Page 183 of The Sun Sister

I stood in an agony of indecision.

‘Listen, let’s take a stroll towards it; it’s a place you should see anyway while you’re here in Harlem,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ I agreed, my stomach doing one of those weird plungey things and sending my heart rate up at the thought.

As we walked, I tried to stay calm and take in the streets around me. Even though some of the brownstones were crumbling away – windows filled with cardboard and overflowing trash cans – it was obvious from the hipster cafés we were passing and the scaffolding erected around a number of the conversions that this area was being gentrified. We passed a large red-brick building and had to step off the sidewalk and onto the road to pass the crowd that was standing outside. They were all dressed formally, in colourful suits and dresses with matching hats, and as I stepped back onto the sidewalk, I saw a car decorated with flowers pull up outside.

‘That’s Sarah and Michael getting hitched,’ Miles commented. ‘She’s one of my success stories; I helped her fight to get an apartment when she was living in a women’s shelter,’ he added as a young woman dressed in an enormous wedding gown of shiny white satin manoeuvred herself out of the back seat of the old car. The crowd waiting outside what I now realised was a church clapped and cheered her and started to funnel inside.

‘Let me go give her a hug,’ Miles said, and walked back swiftly towards the bride. The woman turned and smiled at him as he embraced her.

‘So you know people around here?’ I asked as he came back.

‘Sure I do. I moved here five years ago, after I got clean. That’s my church,’ he added as we watched a man who had to be the bride’s father take his daughter’s hand and lead her inside. ‘It’s super nice to see a happy ending – it fires me up to keep pushing for help for these kids,’ Miles continued as he began to walk at some pace and I doubled my stride to keep up with him.

‘So, what kind of lawyering do you actually do?’ I asked.

‘After law school, I was recruited by a top firm to join their litigation department – that’s where lawyers bill the most hours – and I made money hand over fist. Which I then spent as fast as I could, putting it up my nose and pouring it down my throat. The pressure was something else. Then I got clean and even though it meant a big salary cut, I decided to transition to a smaller firm, where I get a lot more opportunity to take pro-bono cases.’

‘What are they?’

‘Cases like Vanessa’s. In crude terms, my law firm lets me take on charity cases for free. And yeah, I wish I could do more, but even I gotta pay my bills.’

‘That makes you sound like a very good person, Miles,’ I said as the road led upwards and I reckoned we were heading in the direction of Marble Hill.

‘It makes me someonetryingto be a good person, but I fail more often than I succeed,’ Miles shrugged. ‘But that’s okay too. Since I came back to Jesus, I understand that it’s all right to fail as long as you are trying.’

‘What do you mean, you “came back to Jesus”?’ I asked him.

‘My whole family – in fact, my whole community in Philly – was centred around the church. It was like one great happy family and I had a whole load of aunties, uncles and cousins who weren’t related to me by blood, but through Jesus. Then I went to Harvard, moved into the world of Big Bucks and felt big with myself – bigger than my family, my church and the Lord himself. I decided I didn’t need any of them, that the church was some human conspiracy to keep the working man down and in his place – I’d read some Karl Marx at Harvard.’ Miles gave a deep throaty chuckle. ‘I was a total asshole back then, Electra. Anyway, you know what happened next – eventually I found my way back to Jesus and my family. You ever sing with a choir?’

‘Are you joking?! I’ve never sung in my life.’

Miles stopped right where he was in the street. ‘You cannot be serious.’

‘I am. As a kid, I used my vocal chords to scream, not sing, so my sisters told me.’

‘Electra’ – Miles lowered his voice – ‘you simply cannot be a black woman who doesn’t sing, even if it’s not in tune. In fact, I can’t think of one single guy or girl I know who doesn’t. It’s, like, part of our culture.’

Miles began to walk again, then a mellow sound came out of his mouth. He was humming just three notes.

‘You try.’

‘What? No way!’

He hummed the three notes again. ‘Come on, Electra, everyone sings. It makes them feel happy. “Oh Happy Day”,’ Miles suddenly sang out very loudly and perfectly in tune. I looked around at the passers-by, and they took no notice as Miles continued with a melody even I recognised.

‘I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I?’ he grinned.

‘Yup. I told you, I didn’t grow up in a household that had your traditions.’

‘It’s never too late to learn, Electra. And one day, I’m gonna take you to church and you’re gonna see what you’ve been missing all these years. Right.’ Miles’s long legs stopped abruptly in front of a brownstone. ‘This is it, Hale House, where your pa found you.’

‘Oh, er, right.’

‘And that there,’ he said, pointing at a statue of a woman with a very kind face holding out a hand towards me, ‘is Mother Clara Hale. She’s the stuff of legend around here. You were born in 1982, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’