The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Furious with Garrett, Claire wouldn't speak to him and turned from the room
to get her keys and purse, slamming the door behind her. Garrett was used
to this. That girl's slammed many a door, he chuckled; it helped to keep
them from talking about things, and that's the way they wanted it. "Anyway,"
he said to the door, "I stayed because I wanted to be with you."
But Claire wasn't really mad, and she always listened for several moments
after she slammed a door.
Not five minutes after Chloe got back to the motel room, she heard a light
tapping on the door.
"Who is it?" Tommy called out.
"Chloe? It's Mrs. Mason. Claire. May I have a word with
you?"
Claire could hear muffled whispers from the other side of the door.
"It's awright Tommy. Take the girls outa here for a while. I'll
be awright. Go on, now. Go on, y'all. Mama's gonna talk to her
friend." The door opened, and a tall, clean shaven man and two bashful
girls, one about five and the other seven, walked out of the room. The man
reached up and touched the brim of his baseball cap, and politely said,
"Ma'am," to Claire. The girls said a shy, giggly hello, after
being prodded by their mama. The two women watched from the doorway as the
three got into a truck, and pulled out of the driveway of the motel.
"Come on in, Mrs. Mason. I'm real glad you came." Chloe
said.
"Thank you, Chloe. Please, call me Claire." The room was small,
but tidy except for some dolls and books on the table. The family's
luggage was stored neatly in one corner.
"I'm a bit surprised by everything you said, but I am curious how you seem
to know so much." Claire started.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but are you really surprised?" Chloe asked
knowingly. Claire didn't respond.
"Why did you come here?" Claire asked.
"Because your daughters need to know they're angels, and you have to tell
them."
Claire's feathers ruffled at the temerity of this young woman's confident words.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, ma'am. I don't know any more than that." Chloe said.
"Oh, really?" Claire raised her eyebrows. "That's all
you know, is it?" She did not try to hide the disapproval in her
tone.
"Ma'am, I just report the news, I don't ma-"
"You don't make it. Yes, I remember, how convenient!"
"May I tell you a story, Mrs. Mason?" Chloe tilted her head a
little to the side, and it made Claire think of Jessica. Jessica would be
in hog heaven to sit here and talk with this woman. Claire was a bit out
of her league, weary of trying to keep the upper hand that no one was vying for
except her.
"Go right ahead." Claire answered.
Chloe took a deep breath and prepared to tell the story she'd only told one
other time.
"My family's from Beloxi, Mississippi. There are ten of us; I'm the
youngest, and by the time I came along mama was plum wore out." Chloe
dropped her eyes now and looked down at her hands in her lap as she spoke.
"Truth is, she ain't my real mama. My daddy had an affair, but
the woman didn't want nothin' to do with me after I was born, so daddy took me
home. They already had nine kids, so you'd think they wouldna noticed one
more, but mama wasn't real happy about things. She made daddy take me with
him everywhere he went." She paused for a moment. "It made
me feel so special, like a princess. Daddy was a mechanic, and he made it
all a great adventure, working in his shop and playing with the tools. I'd
hold the flashlight for him while he worked underneath the cars, holding the
light; that was my job he said. We'd talk and talk. About
everything.
"I'd tell him about all the stuff I could see, inside people's
minds and all. I asked him why I could see inside people and know what was
going on in their lives. Some folks didn't like it when I told them the
stuff I saw, and sometimes I even got in trouble. I was confused. They'd
tell me to hush up or something like that, but I knew I was right. My
daddy told me one time when I was about ten, 'Chloe, angel girl, you
got a gift. You're a seer. Don't ever be afraid to look, but ya
gotta watch what you say. You're an angel, and angels just hold the
light.' Just like I was doin' for him. Holding the light.
He was always so kind to me. I didn't think about it much; why I got
to go with him, and the other kids went to school or stayed home. I found
out later mama hated every hair on my head, thought I was a witch, and wanted to
skin me alive; so daddy had to keep me with him to protect me. She made
nice in front of folks outside the family, but at home she treated the
cockroaches better than me. One of my older brothers used to, you know,
mess with me, when he'd get me alone, and finally one day when I was about
fourteen and this had been going on for years, I'd had enough. I told my
daddy, and I just knew he'd get him to stop. But he didn't. He didn't
believe me. He told me that was nonsense, and if I ever said anything like
that again, he'd whup me good."
She took a deep breath and looked out
the window. "Broke my heart right there on the spot. I stopped
seeing inside folks and let my gift die. He died, too, the next year.
My sister came running up to me on the driveway and told me daddy had a
heart attack. I turned around and never looked back. Mama woulda
killed me for sure with daddy gone. I lived on the streets for five years
until the day your husband rescued me."
Chloe ferverently prayed that
Mrs. Mason would see that we may give up on ourselves, but God never gives up on
us. "Mrs. Mason, our gifts are a blessing. What you are is
God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God. Why
don't you want to tell your daughters that they're angels? That they have
a gift?" Chloe asked sincerely.
Claire was staring out the window taking in this woman's story. "Not
every gift is a blessing, Chloe." She said reflectively, and Chloe
stopped herself from asking what she meant.
"With all due respect, ma'am, that can't be true. Everything in this
life is a blessing, we just don't see it right. We see it with our eyes
instead of our hearts."
"What if we don't want to look, huh? What if I just want to live my
life, take care of things, and mind my own business. What if I don't want
to be an angel?" Claire challenged. She's acting like a wounded
animal, thought Chloe. What is she afraid of? she wondered.
"I guess you just miss the blessing this time. You'll get another
chance. But the same thing that stops you from seeing with your heart now
will be there next time. It'll always be there until you hold it up to the
light. We can never fail. Oh, we might stop trying and don't finish
what we started, but there is no defeat, only postponement. That's why
people who kill themselves are just being silly. They ain't getting out of
anything. None of us can. We think that what we do to another will
be done to us. Our minds are like this sophisticated projector, I read.
Everything that goes on in us we put out into our lives, and the people we
know, and the things we see, it's all colored by our perceptions. This
might be our reality, but it's not truth. I remember one teacher said,
‘We judge others when we want them to learn our lessons.'" Chloe
thought for a few minutes and looked at Claire as if she were on the verge of
solving a puzzle.
"Mrs. Mason, being an angel, or rather knowing you're an angel, doesn't
make you special, it just means... oh, mercy, that's why I told you all that.
Are you afraid being an angel makes you special, different from everybody
else and being different from everybody else... mercy, me, I shoulda seen
this." Claire hadn't moved from her place at the window, and Chloe
came over to where she stood and stooped over sideways to look into Claire's
eyes. Claire was tired of dodging ghosts she couldn't see and believing a
truth she knew wasn't.
"I see it in your eyes. You don't have to tell me. I know.
You think having a gift is a curse. So did I. Mercy, we choose
some tough stuff, don't we? We have so much to unlearn. I remember a
minister saying that Jesus doesn't have anything we don't have, he just don't
have anything else." The two sat in silence, and Chloe was in awe of
the power of God to put them together. Quite a system, she thought to
herself. After the long silence, Claire spoke.
"He said I was special, that I had a gift. Then he raped me. For
years no one believed me, and finally I was sent away from my home and my
friends, all the way across country to a boarding school. All because I
spoke up and told the truth. The truth never set anything free."
Claire kept looking out the window, but what she saw was not the view.
"I heard my heart saying just what you're saying, but after a while
you don't know whose talking. Do you know what I mean?" She
didn't give Chloe a chance to respond before adding, "Why would
anyone do that to a child?" She let those years of agony ripple
through her body, then sharply turned around to face this odd young woman
who was changing everything.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Claire asked, her voice filled
with courage and resolution. Chloe wasn't sure if she meant about the
past, the present or the future, then realized the answer was the same for all
of it.
"Forgive." Chloe replied softly.
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