Mama B - A Time to Mend (Book 4) (6 page)

He ate like he hadn’t seen a
morsel of food in days. Now, boys his age always eat like hogs, but this wasn’t
normal. Then again, Jeffrey wasn’t the average boy, either.

I sat on a stool across from
him, set both elbows on the island, and propped my chin up in my hands.
“Jeffrey, honey, when was the last time you had food?”

“I do not remember,” he said
between bites. “Do you have more?”

“Well, finish up what you’ve
got there first.” He always talkin’ like a robot, like he can’t shorten his
words with—what you call it?
Aposterfees? Apostutees
? Y’all know
what I’m sayin’. When you been out of school for more than sixty years, you
forget a few things.

Anyhow, Jeffrey continued,
“Miss Callahan has chicken salad for lunch sometimes,” He took a big gulp of
juice.

“Who’s Miss Callahan?”

“She lives there,” he
pointed, letting me know she was probably someone on our street. “Her car is
blue.”

“But I do not like Mr.
Gaines.” Jeffrey pointed the opposite direction. “He has two cars. One is
green. One is red and big. He has a dog. His dog chased me away.”

“That must have been pretty
scary, huh?”

 “Yes. Can I have more
food now?”

“Yes, you may.” As I prepared
two more of everything, Jeffrey went on to give me snippets of information
about all my neighbors. He even knew what kinds of cars they drove, which
explained why Jeffrey was so distraught and disoriented to see my car in
Frank’s driveway the previous week. Funny thing, it would have still been in
the garage if it weren’t for all the household rearranging with trying to merge
my stuff with Frank’s.

I was pretty impressed with
Jeffrey’s ability to remember who had what car, but that boy nearly knocked my
socks off when he doubled back through the list of everybody’s car and started
naming off the license plate numbers.

“Jeffrey, do you know mine?”

“2-2-R-Y-U-4-7. And for
Doctor Frank, it is W-S-E-E-5-9. He only has five parts on his tag.”

Chile, I got chills up my
spine just listening to Jeffrey.
Lord, I see your glory. Jeffrey is a
wonder!
“Jeffrey, you are absolutely brilliant!” I praised. “I’ve never met
anyone with a mind like yours!”

And he rewarded me with a
priceless grin, like nobody ever told him that before. “I-I like school.”

“Well why aren’t you at
school now?”

He busied himself eating
again as the joy slipped from his face.

I waited for him to finish
the second serving then tried again. “Jeffrey, if you like school, why aren’t
you there?”

Jeffrey’s eyes stayed fixed
on the empty plate. “Father said no.”

This didn’t make a lick of
sense, of course. A child like Jeffrey needed to be in school with people who
could help him feel good about himself and what he
could
do. Him walking
up and down the streets memorizin’ licenses plates all day wasn’t nowhere near
productive.
Poor child just been teachin’ hisself what was available to
learn
.

My first mind was to call
child protective services. Not only was it morally wrong to keep Jeffrey out of
school; it had to be illegal, too. And I had no doubt if somebody with some
kind of child-guardin’ authority walked up in in the Allen’s house and saw all
that mess, they’d snatch Jeffrey out of there before he knew what hit him. And
with Jeffrey’s special mind, gettin’ uprooted suddenly might not be the best
thing for him in the long run.

Lord, what do You want me to
do?

Well, since I couldn’t very
well go back to my private prayer moment with Jeffrey there, I decided the best
thing to do would be to ask Julia some questions. I’d have to be careful,
though. Folk get mighty defensive when you start holding their parenting habits
under a microscope. They be mostly embarrassed.

He drank another half a glass
of orange juice and then I told him I’d drive him back home that morning. “I
want to ask your step-mother something.”

Again, he stopped with the
eye contact. Clamped his lips shut.

On the way back to his house,
he asked, “Am I in trouble, Mama B?”

“Goodness, no, Jeffrey. I
just want to talk to her about something.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No way!” I rubbed his
forearm quickly to calm him. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Of course, it took Julia some
time to come to the door. When she finally opened it, she barely made enough
room for Jeffrey to squeeze by. “I’m sorry he keeps bothering you, Beatrice. I
told him to fix himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast.”

“He ain’t no problem,” I
laughed, “and I’m the one need to be apologizin’ ‘cause I told him just the
opposite, told him he could come over for breakfast any time. I suppose I
should have made sure it was all right with you first.”

“Well…” Julia repositioned
the crutches under her armpits. She winced with obvious pain.

“Those crutches do make your
sides tender after a while, huh?”

“These things hurt like
crazy,” she complained.

I took advantage of our
little moment of agreement and eased on into my real purpose for coming.
“Julia, I-I hope I’m not overstepping my boundaries with you, but may I ask why
Jeffrey isn’t going to school?”

She flicked her red hair
behind her shoulders. “Despite what you hoped, you
have
crossed the
line.”

I could see she didn’t respond
well to southern manners. I had to go L-A Law on her. “I mean, I don’t want to
be that nosy neighbor down the street, but every child got a
right
to
learn, by the state of Texas, if they can.” And all the time, I kept the
sweetest smile on my face.

She tightened her lips. “He’s
homeschooled, okay?”

By who, you?
was the words that popped
into my head. Thank God for a holy filter. “I see. Well, he sure is good at
memorizin’, I tell you!”

Julia hopped back a few feet,
grabbed the door handle from her side. “Thank you. Have a good day.”

“Same to—”

Chile, she shut the door
before I could finish my sentence. Now, you know that was just plain-old,
no-home-training, grew-up-eatin’-beans-out-the-can kind of rude! Well, naw,
forget about the beans part.
I
ate beans out the can sometimes, but I
know better than to slam a door in somebody’s face, particularly somebody older
than me.

My heart was poundin’ with
anger when I got back home.
How she treat me like dirt when I’m feedin’ her
child breakfast? People so ungrateful these days! She betta be glad I ain’t
called building inspection, child protective services, and the humane society
on her—yet!

When I walked inside, my
Bible and notes was still waitin’ on me at my end of the table, like God sayin’
to me, “We need to continue our morning talk, B.”

I’ll tell the truth: My flesh
wanted to keep up the anger ‘cause sometimes it feel mighty good to run up and
down all the ways somebody done you wrong. Make you feel almost justified in
puttin’ them person on your bad list. Until Jesus whisper something like “I
want her to know my love” in your heart.

Well, I shouldn’t say “something
like” because this is
exactly
what He spoke into my heart when I sat
back down in my sacred prayer closet spot. Jesus loved Julia, too. And I been
knowin’ Him long enough to realize He wanted me to be His feet and hands to her.

Lord, I hear you.
I heard Him all right, but I
still didn’t like it. So I got down on my knees and prayed until the power of
God changed my heart to match His because for as much as I don’t like what
Julia did to me, it ain’t nothin’ compared to how much I don’t like it when me
and God’s relationship got a strain on it. He’s my best friend and I can’t
stand to be at odds with Him.

His thoughts higher than mine
anyway, by Isaiah 55:8-9. “Yes, Lord. Have Your way.”

Chapter 8

We hit a rainy spell the rest
of the week. I thought that might impede Jeffrey’s breakfast run, but he came
on over, wet clothes and all. I took him home after breakfast on Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday. I got the chance to wave at Julia. She waved back best as
she could, making sure she didn’t fall, I’m sure. By Friday, there was a little
spark of genuine thanks in her eyes. I’m sure the Lord just wanted to give me
some encouragement, now that I was travailing in prayer for her. The Lord
reminded me that people like Julia spend so much energy tryin’ to make theyself
look like they got it all together on the outside, they ain’t hardly got
nothin’ left to fix what’s on the inside.

Well, if He wanted to fix her
heart, I’d be standin’ right there like a surgical nurse handin’ Him whatever
He needed from me to get the job done.

Saturday morning when we got
up, Frank suggested we go out for breakfast. “Well, let me leave something on
the back porch in case Jeffrey comes by.” My breakfast guest was hit-or-miss on
the weekends. I guessed if his Daddy was home, he stayed put.

“B, how long do you plan to
keep feeding Jeffrey?” Frank asked me. He was sitting on the edge of the bed
bent over tying his tennis shoes, so I couldn’t read his face.

I leaned in toward the bathroom
mirror and slid lipstick on my lips. “I don’t know. I guess so long as he’s
hungry. It’s not like he’s a cat, gon’ bring more with him.”

Frank came and stood behind
me, both of us staring at our reflections in the mirror. He was a full head
over me, so we could see each other clearly. He wrapped his arms around my
waist. “B, I know you don’t mean any harm by feeding Jeffrey, but the people at
2300 Silver Oaks Dr. have always been…
not
good news.”

“What you mean, Frank?”

Frank sighed and squeezed
tighter. Kissed me on the cheek. “Look, I don’t want to go through the history.
Suffice it to say, Mr. Allen and I have had our moments.”

“What
kind
of
moments?”

“Bad moments.” Frank
unraveled the hug and walked back to our bedroom.

“Bad like what? Fightin’? Arguin’?
Y’all enemies or just got two different personalities?”

“Leave it alone, B. And keep
some distance,” Frank hollered from the bedroom.

Now, I got to say something
right here. Anybody who ever knowed me when I was married to Albert would know
submittin’ to my husband ain’t never been my strong point. I be tryin’, Lord
knows I do. And it help when you got a good husband. But the promise God made
in the garden of Eden, about puttin’ enmity between the husband and wife, He
wasn’t lyin’! Every husband and wife have they times when one or the other get
out line.

So while I got Julia on the
prayer list, I needed to put myself right beside her ‘cause Lord knows I had no
intentions of following Frank’s suggestion ‘les he explain what he meant about
him and Mr. Allen “had our moments.” Jeffrey’s stomach didn’t care about no
moments
,
and my assignment to help Julia didn’t care about no
moments
.

Lord, I want to follow You
and be a godly wife, too.

Now, probably if I would have
just sat back and waited, He would have showed me exactly how to proceed. But
you know, I had done been widowed and livin’ on my own for the last eight years.
I had done forgot all about waitin’ ‘cause of a third party, my husband, by
then. I just decided to pray over Frank and Mr. Allen’s “moments” and keep on
doin’ what I wanted to do.

Son said Ida Mae wanted to
move in by the first of October, which gave me about three weeks to finish
cleaning out my house. According to our go-between, which was Son because he
refused to involve a management company, Ida Mae had plenty furniture from her
one-bedroom apartment to fill up the family room and the main bedroom, but she
wouldn’t mind me keeping the stuff in the living room and the other bedrooms
which used to belong to my kids. Said she had plenty kitchen stuff of her own.
That was fine, too, considerin’ I took all my good seasoned skillets and
favorite pots and pans over to Frank’s with me. I already had my measurin’
cups, baster, casserole dishes and all the other knick-knacks I wasn’t gonna
part with until Jesus came back for me.

Me and Libby did our Monday
walk and then came back to the house to start packing some of the other stuff I
didn’t want to leave in the house and didn't think Ida Mae would necessarily
want sittin’ around.

I considered calling someone
to move the my grandfather clock, but it always fit so nicely along the wall. I
remembered when my husband brought home a huge box filled with a million
trinkets. He and Son spent countless hours, weeks putting that thing together.
Never could get the chimes to work properly, but it kept time perfectly. They
were both so proud, and the clock was a timeless reminder of the love my
husband and our firstborn shared. I called Son to ask him if he wanted the
clock at his house. He said, “no” and agreed with me that the clock should
stand in that one spot forever.