Rhythms of Grace (15 page)

“Here,” she said, pushing the little girl into my chest. She lifted a leather tote inside the door. “There’s enough milk and diapers in there to hold her a few hours. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

I tugged at her sleeve as she turned to go. “Come inside and let’s take turns. Seriously. I’ve hardly slept in two days. Let me sleep for two hours and I’ll let you sleep for two . . .”

My voice faded but Carmel’s response was like smelling salts. For the moment, anyway.

“You don’t get it, do you? In two hours, I have to be at work and pretend I’m happy that some fourteen-year-old is having a baby. Tell her that everything will be all right.”

The baby wailed, startled by our loud voices.

“And it won’t be all right, but it’s all I got. I’m sorry, Jerry. I never meant for it to be like this for either of us.” Carmel tightened the belt of her jacket and marched to her car.

I stared behind her until she pulled off. Another cry brought me back to reality and back inside the house. I patted the baby’s back. “I never meant for it to be like this for you either, little mama.”

I closed the door and rested on it, the baby’s head under my chin. After a few tickles, we headed for my bed with the diaper bag in tow. With a prayer of thanks for family, for legacy, I called in to my job and prayed for as much sleep as I could get. Somehow, I had to get this girl to lie down.

18

Brian

The muzzle of a nine-millimeter swept an arc over us and back again with every word the gunman spoke. The floor was hard under us and cold, but we lay still. My thumb was pressed to Grace’s lips, her head against my chest. The police were pulling in now, we could hear them outside.

The boy waving the gun seemed desperate. We heard him pop the ammunition out and back in again.

Grace didn’t speak, but her tears soaked my shirt. That took me over the edge I was already peering over, made me want to sweep the guy’s legs out from under him. I slid my hands from under her head. Just when I was going to make a move, the other boy flicked a lighter. Sean McKnight. The kid who’d almost cost me my job and now maybe my life. It was too late, but maybe he’d come to his senses.

“What are you doing, man! Turn that off.”

The light flickered off. “This isn’t how you said it was going to go down. No guns, remember? I want out,” Sean said with a strained voice.

It was all I could do to keep quiet. Now Sean wanted to use his head, when he was about to go to jail
?
For all the difficulties Sean and I had gone through, I hated that things had come to this.

“Shut up,” the gunman said. “Don’t worry about getting out. You ain’t getting in. It’s staying alive you got to be worrying with now. Just follow us and keep your mouth shut. What’s that lady’s name? The principal—”

“Nobody. She’s nobody to you,” Sean whispered. As police flashlights lit up the room, Sean and I locked eyes.

“Police!” The shout came from the hall. The doors creaked open, flooding the room with light.

As the boys started to run, I grabbed for the gunman’s leg. Once he was down, I tried to push myself up, but someone yanked me back. Grace. She was stronger than she looked. A policeman rushed past us and finished the job, clicking the handcuffs on the gunman in a flash.

She sagged in my arms, her words rushing out in one breath. “Thank you, Jesus.”

I shrugged before pulling my new co-worker to her feet. I still wasn’t feeling the God thing, but I’d almost said the same thing myself. What Grace didn’t know—Joyce always omitted it from her new teacher invitations—was that several teachers in the district had been critically injured by students, one even killed. At Northside High, once the suburban school of choice, a twenty-five-year veteran teacher had been gunned down after school for giving a student a failing grade. Imani’s own vice principal had broken his arm breaking up a fight during summer school and retired soon after. Last year had been a rough one for the school district, and this year might not be much better. And yet, here was Grace, standing tall with her Jesus.

One of the detectives I knew from around town gave me a quick nod, pointing out Joyce gathering parents together across the room. He’d gone to Imani himself.

“She wants to say a few words to the parents. I’ll give her five minutes to clear the room. Will you keep her straight?”

I nodded, turning to tell Grace what was going on, but she and her mumbled prayers had already blended into the crowd.

My emergency faith melted away as I watched amazed while a few parents righted their clothes and gripped the hands of their children and stayed five more minutes when everyone else had run out as quickly as they could. The five minutes was long gone now as Joyce had done a quick dash to the parking lot and guided three more parents back into the cafeteria.

“Thanks for staying. I know it was scary tonight, but I’m glad you saw what happened tonight. This is exactly why this school is needed,” she said. “We have to reach these kids. Help them discover their destinies.” Joyce marched by, waving for me to follow.

I frowned, but followed, righting overturned chairs as I went. The detective gave me a tense look, but I held up a hand asking for a little more time. Joyce couldn’t be anything, anyone, other than herself.

Neither could Grace, whose flowery scent still mingled with my sweaty one. Instead of leaving like I’d thought, Grace had joined Thelma in helping some of the older people to their cars while Joyce dealt with the media. There was talk of giving rides to those who’d missed the last bus, but I talked both ladies out of that, leaving it to the police and myself, if necessary. Lottie was nowhere to be seen.

I tuned out Joyce’s weary optimism as she talked to reporters. Instead, I watched through the doorway as a policeman walked Grace to her car. I’d liked to have done it myself, but she walked on without looking back. Despite her ripped dress and bare feet, she still made me shift my feet. I even thought of my late wife, Karyn. “You can’t run from God forever,” she’d said to me before she died. As Grace’s pitiful excuse for a car pulled away, I wondered if she hadn’t been right. For the first time in a long time, none of my philosophies rang true.

Tonight it’d been me calling out to God in the darkness. I’d been in dangerous situations before, some worse than this. Tonight though, I’d wanted—needed—God’s help. And I’d gotten it. Where that left me now, I wasn’t sure.

“Get off me!” someone yelled in the hall.

I turned and saw Sean McKnight struggling between two officers. Earlier, I’d put in a word for him, probably only because of Joyce. The officer, my former classmate, didn’t say much, but he kept Sean behind the others being hauled off to jail. I hoped Sean, only seventeen, would get time in juvenile detention instead of being tried as adult. I clutched my gut, sore from the kicks and prods of the crowd. The sight of a student in handcuffs, even a kid who refused to live up to his potential, turned my stomach. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t save them all. Joyce couldn’t either. I signaled to her one last time to shut it all down. She ignored me.

“Dr. Mayfield and I will stand with this community to make changes one child at a time. We were all afraid tonight, but we all stayed, we all prayed. Things come against us, but we will prevail. This
will
be a good year.” Joyce spoke softly, but I knew that she meant every word.

We all walked to the door together. I reached out and took Joyce’s hand, which, unlike Grace’s, felt like a child’s against my own. I felt her body rest against me as the school door closed behind us. After locking it and giving the key to the officer, I kissed her cheek. She’d been doing this a long time and for all her love, all her patience, she was tired. I was too.

I offered to drive Joyce home but she refused, opting instead for a police escort following behind her. I reached for my car keys, slipped into my remaining pocket hours earlier.

Was that tonight? I wondered. A satin tag fluttered to the ground as I pulled out my keys. Once I was inside the car, I read it. Slowly.

Virtuous Woman. Size 16.

19

Grace

Morning air poured in my car window on the way to church. Though Testimony was landlocked, the breeze had a salty taste, like tears warmed with the last fever of summer. Or maybe my own tears still lingered on my tongue. Home after the mess at orientation, the tears I’d been waiting on for so long finally came. I wanted to believe that it would be the last cry for a while, that today was truly a new day, a fresh mercy.

You are a new creation.

I kept driving, past Zeely’s empty driveway—she’d left hours ago to sing in the choir at first service—past Imani Academy and right up to Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church. I did a quick scan for a black Jaguar. It wasn’t there. I only had the questions to battle with as I climbed the church stairs, only the words in my head that had robbed my sleep:

You can’t help those kids.

That man doesn’t want you. Nobody does. Nobody ever will.

Who do you think you are?

God knew who I was, what I’d been through. He knew who he’d created me to be. He’d be with me through this, whatever this was.

Are you sure? He left you once.

“No,” I whispered as I took hold of the church door. Whether I understood it or not, God had been with me.

Even then.

I took a seat three rows of hats back from the pulpit. Mount Olive looked different: padded pews replaced the wood benches and shag carpet blanketed the once bare floor. A new organ even jazzed up the old songs. Still, something, everything about the place was painfully familiar. The hurt I’d buried years ago in the downstairs choir closet crawled up through the floor and into my soul. Each word from Reverend Wilkins hit the rewind button on my life, leaving a confused teenager in a woman’s body.

“Everybody has a cross—a place where something died. Sometimes we run away before the resurrection. Sometimes we linger long after the body is gone.” The Reverend’s voice boomed from his slight frame.

I studied the cross above the pulpit. It looked the same from the front as it had from the youth choirstand where I’d sat on my last visit. My eyes waded through the suits and sequins to the bus stop outside, the scene of my destination, the debut for which I never arrived. The bus had come eventually and dropped off its passengers. If only I had been one of them . . .

Don’t play that game.

“You can’t outrun God. I see it all the time. Folks cut the rug out of here and come back dragging one arm, three kids, and a parole officer—”

“I heard that!” someone said. Laughter rumbled through the church. A tall man across the aisle jerked awake and added a chuckle before nodding off again.

The sermon went on, floating around my head. Until everyone stood for the offering. We flowed into two columns in the center aisle, with each side of the room making the appropriate turn to get back to our seats. When it was my turn to put in my offering, I paused before the aging deacons and smiled, dropping more money than I could afford into the bronze plate. I remembered too late that Mount Olive had as many as four offerings in one service and could be counted on to call someone to the front who was in need of a little extra help. As I walked back to my seat, Zeely gave me a proud smile and approving glance. I stared at the floor. I wouldn’t be able to give her a repeat performance if I wanted to eat until my first paycheck.

Back in the pew, I reached for my Bible and opened up to Psalms, marked with a flyer addressed to “Occupant” at my new address. The word “God” sprawled across the page in a neon blur. I paused to read it as everyone made it back to their seats.

Need a fresh start with God? Stop by anytime. Tender Mercies
Church.

I crossed my legs, careful not to run my last pair of hose. Calculating how much to give on the next trip around the room, I wondered how many offerings Tender Mercies had. I stared out the window at the stone bench and withered trees, watching as a bus pulled up and released a group of laughing teens at the corner.

My hand tightened around the bills tucked in my palm. I stood slowly and headed for the back door, holding up an index finger like my mother had when she got sick of things—most times of my daddy. I didn’t falter, even when Zeely narrowed her eyes. It didn’t matter if the other church took up ten offerings. Being here was like worshiping next to a grave.

20

Brian

Midnight heroes made a sorry sight the next morning. And if I wasn’t sure of that, pain blazed from my ankle to my thigh every few minutes, ensuring that I didn’t forget. I tossed back a glass of apple-carrot juice, hoping the nutrients would sooth something. My mind would be a good place to start, especially after the fax that had just come buzzing out of my machine with both mine and Grace’s names on each page. The more I thought about that, about her, the less I thought it was a good idea for us to teach together.

I reached for the phone, both hoping and doubting that Joyce would be home from church.

“Praise the Lord,” Joyce answered in a tone that let me know she didn’t appreciate the Sunday call. Well, I hadn’t enjoyed the Saturday brawl either. We’d both have to deal with it.

“Morning, Doc. Can you talk?”

A sigh came through the phone. “Dr. Mayfield, you know I rest on the Sabbath. This better be important.”

Dr. Mayfield? She was plenty mad. My leg hurt so bad that I didn’t mind pushing back a little. “Sorry to bother you, Joyce, really, but it’s this joint teaching thing. After last night, I don’t know if Ms. Okoye needs to be in the proficiency test class at all.” There was more to it of course, but there was no need to get into it.

“If you can’t work with her, you can’t work. Don’t call me back either, sweetheart. See you Tuesday. Have a nice Labor Day.”

Despite the warmth in her words, a click on the line denied me any chance of further appeal.

I lowered the phone, accepting Joyce’s words. In my office, I collected the class roster. Its pages had escaped the paper tray. Many of the names I knew from years before, retakers mostly. A few kids were kids I’d met at orientation. There were also names I didn’t recognize, probably kids who’d heard things about me and signed up out of curiosity. My tresses and my temper had earned me a strange fame at Imani, although the man usually disappointed the myth.