Leaving the Light

Leaving the Light

Dipping beneath the cedar tree a spider web — as usual — casts a silky netting over my face. I peel it off and pick my way up the cinder blocks to Miss Oberah’s sagging green porch. Beetles the color of Indian beads cluster around the naked bulb she uses as a porch light. I wonder if she’s left it on for me.

The screen door quakes even with my gentle knock. Through the window slit in the door, a familiar set of rheumy eyes skitters warily over my face.

“Mr. Charles,” I call, “it’s Jolina. Your neighbor.” Attempting to soothe his fear, I offer a little wave. The simple gesture only disorients him more. “Mr. Charles, is Miss Oberah home?”

Over the roar of Channel 30, I hear the clap of pans and the grease burbling in the deep fryer. Prying open the screen door, I knock once more while calling her name. Without her even peeking through the window, I hear the clatter of Miss Oberah turning the locks.

“Is that my baby?” she croons, her smile dancing around the words.

Before I even have a chance to respond, she throws open the door, pricks her way over to me in her Sunday-best pumps and folds me into a hug. She smells of cooking grease and cocoa butter. The Ponderosa napkins she stuffs in her purple dress suit crinkle as she continues to hold me in silence. Finally, she whispers against my hair, “I thought you’d never come. I kept praying, ‘Lord, you know my baby’s busy right now with movin’ and all, but please let her come say goodbye.’”

Gently taking her shoulders in my hands, I look through her smudged glasses and into those melting chocolate eyes. “Now, you knew I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, Miss Oberah.”

With her smile, her face unfolds like a fan and her empty gums glisten. Straightening her jet-black wig, she ushers me inside with one tiny, warm brown hand curled around my waist. The heat from their cottage oozes around me like a liquid.

“Mr. Charles, how’ve you been?”

From his recliner, Miss Oberah’s husband glances up from the Bargain Browser, over his coke-bottle glasses, and up into my face. His ’50s style felt hat perches rakishly on his tufts of speckled black hair. He smiles an innocent, gap-toothed grin and dimples button his sable cheeks. In his gaze, I see a glimmer of recognition. He reaches out a shaking hand, and I clasp it between my own.

“It’s good to see you,” he wavers while tapping his dress shoes on the thread-bare carpet. He can never remember my name, but I am sure that he knows me.

Miss Oberah shoos me away from the couch and clucks her tongue while gathering tissues, Bibles, pens, and her ever-present cup of soda. In front of the couch, the television spits jumbled laughter.

“Here, baby, here’s a place for you,” she says, sitting down and patting the spot on the couch next to her. Once I do, she immediately reaches out a hand and touches my knee. “How’ve you been?”

I recount my family’s hectic days spent sorting, packing, and transferring all our worldly possessions from our idyllic home in Adams to a house three times smaller than the one we’ve lived in before.

“Miss Oberah, in the front yard we have a four lane highway, and that’s not even the worst part!” I wail. “In the backyard we have a train that blares its whistle every 30 minutes!”

Not surprisingly, she replies with the wisdom of a Southern Solomon: “Girl, now, you don’t be needin’ all that room! Before you know it, you’ll be beginnin’ to love that little home because your family will be there! All you need is love, baby. Love! Love can get you through so many things. It’s not the size of the house that matters, but the size of your heart!”

Miss Oberah speaks with the passion of a Pentecostal pastor after a ten-year sabbatical. She pauses a moment to let the words cascade over me. “You know what I mean, don’t you, baby?”

I nod my head, feeling like one of the five-year-olds Miss Oberah teaches in her Sunday school class.

“All you need is Jesus in your heart and love, baby.” Looking around at her tiny cottage, Miss Oberah smiles and pats my leg. “I don’t have no fancy car or fancy rooms, but I have my Jesus, and I have my Charles.”

Over the rustle of the newspaper, we hear a deep, rumbling chuckle. Glancing over, I watch Mr. Charles grin while watching his wife of many, many years.

“He’s a good man, my Charles is,” Miss Oberah says while twirling the thin, silver band on her left hand. “He don’t know much ’bout what’s going on no more. But he wouldn’t pester a fly.” She pauses a moment, watching me. Her eyes shine.

“You’ve done found him, yourself, haven’t you?” she asks, swatting my arm. “You found The One.” Clucking her tongue, she chides, “I told you, didn’t I? You thought it’d never happen, but I just knew it the moment I met ’im. I thought to myself, ‘Now, there’s a boy for my baby.’”

I smile although heat’s climbing the column of my neck. “What can I say, Miss Oberah, you were right all along.”

“Oh, I knew I was!” Miss Oberah crows, clapping her hands. “I had no doubts about that boy, and he’s handsome! Girl, is he hand-some!”

As if on cue, Mr. Charles warbles a bout of laughter and flicks open another page of the Bargain Browser.

Miss Oberah leans toward my ear in a conspiring whisper, “You shoulda seen Mr. Charles back in his day. He was such a natty dresser. But he wasn’t like those boys these days, lookin’ round with a rovin’ eye. No, baby, he had eyes for me and for me alone.”

Sweat’s gathering at the creases of my knees. I look at the clock on her coffee table: 9:35. Miss Oberah traces shapes on my back as I peruse her cottage as if seeing it for the final time. Next to the couch, an air conditioner creeps out of the window like an alien being; I doubt they’ve used it once. Above the coffee table curtains dangle limply in the windows. On the wall above the television set is the blond, blue-eyed Jesus clock that’s not counted a second since I’ve been their neighbor. Beside it rests the green love seat my fiancé sat in during his interrogation with Miss Oberah. Displayed on the wall behind Mr. Charles’ recliner are the letters of recognition Miss Oberah received for her outstanding service to our community. Tears nip my eyes, as I perceive — in the corner of the award from the Adams Clubhouse — a picture of my little brother beside a picture of her nephews and nieces. We might not look like kin, but to each of us Miss Oberah has become the grandmother we were never able to know.

Miss Oberah passes me a Ponderosa napkin. I dab at my tears and say, “Miss Oberah, I don’t want to leave.”

She sighs and pats my back. “Baby, everything’s always achanging. You just gotta trust that the good Lord’s gonna keep you in His hand.”

I glance at the clock again: 9:55. There’s not enough time left; there never could be enough time to glean from this woman all the knowledge she has to offer. Before I lose it completely, I stand and Miss Oberah does as well.

“This ain’t goodbye, baby,” Miss Oberah soothes, pulling me into her arms once again. “Before you know it, you’re gonna be done with that school, and I’ll be walkin’ down the aisle of your weddin’.” Abruptly, Miss Oberah pushes me back to stare into my face. “Now, I am invited to the weddin’, right?”

I cannot help but smile. “Miss Oberah, at our wedding you’d better believe I’m gonna have you seated front and center.”

Squashing me against her narrow frame, I can feel Miss Oberah’s laughter–smooth and rich as molasses. “That’s what I was thinkin’, but I had to make sure.”

For a moment I pause in her arms and feel the tears threatening to fall. Looking down to adjust her wig, Miss Oberah’s smile falters. It isn’t until then I realize we’re both wearing the same façade of strength. “You’d better write me, baby, ya hear? I want to know what’s goin’ on in your life from you, not from The Robertson County Times.”

“I will, Miss Oberah. I promise.”

As if I am a child, Miss Oberah places a hand on the small of my back and walks with me toward the door. In front of the recliner, I stop.

“Mr. Charles,” I playfully admonish, taking his hand again, “you’d better take care of this little lady here. She’s one in a million.”

Nodding his head, Mr. Charles looks up at me with his dark, dancing eyes and carefully places his work-hardened hand over my own. With this silent agreement, he removes his hand to flip another page of the Bargain Browser.

As usual, Miss Oberah steps out with me onto their sagging green porch. Squinting her eyes while peering into the darkness, Miss Oberah yelps, “Wait, baby, it’s too dark for you to walk to your car. I’ll quick get my flashlight.”

Through my haze of tears, I watch Miss Oberah scurry for the flashlight while still in those Sunday-best pumps. How many times have we played out this same scene? How many times did she offer to walk with me to my home, frightened that I would be carried off by coyotes, Bozo the Saint Bernard, or the men with “roving eyes”?

Miss Oberah snaps shut the aluminum door and proclaims, “I’ve got it!”

Prancing down the cinder block steps, she tucks my arm beneath hers and wields the flashlight like a light saber. In the distance, the mournful croon of coyotes drifts over us like a phantom wind. I shiver.

“Baby, you’re sure it’s not too late for you to be drivin’ back tonight?”

Patting her arm, I sigh, “I’ve gotta go, Miss Oberah. Our home’s completely empty now. It’d be too hard to leave it twice.” While she sweeps the beam of light to direct our path, I feel rather than see Miss Oberah’s resigning nod. Beneath the glow of the streetlamp, we stand side-by-side in front of my car.

Miss Oberah, with trembling fingers, tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “You’ll keep in touch, you promise?”

“Miss Oberah, I have to–you’re like my grandmother.”

Uttering those words, I fall into her arms once again, and as always she is there, waiting to catch me. “I love you, Miss Oberah. There’s no one in the world like you.”

“I love you too, baby.” In her whisper I hear every minute of her 85 years. Patting my back, she says, “You’d better get on home now.”

Gingerly, I open the car door with one hand while using the other to bracket my teetering boxes. Once inside, Miss Oberah closes the door for me and steps away. Shifting my car into reverse, it begins to roll.

“Wait! Wait!” Miss Oberah cries.

I punch my brakes and roll down the window. “What is it?”

“Wait, I have to make sure nothing’s comin’.”

Using the flashlight beam to guide her way, Miss Oberah walks to the end of the driveway, past the bushes, and on to the road. Carefully, she searches the empty street in search of anything that could cause me harm. Deeming it safe, she yells, “Okay, baby, it’s all right, now. You be safe, ya hear?”

“I hear, Miss Oberah, I hear.”

Ever so slowly, I back out the lane and on to the road. Shifting into drive, I glance into my rearview mirror and see her there still: waving her flashlight beam through the air like a beckon in the night, letting me know that I can always find my way back home.