Too Much of a Good Thing

by J.J. Murray

Genres: Women's Fiction; African American Romance; Contemporary Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance

Synopsis

When recently widowed Joe Murphy "meets" Shawna Mitchell in an online forum, all he's seeking is advice on keeping his home and his family together. Shawna's compassionate e-mails become his lifeline, and as months pass their correspondence grows deep and warm. Discovering that Shawna lives only blocks away. . .well, it feels like more than luck. It feels a lot like hope. With three children to raise, Shawna has no interest in getting close to another man, let alone one who's got three kids of his own. And the fact that Joe's white can only complicate matters more. But now, as they navigate family dates and vacations and their own doubts and fears, Joe and Shawna find themselves moving toward a future that's bright, new, and totally unexpected. . .

Release date: February 1, 2012

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 368

Sample

I help folks as much as I can by replying to their posts at LivingWithDeath.com, a site for the grieving, but there are so many needy people at that site. I had my own grief to deal with, my own husband, Rodney, dying eight years ago from colon cancer when he was only forty. But as soon as I started posting my own coping techniques, all learned on the job as the widowed mother of two girls and a boy, I started to heal.

“Give and it will be given to you,” the Bible tells us, and it’s true. The more help I give, the more healing I receive.

I check out the newest posts every morning while the kids get ready for school, and Joe’s post stops me today. “Father of Three”—a single parent of three like me, and their ages are close to my kids’ ages—girls eight and seventeen, boy fifteen. Joe says he is not necessarily in need of “help”—he’s in need of “prayer.” That really touches me. Ninety percent of the posts at LivingWithDeath.com are “Help me now!” letters. I’m sure Joe wants and needs help, or why would he have asked someone to share and bear his burdens? But simply asking for prayer—I can do that for him.

“Father, help Joe, and help his family,” I pray.

He mentions that his wife (who was the same age as me) “passed,” not died, so maybe he’s from the South. I haven’t heard that phrase anywhere but the South. Joe took his wife for granted, just as I took Rodney for granted. You never truly know what you have until it’s gone. Our church, Pilgrim Baptist, has helped us, too. The folks at Pilgrim have been a weekly source of strength, giving my children extralong hugs and holy handshakes as if they’ve adopted my kids. Family who could help Joe is far away. Rodney’s mama lived in Texas before she passed, and most of the Mitchell clan lives in or around Atlanta, while my kids and I live in Roanoke, Virginia. We are not a hop, skip, or jump away from any “free” help either. Joe’s house is a “wreck,” and his kids hate him. Our apartment isn’t a wreck, and after eight years, my kids don’t hate me as much anymore.

I know exactly how Joe is feeling. My older two, Crystal and Junior, hated me, each other, their new baby sister, Toni, our apartment, their teachers, God, the food they ate, their clothes, their shoes, the dusty old TV that sometimes worked, life itself—anything, in fact, that they could hate. My youngest? Toni never knew her daddy at all, just all that tension and me, and though she’s capable of monumental temper tantrums, she has been such a mostly quiet blessing so far in comparison to her brother and sister.

And so has Priscilla62, a faceless saint of a person who posted “Embracing the End” at LivingWithDeath.com several years ago. Her poem is so amazing that I printed it out and have it taped inside the front cover of my well-thumbed copy of Streams in the Desert, that timeless book of daily devotions. I read Priscilla62’s poem before I even brush my teeth every single morning, and her words comfort me in ways I cannot fully explain.

My life since Rodney’s death hasn’t exactly been full of God’s glory, but moving into Terrace Apartments, aka “The Castle,” at the intersection of Wasena Avenue and Maiden Lane seven years ago saved us and made our lives, well, glorious.

It still doesn’t make sense. How can you remove your family from a nice two-story house with everyone—including the baby—having his or her own room? How can you uproot your family from a nice flat yard containing a million flowers you planted yourself to a white brick apartment complex that looks more like a government-built White Castle than a home? What was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that you take them to a new place to leave the ghost of their daddy behind, since he died in our bed with all of us around him. You take them to a new place to save yourself money you don’t have for mortgage, insurance, and property tax payments if you want to keep alive your husband’s dream of sending all three of your kids to college. You take them to a new place to be somewhat closer to your first real job as an assistant manager at a McDonald’s. You take them to a new place to escape the old memories. . . Even if it is to a 225-unit monstrosity built in 1950 on nine acres overlooking the muddy Roanoke River.

Colon cancer. End stage before Rodney, me, or anyone else, for that matter, knew what hit him. We had spent ten adventurous years together, mainly at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Rodney moved up in rank from corporal in Desert Storm to a master gunnery sergeant thinking seriously about becoming an officer and being a career marine. “But,” he had said, “my kids won’t know me,” so he became a full-time marine recruiter here in Roanoke instead. He was only three years from his “twenty,” just a thousand days from retiring with full pay and benefits. Despite all his duties, he somehow found time to coach Little League, Pee Wee football, and an AAU basketball team. Strong. Virile. A heart as big as his chest. Yet cancer laid him low because they didn’t catch it in time. Of course, Rodney was the kind of man who only went to the doctor if he was on his last legs—meaning never. I should have made him go before he hit forty. I should have driven him myself. Instead I watched him vanish before my eyes, watched him disappear little by little over three months, his big, strong arms reduced to sticks—

“Ma-uh-ma! Crystal’s using my brush again!” Toni screams.

The child can scream, and our neighbors on all sides in all directions—including upstairs and downstairs—know it. I’m always afraid they’ll dial 9-1-1 on me because of those screams.

“Crystal!” I yell. I don’t scream. I yell. “Use your own brush! Toni, stop all that noise! You’re scaring the neighbors. Junior, have you put on deodorant?”

“Yes,” Junior says, coming to me from the kitchen.

“We have to be out the door in ten minutes, y’all!”

“Haraka, haraka, haina baraka,” Junior says in his deepening, mannish-boy voice.

He’s learning Swahili from some of the African kids here and, by extension, so am I. “I know, I know. ‘Hurry, hurry has no blessing,’ right?”

He nods. He’s becoming something miraculous, this child, something bigger and wiser than me and Rodney combined, and he’s not nearly as hateful as he used to be.

“We need to get up earlier,” I say.

He nods, and then he returns to the kitchen.

Who am I kidding? I’ve been saying “We need to get up earlier” for eight years.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Terrace Apartments, our home.

Everybody lives in Terrace Apartments, and I mean, everybody: black, white, Muslim, Christian, and Jew, old, young, plump, thin, foreign, and domestic. The Castle contains Vietnamese boat people who escaped the Communists almost thirty years ago, Bosnians who fled war and ethnic cleansing, Cubans floating away from Castro, Liberians escaping civil war, and, most recently, Somali Bantu, a persecuted minority fleeing civil war, famine, random killings, and virtual slavery in East Africa. They have all come to The Castle as refugees, and I guess I’m a refugee from grief, but my grief doesn’t even compare to theirs. I lost a husband. Many here are the last remaining members of their entire families. Some have lost everyone and everything dear to them, while I still have all my children.

Physically anyway. As for their minds and spirits, I’m not so sure.

The Castle is the United Nations in Roanoke, Virginia, of all places. People from Sierra Leone, Albania, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Haiti, and Iraq also live here. Why Roanoke? We have a low cost of living, cheap housing, decent schools, a low crime rate, and, despite the South’s close-minded image, Roanokers are generally accepting people.

When Rodney and I moved to Roanoke, we found an average city. Nothing too good and nothing too bad ever seems to happen in Roanoke. Decent. This is a decent place full of decent, hardworking folks who value education, old people, the flag, this country, and the president—as long as he (or she) is a Democrat. Roanoke has made many national Top Ten lists, but we’re never at the top. We’re middling. That’s it. Roanoke is a middling town in the middle of the mountains where folks are middle-of-the-road and generally have average middles.

But after Rodney died, the four of us looked so strange to the people already living at The Castle when we first moved in. We had no colorful clothes, no accents other than this Southern twang I’ve infected my children with, no terrible tales of refugee camps or boat rides on menacing seas or walks through African deserts. Yet, these people have welcomed us, have embraced us, and have ultimately saved us.

There are so many stories walking around here. Carlos Caballero spent twenty years in Cuban prisons being tortured, and now his daughter, Soima, recites the Spanish version of “The Pledge of Allegiance” nearly every morning at Patrick Henry High School, where Crystal and Junior go to school. Rema Mdame, a Somali Bantu and a devout Christian friend, spent ten years in a refugee camp. She arrived at The Castle with three children and one on the way just a few months ago, and now she shops at Mick or Mack over in Grandin Village like a seasoned pro after cleaning rooms at Brandon Oaks Retirement Community. And Amina, the pretty little girl teaching Swahili to Junior—and that better be all that child teaches my boy now that he’s a man-child with peach fuzz on his chin—Amina would rather walk to school barefoot carrying her books on her head than ride the bus carrying a backpack. I know Junior’s smitten with her. I catch him trying to balance his books on his round head, and his new school shoes still look new even after a month of school. This is good because those shoes have to last him at least until Christmas.

The Castle has definitely been an education for me and my kids, and one day I will cancel my cable because of it. I can spend hours at the windows watching the Third World walk by, wearing colorful scarves and head coverings and handmade dresses. I can hear Spanish, and Bosnian, and Creole, and Arabic, and Pashto mixing with bold attempts at English. I can feel and see the village taking care of its own people. My kids get as much of an education after school here as they do in school. The Castle is a place where difference is normal, where skin color, fabric, hair, and even noses defy convention. There’s so much texture here, so much ... life. Atangaye na jua hujuwa—“A person who wanders around by day a lot, learns a lot.” I have learned so much in my wanderings around here.

And it’s nice to live around other people who don’t have much. I know that sounds strange, but daily it makes a difference for me. No one in The Castle is in competition to get the “next best thing” to show off. My busted, dented, dusty, and paid-off Nissan Sentra looks right at home next to ancient Buicks, Chevrolets, and Fords parked around The Castle. We’re not poor—we just don’t have much money. Rema once told me, “Lacking money is not necessarily the same as being poor,” and I know she’s right.

Whenever the ice-cream truck comes around, I no longer feel the need to give my children money, ever since the day I saw Rema calming her four children with one phrase as the ice-cream truck rolled away. My kids hear “No,” but they have to keep negotiating. Rema’s kids had just walked away smiling while mine stewed long into the night because they didn’t get any overpriced ice cream. I just had to find out what she told her kids.

“ ‘Ah,’ ” Rema said. “ ‘I tell them I live as I can afford, not as you wish.’ ”

Trust me—if you say that line five times a day to each child, your kids will stop pestering you for anything.

I wouldn’t live anywhere else but The Castle now.

A long time ago after watching The Color Purple, I got it into my head to become a missionary to Africa. Now, I guess I’m kind of a missionary here among these people. Or maybe, and I’m believing this more and more, these people named Isha and Nuri and Hijiro and Yussuf and Sabtow are missionaries to us. Rema says, “ ‘God is our neighbor when our brother is absent,’ ” and I truly believe God is in our neighbors.

What time is it? Geez, we’re running late, but I can’t leave Joe hanging. “Okay, Mr. Man-in-a-similar-predicament.”

I start to type:


“It means, ‘One who talks to himself or herself cannot be wrong.’ ” He smiles. “You were talking to yourself again, Mama.”

“I was?”

“You’re praying for someone named Joe, right?”

I was talking to myself, all right. Hmm. “Let me finish, okay? And help your sister with her backpack.”

I finish typing:


“Mama, you at it again?” Crystal asks from the hallway, Toni trailing behind.

I hit the SEND button. “At what again?”

“Trying to save the world one e-mail at a time,” Crystal says.

I stand in an attempt to dress Crystal down with my eyes, but I can’t since she’s almost wearing her clothes again. Deep V top showing more cleavage than I have (Rodney’s people are big-breasted) and a whole lot of flat stomach and pierced belly button (I wish I could show off that much!), tight black jeans, and no panty line. She has to be wearing a thong again.

“Girl, you cannot go to school looking like that. They’ll send you home.” Again. I’m praying for a cold spell so she’ll have to cover up all that skin, but Roanoke doesn’t start to really cool off until mid-October.

“They won’t send me home for this.” She poses.

Junior shakes his head. “Kizuri chajiuza kibaya chajitem-beza.”

“Mama, he’s doing it again!” Crystal whines. “Why can’t you just speak English for a change? You ain’t African.”

“Tell her what it means, Junior,” I say, hoping it’s something deep.

“It means ‘A good thing sells itself,’ ” he says, “ ‘while a bad thing advertises itself.’ ”

So true. Miss Thing is advertising Miss Bad Thing today. If I weren’t her mama, I’d say, “What’s that child selling?”

Junior smiles at Crystal. “You are a flag blowing in the wind, my sister.”

“I ain’t advertising nothing,” Crystal says, teeth clenched, a finger in Junior’s face.

“Speak English,” Junior says, and he opens the door, Toni zipping around them out to the sidewalk, Junior drifting through the door.

“I am speaking English, African Boy,” Crystal says, practically stepping on the backs of his feet. “You’re only learning that stuff cuz you want to get with Amina ...”

After I get a sweatshirt that Crystal will wear all day or else to cover up all that skin, I lock up, chuckling to myself. I used to hate any kind of arguing in my house, and Rodney did, too. We argued softly, reasonably, without raising our voices. But now, I don’t mind the yelling so much, mainly because of something Rema told me. She said something so beautiful in Swahili to me one day when I had to go outside to separate Crystal’s flailing (and sharp) fingernails from Junior’s face.

“What does it mean?” I had asked.

In her lilting voice, Rema said, “ ‘Hot water not burn down house.’ ”

Hot water does not burn down a house.

In other words, fussing doesn’t destroy a family.

At the rate we’re fussing, though, we’re bound to be the strongest family that ever lived.

I can live with that.

Wow.

Sixty people answered my post, but not many said they would pray for us. Some give advice: “Get a nanny ... ” “Hire a housekeeper ...” “Move to a new house ...” “Move back home to your family in Canada ...” “Go to church more often ...” “Read this book I wrote ...” “Call this toll-free hotline.” One even suggested I cart all three of them off to military school.

Though that particular idea is tempting, I cannot live alone in this house in Wasena. This was Cheryl’s dream house, all eighteen hundred square feet of it. She refinished the hardwood floors, she updated the kitchen, she nagged me to build the fence, the deck, and the playhouse, and ... Okay, she didn’t nag me. She would just drop hints for days and weeks, and, like water dropping on a stone, eventually she’d get through to me.

God, I miss her.

I look back at all the advice. One person asks where Cheryl’s family is and why don’t they help. Cheryl was from Oregon, a navy brat, the youngest of five, and her folks passed within a year of each other about six years ago. We had already lost touch with her brothers and sisters completely before Cheryl died. As for my family, my brother is a missionary in Irian Jaya, but he and my parents e-mail me often enough.

I just feel so alone in all this.

I’m not quite alone. Arnie Roberts, a retired army chaplain and member at Shenandoah Baptist where we’ve attended since Rose was born, stepped in and helped me with the funeral. Arnie is all short hair, spit, and polish, the fittest seventy-year-old I’ve ever known. He’s been a mighty prayer warrior and friend, calling regularly to catch up and sitting with us during the morning service. My kids call him Uncle Arnie, and that suits him fine. I’m not sure if he adopted us or we adopted him, but he is one powerful church brother to have, sharpening me and my walk with the Lord as “iron sharpeneth iron” (Proverbs 27:17).

I just wish Arnie weren’t so pushy about me finding another wife. “Get yourself another Proverbs 31 woman,” he tells me. Cheryl fit some of the qualities of the woman described in that famous passage, a passage usually read on Mother’s Day, but, honestly, I don’t think there are that many women who have ever lived who match the Proverbs 31 woman, who is worth “far above rubies.” This particular woman has to be able to sew, shop, cook, clean, take care of her family, work eighteen-hour days, do charitable work, and somehow find time to work in the garden. “She will do him good,” the Bible says. “Strength and honor are her clothing.” If I ever found a woman like that ...

I think I did once. Cheryl was her name.

I browsed a few websites claiming they could find me my soul mate (“She’s out there waiting for YOU!!!”) in sixty days or less (“Guaranteed, or your money back!!!”) and read post after post titled “LOOKING/PRAYING FOR A PROVERBS 31 WOMAN.” At first, I was surprised that so many women responded to these posts, but when I read what these women had to say, I wasn’t surprised at all. “That woman doesn’t exist, you foolish men” is how most of the nicer ones began. “She’s just an example of the woman God wants us to be ... ” “She is the model, and the rest of us real women are the clay ...” “Why waste your entire life looking for this woman when the woman of your dreams might be sitting in front of you at church?”

“I’m on the lookout, Joe,” Arnie says, “always on the lookout.”

I’m not sure I should be taking advice from Arnie, a lifelong bachelor, at all, but it’s nice to know someone is on the lookout for me.

Arnie and all these folks who sent me e-mails mean well, and I’m sure every bit of their advice is rooted in reality, but only Shawna has given me something concrete, something constructive I can do right now.

I go to the foot of the stairs. “Family meeting in the kitchen in five minutes!”

I expect to hear a door or two opening, the familiar “What’d you say?” echoing throughout the house. But I hear nothing, not a single squeaking bed, shuffling chair, or footstep.

I climb halfway up. “Family meeting! In the kitchen! Now!”

“Now” arrives ten minutes later, Joey showing up first. “I was just finishing my homework,” he says.

Joey is a good kid, hardworking and smart, a better athlete and student than I ever was, excelling in soccer, basketball, baseball, math, and science. I’m hoping he’ll rub off on his little brother, Jimmy, who has turned into a little hellion since Cheryl died. Jimmy thinks nothing of slamming doors, “borrowing” Joey’s stuff, or harassing Joey while he tries to do his homework. Joey has asked for a lock on his bedroom door, but I don’t want that.

I pray it never comes to that.

“You had homework on a Friday night?” I ask.

“Just some reading.”

He is Cheryl’s son, all right. While Rose, Jimmy, and I would vegetate in front of the TV most nights, Joey and Cheryl would be off by themselves in another room putting together a puzzle, playing Scrabble, or reading quietly. Though he looks more like me than Jimmy does, I don’t really know Joey all that well, and that scares me. I don’t know my own child. I don’t know what’s going through his head, I don’t know why he’s suddenly shy, and I don’t know why he stays inside all the time. He and Jimmy used to tear all over the neighborhood on their bikes or go down to Wasena Park and ride skateboards and play basketball.

Rose arrives next, looking like death. No father should ever feel this way about his firstborn, but I can’t help it. She has become what she calls a Victorian Goth. “And not just because Queen Victoria smoked marijuana to help her cramps,” she tells me after church last week. Rose has suddenly decided to like corsets, long black gowns, and red ballet slippers. She makes me buy Cheer Dark to keep all her dark clothes nice and Gothic. Her room is a shrine to death with Edgar Allan Poe’s head filling most of one poster on her door. The rest of her room is dedicated to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, huge bloody red lips everywhere. Joey tells me the Goth look “went out years ago, Dad.” I’m hoping it’s just a case of old-fashioned, teenaged rebellion. Just a month ago, she was wearing Levi’s, Nike, and Gap, and had a poster of the U.S. women’s soccer team on the wall. She used to wear makeup, but now she wears no makeup at all, saying she prefers to look unnatural.

“What’s this all about?” Rose demands.

“We need to have a family meeting,” I say.

“To discuss what?”

“This family?” I smile.

Rose slumps into a chair, her gown rustling around her. “Is this going to take long?”

“It might,” I say.

“Whoopee,” she says.

Jimmy finally trips down the stairs. “What are you all doing?”

It must be a commercial break. Jimmy didn’t hear me yelling up the stairs at all.

“Family meeting, doofus,” Rose says.

“A what?” Jimmy asks.

“Family meeting,” Joey says softly.

Jimmy takes a seat, what used to be Cheryl’s, at the other end of the table. “And no one invited me?”

Jimmy is the he-man in the family, preferring to use his fists and mouth more than his mind. He has always been a little ornery, but since Cheryl left us, he’s been trouble with a capital T. He has been suspended from the bus for extorting “seat rent” from other kids, sent to the office twice for bullying, and is in danger already of repeating the seventh grade—and it’s only mid-September.

“Okay, I’ve called this meeting so we can air out whatever has been bothering you since ...” I sigh. “Since Mom died.”

I brace for an onslaught of grief, despair, angst, and anguish.

Nothing happens. The mantel clock over the fireplace in the other room ticks on.

“I can go first,” I say.

L. . .