Rhythms of Grace (23 page)

Grace

There’s something in my belly. I can feel it fluttering,
like a butterfly.

Diana Dixon

I didn’t watch while Brian scrubbed pink lipstick off his hands. It wouldn’t come off easily—for either of us. My faith wanted to believe all things, to bear all things, but my mind wasn’t having it as he arranged his shirt and wiped his hands before approaching the office where I’d retreated.

“Come in.” I sounded cold, like Joyce before an expulsion.

Brian inched toward me, pushing around the kiln to get to my desk. “What’re you reading?”

“The usual.” I held up a squat paperback with a neon pink cover titled
The Message
. He groaned. He probably wondered how many Bibles one woman needed.

From the way my hands trembled as I turned the pages, maybe I needed a few more. Brian kneeled beside my desk.

“That wasn’t what you think. She came in and jumped all over me . . . At first I thought it was you—”

My lips tightened into a smile. A fake one. “You don’t have to explain.”
But I want you to. I really want you to. I just don’t think
you can.

Brian sucked his teeth. “There’s nothing
to
explain. I just didn’t want you to think I was—like that.”

My false smile twisted to one side. I let the book, the Bible, slip from my fingers as I stood, staring into his eyes.

“Uh-oh,” he whispered.

He’d gotten that much right.

“In your own words, it will be a rough day, so let’s get to work. I brought some of the books we discussed the other night.” I took my tote from the back of my chair and dumped a stack of paperback classics onto the table.

Brian nodded as he found his feet and went to his own desk. “Right. Thanks.”

“Oh, and Dr. Mayfield?”

“Yes?” His eyes lit up.

“If you’d like, I can loan you some foundation to cover that
thing
on your neck. The students have enough to gossip about as it is.”

A few minutes later I hid in the bathroom, beating myself up for having gone out with Brian at all. How could I have been so stupid? Malachi was right about one thing. A single woman wasn’t safe, not even in the workplace.

Brian’s words reverberated in my mind:
I thought she was you
.

Not wanting to think about it anymore, I went back to the classroom, straight into the office. I took a deep breath when Brian wasn’t there. And then, smelling of almonds and honey, he was there. I acted as if he wasn’t.

He pressed into the desk as though his arms were his only support. As he did, a patch of red crept over his buttoned collar.

He touched my arm. “You ready to get started?”

I jerked away, heart pounding. Suddenly I was somewhere else. He was someone else. Someone dangerous.

“Grace! Are you afraid of me? Come on now. We talked for hours the other night.”

What a waste of time.
“I remember.”

“Do you? Look, I realize you don’t know me well, but that wasn’t what it looked like. I promise.”

I didn’t respond.

He crossed his arms. “We’ll talk more later. Let’s just get through the day. Here’s what we discussed. The history lesson? I do it every year. I know you said we’d be doing it today, but we can do it later. If you’re still working with me, that is.” He placed a stack of papers on my desk.

He made his point. And it was my fault too, mixing business with pleasure in the first place. I adored Joyce, but this had been an unwise placement from the first. Now I had a choice: sit at this desk and sulk or do my job. It was difficult to consider either without knowing what was really going on. If it was something mutual, consensual, it was none of my business. But if it was something else, something violent, then that changed everything. Maybe I should have asked Lottie to stay, let Brian explain . . .

Perfect love casts out fear.

Though I loved the Lord, I wasn’t so sure about this one. I’d taught on that verse before, using fishing line as a prop.
Cast
meant to throw far, like a fisherman pitching a line. I’d have to fling my suspicions all the way back to Cincinnati to get through this. A woman had to have some common sense. I’d learned that the hard way.

I watched through the doorway as Brian mounted a timeline of the Middle Passage, the longest and deadliest part of our ancestors’ trip to the New World. The display was laminated and colorful like most teaching aids, but intricate in its detail. I looked closer at the words beneath each image. Brian’s firm hand and block letters gave him away as the artist.

I walked hurriedly to the doorway. “You made that?”

He smiled cautiously at my presence. “I like visuals. Helps them to remember.”

I nodded, remembering the morning’s events. Some visuals were unforgettable. “What about the hands-on project you put in the lesson plan? Aren’t you going to do that too?”

Brian’s smile widened. “I didn’t think you were up to it. Help me move the desks. If we work fast, we can still pull it off.”

Once the desks were out of the way, we rolled a giant poster across the floor. A life-size ship. Dotted outlines indicated the slaves’ positions. From the looks of it, Brian had drawn that out too.
Incredible.

I stepped close to it, careful not to rip the shiny paper. “I’ve never seen such a big poster.”

“Go ahead, walk on it. It’s laminated.”

With one step, I was transported to the cramped quarters . . . women huddled with their infants, men sandwiched together in ways that brought them shame. Such closeness and no bathroom. It hurt to even think about it, and yet I must, we must. This town was confused enough as it was.

I covered my mouth, then turned to Brian. “What now?”

Eyes wet, Brian leaned over and rubbed his hand down the length of one of the outlined bodies. “Now we put the desks on top.”

I fell in place beside Brian, pushing the desks across the room. I tried to be wary of him, but as the time to start class grew near, my passion for the lesson displaced my fear.

He climbed on top of some of the desks. “This is the deck. We’ll pack the kids in the ‘hold’ below. Head-to-head. Just like it was. Do you remember the Swahili from Ngozi?”

“Some.”

“Good enough.” We rehearsed the words, with Brian explaining the meanings as he went along.

After testing the hold to be sure, I held my breath. The ship, scaled from an actual slaver, was quite convincing. I remembered my earnest tears after reading the ship scenes in
Roots
. I’d thrashed and wailed, balled up in knots. I’d carried on until my mother took the book away, declaring it too much for a nine-year-old, especially one with such an overly emotional personality. That had only brought more tears and a secret copy I left in my desk at school.

Even now, Mom dismissed my passionate nature as a defect, a problem. “Please don’t start it. Don’t get yourself worked up. Anger killed your father, you know. Anger and pork chops,” she’d say on the phone when the conversation reached a conflict. Only in dance could I release the emotions restrained first by my mother and later, my husband. My version of art “wasn’t acceptable.” They’d both made that very clear. A young lady, a good wife didn’t wipe up the floor with herself or do poetry readings in the bathroom. A good woman sat still and quiet, rotting in her own skin.

The two of them had interpreted my creativity as something sensual. Sinful. My mother had even implied that my free spirit caused the theft of my womanhood. “You have a slutty way about you,” she explained. How an overweight teen with braces and glasses could look slutty I still didn’t understand. Peter too had scolded me for being “too friendly” with people. He encouraged me to be detached, uninvolved. Like him.

Even now, there were times like this morning when I had to run to the bathroom whispering Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” under my breath, running from the beast lurking in my own skin. Until now, until seeing Brian again, I’d always been able to force down the monster when it resurfaced, to keep myself calm. Safe. But now it was harder, watching as he strapped a set of drums across his shoulders, his eyes lit with the same fire, the same beast of emotion lurking behind his gold-green eyes.

“You’re getting into it, aren’t you?” He patted the biggest drum in the front a few times playfully, then tapped the smaller ones on the sides.

I looked at the door, not expecting this. “You still play?”

He unbuttoned his sleeves, folding them up to his elbows. “I’ll let you answer that when I’m done. The question is, do you still dance?” His palms molded to the drums’ canvas. In seconds, the air filled with his pulse, extending through his hands—and into me.

The beat tackled my senses. I might have forgotten most of my Swahili, but my body remained fluent in rhythm. Still, I really hadn’t planned to dance. I wasn’t dressed for it. I hadn’t prayed about it. I crossed my legs, sucked in my stomach.

Hold it in, girl. Hold it in.

He hit the drum with the heels of his hands and backed up to face me. He gave three short beats before starting in hard and fast—the signal for the solo I’d never danced.

He hadn’t forgotten.

I wanted to ask Brian to stop, but his eyes were closed and my feet were already moving. My slip-on shoes were replaced with the cold floor under my bare feet. As the drums talked back and forth, male and female, I shuffled forward. Shimmied back. I rose and fell.

Brian was sweating now and swaying too. Crouched low, he played each note truer than the last. His arms were stronger now than they’d been all those years ago. His soul was bigger too. I danced on, slowing as the female drum screeched to a climax. The full-bellied male drum called back, daring her on. Joyce’s voice whispered in my head.
Head up. Shoulders back. Now let it go . . .
I leapt at the crescendo, landing in a sweaty heap, cradling my knees.

Unexpected applause poured in through the doorway as the drumming broke off and Brian and I crashed through the surface of ourselves. I was shocked, vulnerable, and quite speechless.

Brian had no such problem. He wiggled out of his drums and climbed onto the nearest desk.
“Habari Gani!”
He welcomed them in Swahili, continuing in dialect for several sentences before pausing. The students looked to me for help.

I translated. “Welcome! You have been sold or captured. You belong to me. Do not try to escape.” I pulled back a chair. “Ladies enter here. Boys there.”

Brian waved the boys to the other side.

The logistics proved more difficult than anticipated. One girl was as tall as she was wide, and another seemed a little too eager to be sandwiched between her classmates. I motioned for Brian to move things along. The beauty queens were wilting and the boys were plotting to crawl over to the girls’ side.

He relented and directed the kids back to reassemble their seats. “Think about what you just experienced. You’ll be writing about it at the end of the period. Who will be our griot today?” Now warm and red-faced, Brian freed his top button and stroked his beard.

My eyes widened. I tried to get his attention, but several students were already waving their hands. One in particular found the sight of Brian’s neck so funny that he twisted around in his seat to smack hands with a friend behind him. He was doubled over with laughter.