Southern Fried Sushi (34 page)

“Huh? No.” Adam’s paper crinkled.

“Good.”

“I mean, not usually.”

The spicy sausage and cheese opened a well in my stomach and I ate hungrily, feeling light and strange and almost delirious. Lack of sleep and deep thinking had turned me inside out. I folded the biscuit paper into neat, tiny little triangles like the Japanese did.

“Did you need all that stuff to fix the roses?” I blurted in midsip of steaming coffee, seeing the back of Adam’s truck for the first time. The bed spilled over with big bags of mulch andsoil, potted trees, and all kinds of garden tools, everything tied down with rope.

“No. It’s for work today.”

“You still work on Saturdays?”

“Sure. I’m doing part of a new subdivision in Fishersville.”

“Where’s Fishersville?”

“A few miles outside of Staunton. And I’d better go before I’m late.” He drained his coffee. “They want me there by eight thirty.”

“Oh.” I felt silly for calling him all the way over here. No amount of apologizing could remedy the situation, so I just thanked him instead. Felt like a heel.

He stood up and took my little biscuit-paper triangle and tossed it in his bag. “You fold all your trash into geometric shapes?”

“A Japanese thing.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I’ll fold a bird for you next time.”

I tried hastily to finish the too-hot coffee, but Adam waved it back. “Keep the mug. Give it to me next time I see you.” He stood up and got out his keys. “Hope your roses make it, Shiloh. Just remember what I told you.”

“Lots of water. I know. I’ll do it. I mean it this time.”

“Good because you might not get a next time.” His face was serious. “If you keep letting them dry out, you’ll damage their root systems for good, and there’s no fixing it. God’s creation can only take so much trauma without long-term effects.”

“Believe me, I know,” I said, thinking back over my life. Tears stung my eyes again. “I just didn’t …”

“Didn’t what?”

“I didn’t know Mom’s roses meant so much to her.” I pawed the gravel with my sandal.

Adam’s face softened. “Does that matter to you?”

“It does now.”

“Good.” He seemed pleased. “I’m proud of you, Shiloh.”

Proud of me? Was he praising me or patronizing me?

“And as for the trauma and long-term effects, well, remember how we talked about miracles. God can raise the dead. Don’t be afraid.” His eyes met mine one last time, blue across blue morning.

W
ater spilled across my dirty fingers in the Barnes & Noble bathroom sink, bright and sparkling. Sprinkler-like. My thoughts leafing like my roses, bright and thick with green. I couldn’t stop pondering this strange and powerful Jesus. Speaking in parables, in riddles. Tongue-lashing hypocrisy. Turning over tables. Touching the leper.

His startling words leaped from the Bible pages as I read through them, chapter after chapter. I blinked back yawns in too-late lamplight, unable to put the Bible down.

I was still thinking of how Mom and Jesus both cared for the blind, when, in the mirror, I saw Jamie emerge from a stall, eyes red from crying.

“Jamie?” I turned in shock, hands still dripping.

“Hi. Sorry.” She wiped her eyes and tried to laugh.

Normally Jamie’s angelic smile glowed a permanent fixture, but today she looked like a fallen angel, crumpled and sad.

“Are you okay?” What a dumb question! Of course she wasn’t okay. I modified. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing really. Nothing that won’t solve itself in a year or two.”

I waited for her to elaborate. “Money problems,” she finallysaid, turning on the faucet and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “I know it’s silly, but I just didn’t expect to wait out my last year of college again.”

I raised my eyebrows. Twenty-two definitely wasn’t late for finishing college.

“Why do you need to wait another year?” I asked delicately. “And why do you think it’s late?”

“Well, I started college early—at seventeen. I expected to finish early. But now I’m stuck again. My parents don’t have a lot of money, and right after I graduated from high school Daddy got laid off from his job. So we couldn’t afford college for two years.”

“No scholarships?”

“Some, but not a free ride. I did some volunteer work and went to a cheaper community college then transferred credits little by little.”

I’d known drunk football players at Cornell who’d gotten “free rides” and partied their time away. And hard-working Jamie Rivera went to community colleges because her family couldn’t afford tuition.

It smacked of unfairness. I scrunched my paper towel harshly.

“But I’m fine with waiting. I saved enough to complete my senior year last year and planned to start again this fall. But they canceled my biggest scholarship.”

“Why?”

“No idea. Lack of funding or something. I talked to the dean and he said cancellations happen, and I should try to apply for more financial aid. I’ve already done that, and I’ve taken out the maximum student loans I can. So.” She shrugged and wiped her face. “There’s nothing else I can do. If God wants me to start next year, I’ll start next year.”

I turned away and folded my paper towel into a tiny rectangle, Japanese-style. “That’s a bit fatalistic, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—things just turn out the way they’re going to because of God. That there’s no such thing as our actions or coincidence or just plain injustice.”

Jamie’s hands paused on the faucet. “Yes and no. We do face consequences for our actions. But coincidence? No. Things happen because God ordains them.”

Somehow Jamie’s word
ordain
sounded holier than mine, although we meant the same thing.

“The Bible says not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from God’s will. So whatever He plans, happens. I can trust Him with my life. If I don’t go back to college this fall, He must have a reason and a purpose.”

There it was again—God, not good-luck charms, or even pure fate—behind the events of our lives.

I stared at Jamie in amazement. This was what set Christians apart from non-Christians: their unfaltering trust and optimism, like the people singing in the rain at that little country church. If something turned out badly, God had still ordained it—and for their good. In all my years I’d never entertained notions like Jamie’s. Life, as I told Kyoko, sometimes just stank. Period. And I rose above it with my own skills and know-how.

What was I saying? I was in a Staunton mall bathroom. I’d bombed, not succeeded. My mental-illness mom had actually found more peace in her life than I had.

“So no fatalism.” Jamie tossed her tissue and washed her hands. “I trust God no matter what. He’s never let me down.”

“But isn’t this letting you down? You were crying.”

She looked surprised. “Would you give your little child anything she asked for?”

“Jamie, sorry, but you’re not a little child. You’re a twenty-two-year-old woman. The analogy doesn’t fit. It’s always bugged me about … you know … Christianity.”

“We’re all children in some respects,” she replied without changing her expression. “We don’t always know what’s good forus. If I’d gotten everything I’d asked for, I’d have a mansion and nasty Bobby Stimpson from sixth grade as a husband.”

My thoughts flashed briefly to Becky and her dream of a house full of kids. “What’s the problem with getting what we want? Why is it so wrong?”

“It’s not wrong. Sometimes God does give us what we want. But …” She pursed her lips in thought. “Sometimes we need to grow, Shiloh. We need to be stretched, and it’s not pleasant. It’s painful. We change through suffering.”

“Sure we do. We become bitter and twisted old hags who hate life.”

She briefly beamed a smile. “Maybe. Or maybe we become more compassionate or gentler toward others. We learn from our mistakes and become better people. And maybe, just maybe, we reach out for God.”

“So it’s back to Him again.” I unfolded my paper-towel-rectangle and wiped my hands some more, even though they didn’t need it. “I don’t need suffering to change me, Jamie. I just need a couple thousand bucks, and all my problems will be over.” Okay, more than a couple thousand. A couple ten thousands.

Jamie’s dark eyes glinted back at me in the mirror. “You really think money will solve everything?”

“Sure I do.”

“Well, it certainly hasn’t solved anything in Hollywood. Do you read the tabloids, Shiloh? Cheating? Adultery? Embezzling money? Shoplifting? Because when you’re missing God, nothing fills the hole.” She gestured around us. “God made everything—every molecule, every breath. We’re made to give Him glory, not stuff ourselves full of things of no importance.”

“‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in His image….’“ My lips formed the words in a whisper.

“Exactly,” Jamie’s soft voice echoed against the cold tiles. “The word
workmanship
also translates as
poem
in the Greek. We are God’s poem.”

Words stuck in my throat. I dried my hands some more, not meeting her eyes.

“He gives us a choice of blessing and cursing,” added Jamie, “and urges us to choose life. To choose Him. Because only He brings real satisfaction.”

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. “What did you say?”

“What? About Hollywood?”

“No, the part about choosing life. Choosing God. How He wants us …”

“To live for Him, even with all our problems and hurts. And we’re not satisfied until we do.”

Persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not destroyed. For we are His workmanship …

Those verses were following me, stalking me, even into the Barnes & Noble bathroom. Pursuing me. I looked behind me for a split second, half-expecting to see someone standing there.

“You really think He doesn’t solve everything for us on purpose?” I finally asked, beautiful words from Mom’s journal swelling up painfully. “That He knows we’re suffering and allows this horrible stuff for our good?”

“I really do.” Jamie looked at me just a little bit stubbornly. “And I wish you did, too.”

Everybody in this town, it seemed, wanted to evangelize me. Except Lowell. He just wanted to evangelize buyers with my perfectly staged house.

“Well, I still don’t like the child imagery. We’re the child, He’s the father. The immature and the mature. The unwise and the wise. I think it’s insulting.” I threw my paper towel in the trash and checked my watch. “Besides, I have to go to work again.”

“Shiloh, don’t you long for a father? The way a father is supposed to be?”

Her question hung in the air like a breath of summer breeze penetrating the stale Barnes & Noble bathroom walls.

“Me?” I stalled for time to come up with a better answer than the one that rose, like an ache, to the surface.

“A father who loves you infinitely, who adores you no matter what you do, who would rather die than live without you?”

Suddenly I couldn’t see. The mirror and Jamie smeared together like weird stained glass.

“There’s no father like that,” I whispered hoarsely. “If he existed, I’d do anything to be with him.”

“Well, He does. And He’s waiting for you to see it.”

Our voices had fallen to near whispers. If anyone pushed open the door now, they’d break the sacred calm settling over us, just like in Adam’s truck. I prayed they wouldn’t. That they’d leave me alone with this moment, this hope that Jamie just wouldn’t let fizzle out.

“My dad isn’t like that.”

“God isn’t your dad.”

“God gave me my dad, who doesn’t care if I live or die.”

“God wants to show you how different He is from your dad. And He’s arranged everything in your life to bring you to where you are now—so you can find Him. Every bit of love, mercy, or anything good you have in your life is from Him. His gift. Because He loves you.”

I thought suddenly, wildly, of Becky and Tim and their smiles, their faith … of steadfast Faye … of Mom’s prayers for me in her journal. Those blue-penned words speaking hope, life, and victory. Rebuilding on the ruins. Her smiling photos with a face so peaceful it almost didn’t look like her.

“Come, fall! Come, winter! I am not afraid. I will keep on singing until my last petal falls.”

“What if I don’t believe it?”

“Tell Him you want to.”

“God can raise the dead,” Adam said as he stood over Mom’s roses.

And then without a word, I turned on my heel and fled.

I
could hardly hear my own thoughts over the din of the kitchen.

Banging pots, short-order cooks calling orders, the hiss of fry oil. Jerry shouting left and right, and waitresses frantically dodging each other with loaded trays. The crash of silverware and roar of the sink as two cleaners struggled to wash and sanitize the growing mound of dishes. Busboys kept scurrying, dumping more loads.

My mouth hung open. Not one inch of my overloaded brain could have prepared itself for the chaos I found upon entering The Green Tree for my first work night.

“The Harlem Globetrotters!” Jerry shouted. Wearing a suit and tie. “Brace yourself, Shiloh, because tonight’s gonna be big!”

“What?” I shouted back over the noise, terrified. “The Harlem Globetrotters are in Staunton?”

“Made a reservation for thirty-seven people just this morning!”

I felt like I did in my recurring dream of being chased by a herd of black-eyed peas. “Please tell me you’re joking!”

I pressed my hand to my forehead, trying to block out the noise. Jamie’s words. My stomach heaved. “Why does everything have to happen at the same time? I need to go home, Jerry.”

“Nonsense!” He flashed a gleeful smile and tossed my apron at me. “Live a little, Shiloh! This is what it’s all about! Keepin’ up with what life throws at ya!” He tapped me affectionately with his notebook. “It’s insane!”

Insane indeed! Jerry was insane.

I felt like one of those Black Cat firecrackers the neighborhood kids popped after dark (probably bought in South Carolina, where Stella told me they sold every kind of explosive known to man).

“I’ll introduce you to the staff better another time, but for tonight, you’re on! And thank goodness for that—you couldn’t have come at a better night!”