The Non-Silence of the Lamb

by Luke Brown

  When Betty turned eighteen years old, she woke up to a joyous chorus of the famous birthday song sung by her brothers and sisters.

  “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Betty. Happy birthday to you!” they all sang to her while she lay in bed. She was half asleep and half awake, but she recognized them all.

  “Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome,” they said together.

  Betty noticed that her mother was the only one missing from the gathering. “Where is Momma?”

  “Momma is still at work. She stayed over because she got held up while preparing a surprise for your birthday.” Junior lied to cover for Essie, who was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the cake.

  “Hope you live to see many more wonderful birthdays,” Bunny said with a big, gleaming smile.

  “I wish you the same,” Karl said.

  “May you have a wonderful year,” Leonard added.

  “I wish you lots of prosperity,” Myrtle said.

  “I wish you good luck,” Andre and Don said to their aunt.

  “I wish you good luck, too,” said Breath, just in time before Essie burst into the room with a large, luscious, sweet-smelling fruitcake that she had baked the day before at her job and finished off minutes ago.

  “Surprise! Here is your cake that I baked for you. Happy eighteenth birthday, my daughter.” She rushed into the room with the enticing white fruitcake decorated with letters that read, Happy Birthday, Betty. We wish U luck & prosperity. Mom and family. It had one candle in the middle.

  “Oh my God!” Betty shouted. “My birthday cake. You guys lied to me. It’s a wonderful cake. I love it, Momma. Thank you so much. A birthday is not a birthday without one of your special cakes!” She sprang out of bed to blow out her candle.

  “Make a wish,” Essie said.

  Betty paused and closed her eyes. With one big blow, she extinguished the candle. She was very happy, although she hadn’t received any other gift from her mother. She knew that Essie’s cake, made especially for her, was the best gift that she could have gotten on her eighteenth birthday. Essie once again had made Betty’s special day a delightful one. She gave her the best of what she could afford, and she gave it with the deep, caring love that came directly from a mother’s heart. What more could anyone ask for?

  Essie also baked cakes for Leonard’s church harvest or for any major occasion or celebration at his church. She would bake several cakes and give them to Leonard to take with him. The church members all looked forward to Essie’s contribution.

  “Hey, Leonard, are you coming to this year’s church harvest celebration?” a church sister asked him.

  “Sure, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be bringing one of those lovely, titillating fruitcakes that your mother usually makes?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to ask her.”

  “Oh, please do! Don’t forget to ask her to make a cake for harvest. You know how much we love her cake.”

  “Okay, I must remember to ask her about it.”

  “It wouldn’t be a harvest without your mother’s oh-so-delicious fruitcake. Mmm … makes me hungry just thinking about it. Remember now, don’t forget, or else I’ll have to go and ask her myself.” Leaving Leonard with that threat, the church sister walked away.

  Leonard told his mother about the church harvest celebration that was scheduled for three weeks away, and Essie gladly baked two large fruitcakes for him to take.

  Essie also baked for school and community occasions. Once Bunny’s class was having a school party, and the students were all told to bring any kind of food they liked. Bunny’s teacher was familiar with Essie’s delightful fruitcakes from a previous occasion, and she specifically instructed him to bring one of them. “Bunny, don’t forget to tell your mother to send a cake for the class party,” she reminded him. It was no secret that the teacher was more interested in the cake for herself than for her class. At the previous party, she had taken two-thirds of it home with her.

  As a matter of fact, the whole neighborhood knew and loved Essie for her fruitcakes. In order to get a big turnout to a community event, one just had to advertise that Essie’s fruitcakes would be available there, and that event would be a guaranteed hit. It goes without saying, Essie was famous for her fruitcakes.

  Chapter 23

  After being baptized, Leonard became a strict member of the Glenworth Seventh-day Adventist Church. He had taught himself to play the guitar after his sister Gena sent him a little toy-like guitar from the United States. He often used it to comfort himself when he got moody and sad.

  He became sad when he thought of the odds that he would make it out of his limited situation, which were slim to none. He considered his situation limited because he wanted to be a physician so badly when he grew up, but his family was too wretchedly poor to even consider it seriously.

  He didn’t quite know what it took to be a physician, but he knew he wanted to be one. His chances of making his ambitious dream come true in Jamaica at this time were poor—about as good as a Haitian refugee heading off to the Miami shores with only a broomstick and a wish.

  He often thought of the truth in one of his favorite songs, “Many Rivers to Cross,” by a well-known singer named Jimmy Cliff.

  Many rivers to cross

  But I can’t seem to find my way over …

  And it’s only my will that keeps me alive …

  And I merely survive because of my pride …

  Strangely, it was another one of Jimmy Cliff’s songs, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” that helped to motivate him.

  You can get it if you really want

  But you must try, try and try

  Try and try, you’ll succeed at last …

  Leonard made a vow to himself that he would be a physician or nothing at all. Surprisingly, he came to this decision when he was only ten years old.

  He also promised Essie that he would one day write a book about her life so the world would know her true story—maybe he would call that book, ‘Essie’ a short for Estelle, his real mother’s name. Leonard was very young, but he could remember bits and pieces of some of the disasters that had happened in the family’s earlier years.

  In one particular flashback, he was in the back of a pickup truck with some of his brothers and sisters. He was sitting on a pile of furniture and was on some obscure journey. He figured no one knew where they were heading, because everyone in the truck was clearly flustered. They were crying and reassuring each other that they would find a place to stay.

  He never asked many questions about that incident, but each time he had that flashback, he thought ambitiously of writing the full story of his mother’s life. Maybe I’ll name that book Essie, he thought to himself, as a shortened form of my mother’s real name, Estelle.

  Essie loved to hear Leonard’s big dreams. She was the only one who took him seriously. She knew that her life was noteworthy, to say the least, so she prayed that Leonard’s dream would come true one day.

  She always hoped that at least one of the seeds that she had planted on this earth would become a great, influential figure in this world. When times were unbearably hard, during her various pregnancies, these were some of the thoughts that helped her to make it through those tough times.

  It was therefore easy for Leonard to convince her to send him to an SDA private school, Harrison Memorial High School. Essie didn’t have the money to pay private-school tuition, but she knew it was necessary to at least try to make it happen, so she signed him up. She struggled tremendously with the various costs, but she did everything she could to meet his tuition each semester. Sometimes she even had to borrow money from her neighbors to meet his school expenses.

  Leonard was now the only one in his family who attended church regularly; Myrtle had fully dropped out. One day, he invited his mother to a crusade meeting that his church was conducting, and Es
sie went with him to that church for the first time. At the end of the service, the minister gave an altar call and requested those who might need him to pray for them to come forward.

  Essie reflected on one particular thing that the minister had said in his sermon. “God knows that we are only human, and in a lifetime of temptations, we are bound to sin. That is why He sent His son, Jesus. Jesus has died for us all so that all our sins may be forgiven. If you accept Christ in your heart, all your sins will be forgiven.”

  Essie kept hearing the last phrase repeatedly ringing in her ears and in her head: All your sins will be forgiven. She went to the altar for the minister to pray for her. As he prayed, tears ran down her cheeks. For the first time in her life, it dawned on her that Jesus was the only man she really needed. If she had Jesus in her life, everything else would fall into place. Essie was pounded in the head with salvation. She fell to the ground under mercy and forgiveness. She woke up to a brand new life of Christianity.

  Essie left the church a fully changed person. She told Leonard that she was going to quit smoking and drinking that night. She told him that she was going to give her heart to the Lord. Essie’s words were simple, but they were bafflingly true. She never smoked another cigarette again in her life. She never took another sip of alcohol again in her life. Essie quit cold turkey.

  She was baptized within two months of the night she had astonishingly found God. The only reason she wasn’t baptized sooner was because she wanted to do one more thing first. She needed to do it so she could start a new, respectable life. She needed to get married to the man she really loved, the man God kept putting in her life every time she needed him most, the man who had been in her life from when she was a teenager, the man who was, right now, waiting patiently for her. Essie decided that she was going to ask for Tim’s hand in marriage before she got baptized.

  “Timothy Brown, the true love of my life, will you marry me?” Essie went down on both knees with her hands clasped in a prayerful position in front of her face, as if she were pleading for his forgiveness if she had done him any unforgivable wrong in the past. Pitifully, she looked up at Tim as she asked him this life-changing question. She knew in her heart that she had done him wrong.

  Tim didn’t say a word. He was as silent as the day Essie had left him for a big-time city guy. He stood still for a moment, then looked down at her, swallowed up into her wanting stare. He looked up to the heavens, on the verge of breaking down. “Thank you, Lord,” he said, his body shaking as only a grown man shakes when he cries.

  He took Essie by the hand and gracefully raised her up from her knees. He was thankful to God for answering his pleading during many lonely nights. He hugged her like the father hugged his son in the story of the returning prodigal. “Essie, my pretty lady, we started it, so it’s only right that we end it together. That’s what good friends do; we wait for each other to catch up in life. I’m glad you came back to the arms that were always longing for you. Having you as my wife will make me a happy man. You make my life complete. I can go to my grave in peace and with dignity.”

  “Tim, I’ll love you until the day I die,” Essie promised him. “You know I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  After she married Tim, Essie was baptized and became a true Christian. She insisted that everyone should call her by her new married name, Mrs. Essie Brown. She no longer had repeated thoughts of suicide. She now knew God understood all things. She knew that God had forgiven her for all her sins and made her into a new person.

  The more Mrs. Essie Brown understood the Bible and the ways of God, the happier she became. Eventually, Mrs. Essie Brown became such a strict Christian, she was almost like a religious fanatic.

  She prayed to God twice a day. She sang songs from the hymnal, read her Bible, and prayed from thirty minutes to as much as two hours early every morning for the rest of her life, and did the same thing in the evenings. Mrs. Essie Brown praised God so much that it seemed as if she was trying to make up for lost time in her earlier life, for the time when she was not a Christian. She just could not get enough of serving God. When Mrs. Essie Brown found God, it was irrefutably the happiest time in her life.

  Her husband, Tim, remained in the country, and she remained in the big city. Just like old times, Tim rolled out the red carpet for his adorable, gracefully aging Christian wife every time she came to see him.

  Mrs. Essie Brown would do the same for her warm, humble, country farmer husband whenever he came home to her in the big city. Some people were made to be different. But that didn’t mean they weren’t meant to be together.

  Chapter 24

  Mrs. Essie Brown’s life took a significant upswing after she perspicaciously found herself. She had made the first major change in her life with her own two hands. She had lived her life as a strong single mother until she married Mr. Timothy Brown. Now she officially and proudly was no longer a single parent.

  This much-needed change came a little late in her life, reminiscent of the ironies mentioned in the lyrics of a song titled “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette:

  It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late …

  It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid …

  A traffic jam when you’re already late …

  It’s meeting the man of my dreams

  And then meeting his beautiful wife …

  In Mrs. Essie Brown’s case, it was a woman who had gotten married after living her whole damn life as a single mother, and who finally got a good father or stepfather for her kids after her kids were already grown. Though late, the change was significant for Essie. Her kids could say they had a stepdad for the first time, and no one can ever be too old to have a stepdad.

  Also, for the first time, there was someone other than Essie who was responsible for both her social and her financial wellbeing. For the first time in her life, she had someone who swore that he would be there for her to lean on, for better or for worse, for the rest of their lives, for however long that would be.

  These were pretty simple things, but they were huge in Mrs. Essie Brown’s eyes. These things were significant for natural and psychological closure in the long, wild, single-female and single-motherhood period of her life. It was as if she had been brokenhearted ever since Stedman and her best friend betrayed her more than twenty-five years earlier. She had been carrying her broken heart in her hands like a cracked egg this entire time. As she went from relationship to relationship, it crumbled a little more each time.

  But now the buck stopped here. She could feel her heart heal as each crack fused back together to make one uncluttered, trusting, whole, beautiful organ. She could exhale and breathe easily again. Instead of a gloomy, colorless world, she could now see and enjoy the wonderful array of colors in the rainbow and in the fresh dew roses along the way. Mrs. Essie Brown, at age fifty-four, felt complete again. She was ready to live, trust in love, and dream big dreams once more.

  The next significant change in Mrs. Essie Brown’s life was made possible by her miracle child, Gena. Gena providentially got married to a wonderful, humble, down-to-earth American citizen named Mr. Wesley Dobson. Soon after that, she was able to obtain her permanent resident status, which propelled her into the legal, working, taxpaying society of the United States. This also allowed her to travel back and forth to Jamaica.

  Her trips gave her the opportunity to see firsthand any problems that her family had and to try to solve them, if possible. When she visited, she brought lots of goods with her, and she continued to send barrels of food and goods as well. Gena invested lots of money in her mother’s home in Glenworth so that her mother and her three kids, as well as the rest of the family, could live more comfortably.

  In addition to helping with goods and food and helping to fix her mother’s house, Gena helped with domestic affairs. She encouraged and financed Karl’s wedding to his wife, Marva, and helped to pay Leonard’s private-school tuition fees so Mrs. Essie Brown woul
dn’t have to worry about them anymore.

  Gena did so much for her family at the time when Mrs. Essie Brown had banished her past and opened her heart to a wonderful new way of life that it appeared as if God had started blessing Essie indirectly through her daughter Gena. It was like a cycle of blessings. The more God blessed Gina, the more she returned the blessings to her family.

  One of the most significant things Gena did that helped to change Mrs. Essie Brown’s life was to fulfill a promise she had made to her, a promise that she would someday pave the way for the whole family to travel to the United States, where everyone could have a better and brighter future.

  The miracle baby couldn’t make miracles. She couldn’t fulfill her promise all at once, but she could and would keep chipping away at it. She would do whatever it took to get each person from Jamaica to the United States, one at a time.

  The first person Gena brought from Jamaica to live with her in the United States was her younger brother Leonard. One day, while she was passing by a private SDA high school in New York, it suddenly dawned on her that there was a special type of visa called a student visa that was designed specifically for someone like Leonard, who desperately wanted to become a doctor someday. She thought this would be the perfect means of getting him started on the right track. He could leave his private SDA high school in Jamaica to go to another private SDA high school in the United States.

  When the thought popped into her head, she stopped at the school to find out what was required to get her brother admitted. After she had all the information she needed, she then got all the required documents from the immigration office and mailed everything to Leonard to fill out, sign, and take to the US embassy in Jamaica to obtain a student visa. Leonard was super excited. He had wanted to travel to the United States but hadn’t thought it possible.

  Leonard was the spitting image of his father, Tim. Reserved, skinny, tall, and relatively handsome, he dressed neatly at all times. At Harrison Memorial High School, he had much better than average grades. For three years in a row, he was ranked seventh in his class of more than thirty students, and he was third or fourth among the boys in his class of more than twelve.