The Swan House (53 page)

“Hello, Mr. Murphy.” Miss Abigail's voice was poised, calm. “I heard there was a little trouble here.”

“Ain't no trouble I cain't handle myself,” he raged.

“I thought I might pray with you, Mr. Murphy. You know how Jesus hears our prayers and takes care of things.” She began to hum softly some familiar hymn. Mr. Murphy just kept staring at us with that same fire in his eyes, pacing back and forth in the front room.

“Whatcha done brought that white girl with ya for?”

I closed my eyes momentarily, feeling my legs trembling under me. “Mary Swan came over to take care of the children while you and I talk.” Miss Abigail gently placed a hand on my back and urged, “Go on, Mary Swan. Go back and tell George and his sisters a story.”

I didn't think I could make my legs move. All I could see was that shiny knife and that big, angry man standing between me and the rest of the house.

“Let's sit down over here, Mr. Murphy. Tell me what's troubling you.”

“Ain't nothin' troublin' me that no white folk can he'p.”

“Jesus is the one with the answers, Mr. Murphy. Not me. Let's just have a little talk with Him.” Then she took hold of his muscular arm, the one holding the knife, and led him toward the sagging love seat. She nodded to me, and I knew that was my cue to go to the back of the house.

I kept thinking to myself,
I'm not like you, Miss Abigail. I can't do
this. I might get killed. I don't have your faith and Idon't know how to pray
and I am scared out of my wits. Please let me leave
.

But her prayers for me must have been stronger, because somehow I did walk through the room and down a tiny hall to a bedroom, where three small children were crowded together on the floor on the far side of the bed.

“Hello,” I said softly.

They didn't say a word, just stared at me, their eyes filled with terror. I searched my mind for something to say.

“Miss Abigail's meeting with your daddy. Everything is going to be all right now.”

They kept staring at me, eyes wide and suspicious.

“I'm Mary Swan. What are your names?”

The little boy was the first to speak. “I's George and this here is my sista' Angeline and my baby sista' Lissa.”

“Well, it's good to meet you. Would you like me to tell you a story?” My voice cracked nervously.

No response.

“What about if we sing a song? A song from church.” I frantically tried to think of the songs we had sung with Pastor James after our workday. But the only song that came to mind was the one Ella Mae had sung to me for so many years. “Do you know ‘Jesus Loves Me'?”

Just then Mr. Murphy's thunderous voice broke out in a string of curse words, and the children huddled even closer together. I moved quickly to their side of the bed and joined them on the floor, enclosing my arms around them and singing off-key in a quavering voice, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.” Slowly the children joined in, singing very softly and very hesitantly. The voices in the den rose again, and I wondered, terrified, what in the world I would do if Mr. Murphy went after Miss Abigail with a knife.

“Maybe we should pray,” I whispered. “George, could you pray?”

George could not have been more than seven or eight. He gave me a solemn look and said, “Miss Abigail's always the one who prays first.”

“I see.” So I was stuck. It had to be me. I decided I'd just try to imitate Miss Abigail. Hugging the children close to me, I closed my eyes and said, “Dear God. I mean, dear Lord. Please help us now. Help Mr. Murphy calm down. Help George and Angeline and Lissa not to be afraid. Amen.”

It was not a very convincing prayer, and as soon as I pronounced the amen, George remarked, “You's s'posed ta say ‘In Jesus' strong name, amen.'”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said, flustered. “But I think God understood what I meant.”

That seemed to satisfy the children, but I was sweating hard, feeling the pulse in my head, and wishing with all my heart that I had some great idea about what to do next. I started humming any tune that came to mind. Suddenly the children smiled and giggled into their hands while George remonstrated, “You's hummin' ‘Rock Around the Clock.' That ain't no song we's ever sung in church, ma'am.” A little of the tension dissipated. No sound was coming from the den.

Then we saw through the sheer torn curtains the flash of a red light going round and round. “The poleece!” George whispered excitedly. He ran to the window and pressed his nose on the pane while his two younger sisters cowered in my arms.

Indeed it was the police, and soon I heard Miss Abigail's voice calling to me, “Mary Swan, bring the children out here. Everything is going to be okay.” A rather repentant-looking Mr. Murphy gave each of the children a hug and followed a policeman out the door. Immediately Miss Abigail gathered the children around her and announced matter-of-factly, “Your daddy is going to be fine. He's agreed to stay with some nice people for a few days who want to help him. And that means I get the privilege of having you spend a few days with me! How will that be?”

Big smiles erupted on their small faces as we went about gathering pajamas and pillows and three raggedy stuffed animals. George and his sisters filed out to Miss Abigail's station wagon with me, arms piled high with their belongings, following behind. The children climbed into the backseat of the station wagon, chattering excitedly about the snow that was falling in the darkness.

Miss Abigail whispered to me, “Mr. Murphy agreed to get help. They'll be keeping him for some time down at the jail. I'm afraid I won't be able to take you home tonight, Mary Swan. I'll get Carl to drive you.”

For some reason that made my heart beat faster than it had when Mr. Murphy was swinging his knife at me. “I can stay and help you if you need.”

“I'll be fine, Mary Swan. The question is, are you all right?”

“I think . . . I think I am, but it was awful. I was scared out of my mind. I thought he might kill you or me.”

Miss Abigail took a deep breath. “Yes, so did I for a moment.” I shot her a surprised glance. She looked more ragged than the children's dolls. “Thank you for your help, Mary Swan. I'm sorry you got caught in the middle of it, but you did a fine job. A fine job.”

I wanted to burst into tears and tell her how I hadn't known what to do or how to pray. I wanted to beg her to tell me how she had had the guts to go to that house. But Miss Abigail was worn thin, and she still had a long evening ahead of her, feeding, bathing, and reassuring three fragile kids.

She called Carl right away while I took the children into her kitchen. “Are you hungry, kids?”

“Yes, ma'am. We's starvin',” Lissa volunteered.

I opened several cabinets until I found a box of macaroni and cheese. I didn't know how to cook much, but I figured I could pour a box of noodles into boiling water and stir some milk into the little packet of cheese sauce. The children sat silently at the big rectangular table, and I hoped they couldn't see the tears welling up in my eyes.

Snow glistened on the street as Carl started the car. I groaned, suddenly remembering my purse. “Can we stop by the church for just a sec to get my purse?”

“Sure. Let me get the keys from Miss Abigail.” When he got back, he commented, “Miss Abigail told me about the time at the Murphys'. You okay?”

“I guess.” I couldn't look at him. “It was awful. Awful. Does Miss Abigail get calls like that all the time?”

“Happens right often. Yep.”

“Have you ever gone with her?”

“Oh yeah, Mary Swan. I been in similar situations more often than I'd like ta remember.”

“And you aren't scared?”

“Sure I'm scared. But I know the Lord is with us.”

“How do you know?”

“I've seen God at work bunches of times. Calmin' folks down, settlin' a brawl, givin' us ideas when we had long since run outta 'em.”

“Well, He didn't give me any ideas, Carl. Maybe He doesn't speak to people in Buckhead.”

Carl smiled at that. He'd parked the car in front of the church. “I've heard plenty of stories about a whole lotta fine people down where you live. Ladies in that big Baptist church on Peachtree wake up in the night, knowin' they need to pray hard for Miss Abigail. And those fine white ladies get down on their knees by their bed and beg the Lord Jesus to protect Miss Abigail, to protect the children, the families. Happens all the time, Mary Swan. Why, I betcha someday you'll find out that somebody over in Buckhead was prayin' for y'all tonight.”

I got a knot in my throat and fought back the tears.

“Miss Abigail calls it warfare—spiritual warfare. She's always quoting that verse in the Bible that says our battle isn't against flesh and blood but against evil forces in the heavenly places. Against Satan.”

“I don't know about evil forces and Satan, but I know I was scared. Scared to death. I still am.”

“It is scary, Mary Swan, but like I said, I'd be a whole lot more scared if I didn't know that the Lord was watchin' over us and that He was a lot stronger than a drunken papa with a butcher's knife.”

“You really believe that, don't you, Carl? I don't. I just cried out some words that sounded like a prayer, but I didn't believe that some God was big enough to calm down that man. I thought he might kill Miss Abigail. And I'm not convinced it was God who stopped him.” It felt good admitting my unbelief.

“That's okay, Mary Swan. If God is God, He'll get you convinced, one way or 'nuther.”

“You really believe that?”

“Sure. We all need a Savior, Mary Swan. You know what Miss Abigail says?”

“What?”

“She says the ground is all even at the foot of the cross. Ain't no rich or poor, just a lot of needy folks. Folks needin' the grace of the Lord Jesus. She says that sometimes it's even sadder to see a rich person's pain. Some rich folk got problems more severe than the poor folks down here. You know why? 'Cause the poor folks've got street smarts. They know how to survive. But the rich folks, they ain't never had to fight to live. Miss Abigail and those other white ladies, when they come prayin', they pray for the down-and-out and the up-and-out.”

“The up-and-out?”

“People who've got everything on the outside but are hurting mighty bad on the inside.”

That's me,
I thought flatly as Carl handed me the keys to the church and said, “I'll wait for you here.”

My purse was sitting right where I'd left it on a folding chair in the fellowship hall. I picked it up and started toward the door. But something else was tugging at my heart.

Not knowing why, I went upstairs and entered the darkened sanctuary. The stained-glass windows reflected a little of the light from the street so that shadows danced on every wall. I stared up at the plain wooden cross hanging in the alcove behind the pulpit and burst into tears. Something about the way it hung there in the dark, in the silence, sent a chill through me, and I heard Carl's words in my mind.
“The ground is all even at the foot of the cross.”
I fell to my knees, right there on the floor, in front of those old wooden pews, beside the pulpit where Pastor James had spoken to us after the Day at the Park.

With tears streaming down my face, I choked out my words. “I don't know what I need, really, God. I guess I need you, but in some way different from just seeing you as high and holy and far off. So I'm doing like Carl said. I'm just asking you to come into my life. I want what he has and what Cassandra has and especially what Miss Abigail has. I want to be able to pray and know that you are hearing me.

“I was so very, very scared this evening. Oh, God, that's when I saw that I have no idea who you are, not really. I had no faith. But I want it. I want you. I want you to take my life, to forgive me for all the times I've messed up, like Cassandra would say. I want you to be in control, God. Whatever that means.” I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, because it hurt somewhere deep down inside to admit these things.

Then I looked up at the cross and whispered, “Thank you for this cross. Thank you for hanging there, Jesus, and for dying and coming back to life. And thank you that you did it for blacks and whites and Jews and Protestants and Catholics and everyone else. It's gonna take me a long time to figure all this out, God, but please, help me.”

Something suddenly felt so completely natural about pouring out my heart to this unseen Being. “I want to be free. Like Miss Abigail says. Like you said yourself, Jesus. You said that the truth would make me free. So if you are the Truth, I guess that means I just want you.”

I fumbled in my purse for a Kleenex and blew my nose, but I stayed on my knees. “And show me what else to do about Mama's paintings. Poor, poor Mama. And how to love Daddy right. And help Ella Mae get better. And show me what to do about Robbie and Carl and all the other things that are knocking around inside. I am so tired of finding out bad news, God. Will you please just help me?”

I must have stayed there for another ten minutes, on my knees in front of that cross, just weeping, like my heart was completely broken in two. I wondered if that was how God worked. Maybe He let your heart be broken until you thought you couldn't hurt any worse, and then He let you understand a tiny bit of His great love, which was almost as piercing as the pain. When I got stiffly up off of my knees, there was this amazing sense of peace that flooded through my whole body.

“You okay, Mary Swan?” Carl's voice came out of nowhere.

I let out a scream that died down quickly into a whimper when I saw him seated on the second pew. “How long have you been here?” I asked, suddenly ashamed.