Something She Can Feel (27 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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“I was about to come over there to throw some of this punch on you two,” Billie said. We were standing at the punch bowl, watching the students dance. Evan had gone to our table and was chatting with Principal Williams and his wife.
“Yeah, I don't know what's come over Evan. He's all Mr. Nice Guy right now.”
“So he really meant what he said about working things out?”
“I guess so.” I took a sip of my blood-red punch and looked around the room. “Where's Clyde?”
“Ain't seen him; ain't trying to see him!”
“I suppose that's a good thing,” I said, waving at some of my students walking by.
“He's been calling me all day,” she said.
“About what?”
“I don't know. I'm not answering. I don't want to hear another word about him or Ms. Lindsey. I just want to move on now. I have a clean slate. No more drama in my life.”
“Good for you,” I said, slapping her a high five. Billie and I stood in silence, people-watching and sometimes giggling at the few fashion mistakes and mishaps walking by. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man walk into the room in a sweat suit. I turned quickly to see that it was Clyde. Unshaven and underdressed, he made heads turn in waves as he walked through the tables set up behind the dance floors. “Billie?” I called, noticing that he was headed to us. She was looking in the other direction.
“What?” She turned and because she had her punch to her mouth when she saw Clyde, she nearly choked. “What the hell?” she managed, clearing her throat.
“I need to talk to you,” Clyde said, almost running her down.
“Yeah, I gathered that,” Billie said nastily.
“Look, Billie, I'm not trying to fight with you tonight,” he said. “I just need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Outside,” he said.
Billie looked at me, and I put my hands up to say I was staying out of it.
“Can you hold my purse?” she asked, handing it to me.
“Sure,” I said.
I watched Billie follow Clyde charging back through the crowd. Everyone watched, but only the students looked surprised. For us, it was just things going back to normal.
“What was that?” Evan asked, coming up beside me and picking up a full cup of punch.
“He said he wanted to talk to her,” I said. “Looked pretty crazy, too.”
“Hmm,” Evan said, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking something.
“What?” I asked. “Do you know something?”
“When I was at the mall today getting your corsage, I saw him fighting with Ms. Lindsey.”
“Really?” I looked at the door to see if Billie had come back inside.
“Yeah, I didn't want to get involved, but he looked so torn up when she stormed off that I asked him if he was okay and he said she broke up with him. Said she was in love with her ex and wasn't coming back to Black Warrior next year. I didn't say anything because I figured Billie would tell you.”
“She doesn't know,” I said. “But I wonder what their breaking up has to do with Billie.”
“Who knows with those two,” Evan said, and then Billie came rushing back into the room.
At first I thought she was angry, but then she flicked her hand up in the air and screamed so loud that I could hear her even over the music, “I'm engaged!”
“What?” Evan asked.
“I'm engaged!” Billie said to every face she passed in the crowd. Clyde was behind her, standing tall and proud, smiling at everyone as they congratulated them. Everyone was clapping and then Billie was standing right in front of me with the ring on her finger and Clyde at her side.
“Congrats, man,” Evan said to Clyde.
“Can you believe it?” Billie said, hugging me. “He just asked me outside.” She looked down at the sparkling ring and then back at me. “Can you, Journey? Can you believe it?”
“No,” I said, and seeing how happy my friend looked, I didn't have the heart then to say what I was really thinking—that Clyde had done this because Ms. Lindsey was leaving to find Benji. I hugged Billie again and kissed her on the cheek.
After that, the prom became a kind of engagement party for Clyde and Billie. They led the electric slide and when the king and queen went up on stage to claim their royal crowns, they handed them off to Clyde and Billie. I was so happy to see her getting what she wanted for once. And then I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe Clyde did want to marry Billie and Ms. Lindsey's leaving only helped him see it. I knew he loved her. And I knew she loved him. I couldn't see myself bursting Billie's bubble. Not then.
Chapter Twenty-three
I
t was the close of the 7:30 service at the church. Tired and sleepy-eyed, I'd inched out of bed that morning to follow our old ritual of going to church right after the prom and before the graduation ceremony. When I was in high school, I thought it was so absurd that they'd have the prom on Saturday night when most of us had to be in church the next day and we'd also have graduation right after that. But the older I got, the more it made sense. If kids knew they had to be in church at the early service the next day in order to make graduation in the afternoon, they were less likely to be out in the street too long after the prom. While this didn't keep them from breaking even their extended curfews, it gave the adults something to laugh at as the kids crept miserably to their seats at church, some just an hour or so after getting home from wherever. Nana Jessie said that the church service between prom and graduation was once considered a send-off, the last time many of the kids would congregate in their church as official members before leaving for college. Back then, she'd said, some of them were going a long way. They were catching rides all the way up to Wilberforce in Ohio, Howard in Washington, D.C., and Hampton in Virginia. Many of these routes still weren't safe for them. And transportation and lodging were few and far between. The church gathered to bless them. To lay hands on them before they headed out into the world.
 
 
My father was in the pulpit. Dressed in a kente cloth robe one of the African church members had specially made for him, he was pensively looking out into the seats as the choir sang “Grateful” together with him at the lead.
“
Flowing from my heat are the issues of my heart. /Is gratefulness
,” they sang as my father embellished with “hallelujah” in his tenor voice.
Grateful
Grateful
Grateful
The tenors roared.
Grateful
Grateful
Grateful
The altos chanted.
And just before the sopranos began to cry out, I was on my feet shouting.
Grateful
Grateful
Grateful
I joined in, praying for God's mercy over my actions as I lifted my hands, my palms facing upward for just one touch from God.
“I'm not a perfect man. Never have been,” my father said as the choir began to hum softly behind him. “I've tried. Lord knows, I've tried.” I looked to see my mother's eyes transfixed on him. She moved not once. Just kept her hands on the Bible. “But I learned long ago that there are no perfect men. Just us all down here striving to be. Just to be.
Be.
And we fall. And sometimes we stay there. But you know, church—” Taking my seat, I watched as he paused and took a sip of the water sitting beside his Bible. “I've never been surprised to see a man fall. What surprises me is what he does when he falls down. Who he talks to. Goes to. Chats with. And, church, that's because it seems that when most men are down, they go to everyone and everything else but their Creator to get fixed. We self-medicate. We drink. We smoke. We cheat.” A humbling silence unfolded around my seat and almost visibly swam around to my brother and rolled up to my father's feet. “We pay thousands of dollars to sit in a chair and talk to some other man who has problems of his own. And I'll never know why we do this. Why we don't go to the Maker, take it to the altar.”
The organist hit a chord and the entire congregation, even the tired and reluctant kids who'd been forced out of bed after the prom, began to make indistinct sounds in agreement.
“When your car is broken, you don't take it to the dry cleaner's. You don't take it to the grocery store. No. You take it to the fix-it man. Someone who has experience fixing that particular item.”
“Yes, pastor,” someone called out, springing to her feet. “Tell it now.”
“And if you're really smart, you'll bypass the fix-it man altogether. Yes, he has experience with that particular item, but he didn't make it. You realize that if you really want to get that thing fixed the right way—”
The choir continued to hum and the organist struck another chord to carry my father's break.
“If you really want it done right ... you take it to the maker.” He balled his hand into a fist and brought it to his mouth briefly before going on. “And that's good news. Because if you know that, then you must know that when something is wrong with you. When you're out searching for help to get back on your feet. When something has come into your life that was so hard that it rocked your very foundation and made you question everything that you thought you were—”
My eyes filled with tears, I looked up into the section by the door where I'd seen Benji standing the other week. I wanted so hard not to see him there again. Not to find him in a crowd of a million and have him lead me to Dame. I wanted a clean heart. A clean mind. A clean spirit. I prayed and clutched Evan's hand as I closed my eyes and turned my head away.
“There's only one God—your Creator—who can fix that. And, church, I'm so grateful,” he went on as the choir became louder again. “I'm so grateful that our Creator is so merciful. So present. His doors are always open. Mr. Fix-It. The people who made your car. They might all be closed. But God, your Creator, never closes. Never turns away. Never forgets you. God is there in the midst of the storm, waiting to hold your hand and pull you out of the water. And for this, we should forever be grateful.”
The organist replayed the melody leading to the chorus and we all stood up as one church to sing along. May holding my left hand and Evan holding my right, we sang about how grateful we were to God for life, for stability, for redemption. And I felt every word.
 
 
The air outside was much too cool for it to be a May day in Alabama. While we were in church, the dew was supposed to lift from the grass and the sun was to dry the tips of the trees. But as Evan noted when we got into the car to head to the school for the graduation ceremony, it was nearly chilly. And that was a good thing.
We let the top on the car down. We wanted to possibly catch the last of good breezes that would surely stop when June came. Riding along, I thought of everything my father said about going to the Maker. About redemption and being grateful for the second chance that God was willing to give. I thought of my father and how many times he'd hurt my mother, and how my brother was now doing the same thing to May and I'd almost done it to Evan. We all seemed so ungrateful for what was standing right in front of us. Like my mother and like May, Evan wasn't a perfect man. But he loved me. And I had to find a way to love him back. I had to feel for him the way I'd convinced myself I was feeling for Dame.
“You really think Billie is going to marry Clyde?” Evan asked when we pulled into the parking lot at the school.
“I don't know,” I said. “I thought if anyone was sure, you'd be sure. You're always talking about how much they can't live without each other.”
“I know,” he agreed. “But sometimes, I think maybe I just want for them what I have with you.”
I looked at him as we pulled into a spot.
“What do we have?” I asked, not knowing I'd even had the question in my mind.
“After twenty-five years you have to ask that?” Evan laughed in disbelief. “Don't be silly, Journey.”
“You say twenty-five years like we're so old. Like this is just it for us. We're only thirty-three.”
“This isn't it?” he said, taking my hand. “Because I thought it was. Just you and me. Growing old on the porch together.” He looked into my eyes playfully.
“So you don't ever think that maybe there's someone else out there for you? Like another life or something.”
“Damn, girl! Where are these questions coming from?”
“I don't know ... I just—Forget it.” I took off my seat belt and got out of the car with Evan.
“Look,” I went on. “I'm going to the chorus room to get the choir together. I guess I'll meet you back at the car.”
Evan walked around the car and took me into his arms.
“Okay,” he said, kissing me on the forehead and stopping to look into my eyes again.
“What?” I asked as he just stood there and stared.
“There's no one else for me. No other life I want to have. This is it,” he said earnestly.
“That's good to know,” I said. “Really good to know.”
The was no room left in the bleachers on the football field. Not one space. And the grass surrounding the seats that had been set up before the stage for the graduates was covered with people—old and young, in baby strollers and leaning on walkers, men and women, from here and everywhere, waiting to get a glimpse at Black Warrior's class of 2008. This was how it always was. Homecoming and graduation at Black Warrior pulled people out from all over. Some knew graduates; some didn't. Some went to Black Warrior; some hadn't. But they were all there. Packed in like this was the social event of the year. And it had been at one time. And this year, after that million-dollar check, it definitely was. Everyone wanted to claim the alma mater. To finally say how proud they were of Black Warrior. And my kids in the choir, who'd only heard bad things about their school up until all of the attention that came with the check, were beaming as we lined up in the rows to the right of the stage set aside for the choir.
“All these people here to see the seniors?” Opal asked as she walked past to get to her seat with the sopranos.
“They sure are,” I said proudly.
“I hope they come out like this when it's my turn,” she added.
When everyone was in position and the graduates had finally marched in to their processional, I led the choir singing “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing” and then Mr. Williams gave his opening remarks. Afterward, he invited Evan to the stage to speak on behalf of the school board, and as Evan stood at the podium, I watched and noticed how natural he seemed speaking in front of our community. People listened and bent forward as he thanked—without belittling anyone—the community for working with him to build a better school for our children. He thanked them for supporting him, lifting him up and letting him lead the school. He said he knew this was not easy, as so many others had led them in wrong directions in the past. Listening, I realized I'd forgotten how passionately Evan felt about what he did. This was easy to forget day to day as he tried to climb up the political ladder. Then, he seemed so determined to just be on top of everything that it looked like he didn't care who was at the bottom. But now, surrounded by our friends and family, I saw a glimpse of the man I knew in my heart he was.
I looked out into the audience and thought of how lucky I was to have him. How many women out there would be happy to actually have Evan. He was a blessing I was fortunate enough to receive early on in my life and at that moment, I was grateful for it.
“Now,” Mr. Williams said back up at the podium, “we'll have the choir sing a song that's always been sung during the graduation ceremony here at Black Warrior, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.' ”
I got up and turned, raising my hands to signal for the choir to get on their feet. I stood there, looking at them, moving my eyes from face to face, feeling their excitement about what we were about to do. As they must've been, I was nervous but equally energized and ready to show everyone our new composition. Smiling at Opal and then Zenobia and then Devin who was leading the tenors and another boy, Trent, whose sister was in the graduating class, I winked to let them know that whether the audience liked it or not, we did and that was all that mattered.
And then, when I was about to gesture for the pianist to begin the music, I lowered my hand. I thought, right then that if I wanted the audience to really hear the beauty of our new arrangement, it should be unaccompanied. Zenobia was right. We should sing it the way we had in the classroom. Just us letting the words vibrate around us.

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