Homefires (69 page)

“Because,” I met his gaze levelly and spoke through clenched teeth, “I need time
alone
.”

I did. I also needed an ounce of control over my life, as boxed in as it was, as stifling and desolate and damning as it was. Kirk had done it again: stripped me of everything.

Now, I had to find
me
in yet another definition. It wasn’t fair. But that was how it was. And I would be damned to Hell, literally, if I couldn’t at least have this one concession.

“Hah!” His abrupt derision startled me, left me shaking. “Probably got ol’ Johnny tucked away somewhere. Or Nighthawk. I saw ‘im eyeing you at the funeral home. He’s a snake in – ”

“Johnny nor Nighthawk don’t play into – ”

“ – the grass. He’s no good. Never was – ”

“Stop it, Kirk. I’m only – ”

“ – worth the salt in his bread. Not even in high school. He – ”

I spun and walked away. “I’ll see you in three days,” I called back and slammed out the door.

I took only bottled water and sandwich fixings to store in the tiny refrigerator. I would eat only when necessary, I decided. In
the back of my mind, I still dreaded Kirk’s assessment of me after I left here. He already laughed at my ‘weirdness.’

Sleeplessness had rendered me vulnerable to weeping fits and nerves so raw as to be terminable. One recent night, Kirk had gotten up to go to the bathroom and found me outside on the porch, huddled in its dark corner, balled into a fetal knot. I’d long ago learned that he’d not come looking for me during my nightmare hours. Would, in fact, not miss a wink of sleep nor a daytime meal due to my distress. So, my disintegration was my own.

I’d never, in my worst hours, felt so alone.

“What’re you doing out here?” he’d asked coldly, squinting blearily at me as though I were a mole invading his flowerbed.

I’d looked helplessly at him, depression slicing me to ribbons, hardly knowing where I was. “I – I don’t want to live, Kirk,” I whispered hoarsely, not expecting, not even hoping he’d care. Just – answering his query.

“Aww, you’ll be okay, Janeece.” He snorted then, “You’re too selfish to kill yourself.” With that, he yawned mightily and padded back upstairs and slept the rest of the night.

I kicked off my shoes in the motel room, closed the blinds and picked up my Bible. Another episode flashed from nowhere. One rock-bottom day, for some reason, maybe a slip of Kirk’s tongue had led me to believe he’d begun to feel a bit of something for me again, or maybe desperation or survival instinct jolted me into crying out, “Kirk, I need just a little reassurance that – ”

His laugh, a harsh snort of disdain, halted my appeal. “Reassurance?
Reassurance?”

It was the burning look in his eyes that froze me into a
thing
. “Reassure yourself, Janeece. You’re a middle-aged woman, for God’s sake.”

My fingers stilled on the Bible’s pages and I cringed anew at his scorn. I knew his perception of me was distorted. Knew for a certainty that I did not harbor self-pity. Nor was I more selfish than – well, I’d learned through all this that everybody is basically a selfish being. I was no more self-absorbed than the next person, regardless of Kirk’s taunting insinuations. What I did know was that I was in this alone for the long haul.

I couldn’t change Kirk. I couldn’t change anybody else in this whole world.

But I could change me. Somewhere, there was a place for me where I would find peace, where I could love and be loved, but first, I must find me.

“God, help me find me.”

Guilt ambushed me as I whispered my first words. I’d left my Maker behind for so long. In retrospect, there was no justification for my abandonment.

A conflux of emotions dropped on me. I couldn’t dissect the mass of squiggly snakes that crawled over, around and inside me.

Immediately, I locked the door, climbed on the firm mattress with its Cloroxed sheets and began to read my Bible and meditate.

On the fourth morning, I took a long hot, soaking bath. Afterward, I picked up my suitcase, gazed around the little room with its nondescript floral drapes and equally dismal bedspread and was astonished to find I dreaded leaving it. For three days, it had wrapped about me like a warm blanket and kept the cold world outside, cocooning me with words of life and a warm presence of truth. Within its confines, I’d forgotten food as I’d petitioned first for forgiveness, then canoed from harsh desolation toward a shoreline I’d never before known existed. I knew instinctively it was a land of renovation.

There, in the still oasis, I shut up and did more listening than I’d ever done in my life. A video of the past years ran nonstop, one I viewed through new eyes and emotions. This time, the scenes portrayed the humanness of loved ones who’d brought me pain. This time, when I wept, it was for them. With each victory, I felt strength rise a notch.

Words and phrases leapt from the Bible’s pages to smite and enlighten. I was desperate to absorb as much of this inviolable atmosphere as possible, knowing I had nothing else. Without it, I was nothing.

It was there, on that thought that it happened.

As I lay flat on the bed, admitting that, without Divine help, I was nothing, I felt myself lifted gently from the mattress into a bubble of golden mist – where the air seemed stirred by angel’s wings. I knew to describe it would seem hokey, but I didn’t care. There I glimpsed a glowing presence that lit the entire chamber
so brightly my eyes snapped shut against it. I wasn’t afraid. I knew who joined me and tears squeezed from beneath my tightly shut lids and coursed down my cheeks.

And suddenly, I
knew.
Truth invaded me like a zillion fireworks exploding at once. I experienced a presence so powerful it still affects my life to this day. With complete clarity I heard the rumbling many waters voice: “The best way to
hold on
is to
let go. Neecy, you’re going to be all right. I‘m with you.”

I began to laugh, humongous belly busting guffaws, propelled by joy that comes from liberation.

I alternately laughed and wept from sheer happiness, suspended there in that marvelous aura of purity and goodness until I opened my mouth to say, “thank you,” and the words were not English. This time, I let the utterances flow, whooping and weeping and then, finally, feeling that warm honey pour over me until I was satiated as a wee baby burping from Mama’s milk. The peace of it released me into a babe’s slumber.

The next morning, in its aftermath, I was so different from the Janeece who’d walked in there days ago that I wondered if somehow my looks would reveal what had transpired. A glance in the mirror dispelled that notion because, actually, I looked thinner and more wan. But my eyes said it all. The fear was gone.

I walked out the door and for the first time in years, felt up to the task at hand.

My euphoria lasted exactly twenty minutes. The time it took to drive home. It being Wednesday, Toby and Dawn were in school. Kirk sat at the kitchen table, a study of morose brooding.

“Hi,” I said warmly, then headed for our room to unload the suitcase, willing myself not to react to his silence.

As I unpacked and put my things away, I felt Kirk’s presence in the doorway, where he lounged against the doorjamb, his dark gaze riveted to my movements, as though measuring and finding them inept.

“So?” he finally broke the silence. “How was your
season
of prayer?” The sarcasm in his words pierced my heart, but I refused to give in to tears this time.

I turned to face him. “I had a wonderful three days. Thanks for asking.” I resumed returning my toiletries to their bathroom counter niche. I knew Kirk buzzed with anger. Craved a fight.

Takes two to fight
, I reminded myself.

“I suppose Johnny’s doing well?”

I didn’t even look at him this time, just kept shuffling things into place. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him since the last day of classes.” I did turn and look him in the eye then.

Kirk’s face turned surly. “So – you’re actually going to turn back into
little goody-two-shoes Janeece.”

I didn’t flinch from his sneering gaze. “Call it whatever you want Kirk.” I lowered myself onto the edge of our bed. Then, feeling a sweep of tiredness, stretched out and rested my head on the pillow.

Kirk moved to the window, hands shoved into pockets as he stared unseeing into the trees. “Where do we go from here, Neecy? I’m not happy. You’re not happy.”

No rush of panic. With remarkable calm, I said, “I don’t know. But whatever happens, Kirk, I plan to go with God.”

His instant agitation was palpable. He shuffled his feet, glowered at me, then left the room in a huff, slamming the door behind him. I closed my eyes in relief. At least we didn’t fight.

I went downstairs to pour a cup of coffee and was surprised to find Kirk sitting at the table, cup in hand. I thought he’d driven off somewhere to drown his ire. Instead, he examined the bottom of his cup as though it contained a formula for youth.

“Want yours heated up?” I asked as I poured mine, expecting silence.
All I have to do is my part, that’s all.

“Sure,” he mumbled, holding his cup up for me to refill. “Thanks.”

“Kirk,” I said as I took the chair opposite him. “I want to apologize for all I’ve done to hurt you in the past years. I’m sorry I didn’t truly forgive you for being unfaithful. Sorry for the harsh way I responded to you at times when you were kind to me.” I shrugged sadly. “I take my share of the blame for what happened to us next. I regret many things. I can’t undo them, but I can say I’m sorry.”

He still stared into his cup. For long moments he continued to do so. Then, he looked at me. His green gaze was clear. “Neecy, I just want you to know – I plan to go with God, too.”

MawMaw died that week. She’d always said she hoped that when the end came, she would simply go to sleep and wake up on the other side. She got her wish. My entire family attended the funeral in Asheville. Daddy took it as hard as anybody. I suspected he felt that, just when they’d finally made peace, when he’d finally reconnected to her, she was snatched away.

It was downright spooky how much – as he mellowed – Daddy and I thought alike. Toby, now past the gangly stage of youth, resembled Dad more than his sons did. And my son’s disposition was a mother’s dream. Though lively and fun loving, he never seemed to get truly angry. Didn’t seem to have any teen-age axes to grind. Dawn, on the other hand, made up for the two of them.

“I’d
swear
she sits up nights dreaming up ways to worry me,” I told Trish more than once.

“Aww,” Trish poo-poohed my concerns, “she’s just different. She’ll straighten up one of these days. You’ll see.” I tried to take heart from her positiveness.

From her funky, all black clothes and garish purple nail polish to her offbeat sense of family, Dawn’s desperate disparities grated on me like fingernails against a chalkboard. She and I didn’t speak the same language.