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Epiphany - Part II
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Epiphany - Part II |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
By the time I reached home, the bag seemed to have grown in weight. I could barely get it up to my room. I tossed it onto my bed and sat beside it. I desperately wanted to open it, but didn’t want to invade Epiphany’s private bag. So it sat there for the rest of the day. I lay down beside it and, exhausted, took a nap. “Carrie,” my mother called. “Time for supper.” I woke with a start and pulled the bag off my bed and shoved it in the closet. Carl wouldn’t think a second about going through the bag if he found it. I spent the evening, at supper and later watching TV, waiting for the right moment to ask my dad to stop off at the Baptist church in the morning. He was usually asleep by eight o’clock and I wanted to ask before he got up at nine to go to bed. At seven thirty, the phone rang. My father, a deacon in the Methodist church, often got calls in the evening like this so it wasn’t unusual. In a way I was glad, now he wouldn’t go off to bed right away. He came back from taking the call in the kitchen and sat down in his favorite chair. He and mother discussed the call and because church business didn’t interest me, I barely listened. Until I heard the words ‘old colored woman’. I turned quickly and focused on their conversation. “What on earth was an old colored woman doing at the church?” my mother asked. “Some kid saw her outside and she said she was going to rest there for a bit tonight and wait for Sunday services.” “Does she live around here? Does she have family here? I don’t remember any colored families in town.” My mother, lay her embroidery aside. “All I know is what Reverend Dawson told me. An old colored woman was picked up sitting outside the church and when she couldn’t show Sheriff Tomlinson her identification, he drove her into Springfield. Said we don’t allow vagrants, even old women vagrants, in our town.” “What?!” I fairly shouted out the question in panic. “You never mind, Carrie. It’s not your business! Get upstairs and take your bath now.” My mother’s idea of dealing with me as usual was to send me from the room. “I want to know what happened!” I said. Both my mother and father looked at me strangely. I was the quiet twin, never asking for things, always following Carl’s lead. But here I was speaking out, almost demanding to have an answer. “It doesn’t concern you.” My father stated as though that would end my curiosity. I opened my mouth to speak and tell them that I’d met Epiphany that day, that I was holding something for her and maybe there was something in her bag that could identify her. But something held me back. Something made me close my mouth, get up and leave the room. When I reached my room, I sat on the bed, tears of sadness on my cheeks. Springfield was over 100 miles away. There would be no way to get the bag to Epiphany tomorrow. I would have to come up with a plan. The next morning, I decided to leave the bag in my closet and see if I could find out where Epiphany had been taken. I dressed in a daze, aware only that it was terribly hot. I was glad she wouldn’t be walking today. Church was boring. It was always boring except when Reverend Dawson saw some of the people in the pews were falling asleep and then he’d raise his voice as though this would make his sermon more interesting. I found Epiphany’s God now more appealing than the one Reverend Dawson talked about. Grownups may not know this, but kids have a way of finding out things from each other. I knew Sheriff Tomlinson’s son, he was a grade behind me in school. And though we were never friends, I knew if he had the answer to my question, he’d want to show off by telling me. I found him in one of the Sunday School rooms, watching a spider crawl up the window pane. “Jack, can I ask you something?” “What?” he asked, surly as ever. “Did you hear about your dad finding an old colored woman yesterday at the Baptist church?” “Yeah, I heard. What about it?” “Well, I was wondering…just out of curiosity, do you know where he took her in Springfield?” “Sure I do.” He said, puffing up because he knew more than a girl, and a girl that was in a grade ahead of him. “But it won’t do you no good to know.” “Why?” I clenched my fists to keep from socking him right here in the Sunday School room! “Cause she’s gone.” “What?!” I shouted. “Gone, my dad got the call this morning. She just up and walked away. The Springfield police looked for her everywhere and couldn’t find her.” Stunned, I just stood there. What should I do now? I had to get her bag to her somehow. But Springfield was so far away, even is she was walking, it would day her days, maybe weeks to get this far. I spent the rest of that Sunday in a daze. I felt that if I didn’t go after her, I would be letting her down. But I had no clue how to find her. By Sunday night, I was physically sick with worry. I went to bed and slept. I didn’t get out of bed all day Monday, I slept off and on and worried my mother. She kept coming into my room and looking at me. Carl came in a couple of times, but his energy level wouldn’t allow him to sit beside me for more than a few minutes before he was off on an adventure. I woke once to the sound of a crash and my mother’s cry of “Carl! What are you doing?” Tuesday, I got up early. Having decided that I would keep Epiphany’s bag for a week to see if she returned. If she didn’t, I would take it to the Sheriff and he could try to find her. By Friday, my life was pretty much back to normal except I didn’t follow Carl around as much. I spent a lot of time in my room, staring at the walls and remembering the story Epiphany told me about her mother. I counted my allowance savings and decided I would buy a diary at Woolworth’s the next time I went to town. Though nothing in my life was as exciting as the story Epiphany told me, I liked the idea of keeping a record of my life. And the story of how I met a woman in rags would be my first entry. “Carrie!” Carl called from the front yard. “You got a letter!” He held it in his hand between his thumb and finger as though he was holding a fly by its wings. I’d gotten mail before, I signed up for a pen pal in school last year and would sometimes get a letter from the girl I picked. She was in Florida. I ran downstairs and out the front door, forgetting my new ‘quieter’ mood and slammed the screen door. “Carrie!” my mother shouted. She must do that automatically, I thought. I grabbed the letter from Carl and ran to the porch and settled down on the swing. The envelope had my name typed on the front, along with my address. There was no return address. I tore it open and inside was a small handwritten note. The writing, spidery and pale was not my pen pal’s. “Carrie,” the note said. “Please take care of my bag till I can get back for it. I have to go back to Alabama for a bit but will be back in your area by October.” Signed “your good friend Epiphany.” I glanced at the postmark, and it said Springfield. So she must have mailed it before she left. I sighed with relief. Now, I knew she would be back, that I’d see her again. But in the meantime, I also knew that Carl or mother would want to go through the bag if they found it. I rushed back to my room and dragged the bag out of my closet and up the stairs to the attic. I hid it behind a box of baby toys that mother had put there when Carl and I had grown out of them. I would come back in October and bring the bag back to my room so it would be ready when Epiphany returned. I folded her note and put it in my desk drawer. This would be tucked into my diary when I got one. The summer passed, and we returned to school. Somehow, I never found the time to get that diary. And when the maple leaves turned orange and red, and October drew near, I thought of Epiphany and wondered when she would arrive. On a cool Saturday night in September, I lay on the couch watching TV. Mother and dad were at a church meeting and Carl was upstairs in his room, sick with a cold. Sissy Black, the teenage daughter of our nearest neighbor was in the kitchen talking on the phone to her boyfriend. She was baby-sitting us as mother didn’t trust us to be alone in the house. The news came on and I watched with unseeing eyes. I didn’t want to get up and change the channel so I just watched. Then, towards the end of the half-hour, there was a story of a march in Birmingham. Some colored people were upset at how they were treated and were marching down the street. And there, in the middle of the front row of marchers was Epiphany! Tattered as the day I met her, two young men on either side of her helped her along. She looked wonderful! Her eyes were lit and she held her head high and proud! I moved then, to sit close in front of the TV. I reached out and touched her face on the screen and she turned her head almost as if she was turning to look into my eyes. It was the eeriest thing! Then I saw her mouth move. I was sure she said, “remember me”. As I grew, I did remember Epiphany from time to time. I could never find the courage to go through her bag and in 1963 when I went off to college, I left it in the corner of the attic. Now, sitting here with the box of toys and the leather bag in front of me, I was overcome by guilt and love and a sense of loss. The night I returned to this house, as my mother lay dying, I pulled the old leather bag down from the closet and began reading Epiphany’s journals. For three weeks, Epiphany spoke to me as I sat beside my mother’s bed, waiting for her to pass on. I laughed and cried. I finally understood. And in my understanding, I found peace and direction. I gathered up the bits and pieces of the life I used to know and carried them to the RV I had purchased in town. The sale of my parent’s home had been more than enough to buy it. The rest was tucked inside a cupboard in the tiny traveling kitchen. I’d driven a school bus on occasion in my tenure as a seventh grade teacher so I was familiar with handling such a large vehicle. On my way out of town, I stopped one last time at the cemetery. Flowers on my mother’s grave were fresh, so I pulled some from there and placed them on my father’s grave and Carl’s; all three side by side. Then I decided to walk one more time around the old graveyard behind the church. A wild rose bush grew, abundant with pink blossoms, against a fence at the back of the cemetery. I decided I would pick some and take them with me on the first leg of my journey. When I reached the fence, I looked down at the headstone where the bush grew. The name I read made me gasp! She had come back! And I was away at college! I knelt beside her grave and cried. Cried as I couldn’t for my mother. Cried for her, dying here alone. Cried for me, that at a time when she needed me, Epiphany had come too late. In the darkening afternoon, I felt warmth on my shoulders. As though someone’s arm rest there, comforting me. I turned and looked, but there was no one. Perhaps it had been Epiphany. Or God. Or an Angel. Or perhaps a stray ray of sun. I would never know. I rose and left the graves behind me. For inside my heart and deep within my soul, I carried the life and love and history of those I left here. My father and mother. My twin brother Carl. And most of all, an old black woman named Epiphany Jones. She most of all because she had given me a goal. A reason to go on. I lightly touched the name I’d painted on the side of the RV. “Epiphany” And then I left vowing to never visit the same place twice. I had decided, as I sat and read Epiphany’s journal, that the one person in this world that I most wanted to be like was a simple black woman, who loved everyone and believed that teaching mankind to love and respect each other was the most important goal in her life. And so, here I was, a 55 year old single woman, about to embark on a terrifying journey. With nothing but some inheritance and my own wits, I was going to travel around the country experiencing life. I would read to pass the time. I would work if I needed money. I would spread Epiphany’s story as I went. And someday, years from now perhaps, I would become the Epiphany in someone’s life. I smiled as I started the RV. And as I drove off, down the road, I glanced in the rear view mirror. I could swear I saw her standing there in the road, waving at me! A big smile on her face as she said “remember me.” [This message has been edited by Poet deVine (edited 02-19-2000).] |
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| © Copyright 2000 Poet deVine - All Rights Reserved | |||
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kitkat Senior Member
since 2000-01-11
Posts 878Nova Scotia |
Wow DeVine loved the story. Read from start to finish it kept me captivated. You are a talented woman. |
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WhtDove Member Rara Avis
since 1999-07-22
Posts 9245Illinois |
Devine I'm in awe girl! Captivated I was! Tearful and uplifting and one heck of a story! This is EXCELLENT! What a message!! WOW WOW WOW!  <*\\\>< There's only two ways you can go... One way you can save your riches, And the other will save your soul. Rich Mullins |
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Dark Angel Member Patricius
since 1999-08-04
Posts 10095 |
Oh Sharon, this was beautiful, so captivating, Excellent work! A truly moving story!! touched my heart it did!!  What comes from the heart goes to the heart. Samuel Coleridge |
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Angel Senior Member
since 1999-07-02
Posts 551Pennsylvania |
Wow, this was great. I read it beginning to end, too. Awesome as usual  .~Susie~ |
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LoveBug
Moderator
Member Elite
since 2000-01-08
Posts 4697 |
Wow!!!! That was great! *applause*! I'll be looking for more great pieces like this! "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world" |
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Tamma
since 2000-01-17
Posts 794In His Arms, Harpers Ferry, WV |
I love this, it grought be in from the first line. Hehe, what fun it is to be young and hold your mothers patience in your hands "In a secret, I lIve, InvIsIble to all" -Me :) |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
Sharon, this is just deVine! This wonderful piece was flowing, captivating, and heartwarming! I don't think you have any reason to be terrified, from what I've seen you are truly very talented! A writer's soul is on paper etched. In flames I shall not be consumed, but reborn. -- Abrahm Simons |
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Nan
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-20
Posts 21191Cape Cod Massachusetts USA |
You've done a fine job here, Sharon - Your story is captivating - You've spun a wonderfully emotional tapestry of life. There are so many levels of morality here, it's impossible to differentiate one from the next. For me, your story was reminiscent of the true saga of Jones Morgan, a 109 yr old black man who was found in a Virginia soup kitchen in 1990, living in poverty. He was still quite lucid, but his stories of being a veteran of the Spanish-American war were not taken seriously - until his diary was actually uncovered. In the end, Gen. Colin Powell bestowed him with full military honors for his service to our country - a full century later... We should never cast our elders aside - Rather we should learn from them. They have much to teach us. Nice job here, Sharon... |
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Denise
Moderator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-08-22
Posts 22648 |
I am sitting here with tears in my eyes....this touched me deeply, Sharon. Excellent writing! Denise |
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Elizabeth Santos Member Rara Avis
since 1999-11-08
Posts 9269Pennsylvania |
Excellent work and a wonderful story from beginning to end Enjoyable reading |
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
Once again, I'm here to claim that you rock Lady! |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
Sharon, too many of us miss the fine points of life as you have shown us here,...so I hope you don't mind my unceremonious boosting of this, and Part I, back to the top, where newcomers can enjoy this wonderful treat of read that you have woven so well...< !signature--> Karilea If I whisper, will you listen?... I would rather be silent and write, then speak loudly and be bound. KRJ [This message has been edited by Sunshine (edited 11-04-2000).] |
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