Practicing What You Preach. Vanessa Davis Griggs
and ruin my and Brent’s special day. We have been so looking forward to this wedding. You just don’t know how hard it’s been having to wait. Now this comes up. On the surface it looks like it might be a gift from God, but who knows for sure? To learn that my grandmother could possibly still be alive and could be right here, in a place I can get in my car and drive to today, I can’t put it into words.”
“I know it’s messing with your mind,” Gayle said as we walked toward Angela’s car. “But you’re going to make me feel bad if I put even the slightest damper on your wedding for telling you this news today of all days.”
We were close to Angela’s navy blue Cadillac Seville.
“Melissa, why don’t you sit in front so you can show Angela how to get there?” Gayle said. After Angela unlocked the doors, Gayle got in back behind Melissa.
I got in front and closed the door. My old neighborhood was only about thirty minutes from Angela’s place. With the exception of the oak tree in the front yard being much bigger, everything else looked pretty much the same. Angela pulled into the driveway. She sat there, frozen, not moving one way or the other.
Gayle leaned forward and stuck her head through the opening between the front seats. “Are you going to be all right? Do you want me to go in and check for you while you wait out here?”
Angela continued to hold the steering wheel firmly without saying a word. After a minute, she released it and grabbed her purse. Shaking her head a few times, she seemed to snap out of it.
“We can go in together,” Angela said. “If this is where Arletha Brown lives, I’ll just explain everything to her. If it turns out we have the wrong Arletha, I’ll let it go. For now anyway. And when I return from my honeymoon, and Brent and I have had a few weeks to adjust to being husband and wife, I’ll see what I can do to locate the right Arletha.” She nodded a few times as though someone had asked her a question that required a yes answer. “We’ll just have to play this by ear.”
“Should I stay in the car?” I asked.
Angela turned to me. “How well did you know Arletha Brown when you lived here?”
“Not all that well. She didn’t have children and most of us children avoided her house as much as possible. Honestly, she didn’t seem to enjoy being around other people all that much, adults or children,” I said. “But whatever you want from me at this point, I’m ready and willing to do.”
I was sincere about that, but I was also thinking about those place cards for the reception that still needed our attention back at her apartment. The sooner we took care of this, the sooner we could get back to taking care of them and all the other business that was screaming for our attention. There are just some things a wedding planner can’t do without the assistance of the bride. That’s if you want a bride happy with the end results. If my going in with her would help move things along that much faster, then whatever I needed to do, I was willing to do.
“Then let’s go,” Angela said to both me and Gayle as she opened her door.
We walked up to the front porch. There wasn’t a doorbell. Angela took charge even though Gayle was the oldest of us three. She opened the green-trimmed screen door and knocked on the main door. After a minute, she knocked again. Either no one was home or the person inside had peeked out, saw us standing there, and decided not to answer it.
Angela knocked again, harder, in rapid succession. The door suddenly opened. A chain kept the door from opening any wider than a crack large enough to see through. “Yes?” the elderly woman said as she eyed us through the crack.
“Hi. Yes. We’re looking for Arletha Brown,” Angela said.
“Who is we?” the elderly woman asked.
“My name is Angela Gabriel. This is Gayle Cane and Melissa Anderson.” Angela touched us as she spoke our names.
“Sorry, but I don’t talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses. So y’all can take your literature and whatever else you’re trying to peddle and, in Jesus’ name, get off of my porch.”
“Ma’am,” Angela said, speaking quickly before the woman could close the door in our faces. “We’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Then who are you?”
Angela’s hands began to shake a little as she held them up. I took what she was doing as her way of letting this woman know we didn’t come to do her harm. “Ma’am, might you be Arletha Brown?”
“Ms. Arletha”—I moved up around Angela so the woman could see me better—“I’m Melissa Anderson. I used to live up the street from here. I’m Ernestine Anderson’s child, Ms. Cora Belle’s grandchild.”
I threw in my grandmother’s name because I remembered my grandmother had befriended or at least tried to befriend Arletha a few times, back when she lived with us. My grandmother had been looking for more people her age. They would speak on occasion when my grandmother saw her outside. They would chitchat if she caught her before Arletha spotted her and scurried back inside her house. Nothing much ever came of it. My grandmother said Arletha was a little more fanatic than she cared for when it came to religion. Eventually, my grandmother quit even bothering and just waved if she saw her.
“You’re Cora’s grandchild?” the woman asked as she took the chain off the door and opened it. She looked me up and down, then said, “That you are. I see a little bit of Cora in you. Same bone structure, same nose.” She looked from me to Angela and Gayle as she seemed to size them up. “So, what can I do for y’all?”
“Ms. Brown, would you mind if we came in for a minute?” Angela said.
“That depends,” Arletha said. “Are you selling something? ’Cause if you are, I can tell you right now that I ain’t the least bit interested, so don’t bother wasting your time or mine.”
“No, ma’am,” Angela said. “I can assure you we didn’t come here to sell you a thing. I promise, if you’ll give us just a few minutes of your time, I’ll explain everything.”
Arletha motioned for us all to come in. I had never been inside her house before. It was spotless, everything in its place, with a real antiquelike feel to it. The couch and chairs in the living room still had plastic on them, the hard kind that when cracked could do some damage to a leg if you sat or moved the wrong way. The kind of plastic I thought everyone had gotten the memo about stating that it was no longer chic or cool to have on your living room furniture. I sat down. I was thankful—no detectable cracks.
“The clock’s ticking,” Arletha said. “You might want to start your pitch right about now.”
Gayle sat, not having said a word. She looked over at Angela, who sat down, pressed her lips together several times, then quietly and slowly exhaled.
“My name is Angela Gabriel.”
“That much I got when you were outside my door,” Arletha said.
“Ms. Brown, my mother’s name was Rebecca. After my mother died, I was raised by my great-grandmother, Pearl Black Williams.” Angela took in another deep breath. “I have reason to believe you may be my grandmother,” she said, releasing that breath along with those words.
All eyes were now fixed on Arletha.
And that’s when I suddenly realized, that’s when it struck me…I had forgotten how to breathe. As much as I was trying to, I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Something we all do day in and day out without ever thinking about it. But as we sat there, eyes glued on Arletha, all I could hear my brain saying, at first calmly, was, “Breathe. Breathe.” Then in a more panicked tone, I heard my brain begin to scream, “Hurry up, girl. You need to breathe!”—then scream louder—“Breathe!”
Chapter 11
And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart.
—Luke