Sarah Anderson had spent the last fifteen minutes walking through the neighborhood, trying to clear her thoughts. But the walk hadn’t worked for her. She was still angry, still filled with guilt over her daughter’s disappearance, and still lost as to what to do next.
She walked into the church hoping that the Senior Women’s Ministry that met there on Thursday afternoons hadn’t canceled in the wake of everything that had happened.
When she heard the chorus of amens that always accompanied the prayers of Mother Wallace, she knew that the women were there. And she was grateful, because she needed them now more than ever.
Walking slowly up the steps toward the sanctuary, she could hear bits of the prayer floating out toward her.
“And bless Sister Sarah,” Mother Wallace said, her strong voice pounding each consonant and stretching each vowel until
the words sounded more like a sermon than a prayer. “Bless her like you blessed her namesake in the Bible. Bless Keisha, the fruit of her womb, as you blessed Jacob. Bring her back safe, so the world can see the glory of the Lord.”
Sarah could hear the smattering of hallelujahs that followed every word. And as she walked into the back door of the sanctuary, watching the women holding hands as they reached over pews in a circle of prayer, they sensed her presence. And one by one, their voices went silent as they watched her walk down the very aisle that Keisha had walked the night before.
Mother Wallace opened her eyes to see who had joined them. When she saw that it was Sarah, she stopped her prayer in mid-sentence and said, “Amen.”
“Come over here and join us, Sister Sarah,” she said, standing up with a sympathetic smile.
The two women sitting with Mother Wallace stood also. They made their way to the edge of the pews and reached out, silently inviting Sarah into their midst.
She stumbled down the aisle and fell into their arms as the effects of her sleepless night showed through. Her red-rimmed eyes were filled with tears. But none of them fell.
Mother Wallace saw the pain in her face. “It’s all right, honey,” she said as if she were talking to a wounded child. “You with us, now. Go ahead and let it out.”
The tears still refused to come. Instead Sarah smiled weakly and responded as her husband would have. She was still the first lady of the church. And no matter what she was going through, she still had to minister to others.
“I see you saved a seat for Mother Johnson,” she said, nodding toward the empty space in the middle of the pew. “We’re going to miss her. Especially at times like this, when God’s prayer warriors need to be out on the battlefield.”
“She ain’t gotta worry ‘bout none o’ this now,” Mother Green said, lifting her chocolate face toward the heavens. “It’s sad, what happened, but God knows best.”
“Yes, He does,” said Mother Wallace as she took Sarah’s elbow and gently led her to a seat. “How’s Pastor?”
“He’s fine,” Sarah said, knowing, just as they all did, that this was a lie.
“Any news about Keisha?” Mother Wallace asked sheepishly.
“I heard they think that Nichols boy took her,” said Mother Jones. “I just hope he didn’t …”
The other women cast disapproving stares in Mother Jones’s direction and she allowed her words to trail off. But everyone knew what she was going to say. She hoped that Jamal hadn’t hurt Keisha.
Sarah chose not to look at Mother Jones. Instead, she looked inward and stood face-to-face with the reality that she might never see her daughter again.
That sobering thought caused tears to slide down Sarah’s cheeks as Mother Wallace stepped forward and folded her in her arms. Sarah’s weeping gave way to sobbing as she rested her moist face against Mother Wallace’s ample bosom.
Sarah found comfort in Mother Wallace’s arms. It was the kind of comfort that her husband couldn’t give, because only another woman can truly understand the loss of a mother’s child.
“It’s all right, baby,” Mother Wallace whispered, slowly rubbing Sarah’s back as the tears flowed. “God is gonna fix this. He’s gonna fix all o’this.”
Sarah closed her eyes and listened to Mother Wallace’s soothing voice. She thought of the rocky relationship she had with her daughter and the contentious marriage she shared with John. And as she did so, she felt herself hurtling down an emotional sliding board and landing in the sands of regret.
“I just wish I would’ve done something differently,” Sarah said between sobs. “I wish I would’ve—”
“Sshh,” Mother Wallace said while continuing to rub Sarah’s back. “Ain’t nothin’ you coulda done.”
Mother Green chimed in. “Just do what you can right now,” she said softly.
“But first, let them tears go,” Mother Jones added empathetically. “Let ‘em come down, baby. That’s God’s way o’ washin’ away the pain.”
They stood there for the next few moments, comforting her as she cried. When the sobbing eased, Mother Wallace released Sarah from her arms and stared compassionately into her eyes.
“Go home, Sister Sarah,” she said with conviction. “Your husband needs you now more than he ever has before. No matter what happens, he’s gon’ need to know that you there for him. Besides the Lord, you might be the best thing he’s got left.”
Sarah looked up into Mother Wallace’s eyes and mouthed a silent thank you. Then she wiped away the last of her tears, turned on her heel, and walked out of the sanctuary doors to do what she must.
Having convinced the deacons and the sisters to go home after assuring them that he was okay, John Anderson wandered aimlessly through his house. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach while watching and waiting for Sarah to return.
He knew when he walked back into the living room and glanced toward the pictures on the mantelpiece that the time for wandering had ended.
Slowly, he crossed the room and took their wedding picture in his hand. He held it up and blew the dust from the glass pane, then lifted it to his eyes and gently touched it with his fingertips.
He examined the smile on his wife’s face, and tried to remember the last time she’d looked that way. He couldn’t. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled at all.
He put down the picture and sighed, then looked toward the heavens and prayed that God would forgive him for what he was about to do.
Walking up the stairs to the bedroom he shared with Sarah, he opened the closet, reached up to the top shelf, and felt among the dust bunnies. His fingers closed around a familiar shape.
When he pulled down the sawed-off shotgun and looked at it in his hands, he was almost sorry that he still had it. He didn’t want to revert back to the man he’d been so long ago, a man who’d done terrible things.
He still remembered every detail of the last job he’d done with a shotgun like the one he was holding. It was one of the last jobs he had done for the family, just prior to his father’s murder. And though he’d convinced himself that John Senior’s death was the thing that prompted him to leave the family business, he knew that was a lie. He left the business because he’d found out the hard way that he could never kill for a living.
It had happened thirty-five years before, on a summer day that bathed North Philly in a quiet too complete for city streets. John had received an order from his father. And just as he was instructed, he had told no one.
When dusk turned to evening and evening turned to night, he had gotten into the car that his father had left parked for him on Susquehanna Avenue, near Don’s Doo Shop. He drove one block south on Fifteenth Street, and made a slow right turn onto Diamond. As he cruised toward the pale moon that hung like a giant clock in the midnight sky, he saw his target, and his heart began to beat faster.
The Cadillac Eldorado he drove crept slowly alongside a
small-time dealer who’d had the audacity to challenge John Senior. He rolled down the windows and stopped the car. Then he leaned over and aimed the sawed-off shotgun. The man’s horrified face turned toward him just as the gun belched fire. The buckshot slammed into his flesh, and the impact threw him back into one of Diamond Street’s massive brownstones.
When it was done, the man lay bleeding on the sidewalk, his shocked eyes staring up into a star-speckled, purple summer sky. John only saw that look for a second before he peeled out and drove the car to a South Philly chop shop.
But he never forgot that look. And though few people ever knew what he had done, John was left to deal with the guilt long after his father went to his grave.
It was the guilt that had driven him to the ministry. He believed that if God could forgive him, then perhaps he could forgive himself. But it had never worked that way for John. Not completely, anyway. He still carried the memory of his victim’s lifeless eyes, staring into the sky as if to ask God why.
As he stood there in front of his closet, packing the gun into a small black gym bag, John thought of the other secrets that drove him to his knees every day to seek forgiveness, secrets that were born of his lusts.
Nola walked past the giant clothespin outside Center Square, careful to survey the area for the detective she’d elduded earlier.
Though she didn’t see him, she still had the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. The sensation made her walk faster.
Nola pranced into Center Square’s cavernous lobby, and through the glass doors leading to the bank, ignoring the lustful stares that she normally thrived upon.
There was business to handle. And if she’d learned anything from Frank Nichols, it was that business was the most important thing in life, and everything in life was business.
She walked over to the counter near the door, removed a fountain pen and a piece of paper from her purse, and filled out a withdrawal slip for a million dollars.
As second signer on the checking account for Alon Enterprises, the business through which Frank had begun laundering money at her suggestion, Nola was the only person other than Frank who was authorized to access the account.
She’d never touched the money before. Frank would have killed her if she did. But now, things would be different.
Nola smiled as she took the slip, crossed the lobby, and walked past the couch where new customers waited nervously for loans that would never come.
As she rounded the glass partition and headed toward the rear offices, a secretary tried to stop her, but Nola pranced past the woman as if she didn’t exist.
By the time the secretary caught up with her, she’d already opened the regional vice president’s door.
“Mr. Johannsen?” she said with a radiant smile. “Do you have a moment?”
She walked over to the red-faced man whose receding blond hair was arranged in a stiff comb-over.
“I always have time for you, Ms. Langston,” he said, waving away the secretary as he got up to embrace her and kiss her hand.
The secretary backed out of the office and closed the door. Nola sat down and watched Johanssen spin fantasies while staring at her across his desk.
“I’ve got a little problem,” she said, putting her forefinger between her teeth, as if she were nervous about something.
He watched her mouth on her finger, and his face turned redder by the second.
“I can’t imagine you ever having a problem,” he said with a sly smile.
“I need to make a withdrawal from my business account, and I need it in half an hour,” she said in her best damsel-in-distress voice.
“That shouldn’t be a problem, Ms. Langston.”
He got up from his chair and walked around to the front of the desk. “Do you have a withdrawal slip?”
“Yes,” she said, reaching into her purse and handing it to him. “It’s for a million dollars.”
Johanssen licked his lips nervously, knowing that he’d have to overstep his authority to complete such a huge transaction. The FDIC would have to be contacted, and so would company headquarters. It could cost him his job.
“Can you help me, Mr. Johanssen?” she asked, looking up at him with her eyes stretched wide and her mouth slightly open.
He looked at her ample lips and supple legs until desire overcame good sense.
“Maybe we can help each other,” he said, walking over to his office door and locking it.
“I think that can be arranged,” she said, stepping out of the dress she was wearing.
When Johanssen turned around and saw her delicious body standing naked before him, he began to tremble with desire.
And as he prepared to take her, Frank Nichols was exiting the minivan with Marquita in tow, getting ready to take back what was his.
Ishmael had been circling the block for a half-hour. It didn’t matter to him that the police were nearby, knocking on doors and questioning tight-lipped neighbors about the commissioner’s murder. They weren’t looking for him, and even if they were, he was a different man now, both inside and out.
Not only did his conservative suit allow him to elude his pursuers, but he was filled with a righteous indignation that fueled his every move. He was right. His victims were wrong. And for their wrongs, they deserved to die.
Bespectacled and bald, he leaned back in the driver’s seat of the blue Chrysler, turned left onto York Street, and rode slowly down the Andersons’ block. He did so with the full knowledge that he was virtually unrecognizable.
Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw a woman walk down the steps of the church at the opposite corner. She was carrying a Bible and a purse, and walking slowly.
She wore a white, round hat that covered almost every strand of her hair, large glasses that hid most of her face, and a long, loose dress that covered every inch of her femininity. She looked as if she could be beautiful beneath the trappings of her religious fervor. But there was something sad about her, something that shone through in her dour expression.
Curious, he pulled into a nearby parking space and watched her. As she came closer, her features became clearer, and it was easier for him to see the beauty she hid so well.
A wisp of hair hung from the side of the hat she wore, and dangled about three inches past her shoulder. Her mouth bore a certain sensuality that was evident even as she appeared to wear the weight of the world on her shoulders. She seemed to think of something that broke through that sadness for just a moment, and her face creased in a slight smile.
For half a second the rhythm to her gait and the swing of her hips were alluring, even beneath her long, dowdy dress.
But a second later, her demeanor changed. The swing in her hips stiffened. The rhythm of her movement disappeared.
As she drew closer to the car, he reached down, pulled the handle on the side of his seat, and leaned back slowly to avoid being noticed.
She started up the front steps of a nearby house, dragging her feet as if she dreaded going inside.
As she reached out to open the door, a tall man with a black gym bag came charging out and almost knocked her down. His back to Ishmael, the man tried to walk past the woman, but she stopped him, and Ishmael watched her dour expression turn to an enraged scowl.
“Where are you going, John?” the woman said, her tone short. Something about her voice made Ishmael listen more closely.
“I’m going to find our daughter,” the man answered impatiently.
“No you’re not!” she said sharply. “You see what happened the last time you did that.”
“Get out of my way, Sarah,” the man said in a low voice.
Ishmael watched the woman cast a venomous stare in the man’s direction before she grudgingly stood aside.
The man turned to look up the block, and Ishmael saw his face. A chill ran through his body as he saw his target close up for the first time.
Reverend John Anderson, the man who had violated the woman of his dreams; the hypocrite who had led so many of his followers astray; the prey that he would hunt down like an animal.
Ishmael smiled as he watched the preacher stalk down York Street and get into a black Ford at the other end of the one-way street. When John started the car and rode past him, Ishmael pulled out of the space and followed him.
John Anderson was going to die for his sins. And not even his children would be able to escape the consequences.
Keisha and Jamal had barely crossed the street before the highway patrolman pulled up behind the blue Dodge Neon. He didn’t see them disappear into the maze of two-story houses that comprised the housing project behind Frankford Avenue.
Now, as they ran down one of the driveways, Keisha couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been there before.
Glancing at the dull brick facades of the houses in the development, she tried to remember where she had seen them, but her memory betrayed her.
Looking back over her shoulder, she could see other police cars pulling in behind the first. Their swirling lights shone against the buildings, and Jamal’s description was read repeatedly over their radios.
But even as they ran and ducked through the small concrete backyards of the houses, moving ever deeper into the projects, it was the past, rather than the present, that gnawed at her.
Jamal grabbed her hand and led her to a space between two houses. Crouching down, he signaled for her to remain still as he tried desperately to think of a way out.
Kneeling there, she listened to the sound of traffic on I-95, speeding by in waves from two blocks away, and the sounds of everyday life emanating from the nearby houses in the projects.
She heard the sound of soap opera drama, talk show mayhem,
and television news. She heard babies crying, women on telephones, and children playing rope. And that’s when it hit her. She had, indeed, been there before.
“Jamal,” she said, pointing to the back of a nearby house. “This way.”
Staying low to the ground, she jogged across the driveway to the backyard of the house she remembered.
Jamal hesitated. But when he glanced through a crack between the houses and saw ten police cars surrounding the Neon they’d abandoned five minutes before, he knew that he had to move, because Keisha still had the gun he’d handed her in the car.
He got up and followed her path across the driveway, and knelt next to her at the back door of the house. She looked at him, saw apprehension in his eyes, and knew that he didn’t trust her completely. Keisha didn’t blame him. But neither of them had much choice now. They needed each other to survive.
Keisha tapped on the door three times. When there was no answer, she knocked harder.
The ensuing pause seemed to last an eternity, especially after they saw a police car turn onto the driveway’s cracked concrete.
Keisha knocked again.
“Who is it?” an old woman answered in a frail voice.
“It’s John’s daughter,” Keisha said, just loud enough for the woman to hear.
Footsteps shuffled toward the door as the two of them watched the slow-moving police car riding down the driveway.
“Just a minute, honey,” the old woman said sweetly.
Keisha and Jamal tried to hunker down further, but there was nothing in the small yard to hide them.
Jamal looked down at Keisha’s purse and the gun that it contained. The police car, now just ten houses away, drew even
closer. Jamal was about to reach for the gun when the door creaked open.
“Keisha?” the old woman said while looking aimlessly over their heads.
“Aunt Margaret,” a relieved Keisha answered while she and Jamal moved past her and into the kitchen.
The old woman closed the door behind them and turned around unsteadily.
“Who’s that with you?” she asked, her eyes sweeping the room, but focusing on nothing.
“This is my friend André,” Keisha lied. “We were in the neighborhood, so I wanted to stop by, since I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I don’t know why you stoppin’ by now,” the old woman said sarcastically. “You don’t stop by no other time. I coulda been layin’ up in here dead or somethin’, and y’all wouldn’t even know.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Margaret. I’ll try to do better.”
“What you say your friend’s name was?”
“André.”
“Nice to meet you, André,” the old woman said as she felt along the back of a chair, pulled it out from under the table, and sat down.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Jamal answered uneasily.
“Keisha,” the old woman said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since your Uncle William passed away last year. ’Fraid my cataracts is a lot worse since then. Can’t see like I used to.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Keisha said.
“Oh, don’t feel sorry for me,” Aunt Margaret said with a wave of her hand. “Sometimes, when you lose your sight, you see things a lot clearer. Now, come on over here and give your aunt a hug.”
Keisha approached hesitantly and reached down to hug her grandfather’s oldest sister, who was still spry, independent, and sharp, even at the age of ninety.
The old woman wrapped her arms around her great-niece and squeezed with a strength that belied her age. She felt the warmth of Keisha’s nearly bare breasts against her neck, and smelled the mingled odors of sweat and drugs in her clothing.
A frown creased Aunt Margaret’s forehead as Keisha moved past the walker that stood folded in the corner of the kitchen and sat down in a nearby chair. The house was silent except for the sound of the television in the living room, until Aunt Margaret spoke.
“You sure have changed since the last time I saw you, Keisha,” she said sternly.
“What do you mean, Aunt Margaret?” Keisha asked nervously.
The old woman leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips in a look of disappointment.
“I’m old, but I ain’t stupid, honey,” the old woman said. “And I ain’t much for games, either. So I‘ma give it to you straight. I been hearin’ your name on the news all mornin’. You and your friend Jamal here. I know they lookin’ for him for shootin’ Commissioner Freeman, and they said he kidnapped you, too.”
Keisha and Jamal exchanged a worried look as the old woman leaned forward in her seat and placed both hands on her kitchen table.
“Now, I guess the news musta got somethin’ wrong,” she said, “since y’all came in here together like you did. But I heard the sirens on Frankford Avenue a few minutes before you got here. So I know they gon’ come knockin’ pretty soon.”
“Aunt Margaret, let me explain,” Keisha began.
“Ain’t nothin’ to explain,” the old woman said, cutting her off. “’Cause evidently, if you runnin’ with him, you musta did somethin’, too. But lemme tell you somethin’, Keisha. Your grandfather got swallowed up in these streets, and so did your father.
“So before the police come to my door lookin’ for you, I want you to tell me somethin’,” she said, folding her arms defiantly. “Why the hell would you wanna get swallowed up, too?”
Jamal watched them sitting there, and for the first time, he saw the resemblance between them. It wasn’t purely physical, though their faces held some similarities. Their likeness was in their fire.
Jamal wanted to extinguish it, to snatch the gun from Keisha and force the old woman into a closet. He needed Keisha to believe that they could make the impossible escape. In truth, he needed to believe it, too.
“Answer me, Keisha!” the old woman said, interrupting Jamal’s racing thoughts.
Keisha began to weep. It was a sound that tore through Jamal like a jagged blade. Thankfully, her tears stopped as quickly as they had begun. And when she finally spoke, she spat her words like venom.
“Aunt Margaret, the streets can’t swallow me up, ‘cause my family already did that,” she said bitterly. “All my life, y’all wanted me to be the perfect little girl—the good reverend’s faithful daughter. But I can’t be that, and I’m tired of trying.
“I don’t know why things happened the way they did in the past. And I don’t want to know. But I do know this. I love Jamal. I’ve loved him since the first time I met him five years ago. He was the first boy I kissed, the first boy I dreamed about, the first
boy I wanted. And I’m gonna be with him, no matter what you or anybody else in the family thinks.”
“And what about his father?” Aunt Margaret said.
“What about him?” Jamal said angrily.
“You shut up, boy! I’m not talkin’ to you!”
Jamal moved toward the old woman, but Keisha held up her hand and stopped him.
“Whatever happened between Frank Nichols and my father is between them,” she said defiantly. “And whatever happens with me and Jamal is between us.”
The old woman grunted in response. Then she slowly stood up and walked toward the front of the house, lightly touching furniture to guide her from one room to the other, as Keisha and Jamal watched silently.
“What about your grandfather, Keisha?” the old woman said, speaking over her shoulder as she sat down in a chair in the living room. “Does what Jamal’s father did to him have anything to do with you? Or don’t that matter, either?”
The question floated in the air between them like a poisoned mist, threatening to take their breath away.
But before Keisha could answer, there was a hard knock on the front door. The old woman turned her blind eyes in the direction of the noise and, without a word, got up to answer it.
Flattening themselves against the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, Keisha and Jamal stood stock-still, holding their collective breath and waiting nervously for the inevitable.