To say that Patience spoke to God often would have been a lie. The only time she gave Him any thought was during the long, torturous hours of church, and even then, He was just that; a passing thought. She bent her head over her hands and pressed her palms together as those around her did. Whilst they convened with Him, her head was filled with the sound of rain. She never knew what to do with the time, what she was supposed to say, and to ask would have been to give herself away. At times, she wondered if He would’ve tried to prepare her if she had allowed Him in, cleared away some of the clutter that took up much of the free space in her head as her mother did when she expected company.

At the church of Patience’s childhood, there was a singular picture of Jesus hung on the wall behind the pulpit. In hindsight, it was a rather unflattering rendition of him, depicting a man with skin the color of turmeric, almost sallow in nature. The artist had chosen to paint him standing in front of a perfectly round ball of yellow, and it took her grandmother a full service to convince an eight year old Patience that it was a signature of his divinity rather than an oddly placed sun, which she was sure belonged nowhere but in the top right corner of any quality drawing. The background of this painting seemed entirely secondary, so unimportant that it was difficult to recall even given the clarity that death afforded her. The Pastor, a man by the name of Darnell Rolland with the unfortunate habit of slamming his fists onto his pulpit when particularly taken up by the Holy Spirit, was the fear mongering sort of Christian and only mentioned Heaven when it was in contrast to the Hell he was sure that the vast majority of those outside of his congregation were heading towards.

As she grew, she imagined Heaven as something like happiness; it could be a person or thing just as easily as it could be a physical place. At the same time, she had never deluded herself into believing that it was in her cards to ascend, and so it was never important enough for her to consider. Heaven was a space for the clean, the pure. Patience considered herself neither.

On their third consecutive day together, Owl took in this information solemnly, shoving a forth stick of gum into his mouth. She watched his jaw work, watched the ensuing bubble inflate. It swelled to the size of a tennis ball before it popped, leaving a pink flap that stuck to his chin before he sucked it between his lips.

One of the more jarring transitions was accepting that here, this Owl, no longer smoked. He’d explained that if he smelled like cigarettes, then it was only because that’s how she remembered him. In his own Heaven, he hadn’t smoked since the day he died. When she’d inquired as to why he continued to chew the gum, all he’d been able to muster was a shrug and three words.

Habit, I guess.

“So whatchu think about it then?” He placed a stick into her outstretched palm, and she shrugged. Sweetness gathered in the corners of her mouth, almost overwhelming before the artificial bubblegum flavor dispersed across the flat of her tongue.

“This is Heaven.” The more she said it, the more sense it should have made. 

Home was Heaven. Is that really what she thought?

It was hot. 

Sweat gathered at the base of her neck, revitalizing the curls that during the summers of her childhood, her mother had taken care to hot comb into submission. She would sit on the steps back then too, her arms braced on the wide tops of her mother’s thighs, slurping away at a blue pop sickle from the red net as Shanice braided her hair into something she deemed presentable.

Owl nudged her shoulder with his.

Her teeth ground together. It was a while before she trusted herself to speak. “I don’t know.”

Owl, like the bird.

That was how he introduced himself to her, lackadaisically lifting his shoulders and allowing them to fall as if already accepting any grief that she would presumably give him for his name. They were nice, slender shoulders, not quite thin enough to be bony but not broad enough to intimidate anyone. She could not sense any ill will in the looseness of his body, couldn’t seem to hate the way his jeans dipped well below his hips.

Patience, like the virtue, she’d responded, and then regretted it.

But he’d smiled, his lips shaping soundless words that were lost to the quicksand that was her memory of the time. Front and center, a gold tooth stared out at her, slightly bigger than it’s off-white neighbors. They were set into a face that couldn’t have been much older than her own then sixteen years, and she wondered what kind of mother he possessed that would allow him to have such a smile. It was the smile that she grabbed a hold of. Regardless of how many times he used it in her company, it never seemed to get any easier for him. It always seemed awkward and clunky on his face, heavy enough that he would typically let it fall within moments of it’s initial appearance.

He was talking to her before she was fully aware that he was there at all, falling in line beside her as she walked home from the bus stop like it was just the thing to do.

He asked her if she lived nearby because he hadn’t seen her before, what her favorite color was and almost immediately if she had a man.

He fell into the category of cute that boys were before they grew into the word handsome, and this caused her to disregard any of the warnings her mother had passed onto her about older men. She knew what bad looked like, and it wasn’t him. He seemed not to belong there; his Jordans seemed too new to be in the same picture as the cracked, dirty sidewalks, marred with landmines of last summer’s gum. The chain around his neck glimmered, and Patience knew immediately that he hadn’t had to sit and painstakingly paint each link with clear nail polish as her mother had taught her to do with the bulk of her jewelry.

“You must be trying to get jacked, wearing all that out like that,” She ignored his question, shaking her head.

Again, he shrugged, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “Naw, and besides; ain’t no nigga dumb enough to try no shit like that with me. I just wear it to catch the attention of pretty girls like you,” He said. With a waggle of his eyebrows, he added, “is it working?”

An unexpected laugh tangled with her next breath, blowing past her lips louder than intended. “I guess it is.”

Next Chapter: 9