Authors: Shelby Rebecca
“Dillon, I...”
“Sadie!” yells Aunt Lotty from the entrance to the parlor. “They’re starting.” I look at Dillon. He’s holding his stomach. His brows are furrowed. His glaring eyes make me squirm. I bite my thumbnail and kick at a pebble in the grass.
“Let’s talk about this later,” he says, running his hand through his hair and wiping an angry tear from his cheek.
It hurts to see him this way, so I look away. He comes closer but gives me space. Keeps my personal bubble in place. “This isn’t your fault. It’s his,” he says, pointing at the chapel gritting his teeth, his eyes squinting in fury. “I’ve got to get through this today knowing that it’s my own brother who raped you, who stole all these years from us, who broke in and fought me in the middle of the night. But I don’t want to have to worry that you’re leaving me on top of everything else. Just tell me you’ll stay.” His hands are fists. The pain is written in the creases of his perspiring forehead.
“Dillon,” I say. If he wants me to stay, maybe it’s me who can’t face him now. “But you know you’ll never be able to look at me the same way you used to.”
He bites his lip and grabs my hand. “I think that’s something you need to work on. Not me!” he says, and squeezes my hand so tight it hurts. “Let’s go.”
He starts walking so fast I almost can’t keep up. My heels are sticking in the dirt and he’s pulling my arm. When we get to the door, he pulls me past the bushes, around the corner, and pushes my back into the wall of flowers and marble placards with names engraved in them.
He’s breathing heavy, and though we are saying nothing, our bodies are speaking on that frequency that calls unlike atoms one by one together into marriage. He puts his arms on either side of me and pins me with his hips.
With his right hand on my hip, he moves the other up to tilt my chin to meet him. “Close your eyes,” he says, evenly but resolute. I do as he asks, and when his lips meet mine, I find them to be so, so soft, and as warm as a blanket in the hot sun.
He tilts his head to the side and takes my top lip between his forcing my mouth open. When our tongues touch, it’s like live wires everywhere. I put my hands in his hair and kiss him back—kiss him like we are alone in this world and together we create all the meaning that exists in it. My stomach clenches when I push back into the arousal growing between his hips. He forces himself away. Both arms on either side of me are pressed into the marble wall.
“Does that feel the same?” he asks, ardently, frantic. “Look at me. Look at the way I look at you,” he begs, and takes my hands in his. His eyes, full of familiar devotion, are darting back and forth between mine. Calling for me to believe him. I nod my head, and try to take a breath.
“I’ve loved you all your life, that won’t stop for nothin’,” he says, wiping my tears with the tips of his fingers and then taking my hand and placing it over his heart, letting me feel how frantic it beats—for me.
“You’ve said that to me before,” I say, winded, remembering his words to me as I lay slung over his arms, just fresh out of the river.
“I meant it then, and I mean it now,” he says, through hitched breaths. “Tell me you don’t love me anymore and I’ll let you go. But if you can’t, I’ll fight for you, Sadie. I’ll follow you back to California if I have to.”
It’s agonizing as my numb wall melts in a pool around my feet. The knot in my throat is back, I’m shaking like when I’m cold on the inside, but now I know we can face this together.
He knows, and he loves me anyway.
“I do love you, Dillon.”
“And I love you, Sadie,” he says, and kisses me again, soft and slow. Deliberate and controlled.
I hear heels clicking along the sidewalk and he pulls away from me. His eyes have softened around the edges, his lips are wet, and he smiles that I’m-yours smile. He does look at me the same way he used to. I feel like I’m blushing from deep within my core.
“What in heaven’s name are you two doin’?” Missy admonishes, her hands on her hips.
“Dillon’s helping me face the day,” I say, as we walk toward her, our hands entwined like knotted wood. She crosses her arms, and taps the tip of her black pump on the sidewalk, looking at me with her mouth in a twisted grimace.
“Come ‘ere,” she says, pulling me into a big hug, Missy style. “It’s time. Pastor Cole is waitin’ on us,” she says, and all three of us walk back silently to the entrance of the chapel.
Inside, the room is full of familiar faces. I’m so bad with names, but I remember almost everyone. A lot of them are from church. There’s extended family, too. Some people have traveled a long way to get here, even from other states.
My fear causes a symptom; I’m locked into Donnie like there’s an imaginary cord plugging me into his emotions, into his every move to make sure he’s not going to snap. The link between us is still thick as steel. As I walk past him and Renae, Dot and the boys, I check his expression as he glances up at us.
His black eyes lock with mine as he lays his arm across the back of the chair and crosses his ankle over his knee authoritatively. The black slide on his head is combed perfectly. His nose is still bruised, but un-bandaged. He’s suited up. His chest is tight, his jaw squared and tensed.
In the two flowered chairs in the front row are my brothers looking handsome in black shirts and pants. I lean down and hug them both before Dillon and I sit down at the end of the flowered couch in the front row next to Aunt Lotty. Missy sits down on the other side of Dillon next to Dale and the kids. Elise and little Joe jump onto their parent’s laps.
Pastor Cole begins to talk, “Let’s open in prayer,” he says, bowing his head and all of us follow suit. “Lord, we’re here today to honor the life of Leda Jean O’Dell Sparks. Leda Jean was wife to Eugene Sparks for 32 years, Lord. She was mother to Missy Harper, Sadie Sparks, Seth Sparks, and Jake Sparks. She was also grandma to Elise and Joseph Harper. Lord, bless this service, ease the achin’ hearts of this family here Lord Jesus, in Your name. Amen.”
The crowd responds with, “Amen.”
I hear sniffles behind me. But right now I have no tears. I’m too full of fright and nerves to feel sorrow for Momma’s service.
“From the Psalm, 121,” Pastor Cole says,
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber...”
I feel dizzy. The air feels too thick. Dillon puts his arm over my shoulder.
“Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand...”
Just over Dillon’s protective arm, I can see Donnie in a fuzzy unfocused haze. I look to his left and Renae is hunched over. The weight of his arm is too heavy for her wounded frame. On her collarbone, I see a new purple and red bruise. That’s what that has to be. He’s hurt her. Gone back on his word.
“The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.”
Renae locks eyes with me. I look at the bruise and she pulls her too large dress back up to cover it. When she looks back to me, I know it.
Donnie hurt her because of me.
I mouth the words, “Does he know?” and my eyes dart around. No one’s looking at us. She puts her small hand up to her forehead, and nods almost imperceptibly.
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”
No,
I think.
What does he know?
Does he know he’s a suspect? How did he find out? Did he threaten her? Did she break under the pressure?
“...and we have a song in honor of Leda by Dr. Dillon McGraw,”
“Dillon,” I whisper.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ll be right up here,” he says, standing up and walking over to the blue chair next to Momma’s casket. I grab Aunt Lotty’s hand as he picks up his dulcimer and puts a neck harness on so he can play his harmonica, too.
I need to talk to Officer Howard. I look around to see if he’s here. I don’t even know his number. I’m stuck in a room with a psychopath, and he knows I’ve told on him.
What’s he going to do?
I think as my eyes dart back and forth between both brothers. One who would do anything to protect me, and the other who gains the utmost pleasure from my pain. Everyone I love is in this room.
What am I going to do?
Chapter Twenty-Nine—Full Of Lessons
I can feel the unyielding piece of metal that lies in wait under this soft vintage Coach fabric. I push the bag up to my thigh and try to will my knowledge into everyone else in this room. I want them to run or attack. If we all pounce at once, he would be overpowered and I would be free.
“This is an old gospel hymn written by Reverend Charles Albert Tindley,” Dillon says, his voice reliable and steady as he strums the dulcimer on his lap. “It’s called,
‘What Are They Doing in Heaven Today’.”
With long deft fingers, he starts strumming an unhurried melody on steel strings that feels like warm wind crossing over bare skin. Soon, he hums into the harmonica from the neck strap. He halts, but keeps strumming, looks right at my momma’s body, at me, and back to her. His eyes shut, I’m sure to close out his brother’s presence for a moment.
“I’m thinking of friends whom I used to know...”
he begins to sing, but I can’t keep up with the words although he’s singing them painstakingly clear and full of sentiment. Immediately, the crowd begins to sniffle and cry. Aunt Lotty squeezes my hand.
“Sin and sorrow have all gone away. Peace is found like a river they say. But what are they doin’ there now?”
he sings, in his perfect pitch, his deep and light baritone. His words hit me like a moment of deja vu. It’s like a life lesson that I keep failing to apply.
This is a day to celebrate my Momma’s life. To be here, to be present for my brothers, my sister, my renewed family. She’s at peace now just like I felt for those brief moments by the river while Dillon stood by the stump and watched the falls.
Donnie is ruining it, and I’m letting him.
I force myself to unplug emotionally from Donnie. If he’s going to go berserk, I’ll pull out my gun. But I refuse to sit here like a victim over and over, allowing him to ruin my momma’s funeral just like he’s tainted so many other things in my life. His diseased molecules imbedded so deep within me stained so many chances for happiness, for being fully present in my own life.
The string I feel now comes from my heart and not my fear. It is attached to Dillon, plugged into the man who knows everything there is to know, and yet he stands by me. He’s singing this song—for me, so that I’ll feel peace like a river. I finally need a tissue. Aunt Lotty hands it to me.
Dillon’s song breaks and he begins to hum into his harmonica again, methodically, so that it reaches deep within me and pulls on my memories of Momma.
As I look at her I remember her little baby kisses. Her hugs, the way she was just the right amount of soft. Her hair when it was the color of a crow’s feather. Her scent—the one before the medicine—was like almonds and applesauce.
She was always my rock. Which brings to mind the scripture she loved, Luke 6:48. She taught me to recite it. It’s a metaphor for what I’m trying to do now—build my life on solid ground. It went,
‘He is like a man which built a house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.’
And so, I am built on a rock. I’m on that rock while my two brothers, Dillon, and Dale carry my momma’s casket out onto the lawn and under the tent. I am on that rock as tissues are soaked, and Renae cowers under Donnie’s grasp.
I am solid, but present, tearful for all the right reasons as I tighten my grasp on Dillon’s hand and lean onto his steady arm while Pastor Cole delivers a message from first Corinthians, “
Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I am built on solid rock as she is lowered into the ground, as the dirt is thrown on her casket, and Missy can’t stand on her wobbly legs and has to be held up by Dale. I am built on that rock right up until the people start hugging me and I look up and Donnie is leaning down, grabbing my hand tightly and in a portentous whisper says, “You look beautiful today.”
Inadvertently, I try to step back to escape, but I trip as my heel digs into the earth and I fall forward. He catches me by my arms—I feel trapped, restrained. I push away against his dense chest. It all happens so fast. Dillon is there in a blink of an eye, and the two of them are standing chest to chest with me behind Dillon’s back, his arm touching me protectively.
The energy between them could light a small town. They say nothing. It’s all in the body language. Dillon looks taller, more angular, authoritative, protective. Donnie looks like he’s on that ice again, the one that’s not thick enough to hold him up any longer. But then his eyes change as I watch them over Dillon’s shoulder. It’s as if that ice cracks and he knows he’s been caught. His brother is not going to let him near me, and he’s livid.
Maybe he doesn’t
know a
nything yet. Maybe he just suspects like Dillon did. Thinking something and
knowing
it are two different things. I look at Renae, but her head is bowed like a prayer. Dot is watching, but doesn’t step in.
Donnie takes a step back, runs his hand through the black slide on his head, sucks his teeth in that way he does when he’s making a point, and turns around walking away into the death stones like a bad dream. He turns and whistles for his wife like a dog. She follows behind him with Dot and the boys.
I take a breath. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my chest so tight.