Cast a Road Before Me (2 page)

“They’re so content, even when they have nothing,” Mom had whispered to me as we tiptoed from the kitchen out of respect for the Zheng family while they worshiped. “Theirs is a wonderful religion—peaceful, revering all life, never violent.” Mom abhorred violence, her burning aversion long ago forged at the lightning quick hand of her intemperate father. From my earliest days, she had taught me never to raise a hand against anyone. As she lingered to look back at the threadbare, kneeling figures, her lips curved at their serenity.

During the funeral service, that scene—the tiny frame of Mei Zheng bowed low, her dark hair spilling onto the kitchen floor, and my mother’s loving, accepting smile—rose before me again as Ralph Crest, the minister from the Unitarian Church two doors down from the Center, spoke his eulogy. Mom’s closed casket was covered with flowers, from expensive arrangements sent by nearby business owners to hand-picked daisies and day-old bouquets foraged throughout the city by those whom Hope Center sheltered. I knew without a doubt which ones Mom would have liked best. I sat on the front row of hard folding chairs between Aunt Eva Bellingham, Mom’s sister, and her husband, my Uncle Frank. I had seen them only once before, also at a funeral; that one for their only child, Henry, who had been killed in the Korean War. I was only seven at the time, yet had felt the weight of the grief from those around me
pressing down on my own small shoulders. I had wanted to comfort my aunt and uncle then; now they were trying to comfort me.

“Marie Susanna Callum was a deeply religious woman,” Mr. Crest was declaring in a voice of hushed reverence. “She gave wholeheartedly and unceasingly here at Hope Center, yet asked God for nothing for herself. And because of that, she has certainly found her salvation today, now that she has passed from this world.

“You know, every once in a while, Marie would visit our services. And I want to tell you of a day a few years ago when she came with her daughter, Jessie. Marie looked so tired, and I knew she had been working even more than usual here, preparing meals and serving. I believe you’d lost one of your volunteer cooks at the time. After the service she shook my hand and thanked me for my words. Seeing the lines on her forehead, I said, ‘Marie, don’t you ever get tired of giving?’ I said, ‘Some people would insist you’ve already done enough good for one lifetime.’ And you know what she replied? She looked me straight in the eye and said in her soft voice, ‘Well, Minister Crest, I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with those people. No amount I can do will ever be good enough.’”

Never good enough
.

A knife cut through me at the words. All too well I remembered the day they had been hurled at my mother through the gritted, tobacco-stained teeth of her hateful father. How
furious
I’d been at him that day. And how hurt I had been for Mom, my eyes suddenly opened to the childhood abuse at which she’d only hinted. I struggled to push the memory away as a sob rolled up my chest. I could hear others crying behind me, the shaky whispers of women shushing their young children. I thought at that moment that I would simply die, for the sorrow was more than I could bear. It was going to split my chest wide open. How could my wonderful, self-sacrificing mother be
dead?
I squeezed my eyes shut, swooning in my seat. Uncle Frank hastened his arm around me and held me tightly.

“What a marvelous testimony for one who had already done so much,” Ralph Crest concluded. “Yes, Marie Susanna Callum was
forever compassionate to the needs around her. She was always ready to do more.”

I shuddered against Uncle Frank’s broad chest. Despite the minister’s interpretation of Mom’s words, they spoke to me only of wrath and judgment. How could she even have formed those words with her own tongue, especially in reference to herself?

After the service, I rode to the cemetery in a solemn black limousine with my aunt and uncle. I barely remember the journey. Only that Aunt Eva hugged me so hard I could barely breathe, weeping, “My poor chil’, my poor chil’; Lord Jesus, help us take care a her.” It was a fitting day for a burial, the air oppressive with humidity, a light drizzle beginning to fall as we stood before the grave site. When they lowered my mother’s casket into the earth, taking what was left of her away from me forever, I sank to my knees, wracked with sobs. I cried for the loss of her, then cried harder that I wouldn’t even be able to tend her grave. I was to leave the next day to live with my aunt and uncle in the tiny town of Bradleyville, Kentucky, a town I’d seen only once, when their son had been buried.

The ceremony finally complete, I still could not get up. Aunt Eva and Uncle Frank knelt beside me, oblivious to the rain, and prayed aloud for God’s comfort, long after everyone else had gone. Still, I could not leave. Finally, Uncle Frank rose, gathered me tenderly in his arms, and carried me from the grave, my head lolling against his starched white dress shirt, now wet and wrinkled from the rain and my tears.

N
othing could have prepared me for the change in atmosphere and pace that I found in Bradleyville. The town was even smaller than I remembered. It contained all of two stoplights, both on Main Street. The first was upon entering the town along Route 622 after a series of stomach-dropping hills; the second heralded the one-block downtown area. In between the two was the post office, in which Aunt Eva worked. Past the second light were the grocery store, the Laundromat, Miss Alice’s sewing shop, and Mr. Tull’s Drugstore on the right. Across the street lay the hardware store, dime store, and bank, plus a small police station that included a tiny holding cell (hardly ever used), the fire station, and the doctor’s office. There were two churches at strategic locations on different side streets off Main—a Baptist and a Methodist. I soon learned that both prided themselves on being the cleanest, preaching the purest gospel, and boasting the best cooks, who would go to great lengths to outperform each other at the annual townwide potluck supper, which was held at each church on alternating years.

Aunt Eva and Uncle Frank attended the Methodist church, a white wooden building with matching steeple and, above the
entryway, a small stained glass window of Jesus tending lambs. I remembered that window from Henry’s funeral, although in the dead of winter its panes had seemed lifeless in the pale sun. The first time I attended services at the church on a sunny June day after I’d moved to town, the window sparkled with a brilliance that left me standing in awe, head tipped back and lips parted. Jesus’ face radiated love, his hand lying gently upon the back of a tottering lamb. I stared at the picture with stabs in my heart; it reminded me of my mother’s tender care of folks at the Center.

The entire town of Bradleyville embraced me as its own lost little lamb. In such a small place, naturally everyone knew everything about everybody. There wasn’t a soul within the city limits and surrounding countryside who didn’t know my name and my story before I arrived. They all were kind to me. They certainly talked differently, however—half Southern drawl and half what I’d have called plain old “hick.” As for ambiance, Bradleyville was a pretty town in summer. Flowers bloom and ancient leafy oaks sweep the sky. Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians in eastern Kentucky, Bradleyville proudly displayed some of the greenest lawns I’d ever seen. My eyes took in the town’s charming beauty, my lips smiled at folks’ generosity, but none of it registered. My mind was too full of anguish.

It didn’t help that my aunt repeatedly gushed over how much I looked like my mother. I didn’t believe it anyway. True, we both had the same wavy hair, although mine was a darker brown, lacking the red highlights. We both had brown eyes and were petite, small-boned. Mom had only stood five feet, four inches, and I wouldn’t be much above that. There was also some resemblance in our heart-shaped faces and upturned lips. But I would never be as beautiful as my mother. Not in face or in soul.

During my first few months in Bradleyville there was one person who could raise my spirits: Thomas Bradley, town patriarch and war hero. His father, Jonathan, founded the town by building the sawmill on the banks of the Cumberland River a year before Thomas was born. Upon his daddy’s death in 1955, Thomas had
inherited the mill and so was boss to my uncle and most of the men in town. Fortunately, everybody loved Thomas.

Thomas was fifty-seven when I met him, which sounded pretty old to me, but he was spry, feisty, and quick-witted. He wasn’t a large man, but his presence lit up a room like an electrical charge. Thomas would regale me with a story, and his blue eyes would twinkle until I laughed in spite of myself. He was many things to me—wise, proud, and at the same time, humble enough to want to spend time with a bereft sixteen-year-old. What’s more, he publicly cemented our special friendship by inviting me to call him by his first name. Many times during that first summer Thomas treated me to a milkshake at Tull’s Drugstore, where he met almost daily with his two oldest friends, Jake Lewellyn and Hank Jenkins. Never could two people argue like he and Mr. Lewellyn, both pumping their egos by seeking to outdo the other. Theirs was a most enigmatic friendship.

Thomas’s pride sprang from not only his daddy’s accomplishments, but his own. You couldn’t be acquainted with him for five minutes without hearing he was thrice decorated in two wars—the Second World War and Korea. That fact would earn him respect in any town, but in an isolated burg like Bradleyville, his feats—abroad and at home—ran legendary. All the same, while I admired his bravery, he and I learned early in our friendship not to discuss war, for the strategy of battle coursed as hotly through his veins as abhorrence to violence ran through mine.

It was Thomas who opened my eyes to the fact that my aunt and uncle needed me as much as I needed them. Not that Henry could ever be replaced, but they did view me as “another child brought to them by heaven,” as he put it. From the outset, they lavished me with love and displayed only patient understanding at my self-absorption.

Although my aunt and uncle cared for me with one mind, the two of them were as different as night and day. Whereas Uncle Frank was carefully spoken, quiet and constrained, Aunt Eva was chatty, easily set off, her freckled hands often flitting to pat red
curls into their ill-contained bun. If gossip was the official sport of Bradleyville, Aunt Eva was the referee. “Now So-and-So, sittin’ two pews in front of us,” she’d whisper before church started, “I tell you he’s had the hardest time with….” And she’d go on to tell me of So-and-So’s wife or child or physical ailment—until she’d catch herself and abruptly snap her lips shut. “There I am, at it again,” she’d breathe, eyes tilting skyward. “‘Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.’ Proverbs 21:23. Forgive me, Lord.”

Looking back on my first summer in Bradleyville is like staring into a deep, dark hole. Often, alone in my bedroom, I would cry until my tears ran dry. Weekdays, Aunt Eva was busy at the post office, and Uncle Frank worked at the sawmill. To keep me busy while they were gone, my aunt and uncle had made a point to introduce me to girls my age, and they all tried to be my friends. They’d invite me over for an afternoon or to slumber parties, but I rarely said yes. My grief was sucking me dry; I had no energy for people.

When I wasn’t crying, I spent hours slumped upon my bed, trying to sort things out. I was obsessed with the harsh finality that my mother’s life, so charismatic and unselfish, had been cut short within an instant. She’d been only thirty-five years old. The memories of her death were enough to wrench me from nightmarish sleep, sweat-drenched and shaking. How to describe that mindless, wobbly-kneed run ending at the twisted crunch of metal that had been our car? My mother inside, bent and bloodied, with no way to reach her because the doors were flattened, handles gone.

“Sweet chil’, only Jesus can help you through your grief,” Aunt Eva would croon to me. “I know, because he surely helped me when we lost Henry. I’d sat in church every Sunday since movin’ here, but not until Henry died did I accept Jesus as my Savior. That terrible loss drove me to my knees.”

I knew she was trying to help. But her words of faith and encouragement sounded like such platitudes, even though I didn’t doubt she bore deep sorrow—over Henry’s death and my mother’s.
I didn’t mean to be selfish, but I couldn’t believe anyone really understood the depth of my pain, not even Jesus himself. Besides, I didn’t want Jesus to “help me through my grief.”

I just wanted my mother back.

In the fall, I began my junior year of high school. Bradleyville’s high school was a fraction of the size I was used to attending, consisting of one small building on the same campus as the elementary school. I flailed my way through eleventh grade, barely able to concentrate in class. Eventually, I had to repeat the whole year. The nightmares still pursued me, and grief over my mother had swelled into a smoldering resentment against God for taking her from me. Although Mom had taught me to pray when I was young, I no longer cared to talk to God. As far as I was concerned, my mother was the best person who’d ever walked on this earth; yet he’d let her die, while criminals and all manner of selfish, nasty people still lived.

Every Sunday I went to church with my aunt and uncle, fixing my eyes upon our pastor, Jeffrey Frasier, during his sermons but hearing little. The Bellinghams were joyful in their worship, and I admired their faith. Sometimes I wished I had what they did, for they seemed well grounded and content. I’d look at them and then think of Mei Zheng and her children, praying to Buddha. As my mother would say, both families had certainly found their ways to God. There had been times, when I was serving at Hope Center alongside my mom, that I’d felt close to him too. But now he seemed so distant, his ways impenetrable. My anger at him left me feeling all the more alone.

One Sunday about a month after Christmas—which was the hardest day I’d faced to date in Bradleyville—Pastor Frasier preached from the third chapter of John about a man named Nicodemus. “Verily, verily I say unto thee,” he quoted Jesus as saying to Nicodemus, “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” For some reason, those words penetrated my distant thoughts, and I frowned, trying to make sense of them. The statement didn’t sound right to me. I knew the kingdom of
God was heaven. And I knew my mom was in heaven. But I’d never heard her talk about being “born again,” whatever that was. Nicodemus apparently was as confused as I, because he questioned Jesus about what the term meant. Our pastor quoted further verses from the same chapter, and the more I heard, the more confused I became. “Please understand, dear folks,” Pastor Frasier continued, “Jesus says plainly in verses fifteen through eighteen that he is God’s only Son, and that there is no salvation but through him. You can’t be ‘religious’ enough; you can’t serve the poor enough; you can’t go to church enough or even spend time on your knees enough to save your own soul. You can only accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord and live your life for him.”