garbled rap song plays in the background.