I used to wait for Alice here, at the top of the church stairs. She was always inside those walls helping with something. Fundraisers. Sunday School. Usher Board. Anniversary Committee. She didn’t want to leave this place. I didn’t much like to stay. It was always “God this” and “Faith that.” I went from one woman who couldn’t stand the inside of a church to one who couldn’t stand to be outside of one.
Alice felt guilty all the time. Felt guilty she couldn’t give more time to the church though she was here sunup to sundown. Felt guilty she didn’t pray more or read the Bible more. Felt guilty she didn’t change me or couldn’t leave me. Alice wanted me in some kind of box, and it was a box I had to stay in. “You’re a good person,” she’d say. “God knows that. I know that, too. You need to learn that.” She’d tell me, “You’re better than what’s at the bottom of a glass.” How the hell would she know who I am? She had no right to think that. She wanted to fix people that liked being broken. Me. The girl. You can’t make a triangle a square or a circle a rectangle.
You can’t change the shape of things. Not with words or good thoughts. Not with love. Not with God.
There are some boys smoking on the corner. A mixture of cigarette and weed smoke singes my nostrils. They start sliding away from the church one by one. I suspect they feel as comfortable here as I do. A thing like a church can mess with your head if you let it. One of them still lingers finishing his cigarette by the time I make my way to the street.
“Let me get one of them squares,” I say.
I’m polite enough about it, but the boy still looks at me like I’m crazy. His pants sagging too damn low like these young ones do nowadays, but there’s a book in the left back pocket of his jeans. His hat is angled, low, to the left. There’s something familiar in his face, but I can’t place it right now.
“Thought people in church didn’t smoke or drink,” he says, throwing the smoldering butt of his cigarette in the street. Smoke hangs above him for a moment then disappears. His eyes don’t hit mine. He glances past me down the block.
“You the expert on church folk?”
“Didn’t say all that, but I—”
A car rumbles up from behind us, his hand grabs for his waist as he turns his head. It’s just a Toyota with an old man behind the wheel. The boy takes a loose square behind his left ear and a lighter from his right pocket. He hands it to me. Letters in cheap green ink on his left hand spell out the name Anne. He takes a deep breath.
I say, “What’s the verse in Saint Mark? ‘Don’t trouble your heart...’”
“Nah bruh, that’s Saint John, fourteenth chapter and it’s, ‘Let not your heart be troubled...’”
Guess my face showed some kind of surprise before I could hide it. The boy smirks a little. “I can show you I’m right about that verse. Where’s your Bible?”
“Don’t got one on me right now.”
“Damn, man, what kind of Christian is you?”
“Kind that don’t like a lot of questions. And if you so smart, what the hell you doing hanging with those boys that left?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. His smirk leaves, his eyes narrow some, but he isn’t challenging me. He’s sizing up my intentions. Information, giving it to someone, is a heavy gamble especially in a gray place with high walls and thick bars or a holy place with red doors and stained glass. Ragged bits of gossip or knowledge can get you extra cigarettes or a knife in the belly. Church and jail ain’t that different most times.
“You read a lot on the inside?” I take a drag.
“I read some,” he finally answers. “You read a lot when you was in?”
Guess my nice suit and shoes don’t always cover up things. One convict can most times recognize another. It’s a brand we carry like scars or tattoos, but it’s in our eyes, the stain of lost freedom. The stink of a jail doesn’t leave you. It’s a cross between sweat, shit, metal and the cheap cologne the guards would wear. You never quite get comfortable with the sun and the air, walking to the bathroom when you want to, eating when you want or doing anything you please without someone watching you.
“Obvious to you I spent time downstate?”
“Figured you spent time somewhere. Game recognize game, Old Man.”
“Name’s Lebanon, not Old Man.”
“Yeah, I know. You live next door to my grandma.”
“I thought you looked familiar. You Ms. Anne’s grandson.”
“LeTrell. Yeah, I come by and check on her time to time.”
“She’s a nice lady.”
LeTrell nods while I take another drag from my cigarette. Strips of cloud cover the sun before it peaks out again from its momentary veil.
“So what’re you reading?”
He takes out an old paperback edition of Moby Dick. “I prefer the classics, but Grandma’s always trying to read to me from the ‘Lord’s Good Word.’ That what she calls it. She goes to this church sometimes. I probably know the Bible better than the pastor.”
“Doubt that.”
“Yeah, Bibles didn’t do me much good before or now. Places like this either,” he says placing the book back in his left back pocket.
“The church?”
“Lotta churches, not a lotta anything else around here. Grandma just gives them her money. Nothing really changes. No matter how black you make Jesus, we blindly follow the adopted religion from our adopted country.”
“Okay, Malcolm X, besides hanging on the corner, what you doing to make things better?”
“Opportunities ain’t always easy to come by.”
“So it’s everyone else’s fault, that it?”
“I didn’t say that, but it’s either our people being scared of us or white people being scared of us. Either way, none of it puts food in me or my brother’s mouth.”
“Yeah, we all got a pretty side and an ugly one.”
“There’s a lot ugly round this city.”
“Suppose so. Maybe not always.”
A dark sedan pulls up slowly. Two white faces peer through the dirty windshield. Detectives. Gotta be. No other reason for two white men to drive down a street in Bronzeville than to size up the people that live here. They’re not looking for directions. They know exactly where they want to be. No smiles from them. We don’t smile either. Why bother with niceties? We don’t want them here and they think the boy is a statistic waiting to happen. It’s just the matter of whose gun would take his life—theirs or a rival gang member’s. He’d be dead just the same.
“What you do now to make it by? Support yourself?” I ask.
“Whatever it is I gotta do.”
I know what that feels like, the inevitability of a lifestyle, trying to find some other way, but the streets and the schools and the damn government at times are pushing you toward those corners instead of away from them, but I made something of myself regardless. I have a business and a little money. But now I also got a dead wife and cops that wanna tear down everything I built. And I can’t go back there, prison. The smells, the bodies, the guards. The piss and shit and sweat. The hopeless, endless feeling of nighttime. I don’t care if I’ve done things that deserve to put me back there. I can’t go back.
I won’t.
This boy isn’t cut out for whatever it is he thinks he’s doing. None of them are, but not many here to show them different.
“You know, I’m a businessman.”
“Like a pimp or some shit?”
“What? Hell no! I work at the bakery a couple blocks over. Gets pretty busy.”
“You ain’t got nobody else to help you over there?”
I stub out the last of my square. “Look you want a job or not? Better than waiting for someone to come put a bullet in your ass.”
He shrugs.
“Come by tomorrow. I’ll see if I can find something for you.”
“Cool.”
“I believe you mean, Thank you.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He offers his hand. He has a firm grip. Not too tight trying to challenge me, but strong. I like strong.