Redemptive Justice
Father Lorenzo and Khadijah approach the brick structure across from the church, the warm yellow light from inside illuminating the kitchen where they can see Annie through the plate-glass window perched on a small ladder with a paint brush in her right hand.
“Here we are,” Lorenzo says quickly as he opens the door for Khadijah and gestures with his free arm that she should walk in. As she passes through the doorway he closes the glass door, gives her a thumbs up and turns back toward St. Catherine.
Khadijah approaches the kitchen through the small room - vacant but for the chemical smell of the yellow paint on the three walls - her heals clicking on the linoleum floor, covered in white dust, until she reaches the open entrance to the industrial kitchen. From her perch on the ladder, Annie turns her head in Khadijah’s direction, removes the pods from each ear and says “It’s Really You!” in a way that makes Khadijah feel small, but Khadijah knows Annie’s hurt is because she loves her.
“You won’t keep me away,” Khadijah says quietly. “And you can’t ignore me forever, you need me. I’m like your catnip.”
Annie listens carefully and smiles as she begins to doubt her resolve. She takes in the vision of Khadijah with her exaggerated hair towering above in her pink pantsuit and understands it’s ok to feel redemption for them both. “I need help,” she says with a command in her voice, “and you can’t paint in those shoes.” Pointing her paintbrush at Khadijah’s heels. “Grab the sneakers under the counter and sweep out the front room. Then we can talk.”
Khadijah feels a release with Annie’s words and does what she’s told with a smile on her lips and a broom in her manicured hands.
***
They sit on the metal counter in the freshly painted kitchen appraising their work, passing a newly lit joint between them. “This space is starting to feel like mine,” Annie proclaims with a wave of her arm and a long drag from the joint in her right hand. As she exhales she passes it back to Khadijah and sings out into the room, “I love to create!” And laughs with girlish glee.
“When I was flying here, I had this creeping feeling that everything wouldn’t be alright but I kept pushing that down because I need this to be alright. I need us to be alright. I kept saying it’s not real, that feeling, because it was - is so terrifying. But you know what I say, people are in our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and you have always been on my lifetime list. ”
Annie takes the joint back from her friend and presses the tip to her lips without removing her gaze from her dark-brown eyes. She tilts her head up and as she exhales a long-white-wisp she places her left arm across Khadijah’s shoulders and declares, “We’re fine, thank you for coming here.”
The two friends sit together in the bright kitchen as the light outside begins to dim, the comfort of their reunion filling the space with a warm energy. As Khadijah takes one last puff on the dwindling joint, she hears the bells of St. Catherine chime in six o’clock. “I like it here, it’s quaint and you seem happy.”
“I live a normal life here, without drama. I even go to church now,” Annie smiles. “I’m trying to live with gratitude and in the moment. I’ve felt nothing for a long time, and then when I got here I was just sad. I’m not happy, yet, and there are days that I’m filled with dread, fear really, of not knowing the future. I suppose that’s better than being numb. I know fear is a feeling.”
“I love that, can I steal it?” Khadijah asks. “It could be something like, Fear is a good feeling when you haven’t felt anything for so long, that’s a killer hook my friend.”
Annie looks at her friend, removes her arm from her shoulder and jumps off the counter top. “But I’d like to be happy.”
“If you stick with the religion thing you could find joy. Most people don’t understand that joy is the final note of religion. It’s not the same as happy, that’s superficial. I learned that from Daddy.” She pauses and remembers how she used to love listening to him. “Like Daddy used to preach, joy is deep. Joy comes in the morning, after the weeping. Joy is never wrong. We all yearn for joy.”
“Amen sister,” Annie sings out with her hands raised in the air.
“I love it here,” Khadijah says. “There’s good energy on your marijuana bakery.”
“Missed you.”
“Missed you more,” Khadijah smiles with glistening eyes. “We good?”
“Good enough.” Annie answers and feels the release of forgiveness spread from her heart to her body, and breathes in with a sense of calm and peace.
“I can hear music in my head again,” Khadijah squeals delighted in feeling her broken heart mending. She jumps from the counter and grabs Annie’s hands, swinging in a circle and laughing in the light of the moon beginning to stream through the glass wall facing the church across the street.
They stand together looking at the church feeling the love in the room. “I’m glad Lorenzo encouraged me to come here. But I’m gonna say something to you now Annie that you might not want to hear,” she pauses but doesn’t step away. “That man still loves you.”
“Maybe,” Annie answers with a sadness in her voice. “But Lorenzo always loved God more than me. I loved him so much that when he asked me that night in the tree house I couldn’t say no. But after, after, I believed I was unlovable for so long. I don’t think that’s real love.”\ Khadijah hugs her friend close and lets the moment pass slowly, each lost in their own worries and needs.
“All I ever wanted was to be there for Lorenzo because that’s what I thought was right. Lorenzo never had to try for my love, but Nona wouldn’t have it. I’m not really sure what he believes.”
“What did she say? Nona, what did she say to Lorenzo about that?” Khadijah asks cautiously.
“I don’t know, but I tried to talk with him right before I left with JP. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t hear what I needed to tell him about Nona. He said he knew everything about her and I tried to tell him he didn’t. I’d never seen him so mad, it scared me, and I knew I couldn’t go back to Cambridge.”
Annie thinks of the night after they’d smoked a joint in the VFW basement, and then decided it was the perfect night to have a pretend marriage ceremony under the stars in the Gazebo on the Oak Bluffs green on Martha’s Vineyard with Maeve as their flower girl, Todd and Byron the best men, all before Lorenzo presiding over the ceremony.
In that moment under the stars standing with JP on the white wood gazebo, after trying to talk with Lorenzo all weekend, she’d finally understood what had always been wrong with them. Lorenzo could never see her because while Nona was still breathing, Annie would always be second, at best. She’d felt nothing and knew it was finally over, for her, when Lorenzo had looked at her with fury and then pity, when all she wanted was his love.
“I thought he broke me, but there was JP just as I was collapsing. He said to me that the French love the wounded and that the wounded love him. He made me laugh.” Annie takes a step toward the window and looks out at the busy street, the evening lights coloring the dark sky. “And he let me be sad and he let me be mad, and neither of us wanted was expected of us. He didn’t want to go to Harvard and I didn’t want to do anything.” Annie sighs at the thought of the girl she had been and the decision that could have gone very differently. She turns away from the outside world and focuses her vision on Khadijah. “I just wanted to feel right, to stop worrying about what wasn’t mine. I was exhausted,” she says. “So I pretended to marry JP and abandoned my life here.”
Khadijah sees over Annie’s right shoulder Father Lorenzo opening the large wooden door of St. Catherine and begin his descension down the cement staircase.
“One more question, before Lorenzo gets here Do you want to stay, here, in Cambridge? And what about Colette?”
Annie smiles “Life happens when you’re figuring stuff out, and this is my life now and I’ve figured a few things out. There are different kinds of love. Lorenzo, JP and you. You were the disruptor in my life but you also gave us Colette. I’m not going back to LA, but we’ve already been talking about her spending more time with me before the goes to the Vineyard this summer.”
As the words leave her lips they hear the glass-door opening outside the bright yellow kitchen. Although Khadijah is not sure what she thinks of the news Annie has told her, she feels the metallic taste of disappointment coating her tongue. But allows herself to release the feeling when she hears Father Lorenzo call out, “Anyone want to join me for dinner?”