Bill didn't seem to have any special talent like his sister Susan, but for as long as he could think, he could remember the things that nobody else cared to, like birth dates of strangers, addresses, the serial number on the box of Wheaties that he ate out of each morning, and in this case, license plates. It's not that he tried to remember, it's just that if he saw it, then the numbers just seemed to stick with him indefinitely.

He was awkward the way his sister used to be. They just didn't seem to get the fashion gene or the social bug. But Susan had changed herself somehow, reinvented. Bill hardly noticed the change, it was so gradual, until he looked up one day and truly she was a star, at least in his eye. He loved his sister, and would do anything for her. He would fight for her is she needed it, but since he was the baby and smaller than her in their childhood she often fought his battles. Not that she was trying to, she just always happened to be there. As you can imagine, Susan has never been that much of a fighter but she could commit to a moment. And if in that moment her and Bill had to fight to keep him from being bullied everyday, then Susan would fight and fight she did, wild and unyielding swings that often threw her down. But she showed up daily like clock work at lunch time, just to "fight" for her brother.

Nobody else would have called what she did, fighting. It was more like some wild, tribal dance with a secret message hidden deep inside. It's not that she scared anybody away, she was just persistent. For as long as they wanted to take her brother's lunch or steal his homework or put him in the locker, then Susan wanted to "fight." She showed up like clockwork for 31 days. On day 32 they called a truce that lasted right into adulthood. And somehow they developed some weird friendship with Bill looking out for them in the classroom and the ex-bullies looking out for him in the hallway . . .

"You can't do their homework for them!"

"Well that's what they want!"

"So! You can't do their homework for them." Susan said leaning in close this time, "That's wrong and besides, they still have control. Bill, they are going to have to treat like a friend, leave you alone all together or we are going to have to fight again."

"I don't want to fight again!"

"I don't either, but you will not be bullied and controlled by people. So, you cannot do their homework and if you do, then you and I will fight every day."

"Why are you doing this?!"

"Because I love you. You're a man and men are not supposed to be controlled by their fears. Real men conquer fears." It was something she heard on an inspirational tape and believed. That's how she learned and that's how she taught her brother, her mom was always working and just waiting for her to graduate from High School, so that she could go to work too and help out with the bills. She didn't even know that Susan could sing.

"But I'm no man Susan, I'm only 13."

"We might as well get started now Bill--"

"Bill Thingerson, Mr. Bill Thingerson, Mr. Bill-"

"Yes, I'm right here."

"You can see her now." The nurse smiled as she walked away. That smile made him believe that everything would be fine. Just the same, Bill was still a little freaked out about seeing her. What if she was dying and this hospital visit exposed a secret malady that they never knew she had. Yes, he had ridden over in the ambulance but had been sitting in the waiting area for the past half hour and his imagination ran wild . . .

"Hey boy!"

"What's wrong with her."

"Pain pills."

"She's high!"

"She is medicated so that she doesn't feel the pain."

"She's high."

"High and flying baby. That's me."

Bill burst out into laughter and Susan laughed too, because he laughed. At this point she couldn't tell what was funny and what wasn't. She would feel tomorrow, as for today, she would imitate her baby brother and laugh.

"You hit my sister"

"I didn't hit anybody"

"You hit my sister, you need to come with me," and he grabbed her arm. Natasha was twice Bills size, so she simply snatched it back, but to her surprise his grip was strong and he did not let go.

"Let go of me, Help!"

"You hit my sister"

"I didn't hurt anyone, let go of me! Somebody help me!" where is the police when you need them. "Help me!" She yelled, a little hysterical by now, "Help."

"I don't want to hurt you, you hurt my sister, I want you to come see about her," he said as he let go, aware that this white girl could get him in trouble, conveniently ignoring that concept that you don't touch people that you don't know.

"I didn't hurt anybody!" and Natasha ran out of the center, jumped in her car, drove to her loft, but didn't go in. She just sat there in the car, thinking, of nothing at all. Given the events of the day, how could she be thinking of nothing? But she was, in fact she was putting a lot of energy into thinking of nothing, because she didn't want to feel what she felt in that room just minutes before; which sadly was the same thing she felt in another room filled with critics, a day that she had hoped to forget forever, but it seemed to have found it's way into her future. How would she get it out?

"I didn't hurt anybody!?" she said out loud, thinking of that little black man that grabbed her at the door. "They hurt me!"

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve . . .

"Thank you for coming," was all they said, but she wanted to know, what did they think of her, so she stood there.

"Thank you for coming," the judges said again and in unison, fully expecting her to walk out the room and the next contestant to enter.

"So what did you think?"

"Thank you, but-"

"No, what did you think? Don't blow me off."

"Are you kidding?"

"What did you think?"

"I personally think she's crazy," thought one judge. He said, "It was terrible."

"Are you kidding?"

"Horrendous in fact."

"People tell me that I can sing."

"Really what people, the voices in your head," he thought, but said "Thank you for coming!" firmly and with irritation in his voice.

"No, let me sing another song, that will help to see," and Natasha broke out into song again without so much as a nod from the judges. Except this time instead of misplaced confidence, her painful little song was filled with an ugly desperation; the kind that drives people away. Consequently, the judges got up and left through the back door, figuring if she will not exit, then they will. They were collectively tired of being vocally hijacked by people with mediocre skills.

Natasha, opened her eyes in mid note and while holding it, she decided to follow . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

Natasha was so upset by the judges response to her song that in the end, she just stormed out of that room without looking. What did they know about good music? She was so tired of being corrected and judged and made to feel like she was nothing. So she decided, "no more and not today." She didn't realize that like so many others before her, she had come to air her emotional and dirty laundry on national televsion . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

Ms. Thing was not a cocky woman, but given the power behind her voice, the whole world would have allowed a little arrogance, but she didn't require it.

She was born Susan Thingerson, a name that was a curse in middle school, as she was often referred to as Thing, as in the hand on the Adams Family. At that time, she wasn't a beautiful girl, mainly because she wasn't confident and let's face it her momma didn't know how or care to dress her and figured that as long as the girl had clothes on, then the girl was a success for the day. Suffice it to say, the time in between class was hard on Susan, until the day she sang her little song at the school recital.

They brought all the classes into the gym for a special program. There was a guest speaker that day. He was supposed to address racial issues in the school. But he felt like confidence was the real issue and feeling good in your own skin no matter what color it was. He spoke about it so passionately, he had the teachers on the edge of their seats forgetting that this was for the kids. At one point he said that 'confidence can make an ugly woman beautiful and a bully a little kinder.' Susan was no bully, but she desperately wanted to be pretty at least, let alone beautiful. She couldn't get the phrase out her head.

This particular speaker had the ability to reach the child in you and bring out the adult. By the time he finished Susan thought she was grown. So when he announced a quick singing contest and requested volunteers, she was already on the stage before she came to herself.

It was like confidence had mesmerized her so strongly that she couldn't even hear the kids saying,

"What is she getting up for?"

"What does Thing think she is doing now?"

It wasn't that Susan did alot of crazy things, she simply looked crazy doing the things that she did do; partly due to her clothes, hairstyle and facial expressions. She was always a very expressive person. And today she looked crazy to all of her classmates, again.

"What's your name little girl," asked the speaker, taken aback by her hair style mostly, but determined not to show it in his face.

"Susan. Susan Thingerson."

"What are going to sing for us today?," he asked, thinking with that name the kids must give her hell.

"Nothing." she said. "Nothing?" the speaker said, but thought "this little girl must be a little crazy," but then he looked her dead in her eyes and said, "This must be the name of your song?."

The force behind his gaze straighten her up, she half thought "this is a look a daddy must give," but then again Susan wouldn't know. Regardless of why, something in her responded to him and responded quickly, "Yes sir, that's the name of my song," not really having a name at all and she took the microphone, gently from his hands and began to sing the song with no words. A woman's soul came out that little girl's throat that day. It was the kind of sound that makes you want to cry and sway and groove, it just made you feel.

When she finished, she said, "thank you Mr. Speaker" and gave him the microphone back. He completed the contest out of formality and when it was over, he announced the winner is "Ms. Thing! Come on up her girl and get your prize, I think you have found your ticket!" And from that day on everybody called her Ms. Thing.

But now, Susan was in the hallway, waiting for a chance audition. There was one girl in the room, and after her, she would be next...

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

Natasha wanted so much more out of life that she felt her desires made a fool out of her. Even knowing this, she felt possessed by her need to be seen. It was like she couldn't stop herself from running to the front. She couldn't sing, yet she entered every contest. She couldn't dance, yet she was the first to the floor. She looked terrible in a swimsuit (or at least the ones she chose), and yes, she was the first to put hers on--bikini and all.

She just wanted to be in front. Her behavior was second nature, she half noticed it any more. As a child her mother always commented on it. As a woman, she use to try to see herself and control it. But now she just figures this is who I am. I am a singer, so I sing, I am a dancer, so I dance. I am beautiful, why should I hide it, so she didn't.

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

She needed him. She wanted him. She was reaching for him, finally, again. He had been waiting for her to come back to him for so long. Sure her body was there, but the spirit that she used to have, the one he fell in love with had entered that casket with her father and from that point on every time something in her life broke away, a part of Ella did as well. But today, she realized that Eleanor was strong and had the right to be whole. But she didn't want to say all those words, and with Harold she didn't need too right now. All she wanted was to touch him and let him hold her and to move with him close to her and not care what anybody thought.

She walked to him, like he had something she needed and he did; Love, and the fact that he got her. She walked toward him like a model taking the runway, her limp was obvious but her focus was undeniable. She forgot about the cast on her leg and so did he, all she saw was Harold Davis.

And when they finally touched all she wanted was rock and sway in his presence, dance with him. And they danced in the moonlight. They moved together to their own rhythm, the guitarist tried to catch their beat, but it didn't matter. They had all the music they needed. Eleanor James Davis was alive again. The way it was beating in her chest was enough music for the both of them.

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

It was time. It was time to live, so Eleanor gathered herself and walked right through all the people that she had known for a life time; neighbors, friends, her sister, her mother. She hugged her mother strong, in a way that she had not hugged her since she was a girl. Eleanor had watched from a distance, she had seen her crying with her sister, and had been shocked at her mother's tears. Everyone knew she wasn't dead, but their responses to her life were more intense than she ever imagined. She had always fancied herself alone, but so many seemed to care in different ways. They all noticed the quality of her life, why hadn't she . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

-to do anything about it.

Everything was ready.

The people arrived for the wake and the funeral service disguised as a party. Alexandria knew that you normally have them on different nights, but she figured that guest would understand and particularly be forgiving since the honoree survived. And Alexandria wouldn't be Alexandria if the she considered the possibility that they might want to come. Obviously, she was right because it was a good turn out. She figured that everyone should be happy because this is the best kind of funeral, the kind where the honoree survives.

"If only I could get Eleanor to get in that coffin. It's only for the eulogy," she thought, " and then she gets to rise from the dead."

She had convinced the funeral attendent to let her rent the room and in turn to borrow the coffin for the ceremony at no charge. Oh Well, lost opportunity, everyone will just have to pretend.

"It's working out," Alexandria said, assuring herself, and sighing at all the things she has to go through for people.

Eleanor was remarkablely alert give the fact that she felt like passing out-

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

She began to position herself to try to stand up, slowly. She began to feel a pain that most people feel quickly, slowly. She began to scream and yell for all the right reasons, slowly. She began to rise.

She tried to walk but it hurt. She pushed her thoughts back and began to focus on the baby steps that would get her back inside the house with the perfect white picket fence. One the way home, she slipped into something or someone else altogether. Slowly, she became grateful that she could hop a little and crawl a little and make it home. Slowly, she saved her self.

It took her so long to cover those few steps, by the time she made it in, she had forgiven everybody who wasn't there to rescue her, even her father. Once inside the house she knew that she still had to go through with her plans . . . So she killed herself, not all of herself, just the weakest and saddest parts, until the only thing left was her birth right, Eleanor James, a woman of compassion and great power.

But she didn't know that she was becoming all of that at the time; what she did know was the fact that she was dying in all the right places and crying from a darkness that use to make her hollow inside, places that she talked to cover up.

When a car finally passed by that house with the perfect white picket fence on that quiet street, Eleanor was already inside, dialing 911 and her sister. And by then she wanted to live for real this time.

When Alex arrived at the hospital, there where no more tears on Ella's face.

"Eleanor, are those wings I see?" said Alex, gently interrogating her sister. And for the first time in her adult life, Eleanor truly smiled and she was beautiful like her mother, and free. Even with her un-kept hair, dirty clothes, and throbbing foot; she never felt better. And finally she had a story to tell, something interesting to share with Harold, who seemed to have loved her in the dark and in the light. But that would have to wait because she had called her sister first and everybody knows that Alexandria was crazy, but Eleanor often forgot just how far she would go to make a point . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

...happy, beautiful, strong, kind. She had meant to become the things she dreamed of when she was a child,
to be a master chef,
to dance in the moonlight like nothing else in the world mattered,
to change her little place on the planet with a smile that spoke volumes,
to be happier, to listen longer, to love harder, to dream bigger, to just be more, and now...

she was stepping off the curb that day on the quiet street in front of the house with the perfect white picket fence, and she heard her ankle snap. But that's not the interesting part. She fell to the ground and grabbed her foot. She was sitting in the middle of that quiet street in front of the house with the perfect white picket fence, and as if waiting for something, Ella held her breathe for the slightest moment, she paused everything. No tear, no yell, and no body came because no body saw her fall.

And this angered her. She was angry that her husband was at work instead of home to help her; that her sister moved away to the neighboring town instead of living next door like she told her to; that her children were grown and lived so far away; that her neighbors weren't more alert and helpful. Her anger at everything and everybody was a stabbing pain in her heart that hurt more than the broken and now swollen ankle that caused her to crumble to the ground in the first place. And on top of all her rage, Ella was embarassed for falling off the curb on the quiet street in front of the house with the perfect white pickett fence. She was so consumed that she just stayed there in a pitiful little puddle refusing to move. . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .

Ella is a gentle name.

But Ella herself, was soft in all the wrong places and mean in all the rest.

She was weak on her dreams and hard on the people around her.

What a shame that a woman with such clarity about everyone else did not use her power for something more than cutting people down.

"What about the garden club she was going to start. She always spoke of wanting to learn more about that."

"She did talk about it alot, but just never got to it."

"Well, who is going to take her place at the center, wasn' t she volunteering there?"

"No, she went to visit, but just never got around to signing up."

"But she talked about it so much."

"She did didn't she, well, she just never got to it."

If Ella could here this litany of dreams with no endings, she would be sad, and possibly die all over again. She never realized how much she wasn't doing, how much she didn't make happen, because she thought she made everything happen. Her husband, often she said,

"Ella you act like the sky would fall if you weren't here to hold it in place. Let it be woman and go do something interesting." She used to be the most exciting thing that he had ever met. When he was a boy and she was a girl, she used to dance at inappropriate times and sing at the top of her lungs and laugh just because. She used to be so free, she used to be so real; but that was before...

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.org, I got the nerve to say . . .

...kill herself, but the circumstances of this event will also have to wait.

Ella was short for Eleanor James. Ella was a soft and sweet name where as Eleanor was more forceful and presidential. To say Eleanor James is here was to announce the arrival of some one who mattered, but as it was Mrs. James always went by Ella.

"Hi I'm Ella James," she would say when meeting new people. "You can call me Ella," she would add with a beautiful smile that the recipient never suspected would turn to a frown and irritation as they passed on by. You see, there where very few people on the planet that she liked or even regarded with any real respect. She knew how to stab you sweet but a stab was still a stab. She often harped on anything she could find, house shoes worn to the grocery store, a new hairstyle that just doesn't fit her face.

"I am not gossipping," she would say. "I'm just telling it like it is. And a woman cannot be judged for telling the truth. Somebody had to say it." But the truth is, half of what Ella said never had to be uttered out loud, a fact her husband often pointed out, but she considered his comments to be jokes, love talk between the two of them. She talked so much about very little that she only heard the words; and seldom the meaning. She understood him on the day he said, "I love you." And she lived as if that was the only truly important thing that he ever said to her. He had not said it in a while though, and because Ella had been talking so much, she had not noticed. And now, it was too late for Ella to hear or say anything else, because Ella was dead.

"What about that business idea she had."

"She just never got to it. After a few years someone came up with the same idea and you know the rest."

"Well what about that dance skit she was going to put together for the small kids."

"Oh, that was such a cute idea, I remember when she told me, but she just never got to it."

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .