Rhythms of Grace (28 page)

Grace came in with a stack of photocopies and a dreamy look. She leaned over to look at the picture, broken in my hands. “Look at you! Is that high school? Oh yeah. I see Zeely back there.” She picked away the glass as she spoke, leaving the open frame and the photo inside. “There. That will do until you get another frame. That’s a priceless shot. Who took it?”

I couldn’t remember. “My mother maybe. Or Zeely’s father. Maybe Joyce.”

My mother? I hadn’t called Eva that in a very long time. And yet, that was what she’d been: feeding me, clothing me, loving me. That other woman, the one who was both never and always with me, had only offered her DNA. It seemed rational when put that way, but DNA was a curious, irrational thing. Perhaps it was my mother’s part of me that made me take this thing with Ron to heart, even when I knew I should let it go. I think I just wanted someone to be mad at.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to run down to Joyce’s office for a while before our first class. Will you need me for anything?”

“Not that I can think of.” She looked relieved.

“Page me over the intercom if you need me.”

“Sure.”

My shoes skimmed the hall like a tap show as I passed the attendance desk headed for Joyce’s office. Long before I reached her door, I heard voices, especially Joyce’s. Odd. She rarely raised her voice, and from the sound of it, she was talking about someone— another rare event.

Embroiled in a phone conversation with her back to the door, she didn’t move when I came in, but she gave me a sidelong glance recognizing my presence. Instead of trying to make out her sparse, graveled words, I picked up the book off the top of the pile on the corner of the desk.

What Every Woman Should Know about Menopause.

I dropped it back to the desk with a thud, wishing I’d bothered to read the spine. There were some things I’d rather not know.

Joyce turned a little farther toward me, her words now louder, more clear. “No. She will go through with it. You know why. I know why. Neither of them has a clue.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. It sounded like she might have been talking about me, but I knew better than that. Not right in my face. I searched the room, looking for something to focus my mind on. I noticed her purse first, a designer bag I bought for her two Christmases ago, but had never seen her carry. Next to the purse, an array of bottles lining her file cabinet, many of them the same ones as in my bathroom at home, caught my attention. The difference was Joyce actually took hers. All of them.

Alfalfa, astragalus, B-complex . . .

Joyce continued as she turned a little more, almost facing me. “The body is a temple even when the altar has been abandoned. Sex is church. Worship. And you know what happens when you take a woman to church. She wants more. Much more.”

I got up. Whether she was talking about me or someone else, I didn’t want to hear it.

She motioned for me to sit down.

I took my seat, shocked by what she said next. “I tried to tell him about her before. He said there was nothing to it. Do what you can, Red.”

Red. Ron. Not only did he know about Lottie but he had the nerve to be talking to Joyce about it behind my back?

And to think I gave him my car.

I straightened, expecting Joyce would cut the conversation short. She kept talking while looking me right in the eyes.

“Yes. The main thing I need you to do is pray. This is all heading somewhere and only the Lord knows where that is. She could do a lot of damage. Especially now. You know what I mean. I love you,” Joyce said before hanging up.

And then with a slow deliberation that made me crazy, she rearranged her desk, then clasped her hands.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Her lips curled, but not into a smile.

There were a lot of things I could have said: Stop talking about me, be honest with me. My answer surprised us both. “Fire me.”

She looked away. “You don’t mean that. I’m doing all I can—”

“You’re doing too much. Calling Ron about me? Come on. We’re not kids anymore. He’s got his own problems. I don’t need him to fix mine. You either.”

Joyce tapped her computer mouse. A document appeared on the screen. She hit a few strokes on the keyboard. Another tap of the mouse. The printer hummed. She eased up from the chair, retrieving the document from the printer. “Sign here. Have your things out today. Tell Grace to take over the class until I find a replacement.”

I wadded the paper into a ball. I didn’t want to quit. I just needed some understanding. “Don’t tempt me, Doc. I don’t have to be here—to take this. I could have stayed where I was.”

“Maybe you should have.” My former teacher walked around to the front of her desk and sat down on it with her ankles tucked beneath her.

She pointed to the file cabinet, the bottles on it. “Olive leaf extract. Hand me that, please.”

I obeyed quickly, watching as she dropped two capsules into her palm and swallowed them dry with little effort.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Any of it.”

She stared over her glasses at me. “No, you were right. Your coming to Imani was a mistake, both mine and yours. You thought you could change me—”

“That wasn’t it!”

She held up a finger. “I thought the students would change you.”

My voice betrayed me. “They did change me.”

“I know. You’re worse. Before, you thought you knew everything. Now, you’re sure you do.” Joyce put down the bottle and pressed her palms into the desk.

More analysis? Everybody wanted to shrink me.

“That’s not it at all. Perhaps I’m still adjusting from the aptitudes at the college level to the aptitudes here.” It was my dissertation voice and it sounded as wretched and false to me now as it had back then. Some things couldn’t be defended, my motivations among them.

Joyce grabbed a dictionary from somewhere on her desk and flipped quickly through the A’s. “ ‘Aptitude . . . Talent. Capacity for learning.’ There is no adjustment needed for that. These students have the same aptitude as the ones you taught at State. It’s your attitude that needs adjustment. You think this job is a joke. And it shows.”

A vein popped at my temple. This was too much. “It shows? You want to see my lesson plans? My student files? I know more about them than their probation officers, than their parents!” If I’d known I’d be the defendant instead of the judge, I might have prepared better. As it was, I was going down in flames. I felt a little sick.

“That’s just it. You know everything about them, but you don’t
know
them. It sounds the same, but it’s worlds apart. As far as life is from death.” Joyce retreated behind her desk. The leather headrest hissed a little as her head pressed into it.

Death. What did Joyce know about it? Everything I loved died. Everyone
.
“They don’t need me to be their friend, Doc. They need tools. Resources . . .”

Joyce cupped her face between her fingertips. “Is that all I gave you? Resources? If so, I’m also to blame.”

That knocked the wind out of me somehow, like someone had hit me with a wrecking ball. I stood and leaned onto the file cabinet, trying not to think of all that Joyce had given me. Her voice echoed across the years in spite of me, refusing to be silent.

You’re brilliant. Better than just going to college. Good enough
for a doctorate.

I stared down at my shoes, tracing the square toe with my eyes, traveling back over the path of my life. Those simple words had survived all my failures, all my hurts. There had been good books and great learning; Joyce had given more than that. She’d taught us all to believe. The one thing I’d been trying to forget.

Her words moved across my forehead and settled around my eyes. I held onto the file drawer to steady myself in case it was a bad one. Tension headaches, my doctor called them. Ron had them too. Joyce’s bag fell from its perch.

I caught it, but lost the contents. When I bent down to retrieve her things, the floor was thick with secrets.

Joyce’s eyes never left me as I took in the view: seven pill bottles, upended and rolling in different directions, peppermints, wig adhesive. The fattest vial read DCOP.
Dayton Clinical Oncology Program.
I knew that stamp all too well. I shoved everything back into the bag and put it back on the file cabinet. I tripped over my feet on the way to my chair. She’d told me to sit down. One day I’d learn to listen, even when I didn’t feel like it.

Joyce’s voice cracked. “You got it all?”

I stared at her, hungry for some evidence to disprove the theory I’d just seen outlined on the floor. As my gaze skimmed across her—a tendril of arm, a slip of neck held high over two bony hollows that were her cheeks—my eyes widened, choking on something familiar. My knees buckled even though I was sitting down. “Cervical? Ovarian?”

“Blood now. Leukemia. I had it in both breasts before you came. I made it through that. I hoped you would get in the yoke with me, take some of the stress.”

I leaned way forward, almost off the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me? You said you were sick before, but not this. Never this. I would have—”

Joyce shook her head. Slowly. “You would have what? Made the budget meet? Searched for new teachers? Bailed students out of jail? No. If I have to tell you to do something, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

The past five years tumbled through my mind like dirty laundry. Meetings I’d missed. Memos I hadn’t read. The summers in Africa. That irritating urgency in Joyce’s voice. I’d lost all the women I dared to love. This couldn’t happen again. “How long?”

Joyce crossed her legs. “Not long enough for us to waste time discussing it. I picked out my casket last Christmas.”

I slid to my knees.

“It’s that bad, even if I’m just starting to look it. My bottles of friends over there have been a great help, but things are speeding up. Or maybe I should say slowing down. I’ve been running forever, it seems.”

I was in the right position to believe, but when I looked up at Joyce, I didn’t see the healing I was praying for. I saw her in a casket.

She frowned. “Don’t look at me like that, Brian. I’m just dying. You’re already dead.”

39

Ron

My office looks down from the tenth floor of Freedom Tower, home of the courthouse, City Hall, and as of six months ago, Bentek and Associates, founded by Mindy’s father, my current employer.

From my desk, I can see things up here that are easily missed on the ground: a businessman leaving the homeless shelter with a small boy, wiping his breakfast on the back of his sleeve; a woman wearing clothes out of season, her whitewashed shoes mended too many times. Things that make me watch and pray, speak into my voice recorder; add to my list of things to do. Things to be.

“Inquire about volunteering at homeless shelter. Stop.”

It hurt sometimes to look down from Freedom Tower and see hungry confusion instead. After so many years, the fee of testimony was still required to live free in this town. Now more than ever.

Even I wasn’t immune. I had a stack of wedding invitations on my desk to prove it. Though I wasn’t starving or homeless like some of the people passing by below, I longed to be free. I knew though that by freeing myself I would be sentencing many of those people to a life of bondage. God had made a way for me, created hands to pull me out of that house on the hill. Though I didn’t like it or want it, I’d been put in place for such a time as this. The pages in front of me were proof of that.

Lottie’s complaint against Brian.

Why she’d come to us—to me—I wasn’t sure. Despite an internship in criminal law, it wasn’t what I or my firm was known for. I’d tried to downplay it to talk her off the ledge, but the others had stoked the fire, hoping my friend would easily burn. He had it coming, they’d said. A bigmouth who had finally showed his hand. I wondered how much Bentek had to do with this—Brian was his nemesis at city council meetings. And no matter how much I squirmed, pleaded that it wasn’t my specialty, they didn’t budge. In a town like ours, there were no specialties. The family doctor often served as dermatologist, gynecologist, and every other “ologist” needed. It looked like things were about the same for lawyers, outside driving to the next town.

So here I was, trying to do my job, love my friend. The hardest part was Lottie. She’d been thorough: pictures, witnesses, everything. When she showed up, I hardly knew her either. No makeup or short skirts. She played the victim well, but she played the gardener better, planting a seed of doubt so deep that even I found myself wondering. A lot had changed. I wanted to say that I knew how far Brian would go, what he would do, but I wasn’t sure.

Are you talking about yourself or him?

Probably both. At one time we’d boasted that we knew the other as well as ourselves. These days, that wouldn’t be saying much on my end. Still, there had been all those messages from Lottie when I’d gone to Brian’s house. Things he’d said about her months before. A picture she’d had taken of them at a club.

Little things, bones and teeth.

Skeletons.

They tumbled out of closets at the oddest times, stacking odds and threatening jobs, friendships, lives. And then there was God, who’d caused even the dry bones to dance before me.

My assistant’s voice came through the speaker, just as I lowered my head to pray. “Sir, there’s a Mr. Mayfield waiting to—Sir! Wait! You can’t—”

I heard the door burst open behind me. I lifted my head and looked out the window, watching a pigeon on the ledge take flight. Free as a bird. “What took you so long?”

“Why are you in my business?” Brian’s words were cold. Cutting.

I’d wanted to talk to him, but not like this. “Maybe if you’d handle your business a little better—”

“Don’t even go there, okay?”

Brian was next to me now, and I looked up to see his anger dissolve as his eyes roamed over what was spread out on my desk: Lottie’s pictures, obviously taken moments after the incident; another snapshot of her looking like a wholesome art teacher in a long denim skirt; Grace’s name and number scrawled on another piece of paper.