Part 2
(c) copyright October 2016
The next morning, Monday, after my
father had left for work, I told Mama that I was sick and needed to stay home.
She put her hand on my forehead and pronounced that I was cool as a cucumber and
should leave for school immediately. “You better not get no tardy notice,” she
warned.
“But what if I throw up in school?
That would be embarrassing!” I countered.
“If you throw up in school, it
won’t be the first time somebody has done that. Just ask to go to the school
nurse,” Mama said.
I walked to school as slowly as I
could. I walked the back roads so that nobody would see me. That worked fine,
until I got to the school yard.
The school yard was filled with
students milling around on the grounds, waiting for the school’s door to open.
As I approached, Cecil Boudreaux hollered, “There she is!”
My fellow students parted like the
Red Sea. I walked the path of shame that they had created, my eyes stinging
because I was trying so hard not to cry. The school yard was as quiet as a
graveyard. When finally I reached the school door, a boy called out, “Hey, did
three men really get shot right in front of where you live?”
“Yes!” I shouted defiantly. “What
of it?” I was trying to sound like I did not care what they thought of me.
Just then, another boy yelled,
“Wow! Nobody ever gets shot in my neighborhood. I wish I could see something
exciting like that.”
Suddenly they were all crowding
around me, asking questions: Were you scared? Did the police arrest anybody?
What were you doing when it happened? Did you have to talk to the police? Do
you think anybody else will get shot in your neighborhood?
What a shock! I had resigned myself
to being the school pariah, but somehow I had become a celebrity. People were
hanging on my every word. People wanted to talk to me.
In the classroom, my teacher, Mrs.
Harrison, asked me if I was okay. She had been worried about me ever since she
had seen my picture in the paper. She was glad to see me in school so soon
after such a scary incident in my own home. She thought I was brave and was
proud to have me in her class.
At recess I was mobbed. I liked being one of
the cool people. I started making up stories to keep up the momentum. “Oh, it’s
nothing to get shot in my neighborhood. It happens at least three times a week.
I’m not afraid, though, because my daddy is a sharp-shooter and shoots three or
four people every month or so. He is so scary that nobody’s brave enough to
bother me.”
By the end of the week, I had been
elected class president, and I was not even running for the office. A majority
of students had written my name on the ballot, rather than vote for the other
candidates.
By Saturday, I was so full of
myself that my brothers and my sister got fed up with my bragging and would not
have anything to do with me. After all, they were there, too, and they were not
getting any special attention. I told them that was because they did not get
their pictures in the paper.
That afternoon, Reverend Kelly came
to visit with me. My mother greeted him and then retreated to another room. She
was afraid that if she stayed in the room with the preacher and me, he might
try to talk her into going to church. Neither she nor my father cared for city
churches.
Reverend Kelly sat down beside me
on the sofa and patted my hand. He had just come from visiting with Miss Agnes,
and he had seen where a bullet had made a hole in the ceiling of her apartment.
“I knew you lived right above her, and I
wanted to make sure that the bullet didn’t hurt anyone in your family.”
I told him that everyone was fine;
that my daddy, the sharp-shooter, protected us just like Marshall Matt Dillon
protected Dodge City. Reverend Kelly tilted his head and looked at me as though
he were seeing me for the first time. The he stood up and prayed, “Lord, please
bless Linda and her family and keep them safe. Help Linda to realize how
blessed she is to be under your holy protection. In Jesus name, Amen.”
“Are you going to be at church
tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“Sure!” I told him, “Unless
somebody else gets shot.
Asbury United Methodist Church had
two Sunday worship services, one in the morning and one in the evening. I went
to both of them. That Sunday morning’s service followed the usual order of
worship, but at the end of that service, Reverend Kelly announced that the
evening service was going to be a call to the mission field. I had no idea what
a mission field was, but I was excited anyway. It sounded like an adventure,
and I loved adventures.
The evening church service started
at 6:30 pm and I arrived promptly at 6:00.
If you got there early, you got a piece of cake and a cup of Kool-Aid ®.
I was always early, because it was about the only time I ever got cake. The
Kool-Aid ® I could take or leave.
As I was eating my cake, Reverend
Kelly asked me if I would please sit on the front row on the right hand side of
the church during the service. I agreed
and sat there as soon as I finished my cake.
At first, the service followed the
normal order of worship: greetings, prayers, hymns; but when it came time for
the sermon, Reverend Kelly came out from behind the pulpit and stood among the
congregation, up close and personal. I had never seen him do that before.
“My dear church family,” he began,
“we in this church have been so blessed that we have often taken our blessings
for granted. Most of you do not worry about how you will get food, water, safe
housing, or any of life’s other necessities for your families, because you have
those things in abundance. Our lives are
so comfortable that we don’t think about the trials and tribulations that must
be endured by the less fortunate. We
rarely ever leave our comfort zones.
“If you picked up your copy of last
Sunday’s newspaper, you saw a front page headline that read, ‘Triple Homicide in
Local Housing Project.’ If you read that article, you may have realized that
the housing project alluded to is Williams Court, which is right across the
street from this church’s front door. Dozens of children from Williams Court attend
this church every Sunday. Very few of their parents come with them.
“These children have witnessed
things that most of us cannot even imagine. Most of them have been abandoned
by a parent. These children eat spaghetti and rice all throughout the week
because their families live on welfare and cannot afford a healthy diet. Many
of them witness violence on a daily basis. Some of them get taken away from
their families and put into foster homes.
“If you read the article, you may
have noticed the face of little girl staring out of a second floor window,
watching as the dead bodies were carried away on stretchers.”
He looked toward me and motioned
for me to join him. I cautiously walked
up to him and stood there with my head down. He put his hands on my shoulders
and turned me to face the congregation.
“You all know Linda,” he continued.
“She lives in Williams Court and comes to this church every time our
doors are open. Linda is the little girl who was looking out of that second floor
window. We all love her as if she were our own child.”
Amens could be heard throughout the
congregation.
Reverend Kelly said, “Today I
visited the woman whose family lives in the apartment where this shooting took
place. I held her as she sobbed in misery; not knowing what will be the fate of
her husband; not knowing how she is going to support her children.
“I happened to look up and saw that
there was a bullet in her apartment’s ceiling. I knew that Linda lived above
her, and I rushed to see that Linda and her family were okay. Our very own
Linda, a little girl that we love, could have lost a parent or a sibling or
even her own life to that stray bullet.
“We have a mission field right
across the street from this very church. When will we leave our comfort zones
and follow Christ’s command to feed the hungry and care for the sick and the
poor? When will we, the body of Jesus, become His arms, legs, and mouth? When
will we overcome our fear and reach out to those who, though they may have a
different standard of living, are also God’s beloved children? We, the people
of this church, must make the world feel safe for the little children in our
closest mission field. This church must become their refuge.”
Reverend Kelly stood in silence
long enough for me to think the sermon was finally over. He told me that I
could sit down. Then he walked back to the podium and pounded it hard over and over with his
fist, all the while hollering at the top of his lungs, “THIS CHURCH MUST SPEAK.”
At the end of the service, Reverend
Kelly asked me to walk with him to the back of the church and stand at his side
as the congregation left the building.
There was a basket on a table in front of me, and I noticed that folks
were dropping money into the basket. I
was being swarmed by members of my church family who hugged me and prayed
blessings over me.
I was horrified. The people of this church had treated me like
family since the day I first walked through their front door. Now I felt like
an object of pity. Being cool was the last thing on my mind.
Tears spilled out of my eyes, as I
crumpled against the wall behind me. Reverend Kelly put his arm around me. A
woman picked the basket up from the table and handed it to me. I looked into
the basket, filled to overflowing with bills and change. Then I handed the
basket to Reverend Kelly, wiped my eyes, and said, “Wrights do not accept
charity.”
When I got home, my parents could
tell that I had been crying. They wanted to know why. I told them that Reverend
Kelly preached a sad sermon. They seemed satisfied with that answer.
When I got to school the next
morning, I was immediately surrounded by my daily entourage, who wanted to know
how many people got shot in my neighborhood over the weekend. I told them that
nobody had gotten shot.
Several kids remarked that they
were sorry that I had a boring weekend. I objected to that. “Two weeks ago, I
could have lost my parents or my siblings or even my own life because someone
traded a new shirt for an old one. Boring
is a good thing.”
I never wanted to hear gunshots again in my neighborhood, my mission field.
Note:
Mr. Guy stood trial, claiming that he had acted in self-defense. The jury found
him not guilty.
