Rhythms of Grace (22 page)
“Actually we’re going to change the nature of the city altogether,” they’d explained finally. “Expand on the idea of having a historical area. It’ll be a tourist attraction. The story of the town’s name is well known. People would pay up to a million dollars to live here when we’re finished.”
I’d almost had a heart attack then. When I asked what would happen to the middle-class and low-income residents who couldn’t afford to live in such housing, the answer blew my mind.
“We’re planning reenactments throughout town. They can always play the slaves or soldiers. They wouldn’t live here, of course, but the jobs would be steady.”
That comment had started some conversations that had me stuck between quitting my job or being fired. Things were said that seemed so unreal that I started to take notes simply because I couldn’t believe them. My boss had taken my notes and thrown them away. “What’s said in here, stays in here.”
That was what scared me. If I left, who was going to help Joyce and Brian with what was coming down the road? Brian’s stance that every American was born a racist to some degree had always alarmed and saddened me, but after today I had to wonder if he hadn’t been right. Even me. Why didn’t I have Brian’s picture on my desk with snapshots of my college buddies? Why wasn’t Zeely’s picture next to my other smiling ex-girlfriends’?
Between racism and political correctness, I’d never have any peace. And probably not any food either. It was late and I was starving and only one person was likely to have something I really wanted to eat. The one person I had no business talking to, especially after the way things had gone with Mindy tonight.
So I’d gone home instead and ransacked my refrigerator, finding nothing but condiments and lunches gone the way of weird. I gave up. Across the street, my neighbor was attacking his lawn with a weed whacker, making the most of the warm fall night.
My yard was a few weeks from going to seed. The neighborhood association had taken to leaving me friendly reminders with coupons attached so that I could take my invisible children for ice cream. If I didn’t move out of here soon, I was going to lose it.
Maybe I already had.
When I snatched my phone off the base and started punching numbers, I heard numbers punching on the other end.
“Hey! Stop dialing. It’s me.”
Zeely’s voice came in clear and calm. A little too calm. “Don’t tell me. You want more greens.”
“That’d be great, but really, I’ll take anything.” I sounded pitiful, but I couldn’t help myself.
She sighed. “Did you eat it all the last time?”
“Every bite. I think I took the foil to work for a snack. Lots of icing on there.”
“The foil?”
“You heard me.”
Her laughter came then, full and sweet. It made the day’s confusion both tighten and ease.
“Now you’re really going to laugh. The people at work were amazed at my ‘soul food cuisine.’ I was all into it one day, hot sauce running down my mouth and everything. There they were, staring into my office. I almost choked.”
She did choke. “Stop. Please. I can’t take any more. I’ll feed you, all right? And bring your shadow a plate if he’s there.”
So that was how it went.
I didn’t take too kindly to the thought of Jerry in Zeely’s house, even with me there. Thank God he was working that other job tonight. Still, I’d take a good meal any way I could get it—even if it was meant for someone else.
“Jerry’s not here. We do our male bonding on weekends and even then, not very often.”
“I see.”
My neighbor crossed the street and stepped into my yard. I guess he couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to think about what I’d say to him on my way out. So I didn’t think. “Don’t make me beg.”
She laughed again. “No need. I’ve got some butter beans, smothered turkey legs with gravy, and a little rice. Will that do you?”
I leaned back on the couch. That would do me right into next week. “I’m on my way. One question before I let you go.”
“Yes?”
“I know Jerry isn’t usually allowed at your house. How is it that I get to come over?”
“You’re safe. You just want my food.”
I wouldn’t be so sure.
“Right. See you in a minute.”
I headed to the car, trying not to think about what had happened on my job, what hadn’t happened with Mindy, or why I always called Zeely when I didn’t have the time or energy to explain what I wanted. Maybe it was for the best that I hadn’t moved into one of those condos. I’d probably be over there all the time. Jerry really needed to step up his game. Or something.
We were playing musical chairs, all of us, even Mindy. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be around when the music stopped.
Grace
I longed for sleep. Working with Brian left me exhausted and confused, especially our breathless goodbyes. I hadn’t felt like this since . . . well, ever. I held my hand to my face, noting the exact spot where he’d kissed it when we’d gone to dinner. When it happened, I’d breathed a silent prayer and stepped away, afraid to return the endearment. Just thinking about it had me in a daze.
Lord, you promised not to tempt me beyond my limits. Just so
you know, you’re coming pretty close.
Some kind of blues sang in through my thin windowpanes, an open invitation from my college neighbors to come down and say hello. Also an opportunity for Zeely to call the police. It was midnight or later, long after the time for all good teachers to be in bed. And yet, I couldn’t sleep.
Retreating to my room, I grabbed my new nightgown, purple silk from Virtuous Woman. I read the tag before putting it on.
Who can find a virtuous woman? Her price is far above rubies. She
makes herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in the
time to come.
I clutched the tag to my chest before pulling the gown over my head. Those words explained all that I desired to be: a jewel in God’s crown, strong, smart, and beautiful. It also reminded me of everything I wasn’t.
I lifted my arms and threw back my head, offering the only gift I had left—the dance.
The music had slowed from the pulsing drum of my teen years, but it was still the beat of God’s forgiveness that told my body where to go, told my feet how to pray. It was devotion in motion, as Zeely often said in her weekly class, and at the height of it, my phone rang and I stubbed my big toe on the way to answer it.
If it was Brian saying he was outside again, I prayed for the courage to send him home. It had been hard enough the first time.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Joyce. Please . . . come.” She gasped for breath.
“Hold on. I’m on my way.”
Instantly, I pulled on a pair of jeans over the purple nightgown and a sweater over my head. I forced my feet into two odd sneakers. Every time I thought I’d reached all I could bear, God threw another rock on the pile. I guess I didn’t know him or myself as well as I thought I did.
Brian
The empty classroom crackled with anticipation. Since our candlelit dinner of strategy and scheduling and a breathy goodbye at Grace’s door, things had been quite interesting between us. Though I knew I shouldn’t, each morning I looked forward to seeing her. So much about her both compelled and baffled me. Her religion made her seem narrow-minded at times, but there was something beneath it, an innocent generosity that made me want to laugh out loud. Sometimes she was smug and arrogant, and me being me, I liked that too.
When I’d seen her in the parking lot this morning, she’d been neither haughty or guarded. She’d smiled at me with her soul wide open and nothing to cover it. She’d mentioned once that she prayed early in the morning. Today it must have done her good.
And maybe me too.
I couldn’t wait for her to come to the classroom with all that truth on her face. Maybe for once I’d see all of her, not just her faith and her strength, but her pain. Her need. Still there was the chance that she’d switch up at the last minute and arrive all-business, like nothing had happened between us that night at dinner and all the days after. For her, maybe nothing had.
Probably not. Her smiles might have been a gracious way of covering the awkwardness, the pieces that didn’t fit. As she’d pronounced to the man selling newspapers that night, there would be no compromise for Grace. And not for me either.
Though I was feeling less and less confident in the pot-bellied statue on my dresser or the altar to the ancestors beneath my bed, I wasn’t planning on running to Sunday school anytime soon. Still, I found myself reading the Bible more and more. I stayed up most nights now, studying the passages that Grace read before school or during her breaks. She always left it open on her desk and highlighted the good parts bright enough for me to see from a distance.
She probably knew that I was reading the Scriptures from some of the comments that I made. I wondered now if I wasn’t playing a game of my own, making her think I could be what she wanted, what she expected. Perhaps it was best to disappoint her now and tell her all the other sacred texts I stayed up with too, tell her how we might have really made something of this if she hadn’t thrown the gauntlet down:
Jesus Christ is my God.
But she had thrown it down and I wasn’t willing to pick it up. Praying to an unknown deity was one thing. Yielding to Jesus Christ was another.
And yet, I had to wonder why I’d never taken the “altar of the ancestors” out of its box, why I’d never been able to repeat the words to the libations at the ceremonies I’d attended. Something restrained my lips from forming a prayer to the gods that others promised would give me peace. Did the “fear of the living God,” as Eva had always called it, still live somewhere in me? Somewhere deeper than all my pain and anger?
The thought of that and the thought of her gave me another kind of fear, a fear of losing control. There is still some vein of faith deep inside me, but I dared not mine it now. Maybe once I found my mother I could face God. By then, I’d have the right questions to ask. Or maybe just the wrong answers to the one question always at the center of everything: Why?
I checked my Palm Pilot for the day’s lessons, willing myself to calm down. This was a dead-end street, this thing with Grace. She had no obligation to leave her safety and jump into the chaos of somebody like me. But I wanted her to. I wanted it so badly that I’d spoken her name before falling asleep and again when I’d opened my eyes this morning. Only one woman’s name had ever slept on these lips before and then only after years of marriage. I’d known Grace for what, a month?
I hadn’t felt swept up like that since my first read of Ralph Ellison. I could still remember the stab of those first lines.
I am an invisible man . . . a man of substance, of flesh and bone,
fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am
invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Invisible. I realized in my first read of that book that this was my greatest fear—being invisible. The thought that when I died, my mother, wherever she was, would not press a hand to her throat and hold on to her neighbor’s elbow saying, “My son. He’s gone.” But rather that she would go on talking, choking me down, blotting me out as though I’d never been at all. Though everyone around me proclaimed my accomplishments, in the end Ellison’s narrator knew me best. Or at least I had known him best, until Diana Grace returned.
When I’d seen her this morning, she reminded me of a singer, someone on the hundreds of album covers I had at home. Vinyl jackets swept through my mind: brown-sugar eyes, melted ice cream, polyester hips. Minnie Riperton? Too sweet. Thelma Houston? Close. Same body for sure. I couldn’t help but smile when it finally came to me: Angela Bofill, angel of the night. And in Grace’s case, angel of the day.
“That’s her. Straight up,” I said to the spider fern on my desk as though it was listening.
The plant wasn’t listening of course, but someone else was. The door creaked open behind me, and I clenched my fists. How long had she been standing in the hall? Was she feeling as awkward and anxious as me? Why didn’t she say something?
Calm down.
Her footsteps stopped right behind me. Too close. She smelled different today. Overpowering. I’d cataloged the scents. Patchouli. Clary Sage. I turned to face her. As I did, two slim wrists plunged into my neckline. Braids brushed my face. I knew without looking at the face that it wasn’t Grace at all. It was Lottie Wells.
“What’s the matter, baby? You forgot old Lot now that there’s fresh meat on the block? You never call me.” She went for my neck, attaching like a vacuum until I managed to pull her away.
I flung her arms from my shoulders, and nudged her back. “Act like you’ve got some sense.”
Lottie pulled at my shirt again.
This time I pushed. Hard. Probably too hard, but she barely budged. She was worrying me now. “Get off me. And stop calling me too. I know that’s you hanging up all the time.”
Lottie pressed herself onto me, her arms around my waist. “You don’t fool me,” she said. “You want me.”
I sighed. Why had I ever dated this woman? These types were always more trouble in the end than I could see at the beginning. I generally enjoyed dating a few times a year, like eating Thelma’s burritos. Now I wished I’d never taken the first bite. I had to hold her off with one arm, while moving toward the door.
She lunged forward and clawed at my arm as I stepped aside, leaving her to sprawl on the floor. What a mess. I felt bad not helping her up, but I didn’t dare touch her again. I didn’t need any trouble. “Enough. Please go.”
Lottie scrambled to her feet. “Never,” she said, just as Grace walked in.
I had to close my eyes. I wanted so bad to see Grace, but not like this. I watched as her eyes swept the scene—Lottie’s sideways skirt, the button missing from my sleeve. The mask lowered over her face. Her eyes repeated the word spoken a moment before—
never
.