Living Right on Wrong Street

by Titus Pollard

  “I’ll be there. That gives me time to do a few things before I pick you up.”

  “Don’t be late,” she said.

  Job didn’t take her response as fussing. She just didn’t want to spend another minute there if she could help it. He told her, “We’ll get through this, I promise.” He pulled his face away from the receiver to stifle another set of tears that dropped from nowhere. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll be on time.”

  There was a brief silence on the line until Monica said, “I had a talk with God. He got onto me about some things, things I’ve been doing wrong in our marriage.”

  “Oh?”

  “For some reason I can’t explain, I feel ... sure that everything’s gonna be all right. Today, it’s a new day, a better day.”

  No matter how many times Job swallowed, he couldn’t remove the lump in his throat. “I’ll pick you up in a few,” was all he said before they hung up. Monica’s words clenched him. He felt out of the ordinary and somewhat liberated. Is this how I’m supposed to feel when God’s doing His thing?

  He stretched his arms toward the ceiling and took a few short breaths for energy. It was a new day but a day he’d lose if he didn’t get a move on.

  He made a call to the school district’s substitute line to get his classes covered. He decided to use one of his personal days. An explanation to Bianca for his absence would have to wait.

  Job checked out of the hotel and drove back to the house under the possibility that something, anything, might be salvageable from the blackened debris. When he got there, he noticed that two sets of tape surrounded the property. He expected the fire department’s orange. There were also strips of yellow tape, the kind police officers use to designate crime scenes. His emotions tried to resurface, but he kept them at bay.

  He didn’t understand the dual quarantine, and there was no one around to give an explanation. It occured to him to call Statewide Insurance to report a claim. Then he scribbled himself a reminder to call the fire department later that day.

  There was enough time to withdraw funds from an ATM before picking up Monica.

  He arrived at the hospital, took a direct path to the room, and found her sitting in a chair, scanning the pages of a Bible.

  Monica gave a quick hello, a passionate kiss, and told him that she had started getting ready right after he hung up.

  “You’re on a mission, aren’t you?” he asked.

  She grinned. “Umm hmm. I’m released. Everything’s been signed.” Monica grabbed him by the arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Whatever you say.” As they traveled from one end of the city to the next, completing errands, their interactions were delicate, cheery. Job pondered the meaning behind Monica’s behavioral one-eighty and asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” She flipped the sun visor down and looked in the mirror. Her eyes grew wide. “What? You see something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No.” he reached over to her, touching her thigh. “It’s okay to let it out. We lost our home and everything in it.”

  “I know that.”

  “This morning, I did something I haven’t done in a long time. Cried.”

  Monica smiled, giving the impression that she was delighted with what she heard. “I had my cries too. Half the night last night. But God spared my life. I’m alive with no burn marks.”

  “You credit the way you’re acting right now to your faith in God?”

  She shook her head. “It’s what keeps me going.”

  Job gripped the wheel tighter and shrugged. Unbelievable.

  They decided to eat lunch at Miss Wilhelmina’s Café on E. Jefferson, a black-owned establishment where only an individual’s personality could be pretentious, because the restaurant was as down to earth as they come. Job wanted to eat there, because he needed to satisfy his craving for soul food. “Can you name a place any closer that fixes oxtails?” he asked Monica after she lodged her protest to the driving distance.

  It didn’t take her long, though, to settle on Wilhelmina’s; other than a drive-through, it was the one place Monica didn’t mind being seen in the clothing Fontella had loaned her.

  The ills of the day were forgotten when she whiffed Friday’s special: meatloaf and side orders of what those familiar with cuisine south of the Mason-Dixon Line would call “fixins.”

  “C’mon, darling, have a seat,” the waitress said, pulling out Monica’s chair.

  Monica looked around, wondering if there was even room to breathe. People were everywhere with many more packing into the place, their attire ranging from worn-out leisure wear to stilettos. Steam from the kitchen rose everywhere, fogging up the black and white wall pics of celebrities that had frequented the place. It didn’t take long before the aroma and ambience had her craving the hypertension-building grub that reminded her of what Mama used to make. Mmm.

  Job wanted a kiss, but she set passion and good graces aside. After taking a few moments for a personal invocation, she began her meal with a fork of fried okra.

  Job commenced with a soapbox of all they had left to do before their day could end. She scrutinized every declaration he made; in particular, the statement on how they would make it through their latest dilemma.

  To that, she raised her water glass and replied, “Humph. Can’t wait to see this,” which was her expressed disbelief that he would commandeer each task in a timely fashion and yield results.

  Job looked like a man about to knowingly walk into a restricted area. “You’ll be eating that,” he said, referring to her words.

  Monica noticed Job’s head dropping. She asked him, “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  She could think of a million reasons, but she wanted him to give her specifics. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s on your mind. Whatever it is, it’s got you thinking pretty deeply.”

  Job let out a heaving sigh and seemed to bear a hole through the table with the base of his glass. “It’s going to be a huge expense to stay somewhere while our house is being rebuilt.”

  “Maybe not.” She put her fork down. “Matter of fact, I’m sure it won’t be. The insurance company will take care of our stay for the first two weeks, and then we can possibly go to temporary housing. We may not have to take that route, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “We should be able to handle somewhere to our liking. We’ll just have to squeeze tight on our budget.”

  He grunted. “Anywhere decent is expensive. The Oak Woods on Fifty-first and Bell are completely furnished; I mean everything’s in them. All we have to do is stock it with food. But the rental fee is high as all get-out.”

  Monica let out a faint laugh. “You’re forgetting about where I work.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Think about it. We can stay at the resort free of charge. I can just book one of the suites long term.”

  Job’s face turned wicked. “We can’t stay there.” He went off into an annoying tangent about his pride and what people would think, and how Monica’s coworkers would gossip about them being a charity case.

  Monica replayed his account and played it again, keeping her nerves in check. Oh yes, she wanted to reach across the red and white plaid tablecloth and crown him open-handed like a checkers move, but she came to her senses. They were both semi-public figures in a public place, and slapping the taste out of his mouth could be a well-publicized embarrassment to an otherwise gratifying release of irritation. “Joseph Bertram Wright ... Are you hearing yourself?”

  “I don’t care if it is free. I don’t want to put others in the position of guessing what kind of shape we are in.”

  Monica ran her nails along her thigh, her patience frazzled thin by his clear insensitivity. “Are you serious? You’d rather pay money—money we can’t afford to pay—for a temporary dwelling that couldn’t possibly look anything like Nine Iron’s suites because of what you think people will say? Nobody pays that much attention to us, Job.”


  “You got room to talk. Easy for you, Miss My-Salary-Swallows-My-Husband’s.”

  Silence. If anyone else had a conversation in the restaurant, Monica didn’t realize it. “I’ve never brought up money to you. Never. God gave me my job and I don’t apologize for it. The money I earn is our money. Our money keeps us above water. Now I believe I’m seeing the real Job.”

  “You’re implying what?” Job’s teeth gritted. “Now you’re my analyst and I’m the textbook case? You ain’t no scientist, and I ain’t no experiment.”

  “Since we’ve never been in this role before, where the money-making is reversed, I hadn’t had the chance to see how you’d react until now. And you’re good ... you’ve kept it hid from me for over a year. God has His way of showing you things.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His eyes narrowed. “How much green you make don’t bother me.”

  “You’re lying!” Monica felt flush. Her outburst was loud enough to make their argument go public. It seemed that everyone within earshot conveyed their thoughts by facial expression. To her amazement, the looks even seemed unique, specific by ethnicity and gender: Black men’s frowns commanded: Handle your woman, man. Black women smirked, telling Monica they wanted her to set him straight. White men’s twisted crow’s necks cracked a just like black folk. White women’s wishing eyebrows said If only I had the guts.

  Monica really didn’t care what any of them thought. Job was her husband and she had a right to argue with him if she wanted to.

  It was obvious that Job could feel eyes on him, too. He appeared as though he was surrounded in a room full of uncracked, spoiled eggs waiting to burst at the first incongruent move. He leaned in toward Monica and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Everybody’s trying to find out about us right now. Look around you.”

  “What does that—look—this is crazy. I’m not going back and forth with you on this. This is just—I don’t even know what this is.” She started sniffling. “With what has happened, we have no idea the kinds of expenses we’ll run into. We need to spend our cash wisely. Getting a suite at my job isn’t charity. I work to earn that amenity.” She turned away from Job.

  “Don’t cry, Monica.”

  “Man, please. You don’t see any tears.” She hadn’t stopped the water from welling in her eyes, but she refused to let the drops fall onto her face.

  “Okay,” he muttered in consolation.

  It meant nothing to her. She wasn’t surprised that he had taken a stab at her career and salary. Those moments would be ones she would never forget. “You claim you’re an upright man. Start thinking and trusting like one. You’re failing ... not as a man ... necessarily. It’s when you come face to face with a predicament. Under your own strength, you fail almost ev’rytime.”

  “People take hold of their own destinies,” he rebutted. By the vein-popping grip he had on his glass, she had pulled on his conscience, even if he was convinced of his own hype.

  “I don’t know what’s up with you. You don’t sound like the man I know. When we were in Louisville, I refused to be the wife like the kind you see in some tabloid, yanking on her man’s arm like it’s a pillar, showing false support while people who know him watch him fall from grace. I was praying for you. You needed help only God could provide. And it wasn’t your or my intelligence that kept us from falling all the way down.”

  “Oh. It wasn’t?”

  “Nope, and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “Oooh!” The crash of a waitress’s tray of dirty dishes caused Job to throw his leg up, striking his knee on one of the table’s supports. “What was she doing?” he asked.

  Monica let out a muffled laugh. “That was God’s way of letting you know you’re thinking like an infidel. Serves you right. You should be glad your knee is all you hurt.”

  As Job caressed his leg, he had a casual, witless confidence in his look. “You got too much committed to Him. You might think I don’t believe in God. I do. I just believe even stronger that God has expectations of us.”

  Monica grunted, wishing she could snap him out of his own ridiculousness. “You better open your eyes. Larry and Fontella tried to tell you when we first met them, that your faith in God should be more prevalent. I knew you didn’t go along with what they told you.”

  Job bucked his eyes. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  For a second, Monica asked herself how she could’ve been fooled into marrying such an infidel. “Walk by faith and not by sight. Seems pretty obvious to me.”

  “The Bible also says, ‘faith without works is dead.’”

  “You’re trying to make the Word fit your definition. That’s twisted. I can’t help but thank the Lord for keeping us—as silly as it may sound to you. So, whoever’s been yanking your chain, sending you on the crazy path, they got you, brotha.”

  “How you came to that conclusion’s beyond me. In anything we’ve been through that wasn’t in our favor, we came out clean.”

  “That’s what you don’t seem to understand,” she told him. “We didn’t come away from circumstances as clean as we could have if you’d have put your trust—I mean really—put trust in God.”

  “Whatever you say, Monica.”

  “You can act arrogant if you want to. I don’t care what you say. On Monday, I’m making a long term reservation for us at my job. You’ll have to get over your pride.” Monica reached for her water, took a swallow, and then slammed it on the table. “And by the way, we need to pick up the rental car that’s been reserved for us. I felt like I needed to remind you of that, too.”

  Job smirked.

  And Monica did not care. “You know? For a little bit, you’d be no different than Delvin.”

  Chapter 21

  Then a spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up.

  Job 4:15

  As the week spat out its final grains of sand, Delvin began intimidating Murphy with threatening notes and visitations. Demonic stares at mealtimes. Shadowing in the courtyard. He made his presence known.

  Murphy appeared jumpy, but contended that he had no update and that he would, “Relay the procured specifics with immediacy.”

  Procured? That’s right. Murphy sparked his memory. Delvin knew that somebody had better deliver results soon. He’d shelled out thirty thousand dollars for that under-the-prison-radar private investigation work.

  After he managed his anger, Delvin’s sensible side told him to relent and relax under the belief that new information about Job would run him down without his overwrought efforts of coercion. It had to be the right day, the perfect hour.

  And that day finally rolled around. On Friday, September Twenty-first, Delvin felt that his role as an oppressor would be tested once again. It was in his spirit. Not all spirits are holy.

  That morning, a fall Kentucky breeze came through and lingered. It was the perfect weather for jogging, which was what he and Stinson decided to do.

  On his way out to the yard, he met Shiloh, who had on his fresh-aglow personality. “Coming to service this Sunday, Mr. Storm?”

  “Say a prayer for me, Reverend,” Delvin sneered.

  The courtyard perimeter had passed their shoeprints about three times when Murphy came up, eyes bulging.

  Delvin and Stinson stopped exercising.

  Stinson greeted Murphy as usual, slamming him on the back as a mockery. “Boy, you look like you could use some fresh air. Exercise.”

  Delvin felt his face get hot with irritation. “Why’d you come out here and spoil our run? I oughta break your neck.”

  “Mr. Storm,” he panted out. “You must peruse this.” He was shaking the section of a newspaper that had been separated from the whole.

  “What?” Delvin yanked the paper out of Murphy’s hand with a grunt.

  It was from the southern region’s edition of the USA Today. Wednesday’s date. Two days ago. An Associated Press wire had news from Orlando:

  Walt Disney Teacher of th
e Year 2001

  Hatred stamped on his accelerator. He studied the article from its opening paragraph to the ending period, smoldering with every sentence. Joseph Bertram Wright.

  “Well, I’ll be ...” Delvin spat out in bitter resentment. He crushed the article between his palms and stomped back to his cell, leaving Stinson and Murphy in the yard.

  Two hours later, a guard informed Delvin that the Warden had some work for him, so he washed up and put on a fresh shirt, placed the article in his breast pocket, and decided to go to the office by the path of the cell block floor. He passed by Stinson’s cell. He was inside playing solitaire.

  “Boy, how you enjoying being a prison gofer ?” Stinson joked.

  “It’s hard work. Makes me sweat, and you know I don’t like that,” Delvin replied.

  “Whatever you say, boy.”

  “It’s mostly just petty-patty work, nothing special. But it’s time away from the usual, and I do get to use his computer sometimes, when his pants ain’t in a wad.”

  Stinson laughed. “Yeah. I know ’bout that.” He slapped down a card. “And you get to use the internet too?”

  “Yeah. He claims he can tell where I’ve been. Figures I wouldn’t go to a site that adds time to my sentence. I get information for myself, but nothing that would alarm the boss.”

  “Don’t mess up,” Stinson warned, keeping his eyes on the cards.

  “Don’t fret. I won’t.”

  Delvin found himself in the warden’s office, filing reports that held no significance to current inmates. It was ancient material that hadn’t been touched in at least a decade.

  “After you finish, Storm, you can have some time on the computer. Guard Jones will be in your vicinity, but I have rounds to make,” Warden said.

  Those were easy directions to follow—the kind that gave him eventual freedom. Being a good boy is paying off.