Keeping God In Your Pocket

Grimes, Nikki. 2006. The Road to Paris.

Paris is a young girl whose never had a home of her own. Not really. Her mother's bad habits and taste in boyfriends/husbands has never created a healthy environment for a growing child. Paris and her brother, Malcolm, have been in dozens of foster homes over the years. Some were horrible, some were livable. But the truth of the matter is, even when they were physically provided for, they've never been loved. When the two run away from their current foster home where they'd been physically and verbally abused, the two flee to their grandmother's house. Surely in this chaotic world, grandma will have pity on them, right? Wrong. She gives them two days and then she's putting them back into the system. Only this time they're being separated.

Now Paris, lonely away from her brother, is nervous and unsure about her newest foster home. The Lincolns seem nice--really nice. There's an older girl--a teen--who's a foster child. And the couple has two sons both younger than Paris. But can Paris ever learn to trust and open up her heart? She just might because one of her 'brothers' David has just let Paris in on a secret to never being afraid: keeping God in your pocket.

Home was such a funny word. For most kids, home was where your mom and dad lived, where you felt safe, where the bogeyman was merely make-believe. Home was where you knew every square inch of the place by heart, where you could wake up in the middle of the night and know exactly where you were without opening your eyes. Paris didn't have a place like that. She didn't even have an address she'd lived at long enough to memorize, no single place that felt familiar as all that. Except maybe the city itself. For Paris, home was more a person, and that person was Malcolm. (30)

The next evening, when Paris and David were alone in the dining room setting the table, David said out of the blue, "I used to be afraid of the dark. And of the bogeyman, and of spiders--all sorts of things." "Really?" said Paris. "Really." "What did you do?" "I started keeping God in my pocket." "Huh?" "It's something my mom told me once. To keep God in my pocket." "I don't understand. How can God fit inside your pocket?" "No that's not it. It just means to keep God close, you know, like he's right there, in your pocket, close enough to call on, or to talk to. That's what I do when I'm afraid." "And that helps?" "Yup. Sure does." And that was all he said on the subject. But it was enough. It was something she'd never forget. (41)

She wasn't afraid anymore. Not of being beaten, or being locked in the closet. Not of the dark, or of never seeing Malcolm again, or of nobody wanting her. . .Paris could hardly recognize the fearless person she was turning into. . .She was learning to keep God in her pocket, and because she had him to talk to, she was beginning to have faith that she'd be all right. (103)

The Road to Paris tells the story of one girl's journey of healing and recovery. A lot can happen in a year. Life can become normal, an address can become more than numbers on a piece of paper, and family can become more than just a word in the dictionary. (145)

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