The Greatest of These, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
(The following excerpt was taken from "Chapter 12: Thunderstorm Watch".
Setting: May 1993, Atlanta.)
(The following excerpt was taken from "Chapter 12: Thunderstorm Watch".
Setting: May 1993, Atlanta.)
I woke up abruptly. The red digits on my alarm clock glared back at me: 6:30 a.m. I didn't have to be at work until eight. But I've always been a morning person, and all my friends will tell you I can't hang. I loved to drive to work as the sun rose, tinting the sky with pink and yellow and orange. Each day a new page to write on, a flower unfolding possibilities.
This morning, I wasn't thinking about sunrises.
My cotton bedsheets were saturated with sweat. My hair had unraveled from its tight braid, tangling itself into spider webs. I blinked the crust from my eyes and yawned drowsily, feeling drugged.
It took only a split second for me to remember the dream. I stared off into space, bewildered. I mean, when I asked the Lord to take away my night terrors, I really didn't mean for Him to replace it with what He did. But Reverend Deb always says, "Watch out what you ask the Lord for. You just may get it."
Except to drop off Mack’s birthday present on the fifteenth, I hadn't seen Peach since Mother's Day. That was two weeks ago, and I was still upset. I didn't take his advice about Claude. As a matter of fact, it got to the point where everybody in A Chord just knew we were together, and I didn't care. To be honest, I was miserable. Between Claude during the day and my unutterable dreams at night, I had no peace. After praying about both situations and receiving no tangible answer, I put God to the test by eating an entire slice of cheesecake. And suffered no effects. Next time, I would throw away my insulin and see what happened. That was how wicked my thinking was.
Stretching out on the bed, I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. Then I got up and headed towards my dresser. Fumbled through the drawer for my key... there it was. I went slowly towards the trunk that rested right under my window. Preserving, among other things, pressed flowers of two generations and three families.
A Hope Chest, Aynie had called Mama's trunk. I learned from Uncle Leon that it had been given to my mother when she was thirteen and leaving for boarding school in the United States. When I received it at thirteen, it was still hers. It contained boxes of pictures and letters. Through those dusty snapshots I met my mother, the grandmother I was named for, the stepfamily that embraced them but rejected me. Through the letters I learned of the girlish love my mother had for my father.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Faith. The subtance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I never joined the debates in my philosophy and humanities classes over the existence of God. I don't think that there is a such thing as a true atheist. Anyone who sees creation, hears the testimony of millions, and then denies the existence of God is a liar. Plain and simple.
"I'm not an atheist. I'm agnostic," Nikki told me when we were in our freshman year of college.
"How can you question the existence of God?"
"Easily. I don't think anybody can prove that God is really there."
That conversation almost left me in tears. I felt so sorry for my best friend. And I just thought about how terrible, how unbearable my life would have been not only if there was no God, but if I hadn't had the blissful assurance of knowing that He cared for me. All those times that I felt the encroaching darkness would consume me, envelop me, what would I have done without my God shining a rescue light into each situation?
Hope. I think I understand why believers are admonished in the book of James to "count it all joy" in times of trial. I was shocked to discover one day when I was reading the fifth chapter of Romans that the seed of hope is planted in suffering. I began to wonder if maybe the reason that we Christians in America don't shout maranatha! anymore, why we don't long for the return of our Lord and Savior with all of our hearts, is because we've been spoiled...
"I disagree. I don't think the doctrine of suffering is for Christians today," one of our sisters in A Chord told Nakai and I a few weeks before the concert. "The only reason why Christians have any problems at all is because they're not living right. Or they don't have enough word in them to rebuke the enemy."
"God is no respecter of persons, Deedra. Neither is He your genie," Nakai pointed out. "If we have all of our desires fulfilled in this life, why should we look forward to glory?"
"Jesus came that we might live the abundant life here and now. I'm a child of the King, so that makes me a princess. I never heard of a princess having anything less than the best. We can get so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good."
"Most Christians today are so earthly minded that they're no heavenly good," I returned. "There are a lot of things that we as believers suffer because of own hardheadedness. But the Word says, `Yea, and all those that would live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.' We're nearing the time of the end, Dee, and before the Rapture hits, Jesus told us that we would be hated in all nations for His sake. Trials and tribulations nourish the hope we have in us."
Faith. Hope.
One of my favorite old songs is "Walk Around Heaven". Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to see my father on the other side. He was not a Christian, and had no interest in being one. He committed suicide when I was four by poisoning himself. His was a long, agonizing death. Why didn't he just use a bullet, I asked Tante. Her reply was that Dominic had a low pain threshold. I think of what he must be enduring now, what he must endure forever, and shudder.
Why do I worship and adore a God who would allow my father to be sent to Hell? That same God has made a way for me to see the mother I don’t remember. When she was six months pregnant with me, my mother lived with Aynie and Unc while Papa was away on business. Aynie would witness to a rock, I tell you. And she didn’t need any special seminar or conference to do it, either. She would just start by saying, "Honey, let me just tell you what the Lord’s done for me…" and my mother's ears were tender. Her heart was still sore from her stepfather’s family disowning her because of Papa. She accepted Jesus as her Lord and personal Savior three weeks before she went into labor. The reason why I wouldn't dare use my voice for anything other than worship and praise is because of her.
The eight years before I came to America to live with Aynie and Unc seem like a bad dream. A blur of weeping drunken fathers, grandmothers who spoke only Creole, aunts who beat French and domesticity into little girls. Humid Catholic masses, jeering in patois, and smelly tourists who were whipped into lustful frenzies by little girls' swinging pigtails. I left Jamaica behind and didn't look back.
In Rosemary Hamilton Petion's house, I first was introduced to love. Love was what shone from her eyes every morning as she shook me awake for school and kissed me good night. Love was in Unc's rough hugs and peppermint-dry jokes. Love was "passing the peace" during Sunday morning service at Greater Love Baptist, love was leading devotion at Wednesday night Youth Bible Study. Love was rehashing the day's events every night on the phone with bubbly, giggly Nikki. After Peach came to live with us, love was having a roughneck guardian angel on standby at school and someone closer to my age to share with at home. And when Mack was born, love became a newborn baby cousin. Small as a doll, yet wonderfully alive.
And through it all, love was and still is God.
I opened my blinds and pulled a chair up to my window. Opened my old Bible to a little bit beyond the text for "Beloved".
…God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears is not made perfect in love.
We love Him because He first loved us.
I closed the Bible.
Love, beyond all fear.
After Tante... said what she said and that tourist did... that tourist did what he did, I thought the kind of love the world seeks to glorify was a lie. I declared to Nikki when we were in eighth grade if I needed a man to make me a woman, I would stay a child forever. I believed I meant it with all my heart. Cinderella fantasies were my inheritance as a woman, but as an African-American woman, I looked around me and it seemed as if broken promises and shattered dreams were my portion. At thirteen, I knew my patched-up heart couldn't take much more.
I went back on my word with Jonathan Winters, my first love. We went to Homecoming together in `86, when we were in ninth grade. When I got put in the hospital, and they found out I was diabetic, he came to visit me every day until I came home. Then he helped me save the BAC during the Angelo-Quiana-Peach-Mack scandal, and helped me and Nikki sneak off to the DJ contest. I thought he was cool, but I didn't get all silly about him, no matter what Nikki said he told her about me.
My sophomore year was a trip. Peach had picked up and gone, Mack was toddling around and getting into everything, the BAC was dissolved because of the Nakia Edwards/Mr. Linden controversy, and most of the black families at PGP-Dupree were involved in the subsequent legal and media circus. Aynie sent me down to Texas for the summer to her brother Charles and his wife Sheryl. I'll never forget it, because it was the last summer of my childhood. With Jerry, Shahida, and Desiree, I roamed the Hamilton ranch, swam, picked flowers, mourned when a cow I’d grown to like was butchered, and gained a few equestrian skills. Then about a week before I was sent back up North, Aunt Sheryl took me on a series of shopping trips for my "makeover".
When Nikki and I walked into our new public high school as juniors, we both generated quite a few stares. But none of the comments and complimented those strangers tossed at me made me feel quite as good as the one John gave me when we ran into him.
"I can't believe it! Cherie went down South and got fine!"
We were together constantly that school year. He was a student athlete, and I was his biggest fan. Nikki, who was a cheerleader and had her own car, made sure I attended all of his games. I got involved in the music and theatre departments, and he came to see me in A Christmas Carol and West Side Story.
For Valentine's Day in 1989, we went to the Rose. I gave him the Pistons sweatshirt he had been wanting. He gave me a gold filigree ring. It fit my right pointer perfectly.
"Cherie," he said, then stopped to take a breath. "We've been friends for a long time, ever since ninth grade and..."
"And, what?" I smiled.
"We've been talking all year, and..."
"And?"
"I want to be more than friends."
"I do, too."
That summer he went to a college program at UCLA and I headed to Interlochen Fine Arts Camp in northern Michigan. When we got back, our hormones cut up. What had been sweet and innocent became hot and heavy. And despite my upbringing, despite the fact I knew it was wrong, we celebrated his signing with Duke and my winning the part of Dorothy in our school's production of The Wiz by borrowing his brother's apartment for the evening. I lied and told Aynie I was going to spend the night over Jasmine's house, because Nikki was out of town for a cheer competition.
After that, he pressured me all the time. I was sorry I had given in and told him so. We had a horrible argument, and separated. At the prompting of our friends, a few weeks we met at a local teen club to "discuss our differences" the same night that a horrible fight broke out between gangs from two rival schools. It escalated, guns were pulled, everybody ran... and three bullets exploded in John's head.
We buried him, and all my girlish innocence and expectation, a week later.
I dated a little my freshman year. Then, in the fall of `91, Darshon came along.
The nutshell version that I chose to store in the quick reference section of my memory is as follows. Darshon Wilson was the Big Dog on campus. For some strange reason my best friend is always attracted to such beings. She met Darshon at a party and liked him. He met her and was in lust. Carefree and uninhibited, Nikki flirted down the well-traversed path to his bed.
They started seeing each other off and on. Nikki wasn't interested in him as a boyfriend, and Darshon could only stay committed to himself. Their open relationship was a hot topic all over campus. Nikki, who already had a reputation, was branded a certain way. Darshon got even larger.
It was about four months into this situation, about February, that Darshon rested his roving eye on me. For what reasons I don't know. He'd known of me before. Maybe the fact that I was always around Nikki made him acutely aware of my existence. But notice, he did.
He started to pester me. He found out when I ate dinner, and showed up wherever I was eating. He was always in the library stacks whenever I needed a book. And whenever I went to a party, his arms would be pulling me on the floor for a slow dance.
Finally, at long last, he decided that he would make his move. So he caught up with me on my way to a class about four weeks before finals.
"What's up, Josephine?" he asked, running a little to catch up with me. "Here, let me take those."
Coming from Darshon, the gentlemanly gesture of taking my books was almost funny. "I'm doing fine," I said, shifting them to another arm. "How are you?"
"I would be a whole lot better if you would let me get to know you."
"We already know each other," I said, getting ticked off.
"On a certain level only," he said. "You know me from class, and you know of me from what other people say. Why don't you let me take you out sometime?"
"Cause you're kickin' it with my best friend. And you'll be real disappointed when you don't get nothing more than a kiss at the end of the night."
"Mmm. So you will kiss me. I'll pick you up from your dorm lobby at seven day after tomorrow."
The date was fantastic. We went to the movies, then we went to eat, then since I missed curfew, we went to his apartment. Never once did he try to lay a finger on me. We talked about school, ourselves, everything.
And he did get his kiss.
Everyone, Nikki included, found out it. She professed to be happy about it.
"There's enough of him to go around," she told me.
So then there was the revised version of the gossip. Nicole and Josephine were both kickin' it with Darshon. Even though Nikki wasn't sleeping with him anymore and I was the one talking to him, the rumors persisted.
I didn't care. Darshon was a perfect gentleman with me. He opened doors, pulled out my seat, and ordered for both of us. And I loved the way he kissed. Maybe he was a dog... but he kept his bark in check when he saw that I was a lady.
Finally, it was the night before everybody left for summer vacation. There was a big house party off-campus, and of course Darshon and I went. I had a little bit of a cold, and I didn't dance much. Darshon was polite as always.
"Want something to drink?"
I considered. "Could you get me a can of diet Sprite?"
He kissed my cheek. "I'll be right back."
When Darshon returned, he had a glass of red liquid. "This is the only thing I could find."
Not only don't I drink because of the way I was raised, I have to be careful of what I put in my system. Being diabetic is no joke. "What is it?"
"Tahitian Treat." He saw my eyebrows lift. "Come on, baby. It's hot as hell in here. You know I ain't tryin' to play you."
Still looking at him to see his reaction, I downed the small tumbler. It was good, and I couldn't taste a trace of alcohol in it. He didn't blink.
I asked for another one. Then two. Then four. By the time I walked out of the door, I had downed about seven drinks.
He'd lied, of course. I was drunk. But I didn't care. I was happy, and free, and my cold was gone.
Next thing I know, we're in his apartment. And so on, and so on. I'm not about to detail everything that happened. Just let it be said that night was my last encounter of the intimate kind until I met Archer. Yes, I was raped again. Yes, it hurt. But then morning after, feeling like trash and taking a shower, I decided not to tell anyone. After all, it was my fault. I had gotten drunk. I had gone along with it to a point.
In the middle of June, about two weeks before the crash, Nikki broke the news to me.
"I'm pregnant."
"Who's the father?"
"You know."
Nikki told Darshon. He said she was lying. Rather than deal with that age-old headache, she went into her dwindling savings account and paid for an abortion. I tried to talk to her out of it; she was determined.
The last I heard, Darshon had transferred to Dillard in pursuit of happier hunting grounds.
After Darshon, there was Archer.
Demetrius Threat had been destined for the NBA ever since he was in middle school. There, his deadly aim and accurate shooting earned him the use of his middle name, his mother's maiden name: Archer. He went to an exclusive private high school on a full athletic scholarship. Highly recruited, he chose to go to Michigan, where he led the team to a NCAA championship as a sophomore. He was guaranteed to be the number one first round draft pick that year. I think one of the reasons why I liked him so much was because of what happened next. He'd told me one night last summer, over dinner. Against my better judgment, I decided I wanted to be with him that night because of what he said.
"It was a week before the draft. I had been out shopping, matter of fact, for something to wear for my day. I wasn't back in my room five minutes when my aunt called and told me not to do it. She had disapproved with this NBA-at-nineteen business from the get-go. But she had never flat out let me know how she felt.
"`Archer, baby, get your education. You got a full scholarship to school. I don't care what the NBA is offering you. You take care of your mind first, and the rest will follow.'
"Baby, I was on top of the world that year. We'd won the collegiate title, and I felt sure that we could do it again the next year. So I put off entering the draft. And I enrolled in college for another term."
"The season opening that next fall was sold out weeks in advance. We were going to be playing our archrivals from up the street, Michigan. I felt confident that we were going to win, and then..." He had picked up my hands and were turning them over and over in his.
"What?" I had prompted.
"Third quarter. We were ahead by nine. Easy win. But I went to dunk, and I collided with another player in midair. I fell to the gym floor... and shattered my knee. Years of physical therapy, and I still can't jump."
I had sighed. "I'm sorry about that."
"It wasn't meant to be."
Apparently, neither were he and I.
At twenty, I don’t have much experience when it comes to men. I guess that wisdom and maturity in my choices will only come with time. Instead of dating Claude exclusively, maybe I should keep my options open…
I shifted in my chair, and found my bookmark in First Corinthians.
Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.
What a word. I knew exactly why God had led me to it. However, knowing and doing are two distinctly different things.
As I was about to find out.
