Good Heavens Page 3

  Why everyone was so quiet was hard to understand. I tried to get a conversation going by telling them about my trip up the mountain. When that didn’t work, I tried telling the story about Mrs. Purdy’s cat being lost for five days—how I finally found Flossie Ann in a dresser drawer. That story usually made people laugh and ask questions, but not this bunch. The small girl—the one with the tattoos—looked like she shivered, and Linda, the girl beside her, said, “Portia hates cats. Don’t you, Portia?” She got no answer.

  Frankly, I was glad when that meal, if you can call it that, was over. We carried our plates back to the kitchen, and I asked Ursula, “What’s the schedule for this evening?”

  “This evening? I am multitasking.”

  I guess that meant she was busy. “And the women?”

  “They can take care of themselves.”

  Already they had filed out onto the porch and were lighting up again. I went back to my room to unpack some more. I was beginning to think that things were not as they should be at Priscilla Home. First thing tomorrow morning, I told myself, I’m going into Rockville to see what I can do about this food business.

  After I finished unpacking, I slipped in the kitchen and checked out what foodstuffs they had and made a list of things they needed, which was just about everything.

  Early the next morning I was driving into town on the Old Turnpike, which was so foggy I had to run my wipers and creep along. All the way into Rockville I prayed the Lord would show me how he was going to provide for us, because I was sure he was going to do just that. In my wallet I had the money Pastor Osborne had paid me for his first month’s rent, so I had that to spend. Before I left Live Oaks I had intended to save every penny he sent me until I had enough to buy him a decent car, but it looked like the Lord had something else in mind, at least for this first month’s rent.

  I figured the place to begin was a supermarket, and I found one without any trouble. It didn’t take long to load two shopping carts full of staples—flour, meal, sugar, cooking oil, rice, grits, oatmeal, coffee, tea, dry milk, dried beans, peanut butter, and some seasonings. I paid for that, stashed it in the car, and went back in the store for some cheese, milk, and eggs. Then I headed for the produce department.

  In the back of the store, I found the produce manager ripping green leaves from the outside of cabbages. They do that to make the produce look fresher than it really is when they put it on the counter and sprinkle water on it. Well, I couldn’t let the manager get away with that.

  You’d think I was the Queen of Sheba the way I talked to that man. “Mister, don’t you know you are throwing away the best part of them cabbages? All the vitamins and minerals are in those outer leaves that have soaked up the sun.”

  “Hey, if you think so much of those leaves, you can have ’em. Here’s a sack; help yourself.”

  As fast as he peeled off the leaves I stuffed them in that bag, and before you knew it, I needed more bags. It made the fellow curious that I was taking so much. “You got a big family? Having company?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him. “It’s for Priscilla Home.”

  Right away he lightened up, said he’d heard of that place. “That Old Turnpike is a washboard of a road, ain’t it?” he said, and I agreed.

  Seeing he had several shelves of vegetables he was going to have to offer at discount, I asked him, “What’s the best price you can give me on the whole lot?”

  “Hey, I just work here,” he said. “I’ll have to ask the boss.” He stopped what he was doing and disappeared behind swinging doors.

  In about five minutes he reappeared with the store manager in tow. By then I had made up my mind the limit I would pay.

  “She wants a price on all o’ this stuff,” the produce man explained.

  Both men surveyed the shelves, and then the store manager said, “Lady, if you can use this stuff, you’re welcome to it. You’ll be doing us a favor to take it off our hands—save us having to rewrap and reprice it.”

  He turned to go back through the swinging doors, so I called after him, “How much?” But he was gone.

  “There’s no charge,” the produce man told me. “Here, I’ll help you bag it.”

  I can’t tell you how happy I was as I left that store. I still had money left and was beginning to feel like that woman in the Bible with the pot of oil that didn’t give out.

  There was a meat market up a ways from the store, so after I’d stashed the vegetables in the backseat, I drove up there. In the worse way I wanted some red meat for those sad-looking women.

  A round-faced man in a white apron and cap was leaning on the meat case and spoke to me as I came in the door. Before I buy, I always check a meat counter to see if it’s clean, and his was. There were hams, roasts, steaks, sausages, pork chops, chickens, and hamburger meat all neatly displayed in trays. I decided my best bargain would be the hamburger. It being Monday, I knew the meat he had was probably left over from Saturday, and he’d favor a quick sale of hamburger. So I pointed at the price posted and told him, “I can use all you got of that ground beef if the price is right.”

  He rolled open the sliding door of the cabinet, pulled out the pan of hamburger, threw a paper on the scales, and dumped the meat on. “I’ll weigh it,” he said and leaned his head back to read the numbers bobbing on that little glass tube. He was taking so long I figured he was trying to decide on what he would charge me. Finally he announced, “Eight pounds, four ounces.”

  “So, what’s your best price?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer; he just asked me if I was going to put it in my freezer.

  “No,” I said. “It’s for Priscilla Home, and after a meal or two there’ll be nothing left.”

  “Priscilla Home?” He turned to look at me. “How many wimmin you got up there now?”

  “About a dozen, I guess. I just came yesterday.”

  “You a patient up there?”

  “No, I’m the new housemother.”

  He started wrapping the meat. “Hold on,” I said. “You didn’t give me the price.”

  “Two dollars,” he said, wrapping twine around the package.

  “Did I hear you right? Two dollars?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s giving it away!” I didn’t want to take advantage of the man.

  He placed the meat on the counter. “I ain’t a-losin’ a penny, because as my granny used to say, ‘Give and it’ll be give back.’ She was one good woman, and she’d roll over in her grave if I didn’t do what I’m a-doin’ for them pore wimmin.”

  “Well, since you put it that way, I reckon we don’t want your granny rolling over in her grave, now do we?”

  As I was rummaging through my bottomless pit for my wallet, the butcher leaned his arms on the counter and looked out the window. “You know,” he said, “there’s somebody you ought to meet. Name’s Mary—runs the donut shop.”

  I found my wallet and paid him two dollar bills. He rang it up and handed me the meat. “Can you manage it?”

  “I got it,” I said, then thanked him and asked if they had a day-old bread store in town.

  “Sure have. It’s right down this street next to the video store. You can’t miss it.”

  I was almost out the door when he called after me. “Do you know where the donut shop is?”

  Of course, I didn’t. I shook my head.

  “Well, it’s on the other side of Main Street.” He came out from behind the counter to point the way. “Go down here to the foot of the hill and hang a left. There’s some roadwork a-goin’ on down there—street’s been flooded, but you can get around it. You’ll go ’bout half a mile and see the post office on the right. Mary’s shop is on that side street runs alongside the post office. You can’t miss it.”

  I knew I wasn’t interested in buying donuts, so I thanked him and was again about out the door when he added, “Every day when Mary closes shop, she throws away tons of those good donuts. You go down there at closing time, and s
he’ll be glad to give you all the donuts you can use.”

  Now that was a different story. I thanked him again and said I’d be sure to check that out.

  After I bought the bread, I went looking for the donut shop. I saw the post office but was in the wrong lane to make a turn. I tell you, I had a mischief of a time finding my way back. The streets in that town were something else! They twisted and turned and backtracked like you wouldn’t believe. It looked like to make the streets they just paved over the trails the pioneers had made going across the mountains. Made me laugh; they probably done that on purpose to discourage tourists from settling in Rockville.

  Mary and I hit it off right away. She was about my age, sixty-something-or-other. She said we could have all the donuts, Danish, and cream horns left over at the end of any day—that she had back trouble and it would be a help to have us unload all that stuff. I could not believe my ears!

  On the way home, I thought of a way we could give a little back for the donuts. On the days we came for the leftovers, I’d bring a couple of the Priscilla girls, and we’d help Mary clean up of an evening—wash those heavy trays and mop the floor.

  Driving back up the mountain, my heart was so full I just kept singing and saying, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”

  By the time I got to Priscilla’s it was nearly lunchtime. The girls swarmed around the car to help me unload. Seeing all the groceries seemed to break the gloomy spell that hung over the place.

  I asked them where Ursula was. One of the women, I think it was Linda, said Ursula was having a counseling session. I left it to the girls to take care of the groceries, and I climbed the stairs to my room.

  I hadn’t read the Bible all day, so I welcomed a little quiet time before the lunch bell rang. After I went to the bathroom, I plopped down in that easy chair. It didn’t fit me like my old recliner, but I thought maybe in time it would. I got out my prayer list and opened the Bible at the bookmark.

  I had hardly got started reading when Ursula called me into her office.

  3

  Ursula sat down behind her desk, looking very disturbed. “Esmeralda, by what means did you procure all these foodstuffs?”

  “For the most part I paid for them.”

  Those eyeglasses slipped down on her nose, and she peered at me over the top of them. “We can’t do that here. We cannot spend our own funds to finance Priscilla Home.”

  “Why not? I can’t ask the Lord to give us groceries when I have the money in my pocketbook to pay for them.”

  “That will not work here. There are always many needs at Priscilla Home, and you could spend every penny of your income and still not meet all the obligations.”

  She was so matter-of-fact, so sure of herself, I could see how easy we might lock horns. Ursula was a stringy woman and didn’t fit in that big office chair. She tried leaning back in it but that didn’t help. Then she started fooling with a paper clip, bending it out of shape. “When I first came here as director, my father instructed me meticulously about how to bring Priscilla Home up to professional standard.”

  At her age, is her daddy still running her life? I wondered.

  “My father is a learned man, and I respect his judgment,” she was saying. “Fund-raising is the board’s responsibility, he said, and he forbade me spending my money on needs here. That would lead to my financial ruin.”

  “Is the board doing the fund-raising?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, a bit put off by my asking. “It hasn’t worked out that way.” Leaning forward, shuffling a stack of papers, she appeared to be looking for something. “Here, this is what I’m looking for,” she said as she handed me a Priscilla Home prayer letter. As I was reading it, she informed me, “This is a faith ministry. We depend on donations from our constituency and from grants given by foundations. That letter you have in your hand was mailed to our contributors two weeks ago. We should soon begin receiving contributions in the mail.”

  It was a prayer letter, all right—like so many of those letters I would get and have to throw in the trash because it took all I had to support my own church. “You send out letters?”

  “Yes, we send out letters. That informs the public of our financial needs—”

  “And you ask foundations for charity?”

  “Yes, of course.” She looked provoked. “That’s the way all nonprofits are funded.”

  “Nonprofits?”

  Annoyed, she threw the paper clip in the wastebasket and started toying with another one. “Yes, nonprofits like hospitals, research centers, and so forth. Any such organization can apply. I spend hours writing proposals for grants, and since I came here two years ago, we’ve received one, a grant of fifteen hundred dollars. I have eleven proposals in the mail and am in the process of writing six more.”

  The way this conversation was going made me uncomfortable. I didn’t exactly know how to say what I wanted to, but I had to say something or I knew I’d regret it later. “Ursula . . . I don’t think of Priscilla Home as just another nonprofit organization. It’s a Christian ministry. To ask for money makes it look like the Lord can’t take care of us.”

  Ursula sat bolt upright, her elbows on the desk and her fingers twisting that paper clip to beat the band. “Do you consider that my appealing to a foundation and writing letters to our constituency makes us mendicants?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mendicants are religious persons who live off alms. Do you consider that my appealing to foundations and sending letters to our contributors is begging?”

  “What would you call it?”

  The phone rang. She answered it and spoke briefly with somebody. As she was talking, I noticed the black circles under her eyes. No wonder, I thought, she’s probably up half the night writing them proposals to foundations.

  When she got off the line, there was an edge in her voice. “Esmeralda, how do you propose we fund this ministry?”

  “Just trust the Lord. Don’t that seem like the most natural way?”

  “Doesn’t,” she snapped.

  “Well, whatever. It seems to me that if we can trust the Lord to save and keep our souls, we ought to be able to trust him to provide for his work.”

  Her face flushed. “Are you saying I don’t trust the Lord?”

  “No. I’m not your judge. I just think it’s up to the Lord to keep Priscilla Home running as long as he sees fit, and when he’s done with this place he will stop providing for it.”

  “According to that, Esmeralda, it appears the Lord is indeed finished with this ministry.” Throwing the paper clip in the wastebasket, she reached in a desk drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and slid them across to me.

  They were all unpaid bills—all past due. Bills for electricity, propane, gasoline, hardware—I was shocked to see one in there from the meat market where I’d bought the hamburger meat. If I had known Priscilla Home owed that man money, I’d have never asked him for his best price. I thought of what a good man he must be not to have mentioned that bill to me.

  “Esmeralda, we have forty-two dollars in our bank account. If we don’t pay Mountain Power and Light this week, they’re going to discontinue our electricity. What do you propose that we do, pray about it?”

  If she wasn’t sarcastic, she was close to it.

  “Ursula,” I said, “when I was young, things were nip and tuck for me. Through those years I learned that the Lord always provides if I trust him and if I don’t waste what he gives me.”

  “Don’t you think I have prayed?” she snapped. “I’ve prayed and I’ve done what I could to raise revenue, but Esmeralda, we are at our Rubicon! Yesterday I called the president of our board, Mr. Elmwood, to ask his permission to negotiate another bank loan. He approved, and tomorrow I’m going to the bank to borrow ten thousand dollars.”

  “A loan against the property?”

  “What else? After we pay our creditors, we’ll have about two thousand dollars left for future expenditures.�
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  “How will you pay back the loan?”

  “With monthly payments.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was hard-pressed to know how to speak my mind without getting her riled up even more.

  “You disapprove?” she asked, her dark eyes snapping. “Do you have a better plan?”

  “You must think I fell off a turnip truck.”

  “A turnip truck? What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind.” I waved my hand in the air. “Ursula, I do have a better plan. What would you think if I went into town, met all these creditors, and asked for a bit more time?”

  “Oh, we could never do that! Besides, a few more days’ delay won’t change things. What we owe is much more than we could expect to come in within such a short time.”

  I spoke softly so as not to offend her. “Splurgeon says, ‘He pleases God best who trusts him most.’”

  “Splurgeon?”

  The bell rang for lunch, but we still sat there, not saying anything. The smell of fried onions drifted our way. I heard the screen door banging as the girls piled off the porch and came inside.

  Finally Ursula broke the silence. “You would do that? You’d go into town and ask all those creditors to give us extensions?”

  I nodded.

  “What if they say no?”

  “Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  She shook her head disgustedly. “I perceive that your faith exceeds mine, Esmeralda.”

  “No, we all got a pinch of faith, and it only takes a pinch if we put it in the Lord.”

  Unconvinced and probably pitying me, she stood up and stacked her papers, muttering, “The mustard seed?” Not waiting for an answer, she said, “Very well, Esmeralda, you go into town and see what you can do. I’ll delay asking for a loan until you report back to me.”

  After lunch, Ursula gave me the addresses of the creditors, and I wrote down the directions to each of the businesses. Then I took off down the Old Turnpike for Rockville. This won’t be easy, I told myself and braced for whatever might happen.