Heavens to Betsy (13 page)

Again,
ew.

Angelique approaches the box cautiously. “Who did you tick off?”

Angelique came to us through a Welfare-to-Work program. I knew her at 12th and Porter forever, and then she showed up one day for a job interview through a Women in Transition Program we support. Spaghetti tanks with bra straps showing turned out to be the least of our worries. Dr. Black and I’ve been working with Angelique on her professionalism, but clearly we have a ways to go, and with Dr. Black gone, it’s up to me now.

“Who delivered these?” I ask, not quite prepared to give Angelique a lecture in verbal office etiquette.

Angelique shrugs. “No clue. They were propped against the office door when I got back from lunch.”

I retrieve the small envelope and card from the detritus on my desk. “There’s no florist imprint. Nothing.”

Angelique grimaces. “Some special delivery.”

“Yeah. My sermon must have been worse than I thought.”

“Reverend Blessing?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think you’re being stalked?”

I don’t think I’m being stalked, at least not until I check my voice
mail. Three heavy-breathing phone messages later, my skin crawls like a sinner coming back to church.

Weird occurrences are a part of any ministry, and if you’re a woman, you get your own special brand of inappropriate stuff. I regularly receive letters from prisoners requesting I pray for them—and would I mind sending them a pair of underwear I’ve worn recently? More than once a male parishioner has approached me and expressed a wish to discuss the sexual feelings he’s been having for women other than his wife. I’ve learned the Woman Minister’s Secret Handshake. When a man approaches, you extend your right hand and place your left hand on his right shoulder. This demonstrates your warmth and interpersonal skills but also keeps him from getting too close. All that is normal stuff. These dead roses, though, are another thing entirely.

So I do what I always do when I want to run away and hide. I head for the nursing home.

Okay, that’s a little strange, I’ll grant you. A place that smells of disinfectant and rubber-soled shoes isn’t most people’s first choice for sanctuary, but most nursing homes don’t possess the secret weapon they have at Hillsboro Health Care: Velva Brown, a five-foot-tall resident who’s a cross between Yoda and Mother Teresa.

I was drawn to Velva the first time I met her. Maybe it’s the glow that emanates from her weathered face. It could be the zinnias she grows in the flower beds so she can make floral arrangements with her gnarled hands. She carries them to patients who can’t get out of bed. Most important, I think, I seek her out because Velva, too, is ordained. Not that she generally admits to the fact. When she was young in the 1920s, churches ordained women mission workers so they could get the clergy rate on train fare. Velva worked in the Philippines for a few
short years, and then came the stock-market crash of 1929. Mission funding disappeared, and she was called home. She spent the next fifty years of her life working in the denominational offices, typing and filing and waiting for her chance to go back overseas.

Every time she had a chance to return to her beloved Philippines, something intervened. She had back problems. Her mother fell ill. Finally, when she was almost eighty, she went back for a two-year mission stint. Now she lives at Hillsboro Health Care with only a niece in New Jersey to see about her and her memories of the people of the Philippines to make her smile.

Velva’s room reflects her spirit. It’s crammed full with a lifetime of memorabilia. Tibetan prayer drums. A tidy stash of tea bags and a porcelain teapot. Books, books, and more books. Her roommate, Dot-tie, is usually comatose. She spends her days mumbling. I finally figured out she was counting. “Dottie refuses to die until she turns one hundred,” Velva once told me. So that’s how Dottie passes the days, and Velva happily works her into the ambiance. Every morning she brushes Dottie’s hair and puts lipstick on her with the same diligence she employs when she dusts the tops of the furniture and neatly makes her bed.

Today Velva sits in a chair by the window with her Bible open in her lap. I don’t think she’s reading it so much as communing with it. No doubt she has most of it memorized anyway.

When Velva hears my footsteps in the doorway, she turns. I know the aura around her is only backlighting from the sun streaming in the window, but she still looks as if she’s seen the face of God. That’s a glow no makeover in the world can give you.

“My dearest Betsy.” The lines around her mouth emphasize her smile. Her bright blue eyes sparkle. “Such a treat.”

“Hello, friend.” I cross the room and kneel beside her chair. It’s too hard for her to get up and down, so I adjust to her. She puts one hand on the top of my head, as if she’s giving me a blessing. With the other, she tilts my chin toward her.

“What’s all this?” She looks concerned. “When did you start wearing war paint?”

I flush, which only emphasizes the war paint. “I got a makeover.”

“A makeover? What was wrong with you before?”

“I was frumpy.”

Velva sighs. “According to whom?”

“According to me.” I take her fingers from under my chin and very gently squeeze them. With someone as old and frail as Velva, you have to be careful with physical affection. Fortunately, the most minute of touches can convey the deepest feelings. “How’s your arthritis today?”

“Still here.” A conspiratorial light glints in her baby blues. “Did you bring what I asked?”

I cast a quick glance back over my shoulder to make sure no nurses are lurking in the doorway. “Yep.” I reach into my purse on the floor beside me and withdraw a small vial of pills. I slip them into her fingers, and she quickly tucks them under her Bible.

“You’re a dear girl.”

“I feel like a drug dealer.”

“They’re only herbal supplements.”

“And strictly banned in this place.”

Velva smiles. “Let me worry about that.” She motions me to sit in the chair opposite her.

“She’s tired. We stayed up too late reading last night.”

“What kept you up so late?”

Velva draws a book from the seam of her chair where it had been tucked. She turns it toward me.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

“You wild woman.” I laugh and she joins me.

But, as always, Velva knows I’ve come with something on my mind. “What’s troubling you, Betsy?”

I sit in the chair opposite her. “Dr. Black resigned. They’ve asked me to be the interim senior pastor.”

Our lighthearted mood quickly evaporates. “Did you agree?”

“Yes.”

Her brow furrows. “Why?”

“Because I want to prove I can do it.”

She adds a frown to her furrow. “That’s not the reason.”

Velva sees into my soul even more deeply than David does. Maybe it’s her greater years of experience.

“No. It’s not the reason.” I’m quiet for a long moment, and Velva just sits with me, waiting. She’s good at that. Just being a companion, not pushing or prodding, but waiting as if she has all the time in the world. Why is it that a woman of ninety-four, who probably has very little time left, can be far more patient than a woman of thirty who has a lot of years ahead of her?

“I’m leaving the ministry.” There. I’ve said it. It’s out there, named, floating around in the ether.

Velva reaches out and takes my hand in hers. Her fingers are twisted and weak, but her touch conveys strength. She doesn’t say anything for so long I feel compelled to speak.

Velva cocks her head like a little bird. “Has God called you there?”

As usual, Velva cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Tears gather in my eyes, and my shoulders slump. “I don’t know. I don’t know what God wants anymore.”

Since my parents split up when I was fifteen, church has been my refuge. I found comfort, affirmation, opportunities for leadership. When I was a senior, the pastor told me I should think about ministry. The seed seemed to grow of its own accord, and until the day my first church fired me, it always felt like the right thing.

“I’ve tried to do what I thought was right,” I tell Velva, “and look where it’s gotten me. I thought the Big Guy said ‘ministry,’ but maybe it was ‘misery’ I don’t want to—” I stop myself just in time.

“You don’t want to what?”

But I can’t say it—not to her. I can’t say I don’t want to spend my whole life waiting for a chance that might never come.

“It’s too hard, being so close to what I want and knowing it will never be mine. That’s why I agreed to the interim job. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to getting what I want, even if it’s only temporary. And I have to have a job for the next six months until school starts.”

Velva’s hands caress the pages of the Bible in her lap. “Is it what God wants for you, Betsy? Or are you like Jonah, running away because things aren’t going according to your plans?”

I know the answer, but I can’t say it. Velva’s right, though she probably won’t actually offer her opinion. No, she’ll ask supportive, nonthreatening, and open-ended questions and in the process make every point she wants to make.

I sigh. “I can’t cut it in the church, so does it really matter?”

“I’m not sure I do anymore.”

“That’s fear talking.”

“Yes, well, fear has a lot to say these days.”

In the bed by the wall, Dottie snorts and snuffles. Velva releases my hand. “How long would you be willing to wait for God to lead you to the right place? What’s your limit?”

I have the grace to lower my head. I know what Velva’s saying. God works in the Divine’s own sweet time. I’ve read enough Bible stories to know that. Fourteen years for Jacob to finally get the right bride. Forty years of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness. But doesn’t God know the world moves at a faster pace these days?

“I’ve reached my limit. I can’t wait anymore.”

With great difficulty, Velva rises from her chair and shuffles to the counter that runs along one side of the room. She plugs in her electric teakettle and begins to lay out the tea things. It’s a familiar ritual I’ve come to rely on over the past six months.

And, as always, I feel compelled to fill her silence with words. “I thought you would understand better than anyone.”

“If you’ve come for a blessing, I can’t give you one. But I suspect you knew that before you got here.”

We’re both quiet for several minutes. The kettle whistles, and she shakily pours the water into the teapot. “You made a commitment to God. You’re the only one who can give yourself permission to unmake it. Have you done that?”

Once again, Velva’s nailed my problem perfectly. Because, of course, I haven’t done that. Even though I’ve decided to leave, I haven’t let go.

“Until two minutes ago, I thought that’s what I was doing.” Coming face to face with your own self-delusions is never a pretty prospect, as the knot in my stomach indicates.

“If you truly wanted to leave, wouldn’t you just turn in your resignation today?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it?”

Velva slowly sinks back into her chair and smiles with bliss as she settles into the cushions. I pour the tea and hand her the little china cup on its matching saucer.

We both sit quietly for a few minutes as we sip our tea. Dottie mumbles something from her bed, and it blends with the birdsong from the tree outside. Velva had the maintenance men hang several feeders outside her window, and she cajoles and shames the staff into keeping them filled.

“Sometimes things aren’t complicated. We just make them that way.” Velva looks into her teacup as if the answers to all my questions can be found in its contents. “Honestly, Betsy, what’s keeping you from leaving the church?”

I can lie to myself all day long, but lying to Velva is another matter. I grimace. “Because hope won’t die. No matter how hard I try to kill it. I keep thinking something will happen to make it all work out somehow.”

Velva smiles and sips her tea. “I know, my dear. I know.”

Fifty years of waiting for two years of ministry. The longest
advent season ever. Velva was woman enough to manage it, but I don’t think I am.

“Thank you.” I set my cup aside and reach out to squeeze her hand again. “I’d better go.”

“You haven’t finished your tea.”

“That’s okay.” I get up from the chair and reach over to kiss her papery cheek. “Sometimes it’s not the tea you need. It’s the tea ceremony.”

Velva smiles. And so do I, in spite of my tears.