“Oh, baby! Come on in.”
It was good, Michelle thought, that there was one person in her life who always did what was expected, and what was expected was always good. “I wasn’t thinking to see you so soon.” Miz Ida’s eyes looked a question that her mouth did not ask.
“I just thought I would drop by.” Michelle held back what was on her mind for as long as she could. She drank the sweet red Kool-Aid Miz Ida gave her—so sweet that Michelle always wanted a glass of water when she finished. Michelle talked about the old neighborhood, how it had gone down, and she asked Miz Ida when she was going to move.
“You know I ain’t moving, baby.”
Michelle talked about nothing until she just couldn’t hold it anymore. Then she let it all out, like helium from a balloon, about work, about Tonya, and about Shadrach’s suggestion. It was good to have someone—at least one someone that she could tell all the details, all the shameful pieces she would have held back from anyone else. And then, since she was telling, she told Miz Ida about Todd and about the drama with Trench.
“By the time I got through fooling with Tonya in the office, she had blown all the good feeling I got from Trench.”
“Oh, baby, why you got to be with somebody like that—somebody that talks bad to you? Why is it so hard to let Todd love you?”
Michelle just shrugged. There was no point in hiding anything. Miz Ida knew everything anyway. She knew about the molestation, the prostitution, the drugs and jail, and about her mother. Miz Ida knew everything. Michelle could stand naked in front of Miz Ida. The old woman knew who she was and loved her anyway.
Michelle laid her head on Miz Ida’s shoulder.
Thank God for her.
Miz Ida shook her head, her chin brushing the top of Michelle’s hair. “You acted all crazy in the office, like that? So, you think this woman at work is trying to hurt you?” Michelle could feel Miz Ida’s chest rising and falling as she spoke.
“Well, maybe not hurt me, Miz Ida. More like she’s trying to control me and trying to make me be like her. She keeps watching me and trying to tell me what to do, like she’s some kind of preacher or like she’s my momma.”
“And we all know how you feel about that.”
Michelle lifted her head from Miz Ida’s shoulder. “What do you mean? Why did you say it that way?”
Miz Ida looked Michelle square in the eye. “Because that issue—
the momma thing
—just hangs around your neck like a rope waiting to choke you. Things in your life are always going to be off-kilter until you make some peace with who you are and where you come from and about who you belong to.”
“Miz Ida, we keep having this conversation about my momma, about God and everything. What is it you want me to do?”
She put her arm around Michelle’s shoulders. “What I want is for you to get yourself together on this thing. Look, Michelle, your momma wasn’t perfect. But she did what she knew to do. She fed you and she kept a roof over your head. She didn’t have to bear you into this world. Don’t forget that.”
Michelle wanted to pull away. She would have pulled away from anyone else . . . but then, she wouldn’t have let any one else touch her in the first place. “You’re right, Miz Ida. My momma kept me clothed and fed, but where was she when I just needed someone to be there—someone to play with me, talk to me, or to hold me? Where was she when I was crying out?”
“Someday, Michelle, I just pray that the Lord will help you understand.”
“Oh, I understand, Miz Ida. She put that man first. She just didn’t care—she let that man treat her any kind of way. She let him use her. Then she let him use me.”
Miz Ida nodded. “You’re right, you know. Cassandra wasn’t strong. But, you need to know that your momma did everything she knew to do. What’s wrong in her life didn’t start with her. It probably started way before she was born.”
“Miz Ida, you sound like all those people on television. It’s not her fault? Well, you know what, Miz Ida? When does it get to be her fault?
She
left me out there open and unprotected.
She
let a man in her life—in my life—who used me and made me feel like nothing. I would never do that to a child.”
Miz Ida shook her gray head. “No, you doing it to yourself.”
Michelle pulled away from Miz Ida’s embrace at that.
“I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but a true friend tells the truth. Now, your momma’s not in your life bringing men to hurt you. You took over that job yourself.”
The old woman reached to touch one of Michelle’s hands. “Like I been trying to tell you, Michelle, you don’t want to deal with the past, so you just keep repeating it over and over again. Like some kind of pattern. But you can stop it. You got to see it clear and then you got to pray about it. Something bad probably happened to your mother, and she did the same thing to you without knowing it. She couldn’t see it. You
can
see what went wrong, that means you
can
change it. You don’t have to let that history repeat. You don’t have to let another child be hurt, and you don’t have to let yourself be hurt. The good man in your life, you can’t hardly stand. The bad man, you just let him right on in.” She shook her head. “You have to ask yourself what that means.”
Michelle rolled her neck to release the tension and frustration. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Miz Ida.”
“No, I believe you do. You may not
want
to know, but I believe you do.”
“So I guess this same conversation we have is always going to come back to the same old place—my momma, God, and church.”
“Well, if you say so.”
Michelle gritted her teeth. “Miz Ida, it’s going to be a cold day in . . . before I see my momma. Now that’s just that. As for God, He made me. He knows my heart and I don’t have to go to church and pay my money to some man in order for God to see me. He knows every hair on my head—you taught me that.”
“He does know every hair. You were listening when I was talking to you, weren’t you, baby?” Miz Ida pinched Michelle’s cheek with one hand and put the other arm back around Michelle’s shoulders, but Michelle resisted. “Don’t you try to pull away from me.” Miz Ida held on until Michelle surrendered. “If you’re going to change your life, don’t just change it on the outside. Make the change through and through. The only one that I know of that can do a heart change is the Lord. If I knew somebody else, I would recommend him, but in all my time, it’s only the Lord I been able to see do it. If we could really sit at home and do what we need to do to find Him and learn about Him, I wouldn’t bug you so much.” She squeezed her. “I know you don’t like it. But tell the truth—you know the Lord by yourself, but when was the last time you opened a Bible to read anything about Him? All you know the Lord to be is what you’ve heard people say. All they say ain’t all He wants to be to you.”
“It’s not the Lord, Miz Ida. I would go to church, but I just hate all those people asking for money.”
Miz Ida laughed out loud. “Girl, now you know better than to pull my leg. You know you got to give me a better excuse than that.” She let go of Michelle, rose from the couch, and walked into the kitchen. Miz Ida opened the door to her refrigerator and started moving things around. “Let me see if I can fix you something to eat.” She pulled a pot from the refrigerator and set it on the stove.
She started laughing again, and laid her hand on her chest. “I don’t mean to laugh.” She doubled over. “Yes, I do. You know why I’m laughing? If that ain’t the biggest bunch of nothing.
I ain’t paying no man my money.
The people who say that are the same people that will pay all kinds of money for lottery tickets that got a million-to-one chance to win. They will pay twenty dollars a day for cigarettes and other stuff. When you pay for them, who you paying if not some man?
“When you go to church, you got the choice to pray and never give—you give cause your heart say so. Them other things—drinking, gambling, drugs, candy, whatever your poison is, just like me and all the sugar I put in my drinks—you know you got to pay to play. You gone pay for somebody to give you something that’s gone take life away or leave you worse off, but you don’t want to give back to something that’s giving hope.”
Miz Ida shook her head and laughed again, then waved Michelle into the kitchen area. “Now, enough of this. Come on in here and help me get this food on.” Michelle chopped lettuce, and then began to slice tomato and cucumbers. Miz Ida began to laugh again.
“
I ain’t gone give no man my money.
People gone have to come up with a new excuse.”
Fall-Tonya
T
onya made a left turn onto Wabash Avenue on her way home. In her soul and spirit, she kept the running prayer going—the prayer she prayed every day as she drove home. A prayer that God would just let her make it home safely, that the car she was driving—her mid-sized, I’m-only-five-years-old-but-if-you-don’t-keep-an-eye-on-me-I’m-going-to-break-down-right-in-the-middle-of-this-traffic car would just keep going a little bit longer. She prayed that her car would keep going until her change came, until things got better, or until she walked into her season.
The radio announcer said it was five-fifteen. In fact, he said it like everybody ought to shout
Hallelujah!
Then, just before the digital clock on her dashboard could register five-sixteen, he said, “Hallelujah! Everybody say
hallelujah!
”
Obediently, because she was nothing if not obedient, Tonya said, “Hallelujah.” Only if there was a praise meter in heaven, her accolade or jubilation probably registered less like
Hallelujah
and more like
So what?
Tonya had started off her day with the praise song “This Is the Day That the Lord Has Made” in her heart and in her mind. By the afternoon, her joy was gone. What remained was a kind of pained weariness that she felt on her face and in her chest. It was the tiredness that can be seen on some church folks’ faces when they don’t know anyone is looking. Tiredness that says they love the Lord, that they are committed to Him come rain or come shine, but that they have been through a season that has been mostly wind and rain.
It is a tired expression that goes away when they are serving or helping others. It disappears when singing their favorite gospel song along with the radio or a choir, or when they hear the Word being preached on Sunday morning. But sometimes, Tonya knew, when they are alone and thinking—when there is no one around that they need to uplift or encourage—they sink. It is the sinking of people who are waiting for a change that looks like it will never come.
The same sinking Tonya felt so often.
She understood. It wasn’t that they didn’t have faith that change would come. But it was hard not to grow weary of waiting. Tonya had seen the same look on the faces of women who had been loving, submissive, and celibate only to see the men they loved marry women that gave them what they wanted when they wanted it—whether those “giving” women were the right women, the beloved women, or not. It was the weariness of saints who dutifully paid their tithes while their ends hardly ever met, while crooks—both thugs and corporate hoods—drove fancy cars and lived in houses with pools and Jacuzzis.
Tonya thought this must be like the exhaustion of salmon that swim upstream hoping against hope to spawn. It must be the almost hopeless hope of players who sit on the bench wanting to throw in the towel, but who want even more to get into the game.
Tonya had stopped looking in the mirror so she wouldn’t see that there were faint, dark circles under her eyes. Stray hairs had come undone from her bun—the perennial bun or ponytail she wore because they were the fastest hairdos (or hair-don’ts) she could comb without having to look at her reflection. The gray tiredness in her face spoke volumes. It was the drained, glassy-eyed look of the
for-God-I-live-or-for-God-I-will-die
saints when it looks like the Grim Reaper is sharpening his blade. She wore the look of people whose hope is almost gone—all wrapped up in an overstretch, oversized navy-blue sweater. The sister was just tired.
She was tired of doing the same thing every day with the same results. She was lonely, too. She was godly, and she did her best to be holy. She wasn’t slobbering for a man, but she was still lonely. Yes, she had the look of women who think,
Jesus is enough, but it would be nice to have a man.
She didn’t
need
a man; so she wasn’t asking, grooming, or looking. She didn’t need a house or a new car to make her complete, so she wasn’t asking God for it.
But she was waiting for something.
What really bothered her, though, was that while Tonya was waiting, it seemed as though life had moved on for everyone else she knew. While she was waiting to exhale, as Ms. MacMillan might say, Stella had already gotten her groove back—five or six times. It would have been easier for Tonya if she could have given up or just thrown in the towel. But Tonya had a promise. She was waiting on her season, waiting for her change to come, waiting for her time to shine. If she didn’t have to believe that things were going to get better—if she could have just packed it up, put it away, or iced it down—things would have been tidier and so much easier.
But underneath all Tonya’s affected dowdiness was a passionate woman with her eye open for a more abundant life. She couldn’t explain it; it was sort of a prickling desire. It just wasn’t nice, tidy, and neat. It wasn’t a Vaseline-on-your-patent-leather-shoes kind of desire. It wasn’t an overstuff-your-plate-at-Sunday-dinner desire. Tonya wrestled with her promise like the saints of old wrestled as they waited for Emmanuel.
What had her bunched up now, on her way home from work, was mostly Michelle.
“Lord,” she talked with her eyes open, monitoring the obstacles and the traffic. She talked to God without moving her lips so that people in the car next to her wouldn’t think she was crazy and report her to the police over their cell phones. “Lord, what are You trying to do to me?” She slowed so that the car to her right could change lanes in front of her. “I have done everything You told me. I’ve bought her books and cards using money You know I don’t have. And today I even took her the flowers You told me to take her.” Humiliation brought tears to her eyes. “And I told you before I did it that I thought it was a bad idea. I told you!”