Somewhat Saved

by Pat G'Orge-Walker

  “I’m famished,” she said cheerfully. Not one word held a hint of the disappointment she felt. “I can’t order anything dairy or with chocolate, though.”

  “I’m a bit hungry, too.” Sister Betty finally entered the conversation. “Just order chicken wings and grits, if they have any.” She was still confused by the sudden change in Chandler and Zipporah’s body language. But if they were ordering food, she might as well eat. She’d already broken her fast and there was no need for her to be hungry and confused.

  “I’m not particularly hungry but I guess I’ll order an appetizer or something light.” Chandler was still trying to figure out Zipporah’s stare and sudden mood change. He’d seen something of himself in the way she’d switched up on him. Perhaps, he’d misjudged her naiveté as a weakness, a sweetness that he might’ve one day explored.

  The entertainment business had made Chandler a shark. He’d learned how to pimp any situation and keep the collateral damage manageable. Yet, seeing the way she’d emotionally swam through what was obviously a sea of perceived deception was his wake-up call. The business was his excuse for being a shark. Her predatory nature seemed natural.

  Zipporah looked over the top of the menu directly at Chandler. “I’ll just order a garden salad with grilled chicken and a little oil and vinegar dressing on the side.” She didn’t return the menu to Chandler. Instead, she dropped it onto the coffee table. “I certainly wouldn’t want to mess with my money-making equipment.”

  And while Chandler called down their food orders, Zipporah hummed a soulful version of “Jesus Is On the Main Line.” She watched the more-than-pleased look upon Sister Betty’s face and tossed in a few vocal acrobatics, just to show she could.

  31

  After her scuffle with Bea, Sasha was completely worn out and sore. Her best shawl had a snag and her cane was nicked. She was getting too old to get into fights and yet it seemed as though she always was.

  She’d learned that Jasper’s suite was on the same side of the hotel as hers, as well as on the same floor. That meant the suite was in the opposite direction of Bea’s and Sister Betty’s rooms. So she set out to find him. It didn’t take much for her to sniff him out. She heard the echoes of a persistent and almost violent cough as soon as she came out of her room into the corridor.

  Sasha looked around carefully, making sure there was no one else in the corridor. There wasn’t. The coughing came with a hacking sound that stopped her cold. Was she imagining the echoing sound of a death rattle accompanying the cough?

  Sasha continued following the coughing until she arrived at Jasper’s suite. She leaned in closer, allowing her ear to rest against the door. Now that she was there, she felt torn between letting him get the rest he obviously needed, and what she needed at that moment. She stepped away from the door deciding that what she needed mattered more. She took her cane by its grip and rapped hard on the suite door.

  He hadn’t even asked who was at the door. He couldn’t have even if he’d wanted, his strength was so sapped. Yet Jasper opened the door as though somehow he’d expected Sasha.

  Sasha entered the suite without a word, watching Jasper falter slightly as he tried to return to his seat. The sound of hissing coming from the table caught her attention.

  It was the sound of escaping air or something akin to it. Sasha adjusted her eyeglasses and immediately knew. Either out of respect or pity, she didn’t know which, she turned away and waited until Jasper finished what was apparently a self-administered oxygen treatment.

  She heard him as he inhaled air as deeply as he could into his lungs and then expelled it with difficulty. She turned back in time to watch Jasper quickly don the mask attached to the oxygen pump and inhale, again, as though his life depended upon its gift. It did.

  “I’ll just wait over there.” Sasha pointed her cane toward a recliner near the window. While he finished sucking air she looked around the suite, which appeared twice the size of hers.

  From where Sasha sat she could also see into an open closet just off to the side of the living room. There were several expensive-looking suits hanging with well-polished shoes on the shelf above them. Closer to where she sat was another table. On it she saw pictures of not only a much-younger Jasper, with his arms around Areal, but some pictures with the same pose, only with his late wife. She wore the same silly expression as Areal, probably just happy to be on the same planet as Jasper. Sasha wondered, did his wife ever realize that she and Areal were interchangeable at Jasper’s whim?

  Sasha saw other subtle signs of permanency about the room. Apparently, he had told the truth. He’d kept a secret suite there at the Luxor.

  More than fifteen minutes had passed since Sasha’s arrival. Time was something neither of them had much of and she needed to get things rolling. If Sister Betty did what she promised, and was able to get more information about Zipporah and defer Bea’s snooping, Sasha could walk away from this mess pretty much unscathed.

  “I hope you’re not still trying to talk me out of meeting my daughter.” Jasper’s voice had a temporary power that was obviously supplied by the oxygen treatment. “I know what time she’s performing this evening. I’m going to be there.”

  “If there’s no way I can stop you, then I guess I might as well tell you everything I know about her.” Sasha had already rehearsed her words for just this moment. She suggested he listened carefully.

  Jasper’s expression didn’t change at all when Sasha said she was ready to tell him everything. Putting the oxygen mask back on gave him more air while giving Sasha less of a chance to read any emotions.

  Sasha related how shocked she was when she first laid eyes upon Zipporah. Although the resemblance between Zipporah and Ima was undeniable, she’d played dumb when Bea asked if she noticed. She was actually retelling the same tale she’d told when she’d arrived at Areal’s home in the Bronx, New York. Only this time, she was mentioning a revised version of her conversation with Sister Betty. She figured Jasper didn’t need to know it all.

  Jasper leaned back against a pillow that supported his back while he sat on the sofa. He listened intently as he waited for Sasha to tell him something he hadn’t known. And after five more minutes, when she hadn’t and he was again growing tired, he removed his mask and spoke.

  “Aren’t you leaving out something very important?” Jasper could feel the wheezing feeling returning. He was tired of Sasha’s games.

  Sasha’s face feigned surprise. “I’ve told you all I know. She’s got a promising career so it appears, and it’s right here at this hotel. I even told you the part about Bea becoming too involved and threatening to blow things sky high with her nosiness. I can’t think of anything more,” Sasha lied. It’d barely been twenty-four hours since she’d first told him, and Areal, what she’d discovered. How could he doubt what she said? Yet, she felt he did.

  “Your child, Sasha, you haven’t mentioned her.” Jasper reached for his mask as he waited for Sasha’s response.

  “Why do you care about Carrie?” She was puzzled. Her daughter, Carrie, had nothing to do with any of what was going on. Besides, Carrie was almost five years old the last time Jasper laid eyes upon her. She was now a grown, unmarried woman who was doing very well, when she wasn’t husband hunting.

  “I don’t care about Carrie!” Jasper had snatched off the mask in frustration. “I’m talking about the baby you carried in your belly! You thought I didn’t know! My baby. You’ve never once mentioned or even hinted about my baby.”

  Sasha sank lower into the chair. Was every secret she’d schemed and suffered through going to be exposed?

  If silence had a sound, then the moments that passed, after Jasper’s condemning accusation toward Sasha, echoed like a dynamite blast.

  Sasha’s head felt like a barbell. She could’ve sworn, as she turned it to avoid Jasper’s glare, that her neck creaked. The temperature in the suite was cool, yet her tiny body felt clammy. Out of desperation she tried to mentally escape by concentrati
ng for a moment on a single sun ray that filtered through the window. It was no use, his accusation blocked it, too.

  She was becoming unglued and that was not the person she’d fought hard to show the world. By her own admission, Sasha’s mind and memory had slowed down a bit since hitting her golden years. Yet, she’d spent a lot of time and enormous energy on keeping her secrets a secret.

  Sasha thought she’d only sat, stunned, for a few moments. Yet when she turned back to where he’d sat, he was gone. She leaned forward, grabbing the side of the chair to see if he was standing behind her. He wasn’t. She hadn’t heard him move. There had been no sound of the suite door opening or of the wheels moving on his portable oxygen tank. The tank still sat by the television cabinet.

  “Jasper,” Sasha called out. She didn’t want to call his name too loud, in case he’d only gone to the bathroom. “Jasper,” she called again. This time her voice quivered.

  Sasha moved forward and with more agility than she’d used in years, she almost jumped up. She searched the four-room suite and could not find Jasper. The last room she looked into was apparently the one he’d slept in. His toiletries and other items were displayed neatly on the dresser. And, again, she saw more pictures.

  At that moment she didn’t care if Jasper reappeared and found her in the bedroom. She moved almost in slow motion toward the dresser. Some of the people in the pictures she knew immediately. In one tall picture frame were Jasper and the famous Reverend James Cleveland. The two men were smiling broadly and dressed in skinny-leg, shiny brown suits with specks of gold thread. Jasper, his dark black hair slicked back and his face perspiring, held a microphone, and James Cleveland, a portly man at the time, sat grinning by the piano. In the background, a large audience, mostly women, was seen in various stages of appreciation.

  Sasha went from picture to picture. Nearly all of them featured Jasper in some aspect of performing on stage or posing with other celebrities or with his adoring fans. She also saw that one or two pictures that he had taken with Areal were in a much smaller frame. His smile was forced and so was Areal’s. The two of them looked like a pair of teenyboppers. Areal wore a high-collared white blouse and a turquoise skirt with a black and white poodle embroidered between the wide pleats. Her hair was long, past her shoulders, and she wore wide Chinese-styled bangs. Jasper’s hair was long and straight; he looked almost like an Indian chief. He’d worn a dark suit with razor-sharp creases in the skinny pants legs. There was something vaguely familiar about the background, including the out-of-focus girl off to the side. Sasha couldn’t quite make it all out.

  Sasha didn’t like being in the dark about things, so she picked up the photo and sat on the bed. She stared, concentrating on every detail. This picture was obviously from a different time and place than those she’d seen in the living room. Both Jasper and Areal looked to be in their teens. She looked at the date handwritten in the corner of the picture. It took her another few seconds to put it all together. The picture was taken several years before she’d known that Areal and Jasper knew one another in high school. She’d thought she knew Jasper first. Obviously, she hadn’t.

  And that’s when Sasha accepted the realization that she really didn’t know much.

  32

  Slowly, Jasper moved down the hotel corridor. He was surprised at how quickly he’d calmed down. With no regret he’d blasted Sasha’s cold heart and he hadn’t so much as wheezed. There was no room for sympathy when he’d gotten up and left his suite. So what if Sasha was hurt. He hadn’t cared. As far as he was concerned, she could sit there in that burst bubble until the maids came and removed her, along with the other trash from the suite.

  Calm he might’ve been, but he was still tired. Jasper clutched the small portable oxygen tank he carried in a shoulder pouch. It was an alternative he sometimes used because he could also place it in a backpack and hide its long plastic tube under his clothes.

  Jasper glanced at his watch. Zipporah should be preparing for tonight. He knew the rehearsal schedule. A smile and then almost a chuckle was followed by a quick bout of wheezing. He imagined she’d warm up her vocals with a run or two of riffs in a room void of air-conditioning. That’s what he used to do. She’d avoid ice-cold water, chocolates, and anything that contained dairy. He’d done that, too.

  He wanted to do right by her. That was the only thing he hadn’t done. He’d do that.

  Jasper shifted the pouch from one hand to the other and pulled a sheet of paper from his side pocket. He looked it over carefully and when the elevator arrived, he replaced it in his pocket, entered, and pressed a button.

  Earlier in Bea’s room, she’d barely started to munch on one of the expensive two-ounce bags of chips from the minibar when she’d gotten the call. The call; if she had to give it a name, that’s the one she’d use. Yet it was so much more than that because she’d had the wind knocked out of her.

  Most of the things she’d done in her past, and especially since finding God, she’d thought were hidden and forgotten. Didn’t the Word say that He would make you brand new? Sure, she’d done a little time for petty crimes; she’d been no saint. She definitely wasn’t before she accepted Jesus, and not afterward, either. Did she customize her salvation needs? She admitted that she had. She’d paid tithes the best she could and when she felt that it was doable. Being on a fixed income wasn’t a good excuse, but it was the one she used the most. Yet, she’d arrived in Las Vegas through a stroke of luck, so she’d reasoned, and was about to do something good for a change. This time it wasn’t about her. So why now was her world so abruptly challenged?

  A steady coughing outside her hotel room yanked away her thoughts. She tried to ignore the cough’s persistency and concentrate on her next move. When the coughing grew more urgent and appeared that it would remain outside her door, Bea got up to see who was so thoughtless and intrusive.

  When Bea opened her door she was met with a raised fist. Her instinctive nature prompted her to raise her fist as well.

  Jasper had been about to knock on the hotel room door when it flew open and a chubby fist flew from out of nowhere. He didn’t know he still had the strength or the sense to duck at the first sign of danger until Bea swung. If he hadn’t turned aside, Bea would’ve knocked him out.

  At the rate Bea was going, if the Luxor had security cameras running all over the hotel, she’d be on the Las Vegas Most Wanted List before the next shift came on duty.

  “Jasper Epps, what the ham and cheese are you doing, you old peeping Tom?”

  “Bea Blister, are you insane?”

  Jasper recovered slowly and inched his way along the living room wall as Bea apologized and gathered the pouch and other items that he’d dropped in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry.” She knew she was repetitive but she meant every word. “I wasn’t expecting you this quick.” From the bluish-purplish tinge to his coloring, she knew for certain she was going to jail for preemptive murder. Not knowing any better, Bea found his mask and slapped it across his face to help him inhale. She almost knocked Jasper out again.

  While Jasper fought literally for his life inside Bea’s hotel room, Sasha lay across the bed in his suite.

  She didn’t know where Jasper had disappeared to nor had she heard him leave. But what she did know still had her in shock. All her years of trying to keep the left hand from knowing what the right hand did was for nothing.

  It’d taken a moment but a particular memory finally returned. She turned her head aside as though doing so would give her clarity. Her eyes traveled along the pearl and pewter picture frame. It was another picture of Jasper and Areal in their youth. There was a paragraph in the bottom corner that said it was taken at the home-going service for one of the teachers named Miss Lizzie, Miss Lizzie Crow.

  Rising from the bed, she felt the aches of all the battle blows life had dealt to her. She gently picked up the picture and tried to remember more details. She didn’t remember Areal returning home for the funeral although the
y’d both had Miss Crow as a teacher. However, she did remember Jasper being there. She remembered him dressed to the tee in a gray sharkskin suit, a blinding white shirt, and a dark tie. He’d leaned on the side of a fence outside the funeral home wearing a pair of dark shades. There was no one who could compare to the way he’d embraced stardom. No one would’ve guessed he’d just started singing with a traveling gospel group and had returned for the funeral and would sing. As angry as she was at that moment, she smiled a bit at the memory.

  Finally she figured out the identity of the blurred figure in the other photo. She almost had to hold it upside down and then sideways to get it in focus. She should’ve known from the start who it was. “Bea!” Sasha spat on purpose when the realization hit her. “Bea Blister!”

  Sasha’s head throbbed and kicked. The pain came quick, running up and down through her skull and neck, like a cheetah on speed. Each of them—Areal, Jasper, Bea—had turned and deceived the others at some point in time. And yet she’d spent most of her adult life trying to keep things hidden.

  Sasha felt it was time to do it again, so she did. Sasha knelt and cried out to God. Her repentance came slowly and then accelerated. By the time she was fully into praying mode, her body lay supine on the floor. Sasha was completely at God’s mercy, a place in God where she’d always been, and she had never understood or accepted it.

  It hardly ever rained in Las Vegas, yet there were clouds peeking out and then hiding in the evening sky. Chandler had left almost an hour earlier, eager to complete something he’d had in mind for Zipporah. At least that’s what he’d told Sister Betty. He stammered out the excuse almost immediately after Zipporah had dressed him down for not telling everything she’d felt he should, particularly about recording a gospel album. He didn’t even wait around for the food they’d ordered from room service. He needed a miracle to salvage what was seen by Zipporah as a deception. He could almost feel her slipping through his hands before he’d barely closed them around her career.