LAYLA
We’re not going to be at my father’s office long so I don’t turn on the heat. Brown icicles that are my fingers turn on the computer. Elder Alma was here. Dad’s office is only ever this tidy when she cleans it. Otherwise, it’s a manageable disaster. Papers, books and dust.
Tim stands near the door and listens for what I assume is anything unusual. This old place always makes groaning noises, but I’m used to every one. I know every crevice and turn. I don’t even need the lamp to know my way around, but the light is a comfort.
It takes about ten minutes to buy two tickets to Memphis for a morning flight leaving in a few hours from Midway Airport. It takes even less time to email my boss and explain why I need a few days off work for a family emergency. I said I’d need only three days; that I’d be back by Thursday. Take the time you need, Layla, my boss, Veronica, emails me right back.
I pray I’ll be back by Thursday, that Ruby will be okay, that Lebanon will back off and let her be in peace. Me and Ruby could get an apartment together in Beverly or Hyde Park. Argue over which paint goes best on the walls, which couch fits the space. Take walks. Argue some more. Get coffee. Live our lives. Together.
I knew taking time off from work wouldn’t be a challenge. In the nine months I’ve been at Myers & Solomon, I’ve signed new accounts, impressed clients. I’m the first one there, the last one to leave. I prove myself constantly. I have to. What’s the saying? You have to be twice as good to get half as much. I don’t know if that’s even true. I just started working with that mentality and never let up. I swallow the backhanded compliments about how articulate I am, because in the end, most of them mean well, they’re just not experienced with black people, like the people I went to college with, like Christy.
It takes longer for our tickets to Memphis to eke out of the printer than it did for me to purchase them. It’s funny, but I’ve never been in my father’s office without him in it. I never roam around or touch his things. This room is his sacred space, hallowed. I don’t feel completely at ease here, but it’s the only place with a computer and working printer so my options are limited. I sure as hell wasn’t going to buy these at home with Dad breathing down my neck. Next to the computer there’s a yellow pad that has only three lines written on it. He wasn’t “touching up” like he said this morning. He barely started on the damn sermon! My suspicion about Dad is once again correct.
His old Bible, the one in tattered shambles, fastened with duct tape and prayers, sits in the middle of his desk. He’s the only one who touches the ancient, ratty thing. He treats it as part of him. It doesn’t stop me from picking it up and holding it over the garbage can, but my hand still grips it tight and refuses to let it fall.
Tim has that look again, the one he had in the kitchen as I argued with my father, as we exploded at one another.
“I was just kidding.”
“No, you weren’t,” he says.
I put the Bible down just as a piece of paper falls out and onto the ground. An old newspaper clipping along with the paper lie at my feet. Grabbing them, I glance at the dog-eared piece of paper first, and then I focus on the words.
Good Morning Church,
I want to talk to you about two things this morning: Grace and Mercy. How the Lord uses those things to mold us, if we let them.
I’ve spoken about this before. I’ve taken you from the Old Testament to the New. But in all that back and forth, I didn’t want to admit things to myself, didn’t want to disclose things to you all. If you knew me, saints, really knew me, you wouldn’t think me fit to stand up here. You wouldn’t welcome me into your homes; give me your trust like each and every one of you do.
God’s mercy is such that it covers the sins we cannot even speak of, the things we’ve done which we’ve never told our families, things we can’t admit to ourselves. And in that mercy, in the deep and dark, we reach for God and He extends His hand back and pulls us up. God’s mercy and grace sustain us even through our own shortcomings, through this life, and the one that is to come.
Saints, God’s mercy is sufficient as to cover a multitude of sins: lying, bearing false witness, murder. And, I’m ashamed to say I’ve committed each one of these sins. I’ve lied to my church family, but most horrific of all, I’ve lied to my wife and children.
On a cold night in January, there was a boy named Syrus Myllstone.
My eyes blur over the rest of the page.
“...killed Syrus Myllstone”
“...let Lebanon King take the blame”
“...stepping down as Pastor of Calvary Hope immediately”
“I beg forgiveness from not only you, but my loving wife, Joanna, and my children, Layla and Jackson Jr....”
The clipping folded within the paper confirms my father’s confession. The words murder, guilty, and the names Lebanon King, Syrus Myllstone and Holden Walters stab the backs of my eyes.
The discovery of this horrid information sets my hands trembling. Tears escape, salty atomic bombs that streak the old ink. Words, once seen, cannot be unseen, and the idea of my father seems as disfigured as the smudged ink of the article.
“What is it?” Tim asks. I pass him the sermon and the article and he reads them.
“Tell me it’s going to be okay!”
“Layla, I—”
“How can I leave now? What am I supposed to do? Turn him in?”
There are no words that will make it alright. There is nothing real and permanent. I poked and prodded and ended up finding out something about Dad, something I could’ve never imagined. If I tell someone, if I speak to the cops, like the ones outside of Ruby’s home, they’ll haul Dad away, from mom and J.P., from Grandma Violet, from me. There’ll be television reports and newspaper articles. Our church would probably never recover from that kind of scandal. My father, the murderer.
Everything is in a thousand pieces and those pieces are shattered into a thousand more.