The armor of God
10 Finally, be strong
in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so
that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For
our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore
put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may
be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to
stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled
around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet
fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In
addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can
extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the
helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of
God.18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all
kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep
on praying for all the Lord’s people.
– Ephesians 6:10 -18 (NIV)
Alexandria Adonia Prescott turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
The house was in darkness.
She bumped into a pot on the floor sighed and spoke out loud in frustration,
“I need to clean dis place!”
Kicking the pot out of her way, she dumped the two heavy bags at her feet and pulled her handbag open.
It took several minutes for her to find the phone. Using its flashlight to guide her way, she walked to the light switch and flicked it on.
Alexandria wasn’t surprised when the light didn’t come on.
The kitchen light is out again. She thought.
Maneuvering her way through the pots, pans and other Knick knacks on the floor, she made her way to the nearest light switch and flicked that light on.
She surveyed the messy kitchen, took in the unwashed dishes in the sink, the empty open dusty cupboards, the pots and pans that she had placed on the dirty floor earlier that day in order to spray the cupboards and the dead cockroaches scattered on the floor and decided to rest a bit before unpacking the goods she had bought at the supermarket.
Alexandria mentally listed all the things she should do before going to bed as she headed to the bedroom.
Clean her bedroom for a start!
Hmmppff…I’ll just lie down for ten minutes or maybe fifteen then unpack these things, she thought.
She noticed the suitcase first.
It wasn’t in the place where she had left it.
It was on her bed, open.
She noticed the drawers next.
They were all slightly pulled out.
Someone had gone through each one looking for something.
One of her handbags was on the floor, its contents emptied.
Alexandria picked up the purse and looked through it. As expected, the two one hundred U.S. dollar bills that she was keeping for her mother was gone. The thief must not have seen the five two U.S. dollar bills that her Dad had given her for safekeeping because they were still there.
She stared at the piece of newspaper clipping that several days before she had taped in the inside of her purse as a reminder and read the quotation,
They have my new computer and flash drive again.
The doors are still locked, how had they…he gotten in, she wondered.
Alexandria walked over to the door facing her, the door leading to the unfinished house her parents were still building and turned the knob.
The door wasn’t locked, just closed.
She must have forgotten to lock it last Sunday when she opened it to let some fresh air in while her cousin Tanya and her kids were visiting. She had thought that they would have liked some cool breeze and so she had opened the door.
The thief must have come in through here and closed the door on his way out she supposed.
Since the last time they had broken in she had been so careful when locking up. Alexandria let out a big heavy sigh.
I guess I wasn’t careful enough.
Ting-a-ling…Ting-a-ling…the sound of her phone alarm went off, pronouncing that it was seven o’clock.
NEWS TIME the phone reminder prompted.
Alexandria searched for the remote, clicked the t.v. on to the local station, zipped up the suitcase and placed it back in its place, then brushed aside the clothes that needed to be ironed and slumped unto the bed.
The image of an old woman looking distraught filled the screen,
“Where is God’s angels to protect us?”
The reporter took the mike from the old woman and explained the circumstances for her outcry. Gunmen had gruesomely killed an old couple that was well known and loved by those of the neighborhood. The old woman was a friend of the couple, and she didn’t see any reason for anyone to want to kill such good people.
Alexandria Prescott turned the t.v, off.
With the old woman’s cry echoing in her head, she slowly walked to the bathroom. Why wasn’t there any good news? She asked. Because good news don’t sell. She answered herself. Where is God indeed…is there a God? Alexandria mused.
“Oh, No, No, No!” Alexandria stamped her feet down sturdily on the ground, glared at the toilet water, willing it not to flood over unto the bathroom floor.
Dear God, what more can go wrong? She silently asked.
Standing in the foul filthy toilet water now flooding the bathroom, Alexandria began to cry noiselessly. The tears rushed down her cheeks as she dragged her tired body to where she kept the old newspapers stocked in the corner of the kitchen near the rubbish bin and began to lay the newspapers out on the floor, a newspaper heading caught her eye, “Healing Words” the caption said, “York woman uses words to heal wounds”. Alexandria noted the date of the gleaner, Sunday January 30, 2011 and began to read its contents. It said,
YORK, S.C. (AP):
The composition books she writes in are the same ones elementary school kids use – the black and white bound ones with the white ruled pages and wide lines. She has so many note-books filled with words, and she fills more each day.
As Christmas approached, the day that celebrates the birth of her Lord, this woman named Ida Neal Lord used the word “love” at least four times in her latest notebook, which is all about overcoming what happens when there is no love.
“Love conquers all,” Lord said at the York Adult Day Care Center, the place she spends her weekdays every day of her life where she is the one and only author-in-waiting. Where this 45 -year-old woman lights up the place with her face – a face that once lay on a cold floor, covered with blood.
If you get shot in the head by a maniac on Valentine’s Day 2008, and then have to re-learn how to eat and walk and read and write – there is plenty to write down.
Alexandria paused, looked up in the ceiling and wondered what she was doing on Valentine’s Day ‟08. She went to the notebooks she recently packed up into a small cardboard box and rummaged through the books, when she found the book dated January – April 2008 she ruffled through the pages and read the page dated February 14, 2008.
Yes, that was what I was doing, the same thing that I did the year before and maybe the year before as well.
She continued reading.
Ida Neal Lord will not be denied. She writes it all down.
The story she writes is about a mother of three and a nursing aide for hospice patients who goes to a check-cashing business to get money to wire to a brother in prison.
There, somebody who has shot three people before - and robbed even more at gunpoint – shoots her in the head for no reason.
For good measure, he shoots her in the back as she lays on the ground.
The woman somehow survives surgeries and a coma and re-learns how to do everything. But only to a certain point.
Some wounds to her head and body cannot heal. Bullets tore away too much of that head and spine that tell the body what to do and how to do it.
NOT A NOVEL
That is not a novel. That is what happened to Ida Neal Lord on Valentine’s Day 2008, and what she has lived with every day since.
And somehow, at that adult day care, Ida Neal Lord walks in, with a metal brace like a cane with four feet, and smiles.
And each day Lord, a mother of three boys and a grandmother of eight, takes out her composition books and writes it all down.
“Ida has such a determination, a spirit, a joy for living, that none of us can figure out where it comes from because she always has it,” said Dee Curran, director of the adult day care in York.
“She never gives up.”
Nursing assistant Regena Hawes calls Lord, “Our author. Our greatest treasure. Our celebrity.”
A woman who gained celebrity because she was shot. A woman who limps through the grocery store or Walmart, and people clap. They just stop and applaud when they recognise the cane, and the smile, wrought from the barrel of a gun held by the worst serial shooter in York County, ever.
She writes it all down, how people are nice to her and help her continue.
“I love them all,” Lord said.
HELP
With help from one of her grown sons, Lord has found a self-publishing house that will publish that book for about US$1,700. Women who have been shot and have had to re-learn every part of life, do not have US$1700.
Lord has social-work help, an apartment in public housing after a life of living from the sweat of her labour, and little left over. She has asked Santa Claus, in her Christmas list written in one of those composition books, for a CD player for Christmas because hers just broke.
That is what Philip Watts, serving eight life sentences and deserving every one of them for crimes so brutal and cold, has given Ida Neal Lord every day of her life.
Yet Lord forgave Watts long ago.
“I pray for him every night, when I read my bible,” said Lord.
Then, after prayers for the man who shot her, Lord somehow lays her head down to sleep.
She wakes early and faces another day of trying to eat and walk and using her right hand to write.
Her left hand is clasped shut forever - a reminder of violence unleashed on her for no reason at all other than meanness.
She plans on calling the book Anu Beginning. A play on words, instead of ‘A New Beginning’.
“That spelling might be catchy,” Lord said. “I know the right spelling. But I want it to find people.”
“I just hope to get this published, so somebody might be inspired not to give up, like I don’t give up.”
On Ida Neal Lord’s Christmas list is only that CD player. The other thing she wrote cannot be purchased. It can only be earned, then given.
“I want better people, who love each other more,” Lord said.
“That is all I really want.”
“A better world for people, with more love in it.”
The other heading read, “Food For The Poor donates computers”. The advertisement below that stated, “ONE conversation can change so much SWITCH to First Caribbean and gain real benefits!”
Why does everything seem to have spiritual meaning to me nowadays?
She asked herself as she took note of the words
“one conversation can change so much…”
Alexandria flipped the newspaper over.
Digicel’s logo declared its slogan – Jamaica’s Bigger Better Network.
The full page ad said,
“Good Luck to our Ambassadors in the youth view awards 2011 - Young, Hot & hype.”
Alexandria sighed.
This isn’t for me, she thought.
At thirty-five years old, Alexandria Prescott no longer considered herself to be
- Young, Hot & Hype.
The ad featured pictures of six popular, well-known Jamaicans, age ranging from 21-30.
Deejay and dancer Ding Dong.
Singer/dancehall artist Tiffa.
Reggae artist I-Octane who had a song with the lyrics “noh bwoy khan play in a mi dread”. Though Alexandria wasn’t sure if I-Octane had accepted the Rastafarian religion or was just sporting the dreads as a hair style, as some of the Jamaican artists were apt to do.
T.V. and radio personality Ms. Kitty (who helped to make the word “fluffy” promoting “Big/fat-PHAT” women popular),.
Yendi Phillips – the previous host of Digicel rising stars, holder of several beauty titles including Miss Jamaica World 2007, Miss Jamaica Universe 2010, first runner up to the now reigning Miss Universe 2011 and current girlfriend of Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell.
Disc Jockey Bambino – one of the three judges of Digicel rising stars 2011 completed the six.
Alexandria glanced at the pictures once more, nodded and affirmed,
“Yes, this isn’t for me.”
She placed the newspaper on the floor, brushed the tears from her eyes and chuckled.
Love conquers all, hadn’t she proven those words to be false, weren’t those words her motto for many years until recently.
She wasn’t sure God was in control.
Or if there was a God.
What if there wasn’t a God?
And if there is a God,
God and his angels seem to be standing aside,
just watching; allowing the evil to take over.
Anger and hatred, they seemed far more powerful than love.
What was she taught when she was little – God is Love?
If God represented love and the devil hate then it was clear who was winning the battle for souls… if there was a battle going on that is.
God don’t seem to be in attendance…where is he, what the hell is he doing?
Alexandria wanted to know.
A thought flashed through her mind.
At least you aren’t in that woman’s position, crippled, bruised from being shot in the head. Yet she is still praising God. What are you doing?
Suddenly, Alexandria felt oddly calm.
She pushed the clothes to one side of the bed; crawled in, pulled the sheets over her head, wrapped her arms around her and closed her eyes.
I will deal with everything tomorrow, she promised herself as sleep slowly crept upon her.
September 24, 2011
Saturday – 10:39pm
I should tell you this story from the beginning but I am not sure exactly where the beginning begins and I am not at the end as yet. So instead, I will start in the middle where I first saw him.
The sudden whooshing sound of the wind made her put down the pen and glanced around askance. He is on his way here, the female voice behind her said excitedly. She frowned, went to unlock the front door, reheated the meal that was on the stove then returned to the computer desk. Suddenly, hated heat surrounded her as the whooshing sound of the wind became louder in her ear. She immediately gripped the seat of the chair and began to count to ten as sweat poured down her face. The angry heat increased followed by a faint wave of sadness.
He is at the door!
Fear filled her mind with doubt and pain.
She wanted to run.
There was nowhere to run.
She gripped her chest as dark invisible arrows of hate hit her over and over again. The feeling of dizziness washed over her. She picked up the book and pen and walked into her brother’s room. Why is he here? she wondered but didn’t ask those that knew the answer.
She heard the knob of the front door turned, felt the gush of fresh air flow through her, felt the cool breeze fanned all around her, watched as the hair stood upright on her arm and shivered. When she sensed it standing at her right hand, she breathed a sigh of relief. For now, it was over. She waited until she heard his fork scraping his plate then she picked up the pen and continued writing.
“Night.” He called out from her bedroom.
“Night.” She answered from her little hiding place.
“Should I go?” He asked.
The bed gave its usual squeak as he sat down and waited for her answer.
“No, you can stay.” She replied, afraid to say anything more than those few words.
“Ok.” He said and began to get ready for bed.
“Will you be done soon with whatever you are doing in there?” He called out.
“Yes, I will soon come.” She responded.
“Aren’t you coming” He asked.
“Alright” She put down the pen, hid the notepad that she was writing on, closed her brother’s bedroom door and walked towards her room.
Andre Adam Prescott a.k.a. Dre a.k.a. Steven Adams a.k.a. Alec Thompson sauntered into the pub and ordered a drink.
Andre Prescott, no Steven Adams; for that was the name he was going by for the moment, checked his watch.
He had time.
He could deliver the stuff and be back at his house by two am.
Carlissa was on the graveyard shift. She would be home by five am, six the latest. She wouldn’t even know he had left the house. He had been careful when he was leaving out. He was sure no one had seen him leave.
Couple g’s made easily. He mused.
He nodded in the direction of the man coming through the crowd towards him, took a sip of his drink and waited.
“The truck is out back,” the man said.
“Here are the keys”
Andre pocketed the keys.
“Call me when it is done.”
With that said, the man walked back into the crowd.
Steven Adams finished his drink and went out back to the truck.
Comments
Post a Comment