Authors: Grace Octavia

Something She Can Feel (28 page)

BOOK: Something She Can Feel

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I shook my head to the pianist and stepped toward the choir.

“A cappella,” I whispered. Their eyes widened and then I witnessed smiles curling up on faces sporadically. Zenobia winked back at me and smiled, too.

“Watch for my hand and then come in just as you did in practice,” I added.

They straightened up and I could feel the crowd growing restless behind us.

I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath. I opened them, counted to three, and raised my hand in front of my chest to begin conducting the song.

Nana Jessie used to have this saying. When I came off the altar after singing a solo, she'd pull me to her breasts and whisper in my ear, “Sounds like the flapping of angels' wings.” And that's how my students sounded on the first notes. They hit “Swing low, sweet chariot” crisp and clean, so defined and so articulate that I was sure everyone in the whole outdoors could hear them. Standing in front of them, their voices made me quiver through and through and I hardly had to direct. I don't know if it was the crowd or the occasion, but these young people poked out their chests and stood tall and proud, hitting notes as if they were a professional gospel choir. From stanza to stanza, some looked at me, their eyes alert and clear, as if they too were surprised at how melodious their voices sounded as they met the open air. It was a moment of chance confidence, of reverence to the blood that had no doubt been shed beneath our feet. And suddenly, the reason we sang that song, year after year, for so many years, left me full as they sang:

If I get there before you do
Coming for to carry me home
I'll cut a hole and pull you through
Coming for to carry me home

This wasn't a song about dying. It was about living. About getting free and starting a new life. Being reborn. Not as a slave to man and his rules. But free of sin and washed clean in the river. They sang:

If you get there before I do
Coming for to carry me home
Tell all my friends I'm coming, too
Coming for to carry me home

And I started crying. For our past and the students who'd come through Black Warrior by the river for which the school was named, for which Tuscaloosa was even namedâ“the Black Warrior” in Choctaw. And out of this place those students, the sons and daughters of slaves, for generations went on to become great. To become what they dared them not to. And then I cried for my students. Who it seemed time had turned its back on. Zenobia and Opal. And the others. Who had endless talentâall of themâbut nothing seemed to be tapping into it. They needed a sweet chariot right now. And their voices were calling for it to just swing low to catch them from falling.

Everyone was silent when the last note was sung and the song had ended. But I wasn't nervous. I just stood there looking at my children and smiled, not bothering to wipe my tears. I'd performed enough to know what this kind of silence meant. And even with my back turned to the crowd, I knew then that they'd felt what I was feeling. They remembered. And they wanted more. It was like in church when my father signaled for the pianist to keep on going. Play the chorus again. People were fired up and the Spirit was turned loose in the crowd. And if the choir didn't keep it going, then somebody else, Nana Jessie or one of the other church mothers, would just stand up and start her own song, lead the praise until we were all full.

And then, as if she was thinking just what I was thinking and had forgotten we were at the high school graduation and not Prophet House, Zenobia just started the song again altogether. Alone. In the sweetest, most peaceful voice I'd ever heard, she sang, with tears in her eyes, “Swing low, sweet chariot.”

Then I raised my hands and the choir joined in behind her. But what happened next was what moved me the most. I felt sound hit the back of my head, as if it was coming from booming speakers. The audience, I turned to see, was on its feet, singing now, too. The same notes, the same lyrics, the same cadence, as if they'd learned to sing that same song at Black Warrior. Even the graduates and the guests and stakeholders on the stage joined in and we were one choir in praise.

It was the most touching thing I'd ever experienced at Black Warrior. And when we were done, the crowd cheered the choir on so lovingly that Mr. Williams joked he was putting all of the million dollars the school got into the music department. That would've been nice.

As I walked back to the car to meet Evan to head to my parents' house for their annual postgraduation barbecue, people stopped me every two steps I took.

“Great job!”

“That was amazing!”

“I hope you get the million dollars for real!”

“We need more teachers like you!” Everyone had something positive to say in my ear. And I couldn't help but to remember how nervous I'd been about the new arrangement and singing the song a cappella. If only the one person who'd inspired me to do that could've been there.

“Not too bad, music teacher,” Angie Martin said when I walked past her car. And I insisted I was going to just keep walking as I normally did, but filled with pep, I stopped.

I tossed my hip to the side and put my hand on my waist like Billie always did when she was about to tell someone off.

“Well, the way you watch me, you should know,” I said, rolling my eyes and giving her as much cattiness in my one line as I could to make up for the years I'd just walked by. I was tired.

“Okay,” she said. She dropped her keys and looked completely stunned.

“And by the way,” I started (I was on a roll), “why don't you try worrying about your own lifeâabout your own students and what you can do for themâand stop sweating me!” Not bothering to wait for a response. I dropped my hand from my waist and sashayed the rest of the way to the car.

I was about to drop my purse and hightail it when I saw a certain somebody standing with his back to me between Billie and Evan at the car. It was the silhouette of a body I'd looked at thousands of times as I played babysitter and kept his head from hitting the hard edges of the wooden pews as he toddled around at church.

“Justin!” I hollered, extending my arms before he could even turn around to see me.

“Big sister!” He turned and ran toward me, ready to embrace.

I stood there, locked in my baby brother's arms for at least a minute before I would let loose. I hadn't seen him since Christmas when he and my father got into a huge fight after my father asked why he wasn't married yet and what in the hell was he doing with his life in Atlanta anyway. He was almost accusing Justin of being gay, and for once I just wished he'd come out and say it. Just say it and stop allowing the whispers and secrets to make him lie about who he really was to everyone he knew and loved most. But Justin stormed out, and just as he did almost every holiday, he swore he'd never come back to my father's house again.

He looked good. He'd clearly been putting on some weight in his hips, but he looked good. Like a younger and more strikingly handsome version of my father and Jr, Justin had a strong, almost Anglo angle to his jaw line, high cheekbones and a dimple in his chin that made him look like he belonged on a runway in Paris. In fact, when he was a little boy, his features were so pure and almost pretty that everyone thought he was a little girl. My mother, who doted over Justin hopelessly, always connected his handsome genes with her grandfather, a full-blooded Choctaw, who married her white grandmother.

“Baby brother,” I said, welling up again. “I can't believe you made it.”

“You know I had to come home to see the baddest choir in the land!”

“And they did sound like that today, too,” Billie jumped in, coming over to hug me as well.

“They were good,” I added. “I was so proud.”

“You worked hard enough,” Evan said.

“And then when everyone started singing,” I said, “that was amazing.” I wouldn't let go of Justin. It was like I was afraid he'd just disappear. I had so much to tell him. So much to share about what had been going on with me.

“Yeah, Mama was crying,” Justin said.

“Where are they?” I asked. “Mama and Daddy?”

“They went back to the house, so they could make sure Ms. Cobb and Fanny had everything laid out like they like it,” Justin answered, referring to the two cooks my mother always hired when we were expecting guests at the house for a barbecue. They knew how to cook, but my mother liked things organized a certain way and my father was pretty particular about his barbecue. He seasoned everything himself the night before and insisted on working the grill. “I told them I'd hitch a ride with you.”

“I guess we'd better head over there, then,” I said. “I'm starving.”

“Actually,” Billie said, frowning, “I was coming over to say I wasn't going to make it over to your parents'. I'm going to Clyde's family barbecue.”

“Wait a second, guys.” I excused myself from Evan and Justin and pulled Billie to the side. I couldn't believe she was obviously still considering marrying Clyde. After the prom, I finally got the nerve to tell her everything Evan said about seeing Ms. Lindsey and Clyde fighting at the mall. This had to matter in her decision.

“Are you still going to do this?” I asked. “I mean, after everything he's put you through?”

“I love him,” she replied.

“I know you love him, but it's just not right. He's not going to change just because he asked you to marry him. He's still the same Clyde.”

“And I'm still the same Billie and I don't know how to love anyone else. So I'm going to take this chance and see what he's talking about. After all that's happened, that's the least I can do.”

“But you can do better than be with a man who only wants to be with you because he thought you were with someone else ... someone you hired,” I whispered so Evan and Justin couldn't hear me. “Do you really want that to be how your marriage begins? That he came to you because of that and because Karen left him?”

“I don't even know anymore,” she said. “I just know I have to try. You don't know what it's like to want someone to love you like this for so long and then to finally get it. I know it's not all right, but it's just ... what I got. And I have to know if it'll work.”

“I got your back,” I mouthed.

“Good or bad?”

“Good or bad.”

We hugged and Billie looked down at her ring.

“Now if I could only get this fool to give me a mansion, we're onto something,” she said. “That and my red drop top!”

As Billie headed to her car and I rejoined Evan and Justin, I said a prayer that she finally got what she wanted from Clyde all these yearsâtrue love. And while I knew it was a shot in the dark, if she was strong enough to still have hope, I had to hope, too.

“Okay, I guess that leaves us three,” I said, linking back up with Justin.

“More bad news,” Justin said.

“What?”

“I'm going to hitch a ride with John,” Evan said. “He's swinging over here now to get me.” He looked down at his watch. “Said he has something to show me.”

“Are you serious?” I protested. “But it's a family day.”

“He's said it's really serious. I'll have him drop me by your parents' if we end early.”

“Work. Work. Work,” I repeated. I moved over to hug Evan good-bye. “Will I really get to see you later?” I asked, feeling the happiness of the moment.

“Sure, sweetheart.” He kissed me and when he moved to step away, I saw in Evan's eyes a trace of worry.

“Everything okay?” I asked as he opened the car door for me.

“Everything's fine. You guys go ahead. I'm sure I'll be over shortly.”

He closed the door and stepped up to the curb beside the car.

“So, Ms. Thing, what is going on?” Justin said when we finally pulled out.

I kept my eyes on Evan in the rearview mirror. When we got across the parking lot, I saw John's car pull up and Evan got in.

“What do you mean?” I shifted the mirror.

“Jr's acting all crazy. May was reading scripture in the dining room when I left to come here. And Mama and Daddy hardly said two words to each other.”

“It's a lot of stuff,” I said, telling Justin all about Jr's affair and how I'd run into his live-in mistress at our old house. He and May were still awaiting the paternity results and she swore she was going to stick by her husband's side.

“Well, that explains the Bible being everywhere,” Justin said.

“I don't know why she'd even try to put herself through more of Jr's garbage, but she's prepping herself for the role of her lifetime.”

BOOK: Something She Can Feel

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