The Other Side of Divine

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

  “Actually, I was nine and a half when we first met,” Jasmine said.

  Gabrielle placed her hand on Jasmine’s head. “Close enough. That would be considered a little past eight.”

  Jasmine grinned. “Me and Miss C had a great time today.”

  “Miss C and I had a great time today,” Miss Crowe corrected.

  Jasmine rolled her head in a circular motion. “Well, whichever way, we had a great time today.” Jasmine looked at Gabrielle. “She helped me with all of my spelling words, so I’m ready to ace my test tomorrow.”

  “So you’re feeling well enough to go to school tomorrow?” Gabrielle asked. “Because if you don’t—”

  “I’m fine,” Jasmine said. “Now ask me how to spell Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi? Was that one of your words?” Gabrielle asked. “I don’t recall seeing that one on your list.”

  “No. But go on. Ask me how to spell it.”

  “Okay,” Gabrielle said as she glanced at Miss Crowe, who was also grinning like she’d eaten Tweety the bird. “Jasmine, please spell Mississippi.”

  Jasmine promptly spelled it the way Miss Crowe had shown her. She flopped down on the couch and giggled hard.

  Gabrielle placed her hand on top of Jasmine’s head. “That was good. I’ve heard people do that before. So I see you’re learning all kinds of tricks from one of the best teachers around.” Gabrielle glanced Miss Crowe’s way and winked. “Well, I’m going upstairs to change.”

  “Dinner’s ready. Miss C and I cooked,” Jasmine said.

  “Is that right? Well, I see you two have been quite busy today.”

  “May we eat in the dining room?” Jasmine said with her hands in a prayer mode. “Please, please, please.”

  “Sure,” Gabrielle said. “Why have a dining room if we’re not going to use it?”

  “Yay! I’ll set the table.” Jasmine ran toward the dining room.

  “Being around her is making me so much younger,” Miss Crowe said. “I’ll be back to my twenties at this rate. But she’s such a precious and such a beautiful child, inside and out.”

  “Thanks. And I concur. She really is, although I can’t take much credit for the terrific little girl she’s become. Her adoptive parents laid a wonderful foundation with her. I’m merely maintaining and building on that.”

  “Now don’t cut your contribution short. Jasmine has a lot of your genes running around inside of her. That child reminds me so much of you,” Miss Crowe said, shaking her head. “Especially when it comes to dancing. I’ve nicknamed her Happy Feet after that penguin in that movie.” Miss Crowe did a few tap dancing steps.

  “Well, I’m going to go and change into something more comfortable so we can have dinner in the dining room. I appreciate you so much for keeping Jasmine today. She wanted to go to school, but that shot she received yesterday caused her to have a fever. And I knew, even if I had let her go to school as she was begging for me to do, they would have sent her right back home. Besides, I don’t want to take any chances, not when it comes to her health.” Gabrielle shook her head.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’ve told you that I’m here to help out in anyway that I can,” Miss Crowe said. “It didn’t make sense for you to take off work when I’m at your disposal.”

  “But I don’t want to be imposing upon you, either.”

  Miss Crowe waved Gabrielle’s comment away. “Child, please. I was laid up for over ten years. I’ve gotten all the rest one old woman needs for at least the next ten years. I’m ready to be useful again. And being here with the two of you is the best medicine any doctor could prescribe.”

  “I don’t know why you keep calling yourself old. You’re not old,” Gabrielle said.

  “I know late fifties isn’t considered old these days, but believe me: I really am getting close to being a senior citizen—there’s no two ways about that. And in case you didn’t know, you can get an AARP card at fifty. But being here, surrounded by you and Jasmine, makes me feel young again. You can’t buy what the three of us generate. We’re three true dancers from the heart.”

  “I’ll be back in a few. I’m going to put on my Minnie Mouse shirt so then we can be the three mouseketeers.” Gabrielle went upstairs.

  Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. “I got it!” Miss Crowe yelled, mainly for Gabrielle’s benefit. She quickly made her way to the door and cracked it open about the size of her small framed body. “Yes?”

  “Good evening, miss,” the older gentleman with a small patch of white, off centered in the top of his black hair, said. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for a Ms. Gabrielle Mercedes. Is this the right house?” He looked down at the index card that trembled slightly in his hand.

  “That depends,” Miss Crowe said. “Who are you?”

  The man smiled. “My name is Benjamin. But everybody calls me Bennie.”

  “Bennie?” Miss Crowe said with a frown.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And might you possess a last name you’d care to disclose while you’re passing out your first name?” Miss Crowe gave the dressed-down gentleman (wearing light brown pants and a crisp long-sleeved white shirt, incidentally with no coat, even though it was the dead of winter) a slow, methodical once-over just in case she might need to give a police description later.

  Bennie flashed a full grin, showing that he wasn’t missing any of his teeth as far as his grin extended. “Yes, ma’am, I most certainly do. It’s—”

  “Booker,” Gabrielle said as she stepped up behind Miss Crowe and opened the door wider. She looked him dead in his eyes. “Hello”—she took a long hard swallow, one that could be heard as it went down—“Daddy.”

  Chapter 2

  I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

  —Lamentations 3:1

  “Gabrielle,” Bennie Booker said as he stood outside the door. After only mere seconds, he nodded and wiped at tears that were now falling.

  Miss Crowe looked at Gabrielle, her attempt to gauge what Gabrielle might be thinking and, in turn, what she should do, since (for now anyway) she was the only physical object separating father from daughter.

  Gabrielle took a step back from the doorway, visibly shaking now. Miss Crowe wasn’t sure whether Gabrielle’s trembling reaction was from seeing her father after all these years or from the cold, January 20th Birmingham air blasting through the still opened door.

  “Is it okay if I come in?” Bennie asked, wiping his eyes with a white handkerchief he’d taken out of his pants’ pocket.

  At first, Gabrielle said nothing. Miss Crowe was just about to politely tell him good-bye and close the door when Gabrielle placed her hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” Gabrielle said. Miss Crowe could feel the trembling in Gabrielle’s hand. “You can come in.” Gabrielle opened the door fully to her father.

  Bennie turned back and waved to a waiting cab driver. The cab immediately backed out of the driveway. Bennie stepped inside the house. Miss Crowe closed the door and Gabrielle once again took a few steps back as though she wanted to maintain a certain distance between her and her father.

  “I can’t believe this,” Bennie said with a huge grin on his face as tears continued to roll down. “Will you just look at you? Look at you. You’re all grown up. My sweet little baby girl is not a baby anymore.” He shook his head slowly as he simultaneously wiped his face with his folded handkerchief.

  “So you’re out? You’re really out?” Gabrielle said. “They released you from prison.”

  He moved his mouth from side to side a few times as though he was trying to be certain of the words he chose with a few attempts obviously not making it past the vetting process and being turned back for another. “Yeah.” He finally seemed to settle on. “I’m out. On parole, but for all that matters at this point, I’m a free man for now.” He stared hard at Gabrielle. “Wow.” He shook his head. “You look so much like . . . you look just like your moth . . . you look a lot like her.” He
nodded.

  “Dinner is ready!” Jasmine said, bursting into the foyer. “The table is set and I even put some of the food on the table.” She stopped where everyone now stood.

  Bennie looked down at Jasmine. “Oh, my! Who, pray tell, is this? Wow, you look just like—”

  “Jasmine, why don’t you go to the den and watch TV for a little bit?” Gabrielle said, turning quickly to her daughter.

  “But I thought we were about to eat.” Jasmine looked over at Bennie. “I can set another plate if you like.” Jasmine alternated her look between the man she hadn’t been introduced to yet and Gabrielle. “It’s really no trouble.”

  “Suppertime, huh?” Bennie said with a smile. “That sounds nice. It’s been forever since I’ve actually sat down at a real table—”

  “Jasmine, please. Go to the den like I told you, okay?” Gabrielle softly pressed Jasmine’s little cheeks between her hands, then kissed her lightly on her nose.

  “Okay,” Jasmine said, turning on her toes like a ballerina doing a pivot move as she left to do as Gabrielle had instructed her.

  “Miss Crowe, would you mind going with Jasmine for me? Please.”

  “I can, if you’re sure about that.”

  Gabrielle nodded.

  “Well,” Miss Crowe said, giving Bennie a stern look. “I’ll only be in the den if you need me. And don’t forget about the food. We don’t want it to get cold.”

  Gabrielle nodded again.

  Miss Crowe started making her way out of the foyer, slower than normal to ensure that her exit was the right thing for her to be doing. After all, this was the same man who had killed his wife (bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh seeming not to matter to him), in the presence of his little daughter no less, only months from turning four years old. The same man who lied to the police about what he’d done. Going as far as to slander his wife’s name and character by indicating she had a man on the side and that her secret lover was likely the culprit who’d murdered her. If they would find that man, they’d likely find their murderer. This was the same man who tried to intimidate his little girl into keeping her mouth closed about the truth she’d witnessed using the threat that she’d most assuredly be taken away and given to another family by these evil people who were merely out to trick her if she said one word.

  So in the beginning, Gabrielle became mute.

  Because of what Benjamin “Bennie” Booker had done, Gabrielle had been forced to grow up without the benefit of being cradled in the loving arms of a mother (or a father for that matter), and was mistreated by an aunt and uncle for more than fourteen years along with their four bratty children. And the one laudable out Gabrielle had going for her, the one thing that could have saved her from even more heartache—attending The Juilliard School dance division—and Cecelia Murphy, good old “Aunt Cee-Cee” had effectively managed to even steal that from her, right before kicking Gabrielle out onto the streets with no place to go.

  Because of what Benjamin Booker did, setting off a chain reaction of all that was to come, Gabrielle had gone to stay with someone who really wasn’t a friend, but more a user, named Paris Simmons. And Paris’s father was a lowlife scum who’d taken advantage of Gabrielle’s innocence, sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. Then he sat back and watched as Gabrielle was kicked out of the only place she had to live while insisting she terminate the pregnancy so it wouldn’t mess up his marriage and relationship with his three children. The honorable Alabama congressman (now ex-congressman) Lawrence Simmons who didn’t seem to care about anyone else other than himself and, in the end, his appearance to others.

  Lawrence Simmons who, upon learning that Gabrielle had not aborted their child but instead had given the baby up for adoption, wouldn’t immediately step up and do the right thing when that child was dying, in desperate need of a bone marrow donor. Oh, eventually he did the right thing (with a little push from Gabrielle). And Jasmine dancing around the house now was living proof of that today. But still . . .

  So now here stood Bennie, the man who started the whole ball rolling, a man who had been sentenced to prison and had been incarcerated for two and half decades. A man who likely had his own sympathetic tales of things he’d gone through over these past brutal years.

  But Miss Crowe didn’t really care about him. It was his actions that had brought on the afflictions he’d had to endure. However, Gabrielle . . . Gabrielle was her heart. And even though she might not have been there to protect her from Aunt Cee-Cee and the others who’d done Gabrielle wrong, today was a new day, a different day. Today she was around. And Bennie Booker had better not even think about trying any funny business.

  Not today. Not here. Not while she still had breath circulating in her body.

  Chapter 3

  Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

  —Lamentations 5:7

  “How are you?” Bennie asked Gabrielle.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are . . . absolutely beautiful.” He shook his head. “I’m standing here in complete awe. I can’t believe I had a hand in creating something so beautiful.”

  “God created me,” Gabrielle said in an icy tone.

  Bennie chuckled. “You’re right. You’re right. I just meant . . .”

  Gabrielle folded her arms. “I know what you meant.”

  “I don’t want to upset you or anything. I promise I don’t. But I’m just at a loss for words or the right words at this moment. It’s been twenty-five years.”

  Gabrielle frowned at him. “And whose fault is that?”

  Bennie nodded as he folded his hands into each other. “I know it’s all my fault. And I take full responsibility. Believe me: If I could go back in time and change things, do things all over again—”

  “But you can’t. So talking about it doesn’t mean a hill of beans at this point.”

  He nodded again. “You’re right. I can’t argue with you about any of this. I just want you to understand from my heart that I have complete remorse for what I did. I want you to know that I’m sorry. And Gabrielle, whether you believe me or not: I really did love your mother. I loved her so much. That’s what I think sent me over the edge that day. Maybe I loved her too much.”

  Gabrielle unfolded her arms and stared at him. “If that’s your kind of love then I never want to experience it.” She wiped at a few tears that were now falling. “So why are you here?”

  “You mean here or out of prison?”

  “Both.”

  “Is there somewhere you and I can go sit and talk? The old man is not as young as he used to be. And prison hasn’t been so kind to me.”

  “We were just about to sit down and eat before you came.”

  Bennie nodded. “Okay. I get it. So you’re saying that you’d like me to leave.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you. I didn’t know you were about to get out, let alone be out,” Gabrielle said. “Nobody told me. You have to forgive me, but I’m having a bit of a time wrapping my brain around all of this right now.”

  “I understand, and I’ll cut to the chase. I was released earlier today and this is the first place I came. Gabrielle, I had to come find you . . . I had to come and see my baby girl,” Bennie said.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “Do what?”

  “Don’t call me your baby girl.”

  “But you are my baby girl, Gabrielle Mercedes Booker.”

  Gabrielle let out a short, deranged chuckle. “I dropped the Booker a long time ago. I’m Gabrielle Mercedes now.”

  “Yeah, your aunt Cee-Cee wrote and told me that in one of the rare letters I got from her. It’s been lonely being away from family; you just don’t know how much. I’ve missed you, Gabrielle. I used to ask Cee-Cee to bring you to the prison for a visit, but she always had some excuse why she couldn’t. Somehow, in all the years you were living with her, she never got around to it.” Bennie walked over to the staircase and s
at down on the next to the bottom step.

  Gabrielle stayed where she was, merely turning toward him as he continued to speak. “I wrote and told Cee-Cee about a year and a half ago that there was a good chance, a mighty good chance, that I might make parole this time around. I told her I would need a place to come home to if that was to happen.”

  “Good old Aunt Cee-Cee,” Gabrielle said, stepping closer to where her father sat. “The person I ended up with after you murdered my mother.” Gabrielle practically spat the words at his dark brown, worn face.

  “Why do you say it like that? Did my sister not do right by you?”

  Gabrielle released a sinister chortle this time around. “You don’t know the half of all I’ve been through these years.” She wiped hard at tears that were making their way down her face.

  Bennie stood up and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. “Gabrielle, what did my sister do? Tell me.”

  Gabrielle pulled away from his hand and took two steps back. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you.”

  “But suffice it to say, your years with her were not pleasant. Her husband, Dennis . . . did he—”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about them, any of them, okay?” Gabrielle’s voice escalated.

  Bennie nodded as he held his hands up to calm her. “Okay. All right. I guess this is starting to make a little more sense now. I told Cee-Cee I had a good chance of being released. And during a rare time of sending back a response, she sent me a letter giving me your address saying this is where I should come if I were to ever get out. I tried calling her last year, but the number was disconnected. A letter I sent after that was returned without a forwarding address.”

  “Yeah. They were evicted from their house. I’m not sure where they’re living these days. They came here briefly. Listen, I really don’t want to talk about this right now. I don’t care about Aunt Cee-Cee or her sorry excuse for a husband or her children or grandchildren. I just don’t.” Gabrielle wrapped her arms around herself.