Grandma Geneva, God's Grace and Crack Cocaine - Part 2

...continued from Part 1.

The porch of a stranger is not a place of ambivalence. It is a place filled with the intrigue of the unknown. But a porch is an especially enchanting place if the stranger is your grandmother. The stranger's porch I was standing on belonged to my grandmother Geneva and the enchantment I felt was crawling up my spine, standing up every hair on its way.

I glanced over toward my wife, and then down to my eleven-year old son, Isaac. I knew their anticipation was only a fraction of mine. How could they possibly feel what I felt? The harvest of my long-cultivated dreams lay bundled in the person behind the door. We stood there in collective silence, waiting for the door to open. For some reason, that's what you do when you're standing on a porch waiting for the door to open.

The house attached to the porch stood exhausted from years of semi-neglect. It still wore the same dingy grey suit with the burgundy trim it'd been painted with in the 80's. The sidewalk leading up from 10th avenue to the west was a cracked mess and the hedge  obscuring our view to Ainsworth street to the south looked a little grouchy and unkempt. But none of that mattered as my vision blurred into a vacant straight ahead stare. I was only there to see one thing, Grandma Geneva.

I've experienced my share of life-changing moments; some pleasant, some painful. I've already told you about a couple of them. But as I stood there on Grandma Geneva's porch, about to walk into her life again, I  knew for sure I was about to experience another.

The first life-changing moment I can remember was in 1973. I was a round-bellied five-year old with brown eyes, a full-lipped smile and enough hair on the top of my head to weave a small Afghan sweater. Alongside my six-year old sister, I stood in the office of a family court judge, watching him sign a piece of paper that said I had a new mom and dad. That paper gave me a brand, new life. We all went to Ferrell's afterward and gobbled down a bucket full of ice cream to celebrate (The famous Pig's Trough for the locals).

In my old life, my mother slammed heroin and nodded on the couch while we played by her feet with our toys. In my new life, my mother made us chunky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tucked us in at night with a bedtime story. In my old life, my father was mostly gone; a shadowy figure who gave us only a sporadic and neglectful love. In my new life, my dad told us he loved us every day by going to work and, to my daily wonder, always coming home.

That judge had rescued me. But as he was rescuing me, he was also robbing me. It wasn't his intent, mind you. You’d have done the same thing too, if you'd seen the first chapter of my life. But, like it or not, adoptions are a lot like surgery. At the beginning, there's a lot of cutting and pain; horrible pain. All that cutting makes you hurt and bleed for awhile. But after the pain subsides, slowly you get stronger and heal. And most kids even thrive. I did.

But just like surgery, adoption makes you lose parts of yourself forever. You lose your people, your history. Standing on the porch, I was filled with a great awareness of that loss. I've always been much more thankful for the gain than sorrowful for the loss. But, as with radical surgeries, sometimes the doctor cuts so deep, he removes the good parts along with the bad. Grandma Geneva was the good part.

As I stood on the porch of Grandma's Geneva's house thirty-seven years later, I wondered how our lives would change once I crossed the threshold. It felt like a part of me that’d been missing a long time was about to be grafted back in. Like a greater Doctor was about to give me back a long lost piece of my heart.

I knocked again.

A short, stout, bleary-eyed man in a stained wife beater and soiled blue jeans swung the door open. His Jack Daniel's breath burned its way through the screen mesh on its way to our nostrils, as he barked out a disinterested, "Yeah?”.

"My name is Timothy," I said in the well-heeled diction with which I'd been raised. "I'm Geneva's grandson.”

He looked at me quizzically and then, as if finally recalling the answer to a test question, bellowed over his shoulder, "Geneva! It's your grandson, Timothy!"

[Author's note: Although my grandma's character and honesty are unimpeachable, some of the following events are subject to the memory and interpretation of a 90-year old mind. However, after speaking with DJ himself, I feel confident enough to share this account. I have changed his name to protect his identity.]

DJ was a crackhead. I don't know, maybe he still is. But we don't see him any longer. The family put him out last year after finding out what I'm about to tell you. You see, a few years back, Grandma and DJ's life mysteriously and shockingly collided when he brazenly sneaked into Grandma's house one night with all the gall of a peacock in a 3-piece suit.

You have to understand. By this time, Grandma lived alone, and although growing feeble, she stubbornly held on to her independence. Some years before, the white clouds of blindness had stolen her eyesight and it was becoming harder and harder to get around. Although family members did their best to watch over her safe keeping and care for her, she was easy pickin's for a crackhead with a little imagination and a light step.

Grandma recounted the tale later in one of our many conversations. For some time, she'd heard the noises; floors creaking and things going bump in the night.

"Weren't you scared, Grandma?", I asked her at the time she shared the story.

"Timoth-eh," Grandma croaked in her Tex Arkansas cadence that always makes me smile, "I KNEW somebody was there, cuz I heard the flo' creekin'. I could FEEL it."

"But you were scared, right?"

"Well, yes. But, the Lawd always been good to me. He kept me safe." her voice trailed.

DJ crept in and out of Grandma's house on his intoxicated tip toes for two weeks. He'd creep out to buy smack and creep back in to smoke it; slip out for a 5th of gin and back in to gulp it down. Mercifully, after Grandma's repeated demands to know, "Who's there? Who's in my house?!", he replied matter-o-factly, "DJ."

Beyond imagination, Grandma invited DJ to stay. She struck a deal with him, of sorts. She'd let him stay if he'd help her around the house, cook and clean up a bit, and "NEVER bring drugs into my house!".

DJ kept two out of the three terms in the deal, but Grandma kept all of hers and then some. Even with all of his blatant buffoonery, Grandma gave DJ what he didn't deserve. She gave him the roof over her head, the food off her table, and a chance to straighten out his life.

Grandma is a living "What Would Jesus Do" bracelet. To be sure, she was frail and reached out to him partly out of the necessity she felt. But that's not the strongest thread in the story. Grandma let DJ stay in her home because she is kind. You and I see crackheads like DJ and we cross the street to the other side. We avoid the DJs. But, a crackhead sneaks into my Grandma's house and she gives him the spare bedroom. The world lacks kindness. Kindness is mocked as weakness or naivete. But would there be so many DJs in it if there weren't so few Grandma Genevas?

I learned from Grandma Geneva that you don't have to be a ninety-year old blind, black woman to be a Grandma Geneva. Just keep a your ear to the floor boards of your life and listen for the DJs. You may not open the spare room, but you can open your heart.

DJ bellowed to Grandma again in his smoky voice, "Your grandson, Timothy is here!". He pushed the screen door open wide and motioned us in.

Grandma's house was an odd collision between her past and present realities. Old pictures of family hung on the walls and sat on the mantle above the fireplace in her living room; each displaying the faces of loved ones. I instantly longed to know their stories. I wondered where my picture would have hung, had life been different. These were my people and yet, I felt like a stranger among them as their smiling gazes silently followed me as we walked across the creaky hardwood floor. I tried to read the story of Grandma's life in the walls and curtains, in the smell of the air, in the feel of it all.

In my mind, the beautiful chapters were scenes of happy family gatherings. Of parents holding Easter plates piled high with chicken and home-cooked greens, while children darted in and around their legs in a wild-eyed game of tag. I could hear laughter bounce off the ceiling as aunties and uncles regaled nieces and nephews with childhood tales. I imagined baritone and tenor voices blending with alto, as well known hymns lifted the ceiling to new heights after church on Sunday afternoons.

Over and through it all, I could sense the matriarchal majesty with which Grandma watched over her brood. I could hear her voice, feel her power; a power that had once held a family together. A presence that made everyone know things were going to be okay. But, that voice had long since yielded to the slow and natural demands of age.

There she was, sitting alone in the corner of a cluttered dining room near a small end table piled high with odds and ends. Over her grandma clothes, an old apron hung from her shoulders and wrapped around her waist. A bonnet covered most of her natural, silver hair and her body was settled in her chair in a elderly slump. She was vulnerable, yet queenly to me. A venerable woman, subdued and resigned to the years God had apportioned her.

Seeing her sitting in that corner made me realize how much life had happened since I'd seen her in that hospital waiting room almost twenty years before. Then, she'd been vibrant and commanding, even though my only memory of was from a glance. Now, she was 90-years old and tired. Of the fourteen children she'd brought into the world between 1933 and 1952, four were left. She'd buried ten; mostly by violence or hardcore drugs.

DJ leaned over and yelled in Grandma’s ear, “It’s your grandson, Timothy!”

“Timoth-eh?”, a puzzled look stretched across her leathered face.

DJ leaned down with his moustached lips just inches from Grandma's bonnet covered ear and kindly raised his voice, “I said your grandson, Timothy is here!”.

“Timoth-eh? Timoth-eh? ... TIMOTH-EH!”

I'll never forget the look that formed on my beautiful Grandma's face as long as I live. It was as if different parts of her face burst into separate emotions independent of each other. Her cheeks raised with the unmistakable lift of joy, while her eyebrows knitted together with a familiar sorrow. All the while, her mouth gaped in disbelief as her hands stretched forward trying to find me.

"Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd! My grandson, Timoth-eh! I thought you'd forgotten me!"

Worn and weathered hands searched for my face, as tears began to fill her eyes and gently spill down her cheeks. I put my face in those hands. Hands that had once held me so long ago.

After a long embrace, Grandma hugged and held Trudi and Isaac, too; as if she'd known them for a lifetime. And then, she immediately demanded we take her over to the "red couch" so we could visit.

The moment we sank into that couch with Trudi and Isaac on one side and me snuggled close on the other, Grandma launched into the first of many stories.

I'll always remember her very first words, spoken in a voice strong, yet laden with sorrow.

"We walked up Denver Avenue, me and my children. Just after the Vanport flood. Oh Lawd! Everything was gone. We got to the school and the white lady, she took care of us. They fed us coffee and sandwiches. Oh, Lawd! All my life, the Lawd's been good to me."

My ears loved her voice. My hands loved her hands. History poured into my heart, filling it with joy one word at a time.

To be continued...