Fifteen Years (7 page)

“So what were you telling the guy to do about his missing leg? Pour some water on his stump and hope it grows?”

“
The preacher
was telling him—”

“Okay, the preacher … you … tomato … tom-ah-to.” Josiah pounded his fists on his thighs to the rhythm of the last two words. Nothing annoyed him more than people who’d had perfect little lives who tried to tell people with troubled lives how to get over it.

Josiah attempted to keep the annoyance out of his tone, but he knew it could be heard, and for the moment, he didn’t care. It had been kind of cute the first time Bishop Lumpkin referred to himself in third person in this little scenario that he’d cooked up, but now it was getting old.

“
The preacher
,” Bishop Lumpkin began again in a much firmer tone than before, “was telling him that he had the option to take control of much of the situation.”

The air thickened, and Josiah shrank in his chair, feeling like a kid about to be punished. He had crossed the line when he so rudely disrupted his pastor’s previous reply, and he knew it. Josiah clasped his hands together, and then slid them between the same thighs he’d pounded earlier. His eyes were downcast when he muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“Contrary to what you have assumed, Brother Tucker, I am not the preacher in this story.”

The bishop’s tone had softened a little, and Josiah felt that it was safe to look up at him again.
What did he mean he wasn’t the preacher in the story?
Josiah never verbalized the question, but Bishop Lumpkin answered as though he did.

“I am not the preacher who gave the advice.” Bishop paused like he was giving the words time to sink into Josiah’s head; then he reached down and carefully rolled up the left leg of his dress pants. “I was the young man who he gave the advice to.”

Wonderment left Josiah speechless as he watched his pastor roll down a brown sock to unveil a prosthesis that served as his leg. Josiah didn’t know what to say, and even if he did, there was no voice to amplify the words.

“I couldn’t
water my stump
and grow a natural leg,” Bishop Lumpkin said, allowing his prosthesis to remain exposed as he talked, “but I had the power to change the incompleteness that had tortured me for more than twenty-five years because I didn’t have that leg.”

Josiah felt like a fool. He wanted to apologize again for his outburst, but saying I’m sorry just didn’t seem adequate. So instead, he remained silent while the preacher continued to talk.

“I could change it so that what I didn’t have wasn’t the first thing people noticed when they saw me, so that I didn’t wear my pain as a visible chip on my shoulder. So that people didn’t get introduced to my hurt and my bitterness before they got introduced to Nathaniel Lumpkin.”

Josiah finally tore his eyes away from the visual example that his pastor had given and stood from his chair. He wanted to go to a window and look out of it, but the bishop’s office had none. Plan B had Josiah walking to one of the bookshelves and scanning the spines of the reading material while he spoke.

“What did Craig tell you about me?” Josiah asked.

“Nothing.”

The bishop’s reply made Josiah turn to face him. Nobody else knew his life story. Josiah had made Craig vow never to share the details of his past with anyone, so who else could have told the
pastor? “Danielle?” Josiah asked, all the while, preparing to corner Craig if he found out that he’d shared the story with his fiancée.

Bishop Lumpkin slid from the desktop and walked back around to his chair. “No one has told me anything about your story, Brother Tucker. Why don’t you share it with me?”

Josiah eyed his pastor in disbelief. “If you don’t already know about me then why did you tell me your story?”

“Because the Lord led me to,” the bishop replied.

Josiah looked at him a moment longer before turning back toward the books. He stared at the spines, wondering how many of them had been written out of pain. “That’s great about your leg, Bishop. I mean, it’s great that you could do something to make your life better; put something there to take the place of what you lost … or never had. But that won’t work for my issue. So since I can’t change it, I guess I’m one of those people who has to somehow learn to live with it.”

“Why don’t you think you can do anything to change it?”

Josiah had just scanned intriguing book titles by authors he’d never heard of before, like
Run and Not Be Weary
by Toni Alvarado,
Naked and Unashamed
by Dr. Stacy Spencer,
U-Turn
by Terence B. Lester,
and Jesus In Me
by Adrian M. Bellamy, when he turned away to face Bishop Lumpkin again. Inwardly, he prayed that his words wouldn’t cross the lines again.

“You can’t go and buy a prosthetic family, Bishop,” Josiah said. “I’m not trying to say that what you went through was a piece of cake compared to what I’ve had to put up with, but to tell the truth …” Josiah left the sentence hanging momentarily. Then after a breath he started again. “To tell the honest truth, if I could be given a choice to live without ever having a leg versus living without ever having a family, I’d choose to spend my life on crutches.”

Josiah expected a reprimand from his pastor, but he didn’t get
one. Instead, Bishop Lumpkin urged him to go on.

“Tell me about your family.”

Josiah released an annoyed laugh that ended with the words, “What family?”

And then it happened. The words poured from Josiah’s mouth, making Bishop Lumpkin a member of the elite group of two who now knew the poignant, heartbreaking details of the life of Josiah Tucker. As he spoke, he leaned on the bookshelf as though he needed a prop to keep him from toppling to the floor as he’d done on the day the policeman first told him of his mother’s murder. Throughout the reveal, Josiah found himself blinking hard, determined not to get emotional as he’d done on Friday. When he was done, he ran his hand over his bald head for no apparent reason.

“You have indeed been through a lot,” Bishop Lumpkin said.

“Been through
implies that it’s over and done with. I feel like I’m still going through it.” It was the first time Josiah had admitted it out loud. “That’s the problem. I pray and I ask God to take away the memories and the pain, but every single day it’s still there on some level. Some days are better than others, but it’s always there. My entire life, I’ve put my everything into whatever I’m doing-school, work, church, everything—just to try and clutter my mind with so much other stuff that there is no room for the memories. But they’re still there.”

“Are there no good memories? None at all?” Bishop looked like he was sincerely trying to grasp for something positive.

“None.” Josiah wasted no time answering. “I don’t even know who I am. The only person who gave me a particle of identity is dead, and sometimes I think I didn’t know her either. I never knew a sober Reeva Mae Tucker. Not for long, anyway. The little time she was clearheaded was spent trying to steal something from me or somebody else that could buy her next high. And when she wasn’t
stealing, she was out on the streets trying to
earn
the money the only way she knew how.”

“I see.”

“No, Bishop. No you don’t,” Josiah insisted. “Part of the reason that I carry this … this … this unexplainable heaviness is because as much as I wish I could say I loved my mom, I don’t think I did.” When Josiah said that part, his voice dropped to a whisper. He felt ashamed of himself for saying the words and wanted to be sure that no one standing anywhere near the bishop’s door could hear them. “I know that sounds awful to hear it, ’cause it feels awful to say it. But it’s true. I can’t say that there was ever a time that I really loved my mother. I mean… I did, but I didn’t. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know,” Josiah rambled. “But I don’t know any other way to say it. I prayed for her all the time, and I hoped that she’d one day just snap out of it, but that never happened. So just to get some relief, I would hope that she’d go off somewhere for a few days so I could get some sleep or so I could eat in peace. Simple stuff that I couldn’t do when she was home.

“She never gave me anything, Bishop. I felt like I was the adult of the house, and she was the kid. The spoiled, unruly, rotten kid.” Josiah blinked away more tears. “I was constantly cleaning up behind her; washing her dirty clothes, picking up empty beer cans and liquor bottles and making sure there were no filthy used needles lying around the house that I might step on or prick my finger with. I had to keep food in the refrigerator and lights on in the house and … and … and toilet paper in the bathroom. There were so many days when I asked God why He didn’t just fix things so that I could have remained with the Smiths. I just wanted to be a regular boy who lived a regular life, but I couldn’t be a regular boy because I didn’t have a regular mom.”

Bishop Lumpkin had been nodding throughout Josiah’s rant,
and when silence finally reigned the pastor took advantage of it. “It’s very understandable that you would feel that way, Brother Tucker. And believe it or not, I fully comprehend how you could love your mother but not love her at the same time. There are different types of love, and there are some people in our lives—within and outside of our families—who we can only love with the love of Christ.

“Agape love is a type of love that makes you sacrifice self in order to try and help others. You definitely did that in the case of your mother, so maybe that was the kind of love you had for her. She didn’t feel like a mother to you. She didn’t do the things a mother should do for her child. Mothers are supposed to protect and care for their children, but yours brought danger and hardship to your life. It stands to reason that you wouldn’t necessarily feel toward her as you would if she had been the nurturing person that a mother should be.”

Josiah had never heard it put quite that way before. He wasn’t feeling so much like a monster anymore. That was how he’d felt for years knowing that he hadn’t loved Reeva the way a son should. Even still, the void was there. The same emptiness that he felt when he had no one rooting for him at his high school graduation, his college graduation, nor at his promotion dinner last night, was still there.

Josiah gave his pastor a pitiful smile and pointed in the general area of where he knew the bishop’s leg rested behind the desk. “You think they make those things for families? If I could buy a prosthetic family, I would.”

Bishop Lumpkin laughed, then said, “Give technology and medicine just a little longer, and who knows?

Josiah laughed too. It felt good to laugh.

“What about the Smiths? Are you still in contact with them? Did you form any real bonds there?”

Josiah looked perturbed. “The Smiths?” How did he know about them?

“Yes,” Bishop said. “You indicated a moment ago that you wish your mother would have left you with the Smiths. I assume that’s the surname of one of the families that took you in. Tell me about them.”

Josiah must have been talking faster than his brain could keep up. He hadn’t realized he’d mentioned them, but it was apparent he had. “I stayed in a number of homes, but only for a few weeks or months at a time. It was different with the Smiths. I stayed with them from the time I was eight until the time I was fifteen.”

“Were they the last ones you stayed with before going home for the final time?”

Josiah nodded and stared off as he spoke. “I wasn’t the only one though. They kept quite a few foster kids, so I saw many come and go. But there were two—a special-needs boy named Sammy and a girl named Peaches—who were there just as long as I was. We were together so long that I felt like I had a little brother and an older sister.”

“Peaches?” the reverend asked with an amused face. “I would expect a name like that to rise out of a southern area that’s a lot more rural than metropolitan Atlanta.”

Josiah shrugged. “It was a nickname. Long story. Her real name was Patrice.”

“I see.”

Josiah smiled as he brought his eyes back to the place where his pastor sat at his desk. It felt good to talk about a time when life was more pleasant. “Thomas and Joanne Smith were great,” he concluded. “Those were my parents … my foster parents, that is.”

Bishop Lumpkin leaned forward in his seat and repeated the question he’d asked earlier. “Are you still in contact with them?”

Shaking his head, Josiah said, “No. Unfortunately not. It was my fault. They were getting ready to move into a new house at the time I was being returned to my mother, and the new house was gonna have a private phone number. They gave it to me on a piece of paper and told me to call them often. I lost it somewhere in the move from Atlanta to Chicago. They didn’t have a number for me ’cause … well, my mom didn’t have a phone in the house where she was living when she regained custody.”

“You never went back to see them?” Bishop Lumpkin sounded baffled.

“How could I? They lived in Atlanta and I lived in Chicago. I didn’t have any money for a flight, and that wasn’t exactly walking distance. Mama had no life insurance, so even when she died, I had no extra money to use for travel. It took all of my little paycheck to keep the bills paid until I moved into my dorm on campus that fall.”

The bishop nodded. “I understand that, but what about after you graduated from college? Did you ever try to get in touch with them?”

“I told you, I didn’t have their phone number.”

“You could have called information, and—”

“The number was private.”

“Or maybe gotten back in touch with your old social worker, or even searched the Internet. There were ways—”

“I went straight to work after graduation.” Josiah folded his arms and shuffled his feet. “There were new employer orientation meetings, policies and procedures to commit to memory… I guess life just got too busy with work and all. By then, they’d forgotten all about me anyway, I’m sure. Like I said, they kept a lot of kids.”

“You’re choosing to be a cripple, Brother Tucker.” Bishop Lumpkin’s words startled Josiah. “You’re handing me a laundry list of excuses as to why you haven’t reached out to this family, and
although you’re saying a lot of words, all I’m really hearing is fear.”