Layla walks back through my wide corridor, and I listen to the resonant tap of her footsteps. Her step is heavy and I easily deduce from her jumbled, heated thoughts she is more than a little reluctant to speak with her father. Through my glass windows, sunlight playfully shapes itself into sparse remains of rainbows on my ugly chipped mint-green walls. If I’d arms and fingers, I’d paint my halls a more cheerful blue, but I remember green was the favorite color of the girl who painted them decades ago with her only two friends.
A door with a hinge in need of oil gives way to Jackson and his billowing black robe, bestowing the appearance of more girth and height. My friends the shadows and the light enjoy playing games and manipulating perceptions. Jackson’s mind also churns in thought, moments, regrets, words he’d take back if he could.
Jackson stops and looks at the wall, a shimmering ray of sun carving out the spot on the floor with a raised tile. He steps on it knowing the tile will remain level for a time, but the unevenness of my floors, will cause it to rise again. Layla tripped on this tile once when she was four years old. She fell and cut her knee. There was blood and tears. But there was Jackson, too. There was her father who scooped her up into his arms and Layla held on to him as if he were the only solid thing keeping her afloat. And Jackson swore he wouldn’t let anything else harm Layla though he knew it was a futile promise, a whimsical notion. “Daddy’s got you. I’ve got you,” he said to her over and over again until her cries turned to whimpers and then calm. And her smile, wavering, and her deep brown eyes puffy from crying, gazed into his and there was nothing else around them, father and daughter, but love and a bond neither one of them at that moment believed anything could break. They were wrong about that, but most people are wrong about the unbreakable. However, some humans (and this about them I admire) will try to mend their love and heal their brokenness. This is what Jackson wants to do. Layla too.
But can it be done when two are so far apart?
Opposing forces, opposing motivations, opposing people, and most of all stubbornness keeping them one from the other at such times it seems they may never come together again.
Jackson walks through my halls whispering to himself, pleading in all sincerity, “God, just...help me,” he whispers. “It’s too much. All of it and no one knows. No one knows.” Again, his mind drifts to a January night and a boy named Syrus. He thinks of Alice. His mind then turns to Lebanon, about the check he made Alma sign. One thought begets a regret which brings another thought which begets another regret and so on, his mind never loosed from the internal churning of his shame.
Layla’s steps mirror her father’s, an earnest plea for understanding and acceptance ready to tumble from her lips. She wanted people around while speaking to Jackson so he could exude that false, reassuring humility she needed on display to get out of a church service with a clear conscience and unhurt feelings on either side, but she must meet Ruby soon and there is no more time to rehearse and practice what she will say. No more time to wait for other people’s grace to save her feelings or ego.
Only a few steps behind her father, Layla says, “Dad, I have an errand to run. It’s going to take a little time. I won’t be able to come to the service this afternoon.”
Jackson turns around, his brow deeply furrowed, replies, “You’re needed.”
“No. You’re needed. You’re speaking. I have something important and I gotta go do something other than make you look like Dad of the Year.”
“What’s so important that you can’t give some time to the Lord?”
“Considering the past twenty-four years in God’s Army, I think He can forgive me one church service.”
Jackson Potter’s immense stature when angry seems to give him an extra three or four feet in height. At least it appears this way to Layla, who does her best to feel tall and powerful and not give the impression she’s backing down an inch from this man. Like someone does with an angry, wild bear.
Jackson bellows, “It’s not just about one church service!”
“Really? Please do enlighten me. I so need to hang on your every word.”
“You know, there’s this little part in the Bible about children obeying their parents.”
One trait she got from her dad that she proudly flaunts is her stubbornness. She wanted to have the conversation on amicable terms, but now all she wants to do is piss him off. It’s sport for her now. Layla’s voice now matches the volume of her father’s, but the venom bubbles and boils with each word leaving her mouth. “That line only works if I’m a child. I’m an adult.”
“An adult that still lives under my roof.”
“I’m more than happy to change that arrangement anytime but seeing as being pastor here means you make less than I do, you might need me to help with the mortgage.”
That dig at his ability to provide for the household, that not so subtle hint of glee in Layla’s eyes when she let those words leave her lips, enrage Jackson and he steps toward Layla. A Bible gripped in his fingers points so close to her face, a few inches separate the air and the spine of the book. She swats it away.
“I ask again. What is so important that you have to miss service?” His voice pummels and pounds the empty air of my hallway, near the spot where he once cradled his daughter in his arms.
“Trust me. It’s worth it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you wanna grab me like you did in the office? You wanna hit me? You aiming to turn into Lebanon—is that it?”
He won’t touch her. The guilt about this morning still fractures him, and he knows there aren’t enough apologies to make it right, but Jackson feels he needs to protect Layla, his daughter, his little girl. Though he can’t speak the words, share the underpinnings for his motivation, he needs her to stay under the roof of the church, stay with him.
“What in God’s name are y’all two going on about now?”
Behind Layla stands Violet, her voice the only physical testament of her presence as Layla’s body blocks her from Jackson’s view.
Jackson looks at his mother. In this moment, that command and strength vanish and he is a little boy.
Stepping between Layla and Jackson, Violet holds them both silent. “Let her go do what she needs to do. She’s a grown woman. Treat her like one.”
Jackson opens his mouth in response, but one look from Violet and he thinks better of it.
“Layla, you show your father due respect. Now, in the short time I’ve got left in this city, there is no more of this bickering. Am I understood?”
Both answer, “Yes, ma’am.” Pitch-perfect and on time, the conductor of an orchestra couldn’t have produced a better symphony of acquiescent melody. Layla and Jackson glare at one another. There is no great awakening or recognition and acceptance of faults. Just a momentary truce. Violet produces an immense wall against which neither Layla or Jackson will break themselves so Jackson walks the other way to his office and prepares to worship at yet another church service.