by Roger Bruner
“Cook now,” he announced before turning around and
opening the door to his apartment. He shut it behind him before either of us could open our mouths to say good-bye. Had he realized that Aleesha and I needed to talk, or was he simply not in the mood to put up with our silliness? Probably the latter.
“Rob looks the same during the night as he does during the day. Ugly as the soles of my feet.”
She was teasing, although nobody listening to our conversation would have known it. We’d once agreed that Rob was reasonably good-looking for someone two long generations older than us. Besides, Aleesha didn’t consider any part of her body to be ugly. Not even the bottoms of her feet. She believed in a bumper sticker that read, My body is the temple of God, and God doesn’t inhabit imperfect temples.
“So, what about …?” She pointed her head at Graham’s apartment.
Part of me was dying to tell Aleesha about my conversation with Graham, yet it seemed too personal and private. Although he hadn’t said more than a hundred words to me—maybe not half or a fourth of that—and I’d understood the words without always comprehending the meaning, I felt like he’d revealed something of himself.
I might not have understood what it was. But it was something he might not want me to share with Aleesha.
“I’m not sure whether I chipped the ice a little bit or broke the pickax trying. Either way, it’s gonna be slick going.”
Her narrowed eyes and wrinkled brow sent a clear message: “Keep trying, girl. “
I nodded and smiled. I might still have to tell her about the conversation with Graham, but I wanted to figure out what he’d been talking about first. “Now, what about Rob … and Jo?”
Aleesha looked around to make sure Jo wasn’t lurking within earshot.
“Mr. Rob was really concerned about her when we first got here. And working with her yesterday morning was apparently, uh, difficult. But he’d seen so much progress by the time she got involved in last night’s service that he assumed she’d turned the corner. He thought she’d be fine from that point on.”
“Didn’t we all! She was as enthusiastic as you and me in the van last night. She sounded like the old Betsy Jo—from before Mexico. And I heard her mumbling in Spanish when we first got back. I guess she was warming up for that Latino fellow. I hope he comes tonight.”
“Be that as it may, Mr. Rob was amazed to hear about Jo’s reaction to your nightmare. Amazed, did I say?” Aleesha chuckled. “The poor man was shocked speechless.”
I ignored her. “Does he have any idea what’s wrong with her?”
“Not exactly. But he told me she had borrowed his satellite phone for ten or fifteen minutes.”
I scratched my head. “I’d been curled up in my sleeping bag for a while when Jo came to bed, and she was quiet when she came in. I wondered what was going on.”
“So does Mr. Rob,” Aleesha said. “He said her eyes were red and raw when she brought the phone back.”
chapter thirty-four
The scent of coffee filled Graham’s apartment. That same nutty blend I’d enjoyed the morning before, though I still couldn’t figure out if it was hazelnut or southern pecan.
“Good morning,” I said to Jo as she entered the dining room. When I smiled and started to give her a hug, she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the living room. “Kim, I acted a little weird last night. I am so sorry.” “I’ve reset my wrongness counter to zero,” I said. She couldn’t have looked more baffled if I’d just sprouted eagle wings. “Whoops. I didn’t tell you that part of my experience in Santa María? That means apology accepted.”
When I opened my arms, she gave me a half-smile, and we hugged as if nothing strange had happened during the night.
“Anything you want to talk with me about, Jo?” I said when we broke apart.
Her right eye twitched a couple of times. Is that a nervous reaction to my question, Jo? Maybe not. It stopped as soon as she shook her head.
Jo, you may not want to talk, but the more you resist unburdening, the more you probably need to talk.
I didn’t waste time trying to remember whether I’d picked up that bit of wisdom from Aleesha or Mom. The two wisest women in my life so far. Present and … past.
“Did you get to call home last night?” I couldn’t think of a less conspicuous way to prompt Jo for information without sounding nosey. “We were so late leaving Red Cedar you didn’t get to use one of the office phones.”
“Uh-huh.” But not a word about the satellite phone or the call itself.
“Were your parents glad to hear from you?”
“Uh.” She spoke so softly I could barely hear her, and her response was one of those “uhs” that could have meant either “uh-huh” or “uh-uh.”
What possible reason would Mr. and Mrs. Snelling have had for not being pleased to hear from their daughter, though? Their only child, in fact. Had her mom picked last night to ream her out over the phone for coming on this trip against her wishes?
Of course, Jo had called home sometime after 10:00 p.m. Pacific time. She’d probably awakened her parents from a sound 1:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time snooze.
Maybe they had a right to be less pleased than they would have been at an earlier hour. Especially if she didn’t bother to explain about cell phone coverage and not having access to a phone at a more appropriate time.
I decided to take my inquiry one level deeper. If it didn’t yield results, I’d quit for now. “And how are the two of them?”
She didn’t answer. Not in words.
The dam holding back a potential flood of sobbing might not have broken yet, but it sprang a noticeable leak. Jo’s eyes glistened with moisture that confirmed that her parents were all or part of the problem. I was dying to find out what, but not even the best of friends could have asked anything else under those circumstances.
Had someone been in an accident? Had the house burned down? Was someone seriously ill? Had Mr. Snelling lost his job? Had Jo’s parents been …?
Had they been fighting? I’d often wondered about their relationship, especially after some of the things Mr. Snelling said—and especially what he didn’t say—when we asked his
permission to bring Jo to California.
If the Snellings had been fighting, I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to say anything. She couldn’t disguise the frightened look on her face, though. She knew I’d figured it out. Some of it, anyhow.
She stared out the window for a number of seconds. The sky’s early morning glory had yielded the stage to a layer of clouds that hid the sun completely, even though sprinkles of sunlight spotlighted the distant mountains.
Jo looked at me again. “We’d better get back to the dining room.” Her voice might have said, “Breakfast must be ready now.” But her eyes pled, “I know you care, but you can’t help. Please don’t ask anymore. “
I resisted the temptation to reveal my frustration. Instead, I let my mouth relax in a friendly smile. We walked arm-in-arm back into the dining room. Just as I’d expected, everyone was busy eating. Scrambled eggs. Mmm. Topped with cheese. Graham had also cooked a pig-load of thick-cut bacon. And a good-sized bread tray full of biscuits that had to be homemade. When had Graham found time to do all of that?
“Have a seat, girls,” Rob said. “Graham said he made these biscuits especially for the two of you. Fact is, he wouldn’t let the rest of us have any until you got here and ate your fill.”
Huh? Especially for the two of us? The two people he knew had problems? I wondered if I looked as dumbfounded as I felt.
I smiled at Graham and thanked him, but then I almost fell off my chair. He gave me a slight smile. Barely perceptible, but still a smile. Was he using those biscuits to invite Jo and me to join him in some secret society?
Or should I say a society of secret-keepers? It seemed as if the three of us wouldn’t admit our problems even to one another, and yet we seemed destined to share at least some
of one an
other’s pain.
I don’t know if Dad or Rob paid attention to what was going on, but Aleesha did.
“You have a good talk with Jo?” she asked quietly while we looked for a starting point in our first unit of the day.
I spent a couple of minutes pondering my answer.
“Not a good talk?”
I must have given her a defensive look.
“You groaned. That’s why I assumed things didn’t go well.”
Oh.
“Sorry about that,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “That’s because this room is the worst one yet.” Aleesha looked satisfied with my explanation. And why not? I’d told her the truth—as far as it went.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “Not anything specific.”
I felt funny talking about Jo. Like I was breaking a confidence by admitting we’d even had a conversation. But Aleesha had seen Jo pull me out of the dining room to talk about something, so I didn’t fret long.
I decided not to say anything about the Snellings, though.
“She apologized about last night,” I said.
“She apologized to me after breakfast, too. Maybe she’d worn herself out too much to deal sanely with your nightmare.”
“Sure.” Her suggestion sounded better than the whole truth. That being upset about her parents had worn her out. And probably kept her from sleeping.
But why would one call affect her so severely? Had the Snellings been arguing while they were on the phone with Jo? I couldn’t imagine Mr. Snelling doing that, but Jo’s mother … she might not have given him any choice.
“Aleesha,” I said about the time we’d cleared the room halfway, “maybe I should work with Jo this afternoon. You know, to see if I can learn more.”
She nodded. “I was going to suggest that.”
“Good. I’ll—”
“And would you consider telling her about your guilt problem? She might be more willing to confide in you if you confide in her first.”
I could feel my face reddening. “I hadn’t thought about it.” I wasn’t sure I wanted Jo to know the details, but trying to keep things from her was a never-ending juggling act. Besides, Aleesha might be right. Maybe one confession would lead to another.
“Are you afraid she’ll flake out and tell Mr. Scott?” I knew I moaned that time. “She might.” Did I dare to take that chance?
“There are worse things than your dad finding out, you know. As well as you two get along now, I think he can handle it.”
Aleesha and I couldn’t have been more completely on opposite ends of that opinion.
I dumped a handful of unused nails into an empty bucket and listened to their pings ring like gunshots. Then I climbed up on a sawhorse that reminded me of a wooden rocking horse I’d had as a kid. And of the mess-tent table supports in Santa María.
I looked at Aleesha. She was laughing her head off.
And why not? She had enough padding to sit on a sawhorse for hours without getting sore and enough sense not to do it.
“So how do I beat this guilt?” I asked. I faked a smile and feigned lightheartedness. “Share some of your street smarts on the subject, and I’ll pay double your normal rates.”
I didn’t fool Aleesha any more than I fooled myself. She knew better than to take my cheerfulness at face value.
She didn’t usually wait for an invitation to dispense free advice, but she’d apparently been holding back a sermon this
time. I just hadn’t realized it.
“Girl,” she said, “you’ve come to the right place.”
“To the source of all street wisdom?”
I didn’t expect anything substantial or earth shattering. Not now. If Aleesha had known how to get rid of my guilt, she would’ve told me the cure long before now. If anything, she’d made a conscious effort to keep reminding me of it.
“Uh-uh, girl. God is the source of all wisdom—period—and He doesn’t take kindly to competitors. Not even when they’re ultra-talented drama and theater majors who specialize in my kind of modesty.”
I cackled. Aleesha wasn’t conceited. Not really. But sometimes I had to remind myself of that. She was just, uh, extremely conscious of how special she was and not the least shy about making sure other people knew it, too.
“I meant Red Cedar is the right place for you to be. I don’t think God brought you here just to help complete this hostel.”
I nodded and uh-huh-ed before responding. “He must have meant for me—for all of us—to touch lives in the prison ministry, too.”
“I’m not disagreeing, but I believe God has plans for helping you deal with that Season of Pebbles you’re going through. You’ve been suffering grief. Guilt. Fatigue. Nightmares. Now don’t go getting paranoid and start looking for a new problem under every rock in your path. Fact is, though, more pebbles may lie in your path, and God may not plan to lead you to victory quite yet. But maybe it’ll happen here.”
My sigh could have started a tsunami. “I sometimes think God decided to go bowling and positioned me as the headpin.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
I thought I did, but Aleesha seemed determined to set my thinking straight—fast.
She shook her head. I could tell from her expression that
the thoughts boiling in her brain were about to steam their way out to me. Although I wasn’t in a mood to be preached to, maybe God could use one of Aleesha’s sermons to alter my view of the circumstances.
“So maybe it’s the devil who’s bowling,” I said. “Aren’t you going to remind me that a father doesn’t give his children bad gifts? And neither does God.”
“He’s the giver of every good and perfect gift,” Aleesha said with the power and conviction she’d undoubtedly used in preaching to our teammates in Santa María. “And nothing bad comes from Him. Our hope is in Him. Remember what the apostle Paul said? Everything eventually works for good to believers who stay in the center of God’s will. That’s the Aleesha Jefferson translation of Romans 8:28.”
I nodded enthusiastically. I’d drawn encouragement from that verse in the past, but I needed to believe it even more now. I couldn’t let my guilt drive me over the edge. And yet could I stop it?
chapter thirty-five
Working with Jo that afternoon might not have provided any useful insights—we rarely spoke, in fact—but we got a lot done. At first, I was afraid my fatigue might return, but I didn’t dwell on it. Aleesha’s little sermon had warned me not to give in to the power of suggestion.
Nonetheless, after the first twenty minutes of strenuous effort, I was huffing and puffing, ready to collapse. Rob had told me to take a break whenever I needed one and not to worry about it. Although I knew he was right, I felt funny about it.
But I did it anyhow. Seated with my back against a wall, I lifted a bottle of cold water to my lips.
I watched Jo for a couple of minutes while she worked around me. No wonder I already felt worn out. I’d been trying to march to her beat, but she wasn’t marching. She was running so fast nobody could have kept up. Not even Anjelita.
I’d never thought of Jo as a high-voltage gal. If anything, I’d considered her a tad lazy. But that word didn’t fit her now. Had she somehow “caught” the energy I’d lost? As silly as it sounded, that was the best explanation I could come up with.
When I got up again, I felt better. I did what I should have done all along: I worked at my own pace. That not only kept me productive for the next three hours without pooping out, it also gave me a chance to observe my old friend more closely.
Why and how had she become this proverbial house on fire?
I got my first clue when I looked at her mouth. Maybe I wasn’t good at interpreting body language, but my vision was
20/20—corrected with contacts—and I could see her gritting her teeth.
What did that signify, though? Determination? Maybe. I’d have to ask Aleesha the next time she and I were alone.
Even if I was right, though, why was Jo so determined? We weren’t on a do-or-die schedule like completing the villagers’ houses before the start of the rainy season.
And we weren’t competing with Rob, Dad, and Aleesha, either. I didn’t count Graham in the noncompetition because he didn’t participate in construction activities. Even if he had, he took his time doing everything—not just in responding to repeated efforts to get him to talk.
Then I noticed Jo’s eyes. The expression “shooting daggers” came to mind. She looked like she wanted to mutilate and destroy every piece of trash she picked up. She threw unused nails into the galvanized bucket, knocking it over several times.
I don’t know where she got the momentum to do that. What had sounded like single gunshots when I dropped nails in the bucket resembled semiautomatic fire the way she propelled them. I made a point of looking at the bucket when Rob came by to empty it. It would never hold a liquid again.
And the usable leftover materials? By the time Jo dragged a piece of perfectly good plywood to the wheelbarrow in the doorway, she splintered the sides and knocked two corners off three times out of four.
Halfway through the afternoon, she began muttering. I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t even looking in my direction. I maneuvered a little closer without being overly conspicuous.
She kept her volume low, but I could pick out an occasional word. Like mother, rotten, and deserted. Before long, her muttering turned into a growl of sorts. I never saw her
take a breath, but the growls continued incessantly—like an emergency siren.
I wanted to help her, but …
“Jo?” She turned to look at me, but she didn’t stop moving. After watching her purposely throw a couple of good tools into the trash pile, I almost chickened out of saying anything.
“Yeah?”
Hmm. Not the most receptive response she could have given. Especially since it contained more than a small hint of hostility.
She must have seen me draw back defensively. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not in the best of moods.”
I wasn’t about to tease her by saying, “I could tell.” I could have done that with Aleesha under similar circumstances, but never with Jo. I was just glad I wasn’t the one who’d upset her.
