Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (8 page)

The next morning, Wednesday, as I headed out on the Harley to Sacrament One for communion I decided to take God at his go-another-mile word and drive a longer route. Instead of going straight down West King, Classic II and I took a back way around Oyster Creek with its clusters of shellfish gaping from their beds.

Once we made the curve on Davis, I let the throttle out a little. I always found it ironic that the moss-hung streets in the weary West King area made for better riding than the ones everybody wanted to live on. Classic seemed to like the freedom to make wide, sweeping turns, the kind we could lean into like one being, purring all the way. As Desmond would say, “Yeah, baby.” My mood improved by several degrees.

Until I made the turn from Moultrie onto San Luis and remembered why I made a point never to come this way.

The forgotten framework of Flagler Church’s partially built school was on that corner. It looked little different than it had four months ago when I’d last let myself look at it. The only new addition was the mounds of Johnson grass that grew wherever the bulldozers hadn’t completely killed the earth. My mind said,
Don’t look at it. Keep going. You’ll be late.
But something else pulled me to a heavy stop. I planted my feet and let the Harley rumble impatiently.

The naked, hulking frame was as far as Troy Irwin’s money had taken the church’s project before he teetered on the edge of disgrace. At least the Reverend Howard had the integrity to part company with him.

Yet apparently not enough for his congregation. Being unforgiven could kill a man like Garry Howard.

“Your school was a terrible idea, Reverend,” I whispered. But the skeleton of a dead hope was worse.

Hank’s Sportster wasn’t parked in front of Sacrament House I when I pulled up, which meant I’d have a few minutes with the Sisters before she arrived. As I walked toward the front porch it occurred to me that this first house looked like a wise older sister to Sacrament Two across the street. The two pecan trees Owen had supervised the planting of were gaining some heft as if the yard were growing toward a maturity the second house hadn’t caught up to yet.

When I peered through the screen, Jasmine peered back and whispered, “I am
so
glad to see you, Miss Angel.”

The chin was in full-quiver. I took a deep breath and slid through the mere crack she made for me as she opened the door.

“What’s going on?” I said.

Mercedes’s deep voice answered from the direction of the couch. “Just so you know, Miss Angel, I told them we shoulda called you last night.”

“I didn’t want to be wakin’ you up at midnight,” Jasmine said.

“More like two a.m.” That came from Sherry who approached me with a steaming mug. “You’re gonna need this.”

“Why?”

The three of them eyeballed each other like siblings with a joint confession they each thought the other should make. Stocky Rochelle didn’t even grunt from her position against the wall that led to the hallway. She just leaned there, arms folded, revealing part of the tattoo sleeve that depicted what appeared to be the complete Battle of Gettysburg. Only Ophelia seemed unruffled, although she was probably still half asleep and had no clue what this was all about. She gazed at my coffee mug.

“Somebody,” I said as I handed the coffee to Ophelia. “Anybody.”

“What are y’all waitin’ for?” Zelda strode in from the hall and bounced off of Rochelle’s hefty arm as she passed her. “It ain’t like we done somethin’ wrong. We just doin’ the Jesus thing.”

“That’s what I told them, Miss Angel,” Jasmine said.

“So how about telling
me
?”

“Foxy.” Zelda’s voice was reminiscent of heavy-grade sandpaper as she craned her neck to look down the hall. “Come out here and meet Miss Angel. She don’t bite.”

No. But I wasn’t sure I could say the same about the person who appeared beside Rochelle. Her face took a piece right out of my soul.

She was a waif of a thing, even shorter than the diminutive Ophelia, thinner than Zelda, and with bigger eyes than Gigi. Her skin might be fairer than Sherry’s near translucence, although it was hard to tell with the makeup she’d apparently applied to lips, face, and eyes with a trowel. No one in the room had hair like hers—auburn and thick and curly—nor could any of them rival her for the stubborn set of her chiseled chin. Not Rochelle. Not even Mercedes.

“So, what?” this slip of a redheaded person said. “Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose?”

“I apologize,” I said. “I’m Allison Chamberlain. And you are?”

“Foxy.” A cute-husky voice bore no resemblance to the disdain that claimed the rest of her. “And don’t ask me for my last name because I don’t give out that information.”

Mercedes obviously couldn’t hold back an “Mmm-
mm.”

It wasn’t as if we hadn’t seen attitude here before. It was the habit most of
them
had worn until they could believe we, and God, loved them enough to want them whole. But none of them had looked like they were concealing a weapon under it. Something had nudged them to come in. This one looked like she’d been forced at gunpoint.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” I said. “Have some coffee—”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Anybody else?”

“I got it handled.” Sherry nodded at Rochelle who grunted and followed her into the kitchen.

“Join us,” I said to Foxy.

We all took our customary places on the couch and the two chairs covered with afghans to hide their bald spots and on the big floor pillows that had once lived at India’s house. Jasmine smiled at Foxy and patted a spot next to her on the couch, which Ophelia had graciously given up. Of course, we could probably have parked Ophelia on the front porch and she wouldn’t have noticed until her second cup of caffeine.

Foxy watched that all happen and then straddled the arm of the sofa near a now scowling Zelda. Our Zelda
could
give her a run for her money when it came to out-and-out glowering, but Foxy looked unaffected.

I took a beaded turquoise pillow on the floor next to Mercedes’s chair and said, “So how did you find us, Foxy?”

“I didn’t. They found me.”

I waited, but further elaboration was apparently unnecessary in her view. Or something had dried out her mouth and she wasn’t owning it.

“Who are they?” I said.

“Me and Sherry,” Zelda said. “We was lockin’ up at C.A.R.S. last night, and it was late ’cause Sherry was doin’ the books ’cause ol’ Maharry messed ’em up, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

She glanced warily at Sherry who was entering with a tray of mismatched mugs. Rochelle followed with the coffee pot.

“Go on,” I said.

“And we seen this one—Foxy—back in the alley with some dude, ’bout to … well, they was fixin’ to get it on.”

“Which was none of your business,” Foxy said.

Sherry paused midway into handing Jasmine a cup. “When some man slaps a woman across the face and I see it, that is my business.”

I sat straighter on the cushion and watched Foxy. She picked at a hole in the upholstery between her thighs.

“When we saw he was gettin’ ready to hit her again,” Zelda said, “we both just took off down the alley toward ’em.”

“Never mind that he coulda been carryin’,” Mercedes said.

Zelda’s voice pitched upward. “You sayin’ you wouldn’t a done the same thing if you saw somebody bein’ abused?”

“Who said I was being abused?”

We all looked at Foxy.

“He just wanted it rough.”

Sherry leaned over to get her face closer to Foxy’s. “Maybe so, but you didn’t.”

Foxy looked right back at her. “Since when does it matter what I want?”

A chill rippled up my backbone.

“Since right now,” Sherry said. “All you got to do is say you don’t want that kind of life anymore, and we’ll help you find a real way to live.”

“Like this?” Foxy looked around the room as if she smelled something foul.

“Yeah, like this,” Mercedes said. “With a future.”

“Working in a car place?”

“Turning tricks in an alley?” Jasmine came off the couch, eyes shimmering, and knelt in front of Foxy. “You can try to tell us you like starvin’ half to death but we ain’t gon’ believe it any more than we believed it when we said it our own self.”

“I wasn’t starving.”

“You fainted before we even ran off your john.” Sherry looked at me. “Zelda and I had to carry her here.”

“And she about ate the plate when Mercedes scrambled her some eggs,” Jasmine said.

Rochelle motioned to me with the coffee pot but I shook my head, eyes still on Foxy. It had taken me until then to realize what else was different about this one: she clearly wasn’t an addict. I didn’t even see any evidence that she was an alcoholic. The ghostly look of her skin and the dried stuff on her lips might have been the result of dehydration, but it wasn’t from drugs or booze.

“Why do you keep staring at me like that?” Foxy said to me.

“Miss Angel ain’t bein’ rude.” Jasmine still knelt in front of Foxy, who was plucking stuffing from the hole in the sofa arm. “She lookin’ to see if you want what we got to offer you.”

“Mm-hmm,” one of them said, followed by a “That’s right, now.” The Sisters were finding their rhythm.

Foxy shrugged the negligible shoulders. “I hit the wall, okay? I guess I don’t have any choice but to stay.”

“Oh, you always got choices,” Mercedes said. “You done made some already. If you want, we can show you how to make better ones. Us and God.”

That was the philosophy Sacrament House was built on, only, something about it didn’t seem to fit Foxy the way it had the women before her who had been so far down when they came in, they weren’t even sure of their own names. Yes, she was terrified to the marrow and masked it with a ferocity none of them had had the energy for.

I just wasn’t seeing the wall she said she’d hit.

“What do I have to do?”

Foxy was looking at me, but I deferred to Ophelia, who set down her second cup of coffee and smiled at Foxy. Her soft eloquence made her the designated explainer to new initiates. I mentally thanked India for that training because I wasn’t sure anyone else had her heart in it right now. I obviously wasn’t the only one who found Foxy a little less than eager to be part of the family.

“You’d be in the Initiate Phase for eighteen days,” Ophelia said. “You’d still be considered one of the Sisters—”

“Is it like being a nun or something? Because I’m not Catholic anymore.”

She gave the magnificent red hair a toss. She looked less like a candidate for a convent than Lady Gaga.

“I heard you all talking about God ever since I got here and just so you know, I don’t need church.”

I didn’t have to say a word. Every single body in the room tilted toward her. Mercedes grabbed the floor first.

“We don’t just do church,” she said. “We do the Jesus thing.”

“What—walk on water?”

At least she’d actually heard of Jesus. That reference would have been lost on most of these women in the beginning.

“You’re gon’
see
more about God and Jesus than you’re gon’
hear
about it.” Jasmine put her hand on Foxy’s sleeve, and I realized Foxy was wearing the silky yellow pajamas I’d given Jasmine for her birthday. Foxy could have fit Zelda and Gigi in there with her and had room to spare.

“Mmm-hmm,” Mercedes said. “I was the same way as you when I first come here: all thinkin’ I didn’t need no help from God.”

She let the “mmm-hmm’s” and the “I know that, now,” gently rock the room before she went on to, “But didn’t nobody push me. I just got it.”

“Got
what
?
”

“That I couldn’t save my own life.”

Somewhere in the silent wonder of these women I heard Hank’s Sportster pull up and sensed her coming through the screen door. But I kept my gaze on Mercedes and savored the hope she exuded like musk.

“So I don’t have to go to confession,” Foxy said.

“Oh, they be plenty of confessin’.”

“But not the kind you’re thinking of,” I said.

Zelda frowned. “What kind’s she thinking of?”

“Any kind.” Foxy gave the hair an expressive toss, which made me suspect she wouldn’t be able to talk if her head were shaved. “I just want to leave the past behind and move on. Without anybody shoving church down my throat.”

“You don’t have to worry ’bout that,” Mercedes told her. “God doesn’t get into a person that way.”

By then Hank had squatted beside me, and the divine aroma of communion bread was wafting from the bag over her shoulder. I nodded for her to join me in the kitchen.

“Are you hearing this?” I said, motioning in the direction of the living room.

“Ya gotta love it when God does God’s thing, don’tcha?”

“But I just don’t get the feeling that this one is totally ready.”

“What’s her name?”

“Foxy.”

Hank set the bag on the counter. “You’re buying that?”

“No, but that’s all she’s telling right now. I mean, who knows? Is Gigi’s real name Gigi?”

“I hope not. It sounds like a poodle.” Hank pulled off her do-rag and wiped her damp forehead with it. “You going to let Foxy give it a shot?”