Dear Wife(61)

And then there are all the people it takes to make this place run. The Reverend and his slew of church-lady assistants. His pastors and ministry staff. An army of volunteers. And everywhere these people go, they leave traces of themselves, fingerprints and shoe prints and keys that tumble from their pockets. We spend the day picking up and wiping away.

But in the short time I’ve been here, the faces have become familiar, their smiles as we pass in the hallways more relaxed and instant. The Reverend was right; I am one of them now.

The realization pushes a new worry up from the pile: that I will become too comfortable here. Or maybe that I already am. When I walked through the doors, I was so scared, so worn down from running that this place felt like something of a relief, a much-needed calm after the shitstorm.

But already the relentless peacefulness of this place is getting to me, lulling me into a sense of security I can’t afford. Now that Sabine’s story has crept across state lines, now that it’s stretched from a tiny Arkansas town to Georgia and beyond, I know what it means.

It means you’re closing in.

The fear comes on strong and out of nowhere, and I sit back on my heels and swallow. Take a deep breath. Tell my heart to settle. I can’t afford to be lazy because you are stealthy and cunning. I won’t see you coming until you’re already here.

I drop my sponge in the bucket and whirl around, feeling ungrounded even though the carpet is grinding into my knees. Sleep has been hard to come by the last few nights, and my exhaustion is doing a number on my head—too much up there to sort through. I can’t get a grip on any one solid thought.

There’s nobody here. I’m alone. The Reverend’s office is an oasis of quiet.

I spend all day up here now, ever since Oscar called to say he was staying in Florida and the Reverend gave me his job. Martina rolls her eyes whenever he brags about the brilliant job I did with his bookshelves, the way I grouped the books by subject, alphabetized them by author and created a checkout system that any idiot can monitor. She thinks there’s something else going on, some other reason he’s taken me under his wing, and I don’t disagree. Maybe it was my tears that first day, or my internet search history on his computer. Maybe he feels protective and wants to keep me close, or maybe he’s suspicious, I don’t know. I study his face for clues when he thinks I’m not looking, but I can’t find anything but kindness.

Martina accused me of abandoning her, and she’s not wrong about that, either. Without me running interference between her and Ayana, the two in the same room are like a pressure cooker. The tiff I witnessed that first day only scratched the surface of the animosity between them, and eight hours of scrubbing the same floors each day has not improved the situation. I try to stay out of it, but Martina is like a middle schooler, badgering me to choose a side on the car rides to and from Morgan House.

“Yours,” I told her just this morning behind the wheel of the Buick. “Of course I’m on your side.”

And I am, mostly. Probably. Even though we haven’t had any heart-to-hearts, she still feels like someone who has my back. The least I can do is return the favor.

So now I spend my days much like Oscar did, wiping down desks that are already spotless and shooting the shit with Charlene and the six other church ladies in the offices lining the hall. I haul drinks and snacks to staff meetings and the late afternoon huddle in the kitchen. I empty their trash cans and pick up the bits of paper that flutter from their pockets. The women are a chatty bunch, and in the dull patches of the day, when they’re not blabbing into their phones or clacking away at their keyboards, their questions come like gunfire.

Where are you from? Out west.

Are you single? Very.

What brings you to Atlanta? It seemed like a nice place to settle.

I don’t detect any agenda to their questions other than curiosity, but I always shift the conversation back to one of them. I’d much rather hear some long-winded discussion about a sister’s money troubles or how to choose the right private school for the twin four-year-olds. I feign shock when they tell me that Atlanta’s public schools are not godly places, nor are the people who let their children go there. I shake my head in dismay when they say the standardized test scores from the students who attend public school are barely high enough to squeak out an acceptance letter to DeVry. What I don’t do is bring up Martina’s half brother at Grady High, or tell them that even if he has the grades to get into private school, he probably couldn’t afford it anyway.

But I’m not fooled by their friendly get-to-know-you inquiries and watercooler conversations. When lunchtime rolls around, they hook their bags over an arm and file out the door, arguing about whose turn it is to drive or whether they want salads or sandwiches, but not one of them ever thinks to ask me to join. There’s still a hierarchy to this place, and I’m still the maid.

Or maybe they wonder if I’m not who I claim to be.

  It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m standing in the doorway of the Reverend’s office, looking for something to clean. I’ve scrubbed all the floorboards and organized his desk. Color-coded the file cabinets and polished all the picture frames. Unknotted every paper clip and thrown away every empty pen. How did Oscar do this job? Unlike him, I was not made to piddle the day away, scrubbing at spots that are already spotless. I need somebody to turn a briefcase upside down, or dump a full pot of coffee onto the Reverend’s carpet. Until something falls or spills, there’s nothing left to do.