“God led me to this place. Yessir, I knew I’d get this place. I didn’t know how but I knew God meant me and Adam to live here. You like some ice cream? I always fix me and Adam a little snack ‘bout now. You sure? Well, you don’t mind if we eat some do you?”
Ida fixed up two bowls of Neapolitan ice cream, big servings, and hollered out the window to Adam who came running in acting like he didn’t know what for but Ida winked at the social worker like it was as obvious to that young man as it was to her that Adam always knew when it was time to eat something. He was new on the case and didn’t really understand yet what a treat food was for Adam, especially the unnecessary kind eaten for pleasure and not just anything to stifle hunger pains, to stay alive.
The worker, his name was Gerald and no one called him Jerry, sat in embarrassed silence while Ida said a blessing over the ice cream before unleashing the eager ten year old on it. The child ate quickly, asked to be excused and ran back outside to play. He seemed very normal. Ida was talking, unfazed by the interruption, all the while moving about the kitchen making elaborate preparations for the evening meal. Gerald was late for supper himself but couldn’t bring himself to interrupt even to ask the customary and necessary questions, let alone take his leave. His family would have to eat without him. This woman was talking about god.
“Oh yessir, God told me he’d let me know when I found the right place. It took three years and I was getting tired and losing hope. There was this other place I wanted up in Longmont, near my youngest son, the one trains horses. He trained that pony out back for Adam you know. Well, I wanted that place bad, ‘bout six months before I found this place and I was standing in my kitchen doing the dishes and begging him to give me a sign, talk to me and he just said clear as day, ‘Ida, that place is not for you.’ And that’s all, no explanations, no nothing, just ‘that place is not for you’ and I was hurt and then I got mad.
I never bin mad at God before but I was mad then. And I talked back to God and I spoke my heart. ‘I bin living here thirty years,’ I said and I meant that old neighborhood where we had the trouble, you know that neighbor who charged me with assault? Well, that man was selling drugs to the kids right out his front door and I couldn’t have that what with my little ones coming up. I had you know another foster son before Adam and he turned bad on me when he started using them drugs and he got them from that man and he denied it and wouldn’t say where he got the stuff but I found out ’cuz I seen it you know him selling to other kids and I put two and two together. Oh my God, that boy was only twelve years old. …”
Ida cried a little then and wiped her face all over with the dish towel and Gerald sat quietly, embarrassed but also fascinated by the old Creole woman.
“Well, where was I? Oh yes, oh yes I was mad at God because I wanted to move away from there. I did go after that man with my shovel because he was taunting me when I was out digging in the yard. Laughing at me as if it’s a laughing matter to lead a boy astray and I lay into him and I did go to jail one night but my son got me out and they dropped it (you know my son knows the DA) so I had had enough and I wanted out and I bin looking and looking and that place up by Longmont seemed perfect for us but God said no, said trust him there’d be another place but I wouldn’t listen I was so mad.
And I told him, I said, ‘All these years I bin good, doing for others and living by your word, ain’t never had me a man since my own boys’ dad left and I brought up my boys to be decent and sacrificed to keep them on the straight and narrow and I go every Sunday to the church and sing my heart out, every Sunday for thirty years and more, and taking care of the old folks two days a week and taking in the motherless children and praying every day in the morning and at night, always grateful for the new day, grateful for my food, grateful for my rest at night and never asking nothing until now. Well, hell Lord...’ and I did cuss then and I ain’t cussed since my boys be little but I did that day and I told the Lord I be quitting the church, the old folks.…and I did…I stopped going and I just be mad and bitter at the Lord and just talking to myself all the time and my boys be thinking then that maybe I going crazy. A crazy mad old lady that was me.”
Ida was laughing and shaking her head and wiping the ice cream off her lips so Gerald figured there was a happy ending to her story and he stole a furtive glance at the kitchen clock.
Ida talked then about her loneliness like a woman who’d lost her lover and he remembered that she’d had no lover. Children and God were her only companions. God was the great love of her life and after thirty years she was experiencing her first lover’s quarrel.
“I felt abandoned, lost, you know that feeling? You feel empty inside. You ever feel that way? I almost can’t quite explain it but I was dying inside. I knew that and finally I had to go back. I was driving my car up Colorado Blvd. to Commerce City to go to work and it just come to me, that light you know and I started talking to God and I told him I’d be back in church on Sunday and I knew he’d find us a place ’cuz we had to move. I just talked and talked all the way to work and talked at work and my co-workers thought I was crazy but I didn’t care and I come home and talked and talked all the while I fixed supper and my youngest he come for supper and he says, ‘Ma you up to that again? You crazy, Ma?’ but I didn’t care. I talked and talked and I felt better and better. Don’t you see I got my JOY back.”
And Ida smiled so wide as she raised her voice and clenched her fists in triumph and there was nothing Gerald could say because god wasn’t that real to him so he waited for her moment of re-lived rapture to pass and as she relaxed and shook her head a little at herself he asked her how she found the place, the house on two acres with a barn and large shed and garage.
“Well you know the agent had no business even showing me this place. I knew I could borrow $60,000 and here they be asking three times what I could afford. But she brings me down here to look at another house on the property, well now I need to explain. The Quiggleys over yonder they’d owned all this land and these two houses and they lived in this one and rented that other one. They was living in that trailer over back of the rental house when I come to look here. They’d tried to sell that rental house to get the bank off their backs but they couldn’t and the bank foreclosed before I come on the scene. I don’t know how it was they could keep that little bit of land they be living on now but that’s where they was and that’s where they be now. Anyway she showed me this place ’cuz it was here and it looked interesting and I just fell in love with it and never even looked at the rental house. No I wanted this one and the outbuildings and a couple of acres and I told her, I said, ‘God will help me find a way.’ Because God told me the day before that he had a place for me and I’d know it when I saw it and when I saw this place I knew it.
“Well I guess the bank hadn’t had any nibbles and were needing to get some action because the agent said she believed she could get the banker to come down, way down, and she tried to convince me to offer $120,000, that was $60,000 less than they was askin’ and I tole her no way that’s twice what I got to work with. I’ll offer ’em $60,000 ’cuz that’s what I got. The banker laughed and said I had ‘chutzpah’ you know what that is?”
Gerald didn’t know and Ida explained it was a Jewish expression meant a lot of nerve and explained how the banker was a Jew for Jesus and how they talked about being saved, being Christians both, and how ultimately she talked that banker down to $72,000. Well, she and God, because the banker called her one day and said he’d had a dream about her and the boy living there and he wanted to see her get the place and he’d give it to her if he could, but $72,000 was as low as he could go. The bank had to get that much out of it and so that’s how they settled, him dreaming, her praying and here they were Ida and Adam way out in the country with a couple horses and a garden. Ida made that social worker get right up and go out with her for a tour. She showed him each sapling, each bit of fencing, each load of manure piled here and there and t
he buckets she used to haul the water to pour around each corn, tomato and squash plant.
It looked to Gerald to be pretty dry hard ground and a proper challenge for this stalwart wife of the Lord. It was chilly when he followed her out of the kitchen to inspect the garden, the barn, the beginnings of a picket-fenced lawn in front and the sun was low and red over the factory chimneys of Commerce City and a pale moon had already risen over the silos of Brighton and Greeley. He was thinking he could just get into his car and drive away then because he felt more developments coming on and he’d have preferred to leave on the note of the happy ending but he had left his briefcase in the kitchen so back they went and Ida was already past the beginning of the next story, the story about the Quiggleys, before they were past the threshold of the door. Gerald just sat himself down, didn’t even ask to use the phone. In his mind he was already explaining why he couldn’t call, describing Ida, how important people like her were to kids like Adam.
“It’s the young one scares me—something so strange and wild about that boy he be ’bout 16 I guess. Why you know one night just after we moved in here he drive his dad’s jeep up and down the road out front, back and forth, gunning the engine makin’ a lot of noise and shoutin’ top a his lungs, ‘niggers in the neighborhood. Niggers in the neighborhood.’ And I know his folks encouraged him. If it ain’t one thing it’s another. First was the well—Mr. Quiggley was sending his wife over to the well. He did ask first well no, he never asked, he told me he was sending her over for water ’cuz they didn’t have no water in that trailer and they owned this whole place once and they was entitled to that water. Bin better if he’d asked but back then I just wanted to be friendly with neighbors and figured they’d bin hit hard to lose this place so I tole him to go ahead and send her over. He made it clear to me he didn’t come asking no nigger’s permission so I just tole him it was my place now and if they had a need and asked I’d be a good Christian neighbor. Well it just got out a hand—they was pushin' anyway. She’d come every day every day and take her a good 10 gallon a water every day. I finally went out and tole her she better be leaving some for us but she wouldn’t talk to me then. You know what I did?”
Ida waited as if expecting Gerald to know.
“I locked the pump." And she stood back a bit to get a better look at Gerald's reaction. "We get our water direct into the house anyway. I sat ‘n watched her the first day she come and find that lock—waited ’til night to do it just so I’d have the time Saturday morning to watch out this window right here and boy she was mad. I think she saw me too peeking through the curtains. Well, you know they always come out to watch me and the boy—did you see them down there watchin' us when I was showing you around? So I guess I got a right to watch them back and I guess I got a right to lock up my own well. So then they go and hook up to my electricity, there’s an outlet in that big garage and Mr. Quiggley done run him a line from there and next thing you know my electric bill’s doubled. Took a while to see what was going on. He must a done it in the dark at night. Well we took that cord down and my son disconnect the electricity out to the garage and then we locked it up anyway—he got him that old classic pick-up in there—did I show you that? Well maybe another time. So he figured best to lock it up or next you know we be finding that thing gone or all broke up. Those Quiggleys be a mean family, the three of them. The worst be when that woman come in here, in my house, she tole me I had no right to change nothin'. You saw the stairs to the family room? Well that was all closed in before I opened that up all myself and then put the closet underneath all myself, did the drywall myself.”
“Your sons didn’t help you?”
“Well they would a but I get impatient and there I was one Saturday and it be rainin’ out so I couldn’t do no yard work— ‘n I be lookin' around and get the idea I wanna open up them stairs and put me in an extra closet under there so I just did it. Just got started ‘n then I had to go to the lumberyard and get some lumber and the drywall ‘n all ‘n ended up working till midnight afore I just collapsed—right there on the front room sofa I nearly missed church the next morning. But you saw—I did a good job and you know I never did that drywall work before—I just asked some fella at the Hugh M. Woods ‘n followed instructions ‘n I think it came out real good, don’t you? Well, anyway that woman come over the next day—she musta bin watching for me to come home from church ’cuz I hadn’t even got my hat off my head ‘n that woman be knockin’ at the front door like she just wants ta make a friendly call. I didn’t know what ta make of it—after all that trouble over the water and electric.
I just come in from church and be in a forgiving mood ya know. So I let that woman in here and even offer her some ice cream ‘n she don’t even say how do to me afore she be walking all through the house lookin’ around, lookin’ around. And she start in ta askin’ me questions—what did I do here? Who tole me I could be knockin’ down walls like that? I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘What do you mean who tole me I could knock down my own walls, woman? Who do you think you are comin’ in here to my house and tellin’ me I got to get permission to remodel my own home? You answer me that?’ ‘n she start in ta yellin’ at me that she live in this house for near on 35 years and she never changed a thing outta respect for her mother-in-law who lived here longer ‘n that. ‘n I tole her she weren’t my mother-in-law and it weren’t her house no more ‘n I paid my good money and had me a deed ta this house ‘n if I wanna put in a closet or take out a wall I’ll just go ahead and do that. I tole her she was in my house with my permission and that permission had just expired along with my patience and she better be gettin’ her butt up the road and back to her house and not be bothering’ me no more ‘n she just turned her white face around and ran outta that door and never came round here again.
But the ole man come over that very night to tell me I got no right to talk like that to his missus like that but he never got inside the door and I jes shut that door in his face ‘n my son when he hear ’bout all this goins on he get right in his truck ‘n drive right down here up to that Quiggleys door and pound on it and they almost don’t open up but he shout at them, they damn well better answer their door and when that Mr. Quiggley open up Lance tell him real quiet like that if anything happen to his mother or that little boy out there that he be down here in exactly twenty minutes and shoot Quiggley’s head off, that simple, ‘n then he just turn around and come up here for supper. All quiet like. But after supper my son he bring me this .38 I got hid away and he take me out back and teach me ta shoot that thing and we shoot cans and targets for a while so them Quiggleys get the idea ‘n I got ta admit I ain’t had no trouble since, ’kept them watchin’ all the time. Why, they be out there now watchin’ ta see when you leave.”
Gerald drove down the dirt road toward the highway. It was dusky, an ominous evening in early summer, lights coming on in the distance made him melancholy, bringing up old fears. He hurried to get home to the noise and security of familiar people and lots of them. They were so alone out there, Adam and Ida, surrounded by the vast sea of dark night and silence, no trees even to break that sense of unknown eternity, an endless waiting. He imagined the mornings must be a relief with the rush and the bustle. He worried about those Quiggleys.