9

Andre lies on his air mattress, fingers locked behind his clean-shaven head as he stares into the darkness that clogs his tiny apartment.

The accident.

His phone buzzes. It’s Sandra. He lets it go to voice mail, but the suspense of why she called gets the better of him.

“Hey, Dre. It’s Sahn. I wanted to see if you could watch the little man tonight. I have a meeting and I want to make sure he’s not getting into everything. Call me if you can do it. Bye.”

“Sahn” is the love name Andre gave Sandra when they were still in college. He calls her right back.

“Hello?” she answers.

“Is this Sahn?” he asks sarcastically.

“Sorry, that kind of slipped out. Can you do it?”

“What time do you want me to be there?”

“You can come now if you want. I figured I’d cook you something as payment for your services.”

“You don’t have to pay me to spend time with my son. I’m off for the next couple of weeks, so you can tell your mom that I can watch him while you’re at work.”

“You’re on vacation?”

“Something like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Now who’s quizzing who on what they do?”

Sandra’s giggle tickles Andre’s ears before quiet drops in.

To him, the silence is reminiscent of the soundless communication that turned their phone calls into all-night affairs when they first got together. Just knowing that the other was on the line was enough to keep them wide-eyed for hours.

Sandra breaks the whimsical silence. “I’ll see you when you get here.”

Andre painstakingly irons his Daniel Hechter V-neck jumper sweater with stitched harlequin diamonds up the right front. His black flannel dress pants hug tighter than they used to but still look sharp. A touch of Joop behind each ear and the box-sized apartment is spiced like a perfumery.

Andre watches himself in the mirror, and the man who smiles back at him looks like the old Dre. Suddenly he’s intoxicated by the giddy pleasure of pursuit.

Andre taps his signature knock on Sandra’s front door.

Tap-tap, tap-TAP.

A smooth-faced, slender brown man with thick eyebrows and wavy hair answers. Andre recognizes him as the hot-wing peddler from New Jersey Truth and experiences the sensation of being punched in the stomach—hard.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Fredrick says. “I met you a few Sundays ago.”

Andre pushes past him and searches the apartment for Sandra, Little Dre, and any flimsy excuse to swing on the wing man. Sandra comes out of the bathroom holding a naked-bottomed Little Dre and seems to notice the ruin in Andre’s eyes.

She quickly explains, “The baby got stinky all over his clothes and I had to clean him up in the bathroom, so I couldn’t get to the door.”

“Dah-dah!” Little Dre glows and twists from Sandra’s arms into Andre’s grasp.

“What’s he doing here?” Andre demands, jamming a thumb at Fredrick.

“He’s part of the group that’s—”

“What does that have to do with him answering your door?”

Fredrick steps in. Andre pushes Little Dre back into Sandra’s arms and squares off.

“I’m going tell you once to back up off me.”

“Andre, I’m telling you, it’s nothing—”

“You don’t know me, so don’t say my name!” Andre balls up both fists. “And I said back up off me!”

Fredrick throws his hands up in surrender.

“And I advise you to step outside!”

Fredrick backs out of the door with his hands still raised while Andre turns his attention to Sandra. “I knew something was up, talking about ‘this is Sahn.’”

“Dre, you are really out of line right now, so I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“Why? So you can run off to your meeting with pretty boy while I’m here watching Dre?”

Sandra draws back to smack Andre but stops. “The meeting is here!” she screams. “And Fredrick came to help me prepare since this is the first one I’m hosting!”

Andre’s canine psychology kicks in.

Yeah, right.

He’s struck by how naive women are when it comes to discerning a man’s true motive for helping them with anything.

Sandra grabs the phone. “I said get out, Andre, or I’m calling the police!”

Andre suspects that Sandra’s threat is just another case of emotional high jinks, but he’s not taking any chances. The last thing he wants is to wind up back at the police station.

“Sandra, hold on.”

When Andre opens the door, Fredrick is seated on the hallway steps. Andre waves him in and mumbles a rootless apology, but he doesn’t trust the wing peddler any farther than he can throw him across the room and through the window onto King. He extends his hand to Fredrick, who ignores it and reenters the apartment.

For the next half hour, Andre huddles in the bedroom with Little Dre. Between countless encores of “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “If I Was a Great Big Bumble Bee,” and “Old McDonald,” he strains to capture dashes of Fredrick and Sandra’s conversation. Fredrick’s slick baritone carries farther than Sandra’s dainty soprano, so Andre can only scrape together Fredrick’s end of what’s being said.

“You’re not leading the conversation, you’re just facilitating it . . . Your experience is your experience, and that’s what everyone is interested in hearing . . . The question is how did it affect you? No one expects you to be a scholar . . .”

All of this makes Andre crazy.

Why wouldn’t she like somebody like him?

Fredrick is magazine handsome, refined, and graced with a natural athletic build. Moments like these are when Andre regrets not having a degree the most.

After twenty minutes of Andre’s tone-deaf serenades, Little Dre is out cold on Daddy’s shoulder, rocked to sleep on a bellyful of warm milk.

Andre feels extraordinarily reduced—sequestered in the back room of what used to be his apartment, babysitting— while Sandra yuks it up with a smooth dude and a company of strangers. It’s bad enough that he drives a bus for a living.

But I’m not even doing that now.

It occurs to Andre that he must be nice to Sandra since the shortfall from the suspension will affect his child support payments.

I still don’t regret flipping the way I did.

He just wishes he hadn’t done it in front of Sandra. Andre hoists his chin high.

The wing man needs to know that Sandra isn’t some lonely damsel who needs to be whisked away on his white horse.

There’s a knock at the door. Andre opens it. It’s the stocky dude who controlled the stage at New Jersey Truth.

“What’s happening, brother? I’m Rock.”

“Andre.”

They engage in an equally firm handshake.

“When Sandra told us you were back here, I thought, ‘What’s he doing back there? He should be out here with us.’ Care to join us, brother?”

Andre wavers between curiosity and embarrassment. He’s not sure what Sandra or Fredrick told the others about their encounter, but even if they said nothing, Andre has never been comfortable in situations where he didn’t know anyone or where he wasn’t in control. Nevertheless, curiosity wins.

Seven people are sorted throughout the living room. In addition to Fredrick, Sandra, and Rock, there’s a young Latino couple, an attractive African American girl who looks like she’s fresh out of high school, and the other usher that Andre encountered at New Jersey Truth.

Everyone stands to shake Andre’s hand as Sandra introduces him as “Little Dre’s father.” Something about that hurts. Sandra doesn’t acknowledge anything more from their seven-year connection.

But is there still a connection?

Lately, Sandra hasn’t demonstrated any interest in Andre other than his services as a babysitter. Even so, he has functioned under the illusion that he could have her back at any time. That may have been true in the early stages of their breakup, but now?

Resentment wrestles Andre into his seat. He notices that everyone has a Bible, a notebook, and a pen. He feels like a beast among the meek. Rock slips him a small Testament and whispers, “We’re talking about the law of sowing and reaping.”

Andre stares at him blankly.

“Galatians 6:7?” Rock queries.

Andre has no idea what Galatians is or where to find it. Rock leans over and gives him a clue. “Table of contents.”

“Right.”

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

“Andre, we’re going around the room and everyone is giving an example of how they’ve seen the law of sowing and reaping play out in their lives,” Sandra says. “Rock is next.”

“Oh, it’s on me?” Rock asks, looking around. “Okay. Well, the biggest one for me is probably my greatest regret. I started a gang fifteen years ago, got locked up for ten, and when I got out my nephew was running it. Now when I try to tell him about life and how I’ve changed, he doesn’t want to hear it. Why? Because he learned how to thug by watching me.”

Now the ferocious air that Rock gives off makes sense. Andre is surprised that a man of the cloth started a gang and did a dime in the clink. Even more surprising is that he openly shares it with a roomful of people.

I wonder how much of our situation Sandra has shared with these folks?

By the time it’s Andre’s turn to speak, his wonder has hardened into annoyance. “You all may attribute sowing and reaping to God, but that’s the same thing as karma, and that has nothing to do with God. Why do Christians try to make God responsible for things he has nothing to do with? And that’s assuming God even exists in the first place.”

Andre is careful not to peek Sandra’s way, because he can sense the blast of fury emanating from her eyes. He smiles on the inside because everyone in the room seems to be searching for an appropriate response.

“My brother,” Rock calmly replies, “on the one hand you say that Christians put God in places that he doesn’t belong, but then you question the existence of God. Which do you believe? Because it doesn’t sound like you’re sure what you think.”

Andre’s inner smile turns downward. He didn’t anticipate a response, much less one that he couldn’t readily smack down. He ponders Rock’s question, and rather than answer, he turns the tables and tosses a question back at him. “Can you prove to me, right now, that God exists?”

“Of course not, ’cuz you’re committed to not believing.”

Andre is thrown. He expected a verbal joust.

“Anything else you’d like to say before the young lady continues her discussion of sowing and reaping?” Rock asks.

If black people could turn red from embarrassment, Andre would look like Tonto. For the rest of the meeting, he stews in silence.

At the end of the night, Andre loiters in the kitchen and waits for the last person to leave. On his way out, Rock slips Andre a card and says, “Call anytime. I like debating. That’s all we did in the pen.” Andre looks at the generic white business card with blocky black type.

ROCKY JENKINS, SERVANT LEADER. NEW JERSEY TRUTH.

He slips the card in his pocket, closes the door, and notices that the large dent that Sandra kicked in it years ago is still there.

Behind him, her laughter erupts and bounces around the kitchen like a ball of flames.

“What’s so funny?” Andre asks, even though he knows exactly why she’s laughing.

“I’m sorry.” Sandra seems to be having a tough time getting her hee-hawing under control. “You came over here acting like a—” Her snickering explodes again.

I can’t believe I let that dude silence me like that in front of my girl.

Sandra catches her breath. “You came over here acting like a complete fool, and by the end of the night you looked like the biggest fool in the room. You sowed foolishness, and that’s exactly what you reaped!”

Andre is ready to move on—to the more serious matters that he stuck around to discuss.

“But I’m glad I can find something to laugh about, because you embarrassed me twice tonight,” Sandra continues. “And if that’s the way you’re going to act with my friends, I can’t have you around anymore.”

Andre gets down on one knee and takes her hand. “Sandra, I was an idiot a lot in the seven years we were together. Even tonight I showed out. But you and Little Dre are the only good things in my life, and the thought of you being with someone else makes me crazy. I want to try and make it work between us.”

Sandra covers her mouth and Andre braces himself.

Please don’t start crying. I haven’t even said anything yet.

Nevertheless, Andre’s insides get warm because his charm still works. He hadn’t planned to bow the knee, but at this point he’s prepared to do anything to get Sandra back. And he’s relieved because he was starting to think she had lost her love for him.

Sandra uncovers her mouth and clasps Andre’s hand in hers. “Dre . . . I don’t know what to say. But it’s not like that with us anymore. I’m sorry.”