The Sky Beneath My Feet

Chapter 11


Only Trying to Help





Blame everything on the dream.

Or rather, me waking up in the middle of the dream.

At five in the morning, stumbling down the hall from the bathroom, Jed or Eli (I don’t know which) must have knocked something over (I don’t know what). I hear the crash just as Mother Zacchaeus removes one of the enamel pins from her shirt to stick it onto mine. The sound startles her, and she drives the sharp back right through the fabric of my top and into my skin.

“Ouch,” I say, only to find myself bolt upright in bed, blinking in the dark.

When your dreams run their course, you remember them the next day as dreams—assuming you remember them at all. When you wake up in the middle, though, the dream stays real. I can feel Mother Zacchaeus’s presence in the bedroom with me, not to mention the pain in my chest from where she stuck the pin.

What had she been doing? Giving me an award for distinguished service.

“You saved that girl, Beth. You are a good Christian woman.”

Disoriented, I switch on the lamp. It’s strange not to find Mother Zacchaeus in the room. Then I remember that crashing sound. What was it? Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I step into my slippers and creep into the hallway to investigate. My toe collides with something on the floor. Whatever it is, it’s light enough to go skidding over the floorboards.

I switch on the light. From the ground, St. Rick stares up at me. The nail he used to hang from is there on the floor too. Eli must have pounded it straight into the plaster, which has a tendency to crumble, and at a right angle. The weight of the painting, though slight, would have been enough to work the nail out over time. I keep a lecture on file in my brain: the evils of not using the special plaster hangers to put pictures on the wall. But it’s five in the morning. I’m not going to wake him up to go over the fine points of decorating.

Besides, no harm done. Not much anyway. I pick the painting up to inspect for damage and find one of the corners dimpled from impact.

I frown at St. Rick. “Serves you right.”

The next morning, while I’m digging through the drawer where I keep the plaster hangers, Holly calls. Before she can give me a hard time for my no-show at the book club, I butt in with Marlene’s unexpected visit.

“I’m a little worried Jed has a crush on this girl,” I tell her. This makes it sound like I’m sharing because of Jed, not to get off the hook.

But Holly’s not interested in my son’s love life. I missed more than a bodice ripping last night. The book barely came up. The ladies were too busy talking about the latest scandal.

“It’s probably better you weren’t there,” she says. “Apparently the drug-sniffing dogs at Eli’s school found marijuana in a lot of kids’ lockers. Including two who are in the youth group at The Community. Thanks to zero tolerance, that’s an automatic suspension. One of the kids posted on Facebook that all of his friends do it, and it’s unfair to single out only the people who got caught.”

While she goes on, describing the reactions at the book club, all I can hear is the blood pounding in my head.

“Who are the kids?” I finally ask.

She mentions the names, but I don’t recognize them. Eli knows them, I’m sure. And they’ll know him too. I lean on the counter to steady myself. I feel physically sick.

“It’s terrible,” I say.

“I know, I know. But the way some of those ladies go on about it, you’d think they were never in high school themselves. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning anything. Still, you have to admit, there are worse things those kids could be into. Look at your houseguest from the other day.”

“I feel for their parents.”

“Yeah, you have a point there. They’ll have a hard time showing their faces at church. It shouldn’t be that way, though, if you ask me.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” I say, too emphatically.

When I get off the phone, all I can think is, That could have been Eli. The bad part is, I’ve known for days and still haven’t said anything. I wanted confirmation. I imagined him denying everything and then rebelling. Or worse, pretending to mend his ways only to hatch more sophisticated plans for deceiving me.

What he needs is a wake-up call. Maybe these suspensions will do the trick. Then again, maybe not. There has to be something I can do, something to make sure he never touches the stuff again.

“You saved that girl,” Mother Zacchaeus says. I feel the pain in my chest again.

“Thank you,” I say aloud. She’s absolutely right, and she’s given me an idea.

So that’s how the trouble started.





No Cool Mom sunglasses for me. I let Eli get a good look at my baby browns. Steely and merciless. Impossible to question. He puts his bike in the back, careful not to scratch his new Brooks saddle. When he slips into the passenger seat, he looks uneasy.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll see,” I tell him. “Trust me.”

As we drive south into town, Eli’s earphones come out of the bag. He cranks some tunes and starts slapping out the rhythm on his thigh. I smile. This show of absorption has the opposite effect of what he intends.

“You’re trying too hard,” I say.

He pretends not to hear me.

Soon enough, his hands go still. He tugs on the white wire snaking up his chest, popping the earbuds free.

He knows.

He knows I know about the marijuana. He knows the reckoning is about to come. And I’m pretty sure it’s dawned on him where we’re going. His brows furrow in concentration. No doubt he is working on his defense, trying to come up with the best strategy for dealing with whatever I have in store for him. He doesn’t say anything, though, and neither do I. We’re waiting each other out.

Finding Mission Up isn’t easy. The first time I visited, I wasn’t paying close attention to the route. Plus, this grid of huddled inner-city blocks all looks the same to me. Once I get us to the general vicinity, we cruise up and down the streets in search of the telltale pink accents and the hand-lettered sign. Eli keeps craning his neck at the sights.

“Did you see that?” he says as we roll through an intersection. “Those guys back there?”

“What’s the matter? Never seen a deal go down?”

He laughs nervously. “Not out in the open like that.”

I’m already past Mission Up before I realize we’ve found it. As I double back, Eli double-checks that the VW’s doors are locked.

“We’re not getting out,” he says.

“That’s where we’re going, right across the street.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere. Are you crazy? Do you realize where we are?”

“I know exactly where we are. That’s the place I found Sam, the girl who crashed your birthday party. Come on, Eli. Don’t be afraid.”

But he isn’t budging.

“Come on,” I say, popping the lock on my door.

He reaches across to grab my forearm. “Just stop it, okay? You’re always pulling stuff like this, and I’m tired of it.”

“Stuff like what, Eli?”

“Like this! Like the Rent-a-Mob thing. Whenever I say something you don’t like, whenever I do something . . . you get this look in your eye and all the sudden, it’s Scared Straight time.”

I really shouldn’t, but his anxiety makes me laugh. “Scared Straight?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You act like I don’t know the way things really are, and you’re gonna teach me by dragging me into some awkward situation—‘Hey, son, let’s go meet the hippies!’ ‘Hey, look, son! This is where the junkies shoot up! Let’s have a look!’ Stop laughing at me, Mom. I’m serious. You think you’re making things better, but you’re not. You’re screwing them up.” He slumps in his seat, arms folded. “Just like always.”

Ouch. That wipes the smile off my face.

There are all these things you’re not supposed to say to your kids, things that will demotivate and warp them, things that will make them grow up to be self-loathing axe murderers. But restraint seems to be a one-way street. A teenage boy in anger will say just about anything.

But I’m not giving in. “Let’s get this over with, Eli.”

“I’m staying right here.”

In the end, I have to get out and go around to his door, which he won’t unlock, forcing me to use the one power every mother possesses in such situations: shame. I start tapping on the window loudly, telling him not to be scared, and the power of humiliation does the rest. He may be afraid of the strangers on the sidewalk, afraid of what’s waiting behind the scary pink door, but he’s also sixteen and he will do anything to get his mom to stop embarrassing him in public.

“Okay, fine,” he says, slamming his door shut. “Just be quiet, okay?”

He follows me across the street, eyes cast down. At the door, I pause before knocking.

“This isn’t about scaring you, Eli. The fact is, you’re scaring me. I just want you to see the world you’re dabbling in. You need to decide if this is really the direction you want to go.”

I’m proud of myself for that little speech, which acknowledges that I know about the weed without coming out and saying it. I’m proud, too, that he doesn’t protest his innocence or try to argue. He hangs his head down, defeated. Maybe I’m getting through to him.

I have to rap on the door several times before there’s any movement on the other side. Finally, I hear the bar dragging on the floor, the locks sliding open. When the door cracks open, it’s not Mother Zacchaeus who answers. It is the girl who sat smoking in Sam’s room. She is wearing a sequined tube top and cutoff shorts. Seeing Eli, she throws the door open wide.

“Well, well, what we got here? What your name, big man?”

Eli swallows hard but doesn’t look up.

“Aziza, right? Is Mother Zacchaeus here?” I ask.

“Whatsa matter? Don’t he talk?”

“Mom, can we just get out of here?”

“Ooohhh,” she says. “This your boy? Come on in here and lemme take a look at you. Come on, now.” She motions Eli through, but he doesn’t budge. “He’s shy, ain’t he? Don’t worry, big man. I ain’t gonna bite you or nothing.” She laughs, revealing a gold-framed tooth, then pulls a soft pack of Parliaments from her back pocket, offering him one. I wave the pack away. She pulls one free with her lips before tucking the cigarettes away, then fishes a purple plastic lighter out.

“Mother Zacchaeus?” I ask her.

She nods through a cloud of smoke. “She in the back. You go on.”

I walk through, pausing for Eli to follow me, along with the girl’s chuckles. She puffs smoke in his face as he passes her. Eli looks about as uncomfortable as I’ve ever seen him. As mothers go, I’m about as protective as they come. But this really couldn’t be going any better. It wouldn’t surprise me if he threw himself at my feet, promising never to touch marijuana again, if only I’d get him out of here.

I feel the footsteps trembling through the floorboards before I hear them. Eli steps back involuntarily. Then Mother Zacchaeus appears, stomping through the TV lounge from the kitchen, making her way straight for us. The way her eyes flash reminds me of a cartoon bull making its way toward the red cape. “Who’s smoking inside?” she roars.

If Aziza didn’t inoculate Eli against all future vice, this threatening nun is sure to do the trick.

“You?” Her eyes flash.

“I want you to meet someone,” I tell him. “Mother Zacchaeus, may I present my son—”

Her hand flashes quickly.

I catch a snapshot of her open palm, then my cheek explodes.

The shock comes first. She slapped me! And then the pain, a hot, throbbing swell of pain. I double over, shielding my face with my hand, fully expecting my eye to pop out at any moment. There’s embarrassment, too, because I can feel tears welling up.

“What’s wrong with you, lady? You call yourself a good Christian. What’s wrong with you?”

Mother Zacchaeus spits the words out over my reeling head. What’s wrong with me? You’re the one who smacked me—what’s wrong with you? I can only answer her in my mind, though. My jaw has ideas of its own that mainly involve hanging there.

Eli edges forward to try to screen me from the nun. I see his feet, the new black sneakers exceptionally clean. Don’t, I think. But there’s no danger of Eli retaliating. He keeps inching forward only to move back again.

“You know what you is? You know? You a kidnapper, that’s what. Aziza, why you open the door to this woman, knowing what she done?”

“What she done?” Aziza asks. “All she done is get that skanky little white girl outta here and she don’t belong here in the first place. Shootin’ up right in front of me like that.”

“This lady a kidnapper,” Mother Zacchaeus says loudly, proclaiming it to the heavens.

“Mom, are you okay?” Eli whispers.

I feel his hands on my shoulders, helping me upright.

“I’m fine,” I manage to say, though the room is spinning. I face the nun. “Why did you hit me?” Clearly we’ve been dreaming at cross purposes. In my dreams, she pins a medal on me, and in hers the stabbing is intentional. “You seem to have completely misunderstood the situation.”

Mother Zacchaeus cocks her head, like she can’t understand me.

“We didn’t kidnap Sam,” I say. “We rescued her.”

“Rescued her from what? From here? This here is a safe place. When you in here, nobody can come in and take you ’way. Nobody.”

“She’s fine now,” I say. “She’s back with her mother.”

“Back with her mother ain’t fine. Back with her mother is the problem. You don’t know nothing, you know that?”

“Maybe not. But I didn’t kidnap anybody. She went willingly.”

Aziza, the smoking girl, laughs at this. “That man with you, he let her shoot up again and then he carried her out. That wasn’t willing, that was unconscious.”

This hits me harder than the slap. It makes sense, though. When I’d first spoken to her, Sam was growing more aware, more belligerent. When I saw her in the backseat of the car, she’d been completely out of it, passive and pliable. I remember Gregory saying once that the rehab counselors actually prefer when their clients check in high or loaded. It makes them easier to manage.

Eli tugs me toward the door. “Mom, let’s just get out of here.”

“Listen to the boy,” Mother Zacchaeus says. “Get out before the police get here. ’Cause they coming to lock your kidnappin’ self away—”

“Don’t you get it?” I tell her. “We’re on the same side. I was trying to help that girl, just like you. I brought my son with me to see what’s happening here.”

“Why, so he can laugh at us, like you doing?”

“No,” I say. “I thought it would help.”

She cocks her head at this too. “What you mean, help?”

I’m not going to elaborate. I’m not going to tell this woman my son’s been smoking weed and I thought a firsthand glimpse of the bedlam that is Mission Up would freak him out sufficiently to get him to stop.

“How it gonna help?” she asks.

“I just . . .”

Eli pulls on my arm again. “Let’s just go.”

“No, wait,” Mother Zacchaeus says. “The lady wanna help. Aziza, you hear? Go get the box. The lady wanna help us. She come down here for our benefit. She here to grace us with her presence. Go on and get the box.”

Aziza disappears with a smile, returning from the lounge with a shiny pink shoe box. The top is taped down with clear cellophane and a jagged slot has been cut into the center. She holds the box toward me and shakes it.

“You wanna help, this is how.”

I reach for the box.

“No you don’t,” she says, snatching it away.

Mother Zacchaeus shakes her head. “It’s for putting your money in. Go on. You gonna help or what?”

“You just slapped me,” I say. “I’m not paying you for the privilege.”

She mulls this over, then smiles. This happened last time too, the sudden change of demeanor when I stood up to her. Mother Zacchaeus, I realize, is a bully. She only respects the people who stand up to her. If I slapped her back, we’d probably end up the best of friends.

But don’t worry, I won’t.

“You know, I think my brother understood this place and I’m the one who didn’t. We’re from two different worlds, I realize, but I left here thinking we were on the same side. Clearly I was wrong.”

“Aw,” she says. “Two different worlds. Now tell me this: in your world, you can just walk into the hospital and check somebody out? In this world here, it don’t work like that. Here we don’t let you just take somebody away. I don’t know what side you on, but on this side, you gonna get yourself slapped upside the head doing things like that.”

“Don’t I know it. Anyway, you don’t need my help, I can see that now.”

She shrugs. “That depends on the kind of help. You can put money in the box, if you want. You be surprised how much it cost, a sanctuary like this.”

That word again, sanctuary. Glancing around, taking in Eli’s wide-eyed stare, I can’t help wondering how bad life has to get for a place like Mission Up to look like a sanctuary.

“Here,” Eli says. He pulls out his billfold, a thick, duct-taped affair, and produces a wad of fives and ones. Aziza extends the box so he can wedge the money through the slot. “Now can we please just go? We don’t belong in this kind of place.”

“Amen to that,” Mother Zacchaeus says.

Something clicks inside me, the same thing that clicked when I heard him say “hippie losers.” “What do you mean, we don’t belong? Why don’t we belong?”

Eli shakes his head, like it’s too obvious to explain.

“Why wouldn’t we belong here? Are we too good for this place? Too rich? Too white?”

“Jeez, Mom, shut up.”

“It’s okay, big man,” Aziza says. “We know you white.”

Mortified, Eli leaves without me, pausing out on the curb where his uncle waited last time. Aziza chuckles and heads for the stairs. Mother Zacchaeus reaches for the row of enamel pins on her chest. She pulls one free, pressing the thumb of her free hand against her shirt to hold the back of the pin in place. Then she wriggles it toward the straining button placket until she can snap the pin together. That’s a relief. I was afraid she would try to stab me with it.

“Come here,” she says. “You know what this is?” She studies the tiny emblem on the front of the pin. “This is what they give for memorization. You take it. Go on.”

I open my hand and she drops the lapel pin into my palm. Sure enough, there’s an open Bible inside a green border and the motto THY WORD HAVE I HIDDEN IN MY HEART.

“So you don’t forget,” she says.

How could I?

As I descend the stairs, the nun watches me from the door. Down the street, the whoop-whoop of a police siren sounds. Eli goes stiff, but the cruiser turns off at the end of the block.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mother Zacchaeus calls out.

We cross the street to the car. Before closing the door, she actually waves.

“That woman’s nuts,” Eli says, slamming his fist down on the door lock.

“You have to be a little crazy to be a nun.”

“Is that what she’s supposed to be? I don’t think so.”

“Well, she’s something.” Like Eli, I’m pretty sure Mother Zacchaeus has no affiliation with a conventional Roman Catholic order. But how do I put this? I’ve never understood the hierarchy of black churches—the bishops, apostles, and whatnot. They seem a little unconventional to me, but it’s not like there’s a rule book. At least, not a crystal clear one.

“And, Mom,” he says. “I told you so. That was a disaster waiting to happen, and you walked us right into it, just like always.”

I flip the visor down and check my face. Surprisingly, there’s not a flaming handprint across my cheek. Shifting back and forth, I try to determine whether one side is puffier than the other.

“Eli, look at me.”

He makes an inspection, then shrugs. “Wait and see. Maybe it’ll bruise up.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I turn the key in the ignition.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t like anything about what just happened.”

“Well,” I say, pulling away from the curb, “I guess it’s time we had a talk.”

He slumps against the door and sighs. “Whatever.”





You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth. For the last four years, since junior high, Eli has been indoctrinated by the school system with the goal of making him into a tolerant, non-bullying citizen who says no to drugs. Instead, like all the smart kids, he’s adopted an ironic stance toward the virtues his leaders have so clumsily tried to impress onto him. His friends use the word gay as a synonym for stupid or lame. “That’s so gay,” I’ll overhear them saying, or “Why do you have to be so gay?” They run in cliques, a social caste system, and while I’m sure Eli would never push anybody around physically, I don’t have any illusions that the kid who spat out “hippie losers” really believes in his own superiority.

“You don’t get it,” he says.

“What’s there to get? It’s illegal, Eli. You can go to jail just for possession.”

He shrugs. “A lot of things are illegal. Speeding is illegal, but look at you.”

I glance down at the speedometer, and sure enough. I ease my foot off. “All I’m asking is that you’ll promise me you won’t do it anymore. All right?”

Nothing.

“Eli, come on. Just promise me—”

“I’m not going to say something I don’t believe. I’m not going to promise not to, because what if I do? I’d be lying.”

“You mean you’re going to smoke more dope? You want to be a stoner, is that it?”

“Whatever. You’re not even listening.”

“Eli, I’m trying.”

This isn’t how I imagined the conversation going. I expected our visit to Mission Up to shake him up. Mission accomplished. I expected him to be cowed into submission. Not so much. Somehow, I had assumed that confronting him would do the trick. There would be tears, repentance, maybe some denial. I expected him to try to charm me, to reassure me, to do anything to win back my favor. Instead, he’s defiant. Brazen.

“What you’re saying is, you might want to keep smoking weed.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know.”

“What about the kids at your school who got suspended? You wanna end up like them?”

“Of course not,” he says. “They’re stupid.”

“Because they got caught?”

He nods. “And anyway, it shouldn’t be illegal. Pretty soon it won’t be. I don’t know what the big deal is. There are more important things in life.”

“I want what’s best for you—”

“Don’t worry about it, then. I’m not stupid like those kids.”

“No, Eli, I’m not saying I don’t want you to be caught. I don’t want you to be hurt. There’s a difference.”

“It doesn’t hurt me,” he says. “That’s a myth.”

I’m clutching the wheel with white-knuckled intensity, frustrated by the knowledge that I am losing the argument. That for all my waiting, I went into this unprepared. It never occurred to me that, confronted by the fact he was smoking marijuana, his response would be, “So what?” It’s another slap in the face, a much more painful one.

“If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.”

“You can’t guilt me into something I don’t believe in.”

Oh really?

“All right, then,” I say. “But I don’t know what your father is going to think about this.”

I hate the sound of that sentence, but it’s out before I can stop myself.

“Well?” I ask.

Eli laughs.

“Stop that,” I say.

“Are you kidding? Believe me, if you ask anybody in the neighborhood who in this family is smoking weed, they wouldn’t say it was me. Look at you people! You’re all crazy. You with your Rent-a-Mob. Dad holed up in his shed. He belongs in a straitjacket, if you ask me.”

Maybe we both do.

I feel like I’m going insane right about now.