The Vanishings Read Online Free Page B

weak and goes back to doing things he knows he shouldn’t,” she said, “but when he comes back to church and asks forgiveness and tries to live for the Lord, well, we have to accept him and help him if we can. I believe he’s really trying.”
    Lionel was proud of his mother, but for reasons other than that she seemed wise in the areas of forgiveness and acceptance. The truth was, with her job, she was the star of the family. Not just Lionel’s family, but the whole Washington clan. They traced their roots to the freedom riders on the Underground Railroad during the days of slavery, and many of his ancestors had been active in the civil rights movement, fighting for equal opportunities among the races. His mother was one who had proved that a person, regardless of the color of her skin or the housing project she had grown up in, could achieve and make something of herself if she really committed herself to it.
    Lucinda Washington told Lionel she had been born and raised in a Cleveland ghetto,but “I loved to study. And that was going to be my way out of the projects.” She said she fell in love with journalism, reporting, and writing. She graduated from journalism school and worked her way up finally to Global Weekly magazine.
    She made good money, even more than her husband, Charles, who was a heavy-equipment operator. He was as proud of her as anyone, and secretly Lionel was proud of her too.
    But Lionel had another secret, and it caused him no end of anxiety. Lionel knew something no one else in the family except André even suspected. Neither he nor André were really Christians, even though the whole family history revolved around church.
    Church was something that had not changed when Charles and Lucinda Washington had moved to the suburbs. They had been able to somehow fit in to the strange white culture, though many people made it clear they were not happy about a black family’s moving in, wealthy or not. The Washingtons had quickly befriended those homeowners who had not moved out and convinced them they were good neighbors.
    Finding a church they were comfortable in was another story. Lionel could not remember when he had not been attending church. Family legends said his mother took him to church when he was less than a week old, but is mother told him that was slightly exaggerated. “But you weren’t two weeks old,” she said, grinning. “You might as well have been born in the church and grown up there.”
    Actually, he liked church a lot. Lionel was glad that his parents drove all the way back into the city to attend their old church. Some of the people who criticized them for “moving out and moving up” were glad to see they had not forgotten their roots. And even if they were jealous of the Washingtons’ ability to move out of a high-crime area, they were glad to see them come back every Sunday morning and evening and every Wednesday night.
    Church was what the Washington family was about, but Lionel knew it went deeper than that. His mother not only loved church, she truly loved God. And Jesus. And the Holy Spirit. They had visited a few churches in the suburbs, including a couple that had both white and black members. Lionel had been a young boy then, but even he could see that these just were not the same as his home church in Chicago.
    Those people didn’t seem to have anyspirit. His mother assured him, “They are certainly true believers, and I don’t question their salvation for a second. But I need to go to a church where people don’t mind expressing themselves. If I was to jump and shout praises or sing at the top of my lungs, or sway to the music or even dance in the aisles, I wouldn’t want to worry about what someone thinks.”
    Lionel knew what she was talking about. He loved to clap and sing and sway, and while he had not danced in the aisle, he enjoyed watching people who did. The services at his