Coffee and Sugar, C. Sean McGee [highly recommended books txt] 📗

hair draped over her shoulders and scratched against the middle of her back and he was catatonic watching her as she was watching the screen.

When the lottery was done; after all the numbers had been read and the hosts waved goodbye to everyone and well after the credits and rolled across the screen, Charity sat with her eyes glued shut and her smile widening so much that it seemed she would tear her face in half if she kept going. Joao wondered what she could be thinking, what pleasantry was staging in her cerebral theatre. She looked like she was witnessing the birth of a child, the rescuing of a puppy from a well or the returning of a lost child to its parents. The smile she wore was not one that was handed out on a whim and it felt awkward watching her, as if he were stealing some private moment.

After a minute she opened her eyes and took a breath and Joao could only see that she had opened one, because of the angle she sat but he watched her move and wondered if he could go over and speak to her now.

Charity stood up from her seat and pushed her chair in gently and started to walk towards the door but as she walked she hobbled horribly as if she had suffered some horrific trauma to her legs. She looked in pain and her thin white legs wobbled under her shifting weight as if they were foreign to her body; on their first day and receiving their first orders, mixing everything up.

As she hobbled and stumbled towards the door, her hands gripped at the back of chairs to steady herself and she apologised here or there to patrons whose hair she pulled on by accident or shirts that she tugged whilst firming her grip and making her way through the café.

“Charity, are you ok?” shouted Joao rushing to help her, putting his right arm under her left, steadying her direction and helping her to the door.

“Thanks Joao. Sorry I can’t stay and talk. I have to be somewhere. But next week, we’ll meet and I’ll take you to that place I said, ok?” she said.

“Ok” said Joao.

Charity turned to kiss his cheek and as she did, Joao saw in the reflection in the mirror the black bruise over her right eye and her purple swollen cheek bone and split and scabbing upper lip.

Charity hobbled out of the café and rested her right arm along the wall beside her as she slowly made her way up the street and into the disappearance of night.

CHAPTR ELEVEN

“Wake up” said The Bishop shaking at Joao’s legs.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” asked Joao.

“Time to do the lord’s bidding” said The Bishop.

Joao unclamped his eyelids from their encampment, letting the virgin light of dawn attend to its retinal battery as he adjusted his focus as best he could, seeing The Bishop; or the outline of The Bishop, dressed neatly in his Sunday suit, seated at the table Joao had bought, folding pieces of paper and making a neat stack just beside his leather case.

“Come on Joao before we give the devil the start he needs” said The Bishop speaking in a light joviality that Joao had never heard.

Joao lifted himself from his mattress and stumbled blindly towards the sink by the curtain to his makeshift room, ran some cold water through his hands, feeling the tips of his fingers tingle before falling numb and he stayed there transient, feeling only the weight of something pressing against his hands as his mind drifted into dream, pulled overboard from his conscious vessel as he tried in vain to reel in his tiredness, finding himself thrust outside of his waking body and running instead, through the fancy of his desire.

He stared into the greasy mirror that hanged precariously from the brick wall where a brown rusted screw wound itself from the top of a splintered wooden frame whilst peeling away from the crumbling brick work, hinting at the inevitable effect of disregard.

His eyes fell past the rusted screw and drew past his own reflection where behind him, he could see a row of trees lining a gravel path and as his eyes focused, he could see through the rustling of the leaves and branches, the hand of a girl pushing out into the light. First one and then another, reaching out and parting the leaves so that the light of day shone onto the lire of Charity who sat in the darkness, crouched low under the hanging trees, parting the leaves and smiling at Joao, her eyes inviting him to escape.

“We’ve a big day today Joao” said The Bishop, resting his two hands on his shoulders.

Joao didn’t quite know how to react. He had never felt this sentiment from his father. His custom had been; like a disciplined pet, to cower in whatever shadow would keep him from obstruction whilst listening to the slapping of his father’s heels against the tiles in their house as he paced about with his leather case draped over his shoulder, sweating an air of insolence.

Joao had learned to spread his vine lightly over the crest of his family; careful, should his simple flower be torn from its roots out of a fit of boredom from his bullying siblings or his brutish mother. He had often tried to find some condolence in his father; when he was younger of course, for they swept along the same paths and breathed the same unspoiled air away from the burdens of physical task but it was like an ant trying to cosy up to a landslide.

“Good morning sir” Joao said in his usual defence.

“Don’t call me sir. Call me Bishop or, better yet, you can call me dad. How does that sound?” he said smiling, looking anything but the dishevelled mess that had been taking refuge in its own dejection, buried under a mount of blankets soaked in degrading tears; instead, standing with his head high, his eyes brimming with exuberant fire and a consistent sniff that had him attend to; unendingly, some dust or something caught in his nose.

“Yes sir, dad, sir” said Joao, feeling very strange, like that same disciplined pet, eating from its master’s plate.

“I thought we could start from the top of the hill and work downwards, door by door. It will be better and we’ll cover more ground if we split up and take house by house. I made some flyers, look” said The Bishop handing a dirtied napkin to Joao with a gallant accomplishing smile on his face.

“But this is just a napkin. A flyer should be on paper with colours, like what the people hand out near the café. This isn’t a flyer” said Joao.

“Does it have the name of our church?” asked The Bishop.

“Kind of. Is this it here?” asked Joao pointing out what looked like either blotched ink or tomato sauce.

“Here, look, The World Church of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Glory. And here is the address and email” said The Bishop.

“What’s email?” asked Joao.

“I don’t know exactly. Don’t ask stupid questions Joao. What do you think? I had a friend help me” asked The Bishop.

“You have a friend? Really?” asked Joao surprised.

“She told me about putting an email on the flyer” said The Bishop.

“She? It’s a girl? Does Mother know?” asked Joao.

“Don’t be stupid Joao. It’s not like that. And don’t you tell your mother. She worries enough about you to have to inherit me in her thoughts. She’s just a friend, that’s all” said The Bishop, his cheeks turning from off white to a bright pinkish red as he constructed the last word in his lie.

The Bishop collected a pile of napkins and gave them to Joao who put them neatly into the pockets of his suit; straightening his jacket as he did and tucking his shirt firmly into his pants.

“I’m glad you are happy too” said Joao as he followed The Bishop out of the church and onto the street where about them, junkies brushed off the morning chill from hairs on their arms and haggard looking whores on every corner welcomed the morning sun with their arms outstretched, yawning out the hours of abuse from their spent bodies while; fumbling drunkenly at their metal buckles, scores of addled men escaped the honest bridging of the sun, pulling their pants back up around their waists, abating their molesting wealth for the polite reserve of day that was waking from the shadow of eve and exposing their disgraces unto themselves which; under the veil of night, they had easily disguised as the norm and festivity.

“Excuse me mam” said Joao approaching one of the prostitutes that was lighting up a cigarette.

“My shift’s done buddy. I’m all worn out. Come back in a couple of hours, ok honey?” said The Harmonious Whore.

“Oh no mam, I’m not looking for, well, can I ask you a question? Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” asked Joao, expecting her eyes to light with exhilaration at the thought of pondering the wonder of god.

“I remember you. You got into a little scuffle the other night yeah? How you doin honey? You gotta watch those boys. They got tempers” The Harmonious Whore said, leaning in close to Joao’s ear and like a worn exhaust, spitting clumps of thick smoke and light phlegm towards his ear.

“Oh that’s ok mam. I remember you too. You stood up to those men for me.”

“I did? Well that explains the bruises” she said, rubbing at a tender spot on her bottom, wincing and kicking her leg in the air as she scratched her elongated fingernails against grazed skin and a deep black bruise.

“Did you know that Jesus kept the company of a, well a girl like…”

“You mean a whore, like me? And I aint no girl honey” she said, lifting the slither of fabric she called a skirt, tucking her hand inside her stained, once silken panties and pulling a scabbed and swollen penis out into the morning light.

Joao was shocked, estranged and scientifically puzzled, taking one step back in apparent surprise but looking dumbfounded in obvious wonder. He didn’t know if he was a she or she was a he and that such a thing could even be.

“You stare any longer and you’re gonna have to pay me twenty” The Harmonious Whore said.

Joao immediately turned his head away, pulling his hands over his eyes, apologising as he walked off towards his father, further on up the hill.

“I’m sorry mam, I mean sir. Have a good day” he said stuttering through a polite exit.

“Don’t you wanna talk Jesus honey?” she yelled, shaking her scabbed and swollen penis in one hand while the other gripped firmly to a crevice in the rock face beside her to steady her impending gravitational descent as she threw her joviality and her centre of balance into insulting the delicate reserve of the shy boy, kinking her legs as she swung her hand and fought to stop the pull of the cigarette from her blistered lips to the floor below.

Joao dipped his head and held his sight toward the floor as he quickly shuffled his feet and wearied himself away from the stream of prostitutes and their drunken, bastard lovers that spilled from the back seats of cars, dirty garages that posed as bars and brothels and even from the cracks in the earth once saved only for rats, vermin and the vespertine disease.

“It’s not too late to save yourself. The way is in Jesus Christ, in his heart, in his love and in his word. His arms are whole enough to carry you home” said The Bishop.

“This is my home mother fucker. You see this body?” The Angry Prostitute said, shaking her rickety hips and running her manly thick bulbous index finger in her mouth, over her chapped lips and down along the stubble on her chin and down along the curve in her enormous breasts and finally slapping and mean spirited hand against her rump, winking at The Bishop as the sting rippled through her body and the slap echoed in the morning air.

“This