Rhythms of Grace (50 page)

I tried not to fly away as Mal dragged me to a patch of trees behind one of the model condos. Something in me wanted to let go and look down on the whole scene, but something else wanted to be free.

Wanted to live.

That was the part of me that bit him until he bled. That was the part of me that ran. Only now with my feet freezing and sinking in the snow like quicksand, that same part of me seemed to be fading away.

Mal tackled me and stroked my hair. “Will you stop? I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me.”

That did it, flipped my switch back on. The first time I’d been held against my will, I hadn’t known what would happen. Now I knew what came next. This time I wanted a different ending and I’d have to use my head to get it. I went limp in his hands.

“Give up? Good. I don’t know why you had to make this so difficult. This could have been our honeymoon.” Mal’s breath curled away from my ear like smoke.

I took a deep breath, strengthening myself for what would come.

The righteous are as bold as a lion.

I looked to a star overhead. God would tell me when.

He was going to kiss me again. I closed my eyes, let myself disconnect. The dreaded kiss never came.

“One last chance. Will you marry me?”

I tried to say something that he’d want to hear, something that would save my life, but my disgusted look must have betrayed me.

He shook his head. “I thought as much.”

In the white of the snow, I could see his shadow moving, his body coming down on me. This was it.

Now
.

I shoved my knee into his groin. Mal crumpled to his knees, still grasping my robe. He swung the knife as I pulled away. The blade sliced my palm, but I kept going, crawling backward, lobster-style toward the street, toward the lights. Mal was still down, but not for long.

Scream.

I screamed, hoping, praying that someone would hear. He was up now and coming at me. Before I could scream again, Mal’s hand clapped over my mouth. He jerked my face toward him and pulled something out of his pocket.

A ski mask.

As he pulled it down over his face, I gasped. Only once before had I seen someone’s eyes look like that. Like then, those eyes were the last thing I saw before my soul broke away and everything went black.

81

Brian

There were no lights at Zeely’s. They were probably asleep. I couldn’t look at Ron. “You probably think I’m nuts for sure.”

Ron was still looking up at Zeely’s windows. “You did the right thing.”

Embarrassed, I lifted my foot off the brake, ready to ease down the street in silence.

“Wait.” A light appeared in Zeely’s upstairs window. I put the car back into park. Another light, downstairs. Ron and I looked at each other. He was almost out of the car when I heard the scream.

Grace’s scream.

We took off in two directions.

Ron’s words came over my shoulder as I cut behind the building. “I’m going in for Zeely. I’ll call the cops. I’ll find you . . .”

Lights clicked on in other condos as I stumbled past them, willing my sleep-starved body to keep going. Thinking, praying one thing:

Faster.

A light flicked on across the street, three condos down. I propelled myself forward, pushing a clump of bushes and trees. He had on a ski mask, but when I saw his back, I knew. It was Mal, with a knife in his hand and Grace at his feet. She wasn’t moving.

A scream of my own came somewhere from the depth of me as I charged him. The knife came at me, but I ducked and chopped at his wrist with a martial arts move I’d thought I’d forgotten. The knife flew away.

He tumbled back, but came up ready, both fists raised. “I knew you’d come.”

I head butted him. He kicked me. And all the time I was looking at Grace, hoping that her chest was really moving and that it wasn’t just the wind.

He was watching her too. “I did love her, you know. Always. Even the first time. I just didn’t know it yet.”

That dropped me quicker than any blow he could have landed. Grace had never told me what happened to her, but Testimony was a small town.

It’d been Mal all the time.

I tried to get up, but fell down on one knee.

He laughed as he ran away. I was up now, running after him. I saw Ron, up ahead of me, pulling at Zeely’s arm. I slid to a stop when I saw what she had in her hand.

A gun.

“Zeely, no!” Ron shouted before something exploded in front of me.

Mal was down, grabbing his shoulder. Zeely was shaking. The gun dangled from her fingers. It looked like it weighed more than she did. Ron pried it from her fingers.

With her hands free, she pointed at Mal, screaming at him. “You come into my house and do this? You never loved her, but I did. She was finally going to be okay. We all were.” Tears washed over her chin.

Sirens echoed as what sounded like our entire police force approached. Zeely ran toward Grace. Ron and I stayed put, watching as Mal managed to stand.

A few strides brought me to him. It was a good thing Ron had the gun and not me. “Why did you do it, huh?”

Mal spat in my direction as the police approached. “The first time? Gang initiation. This time, I was going to make it right—”

I punched him then, right where he’d been shot. Put him in a headlock, squeezing off his air.

Ron came to me, but he held the gun out of my reach and unloaded the bullets, threw them in the snow. “Thou shall not kill, bruh. Don’t.”

I let him go. He curled into a ball on the ground. Laughing. “You’re pathetic, Mayfield. A punk. You always were.”

I snatched the empty gun from Ron and raised it over Mal’s head.

Someone grabbed me from behind. Slapped handcuffs on me.

“This is the police. Put down the weapon.”

The gun fell onto a sea of fresh snow. Virgin white. I tried to breathe as the police pulled me past Grace, just laying there as the medics loaded her onto a stretcher.

Once they got the whole story from Ron and confirmed there’d been no bullets in the gun, someone uncuffed me. I didn’t relax until I saw Mal in custody, heard them say the words.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Mal kept going until the end, looking like a pitiful boy now instead of a man who’d done so many horrible things. And still he wouldn’t shut up. “I had to make her understand. Don’t you see? God sent her back to me,” Mal said as they dragged him past me.

I turned from his lies toward Zeely’s sobs, wondering how I could have ever thought of him as a friend. Ron flanked my side as I headed for Grace.

“Can you hear me?” the medic asked once Ron pried Zeely away from Grace’s stretcher.

A weak voice answered. “I—I can.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Zeely said, quiet now, almost whispering. She spoke soft enough for me to hear my own voice.

I was saying it too.

82

Ron

I stayed with Zeely. The police had questioned her, but I’d done a lot of the talking. She was out of it. All the neighbors gathered around, letting the officers know that she had done what any of them would have, defended herself against an intruder. There was some discussion, but she was let go pending further investigation. Let go, but then she didn’t really go anywhere but into my arms.

“Are you okay?”

She shook her head. Started crying. “I never should have bought that gun.”

“I know.”

When one of the officers bagged the gun for evidence, Zeely covered her eyes. “I really shot him, didn’t I?”

I smoothed her hair. “You did. I couldn’t believe it. Where did you get that gun anyway? You’re scared to death of guns.”

She wilted against me, squeezing as she hugged my waist. “Yes. I am afraid of them.” A sob shook her body. “I shot somebody. Did I kill him?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Ron . . .”

“I know. I don’t mean it. He’ll be fine. Probably better than any of us. Come on. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m going in the ambulance. They’re not going to hurt her anymore.”

I sighed. We’d all been hurt tonight, and not just by bullets. I helped her to the ambulance. “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

“You sure?”

“Unless—”

“What?”

“Do you want me to call Jerry instead?”

She stiffened, then climbed up into the ambulance. “No. I want you. I’ll see you there.”

The ambulance doors slammed in my face. I knew that Mal was in the other one. When they’d taken him past me, he’d avoided my eyes. I could hardly believe that this was a guy I’d driven over an hour to hear preach. And tonight, I could have killed the guy. Easy. Brian could have too. But thank God, we hadn’t. As horrible as all of this was, vengeance belongs to God. It had to. I joined Brian sitting on the curb, giving a statement. I’d had to drag the guy out of the snow not long ago, but he seemed to be okay.

Another officer tapped my shoulder. “And your name?”

This again. “Jenkins. Ron Jenkins.”

“You were with, uh, Wilkins, correct?”

“Correct.”

“What’s your relationship? Why were you here tonight?”

I shrugged and looked at Brian. “Friends? We’re good friends. All of us.”

Brian nodded, then looked back at the ground. He pounded his fist against mine as the officer took his statement. We’d been through a war tonight. A battle fit for the two musketeers. We’d called ourselves brothers back in the day, then spent so long struggling to be friends. Something in this ugly night with its screams and guns had made us remember how to be brothers again. It seemed to have made Zeely remember too. I sure hoped so.

83

Grace

Jenny is going to teach me to make booties and a hat
too. Pink ones, because I still think it’s a girl. I picked a
name. Melony. Corny, but I like it. I rewrote my letter.
I told her that I was just a kid and Mom says I have to
give her to someone grown who wants to have a baby.
I told her I didn’t know if that was right, but everyone
says it’s best. I told her I’ll go to college and get a good
job so she’ll be proud if she ever comes to find me. I
hope she does.

Diana Dixon

I looked like a monster, but there was a beauty in the cuts and bruises obscuring my features, the lump that had been my eye. I couldn’t see much, but I knew when the nurse came at me with that little box in her hand what she wanted to do. I tried to scream, to yell, but all I could get was a weak, tired voice.

“Please don’t.” Going through a post-rape exam once was enough for a lifetime.

Standing nose-to-chest with a nurse holding a pair of tweezers, Zeely tapped the nurse’s shoulder. “She wasn’t raped.”

“I know that’s what she says, but we need to do a rape kit just in case.” The nurse reached beneath the drape.

I cried out, clutching Zeely’s hand. Zeely pushed the nurse’s hand away. “I think you’re the rapist tonight. She’s traumatized enough.”

“Ma’am, you don’t understand—”

Zeely squeezed between the stirrups and pulled out the rest of the bed. Put my feet gently down on the bed. “The man is already in jail.”

“But there is some question of a previous case—”

Zeely rubbed her nose in circles, snorting—the warning for complete meltdown. I rolled toward the window, bracing myself for the next wave of pain, sure to come after they carted Zeely away: a speculum, a needle, or some other instrument. I waited so long that I fell asleep. When I woke up, I smelled something wonderful, something scary. Cucumbers rolled in pine needles. Gingerly, I rolled over, lifting the pillow from over my face to look at him.

Brian.

I covered my face again. As much as I was glad he’d come, I didn’t want him to be here now, to see me like this. He took one step at a time, finally reaching me. He put his hands on the pillow and held it, waiting until I moved it out of the way. Someone shut the door behind us and the room went dark. Was it night? I’d lost all track of time.

I wasn’t sure what time it was, but for once I was thankful for the darkness between us. He moved slowly, putting his arms around me, and bringing his lips to my swollen eye, my bruised cheek . . . He kept on, finishing with my bandaged hand. It was as though he’d memorized my wounds in the few seconds that I’d let him look at me. A fragmented thought came to me from somewhere far away.