by Neta Jackson
Chanda wheezed and fanned her face. “Given me history, it’s a miracle. Now if I could just win the Big Lotto to pay off those doctor bills . . .” She picked up the bucket and headed for the kitchen. “All right if I use this sink?”
Oh, help. She really is going to clean my house. If I didn’t feel completely useless before, I certainly did now.
I turned in my chair so I could see her through the kitchen door. “Chanda?” Did I dare say anything? “Chanda, why don’t you quit playing the lottery and buy some medical insurance with that money? Just a suggestion—but I wish you’d think about it.”
“Oh. That’s what I plan to do. Soon as I get me some winnings, I’m goin’ to buy life insurance, medical insurance, a car, and take the kids to Disney World!” Chanda poured some liquid in the bucket and turned on the water in the sink.
Well, at least she didn’t get mad at me for asking. I watched her start in on the kitchen—the sink was full of breakfast dishes—then hobbled back to my bedroom. How embarrassing to have one of your friends cleaning your house. I cringed; the bathroom was the pits, though I couldn’t blame Denny and the kids with the crazy week they’d had. We ought to pay her something—she did it for a living, for goodness’ sake!—but she’d probably feel insulted if we did, since it was her idea.
Why was everyone being so darn nice to me? I didn’t deserve it. It’d be easier if they all just left me alone.
I took another pain pill and lay on the bed in the darkened bedroom, listening to the faint sounds of Chanda singing “Winna Mon” in that patois accent of hers, water running, huffs and thumps and chairs scraping.
Jesus, You did a miracle for Chanda. Why can’t You do a miracle for me?
But I knew there would be no miracle. Not for Jodi Baxter. A boy was dead because of me, and I would have to live with the consequences.
39
By the end of the week, I was weaning myself off the pain medication and getting around pretty well on the elbow crutches. My broken ribs and ten-inch abdominal incision only hurt when I took big breaths—or cried or laughed—so I generally put a lock on my feelings and moved through the days and nights in a sort of detached stupor.
The Fourth of July came and went without any help from us, though Denny had the day off and did the laundry, watered the lawn and wilting flowers, and grilled some salmon fillets.
I missed Josh and Amanda so much. Their absence felt like another huge hole in my gut, right next to where my spleen used to be. But I was glad they were gone, glad I didn’t have to be cheerful for their sakes.
Denny was attentive, trying to anticipate what I needed before I even knew myself, but we didn’t talk much about the upcoming preliminary hearing, which had been scheduled for the following Monday. If I let myself think about it, I might just freak out. So we made small talk, watched TV in the evening, even held hands while Denny prayed for the kids, for the family that was grieving, and thanked God that I was healing . . . but things felt distant between us.
I knew what was wrong—everything was wrong!—but I didn’t know how to fix it.
The doorbell rang late Friday afternoon. Grumbling, I pulled myself off the bed and hobbled down the hall in reasonably good time, considering, and hoped it wasn’t someone who was going to mind me opening the door dressed only in one of Denny’s extra-large T-shirts and a pair of slipper-mocs.
It was Florida, holding out a bag of sub sandwiches.
“So why don’t you have a key?” I turned my crutches around and headed into the living room and the safety of the couch.
“Key? What you talkin’ about, girl? I don’t got no key to your house.”
“Never mind. Just thought Denny handed out keys to everybody in Yada Yada.” I lowered myself onto the couch, with my bum left leg stretched out and my right leg on the floor—which put my back to Florida coming behind me from the foyer. “Why aren’t you at work?”
Florida moved to the overstuffed chair facing me on the other end of the couch. “Girl, don’t mess with me. You know I work the early shift; I get off at three. Decided to come see you and bring you some supper. But I’m getting a little tired of the attitude.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Florida. Really. I appreciate you and everybody else who’s been checking up on me. But—”
“But what?”
Did I have to spell it out? I looked away, but my breathing got heavy, sending little jabs of pain shooting from my sore ribs. “You all act like I had a skiing accident or something. ‘Oh, poor Jodi, let’s bring her some flowers’. . . ‘Hi, Jodi, here’s some supper.’ Chanda came and cleaned my house, for cryin’ out loud.”
“So? You got a problem with people doin’ nice for you?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to slow my breathing. When I felt in control again, I opened them. Florida was sitting on the chair, arms folded, eyeing me like some mama waiting to hear the big whopper her kid was about to tell her.
“Yeah,” I blurted. “Because I don’t deserve it! Everybody’s acting like there isn’t a dead kid who got hit by my car, whose parents are so angry at me that they want me in jail. I’ve even got a copy of the charges from the state’s attorney’s office: The State of Illinois versus Jodi Baxter. Vehicular manslaughter . . . or hadn’t you heard? Oh. And nobody mentions the fact that the kid was African American and I’m white—but I wouldn’t be surprised if his family tells the media that it was a . . . a hate crime, that I did it on purpose or something.”
I shocked myself. Why was I saying all this? Why was I dumping on Florida, of all people? Jodi, you’re a real jerk. She just came by to see you, and you’re blabbering like an idiot.
Florida got up out of the chair. For a second I thought she was going to leave, and I couldn’t blame her. I opened my mouth to apologize, to beg her forgiveness—but instead she stood over me, hand on one hip while she shook a finger in my face with the other.
“Suck it up, Jodi Baxter! What does deserve got to do with anything? You think the only reason you’re my friend is because you deserved it?”
“No, no! That’s not what I meant. It’s just—”
“Oh, I get it. You think you done somethin’ so bad God just can’t forgive you. So you mopin’ around, keepin’ all you blinds dark, like life just came to a stop.”
I squirmed, wishing she’d back off.
But she bent down closer to my face. “Well, what makes you think you deserved God’s love before the accident? Huh?” She straightened and walked around the living room with its comfortable furniture, plants in the windows, and pictures on the wall. “Oh, you been blessed all right. Nice house, nice kids, good husband, good life . . . but don’t take no credit for it. You was born middle-class. You was born white. You was born in a family that already knew God and raised you right. Them three right there gave you a leg up and a head start, while some of the rest of us are still strugglin’ out of the starting gate.”
I watched as she paused and shuffled through some of the CDs by the music cabinet. Take credit for it? Sounds like she’s blaming me for it.
Florida turned. “Know what your problem is, Jodi Baxter? You don’t want to accept that you’re just like me. I didn’t deserve God’s love when I was strung out on drugs, now, did I? But the thing that turned me around? I discovered He loved me anyway. Jesus died on that bloody cross to save me—and look how far He’s brought me! With all your blessings, all your middle-class-white-American privileges, you don’t deserve God’s love, either. But you seem to forget that He loves you anyway, that He saved you, and ain’t nothin’ you can do gonna change that.”
“I know all that.” I pouted.
“In you head maybe. But deep down inside, you ain’t figured out yet what it means to be just a sinner, saved by grace.”
She looked at the CD she’d picked up and had been waving in the air like a punctuation mark. “Where’d you get this?” She held it out toward me. Somebody named Donnie McClurkin.
“Uh, Avis brought it, I
think.”
“You listened to it? . . . Or this?” She waved another CD at me.
I squinted. Clint Brown. I shook my head.
“Girl, you a sad case. Well, you listen for a change. Maybe God let you have this accident to get your attention.”
Florida put the first disc in the CD player, punched the “on” button, and handed me the remote. “I gotta go have me a cig—” She fished a pack of cigarettes out of her purse, then laughed. “Yeah, God’s brought me this far, but I still got a ways to go.” She headed for the front porch. “But you—just listen.”
I couldn’t very well turn off the CD player with Florida sitting just outside on the front porch, having her “cig.” So I lay on the couch as the gospel music filled the room. How often did I take the time to really listen to music? Usually it was just background noise while I cooked supper or watered my plants or prepared a school lesson.
I listened . . . and by the third song, I had forgotten everything but the words filling the room, filling my head, pushing deep down into the emptiness of my soul. “Just for me-ee,” Donnie McClurkin sang, “just for me . . . Jesus came and did it just for me.”
Oh God, do I really believe that? Even if there had been no Hitler or Ku Klux Klan or gang murders or drug lords or 9/11 . . . would Jesus still have had to die on the cross to cover my sins?
A voice seemed to shake up the inside of my head. “You’re missing the point, Jodi! Not ‘would Jesus have had to?’ . . . Jesus did do it . .. just for you. Because God so loved you, Jodi . . .”
I’m not sure I heard many of the next few songs until the end, when another grabbed my attention.
We fall down, but we get up . . .
For a saint is just a sinner who fell down . . . and got up.
If Florida came back in, I never heard her because I was weeping.
AMANDA CALLED LONG DISTANCE Saturday afternoon. She’d bought a calling card with her own money and breathlessly tried to tell us in three minutes how much work they’d gotten done on the cement block home they were building with Habitat for Humanity in the Mezquital Valley. “And I’m learning lots of Spanish, Mom! It’s so different here! I want to take conversational Spanish next year. Edesa would help me, I know! Oh—are you getting better, Mom?”
“I’m fine. Just stay safe and boil your drinking water!”
The front doorbell rang, and Denny, who’d been on the kitchen extension, went to answer it while I got in a few words with Josh, then said good-bye.
Denny poked his head into the living room, where I was stretched out on the couch with the cordless. “Company.” He sounded peculiarly pleased about something but ducked down the hall.
“Hey, girl.” I heard Florida’s voice before I saw her. After the way I’d treated her yesterday, I could hardly believe she was back already. Good. I wanted to— “Got somebody I want you to meet.” Florida sashayed into the living room, holding the hand of a young girl who followed reluctantly, sucking on two fingers.
I thought my heart was going to stop beating. “Oh! Is this . . . Carla?” I looked back and forth from Florida to the child, as though seeing Florida at eight years old. All across the front of her head, Carla’s hair had been braided in tiny cornrows held with little butterfly clips, looking for all the world like a little tiara, behind which sprang a wonderful mane of bushy black curls. She stared shyly at the braided rug on the floor, clinging to Florida’s hand.
Florida beamed in the dim coolness of the living room, “Praise God Almighty! Jesus! Yes it is.” She tugged the girl closer. “Carla, this is Sister Jodi . . . she’s been praying for you.”
My chin quivered. I hadn’t prayed for Carla even once since the accident.
Carla pulled Florida down till her ear was level with the girl’s stage whisper. “Why is she crying? An’ she’s got a big yellow eye.”
Florida glanced at the tears spilling down my still bruised face and smiled. “She’s crying because she’s so happy to see you.” Florida sat down on the overstuffed chair and pulled Carla into her lap. “We get visits to start with. Carla’s staying with me an’ the boys for the weekend.”
I found my voice. “Oh, yes, Carla. I am so happy to see you. Your . . . mommy is my very good friend, so—” I had intended to say, “—so I know we’ll be good friends, too.” But I was having a hard time pushing words past the huge lump in my throat.
Just then Stu bustled through the open front door and into the living room.“Finding a parking place in this neighborhood is like going to the dentist,” she announced. “No, a tax audit. Whatever. Irritating would be too mild a word.” She stood in the middle of my living room, looking me over. “So, Jodi. You got dressed today. Good for you. What do you think of our girl?” She beamed at Carla.
I reached for a tissue and blew my nose, hiding the smile that threatened to put a crack in my crisis mentality, letting in a tiny ray of hope. If God could turn it around for Florida after all she’d been through, then maybe, just maybe, God would get me through this mess, too.
40
Denny wanted me to go to church with him Sunday morning, but I couldn’t face all the Uptown people yet— not to mention the flight of stairs up to the second-floor meeting room. I needed more time.
“You want me to stay home with you? You’ve been alone a lot this week.” He truly seemed distressed about that.
“No, that’s okay. Somebody ought to represent the Baxter family. And besides, then you can tell me about the service.” This would be the third Sunday in a row I’d missed worship at Uptown, and I would like to go if I could be a fly on the wall and just take in the worship and singing and the sermon. But nobody was going to let me be invisible.
“Well, okay, if you’re sure,” Denny said reluctantly. “But how about if we get out and take a walk by the lake this afternoon. Maybe we’ll drive up to Evanston’s lakefront—they’ve got a lot of walking paths.”
Evanston’s lakefront. That sounded good. Not a chance in a million I’d run into anybody I knew up there.
But the moment I heard the garage door close and the old junker rattle down the alley, I had second thoughts about church. Maybe it was a bad idea not to go. At least I would have been distracted for a few hours. As it was, I couldn’t avoid the terrifying reality that tomorrow was the preliminary hearing about the charges being brought against me.
I hobbled into the dining room on my crutches and looked at the computer. Hadn’t checked e-mail since before the accident. Just couldn’t deal with cute forwards, spam ads, or even what had been going on in cyberspace with Yada Yada. Now might be a good time, though. It was something to do.
But I felt overwhelmed at the long list of e-mails that loaded into the inbox after I’d logged on. Halfheartedly I scrolled down through the list. Just as I predicted: a lot of “Fwd Fwd Fwds” with “You gotta read this!” or “So true!” in the subject line. I didn’t even have the energy to delete them. I scrolled past a scattering of messages from various members of Yada Yada . . . old friends in Downers Grove who’d heard about my accident . . . messages for Denny and Josh and Amanda . . .
But one subject line caught my attention: “Vehicular manslaughter.” My mouth went dry. I checked the sender: William J. Farrell to Denny Baxter. As though pushed forward by an unseen force, I clicked on it twice to open it.
To: Denny Baxter
From: William J. Farrell, Attorney at Law Subject: Vehicular manslaughter
Denny,
I’ll try to answer your questions as briefly as possible:
This is not a killing with “malice aforethought,” therefore not murder.
Vehicular manslaughter can be charged in two ways: with “gross negligence” or without it. The former is a felony. The latter is what we call a “wobbler,” which means the prosecution has the choice whether to charge felony or misdemeanor.
Your wife has no priors and wasn’t drinki
ng, so I am confident that at most she might face a misdemeanor charge. Depending on the evidence, a misdemeanor charge—if convicted—can carry with it the possibility of jail time up to a year, and/or a fine and probation.
Usually, yes. But if she can’t be there, I can get a continuance until she’s more recovered. I haven’t heard the state’s attorney’s actual evidence—that will happen Monday. But I’m working on a number of fronts to counter whatever “evidence” they think they have. No matter what happens, we will, of course, plead Not Guilty.
No. The document Jodi signed releases her on her personal recognizance. Even the state’s attorney doesn’t think your wife is a flight risk.
I felt frozen to the chair, even though the temperature was already well into the eighties. How could words like “a killing” and “murder”—even “not murder”—be associated with me, Jodi Baxter? I’d only had one traffic ticket in my entire life, and that was years ago when I got stopped for having an expired registration tag.
I stared in disbelief at the message. Words like “if convicted” and “jail time” swam before my eyes. Suddenly, I felt desperate to get rid of it, make it go away. With shaking hand, I moved the cursor to “delete” then closed the window, shut down the computer . . . and as an added measure, squeezed my sore body around the side of the computer desk and pulled the plug.
Now I was sweating. I needed to lie down. I swung my crutches toward the living room and the comfort of the couch— but knew I had to fill my mind with something, or the words would taunt me, shout me down in the silence. I stopped by the music cabinet and picked up the other CD Avis had brought me. Clint Brown. Never heard of him. But I stuck the disc in the changer, took the remote and the CD insert with me, and collapsed on the couch.
I hit the “play” button.
The music filled the room, rolling around me, over me, through me. No cutesy songs. Every song was about Jesus, about resting in His presence, about finding “strength while I’m waiting,” about Jesus being “my everything.”
