If you missed the first episode of That Other Flock, you can read it here!
“I found out last night that my Daddy died,” My-Name-Is-Tommy broke our comfortable silence. His revelation wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, as they say. We were minding our own business, chowing down on the leftover donuts down in the church kitchen, not planning to share life events. At least I wasn’t.
I was leaning against the counter with my back to the sink. Red was uncomfortably close to me on my right. I don’t know why, but the twentysomething pretty Asian woman insisted on standing about 24 inches from me (way inside my personal space comfort zone). Betty was next to her. On my left was Ice, the young black guy. The Professor, our token Boomer, was next to him, eating a glazed with fussy care like a stray crumb was going to burn a hole in his shabby cardigan sweater. Directly across from me was Jelly, who had a handful of donut holes and was popping them one after another into his maw like peanuts. Tommy completed our ragtag group.
A few of us had settled into “assigned” and comfortable places. I prefer leaning on the counter. Red, for some reason, always stood next to me. Jelly was always next to the donuts. You could never tell where the others would stand.
Rather than continuing to look at our shoes or the donuts, which makes the most sense and is always my preference, everyone, including me, were now looking at Tommy. Lots of eye contact. Lots.
Jelly shifted his fistful of donut to his other hand and he draped his arm around Tommy and pulled him into an awkward hug. Awkward because Jelly is huge and…honestly there’s no other way to say this…fat. He’s fat. There. I mean, it’s a fact. Sorry.
So Jelly wraps an arm around Tommy and pulled him into a fleshy embrace.
I was struggling with the urge to vomit because I could see glaze flakes on Jelly’s shirt grind into Tommy’s shirt. My 6 day-no-erp record was in jeopardy. Jelly’s sticky donut-hole hand was now gripping Tommy’s shoulder. Plus, Jelly had those big armpit sweat rings on his Metallica t-shirt.
This created a dilemma for me. I had my alcohol perfectly balanced this morning. Just enough to get me through the church service and then through this…this…whatever this free donut eating thing was. My rum breakfast and then the three big swigs from the bottle as I walked up the church steps was the right dose. Any more rum than that upped the risk that the sugry wad of donuts would make me erp, but I couldn’t watch this sweet, sweaty hug unassisted by Captain Morgan. A vomit rocket was the risk for sure. I had a decent shot at keeping down one quick bracer sip.
Betty stepped toward Tommy and I used her movement to give me some cover to pull out my pocket bottle and take a long swig. I’m a skilled covert drinker because that’s what life requires if you require alcohol to live. The problem was that Red always wanted a hit when she saw the bottle. It was like a tax.
Of course, she spotted my sly sip. Small hand extended, she looked up at me and changed her face to “pathetic.” Like she flipped a switch. Her bright red lips formed a sad smile, and I passed her the bottle. She drained a depressing amount of rum and, of course, left a smear of red on the mouth of the bottle. And did not clean it off. I couldn’t suppress a shudder as I put it back in my pocket.
While the rum drama unfolded, Betty was patting Tommy on the shoulder and murmuring your basic meaningless consolations. Jelly was squeezing (and sweating on) Tommy. The transfer of viscous moisture had me clutching the bottle in my pocket.
Thankfully, they broke the embrace and returned to a somewhat comfortable interpersonal spacing.
“My Name Is Tommy and thank you for that.” For some reason, Tommy couldn’t help introducing himself, over and over. But who am I to judge people’s quirks, right? I’m pretty much not normally anymore.
“What happened, Tommy? To your dad, how’d he die?” Betty was sipping coffee and trying to make her voice soft. Betty’s not soft. Even though she’s gotta be in her 50s, she’s hard like a tree stump. And built a little like a stump. I’d decided she was a landscaper or gardener. She’s fortunate I heard her introduce herself otherwise I’d be thinking of her as “Stumpy.”
Tommy answered, “I don’t know what happened. I think he died in a hospital, but I’m not sure. The details are unclear.”
“When’s the funeral…or service? Will you go?” Betty asked.
“They’ve already had the funeral.”
“Wow, you missed…”
Tommy kept talking over her. “It was about 6 months ago. The funeral and, of course, he died before that.”
“That’s the traditional order of things.” The Professor was focusing a crumb that had landed on his sweater.
“You didn’t know?” This was Ice. He shot the Professor a hard look.
“My Name Is Tommy…I haven’t spoken to or heard from my daddy in over a decade. He didn’t really understand me. Or like me.” Tommy was looking down at his ankle bracelet as he talked. I also found the little blinking red light mesmerizing.
“What happened? Did you two not get along?” Ice had stepped closer as he talked.
“After my troubles,” Tommy shrugged a what-are-you-going-to-do- shrug. “You know cops, judges, jail…it was too much for him. He couldn’t figure out why I had…ah…he couldn’t understand what happened. No, actually, he knew what happened, but he couldn’t understand why I did what I did.”
Someone said, “Oh.” I’m not sure who because Tommy’s red blinking light had captured my attention and I was trying to not let my imagination run away with me. When I’d managed to shake off the GPS ankle monitor’s hold on me, I could see that Ice was thinking hard about something as well.
I figured he was going to be the one to keep the conversation flowing, but it wasn’t him.
“I think he couldn’t understand that I was still his Tommy…that I was still his son. I expected everyone else to desert me, but I thought he wouldn’t. He was the one who said he’d love me no matter what. But he couldn’t.” He got a far-off look in his eyes and I realized there were tears pooling in his eyes.
I felt a little tug in my gut that snuck past the rum-numbness.. Yeah, so that whole people deserting you thing is real. That I understand.
Jelly looked down at him, still with his arm around his shoulder. Tommy’s a little over 6 foot tall but Jelly’s easily 4 inches taller. He said, “Tommy, mi amigo, parents have dreams for their children. Before we’re even born, they dream of crazy things. What we’re gonna grow into.” He was gesturing wildly with his free hand. “What we’ll do as adults. What our lives will be like. And sometimes it hurts them when we can’t live up to those dreams. It’s stupid but true.” He looked around at the group and said, “Right?”
Red and I shared a glance that made it clear we weren’t responding. I think she didn’t understand what he’d said, and I wasn’t going to say anything.
No one answered, so Jelly kept going. “I understand it because I am an enormous disappointment to my family.”
Here he did something completely unexpected. He looked at me and stage-whispered, “See what I did there? ‘Enormous.’” He winked and did a voila gesture at his belly.
Red snickered. OK, so maybe she understands more than I’d thought.
I had nothing.
Betty nodded for a moment and said, “Yeah. My mom wanted a girly girl. She didn’t get one and no matter how hard she tried or how much I wanted to please her, I couldn’t do it. And to make it worse, I grew up into a lesbian and so that didn’t fit into their dreams at all. Oh…and they are fundamentalist Christians.” Here she glanced up at the ceiling toward the auditorium. “They couldn’t figure out how I fit into their world.”
Jelly looked around the circle like he was checking to see who was going to talk next. No one did. He said, “My parents don’t know what to do with me either, but they try. I let them love me from a distance. That way, they don’t have to come face to face with how much I disappoint them.”
Professor cleared his throat like he was the Arch Duke of Pompous… “I would give up the rest of my days on this earth, the rest of the joy I might experience… from a small joy like a cold drink on a hot day to the biggest joys of…of…of…really I don’t know any big joys anymore. What I’m trying to say is that I haven’t seen or talked to or heard anything from my children in nearly 20 years. I might even have grandchildren, probably do…don’t know. I’d give anything and everything to hear their voices…” Here there was a long pause. “To hear their voices or to hear them say I love you. Or just let me say, I love you. I’d give anything.”
OK, so maybe that throat clearing wasn’t as pompous as I’d imagined.
Everyone was looking down, which should have made me more comfortable, but it didn’t.
“Anyone remember what Preacher said this morning?” Ice asked.
“He told a story about a puppy.” Jelly said, “But I don’t remember anything else.”
“He was talking about forgiveness.” Ice had paid attention to the sermon. “The power of forgiving. Letting the people who’ve harmed us off the hook. And forgiving allows us to find peace by releasing the pain we’ve experienced.”
“Oh yeah, 70 times 7 and all that.” Betty said. “I know where you’re going. We should forgive our parents and the people who’ve hurt us. Blah. Blah. Why should we forgive them? It don’t matter.”
The Professor looked around the group and said, “Not forgiving hurts you…rather, it hurts us. Holding that pain inside has a high cost.”
“My Name Is Tommy… we should tell the people we’ve hurt that we’re sorry and see if they will forgive us.”
Betty gave a slow, soft whistle. “That’s something. That’d be something alright.”
“No kidding,” Tommy said. It took all of my willpower to not look at his ankle bracelet and speculate wildly.
“I wonder what that would feel like. To say those words and hear those voices.” Jelly said it so softly that Red and I both leaned forward to hear.
Then, much louder, he said, “Food for thought!” And started gathering donuts to take home.
In that instant, the mood shifted and this thing, whatever this thing was, was over. No one said a word as we grabbed what we wanted to eat later. We straggled up the stairs in silence.
I’d like to tell you we all called our family and friends and told them we loved them. And we asked for and gave forgiveness. And in that, we felt safe and warm.
But I don’t think any of us did that because we’re not those kind of people.
st
ST, this is really good. Thank you. "“I wonder what that would feel like. To say those words and hear those voices.” Jelly said it so softly that Red and I both leaned forward to hear." That's the crazy thing, right, we don't have to wonder. I hope we each say those words and give the B3 a chance to hear those voices too. Thank you for putting this out there.
WOW! What an amazing, honest community "those people" have become! God is with them right where they are even if they are not aware of it!