“Now I must be dreaming.”
“You know I’m right. I’ve never even met your children. But how long have you sung with our people?”
“Since two days after Terry and I arrived in Baltimore.”
“There you go. So you get the choir together and you train them with the children. If anybody asks, you tell them I said this was how it has to be.”
“What about the Kennedy Center gala?”
“What about it?”
“You mean … you want me …”
“Girl, how can I lead fifty kids I don’t know and who don’t know me?”
“But you’ll be back in two days. There’s still time for you to rehearse them yourself.”
“Maybe I’ll be back,” Alisha corrected.
“Sister, what is going on up there?”
“I told you. A miracle.”
“Wait, now. I’ve got to sit down. All right. You mean it, what you’re saying?”
“You think I’d talk like this if I didn’t?”
“Terry’s been going on for two weeks now, saying God was going to make all this right. And I’ve done nothing but show him the sharp end of my tongue. Now I’ve got to go in there and tell him he was right all along.”
Alisha saw her smile flash in the window’s reflection. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Girl, it’s just awful.”
“I have to go.”
“Alisha, wait. You’ll still be singing with us, won’t you?”
“That’s in God’s hands.”
Alisha returned to the table and waited for the others to start in on all that fine food left by the Syrian and those Arab pastors. But nobody made any move. She started to say something, when the famous lady seated next to her said, “Let’s bless this food and this moment.”
Amen, Alisha wanted to say. But something kept her silent. Which was as strange as how she didn’t feel all that hungry. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, nothing but a coffee, not even a roll. First time since the church had fasted before the last revival she’d skipped her morning meal. She was hungry, and she wasn’t. She wanted to talk, and she wanted to stay silent. She was conflicted, plain and simple. And she was burdened.
She took a plate from Ruth Barrett’s own hand, and let the lady spoon her out some of this and that. She’d eaten most of those things before. Mediterranean food, like what they ate in the Holy Land. She’d always wanted to go there, and had tried the food a number of times. The flavors were different and beautiful. Only today, as she put the first bite in her mouth, she didn’t taste a thing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such fine food set in front of her, and she couldn’t eat. Alisha set her plate down on the trolley behind her chair.
Ruth asked, “You’re not hungry, dear?”
“No, and I don’t understand it either.”
She handed Alisha her own plate. “Put mine over there with yours, please.”
“Maybe it’s everything we’ve been through here.”
“Perhaps. But I feel …”
Alisha nodded. She felt it too. Something she could not put her finger on. But it was there just the same. “Burdened.”
“I should be celebrating,” Ruth said. “I’ve just witnessed a miracle.”
Alisha looked at her. The woman was beautiful in a way that wasn’t touched by years. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here, talking with you like I was somebody.”
“Dear, I’m just another sinner, who’s learned where other sinners can find bread.”
Alisha was going to respond but was interrupted by another astonishment. Yussuf, the Syrian doctor, had remained standing after the waiter and his pastor friends left. He waved and beckoned, then embraced a slender, smiling man. And the day became just a bit more astonishing, for the slender young man was wearing a yarmulke.
Yussuf turned to the tables and announced, “This is my friend and prayer partner, Dr. Aaron Silva.”
The bearded young man had a lively, cheerful voice. “What have I missed, and why did I miss it?”
Whatever had impacted the others and left them without appetite, it certainly did not affect the newcomer. He settled into the chair next to Alisha and reached for a plate. “This looks splendid. Who should I thank for the feast?”
“Mahmut,” Yussuf replied, seating himself on the table’s other side.
“Who is Mahmut?”
“The man I came to see.”
“Mahmut? He did this?”
“It is a tradition among the Alawites,” Yussuf explained. “An act of contrition.”
“So. There is indeed a goodness to be found everywhere.” Aaron picked up a stuffed grape leaf. “This is delicious.”
Yussuf said to the group, “Aaron is an intern at the same hospital as me.”
Ruth asked in a voice that was remarkably gentle, “You are a follower of Jesus?”
“I am indeed.” Aaron cocked his head. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“This is Ruth Barrett,” Yussuf said.
“Astonishing. And you just met here?” Aaron wiped his fingers on a napkin, then stretched his hand out in front of Alisha. “An honor, Mrs. Barrett.”
“Call me Ruth, please.”
Alisha resisted the urge to back further away from the exchange. She glanced from the diminutive older woman on her left to the bony young man on her other side, and thought,
They got to stick me between the skinniest two
.
Aaron glanced around the table. “Why is no one else eating?”
Heather said, “I was just thinking the very same thing.”
But no one else made a move toward the food. Alisha studied the faces around the table, and thought of an expression from her childhood.
Rainbow nation
. Back then, it was meant to represent a change from the white-dominated halls of power. Making room for African-Americans and other races in every profession. But this was something else entirely. Alisha nodded slowly.
The rainbow nation of God’s children
.
Ruth asked, “What is it?”
She started to reply, but was halted by a sudden sensation, similar to the experience she had known in the Sabbath worship. A compression of the very air surrounding her. And yet different, because right here and now, she felt none of the joy. Instead, the burden of sorrow only grew heavier.
“Alisha?”
Alisha studied the faces around their tables. Folks who had been total strangers before this day were bound to her now. John and Ruth and Jenny and Yussuf. They all showed the very same strain as she felt. She said, “We’re sad for a reason.”
“I woke up feeling wretched, and it’s just grown worse ever since,” John Jacobs agreed. He was a man who clearly preferred to hang back. Alisha had known men like that all her life. The ones who often married the noisiest women. She had hoped she might one day find a man like that for herself.
His wife asked, “Are you ill?”
“No, it’s not like that. What Alisha said makes all the sense in the world.”
Jenny said, “I’ve been crying all morning. I never cry.”
Ruth said, “My heart feels like it weighs a ton.”
Alisha nodded agreement. “One ounce heavier and mine would fall out of my chest and go right through the floor.”
Yussuf said, “I thought it was just me. And everything that just happened.”
“It’s not just you,” Alisha said. “And it’s not because of Mahmut.”
They were all watching her now. John Jacobs asked, “What’s going on?”
Usually the only place where Alisha liked being the center of attention was at church. Never in front of strangers. But none of that mattered here. She said, “We’re feeling God’s heart.”
Jenny Linn sighed, like she had been released from some chain. “You’re right.”
“That’s exactly it.” John looked at her like he was sharing his darkest secret. “It’s been staring me in the face, and I didn’t see it.”
“All morning I have been looking for reasons to be sad,” Ruth said. “What a selfish and self-centered person I’ve turned out to be.”
“We’ve all been blind,” Jenny said.
“God is sharing his heart with us,” Alisha said. The words came out unbidden. But she knew she was right, and she knew she had to speak out. “He’s doing it for a reason.”
Ruth reached over and took her hand. “What is his purpose?”
Alisha looked down at the slender white fingers intertwined with her own. If Celeste could see her now. Sitting here in a New York hotel lobby, holding hands with Ruth Barrett. “I expect we’ll find out soon enough.”
John could see the others were now more comfortable with the wait. They did not understand the purpose, but he felt they all shared a sense that the divine hand had brought them together for … something. John studied Alisha, the woman seated across the table from him. The change in his vision was staggering. Before, she had been a big woman, very big, and very reserved. He could tell she was not comfortable here, the only African American in the group. But that was before. Now, she was …
He breathed the words. Not speaking them. But wanted to shape them just the same. She was their sister.
Suddenly John felt hungry. He picked up a plate and began spooning food onto it. The others started doing the same, even Jenny Linn, who looked like she didn’t eat anything at all. Ruth asked Alisha for her plate back, then leaned forward and said to the guy in the skullcap, “How did you and Yussuf become friends?”
It was Yussuf who answered. “I had just arrived in America. I was introduced to a church by two nurses at the teaching hospital. They told me of another doctor who was also attending. As soon as I heard of this one, I felt God’s hand on me, and said I would like to meet him.”
Alisha watched as Aaron loaded his plate up for the third time. Or perhaps it was the fourth. She said, “You always eat this much?”
“Aaron is a medical marvel,” Yussuf replied. “The man can eat a whole cow at one sitting, and not gain an ounce.”
“I’ve done my best not to ever hate another human being,” Alisha murmured, eyebrow cocked.
“When my friend breathes his last,” Yussuf went on, “we are going to open him up and discover a small nuclear reactor.”
Ruth asked, “How did you come to know Jesus?”
“I was not looking for him, I can tell you that.” Aaron set down his fork with genuine reluctance. He made a fastidious process of wiping his fingers and then his mouth and beard. As though the tale required a singular purpose. “I had a patient. Severe melanoma, spread all through her body. She accepted the news with a peace that shattered me. I had entered medicine because I was a fighter. This woman shamed me with her bravery. So I decided to read the Christian Bible. See what it was about this myth that could blind a woman to the enemy we call death.”
Yussuf was smiling. “Tell her how far you got.”
“Three chapters into Mark.” Aaron smiled back. It was clearly an old joke between them.
“His first gospel,” Yussuf said.
“Six pages,” Aaron agreed. “The very first night.”
“Clearly Jesus felt my friend needed help understanding what he was reading.”
“He was there in the room,” Aaron said. “Me. The scientific mind. Born with a microscope in my hand.”
“Talking with an invisible friend,” Yussuf said.
“Out loud, no less,” Aaron said. “On my knees.”
“Tell them what happened when you read the book of Acts,” Yussuf said.
“When I read what happened to Paul on the Damascus Road, I told Jesus, ‘Thank you for not turning me blind.’ I was working thirty-six-hour shifts at the hospital just then. Blindness would have been difficult to explain.”
Ruth was the only one who did not smile. “How did your family take the news?”
Aaron used bony fingers to comb his scraggly beard. “Not at all well.”
“They shunned him,” Yussuf said, his gaze impossibly deep. “They said the prayer, what is it called?”
“Kaddish,” Aaron said, still stroking his beard.
“The prayer for the dead,” Yussuf said. “For a son. Because he knows Jesus, they do this thing.”
Ruth reached across Alisha to grasp Aaron’s shoulder. “I will pray for them to have a change of heart.”
John found his chest pinch at the sight of Alisha also reaching over and setting her own hand on the man’s shoulder. “Let’s all do that right now,” Alisha agreed.
They joined hands, balancing plates on their knees, touching people who a few hours earlier had been total strangers, bound together now by a need to share another’s burden. When they were finished, it seemed to John that everyone was reluctant to let go.
Then Jenny, looking perplexed, rose from her chair and said, “Something is happening.”
One by one they were all drawn over to the windows. The glass ran almost floor-to-ceiling, great slabs so thick the traffic noise was reduced to a soft murmur. But something out there was making such a din John could hear it clearly, shouts and whistles and what sounded like a foghorn. He touched the window and felt it vibrate against his fingers. Times Square was one huge, heaving mob.
Ruth said, “What are they wearing?”
“Costumes,” Jenny said, her face pressed against the glass. “Vampires and the like are very popular these days.”
“Looks like a club or something,” John said. Indeed, it seemed as though virtually all the people he could see wore the outrageous get-ups. And they waved hundreds of signs. Thousands. But they were so jammed together and they moved their banners with such frantic motions, he could not read the words. Then suddenly—
Alisha had moved up beside him. She said, “This is it.”
John nodded. He felt the same way.
“I do not understand,” Yussuf said.
“Hope is dead,” Jenny said.
Ruth asked, “What did you say?”
“It’s what the signs all say. I know this, it’s a mass of people connected by cellphone and iPads. They secretly plan these huge gatherings, and when they all show up at the arranged time, somebody has a dump truck full of banners.”
The mob possessed a manic quality as they danced and writhed and screamed. The scene reminded John of his one time in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. He had been there for a convention, and friends had insisted they go check out the action. John had felt exactly as he did now. Utterly excluded, like a face of humanity had been revealed in which he wanted no part. Back then, he had run down an empty street, flagged a taxi, and gone back to his hotel. Today, however, he finally understood why God felt so sad.
“‘Hope is dead’?” Ruth asked. “Why are they doing this?”