Anxious for Nothing

She walked out of her run-down apartment on the east side of town. The road was under construction, and it took me a few tries, along with a healthy disregard for the GPS, to successfully arrive at the correct duplex.

This was our first time meeting. We’d spoken over text and on the phone, but not in person. I was surprised by how tall she was. She was my height, or perhaps taller; her afro added quite a few inches. The shiny septum ring in her nose sparkled in the afternoon light. It had to have been an 8 gauge. I admired the patience (and pain) it must have taken to stretch it to that size, but I shivered at the thought of making a hole that big in my own nose. My modest 20 gauge is painful enough after a few weeks.

I got out of the car and met her on the sidewalk. She gave me a huge smile, her perfect pearly white teeth flashing, along with a grill ring on her right canine (though it could just as easily have been her left. I am notoriously incapable of telling my left from my right). She wrapped me up in a huge bear hug. I couldn’t wait to have twenty uninterrupted minutes with her in the car.

I started the engine, and NPR’s classical music resumed. She said, “Girl, what you doin’? Here, I got you. Give me the aux. My radio's fire. You like EDM?” She took the cord and, to my surprise, unplugged my phone without so much as a courtesy glance in my direction before pulling up her Spotify. It was, in fact, fire.

When she reached for the cable, I noticed different colors of paint speckled across her forearm.

“Oh! Do you paint?” I asked.

“Funny story…” she began.

She was just getting into the tale behind the masterpiece she was working on when her purse started ringing. She pulled out a cellphone and answered a FaceTime call. I was momentarily confused because her phone was plugged into my car speakers, but apparently, she had two devices. She yelled over the music at her friend in a casual way, like these were the usual conditions in which they spoke. I reached to turn the music down, but she shooed my hand away.

“Nah, it’s good. It’ll just be a sec.”

Then she hung up.

When I asked why she had two phones, she told me she actually had three. One personal, one for work, and one for her artistic pursuits.

This young woman was incredibly busy. She was a nursing student, worked as a caregiver, volunteered at Prophet House, where our paths somehow first crossed, and, in her spare time, painted canvas and recorded music. When I asked what her music sounded like, she described herself as a hip-hop alt neo-soul artist with a sound like Yana the Mooncricket. She grabbed one of the phones, switched to her Spotify profile, and queued up a track. It did sound exactly like Yana the Mooncricket.

She rolled down the window and bobbed her head to the beat. She was so carefree and utterly at home in her own world, without the slightest urge to rehearse tomorrow before it arrived.

We pulled into my driveway, and I gave her a quick tour before making speedy introductions to my family. I gave her the Wi-Fi password and gave my little ones long hugs. They were eager to be rid of me and start building a fort with their new friend. I waved goodbye and headed out for some quality time at the movie theater.

Later that evening, when we returned, the kids were fast asleep in their day clothes: lights on, doors open, food still on the counters, and crayons and papers strewn across the dining room. She was FaceTiming someone, so I quietly went upstairs to change my clothes and put on something more comfortable. By the time I came back downstairs, she was ready to head out.

We got back into the car and made our way toward the highway. I thanked her for her help and asked how the evening had gone. Before she could tell me about it, she said, “Can you quick type in this address, actually? I gotta go to a friend’s house and braid a girl’s hair.”

I typed in the new address and headed toward the University. Curious, I asked about the hair. It was nearly midnight, and from what little I knew, braiding hair takes hours.

She said her friend had a hair emergency and needed it done before an event the next morning.

As we cruised down the highway, I asked how she managed to keep all of this together. It seemed like an awful lot to juggle.

She said, “Jesus takes care of me every single day. I don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. God blesses me every day, and I’m so grateful. You know Jesus?”