by Ashley Smith
Brian closed the cabinets now and stepped back. I guess nothing in there appealed to him. I couldn’t have eaten right then for a million dollars.
“What do you want to read?” he asked.
“It’s just a book,” I said, pointing toward the hallway. “It’s back in my room.”
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah, sure.” He’s starting to let me do what I want. This is very, very good.
I walked back across the living room, with Brian following me again, passing his red jacket on the small bench in the hallway on the way into my bedroom. And he’s following me around the house like he’s my guest or something and I’m the host. Just let it stay this way, God. Let’s keep going with this.
I went over to the dresser in front of the windows and grabbed The Purpose-Driven Life and my Bible from out of my wicker basket. Those two books always sat on the top. The bright light from my closet was enough to read by, so I didn’t bother with the gold lamp sitting on the dresser next to the basket. I just sat down with my books on the end of the bed, on the side closest to the windows. And Brian sat down right next to me.
For a minute I didn’t know what to think about him sitting so close. I didn’t feel threatened. I didn’t think there was anything like rape going through his mind. He had already taped and tied me up and carried me across the hall, and he was a lot closer to me then than he was now. And with the whole shower thing, I thought he probably would’ve raped me by now if he was going to do that. I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t as worried about it right this minute.
Actually, I thought maybe he was sitting with me like this because he might be starting to trust me. Or because he felt closer to me after everything I had told him in the bathroom. Or because he just felt sad. He still seemed very toned down—as he said, he had had a long day—and who knew what was going through his mind? I had no idea where he had been, what he had done. Whatever was happening, something was changing between us—that seemed clear.
I took my Bible—the black leather one from my grandpa—out from underneath my book and laid it on the bed. Then I opened up my Purpose-Driven Life on my lap. I was using a paper bookmark Paige had colored at Sunday school. It read “Jesus is coming again!” There was a big cross on it that she had colored brown. The rest of the bookmark was yellow and green and blue and red and purple and orange. Paige had used scissors to cut a fringe all around the edges, and right at the cross she had almost cut the bookmark in two.
I turned in my book now to where the marker was—I was on Day 32, “Using What God Gave You”—and I looked over at Brian. Did he see what the marker said about Jesus? Maybe he would think about Jesus and feel some hope.
“Do you want to hear it?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “You can read it out loud.”
So I began.
16 what do you think mine is?
This was not my first time to read The Purpose-Driven Life. I had tried twice before, the first time being last summer, right after I started using ice again. I had been out of recovery for a few months. Finally, I had saved enough money cleaning houses to buy this piece of junk for a car—not the same one I had now—so I could go see Paige back in Augusta. And as soon as I got there, I went right back to the old crowd. “I’m not crazy anymore, you guys!” I told them. But my weight was bothering me again, and I felt an urge to get messed up. No big deal, I thought. I could control it now. And then my old boyfriend, John, was back and I wanted to get closer to him, so I just went back to doing what we used to do. Not as much as before. And I snorted—I didn’t hot rail. But it just wasn’t a good thing at all.
On one of those trips home, I stopped by my step-dad’s place. Even though my mom was remarried to another man now, my step-dad was still very important in my life. He still lived in the same house where I had spent my teenage years. He was the father of my brother and sister. I loved him. We were in touch often, and I still went to see him. When I stopped by this one time, I saw a copy of The Purpose-Driven Life out on the coffee table—Aunt Kim had given it to him for Father’s Day.
“Are you reading this?” I asked him. Something about the book just drew me, which was a big deal because I didn’t read books much then.
“No,” he said, so I told him I would take it home with me.
Right away I went back to Atlanta—I had moved out of my mom’s place and into my first apartment—and I started reading. But after doing seventeen days of a chapter-a-day, I started missing days and trying to pick back up where I left off. “Oh, just forget it,” I thought. “I’m not doing this right now. This is not the way the book is supposed to be read. I’ll do it later.” That was July.
Then the guy from Augusta—whose pants were left hanging in my closet for Brian Nichols—moved up and started sharing my apartment with me. I was doing a lot of ice then, but I started the book again in the fall, maybe in September. And I actually made it through all forty chapters. I was probably high or confused a lot of the time I was reading, but I fought to hang onto God too. It was like I was trying to have it both ways, keeping God over here and the drugs over there. I would read The Purpose-Driven Life and then go do drugs up my nose. God must’ve been looking at me, going, “What a hypocrite!” Anyway, I read the whole book, and it might have opened up some doors in my thinking; but it didn’t really register with me then. Once I finished it, I sent the book to John.
Then came February 7, with God pounding at my door, saying, “Ashley, you can stop; I’m here,” and Satan whispering in my ear, “It’s okay.” And all of the back and forth with that guy on the phone. Let him answer. Don’t let him answer. Just, basically, spiritual warfare, as Brian Nichols said. As Aunt Kim said. God and Satan fighting. The drugs had a hold on me, and something had to be done.
So now I was all the way to Day 32 in my book, and since I was about to do today’s chapter, I was counting it as if I hadn’t missed a day yet. I started reading to Brian while we were sitting on my bed, beginning with the Bible verse at the head of the chapter “Using What God Gave You”:
“ ‘Since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be. Romans 12:5.’ ”
Then:
“ ‘What you are is God’s gift to you; what you do with yourself is your gift to God. Danish proverb.’ ”
Then I read the first page of the chapter:
“‘God deserves your best. He shaped you for a purpose, and he expects you to make the most of what you have been given. He doesn’t want you to worry about or covet abilities you don’t have. Instead he wants you to focus on talents he has given you to use. When you attempt to serve God in ways you’re not shaped to serve, it feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s frustrating and produces limited results. It also wastes your time, your talent, and your energy. The best use of your life is to serve God out of your shape. To do this you must discover your shape, learn to accept and enjoy it, and then develop it to its fullest potential.’ ”
“Stop,” Brian said suddenly. I looked over at him; I was about to turn the page. “Read that again.”
This must be speaking to him. He’s got some religious background, and if he’s anything like me, he’s fighting for it right now. God, you just speak to him right here.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll read it again.” So I started: “ ‘God deserves your best,’ ” and I reread the rest of that first page.
Brian was rubbing his hands over his knees now. “So,” he said, “what do you think your purpose is?” This is interesting. He wanted me to read it again. Now he wants to talk?
“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I think it’s to serve others, help others. And to serve God—you know, be his servant and spread his Word.”
All right, if he wants to have a discussion, I might as well ask him too. “What do you think?” I asked, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He paused. T
hen he answered in that low tone. “I think it’s to talk to people and tell them about what’s happened to you.” Wait, ishe telling me my purpose—what he thinks I should do? He sure doesn’t know me that well to be telling me my purpose.
But then I thought, “Maybe there’s something to what he said. I mean, I’ve been doing that all night—talking to him and telling him what’s happened to me.”
Then he asked, “What do you think mine is?” Okay. He told me my purpose, so now I get to tell him his. This is really just incredible.
“I don’t know,” I said. Was I about to say this? Yes. I had to say this. “Maybe it’s to minister to people in prison.” I waited. He was quiet. I could hear him breathing. His hands were still.
Nothing for a few seconds. Then almost a whisper. “What do you think I should do?” he asked.
I could see he was looking at the floor. Okay, God. This is it. I’m telling him. This is an open door. Help me just say it all straight. Help me say it right. This is your thing right here.
“Look,” I said, putting the book aside and turning to him, “you’ve got to turn yourself in. You’ve got to stop running. You’ve got to pay for what you did. You killed some people. You’ve got to pay for that.”
Brian was still looking down.
“You know,” I continued, “I did a bunch of drugs—I’m an addict. And now I don’t have Paige with me. So I’m paying for my mistakes. I used ice because I was scared to death after Mack died. I wasn’t big enough to face the situation. So I used ice, and now I don’t have my little girl. I’m paying. We all have to pay.”
He wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t responding at all. Is he getting this? Is he angry? Is this too much? But I felt bold right then. Like I could keep talking and say what was on my heart. He had to pay, but I wanted him to have some hope too. Without hope he might not turn himself in. So I just kept going with it.
“And, you know, I’m saying all that about having to pay, and we do have to pay for what we do. I mean, when we take an action, we’re accepting responsibility for that action. But God also forgives us. The Bible says we can come to him—you know, come to our heavenly Father and ask and really mean it—and he’ll forgive us our sins. No matter what you’ve done, it’s like, God can still forgive you. You’ve got to believe that.”
I was thinking back to a Bible verse I had read once about God being a father to the fatherless. There were all those years I didn’t have my daddy, but when I read that verse, I thought, “Look, here’s the Father I need.” And I heard God say to me then, “I love you, Ashley. I’ve forgiven you. I’ve been knocking at your door for a long time.”
Looking down at my hands in my lap now, I wanted to take things with Brian a little further. I wanted to equalize things between us—to get him to see that we were the same in God’s eyes. He had to see in his mind, “She’s the same as me,” so he could get this point right here.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and closed my eyes, and I tried to remember how I had heard Aunt Kim say this; she’d said it to me so many times, I almost felt as if her words were coming out of me. God, help me say this right.
“I mean, what I understand is that sin is sin,” I said. “God’s looking at it all the same way. The world may not see it all the same way, but God does. He doesn’t say, like, ‘Okay, you can’t go out and kill people, but it’s fine if you come over here and lie to your wife.’ Do you see what I’m saying? What you’ve done —I mean, yes, it’s really terrible, and I know firsthand because someone killed my husband —and you’ve got to pay. But to God it’s no different than what I’ve done by lying to my family or doing drugs or stealing from a department store or cheating on my boyfriend. It’s no different, dude. Not to God. And if he can forgive me, he can forgive you.”
Was he getting it? Did I say all of that right? He just had to see there was some hope. Even if he was locked up forever, there was hope. How could I get it across better?
I remembered something one of the women had told me at recovery. I was doing my fifth step with her: you had to admit your wrongs to another person. And after I’d been talking with her one day in the house after a meeting, she said, “You sound to me like you’re trying to be perfect for your family, but you know, you can’t be perfect. You’ll never be perfect.” Then she said something I would never forget. And I said it to Brian now.
“If God wanted us to be perfect, Brian, he would’ve put us up there on that cross instead of Jesus.” I was pointing at the ceiling now, trying to get him to see what I was seeing. “Look, I’m not perfect. If I was perfect, I’d be Jesus himself. God knows we’re not perfect—we’re sinners. That doesn’t mean we don’t pay for what we’ve done and try to change and make things right. But it means we need forgiveness. And we’ve got to ask God for it. We can ask him, and he’ll give it to us.”
I had no idea how Brian was taking any of this. He could’ve been thinking, “Look, I just wish you’d shut up, okay?” But I didn’t think that was it. I was facing him now on the bed. He wasn’t looking at me—he was looking straight ahead at my tall dresser with that picture of Paige on it—but there was something about the way he was listening as I talked: He would look down, then look back up at the dresser, then down at his hands in his lap. I just thought he was with me—it seemed like his mind was working. He wasn’t all glazed over as if he had checked out or something. He didn’t look mad. Maybe he was—I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was going to keep working hard to get through to this guy. I was leaving to go see Paige in the morning. I was walking out of this apartment at 9:30, and he had to turn himself in and stop hurting people.
“Look, you never know what God might have for you to do in prison,” I said, trying to go back to what he asked about his purpose. “You don’t know what could happen for you in there. My boyfriend in Augusta—he and I were strung out on ice together and doing all that crazy stuff; and he did all kinds of bad things. Illegal things. And now he’s locked up for it. He’s paying for what he did. But, you know, he’s been starting to write me these letters saying he’s sorry for what he did and how God is working in his life now. And to me he sounds like a totally different person. So, you know what? There’s hope. Wherever you are, there’s hope. I mean, I’m seeing it right now happen for someone I know.”
At that moment Brian stood up. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at me. Just stared straight ahead like he was looking right through that dresser, right through the wall. Maybe I’ve pushed this too far. I tried to think back over what all I had just said to him. I was pretty tough. He asked me what I thought he should do, and I told him. I didn’t hold back. I thought it was okay, God. I was just going with it. Trying to give this guy some hope so he would have the guts to do the right thing. I really hoped I hadn’t just blown what God was trying to do in here. He’s got to turn himself in. There’s no other option. Not any good one.
Looking up at Brian now, I couldn’t read him. Couldn’t read him at all. All I had to go on was his profile. I couldn’t see his eyes. He just stood there. Not moving. So I waited. What’s he going to do?
Then he turned and walked out of the room.
17 learning me
I learned forward on the bed to see where he was going. He was walking across the hall to the bathroom. What’s he doing? Those guns are in there.
Standing up now, I moved toward my bedroom door so I could watch him. He was bent down over the counter near those lines. Then I heard that inhale again; he had snorted another one. Well, God, you’ve kept him from acting crazy on that stuff till now, so could you give me another break and keep him chilled out this time too? For a beginner, two of those lines seemed like a whole lot to be doing.
“Hey,” Brian said, standing up and turning toward the door to look at me across the hall. “Come in here.”
I was not looking forward to this. I hated that those drugs were in there, and I hated that he was doing them again. But I walked across the hall to the bathroom as he
asked and stood in the doorway.
“I just want you to know something,” he said, sniffing a little to get the rest of the ice up his nose. He turned and faced me in that tight tee shirt and those high waters as if he was about to come at me for a tackle.
“Yeah,” I said, “what?”
“You know, I’m still in control here.”
He just stood there looking at me. I guessed he was waiting for my response.
“Okay,” I answered him. “That’s fine.” Yeah right, dude. If you’re still in control, then why are you following me around my house and asking me to use my washing machine? You’re supposed to be holding me hostage here, and you’re going around asking me for stuff. But, sure, you can be in control if you want.
As I saw it, he could try and convince himself all night that he was still in control. I had no problem with that. Fine. I’d agree with him. Go on. I’ll say whatever you want to hear. He just wasn’t going to convince me so easily. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. He was a big guy, and for all I knew he could turn on a dime and start sticking those guns up in my face again. But the thing was, now I saw who really was in control. And it wasn’t Brian Nichols. It wasn’t me, either. It was God.
I stepped back into the hall to get out of his way as he walked by me, and I saw my clogs on the floor near the bench where his red jacket was lying. He must’ve put my shoes there; I had no idea why. My cigarettes, the lighter, and the ashtray were over on the counter in the bathroom, so I went and grabbed those quickly. Then I followed Brian into the living room.
