16. Texas BBQ Meatballs

People seem to wander in and out of my life.  They show up at opportune moments.  They bring recipes, they bring secret codes, they bring passwords, and they bring clues to the future.  Like some strange Robert Altman movie or an episode of Twin Peaks, I’ve got albinos and midgets wandering into my life.  But mostly I’ve got coworkers and cabdrivers.  And that’s how I got the secret recipe for Texas BBQ Meatballs.

I worked for awhile in an office on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. It was a strange office full of high tech computers and barefooted women. I never understood why all the women took off their shoes when they got to work; I just took mine off too.  Those Texas gals were unlike anyone I’d met before.  They worked hard but they loved to laugh and have a good time. Any reason was an excuse for an office party.  A birthday, anniversary, graduation were good reasons for a party.  They even threw me a party when I got my Texas drivers license.  They brought in pot luck dishes from home and these girls could cook!  After one party I commented on the BBQ Meatballs.  If there’s one thing they’ve mastered in Texas, it's BBQ and they BBQ damn near everything. The meatballs were delicious and they were perfect for a party.  That’s when they gave me their recipe for “Texas BBQ Meatballs”.  While I was there these women took me under their wing and treated me like long lost kin.  I thought they're hearts were as big as a Texas sky.  Later I found out they didn’t treat everyone that way.    

Over in the corner of the office was the single black employee. Her name was Cecelia and she was very quiet, head down quiet.  When I first started working she was on leave.  One day I started up a conversation with her and the gals pulled me aside and warned me about Cecelia.  “You know the type.” they said.  “She’s lazy, shiftless; she’s just like all of them others, you know.  Now you don’t pay her no mind.”  For a long time after that I didn’t. I’m not sure why.  Maybe I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. It’s not something I’m proud of.  Then the boss moved me to the desk next to hers so that she could train me.  At first it was all work related but eventually we did talk a bit. 

It turns out that Cecelia actually had the most responsible job in the office.  She was the bean counter, the bookkeeper. She also did the time sheets and the payroll.  She’d been out on a medical leave, due to a stroke.  She came back too soon, she had to.  She would have lost her insurance.  Her body was there and she was coming back slowly. Unlike what I’d been told, I found her to be a gentle soul, not at all lazy or shiftless.

One day I stumbled in to work half asleep and sat down at my desk.  I just held my head in my hands.  For weeks, nightmares had invaded my sleep. It was like a third rate horror flick.  All night long, strange creatures in dark robes tried to take me to meet “him” and I eventually went along.  Out of sheer exhaustion, I went along.  I had no idea who “him” was but I thought that I had no choice in my dreams. 

When I told Cecelia about the dreams, she gasped and said, “Child you don’t NEVER go to see “him” lest you know which “him” it is!  Even in your dreams, even sound asleep, you soul is yours lest you give it away.  Don’t give it away!  Walk away from that man till he tells you who he is!”  I sat ram rod straight in my seat.  Cecelia kept talking, “God watches over us, but you have free will.  If you chose to go with someone without knowing what they want from you, then you have made your choice.  You need to ask that man who he is and what he wants from you!”  I listened to every word she said.  That night when I went to sleep, I remembered her warning.  I slept unmolested.  I have not been troubled by night terrors since.  God bless Cecelia.   

One day she gave me a ride home from work.  As I pulled in the driveway my cousin showed up. He was a distant cousin and living proof that those characters in “Deliverance” are genetically linked to me. Not something I’m proud of.  When Cecelia saw him, she looked afraid and left quickly.  My cousin grabbed my arm and tried to drag me in the house.  “Don’t you never let me see you in no car with no n….!” he yelled at me. “No decent woman would be seen with a n…. girl.”  I tried to reason with him.  I even told him she was my supervisor, but it didn’t matter.  I just walked inside.

Working with Cecelia reminded me of my first office job right out of high school.  I was only 17 and rode the bus downtown to one of those high rise buildings.  I rated auto insurance policies on the thirteenth floor.  The center of the floor had a glass office for the boss, the only male employee.  The rest of the office was full of women.  There was the blond newly wed, the woman who had worked the same job since before the Great Depression, Naomi our Supervisor, a middle aged black woman and Simone recently returned from San Francisco and the Summer of Love to later become my roommate and the best bad influence a Midwestern girl ever had.  But that’s a whole other story. 

The year I worked at insurance company, I watched as the boss sat in his glass house and talked on the phone. I watched him walk around with his hands crossed behind his back.  I watched him stare out the windows.  I watched him play pretend golf.  I watched him with his feet up on the desk.  And I also watched as the stack of papers he put in Naomi’s in box every morning became a stack of completed papers in her out box.  I watched Naomi fill in for sick workers, stay late and come in early.  I watched Naomi when there was a phone call from an agent asking us to “lose” a payment for a customer who had just had an expensive accident.  I watched her not find the check when we all knew where it was. 

When the boss got promoted I half expected that Naomi would be promoted.  It seemed fair, she had done the work.  Instead a new man, fresh out of college was brought in.  Like the previous tenant of the glass office he frequently sat with his feet on the desk talking on the phone, or playing pretend golf while Naomi did the actual work. 

This bothered me. I was no radical.  I wasn’t even a Democrat.  But fair is fair and this bothered me.  When my sister got involved with an offshoot from the Students for a Democratic Society, I went to a meeting with her.  They asked me about my work at the insurance company.  I told them about Naomi and the other women.  They told me all about equal rights and I listened with both ears open.  I got excited.  I got inspired. I bought a Dylan album.  Then I preformed the only act of rebellion I have in my entire life.  I printed up flyers of the umbrella company symbol with a ball and chain attached to the handle.  Then I stayed late one night and posted them all around the building.  I was not a very good revolutionary.  I did not sleep for months, maybe years.  Maybe the men in the black robes were the men from the insurance company.  Maybe “he” was the new boss in the glass office.  God Bless Cecelia.

The next day at work, Cecelia was gone.  She had relapsed and died during the night.  I never forget what she taught me.  Sometimes, I think she stayed just long enough to give me that message.  Sometimes I think its’ that simple. One life on its own makes no sense at all.  But the chain of events, on life touching another and another and that wave of humanity stretching into the future - that makes sense to me. 

It happens like that.  These strangers wander through my life leaving little jewels, words of wisdom.  A few years ago, I met this cab driver whose words still haunt me. I was at the emergency room.  I’d been battling bronchitis and it was beginning to feel like pneumonia.  My doctor told me to go to the Emergency Room for a chest-ray. They kept me there for six hours without medicine, food or even water.  I didn't have a temperature (on the amount of steroids I take - I NEVER have a temp) and because nothing new showed up in the X-ray - they pronounced me well and sent me home. I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – Detroit Lungs.  My condition is terminal.  I am a lost cause.  I swear sometimes that I could walk into the Emergency Room nine months pregnant and in the final stage of labor and they would see COPD on my chart, order a chest x-ray and prescribe steroids. It isn't medicine- they don’t work for me they work for the HMO’s – I’m not a patient I’m a claim number.  But that’s a whole other story too.  This is about Cecelia and the cab driver.

I was in worse condition when I left than when I arrived.  Now I was also exhausted and broke.  They wanted me to wait another few hours for the DSHS ride home.  I decided to spend my last ten dollars and I called a taxi.  I was devastated, instead of helping; the hospital had made the situation worse.  Now, already exhausted, I had to deal with getting home.  My oxygen tank was running low, it was dark and it started to rain. 

The taxi came right away and the driver saw my desperation.  He was a Muslim man.  I didn't expect kindness from a Muslim man.  But he reached across the barriers of sex, race, culture and religion to see another child of God in crisis and he was kind.  He gave me is arm and helped me into the cab.  When we got to my apartment, he refused to accept payment and helped me into the building and to the elevator.  And as the doors to the elevator began to close, he said to me, "It's the same for all of us you know - in the end it is only us and God" 

His words stay with me even now.  Reminding me of what's important.  I can't always know why things happen as they do.  Why there is suffering, injustice, hunger and pain.  I just have to trust in God and believe that there is some larger plan, even if I can't see it. 

It’s like the Periodic table of the elements, the most beautiful works of art ever.  The logic and organization - so neat and precise that there is even room for the elements we haven't discovered yet.  It's a world that can be predicted, numbered and listed.  There are layers ranging from rare earth to noble gas and yet at the core - this magic - this wild card of an electron.  One excited electron and the universe changes, order and chaos - all in one simple box.  Don’t tell me God wasn’t a scientist. 

That face, the kind wonderfully wise face of the cab driver stays with me.  In the dark hours, the long nights when all I know is hurt and loneliness.  When it doesn't make sense and I want to shake my fist at God and ask “Why?”  When I watch the news I see what looks like the end of the world.  There are fires in the west and floods in the Midwest.  The Far East is radioactive and the Middle East is hyperactive.  Preachers are preaching starve the poor and give to the rich.  It sounds like the book of Revelation. 

That’s when I remember Cecelia and the cab driver and I hold on a bit longer. I don’t think he ever knew the effect his words had on me.  I don’t think Cecilia did either.  But their words changed me and maybe I changed a few other people along the way.  Maybe those people changed some really hard hearts.  Maybe change isn’t a big plan or a great new idea.  Maybe it’s just folks with old ideas about kindness and tolerance.  So I remember these amazing people who wandered into my life and I hold on a bit longer to see what comes next. 

I saw the face of the cab driver again on the news the other night.  He had been murdered several months ago and they finally found the killer.  I can't explain why this kind man had to die a horrid violent death. But I know that at the end he was not alone.  At the end, God was with him.  I hope Cecelia was there to welcome him.

The secret recipe is just meatballs soaked in brown sugar and BBQ sauce with a dash of liquid smoke added to the mix.  Then it’s popped in the oven and thirty minutes later you’ve got a dish to put in the heated serving platter and bring to the employee pot luck.