PROLOGUE
ALICE SYNTHIA KING
Ruby wants more than I can give her, but that’s how children are. They expect you to fix all things, figure out all things and love them always.
And, sometimes, you can’t do any of that.
Sometimes you barely love yourself or not at all, sometimes you barely drag yourself out of bed and function in a world that has nary a clue nor care you’ve abandoned the dreams you had for yourself. Instead you raised a child who loves you but resents you because of the mistakes you made.
I’m stitched together by the lies I tell myself and the lies people want to believe about me.
Chicago wind is unique in its relentlessness. It lifts the bottom of my coat and whips my skirt around my knees as I walk outside. Leaving this place of prayer, of unanswered requests, I’ll drive the few miles from my church to my home that is not a home. I’m praying when I open the door that Lebanon isn’t there or, if he is, he’s drunk enough to be in an unconscious heap on the couch. Maybe Ruby will be home if her job hasn’t kept her overtime. She hates it there. Her green eyes are dull, and her voice holds no emotion, happy or sad. She comes and goes more ghost than person, but of course we’re all haunted.
Maybe we can talk. I can show her my new quilt, royal blue with gold stars and ivory trim. My finest creation yet. Maybe I can make her smile. Maybe I can smile.
“Alice! Alice! Sweetie, you’re just in another world, aren’t you?” Ms. Anne yells from the top of the crumbling steps. She ambles her way down and I walk toward her. She clutches my left arm for support. I try not to grimace and breathe slow because that arm is sore and bruised. I think back to Lebanon’s angry face when I dozed off to a story he was telling me about the bakery.
“Sorry. Just thinking about the sermon. It sure was good, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it sure was. Reverend Jackson preached up a storm, but at least it didn’t last long. Can’t do them long services like I used to. And Lord knows—”
Wind drowns out the last of her sentence, but I pretend it didn’t. I pretend I hear Ms. Anne’s words, that they’re important and I smile and nod.
A few more people leave the church and walk past us, all warm smiles and hugs. I know these people. For decades. If you ask them, if you ask Ms. Anne, they’d say we’re good friends, more than that, they’d probably say we’re all family. Church family. And we’re here for one another, we love each other and the Lord God unconditionally, but they’d be lying. I’d be lying. Although if there is one thing you can sometimes find in lying, it’s comfort, warm and complete and blind.
“How’re Lebanon and Ruby?” Ms. Anne looks at me.
“Just wonderful! Lebanon is working hard at the bakery and Ruby adores her job. She’s at some fancy law office downtown. Just so blessed. So very blessed.”
Ms. Anne searches my face like all old black women do when they want more information than you’re willing to share. She examines my tired eyes and the thin folds of brown skin around them, my mouth, the pursing of my lips. “Your arm sore? Your face looked funny when I grabbed it.”
“No, ma’am. It’s just fine. Probably acting up ’cause of the sewing I was doing today.”
“Really, Alice?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m fine.”
I gently remove her hand and begin walking a few steps to my car so I can drive home, toward whatever I will find there, peaceful or ugly.
“Hold up, darlin’! I’m gonna walk with you ’fore I try and take this bus. Doctor said it’s good to exercise this new hip.”
“Now, you know I’m not gonna let you take the bus home, not when you live right next door!”
“I’ma be fine. I don’t wanna be any bother.”
But Ms. Anne knows I’ll fuss until she’s in my car. Christian or not, it’s simple decency.
I slow my pace to accommodate Ms. Anne’s stunted stride. “Alright, since you are insisting, and we both could use the company I’m thinking.” She waddles up and grabs my right arm for support instead of the left one this time, and smiles this smile, invasive and knowing, though she means it to be warm and kind.
I’m careful as I cruise on East 73rd Street, turning at South Lafayette Avenue then toward 79th Street. This route I’ve taken countless times, the stores and streetlights, the blocks and roaming bodies in this part of the city are as much of a fixture to my routine as church itself.
In fifteen minutes, we’re close to home, on Bishop Street, and Ms. Anne starts singing a song, an old gospel only she remembers, probably one she heard many times as a child, but one I don’t know, because many of these songs are lost to time or atrocity or apathy.
Ms. Anne sings about the River Jordan, how a man is going to cross to see the Lord on the other side. She softly croons to me and the empty air until we arrive at her house.
The wind picks up again, pushing against us as we make it to her door.
I try to shield her from the onslaught, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. As I press my body closer to Ms. Anne, her voice, her song, reaches my ear. The man is in the middle of the River Jordan. The current is taking him farther from the other side, but he’s still trying to reach the Lord. The man is afraid he won’t make it.
Our houses, two brick bungalows, are nestled near the end of the street. Ms. Anne’s house is lit from the front, golden shadows of electric light stretch themselves down the block. My house is dark except for an anemic glow from my sewing room window. I help Ms. Anne to her door as she finishes her song.
* * *
He saved me from my poor self; No more do I gotta roam.
I got my home in Paradise, Yes, Lord, now I got my home!
Ms. Anne fumbles a bit with her keys before her grandson LeTrell comes to meet us helping her inside. He’s tall and broad framed, dwarfing his grandma. For all his seeming power, he gently guides Ms. Anne and smiles his thanks at me.
Turning back to the wind, I walk a few steps to my place, trudging through the invisible wall of air making it almost impossible to open my door. Parts of Ms. Anne’s song cycle through my head, the lyrics simple, almost too easy to remember, but the words and how they’re knit together, telling a story of hope, of victory—that’s what makes them powerful. It ignites that spark, the one I barely possess, the one my daughter, Ruby, may have abandoned altogether. But maybe I can still unearth what little power or breath or whatever that’s still good I carry within myself.
The key sticks between the lock and won’t budge, but I realize it’s the wrong key. I put in the right key and it smoothly turns. I’m humming the song, that music has given me some courage, a way to try to again cobble together a plan for me and Ruby. A way to escape Lebanon and find hope. Hope that we can be better versions of ourselves or those versions of ourselves harboring no lies or fear or regret. Perhaps that’s too much to wish for, but it’s the only thing taking me past this door and into this place. He saved me from my poor self; No more do I gotta roam.