Chapter 4
Mercedes is a beautiful bride. Ximena and Alejandro walk her halfway down the aisle, a sandy space set up between folding chairs on the beach near the marina. Then Alejandro kisses Mercedes’s hand, and Ximena walks her daughter, alone, to her waiting groom.
Her husband--to--be, like Mercedes, is a resident at a Miami ER. David is calm where Mercedes is impulsive; quietly determined where Mercedes is a bull in a china shop. They complement each other perfectly.
David reads his vows from his phone. In the emergency room, he says, they see all kinds of devastating accidents.
But every now and then, there is a happy accident—-something that changes the shape of your life, forever.
I watch Milagros and her girlfriend take in his words, and glance shyly at each other.
By the time he finishes, Mercedes is teary.
She starts her vows by pulling a handkerchief out of her bodice and saying, “That’s more words than I’ve ever heard you say at once.
And you had to do it in front of everyone and make me cry? ” The little crowd laughs.
I steal a glance at Ximena, my oldest friend, for now I have known her far longer than I knew Evie. She has an ethereal glow about her. I recognize it as relief; the knowledge that her chicks have left the nest and are successful on their maiden flights.
When Molly gets married, I won’t be there.
Maybe I will see an engagement photo on her Instagram account, which I have stalked now for a few years.
I will not go bridal gown shopping with her or throw her a shower.
I won’t be there the day of the wedding to fasten the back of her dress and gasp at her beauty when she turns around to face me.
I will not watch her partner’s face light up seeing her at the end of the aisle.
I won’t hear her promise to love someone for the rest of her life.
Adam will walk her down the aisle. Evie will be flanking Molly’s other side. Together, they will give her away.
Because I gave her away first.
Molly rarely posts pictures of herself on Instagram.
Instead, there are cute dogs she spots in coffee shops, blurry atmospheric photos of Providence, the occasional shot of a fancy dish in a restaurant.
So when it is June and she posts a picture of herself and two girlfriends on a football field wearing graduation gowns and mortarboards, I drink in the photograph like I am in a desert and it is an oasis.
She looks like Adie. Her long strawberry--blond hair has been tamed into a French braid with a red ribbon, and that makes my chest ache. I touch the edges of my chestnut bob—-these days, I keep my hair short and dye it.
She is graduating early, which makes me swell with pride. Her decorated graduation cap—-the second slide in the post—-reads: prevention is the best medicine. next stop: columbia u school of public health! She is headed back to New York City, to study how to prepare for disasters.
I hope she will be better at it than I was.
I learn about my father’s death from the church website.
Like everything except, apparently, their congregation, the Church of the Living Word has evolved, has embraced technology.
Reverend Ezekiel Owens, the post reads, was called home to the Lord on May 31, 2017.
He was born to Zachary and Martha Owens on March 12, 1946.
As a child, he loved to hike and fish. He attended Cedarville University and was ordained as a Southern Baptist reverend in 1970.
Shortly there-after, he received a vision from God to spread the gospel in Alabama, and he created the Church of the Living Word.
He met his wife, Euphemia, in 1971 at a church supper.
They married two years later and were blessed with a child.
Reverend Owens held an unwavering faith in Jesus, which he shared with all whose lives brushed against his. He joins his daughter Adie in Heaven. He is survived by his wife, Euphemia.
Exodus 23:20—-“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.”
Just like that, I am elided from this thread of my past. They were blessed with a child. He joins his daughter Adie in Heaven. There is no record of me.
Restless, I leave my apartment and step into the infernal Atlanta heat. I walk through city streets, past businessmen texting and teens sharing earbuds and kids eating Popsicles. When the temperature gets so oppressive I need a break, I stop walking and look for a coffee shop.
I notice that I am in front of a synagogue. I’ve never been in one before.
The inside is cool and dark, with wood paneling and carvings in Hebrew that I cannot read. Unlike a church, where you might find people praying at any time of day, I am the only person here. I slip into a pew (are they still called that?) and look at the book in the rack in front of me.
Half the Bible. The Old Testament.
“Can I help you?”
A man stands in the aisle. He’s wearing a small knit cap pinned onto his dark hair. “I’m sorry,” I say immediately, getting to my feet. “Should I not be here?”
“Stay,” he says. “It’s hot out.”
“But I’m not Jewish.”
“I won’t tell the rabbi.” He leans closer and whispers, “I am the rabbi.” He grins at me, but when I don’t grin back, he gestures to the pew so that I sit, and he joins me. “Even if you’re not Jewish, I’m a very good listener.”
“My father died,” I blurt, and then I tell this absolute stranger, “He was an Evangelical preacher.”
The rabbi says gently, “May his memory be a blessing.”
At that, I bark out a short laugh. “It won’t be.” When I find the rabbi looking at me, I add, “He was not a good man.”
“Losing someone whose relationship to us was complicated can be particularly difficult.”
My eyes grow damp, which just makes me angry. “I didn’t even know he had died. It happened months ago.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I ran away when I was seventeen,” I admit.
“Do you feel guilty about that?”
“If I hadn’t left,” I tell the rabbi, “I would not be here today.”
He shifts in his seat. “Sometimes the best thing we can do is sit with discomfort and know that God’s sitting next to us.” He smiles a little. “I promise that your God can find you here, even in a synagogue.”
“I doubt that, since He’s been markedly absent when I needed Him.”
The rabbi tilts his head. “Maybe the miracle isn’t in God showing up, but in being able to trust Him, even when He doesn’t.”
“God’s supposed to be infallible,” I say.
“Is He?” The rabbi shrugs. “You’re familiar with Genesis, I take it. That God made man in His own image?”
I nod. “That’s in our greatest hits, too.”
“Well, then. Are you infallible?”
I am clearly the furthest thing from it. I shake my head.
“If you’re made in God’s image, then . . . perhaps He’s got some flaws, too. Keep an open mind—-you never know when He’ll show up.”
I am still thinking about the rabbi’s words later; his comments have stayed with me in a way my father’s sermons never did. I do not want to go home, so as night falls, I wander to Piedmont Park and sit, trying to think of a happy memory of my father, which seems like the charitable thing to do.
But I don’t have any.
What surprises me the most is how little I feel. No pain, no loss, no ache, no relief. You’d think a child would know the moment a parent has died—-that it would feel like a string sharply snipped, or a squeeze of the heart—-but nothing seems different.
Does this mean Molly doesn’t feel my absence, either? Am I a mere footnote in her life?
I bury my face in my hands, thinking about the fact that I do not give a damn about the first person I ran away from, only the second.
When it suddenly starts to pour, I let the rain soak my hair and my clothes. It runs down my face, like the tears that I cannot make myself cry. I cannot help but think of all the times my father found me lacking, and it seems I proved him right.
“Ma’am?”
The voice is gentle. In the moonlight I can make out a police uniform—-the brim of the hat shielding the angles of his face from the brunt of the rain. Bronze skin. Eyes dark.
“You all right, ma’am?” he asks.
I notice, first, his lack of a Southern accent. He is not from around here.
“I lost someone,” I blurt.
I see the quiver that runs through his body. “A child?”
For a moment, I think maybe this man can see right through to my soul. Then I realize he thinks I’m in a park panicking because my kid dashed off.
“My father died,” I tell this stranger.
His face softens. “Let me help you,” he says.
I remember hearing that the police are the busiest on holidays—-Christmas, New Year’s, Easter—-because of a spike not in crime but in loneliness.
An officer on duty might drop in at the home of someone elderly to chat for a few minutes, or bring candy canes to the children of a single mom.
It is not a holiday, but I can tell this policeman sees me as a charity case, too.
He drives me in his police cruiser to a diner. Although his badge says Yazzie, he tells me his first name is Kai.
I sit across from him in a booth, drinking hot tea. I’m wrapped in a blanket that he had in the trunk of the cruiser. “Aren’t you supposed to be on duty?”
He shakes his head. “Finished up about the time it started to pour.”
“So you’re a Good Samaritan.”
Kai shrugs. “Nah, I just really hate the rain. Not too much of it where I come from.”
“Which is?”
“T’iis Nídeeshgiizh.” He grins, a flash of white. “You’d call it Newcomb, New Mexico . . . if you’re not Diné.” When I stare at him blankly he says, “You’d call that Navajo.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Just kept moving till I got tired.”
Something else we have in common.
He has slanted cheekbones and hair that looks soft as feathers, already drying in the warm heat of the diner. “Were you and your father close?”
I shake my head.
“Well, that’s for the best,” Kai says, and I am so startled my head snaps up.
“Is it?”