Been There Prayed That (9781622860845) (16 page)

Eleanor had exited the house and slammed the door behind her before Lorain could say another word. “The next Mrs. Leary,” she repeated. “Oh, he's creepy all right.” He was creepy enough where Lorain just couldn't let her mother do it. She couldn't let her mother marry that man. She had to give her a reason to return that engagement ring, even if it meant finally telling her what she should have told a long time ago.

“Father God, we thank you for the time you allowed us to fellowship as a family,” Mother Doreen prayed. She, Bethany, Uriah, their two children and Pastor Frey stood in a circle in the living room, holding hands, as they said a prayer before Uriah headed back onto the road.

Mother Doreen prayed for a few more minutes before closing out prayer in Jesus' name by asking the Lord that travel mercies be upon Uriah across the highways and the byways.

“Amen,” all said in unison behind Mother Doreen.

“You got everything?” Bethany asked her husband as she grabbed his leather jacket he wore no matter the season. Since he traveled all over the map, he never knew what the weather was going to be like. He figured he couldn't go wrong with a leather jacket.

“Yep, I reckon I do.” Uriah looked around the room to make sure he wasn't leaving anything behind.

“Wait a minute, Dad,” Sadie said as she made a mad dash for the kitchen, and then returned with a foiled plate in hand. “You left the plate for the road Aunt Doreen fixed for you.”

“Oh, son, you don't want to leave that,” Pastor Frey said as he eyeballed Sadie hand the plate to Uriah. “That sister-in-law of yours has some of the best cooking I've ever tasted, and remember, I was twice married.”

There were a few chuckles.

“Pastor and First Lady will be sorry they could not make it to enjoy some of that delicious food,” Pastor Frey said.

“Yeah, when I invited him and First Lady, he was excited to be able to come, but then he called Beth and told her that something came up,” Uriah said with a bewildered look on his face.

“Yeah, I know how it can be,” Pastor Frey said in his senior pastor's defense. Some of these saints think can't nobody pray them out of a situation but Pastor, so they call on him any day, anytime, never once thinking that he might just need some time for himself.”

“The devil is a liar,” Mother Doreen declared. “Folks better start learning to pray for themselves, to lay hands on themselves, to encourage themselves, to speak into their own lives. Didn't they get anything out of Jesus' relationship with the disciples? He taught them how to—”

Pastor Frey stood there with a proud smile on his face as he listened to Mother Doreen finish making her point. “Mother Doreen, I tell you, you are a mighty woman of God. The way you can always seem to bring biblical knowledge to any situation never ceases to amaze me. You sure you ain't got a calling on your life to teach? Because you break it down plain and simple, my sister.”

Mother Doreen had no idea that she was blushing as a result of Pastor Frey's comments when she replied, “Well, I do believe that has been prophesied to me a couple of times,” she admitted.

“Then, sister, you better walk in that prophesy,” Pastor Frey insisted. “Remember what happened in the Bible to the man given the talents and he didn't' use the—”

“Ahem.” Bethany clearing her throat cut off Pastor Frey's thoughts. It was then when both he and Mother Doreen remembered that they weren't the only two standing in the room.

For the first time, Uriah noticed the somewhat brewing attraction between his sister-in-law and Pastor Frey. He looked over at his wife and winked. It was the type of wink Pastor Davidson would have given. Bethany simply rolled her eyes up in her head.

“I guess I'll walk you out, Brother Uriah,” Pastor Frey said, patting Uriah on the shoulder. “Where are you headed to anyway?”

“Sunny California,” Uriah replied.

“Oh my, what a drive,” Pastor Frey stated. “Are you sure you're up to that?”

“That's exactly what the receptionist of the company who gives me my assignments asked when I called in. Asked me was I feeling okay enough to go on the run. Are y'all trying to tell me I'm getting old or something?”

Pastor Frey nervously cleared his throat, and then offered to drive Uriah to his truck that was parked in a vacant store lot a few blocks up.

“Thank you, Pastor, but I think I'll walk some of this food off,” Uriah said to him, grabbing his packed bags that sat by the front door. “And again, thank you for coming over.”

“Oh, anytime, Brother Uriah. Anytime.”

After everyone said their good-byes to Uriah, he and Pastor Frey exited the house.

“I miss Daddy already,” Sadie said as she walked over and put her arm around Bethany. “Don't you, Ma?”

“Sure, honey, sure,” Bethany said as she pat her daughter's arm. “Anyway, we better get the kitchen cleaned up.” Bethany quickly turned to head to the kitchen.

“Mom, are you okay?” Hudson asked when he saw what looked like his mother stumble.

“Uh, yes, dear, I'm fine,” Bethany said as she balanced herself long enough to go into the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, after failing at her attempt to balance herself by gripping the counter, she then headed down the hall to the restroom. About ten minutes later she opened the bathroom door to find her sister standing right outside the door with her hands on her hips. “Reen!” she exclaimed, putting her hand over her heart. “You scared me.”

“And you're scaring me,” Mother Doreen replied.

“Oh sis, please, it's nothing. Probably just some bug.”

“Well, it ain't the twenty-four hour bug because you been sick longer than twenty-four hours.” Mother Doreen stood there waiting for her baby sister's comeback. She had none. “Uh-huh, just as I thought.”

“I don't know what you're—”

“. . . talking about.” Mother Doreen finished her sister's sentence. “Oh, you know darn well what I'm talking about,” she said as she leaned into her sister while pointing an accusing finger right in her face. “As a matter of fact, you know what I've been talking about since day one.”

Realizing that there was no way around the truth, or Mother Doreen for that matter, Bethany took her usual defensive stand. “Look, Reen, you've been meddling since you got here, and I'm sick and tired of it. You been picking and prodding me like I'm some lab rat. When that didn't work, you now call yourself trying to do the same thing with Wal—Pastor Frey.” Bethany crossed her arms. “So you mean to tell me with all the time you've purposely been spending with Pastor Frey, he hasn't told you what you've wanted to hear?”

“What do you mean by
purposely
?”

“Oh, you know just what I mean. Acting like you're stealing time away from Pastor Frey doing his ministerial duties when all you're really doing is taking him off my hands. You always have been a jealous ol' somethin'.”

“Ooooh, I got a right mind to snatch you up by your arm with my one arm and then wear you a new hide with my free arm, just like I used to do when we were little.” Mother Doreen seethed the words through her tight lips as she squinted her eyes like Esther from
Sanford and Son
. It was a surprise that the words “You fish eyed fool,” didn't spill from her lips next. Intimidating as her big sister was, as her big sister had always been, Bethany didn't back down. “Well, I'm not a little girl anymore, Reen, and it's about time you stop treating me as one. I'm a forty-year-old woman, a wife, a mother of two with one on the—” Bethany's words trailed off once she realized what she was about to say.

“Oh, don't stop now.” Mother Doreen smiled with victory. “See that's the problem. When you were little, I never had to snitch on your behind too often because I knew you'd run your mouth just long enough for you to tell on yourself.”

“Tell what? There's nothing to tell?”

“Then why'd you stop? What were you about to say? Huh, sis?” Bethany turned her nose up and looked away without responding verbally. “You are a mother of two with one on the what?” Mother Doreen began to antagonize her sister by putting her hand to her ear as if she were listening loud and clear. “Come on, say it.” Still Bethany didn't reply. “Look at you standing there. You're even ashamed to say it. How I see it, a woman ain't ashamed to declare she and her husband are about to be parents unless, that is, if she and her husband ain't about to become parents, if you know what I mean.”

“Doreen Nelly Mae Tucker!” Bethany spat in shock.

“Bethany Lou Ellen Tyson!” Doreen shot back.

“Mother, Auntie Doreen!”

For the second time that month, Sadie's voice had interrupted an argument between the siblings. Once again, both Mother Doreen and Bethany looked embarrassed to see the young girl standing there. And yes, once again they each secretly wondered how long she'd been standing there. How much she'd heard.

“Yes, Sadie,” both women said in unison sing song voices as if they hadn't just been yelling loud enough to wake the dead.

“What is it, honey?” Bethany asked her daughter.

Sadie answered with a trembling voice. “It's the police. They're at the door.”

“I don't know what to say.” Paige sat at Tamarra's kitchen table with Tamarra sitting directly across from her. For the first time ever, Tamarra had actually shared with someone the fact that she had a brother and why she had denied him all these years. She even informed her of the role her parents had played in it. “I mean, I know what to say. I have lots of things I want to say. I just don't know how Christlike they are. I mean, your parents—” Paige shook her head in disgust. “They should be in jail too, Tamarra. I know that's an awful thing to say, but my God.” Paige continued shaking her head.

“I know,” were the only words of agreement Tamarra could utter.

After a few more moments of silence, Paige stood. “You're better than me. I couldn't have played along with the whole thing about your parents pretending to divorce and all that mess. I would have been on
Oprah
and everything telling this story. Somebody would have had to pay, that's for sure.” Paige was steaming for what had happened to her best friend as a young, innocent child.

“Well, Raymond paid. He went to jail,” Tamarra sighed.

“Yeah, but not for what he did to you,” Paige reminded her.

Tamarra shrugged.

“Like I said, you're better than me,” Paige repeated.

“Should I take that as a compliment? That I'm better than you?”

“You most certainly should, because if it were me, either that brother of yours would be serving time for the crime he committed against me, or I'd be serving time for the crime I committed against him after the fact.”

“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” Tamarra recited the scripture that had kept her from doing something insane for all of these years. A scripture that had kept her from blowing her brother's brains out with her daddy's shotgun, kept her from sprinkling rat poisoning on his pizza, kept her, while he slept at night, from cutting off his—just kept her. She'd stood on God's Word long before she even knew she was standing on it. She'd been kept by the strength of Jesus long before she even knew just how strong Christ was.

Paige allowed her body to relax back in the chair. “Girl, you're right,” Paige told Tamarra. She then looked upward. “Lord, I repent for having those thoughts. In Jesus' name, forgive me.” Once again, there was silence. “So what are you going to do?” Paige finally asked. “You can't dodge your mom forever—or your brother. I mean, like you said, you really don't even know if he's still in jail. He could be out and show up on your doorstep.”

A look of fear flushed over Tamarra's face. “You think so?” She stood and frantically began checking the kitchen windows to see if they were locked. She then headed to the back and then front door to make sure they were locked.

Paige got up and followed her. “Look, Tamarra, I don't mean to speak the spirit of fear into you. Just call your mother. I mean, maybe this is why you go through so much; you keep running. Stand up and face your giants or demons or whatever you want to call them. Just stop running. You're not supposed to turn your back on Satan when God has equipped you with every ounce of armor needed to defeat him. As a matter of fact, that rascal is already defeated.”

With her hand on the lock after double checking to see that it was, in fact, locked, Tamarra turned around to face her friend. “You're right.”

“I am?” Paige had even surprised herself. Usually it was Tamarra who was giving her all the right advice. It was Tamarra who had been walking with the Lord far longer than she had. She never imagined that she had what it took to minister to someone who'd been a Christian much longer than she had.

“Yes, you are. I've lived a lie almost all of my life when it came to my brother. Well, the lie ends here.” After speaking with such authority, Tamarra walked over to her house phone, picked it up and dialed her mother's number.

“Do you want me to go? Leave the room or something?” Paige whispered.

“No. You stay put. I may need your support like never before when all this is over.” Tamarra listened through the receiver as her mother's phone rang in her ear.

“Hello.”

Her mother's voice choked up Tamarra.

“Hello,” her mother repeated.

Tamarra looked at Paige who was standing there with her hand on her shoulder. Paige gave her a reassuring nod.

“Mom?” Tamarra said.

“Honey, I'm so sorry.” Her mother immediately began apologizing. “I'd told Raymond how well you and I had been getting along lately. We both figured that since you were in a forgiving mode after all these years, that perhaps it would be best if he came to you sooner than later. Raymond said he prayed every night in his jail cell, before we ever made the call to you on the three-way, that God would touch and soften your heart. He's a changed man now, Tamarra. Really he is. But perhaps it was just too soon. I'm so sorry. I really didn't want to mess up things between the two of us.”

“It's okay, Mom,” Tamarra told her mother, also relieved at the fact that Raymond was still incarcerated. She was glad to hear her mother confirm that they'd been reaching out to her via three-way, that he wasn't out of jail living with her parents or anything. She didn't know if she could deal with the fact that her brother was out free walking the streets. It had very little to do with walking in fear and everything to do with her feeling as if he never deserved to be free to walk the streets again.

“It's not okay. I pushed you. It was too soon. I should have just been blessed by the fact that you had forgiven me and left that alone.”

“Did you say blessed?” Tamarra asked her mother, confused. She'd never known her mother to use that type of talk in reference to herself, church talk that is. Her mother didn't even attend church.

“Yes, I did. I said blessed. It may sound strange for you to hear me talk like that, but your forgiving me was nothing short of a blessing. I knew the day you decided to forgive me that there must be a God. No force on this earth could have gotten you to do that after all of these years. I knew this God you served must have been a mighty force if He could get you to forgive me. I felt as though I needed to thank Him personally. So that following Sunday morning, I found me the nearest church house to go give my thanks in. I've even visited the church a couple more times since then. I don't go every Sunday, but I did finally crack open that Bible that's been sitting on my coffee table for show all these years.”

Both Tamarra and her mother let out a chuckle.

“Grandma would be proud, God rest her soul,” Tamarra said, knowing that Bible had been a gift from her maternal grandmother to her mother as a wedding present. The inscription on the inside stated such. But not once had Tamarra ever witnessed her mother read it.

“Yes, she would,” her mother agreed.

Tamarra and her mother spent the next two hours or so on the phone chatting like old girlfriends catching up. They talked about things they'd never talked about before. Tamarra even shared with her mother the situation with Maeyl and his newly discovered daughter.

It wasn't until Tamarra had gotten off the phone and retreated to her master bath to take a shower that she realized Paige had left. She had been so engrossed in her and her mother's conversation that she didn't notice Paige tip-toe out of the door. Not sure how much of the conversation Paige had heard, she made a mental note to call her in the morning to update her. If she could help it, she never wanted to keep any more news from her best friend again, good or bad. And as private as she'd kept the tales of her childhood, she had to admit that finally sharing the gist of her story with Paige had been like therapy, a release.

As the water droplets made their way down Tamarra's body, she was glad that she and her mother had gotten on good terms again. As for her brother, she still didn't want any parts of him—not yet—not now. Little did Tamarra expect, though, there was one part of him that was about to surface whether she wanted it to or not.