Rhythms of Grace (24 page)

Brian didn’t look as if he found anything funny. He pointed at Sean. “You. On your feet.”

All the class laughed then.

Brian reached for a yardstick in the chalk tray at the board. He tapped it on the floor, demanding silence. He pointed to Sean again. “Come on, Mr. Griot. Tell us what we learned yesterday.”

An uneasy hush fell over the room. Everyone realized now that Brian wasn’t in one of his kidding moods.

Sean didn’t look worried. “Don’t worry. I got this.” He took a step toward Brian. “I don’t remember what we learned yesterday, but I’ll tell you what I learned today: you and Miss O aren’t as uptight as y’all try to act. From the looks of your neck anyway—”

Brian crossed the space between him and Sean in three strides. “Sit down.”

The braver half of the class, the students in the back with less to lose, resumed their laughter. The other half looked at each other and then at me, unsure what to say or think. Regret rose in my throat. I’d had such a sweet time of prayer this morning. How could a day with such a blessed start unravel so fast?

Brian recovered quickly, giving excuses that sounded too much like the ones he’d given me. He had the students in his hand again, telling a story about some trip he had taken, some king he had known . . .

I heard it all and none of it too. I had to get out of there. I needed some air.

“I’ll be right back.” I went to the door without waiting for Brian’s reply. I paused in the doorway, where the morning took a dark turn. Pushing the memory away, I stepped into the hall and ran into Joyce.

My boss stepped in front of me. “Where you headed?”

“Bathroom.”

“Stick around.” She led me right back into the room. She smiled at the students. “Hello, Bantus, how are you?”

The students answered in chorus. “Excellent.”

Brian’s chalk squeaked against the board. He turned, his face as red as his neck.

“How are things going this morning?” Joyce asked next, looking first at Brian, then the students.

“We’re fine,” Brian said, his eyes on Sean.

Joyce didn’t look convinced. “Good. I need to speak to you and Ms. Okoye in the office for a moment.”

He looked annoyed. “Sure. Everyone go ahead and start your paper about our activity. Five paragraphs. Sensory details. Approach it from any angle you like. I’ll be right back if you have questions.”

I led Joyce into the office. Brian followed with clenched teeth.

Once inside, he took the lead. “Look, I’m glad you came by. Something happened this morning.”

“So I’ve heard.” Joyce pushed back Brian’s collar and inspected his neck.

Brian looked at me with resignation and betrayal. He changed the subject. “It’s not just that either. It’s McKnight too. I still don’t think I should be teaching him. I’m not sure that boy wants to change.”

Joyce grabbed his other collar, pulled him down an inch. “Change is hard for all of us. Wouldn’t you say so, Grace?”

I nodded, surprised to see Joyce so angry.

She let go of his shirt. “Now for the real reason for my visit. I’ll need to see both of you in my office during lunch today. Separately. It’s imperative.”

Brian hoisted a box of books from the floor and onto the desk. He took his keys out of his desk and punched through the gap in the cardboard. “Can’t you just tell us what you need now? I don’t have time for another five-year plan. Not today.”

Joyce took a deep breath. “Fine, we’ll stick with a one-day plan then. Charlotte Wells has accused you of sexual harassment. She’s named Grace as a witness. If you can’t make time for me, I can bring in the school board.”

33

Jerry

“What’s the opposite of a negative?” I asked the class.

“A positive.”

I turned to the second row and smiled. Sean McKnight again. That one was really changing, getting back on track. I tossed the boy a chunk of bubble gum. A perfect pass.

Sean opened his hands in the shape of a dove. “Only one piece?”

I laughed. “Just one for now. And don’t leave the funny papers on the floor. I find them all over the building.”

The prizewinner slouched in his seat, chuckling. “It’s my modus operandi, Mr. T.” He wiggled his fingers. “I’m sticky.” He ripped the gum open and plopped it in his mouth.

Zeely caught the paper before it hit the floor. “You’re going to be sticking to a jail cell if you keep talking like that.” She started for the trashcan with the same angry look she’d had all morning.

I tugged her sleeve as she passed. “Are you okay?”

She ignored me, turning to the class instead. “It’s time for group work. Here are the problems.” She tossed a packet to the students at the head of each row. One of them dropped it.

“Sorry,” Zeely said before moving on.

When she returned to the desk, I tapped her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right? You seem a little tense.”

She pushed her belt low on her waist. Yanked a thread from her sweater. “Tense? You seem a little lax. This is high school, not kindergarten. You shouldn’t reward them for doing the basics. Nobody else will.” She whispered the rebuke.

Not this again. “They certainly won’t get any breaks from you. You won’t give yourself any either. I’m just trying to get them interested—”

“Phone call for Mr. Terrigan.” The intercom swallowed her response.

I frowned. Carmel again, no doubt. How many times had I told her not to call the office, but to call my cell instead? “Can you take a message?”

The secretary cleared her throat. “The caller insists on speaking with you. Something about a debt—”

All eyes were on me. Especially Zeely’s. “I’ll take it on one.”

Zeely waved her hands. “Group one, are you done? I’m coming back there to check . . .”

I lifted the phone to my ear, stretching the cord around the corner. “This is Jerry Terrigan.”

“As you know, today is the last day to remit payment.”

“I sent two thousand by Western Union this morning—”

“Only full payment is possible at this point. You’ve forfeited all your payment arrangements.”

I wound the cord and the accusation around my finger. “Actually, my wife made those arrangements.”

“You signed the form.”

Did I? Or had Carmel signed my name? It didn’t matter. We got into this together. “I’m sorry.”

“We are too. Your daughter is one of our top students. I planned to recommend her for a Harvard interview next year. Is there anything you can do?”

I sighed. “We sold our house, our cars. We even moved home to cut expenses. There isn’t anything else.” To hear the doctor tell it, I’d pawned my health too.

“No stocks?”

“Sold.”

“Bonds?”

“Turned in.”

“Jewelry?”

I sucked in a breath.
The ring.
It would be worth three thousand at least . . . They didn’t make jewelry like that anymore. I stared at Zeely, paused in the doorway. They didn’t make women like that anymore either. No matter what happened, my mother had intended it for her. It wasn’t mine to give away. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

A whistle on the line. “What a shame. Such promise. We’ll be forced to withdraw her effective immediately.”

Immediately? “Okay. We’re a couple hours away and my ex-wife is working today too. We’ll pick her up tonight.”

“Correction, sir. You’ll pick her up now.”

The trip took longer than usual. I’d tried to get Carmel to come along, but she had the night shift and her boss wouldn’t let her go. So Justice and I set out for Rose Hill Academy. Monique, my older daughter, was packed and waiting when we got there. We hadn’t said much on the way home.

I rubbed my forehead with one hand and guided the steering wheel with the other. Justice wailed in the backseat. “Can you give her the pacifier, please?”

Monique turned around to reach the backseat, her fingers rustling against the baby’s jacket. “The pacifier isn’t on her coat. The day care people must have put it in the bag.”

Day care. Carmel and her bright ideas. The extra sleep had been nice, I had to admit, but the extra hours to pay for it often cancelled that out too. I switched hands on the wheel and fished behind my seat. I pulled up Carmel’s leather backpack. She was too old to carry a diaper bag, she said.

Too cute, more like it.

“Here. Look in there for it. Does she still feel warm?”

Monique reached back and touched the baby’s head. “She’s a little hot. A fever, you think?”

I nodded. “They probably won’t take her tomorrow. I’ll call Joyce. Maybe she’ll let me bring her.”

The baby whimpered again, followed by a sucking sound. I chuckled. “You found it. Good. I’ve got a spare pack in here somewhere.” I turned into my ex-wife’s apartment complex, a few blocks from my own. “Do you still have your key? Probably not, huh? You’re not here much.”

Monique nodded, looking past me to the convenience store uniform hanging behind my head. “I’ve got my key, Daddy.”

A tear coursed down her nose, into her mouth. She sobbed, taking short breaths. “I’m sorry about Justice. The day care. The school. You and mom. I’m sorry for messing up everything.”

“Things were messed up for a long time, honey. It’s not your fault.” I grabbed two napkins from the glove compartment and gave one to Monique. With the other, I blew the baby’s nose. “Come on now. Blow.” A honking sniff. I smiled. “Good girl.”

I got out and opened the back door, unfastening the car seat. By the time I unbuckled Justice, Monique had disappeared inside. Now she reappeared in the door with a strange look.

I sighed. “What?”

“Mom left a message. She has to stay until eleven.”

I stared at the uniform in the car. I’d already taken off most of the day on one job. Now she was going to have me missing again on the other. And when there wasn’t enough money, it would be my fault.

Monique seemed to know just what I was thinking. “We’ll be okay. Go on to work, Daddy.”

“S’up ’Nique?” A dark-skinned boy in a skullcap sagged around the corner. “I thought you only came on the weekends.”

My daughter gave the boy a sly smile. “Hey, Ced. I’m here for good.”

The boy nodded slowly, like he’d just had an idea. “For real?” He walked to the door.

I had an idea too. This wasn’t happening. I left the baby seat on the sidewalk and was quickly in between them. “Go on home, son. And don’t come back.”

Monique looked embarrassed. “But, Daddy—”

I shook my head. I knew exactly where this was going. I saw it every day at school. I saw the results of it now—bright and beautiful on the sidewalk with a binkie in her mouth. This time I knew not to take any chances.

It couldn’t happen again. Not on my watch.

“Get in the car, Monique. You’re coming home with me.”

34

Brian

I sat in the dark classroom, staring at the door, the portal to disaster. I stretched myself over my drum set, licking chalk dust from my lips. A knock sounded at the door. I looked up at the clock. Three thirty. School had let out long ago. I’d watched Grace peel out of the parking lot right after the bell, so it wasn’t her. Whoever else it could be, I didn’t care.

“Doc? Open up. It’s me. Quinn.”

“Go away,” I said from somewhere in the pit of myself. I couldn’t be a mentor now. Role model either. Breathing was challenging enough.

“I ain’t,” Quinn said. He forced the knob and entered the room, feeling along the wall for the light. A basketball bulged under one arm. He fingered the drums lightly before striking out a melody of his own. “Middle Passage, huh?”

My grunt was the only response, but Quinn wouldn’t give up. When I walked into the office and plopped into my chair, hair overflowing my hands, Quinn dribbled in behind me. “Brooding? You know I can’t let you get away with that. Pity is the doorway to excuse and excuse the entrance to ignorance—”

I growled into my hand. There was nothing worse than having your own words used against you.

Quinn laughed, reaching into a box of books with comic strip drawings on the cover. “
The Black Holocaust?
I thought they cut the funds for books. How much these set you back?”

Too much to discuss. I peeked out from under my hair. “You remember it?”

“Remember it? Man, I bought my own copy. Still have it at the house. Why are they still in the box? Don’t you give them out after the Middle Passage?”

He remembers everything. If only I could forget.

“Things don’t seem to be following my lesson plans these days.” What an understatement. A few months ago, I had life figured out. I’d stay single and pour my life into these kids, kids like Quinn. Next summer, it’d be back to Africa and one day, maybe for good. Then I met a woman . . . one who’d likely never talk to me again.

Quinn pulled up a chair. “The thing with Miss Wells getting you down?”

“You know?” I paused. “I guess it’s best. I’ll probably lose my job anyway.”

Quinn balanced the ball on his finger and gave it a spin. “Many are the plans of a man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord shall stand.”

I retreated under my hair again. The Lord? This was ridiculous. By the time I got around to God, there’d be nothing left.