The Atonement (29 page)

Twenty-Seven

Tim was still going back and forth with
himself as he approached the Bynum home for the third time this
week. Though he had resolved to keep his distance from Tamiko, he
had to admit that he was more than happy when he got a text from
her asking for help with something she was working on at school. It
was a little odd because the message was so short and brief, which
was very unlike Tamiko, who wouldn’t even use internet shorthand in
her texts. At first thought, he was leaning towards making an
excuse for why he couldn’t help, but he really couldn’t find one
and it caused him to feel guilty. He did not want his personal
feelings to keep him from being a friend and he knew the task
wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. ‘What could happen?’ he
said to reassure himself.

He gave the doorbell two short rings and
waited for Mother Rose’s caustic greeting, but was pleasantly
surprised when the door suddenly opened.

“Hey,” said Riley looking like a military
service woman standing sentry by a checkpoint, her expression
stoic. She always wore army pants and combat boots. She had to have
them in every color under the sun. Today they were lavender, pink,
and purple camouflage and matched her lavender t-shirt and violet
button down. She had the front of her hair braided into an
intricately ornate pattern of cornrows with her afro forming a
crown behind them.

“Hi, Riley,” said Tim “Is Miko around? She
asked me to help her with something for work”

“She’s somewhere in here,” she said stepping
aside so he could come in.

Tim came in but was a little unsettled by the
way Riley seemed to be looking him over. The last time she did that
she publicly humiliated him. He was wary about saying much of
anything because he was afraid of how she’d respond and he could
tell that she wasn’t very fond of him, and he attributed this to
what he observed was her over protectiveness toward Tamiko. He was
hoping Tamiko wouldn’t be long. For a few minutes they stood facing
each other awkwardly.

“You can sit down for a spell if you want,
while I go get her,” she said before going upstairs.

“Thanks,” said Tim as he took off his jacket
and placed it on the arm of the chair before sitting down and
taking his laptop out of his bag. He was just glad to be left
alone. Then he turned it on, so that it would boot up while he was
waiting. Then he took out his ac adapter and was plugging it into
an outlet when he sensed someone was standing over him.

“Todd?!” said Mother Rose, her call sounding
almost like a reprimand. Tim dropped his cord at her feet.

“It’s Tim, ma’am” he said quietly rising to
greet her. “Nice to see you again Mother Rose” Tim held out his
hand for a shake, but Mother Bynum stood with her arms folded in
front of her.

“May I ask what you are doing in this
house?”

“Tamiko asked me to…”

“Tamiko Elizabeth Bynum!” said Mother Rose as
she walked away from Tim and headed toward the staircase.

Tim sat back down and waited. But it wasn’t
long before he could hear the high shrill sound of Tamiko’s
whining, mixed with her mother’s angry barks, and Riley’s southern
drawl. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” he thought.
It just seemed odd that Tamiko would not have told her mother that
he was coming over. She’d always done so in the past. Unless, she
didn’t because she knew her mom would give her a hard time. The
last thing he wanted was for his visits to cause trouble between
Tamiko and her mom. If that were the case he’d stop coming
altogether and just see Tamiko when she was at Al’s or when they
all went out together. As Tim continued to muse over the matter,
the three women came down stairs. First was Mother Rose, with the
usual sour look on her face, followed by Tamiko who seemed very
uncomfortable, and finally Riley who was struggling to keep a
straight face, as she seemed to find the situation amusing.

“Excuse me, Todd, but there seems to have
been a miscommunication.”

“It’s Tim, Mother Rose,” said Riley.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mother Rose
waving her hand at Riley before returning her attention to Tim.
“You see, our friend Riley has been playing a little joke, as it
were. She has confessed to me that she took liberties with Tamiko’s
cell phone and sent you a message to come over. Tamiko had no idea
what had happened, until now when she checked her phone.”

“Really?” said Tim.

“With all due respect, Mother Rose, I wasn’t
playing a joke. Miko needed help and she was too proud to ask, so I
asked for her. She was gonna flunk her assessment meeting and get
fired, if I didn’t.”

“That is not for you to presume. Tamiko is a
college educated young woman, who is quite capable of completing
her work on her own. If she needed help, she would have asked one
of the young ladies at the school.”

As the two women argued, Tim couldn’t help
but look at Tamiko. She was standing pigeon-toed, looking down and
fondling her charm bracelet, which was what he noticed she often
did when she was nervous or feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t know
if it was the scene her mother and her cousin were making or if it
was something to do with himself, since she wouldn’t look his way.
He wanted to know what she was thinking. Tim wished she would say
something – anything.

“In any event, please accept my apologies for
any inconvenience our friend may have caused you, but as you can
see your services are not required. Now I know you must have a lot
of work to do yourself so I wont hold you…”

“Mom, it would be even more rude to ask him
to leave after he’s come all this way.”

“Tamiko, it is a school night and you have a
lot of work to do.”

“And Tim has come to help me. Right,
Tim?”

“That was my intention.”

“Tim, I’m so sorry for all of the confusion.
I would understand if you wanted to leave, but I’d appreciate it if
you didn’t.”

“Miko, I don’t want you to feel obligated to
have me here. I mean, I understand that all this isn’t your fault,
so If you really don’t want me…”

“You see, Tamiko, he’s not offended at all.
Therefore if he wishes to leave…”

“I do want you – I mean your help,” said
Tamiko.

“In that case, I guess I’ll stay.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll go upstairs and get
my files and my computer. I won’t be long.” she said before heading
back up the stairs.

“Well, this is still my house, and I say that
on school nights, there are going to be limits on how long guests
can be entertained. I expect this young man to be on his way home
by 8:30 and no later. Is that understood Tamiko?”

“Yes, mother,” she called from upstairs.

“Young man, I will remind you that the ground
floor of this home is the only place where guest are allowed…”

“What if he has to go to the bathroom?” asked
Riley.

“This is none of your concern. I am not
addressing you at the moment, although I will have a few choice
words for you later when the Pastor arrives.”

“Sorry. Just askin.”

“I’m going to finish fixing dinner. I can’t
wait until Pastor comes home. The foolishness I’ve had to deal with
today.”

“Let Miko know that if she needs me, I’ll be
right upstairs,” said Riley as she eyed Tim warily.

“I’ll let her know,” said Tim politely.

As soon as Riley went up, Tamiko came back
down. She was casually dressed in a loose fitting, three-quarter
sleeved button front smock dress. It fit like a sack, but no matter
what she wore, to Tim she looked beautiful. When he saw that she
was struggling with what she was carrying, he met her halfway up
the stairs to lighten her load.

“I’ll take some of that,” he said taking her
laptop and a box of files she had, leaving her with the external
hard-drive.

“Thanks.”

“So what are we working on?”

“It’s a sight-word assessment I gave to the
class. It’s like a list of 100 words, which are categorized by
color, or level. Now I have to find a way to organize the
information so that we can see how the students make progress
through the levels. I tried using the levels themselves and then
listing students. Then I tried listing the students and then the
levels on the opposite axis, but that was a disaster. I have to
make one simple table and I’m out of ideas of how to do that with
all this information.”

“Don’t worry. I know what we could try to
make it easier. Have you ever heard of a data filter?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like having a spreadsheet where you can
view different aspects of the data using the filters and print out
different graphs and charts. The only thing is it takes a while to
design your filters and put in all the data.”

“You mean I couldn’t just cut and paste from
what I already have?”

“Not really. Sorry.”

“So we’ll have to re-enter the sight-word
information for all of these students.”

“How many students do you have?”

“Twenty-five. But we don’t have any kids who
knew all 100 words. Most of them capped out at 25.”

“So it shouldn’t take that long. I have a
blank template on my hard drive that I’ll transfer to yours. I’m a
fast typist, so after you come up with the filters you want, I’ll
create the actual spreadsheet and type in the info. Then we’ll
trial it and print some things out to see if it’s what you want.
Sound like a plan?”

“Excellent. Let’s get started.”

*****

“Now for the moment of truth” said Tim in an
imperious voice trying to be funny.

“I can’t look.”

“And…it works!”

“It does? Explain it to me. What am I looking
at?”

“Look, here’s your class, now you can click
on a filter to view whatever aspect of the data you want, for
example if you want to know about how many children know their gold
words, you just click here and then it will show you a break down
of your students that know them. You can see that 2% of your
special ed kids know them, 85 % of the general education, 30% of
your English language learners, and so forth. Then if you click
here, you can even filter by word to see which words are the ones
in each group that most of your students don’t know.”

“Wow, this is so cool.”

“Yeah, like here you can see how all the
students missed the word ‘because’ of the silver words, the same
with the word ‘where’ of the copper words.”

“This is incredible. It’s like I can see
exactly what they need to work on, and how to get started.”

“And you can print reports, like I said
earlier. I’m saving everything in the assessments folder of your
external drive so it’ll be easy for you to find.”

“Tim, you are such a life saver. Words cannot
express how much I am appreciating you right now.”

She put her arms around him and hugged him
tightly before planting a kiss on his cheek.

“I guess I’ll take that as a thank you,” said
Tim as he turned away from her to put away his laptop, hoping she
wouldn’t see the color rising to his face. “You might want to also
save one for Riley, since she was the one that sent out the
S.O.S.”

“You’re right. I do owe her one.”

“So why didn’t you ask me yourself? After
being friends for so long, you should’ve known I’d be willing to
help you with anything.”

“I know, but I didn’t want to monopolize your
time. You have your own work to do and I know it’s not fair to
expect you to drop everything for my little crises.”

“Honestly, Miko. I don’t mind. It’s not like
I’ve got a lot going on like Al does.”

“But you’d have to admit, if I was constantly
bothering you all the time, you’d get annoyed.”

“Tamiko, you could never annoy me.”

“I used to, a while back when we were all in
college. I remember whenever Allen invited me to go with you two
somewhere you’d have this look that screamed ‘Aww, man not
her!’”

“And if I remember correctly, you weren’t too
pleased to see me, either. You wouldn’t even talk to me directly.
You’d always tell Allen to tell me something.”

“Because I thought you didn’t like me and I
didn’t want to antagonize you. When we first met, you didn’t seem
very happy to meet me.”

“That’s because you were looking at me like I
was from another planet.”

“I didn’t mean to. Allen was always telling
me about what a cool brother you were, so I just assumed you were –
but then you looked-”

“Whiter?”

“I wasn’t trying to be…”

“I know you weren’t. At least, that’s what I
realized later. It’s just that I’ve encountered a lot of different
responses to who I am, and unfortunately a lot of it’s been
negative. People look at you and try to figure out what you are so
they can put a label on you. To some people I’m not black enough
and to others I’m not white enough. I guess it’s made me a little
oversensitive over the years.”

“Understandably.”

“So I never really thought you were annoying.
Weird maybe.”

“What?!”

“Not in a bad way. I mean you’re different
from any woman I’ve known. Extraordinary might be a better
word.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you’re kind,
loving, and honest. You see the best in people and you help them to
see the best in themselves. You don’t look for what you can get,
but what you can give. You have courage and integrity that allow
you to stand up for what you believe – and you have faith that’s
unfeigned. When I think of you, I think of that scripture in
Proverbs that says “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is
far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10)”
¹

“Really?” she said quietly as she looked into
his eyes. She seemed as taken aback as he was by his admission.
“What makes you say that?”

“Because of the way you’ve always been there
for me – and I have to give you credit because I haven’t always
been the easiest person to be there for. Even when I start to get
on everyone else’s nerves you always stick up for me.”