Good Heavens (2 page)

“Well, speak up,” I told them.

“You tell her,” Clara said.

Mabel was holding my red velvet cushion up against her chest for comfort—or protection. “I'd rather you tell her, Clara.”

Over the years I'd had to deal with these women, and all I have to say is, they have always been and always will be like Job's friends, miserable comforters, and I do mean
miserable
. They didn't know enough to come in out of the rain, but they thought wisdom would die with them.

Clara sat up straight, twisting her mouth the way she did when she was busting to let you know she knew something that was none of her business. “Esmeralda, first let me say this is a private meeting, and before we say anything, I want you to give me your word that this conversation will go no further.”

“We haven't had it yet.”

She didn't say anything right away, as she was having trouble with her upper plate. Well, if she'd pay the price for decent teeth, they wouldn't get loose like that. With
her thumb she kept pressing until she got the plate in place and then waited to see if it was going to stay there. Satisfied that at least it would hold temporarily, she commenced again. “Do I have your word that you'll not let anyone know that Mabel and me have been here?”

“Why don't you want nobody to know?”

She looked to Mabel, but Mabel only hugged the pillow and gazed up at the ceiling.

“Well,” Clara explained, “Mabel's husband is on the Priscilla Home board of directors—in fact, he's the president, and this is about that offer they made you.”

“So that's it, is it? Well, let me tell you a thing or two—whatever it is you have to say here today will go right in one ear and out the other, so there's not a chance in the world anybody will hear it unless the devil has give them some kinda psychic power. Now, say what you have to say. I got work to do.”

Clara stretched her neck about a yard long and lit in. “Esmeralda, I hope you are not considering that job at Priscilla Home.”

They both leaned forward, peering at me, expecting me to up and tell them my thoughts on the subject. When they realized I wasn't going to give them that satisfaction, Clara lit in again. “Esmeralda, it would be the worst mistake of your life to go up there in those hills to work with those loose-living women who are at best sots! All you will hear up there is foul language and four letter words. Women like them are born losers, freeloaders, and—” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “some of them have got herpes and the like! You don't want to waste what time you have got left playing nursemaid to
that trash, now do you? Don't the Bible say we should not cast our pearls before swine?”

I know I'd had a low opinion of women who couldn't hack it in this life, but I resented the way Clara was talking about them. I don't know what I expected her to say about me taking the job, but in a way she was saying what I wanted to hear. It was just the principle of the thing, them taking it upon themselves to advise me. I was a independent woman, and I had always made my own decisions without any help from the likes of them two.

“We love you, Esmeralda,” Mabel was saying in that syrupy way she has got. “What would Willing Workers be like if you weren't here to help us?”

I hated it when Mabel whined.

Clara nudged her. “Tell Esmeralda what Roger said.”

I thought Mabel was going to ruin my cushion, twisting it the way she was, so I gave her a frown that said “Knock it off.” She lightened up on the cushion, patting it back into shape.

“Well,” she said, “Roger says this job of resident manager would not be in your best interest, Esmeralda, and Roger ought to know, he's been on that board for years.”

I couldn't have cared less what Roger Elmwood thought, and I must of showed it because Mabel started backing off. “Mind you, Esmeralda, it was not easy for us to come to you this way. It's just that we love you to pieces, and we don't want you to make a mistake we would all regret the rest of your life.”

Clara was fooling with that upper plate again, but she was so anxious to say her piece that she took a chance
and started in again. “Esmeralda, you can't pay any attention to Dr. Elsie. To hear her tell it, Priscilla Home is the only place in the world a female addict should go. But I tell you, there are plenty of places like AA where women caught up in the bondage of drugs can find a support group. That's what they need, a support group. Somebody from mental health was on TV the other day talking about addicts, and he said the country has plenty of rehab places where they can find the help they need if they want it, and their insurance pays for the treatment. The people who work in them places have training and experience. Now don't get touchy with me, Esmeralda, but I ask you, what training and experience have you got that fits you for that job?”

“Would you all like a glass of ice tea?” I asked.

I went in the kitchen, and while I was making the tea, I mulled over what they had said. Even though I didn't want to admit it, Clara had a point. I didn't have any training for that job. Of course, I already knew that and had no reason to give Clara credit for bringing it to my attention.

I served them the tea with oatmeal cookies and said I'd rather not talk any more about going to Priscilla Home. I asked Mabel how she was feeling, because I knew that would change the subject. You ask Mabel how she feels, and you get an organ recital.

After they left, I went outside to feed the birds. I guess my mind was made up; I was ready to call Dr. Elsie and tell her I couldn't take the job. But I didn't want to do
it right away and give them two Willing Workers the satisfaction of thinking they'd influenced my decision.
I'll wait a day or two
, I thought.

I didn't really feel good about giving up what Dr. Elsie called an “opportunity.” But it was true; I didn't have any experience with alcohol and drugs, much less training in how to deal with people who did. Now if the job didn't involve contact with the women, just running the house, I could handle that. But, no, if you live in the same house with them, you can't get around having to deal with them. I hated to disappoint Dr. Elsie, but one of those other applicants were bound to be better qualified for the job than me.

I don't know why, but the whole thing made me feel blue.

I wished I knew how to call Beatrice, just for old times' sake, but I had no idea where she and Carl were—still out west somewhere. I wished I could just go back to living the way it was before Beatrice got married. With her gone, I really didn't have a close friend except Elijah. And Elijah was a friend for other kinds of problems, not this kind. Besides, he was too busy doing odd jobs for all the white people in town.

Well, I couldn't wait any longer to get this thing settled. I went to the phone to call Dr. Elsie and was just about to lift the receiver when the phone rang. Speak of the devil, and he will appear—it was Beatrice! She was just bubbling over, excited about seeing Carlsbad Caverns and telling me all about the bats flying out of the caverns at night to catch insects.

She had not run down when I interrupted her to tell
her about them offering me the job at Priscilla Home. Upon my word, she got as sober as a judge. After hearing me out, I heard her say, “Carl, I want you to hear this.”

“No, Beatrice, don't bother him,” I said. “I think I've made up my mind. I don't have the training or the experience to be housemother up there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“Wait just one minute, Esmeralda,” she said with that edge in her voice, which meant she absolutely disagreed. “Have you prayed about it?”

“Well, sure.”

“I mean, have you prayed it through? Do you know positively what the Lord's will is?”

“Well, I—”

“You really don't know what his will is, do you?”

“Now listen here, Beatrice, the Lord don't send us a bolt out of the blue to tell us what to do. He gives us common sense—circumstances—things like that to keep us on track. Don't you think he has give me sound judgment?”

“Sometimes, yes, but this is too important for you to pass up without knowing for sure what he wants to do with you.”

“That's easy for you to say.”

“Esmeralda, I've got to get off the line. Carl says tell you . . . What's that, Carl? . . . He says tell you don't take no wooden nickels. Now, I'll tell Carl what's going on, and you know we'll be praying for you.”

Wooden nickels—I couldn't remember when last I'd heard that expression.
Carl needs to move his self out
of the twentieth century and into this millennium. And I'd just as soon Beatrice not tell him my business, but how can I tell her not to?

I know I was feeling cross, but it was just because I was more confused than ever.

I sat on the porch for a while. It was cool out there, so I went back inside. I went in the kitchen to fix a bite to eat—opened the refrigerator door and stood there looking to see what looked good. Nothing did. I wasn't hungry.

Finally, I just plopped down in my recliner and let go. “Just show me, Lord!” I said and opened my Bible where the bookmark was. Nothing I read spoke to me, and my mind just kept rambling, going over again all the troubling things I could imagine.
What if I did take a job like that, what would I do with my house? Rent it? Renters don't take care of a place
. I couldn't just go off and leave it. I dared not sell it; it was the only security I had for my old age. No, I could not leave my house.

I leaned forward to lay the Bible on the end table, but the recliner popped up and the Bible fell on the floor.
I got to get Elijah to do something about this chair
, I told myself. Everything I kept filed in the pages of my Bible had fell out, and as I was gathering up all them little keepsakes, my eyes fell on a little scrap of paper with the lines of a poem on it. It was a poem I planned to frame and hang in my kitchen but had never got around to doing it. I read the words again:

I sat back down to ponder about that. So far as I could tell, I was living by those words. I tried to do everything, not just church work, for the Lord's glory. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt, well, unsettled, you might call it. I fingered that scrap of paper and asked the Lord if he was trying to tell me something.

Well, I was soon to find out. Without much faith that anything was going to happen, I spread my old King James on my lap, and it opened right at Isaiah 6. That's the chapter where Isaiah has a vision of the Lord in the temple and he overhears the Lord asking, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Isaiah told the Lord, “Here am I, send me.”

I tell you the truth, my heart commenced to pitter-patter. I can't tell you how many times I had read that chapter before—and heard many a sermon on it—but never in my life had it shot an arrow straight to my heart! At my age, was I supposed to tell the Lord, “Here am I, send me”?

I read on until I finished that chapter, but I didn't remember a word I'd read. All I could think about was that question: “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”

Well, I was in no frame of mind to answer the way Isaiah did.

Somebody was at the door, so I got up and answered it. It was the postman with postage due on a letter. I had to find my pocketbook and dig in that bottomless pit for the four cents to give him. By the time I did that and put on my glasses, I saw it was a letter from Percy Poteat. I was fit to be tied. That no-count, good-
for-nothing moocher—just like him not to put enough stamps on a letter to send it all the way.

I opened it and read what he had to say. Said he had got married in Oregon to a widow with grown kids, and that he and his new wife were riding his motorcycle back east. Said he wanted to show off his bride to the people in Live Oaks and could they stay at my house a few days.

The nerve of that guy! The last time I'd seen him, I'd sent him packing so he wouldn't break up Beatrice and Carl. For some reason, all her life long, Beatrice had been crazy about Percy Poteat. Then she met Carl. They were about to be married when Percy showed up on his Harley-Davidson. He had run through at least three wives and was looking for another. I tell you, all he wanted with Beatrice was a good cook and housekeeper. I knew I had to put a stop to that, so I did.

When Beatrice found out, she shamed me pretty bad about sending him packing—not because Percy was any threat to the way she felt about Carl, but because she was concerned for Percy's soul. Carl had been talking to him about the Lord, and they had both been praying for him, but before they got anywhere with Percy, I had caused him to hit the road.

Well, I'd never felt good about that. I knew Jesus died for him same as me, but at the time I wasn't thinking about Percy being lost—I just wanted him to
get
lost! I figured it would ease my conscience if I agreed to let him and this new wife freeload here at my house for a day or two. To my credit, whenever I thought about Percy, which was only once in a blue moon, I did pray for him.