What Lies Beyond the Veil(Of Flesh & Bone #1)(11)

“Come on in.” Granddaddy don’t waste no time with hello, just walks inside for him to follow. Charlie steps aside for me to go first. Nia’s lucky not to have this strange man smiling at her and tipping his hat. I guess she’s still in our room, mad. For a second, I wish that I ain’t fight with her this morning. Having her here would probably be better than being alone. Then again, my chances of actually being included are probably better out here, with these strangers.

Granddaddy sits down on the couch. Charlie sits cross from him in a giant wicker chair that I ain’t notice before, hiding in the corner. Granddaddy finds a Bible from somewhere and that’s what they start to read. I wanna sit and read, too, but I only got my Anne book, which don’t seem like a fit for the thick Bibles. So, I stand in the middle of the room and watch.

“Kenyatta.” Granddaddy whispers my name in his crumbly voice and pats a seat beside him on the couch. I go to him, hoping he might talk to me now. He don’t, but he does lay the Bible cross his lap so I can see it, too. I scoot closer to him as he flips to a page with the word Job at the top. I learned in Sunday School that you can’t say it like if you have a job at McDonald’s; the word is Job with a lot of O in the middle. But that’s bout all I know.

Fifty counted seconds of silence pass before Charlie says, “Where did we leave off?” His Bible’s open to the same page, with Job at the top.

“Chapter 2,” Granddaddy starts.

“Verse 11,” Charlie says, and then, even though I ain’t sure how he knows it’s his turn, Charlie starts to read. “When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.”

I try to keep up, but the Bible’s got such big and long names. I asked Daddy once why all the names were so long, but his only answer was a hearty laugh followed by taking the Bible away and hiding it in his sock drawer.

“When they saw him from a distance,” Charlie goes on, “they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads.” Granddaddy clears his throat loud and Charlie waits, like they both know the rhythm. “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” Charlie finishes and closes his Bible but keeps his thumb stuck in the pages. Granddaddy keeps his Bible open and watches Charlie, like he’s waiting on something.

I wait, too. Soon, there’s a low rumble beneath the sound of the clock that ticks from the wall. It takes me a minute to realize it’s coming from Granddaddy. He’s humming—a song, I think. At church on Sundays, when I was still a little girl, Momma would pick up the little book in the back of the pew. There were two books in every holder: the first, a Bible, usually with a black cover, and a second book with a red cover.

One Sunday, I tapped Momma after she picked hers up, asked, “What’s that?”

“A hymnal,” she whispered back, not taking her eyes off the words on the page, nodding toward the singing choir. “It’s got the words to all the songs.” Then she followed along, matching every note perfect. The song Granddaddy hums now sounds like one of those hymns from the red-covered book, even though his voice is lower and stiller than Momma’s.

Granddaddy and Charlie start talkin’ bout the Bible, and as I listen, I see more bout Granddaddy than I could before. I wonder if him and Charlie are friends. Maybe friends like Job’s friends in the Bible that sit and don’t say a word when Job is hurting. I wonder if Granddaddy is the one hurting now, or Charlie. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my family, it’s that when you hurt, you gotta ignore it and pretend it don’t exist; otherwise it’ll swallow you whole.

“Your turn, next time.” Granddaddy speaks this part loudly to Charlie and his voice makes me jump. I try to hide it with a big yawn, stretching my arms up in the air. Meanwhile, Charlie is turning pages in his Bible, quick, til he finally stops on one page that he sticks his finger in.

“We’ll read from Proverbs next,” says Charlie, and Granddaddy’s pages are already flipping, “Chapter 13. Let’s start with verse 7 and go through 11.” It’s easy for me to remember cause Proverbs was always my favorite chapter in the Bible, and 7-Eleven is my favorite store back in Detroit. We ain’t go too much, but once Momma let me get my own Slurpee, and I mixed together every flavor into a drink that made my head cold and turned my tongue purple.

“One person pretends to be rich, yet has nothing,” Charlie begins, “another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.” He clears his throat and waits. Then Granddaddy picks up.

“A person’s riches may ransom their life, but the poor cannot respond to threatening rebukes.” Granddaddy uses his finger to underline his place on the page for me to follow along, which I can do easy cause Proverbs don’t have so many big names, and most of the words I understand.

“The light of the righteous shines brightly,” Charlie reads, “but the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out.” Granddaddy nods, so I nod, too.

“Where there is strife, there is pride,” Granddaddy reads, “but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” The back-and-forth rhythm feels almost like a song, and I sway, just a little.