Head Over Heels (9 page)

“Why can't you wait until they're done?”

“Because I don't want them to leave. I'm going to say a quick prayer of thanks for the doughnuts, then send them back to the computers. If I wait until they're done, some of them might leave rather than join in when I'm praying.”

He spun around in the chair. “That sounds a little calculated.”

“Besides steering them away from gangs and questionable activities, this is the real reason I want them to come here. So far we've only done informal talks and question-and-answer things, but it's time to kick it up a notch, as the saying goes. This is the only time some of them will ever get to open themselves up to God and the peace a person can have in their heart once they get to know Him. For some of these kids, all they see and hear at home is swearing and cursing and sometimes fighting. Drugs and alcohol abuse is out in the open—I know a few parents who don't even try to hide it. In other homes, even if everything else is fine, they face a life without a future because of the income level, and in this neighborhood they can't break out. All they get at home is discouragement and hopelessness. You don't know the atmosphere in some of the homes they come from.”

“Yes, I do!” he snapped, unable to stop himself. “The one here who doesn't know what it's like is you. You talk about the hopelessness, but do you know what it's like to be so buried by disaster after disaster that you can't find a way out, so you just sink deeper and deeper? When you get so desperate and so angry that you'll do anything to get out?”

“Uh…” Marielle glanced from side to side. Russ stared intently into her face as she looked him straight in the eye. Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Do you want to talk about this? Like, uh, somewhere else?”

Russ swung around in his chair to face the computer. “No. I don't.”

He began keyboarding, but as he did, he became aware that all noise in the room had stopped, all heads were turned and everyone was staring at him.

His hands stilled, poised over the keyboard, while a million thoughts rushed through his head. He didn't want anyone to think he thought he was better than them. He wasn't. He knew everyone was equal in God's eyes. God looked at the heart, not the bank account or how many bathrooms and bedrooms a person had in their house, or even if they didn't have a house at all.

He also didn't want to discourage anyone there from trusting in God and His power. He hadn't meant to challenge Marielle, and he certainly didn't want to challenge God. It was God who had set him free, yet at the same time, God hadn't loosed other chains that bound him.

He pushed the chair back and stood. “It's time for a break. Marielle brought doughnuts. They're on the desk.”

In his mind, Russ pictured every one of the teens getting up and running to the doughnuts, jostling for the best ones.

No one moved. Because in this crowd, it wasn't cool to be the first to accept anything that might be construed as charity.

Russ's pride about accepting charity had long ago been squelched. He walked to the desk first, picked one of the best chocolate-covered crème doughnuts, and held it up for all to see. “You snooze, you lose,” he said, then took a big bite.

Marielle smiled shakily and joined him. She selected a plain doughnut, and also took a bite.

“Sorry I wrecked your plan,” he said softly so only Marielle could hear. “I know you wanted to pray first.”

“It's okay. We'll pray next time.”

A couple of the boys got up and sashayed to the desk, elbowing and hip-checking each other, to show that they really weren't in a rush and that free doughnuts weren't important.

Gradually everyone got up and helped themselves.

Russ ate his doughnut so slowly it was almost painful, just so he wouldn't be the first to finish, and to encourage the kids to relax after he'd lost it in front of them.

He would talk to Marielle later, in private as she'd suggested. He would apologize for his outburst.

Brittany shuffled in close to him, so close they were almost touching. “Russ, what did you mean about being desperate?”

He looked down at Brittany, so young but no doubt having been through a lot. He couldn't remember a time that he saw her when she didn't look tired. Even today, early in the week, circles rimmed her eyes, despite her attempts to cover them with makeup. He remembered that the reason he'd had to help Marielle with the preschool on Sunday morning was that Brittany's mother had an accident and Brittany had to care for her siblings. He hadn't thought about it at the time, but he now wondered where the father was. If Russ were a father and his daughter wanted to go to church, he would do what every father should do, and that was look after the other children so the one could go. Either the father didn't care enough to look after his own children, or there was no father.

He braced himself, knowing that whatever he said to Brittany would be heard by everyone. Russ was sure it would be repeated at the speed of sound, or maybe even the speed of light.

“Things haven't always been good or easy for me. There have been times I've struggled so hard I honestly thought it would never get better, and then when I thought it couldn't get worse, it did. But one day, it did get better, and it's stayed better, and I guess that's why I'm here.”

They didn't ask what it took to get where he was now, so he didn't offer.

“You mean you weren't always rich?”

Russ nearly laughed, except Brittany was serious. “I'm not rich. I'm not even close. But I'm comfortable. I know this sounds callous, but you have to know that no matter how bad you think you've got it, someone else, somewhere, has it worse.”

One of the boys whose name he couldn't remember took one step forward, still keeping his distance, but making it plain that he had something to say that he wanted the group to hear. “That's easy for you to say. You don't know what it's like to live in a neighborhood like this.”

Russ considered the young man for a moment, then said, “Yes, I do. I come from a neighborhood just like this one. When I could, I moved to a different city where I could make a fresh start. And I can tell you a lot about having to accept charity, and accept it graciously. Money, used clothes, the foodbanks. You name it, I've been there. My mother used to tell me that it was okay to accept charity if one day, when you didn't need it
anymore, you could give it back to someone else who needed it more than you. She used to quote me Bible verses that it's okay to accept things when done with the right heart, not like it's owed but out of gratitude.”

Marielle turned to him. “Your mother sounds like a very special woman.”

He felt the question she hadn't asked, which was whether his mother was alive.

“She is. She's remarried now, and doing fine.”

Brittany stared up at him so intently he almost felt it. “What about your dad?”

“My dad left when I was about your age, and I haven't seen him or heard from him since.”

“You got brothers and sisters?”

“I have a younger sister. When she was little she got hit by a car, a hit-and-run, and she was pretty bad for a while. They didn't know if Sasha was going to be permanently disabled. My dad couldn't take it, and he left.”

A collective gasp echoed around him.

He glanced around the room; everyone was staring intently at him. “My sister is okay. One leg is a bit shorter than the other, and she limps and she wears special shoes, but she's otherwise okay. But it was hard on all of us in different ways. So don't tell me I don't know what it's like. I can tell you all this. I worked, I learned, and I worked some more. And if
I
could do it,
you
all can do it, too. In fact, if you swallow your pride, there are now agencies and programs that weren't around when I was your age. Take advantage of everything that's given to you, make something of yourself, and then when you're in a position to do so, give it back so someone else can get out, too.”

Jason looked at him eye to eye, their heights matching. Jason was as big as a man, yet inside, in so many ways still a boy. “Is that why you're here? To give something back?”

Guilt swept over Russ. He wasn't here to give back. He was here for a purely selfish reason—to get ahead in his job. “No,” he answered honestly, without expounding or making excuses. “Now let's get back to the computers. You're all doing well, but you've got a lot more to do if you're going to get as much out of this as your friends who took the course and had to pay money for it.”

As he walked around to each of the teens, he thought every one of them was concentrating more and working hard than usual. Russ didn't think his speech had been motivational. He was sure that some of these kids had stories just as bad or worse than his own. Most people didn't know what really happened inside the walls of their neighbors' homes, or even their family's homes. Many people had known about his sister, but no one had known all the dirty details, especially after his father deserted them.

None of the teens looked at him as he talked to them—they kept their concentration fully on the computers. But Russ could almost feel Marielle's gaze burning into his back.

This time, when they were done with the assignments he'd prepared, instead of working on what Marielle had brought, they pulled the chairs into a circle and Marielle read them a few Bible verses on asking God for favors. Some of the people in the Bible, from the poorest poor to the richest kings, asked God for something, based on their need at the time.

Those who were willing to share discussed some of their needs, which Russ found a real eye-opener into the backgrounds of the kids he'd seen every day for the past two weeks. Just like he'd told them, he had no idea what their lives were like beyond the quirky smiles and displays of attitude.

Not one of them left before six o'clock. But when the designated hour came, they all departed at once.

Which left just Russ and Marielle in the large room.

Russ began walking around to all the stations to make sure the programs were closed and the computers properly shut off.

He sat at one of the machines, feeling the heat of Marielle's stare on his back, like an annoying sunburn, even though she was across the room.

“No, I don't want to talk about it,” he said, not turning around as he spoke. “You've heard everything worth hearing.”

“I doubt that. If you don't want to tell me any more, that's up to you. But now that everyone is gone, I wanted to thank you for being so open with them. Today, you gave them more motivation than I ever could.”

He turned around in the chair. “That's not true. They like you a lot, and they're very loyal to you. They trust you completely. Rags-to-riches stories like mine are a dime a dozen. Except I'm not rich. So that probably lessens the effectiveness of anything I can say.”

“Not true. Rich is in the eye of the beholder. In their eyes, you're rich. I'm sure that when you were their age, if you had seen some single guy with an expensive, trendy vehicle like yours, fashionable clothes that ob
viously didn't come from the local discount store or the consignment shop, and a nice house, you would have thought the same thing.”

“You don't know about my house. You've never seen my house.”

“I'll bet it's got about fourteen hundred square feet with two bathrooms, a double garage and a backyard with trees—although not a garden. You work too much to have a cat or a dog, but I'll bet you have some other kind of pet. Probably something exotic, although not a bird. They're too noisy and would probably annoy you. Tropical fish?”

Russ was stunned at her insight. She was right on all counts, except for the fish. “Actually, I have a lizard. A Bearded Dragon. His name is Fred.”

“Ew.”

“He's quiet, he doesn't smell and he's quite pleasant to hold. He's actually very gentle.”

“What do you feed something like that?”

“Actually, he has a varied diet. I buy him special reptile food in a jar, he likes broccoli and some lettuces, but mostly he eats live bugs.”

“Ew.”

“Will you quit saying that? Fred is a great pet. Better than a cat or dog.”

“Ugh! You're so frustrating! I don't want to talk about pets! I was trying to thank you! You were telling the kids about accepting help and charity and now you're refusing to accept it when all I'm trying to do is give you a compliment!”

“Calm down. You're shouting.”

Her footsteps echoed on the tile floor as she walked
determinedly toward him. She stopped and looked down at him as he sat in the chair. “I'm not shouting,” she said through her teeth.

From the exaggerated rise and fall of her chest, Russ had a feeling she was going to chastise him. He didn't like her superior position as she hovered over him, so he turned the tables and stood, looking down at her.

She cleared her throat, her eyes flashing. “Thank you for everything you said earlier. Now just say ‘you're welcome' and accept the compliment. We have to lock up.”

Russ couldn't respond. This wasn't a reaction he'd experienced before when someone found out his background, nor was it a reaction he had expected. She didn't appear shocked, nor did she feel sorry for him. In fact, she was mad at him. He didn't want her sympathy, but he didn't want her anger, either.

Although, her anger was making his heart pound and his pulse race….

She'd just accepted him the way he was, warts and all, and moved on. She wasn't condescending in any way, nor was she judgmental. Now that she knew that he was an older version of the kids in her underprivileged mentor group, nothing had changed. She didn't think less of his ability, or respect him any less.

He'd never met anyone like her in his life.

His own anger dissolved completely. Slowly, he raised one hand and touched her cheek with his fingertips, needing to touch her, almost to convince himself that she was real—that this was really happening and he wasn't dreaming.