She turns to the Mercedes man. “You, you rascal, you get out of here.”
“This is my corner, nun lady.”
She doesn’t flinch. “No. You’d like it to be your corner. I’m telling you, get in that dang sleazemobile and scram!”
“And if I don’t?”
Her pale, wrinkled skin reddens, and she jerks her head toward Ezekiel. “Tell him what will happen, Zeke.”
“She took in Knoxie Dulaney when his grandmother died. Practically raised him.”
“Shoot.”
“Yeah, man. You’d better get outta here.”
The man holds a finger up to his lips.
Sister J points to him. “My corner. You got that?”
He steps into the car, shuts the door, and leans out the window. “How could a nun raise a devil like Knox Dulaney?” He drives off slowly, not in the scraping peel I expected.
“Go home, Zeke,” the nun says. “You’re better than this bull.” And she kisses his cheek. She whispers something in his ear, and he shakes his head, smiles, then shuffles away.
I finally clamber out and Jace waves me over.
I run toward them. “Mercy! Are you okay?”
Jace whooshes out some relief.
I turn to the heroic nun. “Thank you so much!”
“No big deal.” She waves a chapped, man-sized hand.
“Was that guy really dangerous?”
“Who, Zeke? No. He’s just stuck. He’s not such a rascal once he knows you. Now that other guy, I don’t know who the heck he is. D’you see those Florida plates? His corner! His corner, my rear end!”
“Thank you, sister,” Jace says. “I’d like to say I could have handled it, but that was way out of my league.”
“Frish, but this place is out of most people’s. Never mind that.”
Frish?
“I’m Sister Jerusha.”
“Jace Curridge.”
“Heather.”
Her speech hails from a more northerly location than Baltimore. Sounds like it grew up in the Bronx or someplace once upon a time, but I’m no expert on these things. And it kind of explains a nun using the word bull. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t expect that.
Jace shoves his hands in his pockets. “Where did you come from? It seemed like you appeared from nowhere.”
Sister Jerusha tilts her head to the left and points to a decrepit old hotel across the street. “There. I was almost home from visiting with one of my ex-clients when I saw what was going on. I was just about to go inside when I heard ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ coming out of your car. Frish, but I always loved that song.”
Frish?
“Then I saw Zeke talkin’ smack, so I waited a minute until that Florida boy pulled up. I may be sixty-five years old, but these boots are still made for walkin’, if you know what I mean.”
“You live there?” I ask.
“Run the place, doll.”
A sign above the aluminum-framed glass doors reads “The . . . Hotel.” The original name is covered over in electric blue paint.
“What do you do there?”
“What don’t we do there is the better question. Meals—three a day. A nurse comes in once a week. Showers. Food pantry. Clothing center. Fourth floor we use for recovering addicts. Displaced women whether prostitutes or battered women—third floor. Families transitioning from homelessness—second floor. And then there’s the big room where guys hang out during the day and have a meal or come in off the street on cold nights. We open that up when it hits below thirty-two degrees. Otherwise it’s up to them to find shelter. City rules.”
So she’s given this spiel, what, at least a thousand times?
“Come on over and I’ll fix you a cup of tea. I’m sure you could use something to calm your nerves after those thugs tried to put the make on you.”
I look at Jace. It’s late.
But he’s all over it. “Good idea. If you don’t mind.”
“ ’Course not. Hold on, just let me tell Jaleel inside you’re leaving your truck here for a little while.”
She walks into the store.
Jace turns to me and blows out a whistle. “I pictured a bullet in my head more than once.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was just about to dial 911 when the nun came running over.”
“She’s unbelievable, isn’t she?”
“How tall do you think she is?”
“At least six-two.”
“No wonder they listen to her.”
The bell on the convenience store’s door clangs against the glass. Sister Jerusha flies through like a bat. “It’s all okay. Just leave that thing right there and follow me.” Her glance slides along the Suburban. “Good Lord, that truck’s a monster.”
We cross the street, and she shoves a key into the lock of the double doors. “We lock up at nine in good weather. Plus, that’s the curfew for our residents unless they have a work pass.” She ushers us into a large room with pink-and-salmon-colored checkerboard floor tiling, strips of fluorescent overhead lighting, square tables, and chrome chairs. A long table stretches across the back of the room, presumably where the food is brought during meals, but I can’t be sure. A desk sits perpendicular to the door, and an African-American man who must weigh four hundred pounds, with a head bigger than a Halloween pumpkin, a long thin nose, and one gold chain with a crucifix hanging around his forty-inch neck, says, “Good evening, Sistah J.”
“Mo, this is . . . frish, but I already forgot your names, now, didn’t I?”
Jace shakes his hand. “Jace Curridge. This is my wife, Heather.”
Mo’s hand swallows Jace’s, and all I can think is, “Don’t crush that hand! It makes lots of money!”
Pathetic but true.
Sister Jerusha tucks in a wisp of gray hair that escaped her veil. “What do you know about that rascal with the Florida plates? Big black muscle Mercedes?”
Mo leans back in the office chair, and I pray the springs hold. “Knoxie brought him on. Some distant cousin on his mother’s side.”
The hardened face of the nun softens for a second. “I don’t like him.”
“If he’s working for Knoxie, he’s not supposed to be likable.”
“Have you seen Knox lately?”
Mo shakes his head. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“Don’t talk about my godchild like that, doll.”
“Godchild or not, Sister J, he deserves more than a name like that.”
Sister Jerusha turns to us. “Knox went south. I tried, but what can you do? When his grandmother passed away, he was already fifteen. I was too little, too late.”
Mo rolls his eyes. “You was a lot too late. He was already bad seed, and I should know.” He taps the desk. “So you giving these folks the fifty-cent tour?”
“Heck yeah. It’s payment for me saving their lives!” She laughs. Her smile blesses us with a loveliness previously unseen. Sister Jerusha was actually a beautiful woman in her day, I’ll bet, very big but very beautiful. “Follow me. We’ll start right here.” She sweeps a hand around the room, empty except for two men in sweat suits filling out paperwork or something. Hard to tell.
“This room is a hodgepodge of scrap. The floor in these lovely designer shades came from the Dumpster at Color Tile, and the paint from the Dumpster at Lowe’s.”
Hmm. “Not a bad shade of blue.”
“I know. Lucky for us.”
“Is that right? You get a lot of stuff from Dumpsters?” Jace.
“You bet. We haven’t been Dumpstering enough lately. But what can you do? I only have so much time in the twenty-four hours the good Lord gives me each day. You wouldn’t believe the things you can find out by the malls, though. We’re thinking of selling them on eBay to raise money for operational expenses.”
She laughs. So do we.
“I’m serious, doll.”
“What about government funding?” Jace asks.
She pushes through a swinging door,
and we find ourselves in the kitchen. “Not a dime. We’re privately funded.” She is proud of that. “We’re pretty much the last stop on the line for a lot of our clients.”
Clients.
“Yep. We’re here when all the principalities and powers have failed them and only Jesus’ll do. God’s Spirit keeps us humming.”
The kitchen needs a good scrubbing. The stainless steel worktable is covered with crates of broccoli and some canned goods. The industrial stove . . . well, let’s hope the Health Department doesn’t inspect the place anytime soon.
“Kitchen. As I said, three meals a day, seven days a week. In the past ten years we’ve served over two million meals.”
“Is that right?” Jace gazes at the Peg-Board holding colanders, spatulas, and other utensils. He’s a gadget guy—can actually deep-fry a turkey if you please. “All that from right here?”
“The Christmas and Thanksgiving meals have become their own entity. Lots of volunteers during those times. And believe me, we’ll take whatever we can get whenever we can get it. A lot of people doing what we do get all high and mighty about the holiday dogooders. Not us! No sirree. If you show up, we’ll put you to work, no questions asked.”
“Where do you get that kind of money for food?” Jace.
“Almost all our food is donated. We don’t buy anything except food for the holiday meals. Got to have turkey and dressing for the holiday meals—five thousand people we feed that day in four shifts. I make the stuffing myself. And I make a good stuffing. My mother’s recipe, God rest her.”
I readjust my purse on my shoulder. “Restaurants and stores donate?”
“You bet. It can get a little lean some days, and we have to do a lot of soup, crazy soup, and then some days there’s caviar. It’s a crazy way to run a place. Anyway”—she points to a doorway—“that’s my office and my quarters back there. Nothing to sneeze over. Not even worth the steps it takes to get over there. Unless, of course, you’re a collector of crucifixes like me or you have a thing for duct-taped recliners.”
How could we resist a combination like that?
We head back out to the main room.
Depression hangs like an ocher fog. The plaster is so old the walls buckle and bubble and crack, and somehow sadness has oozed like black mold into those crevices to stay. I guess there’s only so much hope, so much sweat that can keep it from taking over completely.
Sister J ambles over to a corner where a Bunn coffeemaker rests on a card table. “I’d marry this thing if I wasn’t already married to Jesus.” She laughs at her own joke. “It was donated by Jack Billing, who owns Baltimore Coffee. Boiling hot water anytime you want it. How about that tea?”
We nod and she plucks some chipped mugs from a nearby shelf, mine celebrating 200 Years! Bicentennial USA! thirty years too late, and Jace’s apparently a year-round tribute to Kwanzaa.
As she fixes our cups, she rambles on about all of the refurbishment that has taken place over the years, how the Hotel looks like Buckingham Palace compared to what it was when they held hands out front, praying to the Spirit for strength and declaring that redemption had come to this neighborhood. I had no idea nuns could be so spiritual. Who ever heard such talk?
Finally we sit down at one of the tables in the now-empty room.
“We’re a Catholic Worker community.”
“Dorothy Day,” Jace.
She nods, brows raised. “You bet. You’ve heard of her?”
“Big time.” He turns to me. “The Catholic Worker movement started in the Depression, hon.”
“Some people call us leftist crazies because we hate war.” Sister Jerusha barks out a laugh, then reaches into her pocket and draws out a white hankie she begins to fumble. “We call ourselves a ministry of presence. The first step is to be here, to be present. So anytime anybody wants to come in and just hang out with the clients in the main room, we relish that. You don’t have to work your fingers to the bone in the kitchen, although we can always use an extra pair of hands. Our first step is to just be around.”
“Interesting.” Jace looks up at the ceiling. “Need some new tiles there.”
“Heck, yeah. We need a new administrator if you ask me. I can only get so excited about facilities and fund-raising.” She points to a set of steps to the right of where we came in. The newel post is long gone, but with some rubbed-down wooden carving and a bit of gingerbread, it’s easy to tell it was once a hotel staircase. “I love being with the people. That’s my thing, getting into their heads, seeing what’s in their hearts, stealing them back from the devil. Ha! Anyway, upstairs it’s like I told you. Getting late, so I won’t take you up there.”
“And you’ve been here ten years?” Jace asks.
“Eleven in October. We’ve also got the food pantry and clothing ministry like I said, around the corner in a warehouse. Plus, people can do laundry there. Got a phone there by Mo’s desk for clients to use. We do a lot for the working poor too.”
The working poor?
“Lot of ’em can’t afford to install a phone line, so they can use this one. We try to provide those little things most people have learned to take for granted. Frish, but it’s hard to get a good job if your clothes aren’t clean, isn’t it?”
“What about classes and job training?” Jace asks.
“Lots of that with the families in transition and our former street people upstairs. But as far as the homeless gang that comes in for meals most days, well, remember, we’re the last stop on the line. We can only give them food and respect in exchange for a little bit of nothing. A lot of them don’t want to be helped other than that, and God forbid we shove them aside because of it. A ministry of presence is what we do. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
I brighten. “And who knows what God might do in their lives in the future?”
Sister Jerusha shakes her head. “Oh, doll, I wish I had that kind of optimism left. Most of the downstairs folk die of overdoses or exposure or AIDS or whatnot. As I keep saying . . . last stop on the line. But somebody’s got to be around for the least of the least.”
“Thank you for the tour.” Jace drains his cup, then stands up. “It’s late, and we don’t want to keep you.”
“Thanks for coming over. I love showing people the place. And we can always use any help anybody’s willing to give. Time is always of the most value. Money only goes so far.”
She walks us to the door. A loud knock vibrates the aluminum frame. Sister Jerusha peers through the glass, shakes her head as she twists the bolt and opens the door.
A loud, shrill voice gushes over us like ice water.
“Sister J, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be late. I waited for the bus for over an hour.”
“Don’t lie to me, Krista. I can smell your breath. You know the rules.”
She’s seven months pregnant if she’s a day.
“But I swear I’m telling the truth.”
“Out. Back out there. Come back at eight for breakfast, and we’ll talk then.”
“Please don’t send me out there.”
“This is the fourth time, Krista.” She turns to Mo. “Right, Mo? Four times.”
“She’s right. Now you know I can’t let you by this desk, so come back in the morning.”
Krista begins twisting a thread of expletives so foul even Jace raises a brow. Sister J and Mo remain like stone.
Mo stands to his feet. “Do I have to escort you out?”
Krista flips him the bird and backs out. “I ain’t never coming back here. You love your rules more than you love people!” More cankered words and a jabbing finger at Mo. “You are no brother to me, sir!”
The door shuts her out.
We turn to face the pair of them. “Wow,” I say.
“Will she be back?” Jace.
Mo sits back down. “Shoot, yeah. If not tomorrow, then the next day. They almost always come back. She’s not herself right now. Krista’s not all that bad when she’s not strung out. In fact,
she’s downright sweet. You all be careful driving home.”
As we swing through the door, I hear Sister Jerusha say to Mo, “Bread delivery will be a little late in the morning. Is the nurse coming?”
And we are already forgotten.
We practically run to the car, jump in, and press the lock button right away.
What a couple of milksops!
“Mercy, Jace!”
“Wow, some evening. Can you believe that place?”
“Can you believe you might have been shot?”
He turns the key in the ignition, the car engine humming a timely tune of departure. “I don’t know. It all seems a little weird, like some contrived way Sister Jerusha gets volunteers. Wait for people to get lost, sic Ezekiel on them, and come to save the day so she can do a tour.”
“Pretty much.”
“Seriously, she’s a whirlwind, isn’t she?”
“I’m still reeling from all that energy.” I turn in my seat to face him, adjusting the shoulder strap. “It’s hard to believe one person can do so much.”
“Right. I know exactly what you’re saying.” He pulls out of the gas station. Good-bye, Jaleel, who watches us from inside.
“And turning that girl back out on the street. I didn’t understand that, Jace.”
“Imagine trying to run a place like that and not have your rules mean something, though.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true. You know, we really should send them a donation, don’t you think? Fix that ceiling, redo the plaster on the walls, put some decent shelving in the kitchen?”
“Big time.”
We are quiet the rest of the way home, leaving the city behind and returning to the soft darkness of the hill over the lake where the only lights are those of the fireflies who’ve never seen Jaleel, Jerusha, Krista, or Mo, and probably never will.
* * *
Three days later we find ourselves at a large church inside the beltway, its campus spreading like jam over a twenty-acre plot. The band plays with perfection, its singers in coordinating outfits looking like they just came home from lunch at the club or a day at work downtown. Tasteful ficus trees dot the auditorium, spilling a few brown leaves on the understated beige carpet.
Plain Perfect & Quaker Summer 2 in 1 Page 29
