Three lines and forty-five words. I have no idea how I am going to minister to my congregation. My left shoulder is tight and I want to pour a glass of whiskey and drink until my body is slack and slumped and I no longer have the energy to think how much my daughter, Layla, disrespects me. She pushes and pushes until you give her what she wants. That, or you better move to a remote location where she can never, ever find you.
All I want to do is protect and provide understanding, and I can never figure out how to do both. Perhaps because to protect I must omit, blur lines and control what I present myself to be in front my church. And to my family.
This chair is too soft. I can’t get comfortable. I stare at the mostly blank notepad. There is one sermon I have in reserve, but it’s one I can never deliver so I’ll leave it tucked away safely, in my Bible.
Rushing footsteps shuffle past my door and voices whisper bits of gossip about a funeral for a God-fearing woman, a woman whose life was taken too soon by a beautiful city with a lot of ugly, broken parts.
Some in our church and others who live on the twisting blocks of neighboring apartments whisper that Alice probably stored away money in the house and that’s what the murderer wanted. They always saw her scurrying about with stacks of papers and folders. Maybe those papers held some secret accounts. Others hear Lebanon turns a good profit at the bakery, so he probably also had thousands or tens of thousands stashed somewhere in the house.
It’s foolish listening to idle gossip. There’s never knowledge gained, just temporal excitement.
Many people believe it was a random act of violence, and our lives, black lives, are like that. Unforeseen patterns shape our fate. And on the South Side of Chicago, we exist with a unique kind of knowledge of how fragile life unfolds among these clustered rows of brick, cement and asphalt.
I need answers like everyone else. The problem is, I’m not supposed to be like everyone else. I’m supposed to know or at least act like I know.
Addressing her murder in my sermon puts upon me a pressure I haven’t felt in a long while. Reconciling myself with the fact Alice is dead is proving difficult. I’m dealing with my own guilt, my eyes overlooking bruises pancaked over with makeup and long-sleeved blouses on ninety-degree days.
What are the odds that Lebanon just abused her, but didn’t kill her outright?
The odds are low. They are very, very low.
Persuading others to put their faith in a God that didn’t protect a good person is not easy, but forgiving myself could prove damn near impossible.
Lost in my meditation, I don’t notice as the door creaks open and he strolls in. Doesn’t knock. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t respect the title on the door.
Nothing about Lebanon is friendly or shouts friend to me anymore, but that’s what he’s supposed to be, that’s what he was to me at one point long ago. That’s what I still want to see in him, what I need to feel in my bones, but those are cold, like the windowpane rattling against the gusts of wind.
“Need a favor.”
“They’re never favors. You just come in here and give orders like you run this place,” I say.
“Dramatic as always, Jack. Damn! I don’t ask if I don’t need.”
“Stop cursing. Have some respect for this place, and my place in it.”
“Your place.”
The door remains open and the hall, though at this moment empty of walking bodies, isn’t empty of listening ears. He follows my every move as I rise and close it behind him. I move deliberately, every limb and muscle careful not to incite suspicion or anger.
“You do that, you know? You tiptoe around me like Alice does, did. I hate that.”
Did he hate her or something about her so much that he took her life? I piece the night together as I remember it. Layla getting the call from Ruby. Her rushing out, her momma and me following behind. Blue lights, yellow tape, brown bodies and a redbrick house with rigid white bodies cycling in and out. Lebanon’s eyes filled with tears when people looked, his body shivering with grief when eyes wandered over his frame. But when people didn’t look, those few moments when something else grabbed their attention, the tears and the grief briefly seemed to dissipate.
“This is a private conversation. Listening ears and all,” I respond.
“Sure. Whatever you say, man. Now about that favor.”
“No. Whatever it is, I got things I need to do. And you need to be with Ruby right now.”
“Don’t tell me about my family, Jackson. Worry about yours.”
“Don’t let this robe fool you, Lebanon. Watch your mouth about my family.”
Wind rattles the windowpanes. Lebanon stares at the picture of me and my father on my desk and picks it up, the hard glint in his eyes softening a moment. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven in the picture, and I’m looking up at my father maybe the way all children look at their fathers at one point in their lives, with a mix of love and awe. He was telling me to look at Momma, but I refused to look at anyone but him. I had what some called a charmed life. Blessed. Then one night two officers came to the door of my home saying my father, Pastor Thomas Potter, died in a car accident. Some criminal trying to outrun the cops caused a good man to not come home. The guy who killed Dad died too, so I suppose there is some justice in that.
“Uncle Thomas was a good man.”
“Yeah, he was.”
“You’re a good man, too. A good pastor.”
“Now you want to sweet-talk me into doing your bidding.” I sit back down behind my desk and begin writing, trying to compile something, anything for a sermon I have to deliver in an hour or so.
“Nah. I don’t have to do that. You’re gonna do what I ask, but this picture reminds me of something...something good and I wanted to acknowledge it, I guess.”
He sets the picture reverently back down on my desk. My breath catches and I’m still caught off guard by how much I miss Dad. You don’t forget those who mold you or how disappointed they’d be if they saw how misshapen you’ve become in this world.
“What do you want? ’Cause you want something, and I got a sermon to finish up.”
“I saw her today. Sara.”
I drop my pen. “It’s been...”
“Over ten years. Since Naomi’s funeral. Only time I’d ever seen Sara cry.”
“But why?”
“Sara called me. She’s dying, wants me to help her make arrangements. Crazy right?”
“Isn’t that something you’ve always wanted? Her. Dead.”
His dry, bitter cackling bounces off the walls. “I’ve wanted a lot of people dead,” he responds while looking straight in my eyes. “Anyways, hospital says it needs money.”
“I’m not sure how you think I can help.”
“Church is about charity isn’t it?”
“Meaning...”
“You’re really gonna make me beg, Jackson, Reverend-Pastor-Apostle-All-Good-All-Knowing Jackson Potter Sr.? I mean instead of charity, I could make church about confession,” warns Lebanon.
I stop scribbling and glare at him.
“Come on, man. I was kidding,” he teases.
“No. You weren’t.”
“What happened stays with us. You go out there, preach, be their god.”
“I’m not a god.”
“Don’t seem to mind sacrifices like one, Jackson.”
I swallow hard with no comeback for this statement. It twists like a knife in my stomach. Now, I’m back there in a dirty hotel room staring at a painting of vast wilderness with no way out. Pleading to God to forgive me. Wanting to tell someone what really happened to a boy named Syrus, but my voice and self-preservation keep me silent.
Lebanon saunters to the bookcase running his fingers over etchings and trophies, stock paper with my name in loopy letters embossed with gold print.
“You accomplished so much when I was locked up,” he says.
“I don’t know how you think the finances work here, but it’s not just my eyes on the paperwork.” I pretend to write again. “Can’t you figure out your own problems? You always come to me to clean up your messes.”
“Remember who started that tradition, Jackson.”
I could reach across my table and punch him, bloody that nose, mess up that pretty high yellow face women seem to love. I remain in my chair. I try to count slowly and let my rage escape in uneven breaths. “We already helped with Alice’s burial costs.”
“And you can eventually help with Sara’s, but for right now I need some money to pay a hospital bill. Come on, Sara was Aunt Violet’s friend too, right?”
“Yeah Sara was Mom’s friend. Still is for whatever reason.”
“Probably the same reason we still friends.”
“That’s what you call it?”
Lebanon smiles big and wide. That perfect row of teeth. I know what’s coming. He’ll ask the impossible of me and I see my life in this moment as if I can reach out and touch it, and I know to go right, but I’ll still propel myself left. Because I still owe him.
Damn it.
“Tell whoever you have to tell, whatever you have to tell them. Make the check out to the bakery like always, Jackson. It should be for $9,000 at least. Meet me by that spot after church, the one your dad would take us to. Be there around 2:30 p.m.”
“I have to be at another service around that time.”
“And you’ll make time for this. Me being happy is important to you and for you, Jackson. Remember that.”
The door creaks open and he walks out.
I still possess the three lines and forty-five words I managed to cobble together before Lebanon’s arrival. I am bereft, defeated in this moment, laid naked to all the things I know about myself and that he knows about me, but I’m alone in this circle of dark winter nights and infinite debt.
I unlock my drawer and write the check.