Tonya made a left turn onto Wabash Avenue on her way home. In her soul and spirit, she kept the running prayer going—the prayer she prayed every day as she drove home. A prayer that God would just let her make it home safely, that the car she was driving—her mid-sized, I’m-only-five-years-old-but-if-you-don’t-keep-an-eye-on-me-I’m-going-to-break-down-right-in-the-middle-of-this-traffic car would just keep going a little bit longer. She prayed that her car would keep going until her change came, until things got better, or until she walked into her season.
The radio announcer said it was five-fifteen. In fact, he said it like everybody ought to shout Hallelujah! Then, just before the digital clock on her dashboard could register five-sixteen, he said, “Hallelujah! Everybody say hallelujah!”
Obediently, because she was nothing if not obedient, Tonya said, “Hallelujah.” Only if there was a praise meter in heaven, her accolade or jubilation probably registered less like Hallelujah and more like So what?
Tonya had started off her day with the praise song “This Is the Day That the Lord Has Made” in her heart and in her mind. By the afternoon, her joy was gone. What remained was a kind of pained weariness that she felt on her face and in her chest. It was the tiredness that can be seen on some church folks’ faces when they don’t know anyone is looking. Tiredness that says they love the Lord, that they are committed to Him come rain or come shine, but that they have been through a season that has been mostly wind and rain.
It is a tired expression that goes away when they are serving or helping others. It disappears when singing their favorite gospel song along with the radio or a choir, or when they hear the Word being preached on Sunday morning. But sometimes, Tonya knew, when they are alone and thinking—when there is no one around that they need to uplift or encourage—they sink. It is the sinking of people who are waiting for a change that looks like it will never come.
The same sinking Tonya felt so often.
She understood. It wasn’t that they didn’t have faith that change would come. But it was hard not to grow weary of waiting. Tonya had seen the same look on the faces of women who had been loving, submissive, and celibate only to see the men they loved marry women that gave them what they wanted when they wanted it—whether those “giving” women were the right women, the beloved women, or not. It was the weariness of saints who dutifully paid their tithes while their ends hardly ever met, while crooks—both thugs and corporate hoods—drove fancy cars and lived in houses with pools and Jacuzzis.
Tonya thought this must be like the exhaustion of salmon that swim upstream hoping against hope to spawn. It must be the almost hopeless hope of players who sit on the bench wanting to throw in the towel, but who want even more to get into the game.
Tonya had stopped looking in the mirror so she wouldn’t see that there were faint, dark circles under her eyes. Stray hairs had come undone from her bun—the perennial bun or ponytail she wore because they were the fastest hairdos (or hair-don’ts) she could comb without having to look at her reflection. The gray tiredness in her face spoke volumes. It was the drained, glassy-eyed look of the for-God-I-live-or-for-God-I-will-die saints when it looks like the Grim Reaper is sharpening his blade. She wore the look of people whose hope is almost gone—all wrapped up in an overstretch, oversized navy-blue sweater. The sister was just tired.
She was tired of doing the same thing every day with the same results. She was lonely, too. She was godly, and she did her best to be holy. She wasn’t slobbering for a man, but she was still lonely. Yes, she had the look of women who think, Jesus is enough, but it would be nice to have a man. She didn’t need a man; so she wasn’t asking, grooming, or looking. She didn’t need a house or a new car to make her complete, so she wasn’t asking God for it.
But she was waiting for something.
What really bothered her, though, was that while Tonya was waiting, it seemed as though life had moved on for everyone else she knew. While she was waiting to exhale, as Ms. MacMillan might say, Stella had already gotten her groove back—five or six times. It would have been easier for Tonya if she could have given up or just thrown in the towel. But Tonya had a promise. She was waiting on her season, waiting for her change to come, waiting for her time to shine. If she didn’t have to believe that things were going to get better—if she could have just packed it up, put it away, or iced it down—things would have been tidier and so much easier.
But underneath all Tonya’s affected dowdiness was a passionate woman with her eye open for a more abundant life. She couldn’t explain it; it was sort of a prickling desire. It just wasn’t nice, tidy, and neat. It wasn’t a Vaseline-on-your-patent-leather-shoes kind of desire. It wasn’t an overstuff-your-plate-at-Sunday-dinner desire. Tonya wrestled with her promise like the saints of old wrestled as they waited for Emmanuel.
What had her bunched up now, on her way home from work, was mostly Michelle.
“Lord,” she talked with her eyes open, monitoring the obstacles and the traffic. She talked to God without moving her lips so that people in the car next to her wouldn’t think she was crazy and report her to the police over their cell phones. “Lord, what are You trying to do to me?” She slowed so that the car to her right could change lanes in front of her. “I have done everything You told me. I’ve bought her books and cards using money You know I don’t have. And today I even took her the flowers You told me to take her.” Humiliation brought tears to her eyes. “And I told you before I did it that I thought it was a bad idea. I told you!”
The air conditioning in the car was going full blast, but Tonya could feel heat creeping up her neck to her face and ears. “You saw her, God. She acted like I had smacked her in the face and insulted her. There she was in the middle of the office yelling at me . . . calling me everything but a child of God.” An audible sob—not too loud, but just like a baby before it drifted off to sleep—came from Tonya’s throat. “And all those people were looking at me, Lord. Looking at both of us like we were crazy. I just don’t understand it, Lord. I don’t understand it.”
The Lord said nothing.
“She hates me. Michelle hates me for no reason. I try to be nice to her. I pray for her. I tried to smooth things over for her with Mrs. Judson—not to mention that I’m going to need someone to smooth things over for me with Mrs. Judson after this.” Tonya sighed as she checked her rearview mirror. “I’m tired, Lord. I can’t keep doing this and all the while Michelle just keeps kicking me in my face.”
In her heart, Tonya heard the Lord speak. Keep doing what you’ve been doing, daughter.
“Lord?” Tears slipped from the corners of Tonya’s eyes and burned her face. “Lord, she hates me. You know she hates me. Michelle acts like I’m trying to hurt her. Like I’m trying to kill her. And, Lord, You know that I’ve been praying for her. You know that I’ve stuck up for her when Mrs. Judson has wanted me to let her go—even to the point where now Mrs. Judson is threatening both of us.
“Lord, I just need peace. I just need peace somewhere—at home, at work, anywhere. Some place where there is peace. I’m so tired, God. I’m just tired.”
It’s hard, my daughter, to kick against the pricks.
Her tears dried quickly. Tonya took three deep breaths. The Lord never said a lot when He spoke to her heart. He was thrifty with words; He was efficient. But what He said always got the point across.
Kicking against the pricks. Tonya knew what it meant. It was what the Lord had said to Saul when he was having his Damascus Road experience. She knew the King James passage by heart.
Kicking against the pricks. It was those times when God was giving His people—a son or a daughter—information, or requiring one of His children to behave in a way that went against common sense, against experience, against book learning, even against home training. Tonya remembered when she had first read the passage. In the account, something unseen had caused Saul to fall from his horse. There was a great light around him, and he heard a voice.
“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Saul had answered, “Who art thou, Lord?” and the Lord had said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Saul, trembling and astonished, had answered, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” And the Lord had said to him, “Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”2
Paul, who had been Saul, had known the same struggle that educated men and women face when they wrestle in their minds with notions of God as superstition, while even in their hearts, minds, and spirits they witness that there is something greater, something infinite, that they cannot explain. Kicking against the pricks. It was those times when, like Paul, God was saying something that went against the teachings of friends, of family, even against one’s own mind.
It was those times when God was leading in one direction and one of his stubborn children—like an ox in a yoke—tried to go in another. Tonya knew that the Lord was telling her that the pain she was feeling was the spiritual equivalent of the pain that oxen experience when they pull against the direction of the person leading them and are wounded by a yoke or collar of thorns—by the pricks. The Lord was telling her to stop causing her own pain, to surrender and stop fighting, to trust Him. He had a good plan, a plan to bless her and Michelle, not to cause them harm.
Right now, though, it didn’t feel like it. It hurt. Kicking against the pricks. Tonya definitely felt like she was being knocked from her horse, or at least from her desk, by something she knew, and her name was Michelle. She felt like she was in an unwanted spotlight at work. But she just wasn’t so sure that God was speaking with her like he did to Saul, or that she knew the plan.
“God, I spent money I don’t have, for nothing.” Tonya took a deep breath. “It hurt my feelings, God, and it embarrassed me.”
Finally, there it was—the truth. It wasn’t about the money. Tonya was hurt and humiliated.
Then she felt the Lord draw near. It was the closeness of a loving father taking his child on his knee. The tenderness of a father consoling a child when she is heartbroken or injured. It was the kindness of a father who is infinitely, faithfully, and unequivocally concerned about the welfare and happiness of his children.
Tonya pulled into her parking space in front of her and her son’s building in the apartment complex. She sat in her car for a few minutes, just until one of her favorite gospel songs ended—just until Tonya could get herself together.
Then she slipped from the car and went inside.
“Hey, Malik. I’m home,” she called to her son when she stepped through the front door.
“Hey, Moms. What’s up?” Her seventeen-year-old son was back in his bedroom, but she imagined she could see him—headphones half on and half off his head, a video game controller in his hand.
“How was school?” There was no point in bringing her office problems and laying them at her son’s feet. He had enough to deal with on his own. Instead, when he surfaced from his bedroom, Tonya listened to him talk about school. She washed the dishes that had been left in the sink—Malik, I told you to wash whatever plates, glasses, or silverware you use so they won’t be left here for me when I get home—and began like single parents and mothers everywhere to cook dinner without ever sitting down to rest.
That night, when everything that could be done was done, she fell asleep before her body hit the bed, and she dreamed about Michelle.
The office looked the same, except Michelle’s desk was bigger and more ornate than anyone else’s desk. Tonya sat in her space, trying to do her work and mind her own business, but Michelle kept snatching everything she wanted. It was as though Michelle was able to follow Tonya’s eyes, determine what Tonya wanted, then grab the item before Tonya’s fingers could grasp it. Or she would check Tonya with her body to keep her from what she desired. When Tonya reached for a stapler, Michelle grabbed it before she could get her hands on it. Michelle snatched a folder, a chair, even a window office—all things that rightfully belonged to Tonya— the instant before Tonya could reach them.
Then, in that way that happens in dreams, they were instantly transported to Tonya’s apartment. Michelle took pictures off the walls, hustled plates and food off the table, and took Tonya’s car keys off the hook near the door. Michelle even took her husband.
That’s when Tonya relaxed. That’s when, even though she was still dreaming, she determined that she was having a nightmare.
Richard was already gone.