Rhythms of Grace (33 page)
Miss Thelma paused to look up without disturbing the bobby pin between her teeth. “She went and found her white folks. Walked right up to ’em. Ain’t her people the ones that own part of that bank downtown in the Tower? They was one of the first ones to pass. You know they wasn’t gone claim that chile.”
“I know that’s right,” someone else said. “The mayor is my cousin. His daddy still comes to my grandmother’s house on New Year’s to get some chitlins.”
Thelma commenced her pinning. “Girl, that’s how they do. I know plenty of folk passed over. I see one of ’em every time I go over to Columbus to do my insurance. You should see the man looking at me all crazy like I’m going to out him. I walk by like I don’t even know him, but when the white folks turn away, I pass him some pound cake and hug him close. It was his mama that made them do it. You should have seen her husband and ’nem when all those black folk showed up at that woman’s funeral. They probably still confused . . .”
And on and on it had gone like that: secret babies, secret husbands, secret lives. I’d always thought Testimony was slow and boring, but now I saw that below this slow, easy river of a town ran a sweeping current of secrets. And I was the main one being swept along.
“And who are you, baby?” the loudest, largest woman asked.
Thelma eyed me while I considered my answer, but she didn’t say a word. There were many things I could say, but the most obvious was the last thing that I wanted to say: Trey Dixon’s daughter, that girl who . . .
“Me? I’m Grace. A new teacher at Imani Academy.”
The woman, Nita was her name, stared at me for almost a minute before accepting my response.
“Joyce Rogers’ school. Oh yes, they do a lot of good things for the blacks over there. Them Latinos too. Even white children. That Mayfield boy is still over there, right, Thelma?”
I’d squirmed a bit at hearing Brian called a boy. He was anything but.
“Yes, Nella. And he ain’t nobody’s boy, especially yours.”
“You got that right. Don’t nobody know whose boy he is. That’s what’s wrong with him now. He’s right handsome though, ’cept for those worms all over his head. I always used to watch him when he was on TV. Did you see him on
Oprah
that time about black boys? Powerful, I tell you. Liked to make me cry . . .”
I had cried. Under the dryer with a plastic cap over the conditioner on my hair and hiding behind a ten-year-old issue of
Ebony
, I’d bawled like a baby. And not just for Brian. Most of it was for me, a grown woman too scared to say who she really was, to tell what she’d been through. At some point, I was going to have to do what I feared most—tell the truth. Give my real testimony. It’d been so much easier to do this, be someone else, when I was away. It was the one way I could overcome all the things going on in my head.
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and
because of the word of their testimony . . .
Resurrection was what I needed. And to get it, I’d have to bare my heart. I wasn’t sure who to open up to, but when the time came, God would provide someone to partake of my broken bread and poured out wine. The memory of Thelma’s home beauty shop faded and my eyes fell on Brian’s empty chair again.
He’d have to come in soon. I smoothed my temples, gathering materials for today’s lesson. It was Brian’s day to lead, but the way he’d been acting lately—quiet and withdrawn—I’d better be ready for anything.
I reached into a stack of books from the desk and selected a volume of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar. With Dayton, his birthplace, so close by and his work so rich, he was always part of my curriculum. Brian agreed. After making a few notes, I checked my freshly painted nails for chips and picked up my Bible to copy the passage from yesterday’s sermon onto a file card to carry in my pocket. Reading it aloud three times a day for a week usually sufficed for getting the verses into my memory bank.
With a pen and index card, I scribbled down the words still ringing in my head from the sermon:
Who can lay a hand on the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?
After years of hearing the passage used to excuse church leaders from accountability for their actions, it was not one of my favorite places in Scripture. Yesterday, though, when Pastor Rodriquez taught about the verses at Tender Mercies, he’d come from another angle. Instead of a leader-follower application, he gave a personal relationship twist by suggesting that Saul had been used to refine David. It was at that point in the service that I’d dropped my pen.
“Stop trying to put out God’s refining fire!” The pastor’s intense gaze burned into my memory. “If you want to reach your potential in Christ, keep the home fires burning, even if the house starts burning down. If God started the fire, he can put it out.”
What he’d said was true, but how long would the fire burn? I had enough scars already.
I put the Bible aside and skimmed another poem, searching for an excerpt to read to the class during homeroom. As the words blurred in front of me, a troubling concept emerged—Brian as God’s anointed.
The door creaked and Brian filed in, wearing a suit the color of cashews. His mane, freshly retightened, fell to the middle of his back. He beelined to his desk, risking only a nod. He kept all his questions simple since we’d gone to give our stories to the EEOC. Maybe he felt that I’d somehow sided against him, but I could only tell what I saw, what I’d heard. Lately he didn’t give me more than a passing glance, but this morning, he turned away from his desk and gave his eyes what they must have been craving—a good, long look.
His gaze slid down the shine of my kimono like a child on a slide. I looked down too, first at my knees, slimmer now since I’d been taking Zeely’s class, then at my waist, my shoulders . . . My hair. He was staring at my hair. And he didn’t look happy.
“What did you do to it?”
“Got it pressed. Wanted something different.”
Brian looked again at my sleek updo that I’d pierced with two chopsticks for a final effect before leaving the house. It was too cold outside to be dressed this way, but I didn’t care.
He seemed to understand. “It looks good. I wish you’d said something though, about wanting a new style, I mean. I could have tried my hand at it before you let Thelma get to it.”
I raised a brow at the mention of Thelma. This town really was small. “So you’re a cosmetologist too, huh? What happened to ‘this is all natural, just take the handout’ when the kids asked you about your hair the first day?”
Brian inched his chair toward me, abandoning his former reserve. “Did
you
read the handout? I know a little. I used to braid my mother’s hair most nights when she couldn’t do it herself anymore. I cared for my wife’s natural hair. I also had a friend with braids, the little ones. I used to put them back in when they started sliding.”
My smile dissolved. The only person I knew with micros was Lottie. “A friend? I’ll bet you just tightened her right up.”
Brian rolled back to his desk and swiveled away from me, obviously regretting breaking his new get-to-work-but-keep-quiet plan. He picked up his bag and headed for the door.
“I’ll be back in a few. Long before the assembly.” He got up and moved around his desk, carefully navigating the space between us. My shoulders crumpled for a second, rising only when Brian brushed my arm on the way out. I grabbed his fingers. “Wait. I shouldn’t have said that. Will you forgive me?”
Something in his eyes stirred. Hope. A spark among the ashes. I dared to keep looking, tracing the outline of the contacts around his pupils. He leaned down until his hair tickled my shoulders. “You have nothing to be forgiven for. I’m going to go now so I can say the same.” He straightened.
Tell me about it.
Brian’s suits were enough to make this grown woman a little teary eyed. Only God could create something— someone—that fine.
“If looking good is the best revenge, then somebody somewhere is hurting. Bad.” I covered my mouth. Did I say that out loud?
He turned and stared at me. “What?”
I did say it out loud. I forced my face into the book I was reading. “Nothing.”
He turned and left the office, but not before giving me a sly smile. I forced my chair back to my desk. If God planned to use Brian to reveal my weaknesses, I couldn’t think of a better man for the job.
Brian
“What book, written in 1958, is often considered
the
classic of African literature?” I asked the class.
“
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe,” Monique answered from the back.
There she was again. Real potential. I stroked my beard. “It seems this is going to be a tête-à-tête between Miss Terrigan and me this week.”
Sean frowned. “That’s not fair. She answered the first one.”
“Maybe you can answer the next. And don’t worry, Monique, you get your money regardless.”
Sean shrugged. “If the question is about that book, the one she said, I’ll try to answer.”
This was new. “You read it?”
“Yes, Doc. I did.”
“Interesting. Here’s the question. In one sentence, tell me what
Things
was about.” Hands went up all over. I waved them all off, pointing at Sean instead. “He’s Mr. Literature today. Let him tell us.”
“Yams.” He said it with a straight face too.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Boy . . .”
“Okay, it’s a story about white colonization, from the perspective of the son of an African chief who was converted by missionaries.” Sean straightened in his chair. “And yams.”
Across the room, Grace straightened her lips, removing the smile from her face. Monique looked pretty satisfied too.
“I’ll give you a quiz grade for that answer, Sean.” I looked at the clock. “One more. It’s open to everybody. Achebe based his title on what famous poem?” I had them now. Only Monique would know it, if even she did.
Sean’s hand shot up first, followed by Monique’s. This was priceless. I nodded to Sean, rooting for him to get it right despite our past problems.
“
The Second Coming
by Yeats. William Butler Yeats.” Sean grinned. “See? I’m not as stupid as you think.”
He had me there. Sean wasn’t stupid at all. I was. In that moment, as he stared at me defiant and triumphant, I saw all that he could be, all that I could have been, and the girl sitting behind him blurred in the edge of my vision. Monique hadn’t been here long, but his love for her had made Sean remember how to love himself. I wondered for a moment how I might have been different if Grace had shown up for the concert that day. Beyond Sean, I saw her, looking at me too, maybe somehow wondering the same thing. Not that it mattered now.
What did matter was Sean and all the boys like him in this school, in this town, in this world. I made a note to go home tonight and read my own books, take my own counsel, remember what it was I was meant to do in the world. Joyce was right—when Karyn died, when I walked away from the church, I hadn’t just stopped believing in God, I’d stopped believing in people too. I’d spent much of my career trying to save black boys. Maybe two of them—Quinn and Sean—had been given back to me to teach me how to believe, both in God and in man.
I pulled out two five-dollar bills and placed the first on Monique’s desk. I stepped up a row and handed the second bill to Sean. “I underestimated you.” I even smiled. “It’s a mistake I won’t make again.”
After the class let out, I had some trouble breathing. Water didn’t help. A walk in the cold outside just made it worse. Something pressed on me, squeezing, pulling . . . That same thing I’d felt at that church with Quinn. It got so bad that I did something I thought I’d never do; I asked Grace to borrow her Bible. She looked so happy I almost told her to forget it, and by the time she started in on the benefits of the different versions, I’d snatched a King James off the top of her stack and headed for the faculty lounge.
The book had a few gaps in it, secret places as Eva had called them, spots that had been read so often that the Book fell open to them without trying. I went through them all, learning more about Grace than she could ever tell me. The last time I’d held a Bible at school was to showcase it as a tool used by slave masters to keep their human property docile and civilized. I never added that, in my heart, I thought it’d been used to do the same thing to me. Eva or any of the other church people might not have meant it that way, but that’s just how it went.
I did all right letting the Bible fall open until I got to the biggest break, the spot where the binding cracked, where the page was yellow with highlighter, a page creased with pain. On top of that, she’d had the nerve to mark the spot with a ribbon. Ephesians. The bright marker showed the trail that her eyes had taken. The ink in the margins showed the journey of her soul. I dared to follow.
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to himself . . .
I grabbed the arm of the sagging couch as the verse hit me.
Predestined
. It was a word I’d once used a lot when talking to boys, telling them that they’d been created to do great things before the foundation of the earth. And now, thinking over the word and its context, I wondered what my mother really meant if this was true. If I was meant to be adopted by Jesus anyway, did it really matter who my mama and daddy were?
Daddy? You never mention him.
My breath got thick again. I’d never put much on my father because I knew the nature of men. I’d spent my life studying them. I’d convinced myself that he hadn’t known about me, that my mother was the one who should have cared. It was she who I threw in God’s face again and again in those years, asking why God would want me when she hadn’t. I forced my eyes down again.
According to the good pleasure of his will
. . .
If the first part was a blow to the head, this got me in the gut. Pleasure? Could there be anything in me that could give God pleasure? I’d pleasured a lot of women and I was a sure thing for a good interview or a quick controversy, but it was hard for me to imagine God being pleased with me.