The Unpardonable Sin

The streets raised me. That's not an excuse; that's just the God-honest truth of it. And why it was too late for me, even after Miss Virginia Owen Mays took me in, against her better judgment and the advice of everyone on Fournette.

Fournette was a good block. One of the best on the west side. They even had a block club and a sign on both ends listing vices they didn't allow, even though most of the kids who lived there violated all of them at one time or another. No smoking. No loitering. No cursing. No gangs. No drugs. No loud music. 

Good people lived on Fournette, for the most part, the type that believed in bringing their righteousness back home, unlike most people who left it at the church. None was more righteous than Miss Virginia Owen Mays.

What can I say about her that hasn't already been said? Saint, yes. At the church four days a week. Former teacher, but once a teacher always a teacher. She wasn't afraid to correct your grammar mid-sentence. Miss Virginia was a mama, not just to her four grown children, and me, but everyone on the block. She had that godlike love, that spilled over beyond her own family.

I didn't appreciate her sacrifice at the time, taking me in when my own family, and two foster families, had given up on me.

I didn't want to be trouble. The god's honest truth is I did try to be good, and I was for the first month she took me in.

She was determined, even at sixty-five, to raise me properly. Her old school methods were foreign to me. Praying before meals. Doing chores. Homework time. Even tucking me in at nights.

But the truth is, you can't domesticate an alley cat. No, they prefer the freedom of the streets, even if it comes with hard living. Once the streets gets in you, it's impossible to get it out of you. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, as Ms. Virginia's pastor would say.

The streets had already gotten to me. I was beyond reach. Even Saint Virginia Owen Mays' prayers couldn't find an entry point. I'd be fine for a little while, but then the foreigness of it all would feel unbearable, and I'd have to run away.

Miss Virginia would hunt me down, looking in every alley between Fournette and the train yards, calling to me by my formal name: Luther Antony Wilde. I was so embarrassed to hear her shouting my name, sometimes I'd let her find me.

The worse I got, the harder she pressed. The harder she pressed, the worse I got.

One thing we had in common, we were both hard headed. Neither of us was willing to surrender. I was hellbent and she was determined to snatch my soul from the devil's clutches. It was a chess match every day. Each of us making calculated decisions. Move and counter move.

"I'm praying for you Lu Lu," she'd say.

"You're wasting your time, Mama V," I'd say. "God don't want nothing to do with me."

"God's gonna get you one of these days, you watch. Better hope he does before you die and end up in hell."

"At your age, you're the one who needs to be worried about dying."

Back and forth we'd go.

Her cooking was her most effective weapon against me. I'd try to hole up in my room, especially when I was feeling suffocated by her kindness. She'd cook her smothered pork chops, yams, and sweet potato pie, and I'd break every time.

A few times in the five years I lived there, I broke her.

Once when we were arguing, I made the mistake of using her Savior's first and last name. I'd never seen such sorrow caused by words before, nor since. It was as if I had crucified her Lord.

Another time was when I ran away and didn't come back for a month. I was squatting in a boarded-up house on the other end of the block with a couple other kids. There was no running water, but one of the boys had jerry-rigged electricity from a power line. We stole bikes and lawn mowers and anything else of value we could sell at the pawn shop. We survived on junk food from the corner store and smoked weed we got cheap from a high school dropout on the next block over. We lived like kings, eating whatever we wanted and smoking whenever we wanted.

We probably could have lived there a lot longer had the house not caught fire. I've never heard anything as loud as those fire truck sirens at two in the morning. When we woke up, smoke and flames surrounded us. I thought my sins had finally caught up to me and I awoke in hell.

When the firefighters brought me out, Miss Virginia looked beside herself. She was crying like she had lost a family pet. She ran straight to me, in her nightgown and slippers, squeezing the life out of me.

For once, she didn't scold me after I ran away; she just held me there in front of the whole block like I was the prodigal son.

That wasn't the last time I broke her, I'm sorry to say.

I knew Miss Virginia hid her tithe money in a shoe box under her bed. I had never thought of taking it before. Even I knew there were lines you didn't cross without eternal repercussions. But I was failing in school. They were going to have me go through eighth grade again. Miss Virginia was worse than upset, she was disappointed. I think she was finally questioning the potency of her prayers.

"You're not applying yourself," she preached. "You could be something. Don't you want to be something?"

"Nah, I'm good," I said smugly.

I don't know why this particular phrase warranted Miss Virginia's wrath, but it did. She slapped me so hard across the face I saw stars. I tightened my lips and hardened myself inside, so she couldn't have the satisfaction of my tears. I had perfected this skill when my foster parents whooped me mercilessly.

I stayed in my room for three days after the slap. Not even Miss Virginia's rib tips and greens could get me out.

On Saturday morning, I heard the heavy front door slam, and knew Miss Virginia was headed to the church mission to volunteer at the soup kitchen, which she did every week. I finally left my room, fully dressed, shoes on, with a drawstring bag of clothes and toiletries slung over my shoulder.

I went directly to Miss Virginia's room, slid out the shoebox and swiped the cash: nearly four hundred dollars!

I had one last meal of Miss Virginia's leftovers. Sitting at the head of the table, where Miss Virginia usually sat, I savored the food, sucking the meat off the bones. I even poured a tall glass of Miss Virginia's cooking wine, which I had spied her sneaking sips of from time to time when she cooked.

I didn't bother clearing the table or washing dishes. Since I was leaving for good, there was no need to do chores anymore.

On my way out, I knocked framed pictures off the wall, including a photo of Miss Virginia and I on the front porch when I had first arrived. I always hated how scared and helpless I looked in the picture. I left the Martin Luther King, Jr. shrine untouched, as I held a special reverence for him, partially because of his accomplishments for our people and partially because I had been named after him.

Surveying the damage I had done, there was only one thing left to do. I went to Miss Virginia's praying chair, a rocking recliner with a pouch on the side for her prized Bible and devotional books. The Bible was her grandmother's, and in its frail condition, she would take great care turning the pages, painstakingly slow so as not to injure them. With malice in my heart and the swell of the slap still throbbing on my cheek, I committed the unpardonable sin. I ripped the pages out of Miss Virginia's Bible and scattered them across the living room floor.

When the wave of rage had passed, and there was nothing left to tear, I knew I had freed myself completely from Miss Virginia's God, and I was surely damned.

In that moment, I knew I had crossed a line that I could never return from. There was no cock crow, like after Peter betrayed his master, just the ominous ticking of the grandfather clock beating in time with the hollow pounding of my condemned heart. 

I ran out of the house as fast as I could. I made it as far as the train station. In my head, as I had played it out the last three days, I was going to feel emancipated from all the forces, in heaven and on earth, that held me down. I was going to buy a ticket to the end of the line and use the money to start a new life there.

Instead, I felt fear. Not of leaving the familiar or stepping out into the unknown; I felt scared to be alone with myself and face who I had become.

I went back. Not to Miss Virginia's house at first, but to the block over. I bought as much weed as I could with the money and found some boys who were as lost as I was. We went to a condemned storage building on the outskirts of our neighborhood, where old vets squatted and rebellious teens from the suburbs went spelunking.

I smoked until I couldn't feel the anger at Miss Virginia for slapping me, the school for failing me, my parents for abandoning me, the foster families for abusing me, God for putting me in this rundown neighborhood in the first place, and then condemning me to eternal hellfire once it made me into who I am. But mostly, the anger at myself, for being too stupid for school, for thinking someone like Miss Virginia could love a bad kid like me, for wrecking the house and destroying her beloved Bible.

After an hour of smoking, I felt better. After two hours, I felt nothing. Once the weed was gone, the other boys left. The shadows around the building grew as the sun tucked behind the city skyscrapers. The temperature dropped, so I crouched on the ground, hugging myself tightly to keep warm.

A disheveled man urinated in a corner, and I heard groans from someone in an elevator shaft coming off a bad trip. Police sirens blared in the distance, making me jumpy and irritated.

I didn't want to be here anymore. Not just in that smelly, dilapidated building, but here on earth at all. I would have jumped off the top of the building, but I wasn't in any hurry to go to hell. If Miss Virginia's pastor was even remotely right, hell was not a pleasant place for sinners, especially those who committed the worst sins.

I left the building and stumbled down the street toward Miss Virginia's house. Maybe I could make it home before she got back. I could put the pictures back on the wall. I could clear the table and do the dishes.

Then I remembered the Bible. There was no way to undo what I had done to her family relic. I could only apologize, or better, I could change. I could go to church four days a week. If Miss Virginia was a saint, and God was really as merciful as the Bible said, maybe she could forgive me.

When I got to the house, police cars were outside and an ambulance was pulling away.

I came up the front steps, but a police officer stopped me.

"What happened?" I asked.

"A thief broke in and trashed the place."

"Where's Miss Virginia? I need to speak to her."

"She had a heart attack. EMTs tried to revive her, but she didn't make it. They just took the body away."

Tears formed in my eyes, but I squashed them as usual. "Did she say anything?"

"No, she was unresponsive when we arrived. I'm sorry."

#

Later I'd hear the 911 call, her last words uttered on earth:

"Help, please send help. Oh, my heart. Dear Lord Jesus. 511 Fournette, come quickly. Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he does. Tell Luther it's ok. Take care of the house."

#

The church was packed for the funeral with people I had seen before, and many I hadn't. I wanted to speak, but I couldn't. I could barely make it to the casket. I was going to say, "Goodbye, I'm sorry," but the words were locked inside with all my other pain. My emotions were too raw, and I had never spoken from the pulpit of a church before. I wasn't good at school, especially reading. I wasn't about to embarrass myself in front of all those righteous people.

The way everyone talked about Miss Virginia, I didn't want to summon God's wrath either, by drawing attention to a sinner like me.

#

It's been twenty-five years now since Miss Virginia went home to be with her Lord. I think about her every day. I know I wouldn't be the man, the father, or the pastor I am today, had it not been for her loving influence. She's the reason I believe in God.

I started Second Chance Ministries because she gave me second chances...and third and fourth.

"We believe in a God of second chances, Amen?"

The small congregation of Second Chance Ministries packed into the living room of 511 Fournette. I stood before them, holding Miss Virginia's prized Bible, which I had painstakingly taped back together, page by page, years ago.

I took a deep breath, wiped the moisture from my eyes, and asked, "Does anyone have a testimony to share?" 

[This story is dedicated in loving memory to Ms. Pat Herrod and Doris Johnson-Martin Sims]

Shawn Casselberry is an obsessive writer, dog dad, and fan of humanity. He's the author of many fiction and nonfiction books, including a short story collection called "The Image of God," and a science fiction novel, "The Hemingway Bible." He's the Co-founder and Nonfiction Editor for Story Sanctum, and lives in the Chicagoland area when he's not travelling the world.

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