Rolling my neck side to side, I try to relieve the tension in my shoulders, the ache will soon make it to my head and beat between my eyes. I squint, removing as much of the sun from my vision as I can.
Loud sputtering noises escape the engine of my rusting 1997 Chevy Malibu that I call the Black Stallion. I lightly close the door. I don’t lock it because, hey, if you want to steal a fourteen-year-old car, you have more problems than I care to count, and I’ve got enough of my own.
Ruby tried to sound like herself on the phone. She cracked jokes and changed the conversation because it suits her to not talk about painful things. It must suit me too, because I let her do it, I didn’t press her, didn’t say, “No, Ruby! We’re going to talk about what happened...now!” I didn’t say, “No, Ruby. You’re going to come with me and we’re going to find somewhere safe for you because I see the man your father is. I see Lebanon and know you need to leave.”
I didn’t do any of that. I just told her we should go to the Bruno Mars concert, like that would change her situation in any real way.
Why didn’t I say something?
Even at the end of March, the air still bites and nips like a hungry dog. The Chi Town spring sun is deceivingly bright. I sing “Every day is a day of thanksgiving” to the concrete beat of my boots.
I want to believe these words so much that I sing them a little louder hoping the measure of volume will equal my measure of conviction. Maybe God hears me better when I’m not so much in my head. And to be honest, I have a lovely alto voice.
Stopping a few feet from the entrance of the church, I scan the block. Only a few passersby make their way up and down the street. Not many people up this early on Sunday. Most are sleeping or coming home from parties I would’ve loved to attend if I didn’t have to be here by seven o’clock in the morning.
A couple of cars are parked in various points on Indiana Avenue, in Bronzeville, a whole black world within a city; a world with only our people, who arrived barely a century ago in innumerable droves during the Great Migration, living in cramped tenements with the tenuous hope of more freedom than what was doled out down south. And now there is a weird dichotomy of stilted gentrification and unpredictable violence, and yet there’s tangible opportunity if one were to look beyond hasty misconceptions and blatant prejudices.
Long arms grab me from behind and lift me up. I scream. My lungs burn and blood rushes to my ears. I kick and flail and twist.
“Damn, Lala! It was just a joke! You actin’ like you was gonna get kidnapped!”
I turn and punch my little-big brother in the arm as hard as I can. I hope it leaves a bruise.
He’s laughing, bending over thoroughly amused at my near heart attack. “Come on, Lala. I was just playin’. I was just playin’.”
J.P. couldn’t say Layla when we were younger, just Lala. It stuck. Black people always seem to go by nicknames. They are as official as a birth certificate or driver’s license. It’s the funny and the abiding puzzle found in sticky sets of syllables, ancient and varied, affixing themselves to a person, a hundred-year-old, multirooted cypress tree, finding its depth and permanence in a grove of many lives.
My brother’s tall, muscled frame goes in for a hug. He wraps his massive arms around me again. I remain stiff for a few seconds, and then wrap my arms around him. I let go and then punch him in the arm again.
It’s not like I could stay mad at him for more than a few minutes.
Still clad in his post office uniform, my brother parts his lips in a half-moon-bright smile showing the small gap between his two front teeth.
“You’re not coming to church today?”
“Nah, sis. I’ve had enough church for this week, this weekend, hell my entire life! Besides, I just got off a double shift. I’m going home, get some sleep,” he says rubbing his bald head with his heavily muscled arm.
“You know our father, the good ole Reverend Potter, is gonna give you hell for not coming to church today.”
“Oh the holy and devout Reverend Potter can try, not like it’s gonna work.” He laughs.
“What are you doing here, then?” I ask, my heart finally starting to beat a normal rhythm inside of my chest.
“I’m dropping off the programs for this morning. Didn’t get a chance to do them earlier ’cause of Auntie Alice’s funeral.”
My brother raises his head and cranes his neck toward the sky. “Shitty circumstance, but it was a nice homegoing service. She’d have liked it.”
“Yeah, I guess she would’ve. The sermon and songs. It was nice. Maybe it’s what she would’ve wanted, but she never said much about what she liked or didn’t.”
“Yeah Auntie Alice was quiet, like Ruby. Is Ruby gonna be at church today?”
“No.” I look down the block again.
“Stop biting your bottom lip, Lala. It’s gonna get ashy as hell doin’ that.”
I shrug.
J.P. sighs. “She needs time. We all do after something like that, but especially her, now she’s all alone with her father. It’s gonna be rough.”
“That man is not a father.”
“I’m not tryin’ to debate with you, Layla. I’m only telling you what I’m seeing is all.”
“Give me the programs.”
J.P. cocks his head and raises his left eyebrow. I always hated the fact he can do that and I can’t.
“I’ll give them to Dad. You go home and get some sleep. Only one of us needs to piss him off today. It’s my turn.”
“Hmph. You looking for a fight, Lala. You always wanna be the one to go at it with Dad.”
“Give me the damn programs, J.P. Go home.”
My brother hugs me one more time.
“How much you wanna bet Dad hasn’t finished his sermon yet?” I crack a smile.
“Sis, I’d be stupid to take that bet. You know he hasn’t finished it.” J.P. laughs and strolls to his car, an electric-blue Ford Mustang with a white racing stripe down the middle. The car smoothly turns over. He sticks his arm out the window, throws a peace sign and drives off.
I’m alone again on the block. Calvary Hope Christian Church stands before me, a sandy limestone juggernaut. At the bottom of the church, deeply chiseled, is the year of construction, 1891. I crane my neck up, to see the top of the bell tower. Every time I do this and try to take in its great expanse, I feel the same: a seven-year-old girl whose life cannot be separated from this structure, only defined by it.
The small ache in my head is constant. My jaw is tight. I’m frowning. My jaw aches only when I frown. Momma always scolds me when I do that. She says it makes me look older than my age.
Walking toward the newer building, I reach for the keys in my pocket. The wind always seems sharpest on this side of the church, next to the empty field littered with a buffet of trash and old car parts. I grab the key to the church without even looking at it. I know the shape and weight of the brass and insert it into the lock. I shake it until the tumblers give way, and the lock finally relents.
During the late spring and summer, the urban pasture is lush and green, wildflowers sticking out and defiantly displaying their beauty among the junk. But for the moment, the haphazardly discarded items are all one can see and the potential is obscured.
I understand how the state of the deserted pasture is a reflection of my community. I understand how remaining behind walls of worship and offering plates and gospel music does nothing to change my side of the city. I understand how religion without action makes it worse. But even good people grow complacent. And it comes at a high price. That’s how Auntie Alice died. Good people doing nothing.
Elder Alma stands in front of door, tall and broad with a warm smile. “I heard you struggling with the door. I was gonna help, but you always figure things out, baby.”
I smile. Old black people, elders, always figure you need a lesson about struggle because they had so much of it in their lives. Maybe they think it makes us stronger. So they’ll teach, but they won’t coddle. They’ll oversee, but they won’t hover. I’m not annoyed at Elder Alma. She wasn’t trying to be mean. She was being herself. You can’t ever fault people for being themselves. Unless you’re my father, Reverend Jackson Potter Sr., then you can fault people for anything and everything under the sun. Must be nice.
I open the door reading REVEREND JACKSON BLAISDELL POTTER SR., and he is hunched over his oak desk staring at a dog-eared sheet of paper. A yellow notepad with a few lines sloppily written on it sits untouched in front of him. Old football trophies and a degree from seminary school are prominently perched on the shelf behind him.
Beside him is the old Bible, falling apart, the spine bound and rebound over many years with tape. The desk and the Bible I see almost as much as I see him and I think they are so much a part of him, each one cannot exist without the other.
The lamp gifts a cloudy circle of dirty golden light. A new desktop computer sits behind him, but my father refuses to use it. He prefers the old-school method of writing by hand. His handwriting is horrible. Momma calls it “chicken scratch” in that rich soprano voice of hers. Even when she’s talking, it seems like she’s singing so when she’s insulting you, it still sounds like some wonderful compliment.
Knocking lightly on the door, I catch my father’s attention. He quickly folds the piece of paper, sticking it into the old Bible and acts as if he’s resuming the task of writing. “Yes?”
“Still working on today’s sermon, Pops?”
“Touching up. Only touching up.”
“Church starts in about two hours. Will you be finished touching up then?”
He’s lying and I know he’s lying, and I want to call him on it so he knows I can’t be fooled like the other people in this building, but I don’t.
He looks up from his paper. “Stop biting your bottom lip.”
I let my lip go, a light throbbing the only evidence I was biting it in the first place.
“I have the programs. J.P. is headed home. He won’t be here today.”
“You know, I don’t expect much from you and J.P.—”
“Spoken like a parent who expects too much.”
“Watch your tone.”
“I’m alive and so is J.P. I’m assuming that’s the best news a father can expect. His children are alive and thriving.”
“My children can thrive in the church,” he retorts. He turns his attention back to his unfinished sermon. “How’s Ruby?”
This is my cue to stick to pleasantries, but I’m not doing that. I made that mistake already with Ruby. “She’s not coming to church either. I’m worried about what she’ll do, living alone with Lebanon.”
Dad puts down his pen and sighs long and heavy. “Maybe give her some space. It’s a difficult time for her. For all of us.”
I roll my eyes. “Give her space? That’s the last thing she needs right about now.”
My father stands up, cocks his head and clenches his left jaw. “For once, just listen to me, stop being so disrespectful. Give Ruby some time to grieve, to be alone with her family.”
“The last of her family is buried in Restvale Cemetery.”
“Layla, she has—”
“No one, Dad. Ruby has nothing and no one left, except us.”
“She has her father.”
“Who drinks and beat her Mom!”
“Layla!” My father stalks from behind his desk. It still terrifies and amazes me how fast, how stealthily he can move. “Leave this alone. I’m telling you for the last time,” he whispers. His eyes are dark and his fingers are meaty and firm around my right arm. He doesn’t shout. Shouting draws attention and listening ears. We’re a perfect family and we can’t have someone in the congregation witnessing a fight, people talk, rumors swirl. It’s best to leave our dysfunction in the home and out of the church.
“Let go of me.” Shame slowly creeps into his eyes. I no longer feel my heartbeat through the flesh of my right arm. “If I listen to you, if I leave her alone too long, it’ll happen again.”
“What will happen?” My father’s face tightly creases and then relaxes with the bleak understanding of what I mean. “She won’t...do that.”
“You don’t know, and you didn’t find her the first time. You didn’t see—”
“Turn on the lights and start laying today’s programs on the seats, please. Thank you.”
There are times when Dad plays the role of someone truly listening. He nods, but he’s already forming a response because his mind is made up. It’s been that way for years in my calculation and it won’t change. He’s shut down so I shut down. It’s a silent waltz, a graceful movement of questions and nonanswers perfected over many years. That is the end of the conversation. That firm “Thank you” is as good as him saying “Get out.” There’s no reasoning or persuading.
He’s set and so am I.
I close the door harder than I need to.
“Layla, I just fixed the hinges on that door yesterday. Can you let a man enjoy his work before you undo it?” Timothy Simmons smiles as he scolds me.
“I’m sorry. I just...”
“Come here, Layla,” Tim says as he gently takes my hand and leads me to an alcove nearest to the bathroom, a small space where prying eyes can’t reach, and he puts his arms around me. His embrace provides a calm to the uneasiness I’ve felt since Auntie Alice’s murder. I listen to his heartbeat for a minute and try to time my breathing along with it.
“He never listens, Tim.”
“You can make anyone do anything, Layla. Remember when you convinced me and Ruby to sneak out with you so we could go to the Usher concert?”
“We had a great time though.”
“Yeah, I thought about it a lot after I enlisted. That night. We didn’t have problems or pressure. My dad wasn’t a drunk. Ruby’s wasn’t mean. Yours wasn’t—”
“A pretentious jerk.”
“Layla!”
I laugh and Tim does too, despite his better judgment.
“My point is if you can convince us to sneak out on a Saturday night before church, you can make your Dad listen.”
I let go of Tim and raise my face to kiss him, his lips are soft, melting into mine with warmth and ease. I can stand here and kiss him all day, but there’s much I need to do before the service starts. The light click of heels in the hallway causes him to break our kiss. “Make him listen, Layla,” says Tim as he leaves the shadow of our small, sacred space.
Tim is wise, but not when it comes to the ways of my father. Jackson Potter never listens. He won’t listen to my words and he can’t see what I see in Ruby, how she is slowly folding in on herself and turning brittle like fallen leaves. It’s true that the church can cocoon Ruby, but that protective layer can suffocate her, too. I’m all too familiar with that kind of pressure.
Nevertheless, Ruby and I are bound by these walls and these pews and the cracking stone and chipped wood. When we were small, we ran down the halls, our patent leather shoes slapping against the old tile in the basement as we played games or laid our backs against the old mint-green wall and held hands and talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. Neither one of us became what we thought we’d be.
The Sunday after Auntie Alice died, there were so many rumors moving back and forth in Calvary Hope Christian Church. So many people eager to know the details, some feigning concern for Ruby and Lebanon, others asking if they needed someone to help them clean the house or cook a meal. Sister Washington thought her nephew might know someone who saw something. Sister McKay believed she saw someone running from the house “real suspicious-like.” But no one, no one could give the police any facts or actual leads. They brought pies and cakes and looked at the dried blood stain on the living room floor.
I was the one who held Ruby until she cried herself to sleep in my arms, felt her body shake so hard I thought she might fall apart, flesh and bone, in my hands. I told her it was going to be okay, though neither one of us believed it then and still don’t. I made her eat. I call her every two hours, because I know her potential for destruction in a way no one else at this church, save a few, understand.
In this way, Ruby and I are bound together. We are bound by her blood and her survival. Sometimes, I don’t know how I can bear the weight of it, of what I think is one of the truest relationships I’ll ever know.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A text from Ruby. Beverly Café. 1:30 p.m.
I feel a pang in my chest.
I try to call her. No answer.
I try again. No answer.
I try again and again and again.
No. Answer.