Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  Asking for and getting extensions proved to be easier than I thought. There wasn’t a creditor who did not graciously agree to give us ten more days to pay the bill. Last of all, I went to the meat center, dreading to face that butcher. After I apologized for bargaining with him about the hamburger, I asked if he could hold off on our bill for ten more days. “Miss Esmeralda, don’t give it another thought,” he said. “If you don’t never pay that bill, that’ll be okay with me. Like I told you, my granny would have it no other way. If she was alive, she’d like as not whup my butt if I made it hard on you folks.”

  “Well, now,” I said, “we don’t want your granny’s ghost coming back and doing a thing like that, do we?” We laughed, and I said I’d see him in a few days.

  By the time I finished with all that business, it was nearly 6:00, so I dropped by the donut shop, and Mary gave me scads of goodies to take home to the girls.

  But you know, on my way home as I was waiting at a red light, it suddenly came over me just what I had done—I had taken on the responsibility for upwards of eight thousand dollars of debt! I had acted on the spur of the moment—didn’t even pray about it—and just took for granted the Lord would bail us out. I slapped the steering wheel, mad at myself for having done such a thing without being sure it was the right thing to do. Maybe the Lord was through with Priscilla Home. That could very well be the case, because there didn’t seem to be anything spiritual going on there, just counseling sessions. What we needed was a preacher—some good Bible teaching. Oh, my! Lord, what have I done!

  As I was driving out of town, still stewing, I saw a flea market. It was closed, but it gave me an idea. Maybe we could find stuff at Priscilla Home that we could sell at the flea market. That might bring in a few dollars. A few dollars, yes, but we needed eight thousand! Unless hundreds of contributions came in from that prayer letter or one of those grants came through, there was nothing in sight that might bring in eight thousand dollars. I felt sure I had run ahead of the Lord and opened my big mouth without thinking it through. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d done that.

  Well, if I was wrong, it was too late to undo it. Lord, I prayed, I’m sorry. Maybe you want to teach me a lesson . . .

  I was feeling down about the whole thing—mad at myself, really. Elijah had always said, “The Lord will make a way out of no way.” To be sure, this was a “no way” situation, but under the circumstances I couldn’t be sure the Lord would see fit to make a way for us.

  The rocks and holes in the Old Turnpike were becoming familiar, and I knew that if this running back and forth to town kept up, it wouldn’t be long before I could travel it with my eyes closed. Rain was beginning to fall—the way it does in the mountains—drizzling, teasing you into wondering if it’s only going to be misty or if it’s going to be real rain. Dampness just closes in on you. The heater in my car did nothing to help. Even so, I dreaded getting back to the home.

  When I rolled down the driveway, no one was outside on the porch smoking so I thought they must be eating supper.

  I brought the donuts to the kitchen and saw that everybody was in the parlor. I ate a donut before going in to see what was going on.

  “This is ‘Group,’” Ursula told me, and three women on a couch made a place for me. They told me who they were. The three were as different as day and night—one was the daughter of missionaries; she was probably in her early twenties and pretty as a picture. I thought she said her name was Angela. The next girl was forty, I’d say, wore her hair straight back, tucked in with a comb, and wore fairly decent jeans and sweater. “I’m from Arkansas,” she said. “I’m a cosmetologist.” But before she could give me her name, Ursula asked her, “What is your drug of choice, Melba?”

  Melba looked across the room to the other women. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I never saw a drug I didn’t like.” That went around the room like a current, sparking snickers.

  The girl on the end of the sofa was so thin I thought she might be sick. She had a real pretty face and blond hair but was so skinny that if she turned sideways a body couldn’t see her. Ursula spoke for her. “Evelyn has three years of college and looks forward to an acting career.”

  I politely acknowledged the three on the couch and looked across at the other women, expecting to be introduced to them, but Ursula cut short the introductions. “You’ll get to know the other ladies soon enough,” she said, “but we must get down to business. Group is where we get together and share.”

  The girls were looking back at her, stiff as boards. “It helps us to open up if I prompt them,” Ursula explained. “Tell us, Evelyn, what is your drug of choice?”

  “Vodka,” she said politely. “I like vodka.”

  I couldn’t see the point of all this, but I guessed Ursula knew what she was doing. She seemed pleased that Evelyn was willing to say what her choice was; she continued asking the same question all around the room but didn’t get another straight answer, so she changed the question. “Tell us, Dora, what is your definition of an honest person?”

  As well as wearing that hunting jacket, Dora wore heavy boots and worn-out overalls. I had never heard her say a word before, but at length, she did answer. “A honest man runs good likker and sells at a fair price, and he don’t move bound’ry marks to steal a neighbor’s land.”

  The girls looked amused at that, and Linda laughed out loud, even though Dora hadn’t meant it to be funny. Ursula nervously adjusted her glasses and, unsmiling, moved on. “Well, Linda, what is your definition of an honest person?”

  Without answering the question, Linda turned the tables. “Miss Ursula, cut the crap. What you really want is for us to spill our guts, right?” She slid the baseball cap around and back again.

  Ursula’s face flushed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you my story. I was molested from the time I was four, been beat every day of my life, raped, and sent to thirteen different foster homes, seven rehabs. But when I was sent to the West Virginia Correctional Center, I had the time of my life. That is one great place! Good food, nice people, activities. ‘Three hots and a cot,’ we called it, but it was more’n that. I got my G.E.D., and I plan to go on to college and study criminal justice.”

  “Excellent. What you are telling us is, you suffered because of the ill treatment you received as a young person and you did something for which you were incarcerated. Perhaps you would like to tell us what you did that resulted in incarceration.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. There was this doctor left his prescription pad in plain sight. He made it so easy I’d of been a fool not to take that pad. I must have wrote a hunnert or more prescriptions—not just for me but for all my friends.” She was laughing. “Man, we had a twenty-four/seven party going great until I got busted.”

  Ursula looked pleased as punch that someone was opening up. “Linda, you made a bad choice stealing that prescription pad, didn’t you? You made a bad choice, Linda, but you are not a bad person.”

  I’m telling you, Ursula said that with a straight face. I couldn’t believe my ears!

  Linda stopped laughing. “Hogwash! It wasn’t me made a bad choice, it was that doctor. He had no right leaving that pad in plain sight. If I didn’t pick it up, somebody else would have. That’s the way it’s always been for me—every trouble I ever had come from choices other people made, not me.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but when you were released from that correctional facility—”

  “So, I broke probation. Reason that happened was because of the crowd I fell in with. They were the only friends I could find, and to be friends with them you had to go along, drinking, druggin’, an’ stealing, big time. I was the only one got caught. The judge wouldn’t let me go back to West Virginia. He told me I had to go to another rehab, so I come here.”

  I didn’t like what I was hearing. The other girls were enjoying all this talk, and I could well imagine how Linda would fill in the details of her rotten past when they were upstairs or out on the porch by themselves.
I felt I had to put a stop to this if I could, so I spoke up. “It seems to me that airing our dirty underwear don’t do nothing to glorify God—”

  “Doesn’t do anything,” Ursula repeated, her face tight as a tick.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “‘Don’t do nothing’ is a double negative,” she informed me. The women were really enjoying this—seeing us at odds was probably the most fun they’d had in a long time.

  “Whatever,” I said and went on, confused and flustered. “We don’t need to air all our troubles. Splurgeon says, ‘He who talks much of his troubles to men is apt to fall into a way of saying too little of them to God.’”

  Would you believe that Ursula corrected me again! “Don’t you mean ‘Spurgeon’?” she snapped. “Charles Haddon Spurgeon?”

  “No,” I said, confident that I was right. “His name is C. H. Splurgeon.”

  “C. H.? The C. H. stands for Charles Haddon, and his name is not Splurgeon,” she insisted. “His name is Spurgeon.”

  The girls could hardly contain themselves—a few of them were trying to be nice, but the rest were practically rolling on the floor. I felt so foolish I could have run out of that room. I had never called Reverend Splurgeon anything but Splurgeon, and I was sure that was what everybody else called him. I told myself, She must be thinking about somebody else. Then again, she wasn’t the kind to be wrong about anything.

  Ursula turned her attention to Portia, who was sitting beside Linda. “Now, Portia, tell us about yourself.”

  But Portia hung her head and had nothing to say.

  I sat there trying to figure out what I had done to provoke Ursula so bad. Maybe she was just having a bad day. If nothing else, our money problems were enough to stress her out.

  We kept waiting for Portia to say something. That tattoo gave me the creeps. It twined around her neck like ivy. I’d seen tattoos before but nothing like that one.

  Ursula tried again. “Portia, Linda said you hate cats. Why is it you hate cats?”

  There was a long pause, and it didn’t look like she was going to answer. Every eye was on that thin, narrow face, waiting for her to say something. When she did speak, her voice sounded dry as gravel. “I was locked in a closet with a dead cat for three days.”

  Shocked is hardly the word for it. Everybody in the room looked stunned. That is, everyone except Linda, who piped up, “I was locked in a motel room for a week and gang-raped by ten sheriff’s deputies.”

  Even Lenora, the frail one with the empty eyes, stared at Portia and Linda in shocked disbelief.

  We had hardly recovered when the bell rang and Group ended.

  The women were quick to exit the room, dashing outside where they could smoke. I wanted to go in my room and close the door, but I knew Ursula wanted to hear how it went in town, so I followed her into the office. Obviously upset, she shut the door behind us.

  “Esmeralda, your interruptions in Group are not helpful. They disrupt the program. Do you know how long it has taken me to get even this far with these ladies? They have such low self-esteem, they won’t open up when we are one on one, but as you saw today, in Group they are less intimidated.”

  I didn’t say it, but I thought to myself, Why wouldn’t they have “low self-esteem”? If you steal a prescription pad and write prescriptions for all your friends, how can you feel good about yourself? As I saw it, this Linda felt proud of what she’d done, but I wasn’t going to bring that up and challenge Ursula. Something was building up inside of her, and it wouldn’t take much to make her explode.

  “I instituted Group,” she was saying, “to create an informal atmosphere among peers, which is a device that works well. Until they verbalize their feelings, I cannot diagnose and remedy their problems. You have certainly truncated the process, Esmeralda, and such interference will not be tolerated.”

  Where I come from, younger people respect older people like me. Imagine her dressing me down like that. I had to bite my tongue. Of course, I’m not the kind that stays speechless for long. “Ursula, if these girls—”

  “Ladies,” she snapped. Her stringy body was twitching with nerves, and she was going to town on another paper clip.

  Ladies? I thought. Ladies don’t wear tattoos and do such things as I’m hearing here. But I didn’t say what I was thinking.

  I could stay quiet in ten languages if only I knowed ten. I did put in my two cents’ worth, though. “Well, if these ladies have low self-esteem, in most cases it’s their own fault. If I had done the things Linda done, I’d be ashamed to show my face.”

  “That’s hardly the point. I would appreciate it if you would leave analysis to me. I have my master’s in psychology and am well qualified to assess and rectify whatever we have here.”

  “I’m sure you can, Ursula, and I don’t mean to get in your way. It’s just that I don’t think there’s much good comes out of wallowing around in the muck and mire of a miserable past when we could be looking to the future—you know, looking to what Jesus can do for us.”

  “That is a simplistic view. My heart’s desire is to see these ladies come to know the Lord, but it is absolutely necessary to assiduously address the insidious circumstances that have entrapped them. Once we resolve the problems that led them into addictions, then we can lead them to Christ. My practice is based on biblical principles, Esmeralda. I know what I’m doing!”

  She had reached the boiling point, so I didn’t say anything, just waited for her to cool down. We sat in silence. Finally she said, “Well, what’s your report?”

  I told her all the creditors were willing to give us ten days more, and I asked her if any money had come in. “Not a thing.” She started scanning the receipt ledger. “We can depend on getting fifty dollars from a church in Rock Hill, but they are irregular in sending it. . . . Dr. Elsie sends us a hundred dollars a month, but it must have slipped her mind now that she’s in Vermont taking care of her terminally ill sister. . . . There is a Mrs. Hirsch whose daughter was helped at Priscilla Home. The daughter lived a Christian life for a year or two after leaving here, but then she was killed in an automobile accident. Her mother used to send us ten dollars a month from her social security check, but she hasn’t sent us anything in several months.”

  “The widow’s mite,” I remarked.

  She closed the book. “Just how many widow’s mites will it take?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and even though I wasn’t sure what God had in mind, I told her, “but I believe God can make a way out of no way.”

  “Don’t you think I believe that, too?”

  “Of course, you do, Ursula. And you believe in putting feet to our prayers. So do I. I passed a flea market in town, and I got to thinking we might find things here to sell down there.”

  “There’s not much left. The former housemother went through everything and sold it to the thrift store.”

  “That piano—does anybody play it?”

  “No. Lenora Barrineau played piano in nightclubs, but she won’t play here. That piano is in very bad condition.”

  “Then we don’t need it?”

  “Not in its present condition.”

  “Then what would you think of placing an ad in the Rockville paper and offering it for sale?”

  “We might as well. An ad will cost every penny of what we have in the account, so we should ask at least a hundred dollars for it.”

  “Let’s ask five hundred. We can always come down.”

  Ursula leaned her elbows on the desk with her face in her hands and sighed. “Esmeralda, there will be no end to this financial burden. Even if we were to get all these bills paid, we’ll always be up against money problems.”

  “So you’re saying we ought to plan ahead?”

  “Plan ahead? With what?”

  “First off, we have got to look for ways to economize—turning off lights, not running the washing machine or dishwasher unless they’re filled. Trying to make fewer trips into town, that kind of stuff. An
d you know that level ground next to the road? That patch catches morning sun, and I think we can make a garden there—grow our own vegetables.”

  “That ground has never been plowed.”

  “I know, but we should be able to find somebody who has a tractor who’ll plow it for us.”

  “And what will you pay him with?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just have to take one step at a time.”

  The phone was ringing; she answered it and then covered the speaker with her hand. “It’s Mr. Elmwood.”

  I left to give them privacy and went to my room.

  4

  I have never been one to wear my feelings on my elbows, but Ursula correcting me in front of the women got to me. Every day she found something I said that didn’t set well with her. If it wasn’t a verb out of place, it was a dangling participle, whatever that was. Ursula could write a book about dangling participles.

  After I had closed the door to my room and was getting ready for bed, I could hear Ursula talking on the phone to Elmwood. I’m not one to eavesdrop, but I did hear her say something about somebody “grating on her nerves.” That had to be me. That hurt. I’d had many a disagreement with people, but nobody before ever said anything like that about me. At least not that I could hear. And it cut me to the quick. That woman made me feel so stupid, so foolish, I couldn’t stand it.

  Even after I was in bed, she was still talking to Roger Elmwood. Then in a few minutes she was knocking on my door. “Esmeralda, Mr. Elmwood wants to talk to you.”

  “Just a minute,” I said and got up. Throwing on my robe, I went in the office. Ursula had left and shut the door behind her.

  I picked up the phone. “Roger?”

  He jumped right in with what he had to say. “Esmeralda, there are a few things I need to talk to you about. You understand that as president of the board of directors I’m responsible to see that things run smoothly up there. There’s a chain of command you may not be aware of, but you need to respect it. I know you mean well, but the Priscilla Home financial situation is best handled by the director and the board, not by you, the resident manager. Miss Ursula told you I authorized a bank loan to cover all the bills and enough to tide you over until there’s a response to the prayer letter. Out of the goodness of her heart she went along with your asking our creditors for extensions; however, the board has always handled our shortfall professionally, by a bank loan.”