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Though we were president (me) and vice president (him) of Brothers and Sisters in Christ (BASIC), Tad usually looked past me, as if too busy to give me his full attention. Today though, another man lived in his skin—a towel-brandishing, knee-bending, foot-washing man.
His towel hung from one side of his waistband now, like a child’s napkin at a barbecue. He tugged it free and tossed it to the floor before tapping my ankle for me to lift my foot out of the tub. How he knew to do that I didn’t know. Did he get pedicures too?
Too embarrassed to look at him any longer, I stared at my sunshine shoes, the yellow peekaboo pumps I’d made for Dana’s wedding but had only been brave enough to wear today, three months later. Now, I longed for a pair of fuzzy slippers. They’d be easier to escape with. I’d tried to roll with it, but this was ridiculous. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I have to go.”
I struggled to get up, but Tad held my foot, massaged my heel. He took a deep breath. “Wait…Listen.”
The rhythm of Mother Holloway’s humming my favorite hymn, the music minister praying under his breath, someone’s wife crying behind me, and the splashes of simple service moved me, moved through me. It started as a shiver at first, then a stream and finally a flood. The room faded as I shut my eyes, letting the sacred sounds close in on me. Who knew that feet could bring such peace to a place?
Warmth poured over my ankles, flowed between my toes. That Tad. Sneaky. I sat in my chair, head buried in my hands. If he’d only stopped there, I could have endured it, pretended none of it had happened. But as always, Tad went too far.
“You have beautiful feet, Rochelle, the Gospel-spreading, life-giving kind, the kind that make it to the finish line.” He said it loud, in his tornado-warning voice.
Mother Holloway stopped humming. I stopped sitting, dropping my unopened Bible from my lap as I stood. The book splashed Tad’s face as it thudded into the water. The black cover peeled back and released the gold-edged pages, billowing at first, then bloating.
Tad grabbed the book and squeezed as though saving a life. And he was saving a life. Mine. From the cover, bought by my son as a boy, to the notes scribbled in the margin on almost every page, that book contained the past ten years of my life and all God’s promises for my future. Still, I went for my shoes, to run, to save my heart. To save my mind.
“Wait.” He held out the damp Bible. When I took it, he held it with me, knowing I wouldn’t stay. Everyone was looking at us, listening, but he didn’t seem to care. “Really, Rochelle, your feet are beautiful. So are you.” He released his grip on my Bible, but tightened the grip on my heart. Why had he waited until today, when I was giving up on everything, to get all brave? I held the wet stack of pages in front of me like a shield and headed for the door.
“If that boy thinks those feet are pretty, Chelle, you’d better marry him. No offense, sugar.” Mother Holloway’s voice followed me to the door.
None taken, I thought, unable to speak. As for marrying Tad or anyone else, the thought that had always been laughable before became painful now. Why was Tad saying stuff like this now, when it was too late? When whatever shred of womanhood had that survived seventeen years of single parenting, entrepreneurship, church service and a really bad attempt at having a boyfriend last year lay dead on the bottom of my heart. It was best to leave it there. Sometimes it’s been too long for a resurrection.
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now at the door, I looked back at Tad, still kneeling and reaching out with those long copper fingers. He was looking at me, his lips curved into a waning moon full of star-bright teeth. “Thanks for coming. You have so much to offer.” He whispered it, but again, everyone heard.
I stabbed my feet farther into my shoes, grinding my toes into place. Water dotted the canary leather like tears. My own tears refused to fall. After months of crying for everyone else, I had no tears left for myself.
Tad’s smile, a small one, was like a boy with a secret, a man with a plan. I stepped into the hall, reminding myself of how other women in the church had been sucked into a web of mixed messages and ended up with broken hearts and, in some cases, broken faith.
A thousands Sundays of hide-and-seek with Tad had taught me never to put my trust in him. Or my hope. Our game stayed the same each week. (“It’s good to see you, Sister Rochelle.” “And you.”) Stolen glances that would have rendered lesser souls legally blind would follow, but never anything more, unless you counted that February eight years ago when he held my hand for four Sundays in a row. He’d made up for his slip by ignoring me for months, like he’d probably do after today.
On my way to the car, I reminded myself of that, as well as how cruel he’d been to say those things in front of some of the main grinders of the church rumor mill. I’d spend the rest of the year explaining that we weren’t dating, but things like that never occurred to him. I stepped painfully toward the car, trying not to think about the Bible leaking through my dress. How could I start over without my notes? My thoughts? Tad’s thoughts came to me instead.
Gospel-spreading feet.
Yeah, these tootsies could spread cement from here to Mexico. In fact, they’d tried to do just that. When pregnant with my son, the doctor had advised cutting back at work as my feet swelled and my not-so-sensible shoes cramped. Determined to show my teenage heartthrob (who I was sure would marry me at any moment) that I wasn’t a lazy woman, I ignored the doctor’s advice and worked more, not less. If my son’s father was impressed, he had a sorry way of showing it, going to the bathroom during my labor and never returning.
The next time I saw him was on a TV screen as he drank and fought his way through a few stormy years in professional basketball. Though it’d hurt to see him in magazines with pretty women on his arm, the money he sent (a couple hundred thousand, which I invested in design school, my home, my shoe boutique and Dana’s shop) was helpful. One day the money stopped and the only man I’d ever loved or made love to disappeared from the face of the earth. I realized quickly that he might not ever come back. Might not save me.
It was then that Jesus revealed Himself to me, a God more than willing to be my husband, my son’s father and my closest friend. For years, I gave myself freely to Christ without regret, except for my secret, that somewhere in a nursing home in Mexico my son’s father slumbered in a coma like a male version of Sleeping Beauty. From the returns on my well-invested funds, I paid for his monthly care, each night secretly praying the same prayer, Let today be the day, Lord. Let Jordan wake up and come home.
Instead, Jordan’s sister Dana, who’d shared parenting chores with me since her teen years, and Tracey, another friend and former neighbor, filled much of my void for companionship. Though we’d spent time together online as the Sassy Sistahood, we became something more, sisters in Christ. When Dana found out last year about her brother and, worse yet, about me knowing about her brother’s condition and whereabouts, our relationship was a little strained. Okay, so a lot strained. We’re close still but in a different, more distant way. For one thing, she’s married now. Talk about changing relationship dynamics…
Anyway, about Jordan. Though I continued to pay for his care, Jordan coming home drifted away from me with all my other happily-ever-after dreams. Many times, I almost told Dana that I knew where her brother was and what had happened to him, but I never could find the right words. Last year, Jordan woke up and found the words himself, coming home to turn my son’s head and break my heart all over again.
Working too hard to keep a man had broken these feet in the first place, broken my heart. I couldn’t let that happen again. Not for anyone. Not even intelligent, handsome, aggravating Tad.
And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
The Scripture leaked from my mind into one of the puddles I passed on the way to my car. I paused at the trash can near my trunk and slipped off my shoes.
Afraid that some thrifty deaconess would rescue the yellow pumps and put them in the clothes bank, forcing me to see the stain of this morning on the feet of a stranger, I gripped the shoes to my chest along with my soggy Bible. Tomorrow’s trash pickup at home was a safer option, one that ensured I’d never see those sunshine shoes again.
Chapter two
My son, his father, my son’s girlfriend—the whole crew of fools—awaited me at home. I didn’t even get to squish the rest of the water out of my Bible before facing them.
“Hi-eeee,” Shemika said, waving with one hand and covering her watermelon-size belly with the other. She bowed her head quickly, nibbling one of the emergency croissants from my freezer.
I dumped my wet shoes beside the door next to the others. I took in the scene in disbelief. Not only had these folks invaded my home—with the help of my son’s key, no doubt—they’d kicked off their shoes and cooked themselves some breakfast, too.
The nerve.
Still armed with my wet Bible, I grabbed the empty plastic bag my croissants had come in and wrapped the Bible in it. It was a total loss, but I was too afraid to throw it away. I have a thing about Bibles, too. As ink blurred in the margins and bled across the pages, I bled inside too. I’d meant to get a new Bible sometime, but not now. Not yet. Everything was changing without my permission. Sort of like my unexpected guests.
I turned to my son’s father, eating eggs at my kitchen table as though he belonged there. As many times as I’d envisioned him in that seat, the sight bothered me now.
“How did you get in here, Jordan?” I knew already, of course, but I wanted to let all of them know that keying into my home and waiting for me was unacceptable.
“Well, we—”
“Leave Dad out of it, Mom. It’s my fault. I used my key.” My son, Jericho, stood, hands shoved into his jeans.
“Dad? It’s like that now? That’s rich.” About as rich as his father, whose gifts seemed to have worn away any of my son’s remaining brain cells. Sure it was great that Jordan was here today, but what about when he disappeared again?
“Can we not start with that? What’s with you anyway? Are those the sunshine shoes?” He pointed to my wet pumps by the door.
“That’s them. It’s a long story. Sunday school was, well, interesting. I had to come home.” I looked over at Shemika. “Your grandmother had a good time, though.”
“I’m sure.” Shemika shrugged and gave me the same guilty smile she’d worn since her pregnancy started showing. Today though, something different played around her eyes. Maybe the reality I’d been trying to describe to them was finally sinking in.
My son didn’t look as amused. “Church? Is that really it? You seem really out of it. And is that your Bible wrapped up over there? The one that you write in?”
Jordan stopped pushing his eggs around on his plate and looked at me with a concern that shook me a little. I must have looked like a fool in this wet blouse and rumpled skirt, but he looked at me as if I was wearing an evening gown. Tad was one thing, but Jordan was going to have to get out of here. They were all giving me puppy-dog looks now.
“We had an exercise in Sunday school and I got a little wet, okay? The question isn’t about me. The question is, what are you people doing here!” Whoa. Had that come out of my mouth? I was definitely going to have to check with the doctor about those perimenopause supplements. Kicking folks and screaming all before noon? And on a Sunday too? I needed a nap and some sugar-free chocolate.
Shemika piped up this time. “Well, coming here was my idea, actually. I’m not feeling so well, Mrs. Rose—”
“That’s Miss—Miss Gardner, same as Jericho.” I didn’t scream this time, but my meaning was clear. What had they been telling this girl? As long as she’d known us, hadn’t somebody clued her in on the whole horrible story.
“She was never my wife, Shemika,” Jordan said. “Though she should have been. I wasn’t as brave as Jericho, but she was as brave as you. And hardworking, too. She worked double shifts in the supermarket and picked up hours at the hospital until the day she went into labor.” He paused and stared at the floor. “Even messed up her feet to do it. I’m sorry about everything, but I’m sorry about that.”
I braced myself against the chair at the sound of Jordan’s voice. For years, I’d thought that marrying Jordan would have saved me, taken the shame of my teen pregnancy away. All these years later, listening to him, looking at him, I realized things could have been worse if he’d stayed. I couldn’t think of anything he could add to my life. Nothing I needed to think about, anyway.
Shemika tugged my son’s sleeve. “I thought they were divorced—”
“Shh.” Jericho squeezed her hand and gave me a look, one that I deflected. Sure it wasn’t the best way to explain, but since my son was so bent on marrying this girl, he should have told her himself. Suddenly wishing there was another croissant, but glad at the same time that there wasn’t, I backed up against the wall. My bare feet squeaked against the floor.
Even Jordan’s cold eggs called to me as images of the morning—kicking Tad, him washing my lumpy toes, opening the door to find everyone in my kitchen—melted across my mind. This had been a crazy year all around, with Tracey and Dana getting married and Jordan coming home, but this was a bit much. A bit too much.
“Shemika, if you don’t feel well, come into my room and lie down. I need to change my clothes anyway.” All eyes in the room had been focused on my feet since Jordan’s little speech and my words didn’t break the spell. I jetted through the dining room to my bedroom, daring even one tear to fall and hoping reality TV cameramen weren’t waiting behind my drapes.
Shemika followed and stretched out on my favorite comforter—the key-lime pie set I’d gotten from Austin, our newest member in the Sassy Sistahood, during our Christmas-in-July gift swap. The plump comforter plus my queen-size waterbed brought a smile to Shemika’s face.
“Nice,” she said, as I changed into a periwinkle sundress. Not my color exactly, but I wasn’t feeling myself.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry for all the commotion this morning. You’re welcome here anytime, you know that. I just had a bad morning. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
She fluffed the pillow under her head. “I just don’t feel so good. My back hurts, but it’s not time yet and the doctor says to just come in tomorrow. We even went to the hospital, but they said it’s Brackstum Lips—”
“Braxton Hicks.” During the months of my son’s relationship with this girl, I had actually started to warm up to her. Her quietness had given the illusion of wisdom. She should have stuck to that plan. I tried to remind myself that she was only sixteen, no matter how old she looked.
Lord, help this child. And mine, too.
“Yeah, those. But now it’s really hurting. Every now and then. Grandma doesn’t remember all this stuff and my mother, well, she changed her number when she put me out. Maybe I can rest here for a while and go home—”
“Stay as long as you want.” I stroked her head to check for fever and thought about what she’d just said. Home. Jericho had brought the mother of his child to my house because she had nowhere to go. And his shacking-up baby’s daddy had done the right thing and taken Shemika in, given her something to call home.
True enough, my son hadn’t explained the situation to me, but as always, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. And as Jericho loved to remind me, if I’d just have signed the papers to allow him to get married while he was still legally a minor, this wouldn’t be an issue. But I couldn’t. Raising a baby was hard enough. Building a marriage was something else all together. Grown folks with steady jobs struggled at it. How could two teens with a new baby make it work? And what about his basketball? College? No, they needed an education. I’d help with the baby…somehow.
“Shemika, I’m sorry about what happened in June with the big fight about you being here with Jericho alone. If he’d told me the situation—”
She tried to sit up, but I shook my head and she eased back down. “I asked him not to tell you. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think bad of my mother. She has her own problems and a baby is more than she can deal with right now.”
That stunned me for some reason. Sure, Shemika had made a big mistake, but her mother was an adult who should have done better than toss her child into the street. But here Shemika was defending her. More than I could say for myself about my own mother. I tried not to speak against her, but the way she’d abandoned me when I was pregnant with Jericho still hurt all these years later. I hadn’t realized it until now.
Kids. Who needs therapy with them around?
“Embarrassed? You didn’t need to worry about what I think. And you told Mr. Rose, right? Why weren’t you embarrassed for Jordan’s dad to know?”
She shrugged. “He’s different, you know? More like us. You’re like Grandma. All holy and everything.”
I laid down on the bed beside her and stared at the ceiling. “Shemika, I try to live by God’s Word, but I’m far from perfect. A long way from holy. I don’t know what I’ve done to give you the idea that I couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with your problems, but I’ll do better. Try harder.”
She smiled and closed her eyes. “It’s okay. Like I said, I just want to go home.”
My eyes closed, too, with images of Jordan’s glamorous town house scrolling behind them. Sure I was glad that he’d snagged a job as a consultant to the NBA, but sometimes it didn’t seem fair. Though Jordan’s “I’ve been in Mexico in a coma for the last decade” story fell hard on most people’s ears, the NBA had heard stranger tales.
And so came his new job, a fresh start, a fraction of what Jordan might have had if he’d kept playing, but so much more than he’d hoped for. I tried to be happy for him, even if the way my son had come to depend on him made me feel a little lost.
Hadn’t that been what I prayed for all those years when it was just me? That one day Jericho would have a dad he could depend on? Believe in? I hadn’t realized then that prayers seldom have an expiration date and sometimes they’re answered when you least expect it. So I went on, working hard and praying hard and trying to embrace this new life alone—no husband, no son, no single friends. The people in BASIC didn’t really count. I couldn’t really talk with any of them. They’d be shocked enough to know that I’d kicked Tad, let alone the things I thought about sometimes.
And most of them had little sympathy for my up-and-down feelings for Jordan. So what that I’d worked my fingers to the bone building a business? He’d given me the start-up money. Really, there wasn’t much I could say if he hadn’t. He was still my son’s father no matter how I turned the plate.
Shemika’s chest moved up and down, her round belly rising as if it was breathing, too. Jericho had done that in my stomach, too, even danced when I ate lasagna or Adrian Norrell’s mother played Sting full blast next door. Adrian married Dana, Jordan’s sister—but I digress. Watching Shemika sleep, I prayed for all of us, even for the guys around the league that Jordan was helping. I prayed that he’d keep them from turning out regretful, like us. Well, like him. I’d stuck around, done my duty….
I covered my eyes. Yuck. There it was, that holier-than-thou thing Shemika was talking about. Why was I like this? Why did I always have to be right? It wasn’t that I didn’t have regrets, too. I had plenty. Jordan was here now and trying to do what was right. I had to find my way out of the past and make peace with that. Somehow.
With Jordan convinced that a shotgun wedding would solve this new problem, the Jericho-and-Shemika problem, it was difficult to deal with him, especially when Jordan hadn’t married his own live-in girlfriend yet.
I reached out and touched Shemika’s stomach gently, thinking about the many women from our church I’d helped through labor. Shemika didn’t really have the look of a woman in labor, but with the young ones it was hard to tell. I once had a girl laugh and talk with me all the way to the hospital and deliver as soon as we got her into a room. This time would probably be a typical first baby, hard and long. Just like mine.
The door creaked open and Jordan entered, taking a few steps and peeking at us. When he leaned over far enough to see my open-eyed stare, he jumped back. “Girl! I thought you were sleeping, too.”
I wish.
“Nope. Just thinking.” I squirmed a little as he looked around my room. I could tell he liked it by the way he narrowed his eyes at the picture on the wall. Some things never changed.
He moved closer to the bed, then settled on a chair in the corner. “Thinking about what?”
“Nothing.” Frustration whistled through my lips. Why did just the sight of him make me angry? Maybe because hard as I’d worked to get these two kids to finish high school, he’d pressed just as hard for them to get married, something I still wouldn’t agree to. Most likely it was because of Shemika’s words earlier, that Jordan’s place was her home. The other thing that bothered me, the thing I wasn’t ready to deal with, was that the grandchild that I’d refused to deal with might be coming.
Soon.
Careful not to wake her, I reached for Shemika’s hand, praying as I touched her fingers. I wasn’t ready for this. I might never be ready. But God was ready. God was here. As I prayed, the soft flesh under her shirt stiffened into a tight ball. Her back arched, but she continued sleeping.
Jordan saw it, too. “Hey, what was that?” he whispered.
I checked the clock next to my bed—11:02 a.m. “That is the beginning of labor. Looks like our granddaughter wants to meet us a little early.”
“So what did the doctor say?” Jordan’s voice went with his feet, pacing up and down my front hall.
“They said to let her rest as long as she can. That if it’s the real thing, it’ll wake her up and we should time the contractions when it does. When they’re five minutes apart, we should bring her in.”
I nodded and started again, puttering around the kitchen, trying to make something to bring along for Shemika to eat. Every doctor was different, but some still believed in nothing but ice cubes and for a long labor that could be torture.
Somehow I sort of felt like that now, pulled by my anger one moment and my happiness the next. Angry yet happy that they’d come here, put me in the middle of it all.
I should have been happy to come home and find my son and people I hadn’t invited inside my kitchen. Throughout Jericho’s childhood, I’d turned the key in my front door every day knowing there’d probably be some child with a problem on the other side. Only this time, it was my child. My problem. And I had no solution. Only hurt and a strange hope, a joy at the thought my grandchild’s arrival remained. The feeling was stronger than I’d expected, but overshadowed by my pain.
Still, it hurt to see my son, so much a kid, trying to be a father, doing what a husband should. It made me want to go upside his head for doing this in the first place. “So you were just going to hang out and hope it stopped hurting, huh son? Sounds like a very well thought-out plan.”
My words came out sharper than I’d liked, but the question rang true. I should have been honored that my son had thought of me first (well, second—he went to his dad first) after all we’d been through this summer, but I wasn’t. I was disappointed. I tried hard not to be, but I was. This just wasn’t how it was supposed to go. God had only given me one child. There wasn’t any room for black sheep and mess-ups. This wasn’t on the program.
I wiped my eyes and kept at the cupboards until I unearthed a can of Chunky soup my son had left behind. I zipped it open with my electric opener and dumped the goo into a pot, wondering if this was how my mother had felt when she’d happened upon my growing belly? Though my mother had split town, leaving me in my aunt’s care long before my first contraction, my current emotions explained a lot. Not enough, but a lot. Maybe one day I’d be as spiritual as Shemika and even be able to defend her. For now, my feelings peaked and dipped all over the chart, resting on happily disappointed.
Jordan joined me at the stove and gathered my free hand into his. My heart did a free fall, like an eaglet tossed out of its nest. In all these months since he’d come back, he hadn’t touched me. I’d made sure of that. Even with all he’d done to me, the physical connection between the two of us hadn’t diminished. From the first time he’d held my hand at one of his father’s Sunday evening fish-fry dinners, Jordan and I were physically drawn together like two magnets on a refrigerator. Spiritually though, our poles had always been opposite. (Now he professed Christ, but loved someone else.) I tried to pull away, knowing better than to let his touch linger.
He held my hand with that loving grip of his and snaked his other hand around my waist, the way he had when I was pregnant. Though my belly was flat now, he rested his hand at my waist, barely touching my dress.
Jordan cleared his throat. “Father God, we haven’t done everything right, but let us get this right. May this baby be a grace to us, a healing. Help me to be to this girl what I wasn’t to Chelle, to Jericho. Help me to be as a grandfather everything that I wasn’t as a father. Help us all to hold together. To be a family. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” As he released me, his mouth brushed my ear.
“Amen.” My knees felt like rubber bands. Jordan’s Halston Z-14 cologne, the same scent I’d bought him for Valentine’s Day our senior year, whispered along my neck, mocking me. I felt God holding me now instead of Jordan, extending an invitation for me to walk with Him, to fly with Him on the wings of the morning, to walk into this grace, this second chance. Instead, I backed away from the pain that was Jordan, who had never been there for me, for us.
Until now.
