When You Come to Me (41 page)

It was here! Yes, in this moment! In this moment, she was the stronger of the two of them, the comforter, the supporter.

Her heart warmed to the idea that Brandon was now a part of her world…it only made their connection all the more real.

They looked at each other, she sang to his face, and in the midst, she mouthed,
I love you
, watched him reply, and she sang again, as if her voice was the greatest, knew that God was there that day, saw the eyes of the nosy, of the judgmental, of the naïve, grabbed her fiancé tighter, and thanked God…thanked Him, thanked Him, thanked Him…appreciated Brandon then all the more.

She coaxed him into singing, even poked him a little, but he resisted, smiling a little.

#

If he was uncertain about what he was doing there, if he ever wondered if he’d ever fit into this world, he only looked at Natalie’s wide grin, that small twinkle in her brown eyes, the way she sang, her faith in the glow of her brown skin, how happy she looked, and was quickly reminded that he belonged there, that he needed her, that this venture in the church of her upbringing was only a small stepping stone...

After all, all of the reasoning for his fascination with her were in this area, were with these people, this congregation, a vision of varying browns, voices deep, rooted, songs embedded in the faith, Natalie a product of this vision, Natalie a part of them…

They met up with her family at the steps outside of the church, following the service and he stood off to the side, watched her stand with her sisters, laugh a little, and she held her second cousin, Erica’s baby, smiled at it, played with its curls, and she hugged the people who recognized her, who hadn’t seen her in ages, who told her that she looked so grown up, just like her mama, whose accents sounded strikingly familiar to hers.

He swallowed hard, placed his hands in his pockets and she looked at him, a grinned formed out of the corner of her mouth, and she winked at him. She wore that floppy straw hat, her hair had grown to skirt her upper back, and her sundress modestly grazed her knees.

She was an angel, wasn’t she? He found it hard then to imagine a time that he didn’t want to be with her, that he couldn’t see forever with her.

“And who did you come with?” Brandon looked down, saw a woman with dark skin and an obnoxiously blue hat, stood beside him, eyeing him under the large brim.

“Natalie,” he murmured.

The woman leaned in closer, an agitated expression crossing her face. “With who, boy?”

“Natalie,” he repeated.

“Natalie…Natalie…
oh
! One of the Chandler girls, of course. You can tell their mother, Helen that if she skips out on tithes again, she’ll be off the hospitality committee, for good…you hear me, boy?”

“Bernice, who is this?”

A second woman, shorter than the first, approached the woman’s side, studying Brandon as if he were some strange experiment gone wrong.

“I don’t know, Fannie,” Bernice said. “He said he was with one of the Chandler girls…”

“Pretty girls,” Fannie said. “One of them has that loud mouth and that big behind…is that the one you’re with?”

Brandon shook his head. “No…with Natalie…I’m with Natalie…”

“Natalie?” Fannie asked.

Brandon nodded. He watched Fannie’s eyes go in the direction of Natalie and her sisters.

“Oh, Nattie, Bern! Nattie, the smart one!”

“Oh,” Bern said. “The one that wants to be a doctor?”

“That’s the one,” Fannie said. “The skinny one…”

“Pretty girl,” Bern said with a smile. “What you doing with her?”

“We’re getting…um…”

“Speak up, boy…can’t nobody understand all that mumblin’…”

“Married,” Brandon said. “We’re getting married…”

“Married?” Bernice asked, as if she didn’t hear what he’d said. “Now, Helen didn’t say anything about one of her daughters gettin’ married…did she, Fannie?”

“Not that I know of,” Fannie said. “Where do you come from, boy?”

“New York…” Brandon swallowed hard.

“Figured,” Fannie said. “You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

“Nattie must know you from the school? The school in Athens?” Bernice asked.

“Yes, that’s right…”

“You got a job?” Fannie asked. “You look like you have a nice job. Mm-hmm, big money…”

“Yes, I have a job…”

“Bernice and Fannie, if you don’t leave this boy alone…”

A round woman with salt and pepper hair approached, and with round cheeks and small eyes, smiled in Brandon’s direction, placing a hand on his back.

“Can’t you see the boy’s nervous? And here you go interrogatin’ him to death, with all of your meddlin’ questions…let him be!”

The two old women walked away, and Brandon managed a smile in the woman’s direction.

“Thank you,” he said, allowing him to sigh relief.

The woman chuckled heartedly. “Oh, hosh-posh, it’s nothing…”

Brandon looked around, realizing that Natalie had moved to a different location and found her a few seconds later, talking to a younger man under a tree. A small child then ran up to her, attached to her leg, and she began to stroke the child’s head. Brandon smiled.

“She loves you very much, you know…”
Brandon nodded, exhaled deeply, watched the breeze carry Natalie’s hair.

“Not sure that I’ve seen my granddaughter so happy…”

Brandon then turned to the old woman. “You’re her grandmother?”

The older woman chuckled heartedly again. “And you’re Brandon,” she said, smiling. “The young man who’s taken her heart away from me.”

“Am I that easy to point out?”

“The only Caucasian male in an all-black congregation…I’d say the odds were good…”

They both laughed.

“I’ve watched over that girl since her first steps, to the time her father left, to the times she fought with her sisters, through middle school, through high school…and never…never have I seen that girl so fixed…”

“Surely I’m not the cause of that…”

“You had the girl cryin’ the other day…”

Brandon couldn’t remember the last time he blushed.

This instant liking of the woman reminded him of the first encounters with Natalie, how easily he acclimated to her personality, he quickly he got the urge to be around her more, how he reveled in her warmth…

“You have my blessing if you want it…”

Brandon smiled. “Thank you.”

The old woman extended her hand. “Marie Chandler…your new grandmother…”

Natalie approached his side, kissed the side of his cheek, and attached to his arm. She smelled amazing.

“I just met my new grandmother,” he told her.

“Oh?” she asked with a smile.

He nodded. “We have her blessing…”

“So I’ve heard…”

#

Marie Chandler made him help her in the kitchen while Natalie went to her room and changed. Her mother was outside in the yard, arguing with one of Natalie’s uncles about the grill, stationed beneath a lazy poplar, fumbling with white wicker lawn chairs.

The grandmother placed a bowl of chicken pieces before him, instructing him to use the mixture of cayenne pepper and buttermilk set in a measuring container to the left of him.

“Buttermilk,” she said. “Buttermilk is the secret ingredient to the best fried chicken this side of Georgia…just ask my Natalie…she’ll tell you…”

She instructed Brandon to pour the mixture over the chicken and massage it together, making sure that it melded well.

“Buttermilk?” Brandon questioned.

Marie Chandler nodded. “Yes sir, makes the chicken soft, tender, adds a kick…you like ‘kick’ in your food, don’t you, boy?”

“I hope so…”

“You’d better get accustomed to this kind of cooking now, child,” the grandmother smiled. “Because this is all my Nat knows…she’s been helping her granny cook like this her entire life…”

“I have no complaints thus far,” Brandon said.

“Good, good,” she said. “Nattie’s been cookin’ this way since her daddy left so many years ago…”

Brandon saw the opportunity to ask and took it gleefully…

“Who…um…what can you tell me about her father?”

Marie Chandler looked in the young man’s direction. “What? She hasn’t told you anything?”

Brandon shook his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about him much…”

The grandmother sighed. “Let’s see…it’s been so long since I thought about him…um…name was Raphael, Dominican…I…I told Helen that he was bad news…came up here looking for a job…I knew my girl would fall for him…pretty little boy…I remember that he spoke Spanish real well…had a drinkin’ problem, though…I believe that he liked to snatch around Helen and the girls a couple of times…finally, one night, Helen had had enough and kicked him out…haven’t heard from him since…Natalie was…seven? Yes, Natalie was seven…”

Brandon could feel his insides warm a little. “Did he ever touch Natalie?”

“Can’t say,” Granny sighed. “Nattie, the dear little thing, would never tell…that girl can keep a murder quiet…can tell you one thing…she loved her daddy…took his leavin’ harder than Maya or Sidney combined…”

“But he never touched her…”

Granny only chuckled. “Boy, what did I just say? I don’t know. Goodness gracious, you do care about her…”

He climbed the small flight of stairs, finding her bedroom as the first on the right as her grandmother had instructed. It was there that he found her, standing in front of her small vanity mirror, combing her hair and messing with her low-slung jeans and tight, white t-shirt.

Knocking on the door lightly, he entered the room, caught eyes with her, entering a room that smelled just like her. There was very little covering the white walls, with the exception of a few small posters, including one with Psalm 27 and a seascape in the background, and a sprinkling of pictures, with some of her mother, grandmother, and her sisters as younger children.

“You can sit somewhere, baby,” she told him, pointing in the direction of the bed.

Brandon Greene watched his fiancée in silence.

“I’m sure my grandmother ran her mouth off about me, hasn’t she?” Natalie asked him, looking at him through the mirror.

Brandon nodded. “She speaks nothing but positive things about you…”

“I’d hope so,” Natalie sighed, placing her comb down. “I think I was her favorite…”

“You were everyone’s favorite,” Brandon said, rolling his eyes.

Natalie shrugged. “What can I say?”

She moved to the bed and took a place beside him, locking her arm with his.

“What do you think?” she asked lowly.

“Of…?”

“Of the house? Of everything! You’ve been so quiet. I hope you’re okay. I’ve been meaning to ask you all day.”

“I’m fine,” he told her, looking down at her.

“Are you sure? You’ll say that and then…”

He leaned in slowly, kissing her forehead. “I’m fine, Tal…”

“Good.”

They kissed. “I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “My uncle’s on his way over to fire up the grill and put a couple of filets on…”

“And how many uncles do you have?”

“Three…Joseph, Martin, and Ronald…my mother’s brothers…you’ll love them…my uncle Marty is the only one that can cook though…and he’s the funniest…now, my uncle Joe always has one Bud Light too many, and will try and dance with us the entire night…been that way since we were kids…and uncle Ronnie is the best spades player…we’re always on the same team…I’m his favorite niece too…”

“Any aunts?”

“Two…Miriam and June…my mama’s sisters, of course…but we just call them Aunt Miri and Aunt Juney…and neither one of them can cook…and they’ve always been jealous of my mama, Helen, because she is the best cook and the prettiest sister, and was the first one to get married, and arguably, my granny’s favorite daughter…”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because she had me!”

“Wow…could your head get any bigger?”

Natalie smiled, kissed the side of his face, and began to pull him by the wrists. “Come on, boy…let’s go downstairs…it’s time to make you a Chandler…”

She’d left him alone for the third time that evening, on the screened porch, having fulfilled his duty to help Uncle Marty light the tiki torches that lined a small brick-laden pathway, leading toward the back porch. He watched Natalie come in and out of the house, carrying various dishes of things he couldn’t recognize, placing them down on the small, rectangular table with a blue nylon cloth atop it, swaying with the evening breeze. She gave him quick glances as she passed him, he, who sat quietly in a plastic outdoors chair, smelling fried food, becoming increasingly afraid that he wouldn’t enjoy as much as his fiancé wanted him to. He remained patient, something, of course, that was very foreign to him, but hoped Natalie saw that he was trying. Maya, small-figured, squeaky-voiced and round-faced, sat down on the opposing chair near him, sighing.

He remembered the first time that he met Natalie’s little sister. She’d come up from Savannah to visit her sister one weekend in the spring. She was a teenager fresh out of high school. She had shoulder-length brown hair, round eyes and big cheeks, and her smile was enough to light an entire city. She had three piercings in each of her light brown ears, had a tattoo of her name in Arabic on her left toe and three crosses around her neck. She’d looked preppy-dressed Brandon over once, smiled and said, “So, you’re Brandon…”

She was most certainly the more noticeable Chandler sister, but she wasn’t one to vie for attention. She was demure in a way that softened her beautiful features, that made her approachable and kind.

She, the more affectionate of the Chandler sisters, he’d discovered shortly, touched his leg lightly. “Do you need something to do?”

Desperately, he thought. He needed Natalie to sit beside him more than anything, give his back a little stroke, make him believe that those strange, crossed glances that Helen Chandler gave him from the grill outside of the porch, were all in his head.

“I think that it would be smart for me to stay put,” he told the youngest sister, with the youthful face.

Maya tapped his leg. “Nonsense,” she told him. “You should get up and do something. I think Mama needs some help moving the grill, and all of our uncles are too drunk to help…”

They both looked in the direction of where the mother stood, she, who fumbled with the cover, having to toss her tongs aside.