Dominion (34 page)

“The cherubim are so powerful and so…beautiful,” Dani said, voice still trembling.

“Yet their power and beauty,” Torel said, “is but a faint reflection of the infinite power and beauty of Elyon. His is a beauty so great that to those with corrupt eyes it is a more hideous ugliness than the mind can imagine.”

“Hideous? Ugliness?” Dani said.

“Did you not feel the terror?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you felt only a hint of what the inhabitants of hell feel about heaven, what the ungodly feel about God. The terror they feel is unmitigated by solace and reassurance. They feel the burning fire of his holiness without his hand-piercing love.”

“How horrible,” Dani said.

“Yes. And how unnecessary. For everything essential for their redemption has been done. The price has been paid. The blood has been shed. Only their stubbornness keeps them away. To the cleansed, beauty is beautiful. To the unclean, it is ugly beyond imagination.”

Dani shuddered. “Who are the cherubim, Torel?”

“They are the highest order of created being. They defend the garden of God against the intrusion of sinful men and guard Elyon’s throne against all that is unholy.”

“But Elyon needs no guard,” Dani said.

Torel looked at her curiously, as one does when he hears the obvious stated as if it were a dilemma.

“Of course he needs no guard. He is self-existent, independent, needs nothing and no one. But for the sake of those he created and out of love for them he
chooses
to use them. Did he need you to raise your children or share your faith or be his ambassador? No, yet he
chose
to use you, to rely upon you, and in that sense to
need
you to do all of these things and more. Did he need me to guard you day and night? Of course not. Yet he chose to use me in this way so that I had a vital role in your life and in his kingdom plan. He does not need the cherubim, but he has chosen to use them for the most sacred task. They are immersed in his presence. They serve as conduits for his attributes.”

“For a moment I was overwhelmed,” Dani said, “and my impulse was to bow before them. Then I remembered they are creatures and the bowed knee is reserved for Elyon himself.”

“You see the dilemma faced by my kind,” Torel said. “When men bow before angels to worship us we respond in panic. It is unthinkable.”

“I used to have people come to the door,” Dani said, “and argue that Jesus was the greatest of the angels, the highest created being.”

“I was there to hear this blasphemy,” Torel said, “and even now it burns deep within me.” He paced, and she saw fire in his eyes.

“I knew those people at the door were wrong,” Dani said, “and I’d quote a few verses to show that Jesus is God, but—”

“I tried to whisper to you the greatest proof, but my whispers were lost in the competing noises of your world.”

“What proof do you mean?”

“The one we are discussing. Angels are God’s servants, and one thing is more deeply ingrained in us than any other—we must worship
him
and him alone. Under no circumstances can we ever worship anyone else. To do so is unthinkable, repugnant above all else. We worship the Carpenter not because he is the highest of our kind, but because he is
not
of our kind—he is God, the world maker, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.”

“I understand,” Dani said. “There’s so much I see now that I wish I’d seen then, so many answers I wish I’d been able to think of.”

“It was there for you to see, much more than you ever realized,” Torel said. “You did not have to wait to die to know how you should have lived or what you could have said. Elyon’s Book contains the answers you needed, and his Spirit gave you the power you required.”

“At times,” Dani said, “I fall to my face before him. Yet when we walk together, it is so intimate, sometimes even casual. He is my Lord, but he is also my Friend.”

“What you say appears very strange to my kind,” Torel said. “Yet it seems to please Elyon, and what pleases him can only be right. On earth people spoke of him with such ease and familiarity, without first being leveled by his holiness and terrified by his power. It was blasphemy. Yet when they feared him first,
then
responded to his invitation to be their friend, it was different. We of Michael’s race do not experience him as friend. To us he is a benevolent Master, but always Master.” He paused. “And perhaps there is something else we fear.”

“What?” Dani asked.

“The memory of Morningstar and his betrayal of the Almighty. He desired to make himself like the Most High. He became intoxicated by the esteem of his fellows. Instead of deflecting adoration to Elyon, he craved and solicited it for himself. He claimed dominion and in doing so tried to steal it from the One who alone has dominion. The creature usurped that which is only the Creator’s. That was the birth of sin, the beginning of hell, the seed of every injustice and evil the universe has ever known.” He seemed to choke for a moment. “Many of my comrades were lost in that rebellion.”

Torel turned and walked away, overwhelmed by recalling those painful events. Dani left him alone. She looked back at the cherubim that surrounded the throne of God and listened to their words, which she realized to be the perpetual background sound of heaven, like waves crashing at the seashore.

The face of the eagle said, “Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven.”

The face of the ox shouted, “Dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.”

The face of the lion roared, “How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation.”

The face of the man cried out, “You are the living God and you endure forever; your kingdom will not be destroyed, your dominion will never end.”

Clarence stopped for breakfast at Barney’s, a North Portland diner. It needed renovation, but he’d heard the food was good.

He parked his car and walked toward the diner, his stylish dark suit sticking out among the street clientele. A young woman noticeably pregnant and with the eyes of a druggie tried to act sexy, attempting to turn a trick this early to support her drug habit. Clarence felt disgust and pity. Two guys, both with the profiles of drug dealers, studied him head to toe. One sported a beeper on his belt.

Dealing drugs in the morning? The early bird catches the worm, huh?

“Whas it like, dancin’ wid da man?” one of the dealers asked Clarence. The brothers from the hood slapped hands with each other. “That yo’ wheels over there?” He pointed to the Bonneville. “Thought you’d have a pickup truck.” They slapped skin again and laughed heartily.

Clarence didn’t answer them, pretending the opinions of two no-account, shiftless, Jim Beam lovin’ dope pushers meant nothing to him.

“I think he’s one of those double thick Oreos, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Have a nice day, Monkey Suit Man.” The dealer said it in his best imitation of a white accent. “See you, handkerchief head,” the other added. As Clarence kept walking to the diner’s front door he heard one say, “Man, that cat be whiter than white!”

It took all the self-restraint he could muster for Clarence not to dive for their cuffs and show them he hadn’t forgotten the streets.

He sat down at the counter, recalling the jibes he’d taken from blacks. He’d never imagined the degree to which getting inside the professional world would alienate him from those he’d grown up with. It angered him to know that if he’d fathered children outside marriage and abandoned them to the care of mother and welfare, if he was a drug addict or spent his days stumbling the sidewalks and drinking malt liquor, he would be fully accepted by some of the same people who rejected him for succeeding. They ascribed his success to something other than his hard work and determination. They ascribed it to kissin’ up to the white man.

The unpardonable sin wasn’t killing your own people with drugs and guns, it was successfully competing with whites on society’s playing field. These guys would never stoop to work at Burger King or a dry cleaners or the Fred Meyer warehouse. To them the supreme humiliation was to put yourself under whites. And because they’d never take an entry-level job, they would never be in the job market, never become qualified to work over whites instead of under them. They weren’t at all like the backbone of the black community, the stalwarts such as his daddy and Dani and Mrs. Burns and most others, solid people who did right and lived responsibly and never made the newspapers until they died.

His daddy’s words came back to him, as they often did. “Street hustlers, they ain’t your heroes. A man who gets up every morning and does an honest day’s work and takes care of his family—that’s a hero.”

After breakfast Clarence drove south on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Suddenly he saw in his rearview mirror the swirl of red and blue and white. The colors eerily bounced around the car’s interior as if they had a life of their own.

Clarence looked at his speedometer. Right at the speed limit. He hadn’t run a red light. He figured it must be “one of those” stops.

The cop strode forward. Clarence watched him in his sideview mirror. He noticed the officer’s hand on his gun, the holster unsnapped.

“May I see your driver’s license please? And your registration and insurance information?”

Clarence removed the license from his wallet, trying to appear calmer than he was. He reached to the glove compartment to get the other papers. An orange-capped needle dropped to the floor of the car.

He handed the papers to the officer, who stared at the needle.

“I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic,” Clarence explained.

The officer looked at him as if to say, “Right.”

“Okay, Mr. Abernathy. I’ll be back in a minute.” Clarence knew the drill. He realized he was being checked for outstanding warrants, parole violations, possible auto theft, you name it. Having seen the needle, the officer was probably expecting a few drug convictions would pop up on his computer screen.

Clarence kept looking at his watch. He had an interview and he was already cutting it close. Five minutes later the officer returned with his papers and his license.

“Everything checks out, Mr. Abernathy. You’re the sports guy aren’t you?”

Clarence nodded. “Yeah, I’m the sports guy.” Who are you, Robocop?

Clarence looked the officer in the eyes. “Why’d you pull me over? I wasn’t speeding. No traffic violation, right?”

“No, it was just…at roll call this morning they described a suspect in a couple of crimes in this area. Similar car color. When I saw you, I thought maybe you fit the description.”

“What’s the description?”

“Male, driving a nice four door.”

“What color car?”

“Maroon.”

“This isn’t maroon.”

“Well, you know—red, maroon, some people get them mixed up.”

“What color was the suspect?” Clarence knew the answer, but he wanted the cop to say it.

“Black.”

“How old?”

“Oh, twenties maybe.”

“I’m forty-two.”

“Well, I guess you take good care of yourself. You looked a little younger when I saw you.” He laughed. Clarence didn’t.

“What size was the guy?”

“About five eight, 170 pounds. That was just approximate, of course.”

“I’m six four, 285 pounds.” Clarence stared hard. “Doesn’t sound like I fit the profile, does it? Except that I’m a black man. Is that why you pulled me over?”

“Look, sir, I’m sorry. You’re sitting in a car. I couldn’t tell your size or age. I was just doing my job.”

Clarence stared at him.

“Have a good day, Mr. Abernathy. Be careful around here.”

He didn’t add, “It’s a dangerous part of town.” He didn’t have to.

Celeste’s hair felt like the tassels of woolen rugs she used to unravel on her living-room floor. Geneva loved to touch black hair in its natural state—the way it sprung up, just inviting you to lightly bounce your hand on it. But Celeste wanted her aunt to straighten her hair. Geneva understood.

She scooped up a dollop of VO-5, worked it into the strands of hair, spreading it evenly with a brush. Then she applied the heated iron. Geneva loved the beauty shop smell of hot hair. It brought back so many childhood memories.

“We used to have a favorite way of doing a process. You don’t know what you’re missin’, girl.” Geneva talked to Celeste as if she were older, an equal. The little lady ate it up. “We’d mix mashed potatoes, eggs, and lye, then smear it on our hair with a paintbrush. Took the kink right out.”

“Mashed potatoes?” Celeste’s nose scrunched up.

“Believe it, girlfriend. Would I make up something that weird? I remember when your Uncle Antsy’s hair was as high as it was wide. He was about six inches taller back then.”

Geneva thought of Janet’s long brown hair. Yesterday they’d gone out for a walk and were suddenly caught in a shower. They ran and laughed. Geneva had stared at her friend’s rain-soaked tendrils glopping down her back. Even when it was messy, there was something about white girls’ hair. She wanted to ask her what it felt like. She didn’t ask because she was afraid the question would sound envious. She didn’t realize Janet was thinking about Geneva’s hair. Thinking how beautiful it was even when wet.

Geneva thought about the white blood in her veins. Only a few years ago her cousin in California told her his study of the family roots uncovered that their great-grandmother, a slave, had borne two children by her Irish master—one of them their grandfather. At first no one in the family could believe they had Irish blood, especially the darkest ones, but recessive and dominant genes made it work. That’s where some of the family’s “high yellows” had come from. It still bothered Geneva, thinking about how her great-grandmother had been raped. She tried to make light of it, asking Clarence, “If I’m going to have white genes anyway. Why couldn’t I get the hair genes?” She also made good use of her cousin’s discovery. When she was filling out a credit application form, after “Race” she put “Irish,” then watched the clerk scan the page and suddenly look up at her with dropped jaw.

Geneva’s mama had told her, “God blessed black women with low maintenance hair; all you gots to do is wash it, and the wind and rain and sun won’t hurt it.” Well, in her experience black hair was
high
maintenance. It took a lot of foolin’ to get it just the way she wanted.

She thought nostalgically back to the hair products of her childhood, like Sta-Sof-Fro. The billion-dollar-a-year black hair-care business now reigned over by Revlon and other companies was once dominated by black businesses—Soft Sheen, Johnson, M&M, World of Curls, Luster’s, D-orum, and Bronner Brothers. She’d used all their products and more, searching for the perfect hair product as if it were the holy grail. She laughed at herself, then turned Celeste around and looked her right in the eyes.

“Let me tell you somethin’, girlfriend. There’s some good white folk around, but they don’t know nothin’ about hair. We black folk know how to keep it nice and nappy. We know how to straighten it, part it, fry it, conk it, wave it, texturize it, shave it, hot-iron it, cold-wave it, jheri-curl it, dreadlock it, Afrotique it, activate it, oil it, braid it, and we’re just gettin’ started, you hear me? We have our own black hair-care shows because white folk just don’t understand our hair. But that’s okay, little girlfriend. Daddy used to say the reason God gave black people their hair was so we could have a business all our own!”