Divine (17 page)

Emma slumped. "That's terrible."

"Yes." Mary's eyes grew damp. "My grandma loved me so much. She still tells me all the time how much she prayed for me back then. No matter what she did, she couldn't find me, but she could talk to Jesus. And Jesus could talk to me."

"But . . ." Doubt breathed on Emma's neck. "Jesus doesn't really talk. I mean, not out loud." She thought about her mother, how faithful she'd been checking up on her and the girls after she'd moved in with Charlie. "That's what my mama says too. She can talk to Jesus, and He can talk to her."

"He talks to us through His promises in the Bible." Mary blinked back the tears in her eyes. "And through other people." She hesitated. "I can look back over my story and see lots of people who, in a sense, were like Jesus to me. My grandma, of course, and Ted and Evelyn, and even Big Dave, the truck driver. But more than ever he used my friend Nigel." She smiled. "I'll save that part for tomorrow."

Emma stood. Her heart was torn in a dozen different directions. If Jesus had come to Mary through the people in her life, then maybe He'd done the same for her. Maybe she'd missed it somehow. She was amazed at Mary's strength and her willingness to tell her story even when going back in time was obviously painful for her.

Mary rose and put her hand on Emma's shoulder. "Are you seeing yourself yet? the pieces of your story woven into the pieces of mine?"

"Yes." Emma felt her chin quiver. "I never thought anyone would understand."

Mary hugged her, just a quick hug, but for a moment it reminded Emma of everything safe and warm and good that she'd walked away from. An ocean of sobs began to build in Emma's heart.

Her mother had tried to hug her that way, but ever since she got pregnant with Kami, Emma had always pulled away, kept her distance. Now she ached to feel her mother's arms around her again. How come she hadn't listened to the people in her life, the ones who were trying to be like Jesus to her?

She couldn't speak, so she gave Mary a nod and a hurried wave. As she picked up her girls and took them to the cafeteria and afterwards as she read the girls a book and patted their backs as they fell asleep, she stuffed the sorrow that grew inside her.

Finally when the girls were sleeping, she took a pad of paper from the desk drawer in her room and sat in the chair by the small window. Only then did the tears come and with them a review of her life, every bad choice and missed opportunity. . . .

***

She was an only child. Her mother had worked nights as an X-ray technician and delivered newspapers before sunup. Together they shared an apartment and got by, but never with very much. Emma had worn secondhand clothes, and birthdays and Christmases were sparse. Even so, Emma thought her life was wonderful. Her mother was kind and bighearted, with an easy laugh. Faith was everything to her mother, and as a child, faith had been a comfortable given for Emma— Sunday school every weekend, church classes every Wednesday night.

She and her mother found ways to stretch their money. They'd visit the library and check out books together. Her mother would read the tougher ones aloud, and Emma would read the simpler ones, like
Stuart Little
and
Charlotte's Web.
When they reached the funny parts—when Stuart was nearly washed down the kitchen sink or when Wilbur, the pig, tried to fly— they'd set the book down and laugh, sometimes so hard they had tears in their eyes.

Her mother taught her how to make homemade modeling clay from flour and water and food dye, and on rainy Saturdays they'd make crafts together and sing to country songs on the radio.

Emma had heard stories about her father, Jay, and the way he had rescued her mother from the streets of Washington, DC. But she never really knew how much her mother had loved him until one day when she was twelve. Emma walked into her mother's room in search of toothpaste. But there was her mom, sitting low in her chair, crying as if her heart had broken in half.

"Mom . . ." Emma approached her, and only then did she see the scrapbook in her lap. It was something her mother had showed her years earlier. "You're looking at pictures of Daddy?"

Her mother didn't answer. She put the scrapbook down and opened her arms. "Baby . . ."

Emma came to her, dropped to her knees, and hugged her mother for a very long time.

"I loved him ... so much." Her mother's sobs went on for another few minutes. When they finally eased up, she drew back and studied Emma. "He should be here to keep you safe. You're getting older and . . . and you need him."

Emma wasn't sure what to say. She'd never known her father, so she couldn't relate to his death the way her mother could. But that afternoon, lost in her mother's embrace, her cheeks wet from her mother's tears, she had felt an overwhelming sense of loss. What if he'd lived? How different would her life have been with a daddy like Jay Johnson looking over her, taking care of her?

Looking back, Emma was pretty sure the change in her heart happened that day—the one that ushered anger into her soul, slipped it in between the complicated layers of adolescence and left it there to simmer and grow. How dare God take her father from her? How dare her father leave her and her mother alone, her mother scraping by with two jobs, always tired and anxious and overworked?

Even with her work, her mother had tried to be everything to her—both mother and father in one. When Emma was thirteen, the neighbor lady no longer came over and slept on the sofa so Emma wouldn't be alone at night. The extra money Emma's mother paid the woman was the difference between buying teenage shirts and jeans for Emma or keeping her in secondhand clothes.

"You'll be safe, Emma. I'll lock the doors, and you'll never know I'm gone."

But Emma knew.

She'd lie there at night, eyes wide open, and jump at every sound. The wind was like a scary voice whispering to her that she was all alone, the creakings of the old building like bad guys trying to break in and hurt her. Eventually she'd fall asleep.

In the morning—after her mother delivered her newspapers—she would get home and hug her tight. "It makes me so happy to be here in the morning, Emma."

Before she left for school, she and her mother would hold hands, and her mother would pray for her. "Protect Emma, help her be a light to others, and help her fall more in love with You every day. In Jesus' name, amen."

Emma liked the closeness with her mother, but the words of her prayers always fell flat. Protect Emma? God had already taken her father, the man known for his ability to protect girls. Why would her mother think God would have any interest in protecting her now? The part about being a light didn't fit right either. The picture that had come to her mind was one of an advertisement, as if her mother wanted her to go around shouting with her actions, "Have faith in God! It'll be good for you."

But having faith hadn't helped her mother, and it certainly hadn't helped her father.

As for love, Emma wanted more than some talked-about emotion from an invisible God. By the time she was in high school, the only love that made any sense to her was the love being offered by boys her age.

Her mother thought by working nights and early mornings she was making herself more available for Emma. But early in her fifteenth year, Emma figured out a way to work her mother's absence to her favor. She took up with a boy three years older than her, a boy whose parents had little control over him.

When she told the guy she was home alone every night, he raised his eyebrows. "Every night?"

"Yep." Emma angled her head and gave him a coy smile. "Gets awful lonely."

The boy figured out a way to ease her loneliness the next night. He showed up an hour after Emma's mother left for work and stayed until the sun came up. A new pattern took shape in her life. Her daddy wasn't there to take care of her, but there was never a shortage of boys who were.

***

The memory dimmed, and Emma felt the ache of the years build in her throat.

Her mother had trusted her, prayed for her all those years. How could she have turned her back on everything that mattered to her? Fresh tears slid down her cheeks, but she kept her crying quiet so Kami and Kaitlyn wouldn't wake up.

***

It was no surprise halfway through her fifteenth year when she realized that she no longer felt close to her mother. They both noticed it, because her mother had pulled her aside one Saturday morning and took gentle hold of her shoulder. "Maybe we need a craft day, huh, Emma?"

She rolled her eyes. "1 have homework, Mom."

And that was that.

Of course the reason there had been distance between them had little to do with the fact that they didn't read aloud anymore or make crafts on rainy Saturday afternoons. By then, Emma had trouble even looking at her mother without feeling guilty. And even stronger than her guilt was the feeling of lying in a boy's arms, safe and taken care of, not every night but lots of nights.

The boys changed names and faces, but always there was someone sneaking through the front door after dark.

Her tenth-grade year she met Terrence Reid, a quiet football player with dreams of being a doctor someday. Terrence lived a block away, and that year he started walking her home from school.

"It's not out of the way." He shrugged. "Besides, I like the conversation."

Terrence was a church boy, one of the few on the football team who didn't drink or stay out late on Friday nights. "If I want to be a doctor someday, I can't mess up," he told her once. "I have to stick with my plan."

Emma thought him a curious boy. He was funny and kind and safe. He had none of the dashing good looks or daring personalities of the other boys who paid her attention, and over time they became friends. Every topic was open for discussion on their walks home from school, all but one.

The other boys in her life.

Terrence never asked, and she never volunteered information. Emma figured Terrence knew about the other boys in her life. Whether he knew or not, they were there. And though Terrence stayed her friend until the day she moved in with Charlie, the two of them never dated, never even explored the idea.

Once in a while the boys who spent the night would offer Emma drugs or a cold beer, but she always turned them down. She might've been a sinner for having boys spend the night, but she wasn't low enough to turn to drugs. Not even close.

But one decision had a way of naturally leading to the next. The summer before Emma's junior year, she stopped attending church with her mother because it made no sense to keep pretending. "I don't believe the way you do." Emma put her hands on her hips, her tone ruder than she intended. "Don't make me go, Mom. Nothing could be worse than pretending I believe when I don't."

"What happened to you?" Her mother's voice was strained and louder than usual. "When did you stop being the girl I knew?"

Emma had no answer for her. She simply turned and ran from the room.

Before her mother went to work that night she knocked on Emma's bedroom door. "Emma?"

With everything in her she wanted to open the door and run into her mother's arms, cling to her the way she'd clung to her when she was twelve and she had found her mother crying over her father's scrapbook. But the road between then and now was a long, crooked one, too complicated to walk back down.

She'd made her decision when she began having boys spend the night. That night she squeezed her eyes, shut out the tears blurring her vision, and shouted at her mother, "Leave me alone! You don't understand!"

The doorknob turned, and for a moment it seemed her mother was going to come in anyway. Emma half hoped she would. But then there was the sound of her mother letting go and walking back down the hallway.

After that Emma didn't go to church, and her mother never asked again. They'd taken their positions, set up in opposite camps. The battle line was drawn, and neither of them made more than a halfhearted attempt to cross it.

The fall of her junior year, Emma wound up pregnant. Two boys had been keeping her company the month before, and she had no idea which one was the father. The pregnancy clinic down the street was very willing to set up the abortion and the one that followed it six months later.

By then, Emma no longer felt alive.

She'd stopped the visits from boys, but nothing could stop the nightmares, the faces of babies that haunted her at night. The voices started not long after. She'd be brushing her teeth at the bathroom sink and look in the mirror.

You're a killer, Emma. You're worthless. You should take your own life, the way you took the lives oj those babies. Worthless. . . trash, Emma. Nothing but trash.

Sometimes she'd put her hands over her ears to stop the noise, but that didn't work. The voices didn't come from somewhere outside herself. They came from inside.

A month later she went back to having boys stay the night, and this time when one of them pulled out a rolled-up cigarette and offered it to her, she hesitated.

"Come on," he told her. "You'll be on another planet in fifteen minutes."

Take it, Emma . . . who are you kidding? You're no better than a drug user . . . you're not above it. It's what you need, Emma. Try it, you'll see.

The voice taunted her, pushed her, and she put the cigarette to her lips. "Light it for me?"