Then I hit the third verse . . . and pulled away.
“Damn it.” I slammed my fist against the guitar. How many years had I been at this song? I flipped the guitar around, held it by the neck like a bat, and slammed it on the floor. It shattered to pieces, strings buzzing a discordant twang.
I couldn’t find my third verse, but now I understood why: I’d have to say things about Mama I didn’t want to say. Because even though she’d left, and I wanted to hate her—maybedidhate her—I still loved her. And I didn’t know how to reconcile those two things. I’d need to figure it out somehow if I meant to do as the Ward had asked.
Cassius knocked on the door and entered the room. “If this is your metal music, Jack, it commends you well. Though I do not understand why you destroy your instrument after such compelling music.”
I turned to see my friends standing in the hallway behind him—Chuey, Church, Lady, and the raptorial, Lakshmi.
“We didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Lady said, her voice soft. “But Chuey explained to us about Sixth Angel, and we thought maybe you could use some company.”
I waved them all in in. Chuey placed the club soda and lime on the end table near me and swept the broken guitar out of the way. Lady sat beside me and set to cleaning and stitching my wound. The others sat around on the couch or old folding chairs,except Lakshmi, who closed the door and stood with her back against it.
They deserved to know why descending the Strata was so hard for me, and why I’d failed the ward-bond. So, I finally told them the story of the boy in the window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Forgiveness is the only lasting remedy for scars of the soul, and its balm comes not all at once, but moment by moment.
—Thomas Young,Care of the Soul(visiting lecturer to Kings Stratum Forum, Rome, Italy)
In the quietsafety of the Iron Horse greenroom, my friends patiently listened as I searched for the words to tell them about Mama.
“A few years after she left, I figured out how Dad ‘put bread on the table,’ as he liked to say. It helped me make sense of the all-night visitors, the police visits, his and my mother’s fights. All of it.”
“You don’t owe anybody this story,” Chuey said. He knew some of it, of course, but he didn’t know the deeper part.
I shook my head. My friends had put everything on the line, and they deserved to know why the Ward hadn’t accepted me yet.
“Every time Mom and Dad fought, once it was over, Mom came in to stop me from crying. Reassure me. Because every time they fought, she threatened to go.”
“Some men and women are not well yoked,” Cassius observed.
“One night, it got bad. My brothers left the house. I was too small to leave, so I crawled into bed, and pretended to be asleep. The walls and floor shook a few times. I thought this would be it. Everything would break apart. Then it got quiet, and sometime later Mama curled in next to me and wrapped me up in her big arms. Usually she sang to me. Not that night. ‘Dad loves us,’ she said, ‘he’s just a hard man to know.’ ”
Chuey chuckled softly. “Your dad could make black-metal dudes piss themselves.”
I chuckled, too. Chuey had always been there to make me laugh. But the laughter died fast and I paused. The next part I’d never shared. Not with anyone. It was the part that made friends hard to find, and left me amazed when someone actually stuck around in my life. Even now I wasn’t sure I should say it out loud.
“I rolled over to face Mom. ‘If you ever go away,’ I said, ‘please take me with you.’ She traced the birthmark we share on the back of my neck and said, ‘Kiddo, I promise you one thing—if I ever go away, we’re a pair.’ ” For a moment, I’d felt safe. “Turned out I didn’t matter enough to her for her to keep that promise.”
My head filled with the ache of that memory. But I had to finish, and told them about the morning she’d driven away while I screamed at the front-room window for her to come back.
“You dear boy.” Lady finished stitching my neck. “And where did she go?”
“Back then I thought maybe here,” I said. “Her mother was from Hackney. But mostly I just knew she was gone.”
Chuey nodded. “You been carrying that around a long time.”
“Not a day goes by I don’t remember that she broke that promise.” But it was my dad, too. “I also remember all the stuff I saw and did, living in my father’s house. More than once I came close to joining my brothers in a Rollin’ 100s street crew . . . but I’d found metal and along the way started writing songs of my own. Started wanting to chase the dream, you know, leave something behind that matters. Something that might help someone else the way the music helped me.” I tapped the smashed guitar with my toe. “Anyway, that’s where the song comes from, as much of it as there is. And I think that’s also where I stopped knowing how to forgive.”
Church nodded with understanding. “We all do things we come to regret. Perhaps this is also true for your mother.”
Maybe.
Cassius put his big, scarred hand on my shoulder. “Whatever others esteem or disregard, love means putting their happiness before your own. It seems to me, Jack, that this is a truth you already understand well enough. Forgiveness will follow in due course.”
They all nodded to that.
