THE STRUGGLES OF A WANNA-BE ANGEL - Part 1

1. THE DEVIL TAKES OVER  (Kelly)

Most people think I'm an angel. I am the one who will water all your plants, inside and out, while you're gone, or write you a character reference so glowing you can read it in the dark. I’ll bring you my special vegetable soup when you're sick, or drop by with brownies, just because. I even look like an angel, with my curly golden hair and a round face like a renaissance cherub.

I don’t like to make a big deal about it. I go by what they say in the Bible: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” If I feed your dog when you have to work late, I’ll just say, “Oh my gosh, I love little Lala! It really brightened my day to see her!” Or say I bring my neighbor some of my fresh-baked chocolate chip walnut cookies. She may try to tell me how sweet and thoughtful I am, but I’ll just say, “Oh no, I just love to bake, and if I ate it all myself my teeth would fall out!“ I would never say anything about gaining weight, because that would be body-shaming, even if the person I’m talking to isn’t fat.

I really do just like to make people happy. I don’t even care about rewards with my Father who is in heaven. That’s not why I do it. I just want to.

I guess it runs in the family, because one of my sisters is a nurse, and the other one is a counselor in a prison. My brother Larry, on the other hand, is a corporate lawyer. But I guess he still craved the familial altruism, because he married Melanie, who runs a nonprofit that gives at-risk children the support they need to succeed in high school and go to college.

My sister-in-law is a good person. All you have to do is look at her Facebook page to know that. You’ll see that she’s beautiful and fit, and that she serves meals to the poor, weeds and plants flowers in the neglected areas of the city, and raises loads of money for the victims of hurricanes.

And black people. Although she is white, she is very focused on the plight of black people. Which is great! You could call her a champion for civil rights. She often posts quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. During Black History Month she goes all out: she’s got everyone from Mohammed Ali to Harriet Tubman to Madame CJ Walker up there on her wall every day in February.

And now they’ve got an adorable baby girl, an easy baby who hardly ever cries. We don’t talk about it, but my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for two years. What can we do but love our niece, and listen to all the amazing ways Melanie’s come up with to stimulate her mental, emotional and physical development? Lucky little girl.

We also get all caught up at family gatherings about the kids who are the first in their family to go to college, overcoming huge obstacles, all with the support of the “Roots and Wings Preparation for College Program.” Which, again, is great! I’m a teacher, and I love teaching and education. But that’s where I got into trouble.

I was telling the assembled sisters, brother and in-laws about a black kid who told a Mexican-American kid to go back to his country, he didn’t belong here. Things like this happen, and we always take the time in class to talk about empathy and the value of each human life. I was just saying this in a neutral, matter-of-fact way, not to make a point about what a great teacher I am. But Melanie had some thoughts. She let me know that I needed to better understand the history of black oppression, how black people built this country and it is more theirs than anyone else’s. Slavery, Jim Crow, the New Jim Crow, police violence, voter suppression--you couldn’t help but admire the thoroughness of her mastery of the subject. And she said it with such a fresh righteousness, it almost made you forget she’d said it all before, several times. She showed me, all right.

So I did what I did, the worst thing I could think of. Melanie and Larry, my brother, went on vacation, and of course I volunteered to feed their cats. One morning, I told my husband Bill I needed to get to the school extra early to meet with a parent before work. And I drove to my brother’s house, took out a can of paint--washable, of course--and spelled two words on their front door: WHITE SUPREMACIST.

I don’t like to think I’m petty. I like to think that I rejoice in others’ successes. But sometimes I think there is only a fixed amount of goodness allotted to each person. What happened with my sister-in-law, was, I went into negative goodness. I felt bad when I saw how she cried when she talked about it, and agonized about what she could have done to cause this calumny against her. But the positive thing is, now I can make up for it, by being extra good. More surprise birthday parties for my sisters. More pans of lasagna for elderly shut-ins in the neighborhood. Of course, I’ll say, “Oh, other people did all the work,” or, “I had some extra, so I thought why not bring it down to Joe and Gladys?”

I know no one’s watching the scale, but I am. I did a bad thing, but I know, without having to say it, that I’m a good person. It's just that sometimes, well, the devil will have his fun, won’t he?

click to go to Part 2