Birthday Dinner Read online

Chapter 2

  From outside the glowing window, from far away in the dark across the scrubby pine woods and the flat sandy soil on this edge of the coastal plain, beyond the highway’s four empty lanes and the intermittent winding two lane roads and the gravel trails, out there past the broad reservoir and the deciduous woods in their winter dormancy, on up into the cloudy sky and past those clouds to the stars lurking behind and then beyond those stars—the maker behind the gift of their lives and their love dreamed for them a different feast, a feast for the heart.

  Becca sat at the small desk in the converted janitor’s closet at the end of the office hall of St. John’s Episcopal Church in the poorest part of Shefford—“St. John’s by the Homeless Shelter” locals called it. She surveyed the stacks of one-page case files—some left by her predecessor, others recently generated by her—each in its own manila folder, that covered the desktop. She felt totally overwhelmed by the sight because she felt totally overwhelmed by the needs of those individuals documented in those case files—so much need, and she of such inadequate skill and experience. So she did what she often did when feeling overwhelmed—she leaned back in her chair and laughed: not in cynicism or despair or resignation but at the world that would deem to put her in the middle of its large mess.

  Then she took the top file off one stack, opened to the form completed in her handwriting, picked up the phone with her free hand, and dialed the number for County Social Services.

  Later that morning, Father Mark tapped on her open door. “Becca, do you have a minute?”

  Becca swiveled in her chair with three files spread out on her lap atop her jeans.

  Father Mark stood at the doorway with an elderly black woman beside him, and what appeared to be a grade-school age black boy pressed tight to the woman’s legs, his head buried in the folds of her cotton-print dress.

  Becca closed the files as one and set them behind her on the cluttered desk. She stood and walked the two strides to the doorway.

  “This is Mrs. Brackett,” Father Mark said, gesturing toward the woman. From closer and in the better light of the hallway, Becca saw that the woman had that wonderful ageless skin of so many elderly black women—no wrinkles, no scars or pocks, just perfect taut skin the color and texture of the glaze the old potters called “tobacco spit.” Only the woman’s close-cropped snow-white hair gave indication of her years.

  Becca extended her hand and the woman took it but not in the manner of a typical handshake but with her palm up to receive and support Becca’s soft fingers. The woman’s palm was a light tan and far more deeply furrowed than any part of her face; and her skin was cool and soft, neither dry nor oily, like some perfectly conditioned leather. Becca left her hand in the woman’s palm for several seconds, waiting for her to withdraw that touch. When she didn’t move, Becca slowly withdrew her fingers. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brackett. My name is Becca Coles.”

  “And this is Jonah,” Father Mark said, placing his hand on the back of the boy’s head as if offering a blessing. “He’s Mrs. Brackett’s great-grandson.”

  Becca squatted beside the boy. He pushed his face deeper into his great-grandmother’s dress. “You know where I like to go when I want to hide from Father Mark?” Becca asked softly.

  The boy shook his head into the dress.

  “You want to see?”

  He turned his head and peered at her with one eye, saw her open-hearted smile, then offered a tentative nod.

  Without touching him or forcing him to follow, Becca slowly moved into her closet-office, circled around one end of her desk, and squatted beside a hollow space on the backside of the desk, where a filing cabinet might go if the Ministry could afford one. When she looked back, she was pleased to see Jonah right behind her. She got down on her hands and knees and pointed toward the cubbyhole. He silently slid past her and into the recess, just big enough for him to fit. She pulled a couple G.I. Joe soldier dolls—one white man, one black—from a drawer at the front of the desk and handed them to Jonah.

  He looked at the two dolls then at her.

  “Do you know their names?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ll tell you one’s name if you’ll tell me the other’s.”

  He nodded, his eyes never leaving hers.

  She pointed to the white soldier in olive-green Army clothing. “This one is Zach. He’s my best friend. He helps me whenever I’m in trouble.”

  The boy nodded.

  “So what’s your soldier’s name?” She pointed to the African-American doll with a Marine’s beige uniform.

  The boy leaned toward her and whispered, “Kenny.”

  Becca whispered back, “Does Kenny help you?”

  Jonah nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “Maybe he can help Zach out. Zach needs help too sometimes.”

  Jonah nodded.

  “Can you keep an eye on Kenny and Zach in our secret hiding place while I go talk to your great-grandmother for a minute?”

  “Me-me-maw.”

  “Yes, Me-me-maw.”

  Jonah nodded. “O.K.”

  Becca still had not touched the boy, and didn’t risk it now. She smiled and stood and returned to Father Mark and Mrs. Brackett waiting in the hall.

  “Mrs. Brackett tells me that Jonah’s mother Latonya has been out-of-touch for four days.”

  “Drug addict,” Mrs. Brackett muttered.

  “And she needs help caring for Jonah till Latonya returns,” Father Mark added.

  “Just need to be sure to get him to school.” She paused, then added, “And maybe a little bit of food money.”

  “Is his father available?” Becca asked.

  “Nope,” Mrs. Brackett said with obvious disgust.

  “Latonya’s mother?”

  “In jail.”

  “No one else living with you?”

  “All alone.”

  “So why’s Jonah not in school now?”

  “Missed the bus. I don’t got no car to drive him.”

  “Mrs. Brackett is afraid that if Jonah misses too many days of school, Social Services might get involved and take him away.”

  “And his mother didn’t leave any money for food or supplies?”

  “Drugs.”

  The story was already a familiar one to Becca, less than three weeks into her job as the sole paid staff person of Ecumenical Outreach Ministries. She served as an informal liaison between area churches and the county’s welfare and social service departments. Her measly salary was paid from the outreach budgets of a cooperative of five churches, with her office (such as it was) in the church closest to the inner-city poverty that generated the most need for her services. All of the participant churches regularly received requests for assistance from people in trouble or down on their luck. Rather than turn them away empty-handed or handle each case in an ad hoc manner, they’d pooled their resources and created a staff position to help process the requests. The trouble for Becca, not to mention all the petitioners, was that there were so many requests and so little aid available, either from the churches or the government.

  Zach had heard about the job through a Div. School acquaintance and suggested it to Becca once she’d graduated and was looking for a work. While it wasn’t what she thought she wanted to do (though she didn’t really know what she wanted to do), she’d taken it for lack of better alternatives and out of curiosity. Now she was wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

  She turned to Father Mark. “I’m not sure how we can help.”

  Father Mark smiled broadly. “God will provide, Becca.”

  Becca knew it as his favorite current saying, only with the comma left out. Yes, she thought to herself, but what will Becca provide? But she said only, “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Father Mark said, “Thank you,” and turned and headed back down the hall toward his office.

  Becca led Mrs. Brackett into her cramped office, cleared the extra chair of its mound of files, and gestured for her to sit d
own. Then she herself sat down, took up her clipboard with a blank “Social Ministry Action” form, and recorded Mrs. Brackett’s answers to the standardized questions. As she wrote, she listened for the sound of Jonah behind the desk. At first she heard nothing, then she detected the sound of pencil’s or crayon’s frantic scribbling. She hoped Jonah wasn’t redecorating her floor. Then she decided it didn’t matter—the floor could use redecorating.

  It turned out that Mrs. Brackett lived alone in an older section of town, a neighborhood of three-room shacks on postage-stamp lots that was developed in the early decades of the twentieth century to house the second and third generations of freed slaves that were working as housekeepers and cooks and yardmen for the wealthy white gentry that were being spun-off by the booming tobacco industry. While these shacks were thrown up quickly (often in a weekend) and at the time had no provision for electricity or plumbing, it turned out that even the inferior materials and methods of the first quarter of the century were stronger and more durable than the slipshod mass-production of government contractors working on housing projects, as those shacks were still standing while the far newer housing projects were collapsing, their demise accelerated by crime and neglect and a shattered social structure. Many of those shacks now had rudimentary plumbing and wiring, some even had room additions and garages; but the stripped bare essence established in their creation still was evident through the upgrades.

  Mrs. Brackett’s husband had died twenty years before, and she lived on his paltry social security checks (and, maybe, a meager supplement from the cash she’d set aside from decades working as a maid and hid in a coffee can in a walled-over stovepipe or a loose panel under the dresser). She loved Jonah and wanted him to have a chance at a life better than what appeared to be his destiny, but she was also old (she claimed seventy-eight but was probably five or six years older than that) and tired of fighting her children’s and grandchildren’s battles. Still, she was afraid for the well-being of the boy. Becca could tell that reaching out to the “white folks’” church and this wet-behind-the-ears barely out of college overwhelmed blond girl was an action of last resort and little hope to her.

  Becca jotted down Mrs. Brackett’s answer to the last question, then turned the form over to its blank back and asked, “Anything else you can tell me that might help us help you?”

  Mrs. Brackett fixed her in a calm, implacable stare; and Becca felt again what she’d often felt in the last several weeks—that these people labeled as impoverished and downtrodden by her upper middle-class white society had more dignity and resilience and toughness than her comfortably fed, spiffily attired, well-educated soul would ever possess. “He different.”

  “Jonah?”

  Mrs. Brackett nodded.

  “How?”

  “He better than all this. He need to get out before it too late.”

  Becca’d borne her stare the whole time, now returned it best she could. “I don’t know that we can help with that, Mrs. Brackett; but I’ll do my best.”

  She set her clipboard on the desk and circled around behind the black woman and past the end of the desk. She squatted down and looked into the shadowed cubbyhole. There was Jonah sitting cross-legged. On his lap was the easel pad she used to give presentations to the outreach boards of her employer churches. Drawn on the pad with her magic-marker set was a primitive seascape, with what looked to be the ocean around some fish swimming, what looked to be the sky around some birds flying, a yellow sun presiding over the entire scene—except the ocean was blood red, the sky a brilliant orange; and in the seam between blood ocean and fire sky, a little stick-figure black boy bobbed, his hand outstretched to the golden sun. Soldier Zach and Marine Kenny sat off to one side, watching dutifully.

  Becca walked Jonah and his great-grandmother to the entry doors of the church’s office wing. She extended her hand and Mrs. Brackett took it this time, giving it a firm shake. Becca stooped down and opened her arms before Jonah. He paused a moment, then threw himself against her chest and wrapped his arms around her neck in a powerful hug. He finally released her and she stood. She brushed a tear from her eye and turned to Mrs. Brackett. “Can I come to your house tomorrow morning around ten?”

  Mrs. Brackett looked at her then nodded slowly.

  “Maybe I can figure some way to help you help Jonah.”

  The old black woman just stared at the young blond girl.

  Becca nodded. “See you tomorrow.” She turned to the boy. “Bye, Jonah,” she said with a smile, then headed back to her office at the far end of the hall.

  She was halfway to that office when she hesitated in mid-stride, then turned and ran toward the entrance and out into the parking lot. Mrs. Brackett and Jonah were almost to the bus stop at the corner. She overtook them, reached out and placed a wadded bill into Mrs. Brackett’s hand, then jogged back to the church entrance and on to her office. Before putting Mrs. Brackett’s form into its new manila folder, she wrote on the blank back of the sheet in underlined capital letters—HELP JONAH.