Something She Can Feel

“To have the operation?”

“Yes.” She looked away again.

“Well, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at home resting?”

The bell rang.

“Mrs. DeLong, everything all right out here?” Ms. Newberry asked, poking her head out of the office in front of us.

“Yes... . Actually, could you go down to my classroom for a minute until I get there?” I put my arm around Zenobia.

“Sure,” she answered quickly.

“Let it out,” I said to Zenobia when Ms. Newberry left. “It’s okay to feel sad. You just did something very adult. You just have to be strong now. You hear me?” I lifted her head with my hand so she could see my face.

“I didn’t do it,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“I couldn’t do it. I went and my mama left me because she had to go to work and I waited and waited and I just left.”

She started crying openly then; tears were coming from her eyes faster than she could wipe them away.

“Oh, Zenobia,” I said, and she went to rest her head back on her knees.

“I can’t kill my baby,” she said and her voice was both angry and sad. “I won’t do it. It’s my baby. I won’t kill it.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just let it out. No one’s going to make you do anything.”

“Mrs. DeLong,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I keep thinking that—that I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I have to figure it out because I can’t kill my baby.”

“So, this is really what you want?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I can’t lie to you. It’s going to be hard. Really hard. And there will be a lot of sacrifices. But if you pray and really keep God first, you can make it.”

“You believe that?” she asked tearfully, and in the eyes of this girl who’d fought me so many times and complained and turned her back on me, I saw for the first time that she really needed to hear my opinion of her and that it mattered.

“You can do anything you put your mind to, Zenobia,” I said. “You’re a strong girl. You’re passionate. You’re bright. You’re smart. If you use all those skills—skills that God gave you—you’ll be blessed.”

She shook her head, and I could see that she hadn’t heard these things about herself before. But I meant each of them. As feisty as Zenobia was, her passion always shined through. Similar to most of the kids like her, she just had to focus this energy on a goal. And now, she had one.

Chapter Eighteen

As desperate as things seemed to be getting in my marriage, in my family—in my personal life in general since my thirty-third birthday, there were moments like the one with Zenobia that day out in the lobby of the school at the beginning of sixth period that brought some clarity. The days following, I remembered what my mother said about taking stock of my life and I realized that while I wasn’t clear at all on the direction anything was going to take—at that point I was willing to admit that—I had to begin to trust myself. As I told Zenobia, who was now having to take stock of her life and start planning a path that even I couldn’t imagine how dark it was going to get, I had to believe in myself. That only I knew if I wasn’t happy. That I knew if I was happy. And that soon, I’d have to make a decision about everything and trust, like I’d told Zenobia, it would be okay. Now, this was just a tested theory in my mind at the time. While I’d tried to seem confident and allknowing like adults did whenever they shared advice with children like Zenobia, I was preparing myself to take baby steps to get to wherever I was going. So when Evan came to me each night when the moon was high and he wanted me to make good on my promise to start a family, I kept a secret to myself and just said I was tired. But the truth was I needed time to think. Time to make a decision to stay and move forward. To fall back in love with my life and having him in it. Or time to plan away out. To just walk away from everything and leave my past behind and Evan with it. And then I’d think about Dame and how he’d left and went out into the world even before anyone said he should. Just like me, everyone had plans for him, but he had plans for himself.

At church on Sunday, it was as if I wasn’t even there. I was sitting in my seat beside Evan and next to May and Jr, but I wasn’t there. I couldn’t hear the sermon or focus on one song that was sung. I was praying. Not in a formal way. Not with my hands lifted or my head bowed. In fact, if anyone found my face in the row, they’d think I was just listening. But I was in my mind. Meditating and thinking of the better me. The better Journey I wanted to be. The things about myself that I hadn’t said to myself in a long time. My wants. My desires. My strengths. The things that Dame had said to me that tickled my ears like the lightest feather.

Evan rested his hand on my lap and laughed at something my father was saying. It was a big laugh—one that let me know that Evan was just in his world while I was in mine. As he was static, I was racing. As he was staying the same, I was changing. And then I looked out over the congregation and suddenly all I could see was moving parts. Everyone was the same. The way my mother looked at my father—even when she was angry with him. The way Jr rolled his eyes when Jack Newsome stood up. Mrs. Alice sitting in the third seat from the aisle in the fifth row. The choir in the loft. They were all the same as they’d always been. The same grudges. The same fears. The same happiness. The same sadness. The same praise in the same place I’d been every Sunday of my life. And for the first time, I thought maybe I wasn’t even there. It was like I was watching a movie. I wasn’t even there. Just in it. Participating as expected and playing a role, saying lines when cued. After this, Evan and I would walk to the car, talk about the sermon, and head to my parents’ house for dinner. There, my father would press me about children. May would be quiet. Jr would say something mean and I’d sit and wait for it to be over. The act was the same and I’d be there for the entire thing until I went to bed and lay in my space in the bed where the moon looked down on me to see that once again, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. This list turned into a tornado in my mind. It was spinning and kicking up dust all around. Forever—forever. I was breathless just thinking about it. Just wondering how I could do it all and come out okay on the other side. Could I still be me each night when I went to bed? Could I be my best? Or was I someone else?

I looked up into the rows in the second and then third balcony to try to find something still to stop the spinning—to focus on. Six faces I counted—all laughing, all smiling at the same thing. Seven. A door swinging open. A man with his back to me. He was walking outside the doors, but even from my seat I could see his size, his gait, how he carried himself in the loose fitting jeans and buttoned-up shirt he was wearing.

“Benji?” I said, and hearing Dame say in my mind, “Whenever you see Benji, know that I’m just two steps behind,” my heart immediately began to palpitate.

“What’d you say, honey?” Evan asked, leaning toward me.