Been There Prayed That (9781622860845) (17 page)

It was Saturday afternoon as Lorain and Unique sat inside McDonald's watching Unique's children play on the indoor playground equipment. They hadn't met to discuss Single's Ministry business or anything like that. Lorain had just decided out of the blue to call Unique and ask her if she could take her and the children to lunch at McDonald's.

With so much going on in Lorain's life right now with her mother marrying Broady and all, she needed to get her mind off of that situation and focus on happier things. For some reason, the interaction of Unique and her children made her happy. Just watching those kids with their bright, well-behaved selves, seemed to put a smile on Lorain's face and allow her to lose herself in her own childhood, the days of playing with cousins. Besides that, Lorain's conscience had been bothering her regarding the time she refused to front Unique the money to get the children McDonald's meals for lunch. At least now that was one thing she could get off of her conscience.

“They are so cute,” Lorain said to Unique, eating a French fry while admiring the children. “I can't believe they are so well-mannered, the way they talk and pray.”

Unique looked at Lorain as she sipped on her strawberry milkshake. In all honesty, she didn't know whether to take Lorain's words as a compliment or not. “Why do you act so surprised? I mean, how did you expect them to act?”

Hearing the edginess in Unique's voice, Lorain made an attempt to clean up her statement. “Oh, I didn't mean it like that. It's just that I expected them to be—well, you know how kids like that act. Single mom, different daddies, grew up in the projects, now living with an auntie. Just seems like a chaotic life, so I guess I just expected them to reflect it.”

It was a failed attempt on Lorain's part by Unique's standard. Unique slammed her milkshake on the table. It caused Lorain to jump, then turn her attention from the children and to Unique.

“Why do you do that?” Unique said in a soft, broken tone. Her initial thoughts were to get loud and ghetto, like she sometimes did—okay, often did. But she suspected that that was the type of behavior Lorain expected out of her, out of her children, so she restrained herself and refrained from acting in such a manner.

“Do what?” Lorain shrugged as if she hadn't just, in so many words, put Unique and her children down. Although that had not been Lorain's intentions, she had, in fact, insulted Unique.

“Act like you're better than me and my kids,” Unique answered. “You act like you are some high and mighty Mary the virgin just because I have all these kids and stuff and you don't have any?” Unique didn't wait for Lorain to reply before she continued as she stared over at her children playing without a care in the world. “So what that we're living with my sister while you're living in a nice little condo, townhouse, whatever you call it. Is that why you think you are so much better than us? Or do you really think you are better than me? Perhaps you don't at all. Perhaps you just want me to believe that you are better than me by always trying to put me down. You're trying to make me feel inferior to you. Put me down while you're lifted up, huh? Well, sweetheart, it's not working.”

“Unique, I—” Lorain started, but Unique was quick to cut her off.

“Do you think this is the life I wanted for myself? For my children?” Unique's voice was starting to crack. “I mean, what little girl really sits in front of her mirror playing dress up and tells herself, ‘When I grow up I want three kids with three baby daddies, to be on welfare, living in somebody else's house?'”

Lorain opened her mouth to speak again, but Unique was quick to cut her off again.

“This here is a curse. It's a curse that I'm trying to break. When I'm up in New Day praising and worshiping and falling out at the altar, it's not for show. It's not for God to bless me with a new car and a house of my own. It's to break the curse. And before you get it twisted, it's not my children that are the curse, but just my entire lifestyle. I mean, my mama got a bunch of kids and we all got different daddies. My sisters and brothers have all kinds of kids by different baby daddies and mamas. Heck, my twenty-six-year-old sister is about to be a grandmother.”

Lorain gasped as she looked at Unique with shock.

“Yeah, that's right, you heard me. But what would a diva like you know about that? With all of your clothes and designer shoes? You were probably born with a silver spoon in your mouth. If you found a food stamp from back in the day, you probably would have thought it was Monopoly money.” Unique snickered. “So now, knowing what you know about me and my family, I bet you can really turn your nose down at me. That's the kind of stock I come from. Or at least that's the stock I got thrown away into.” Unique had this far off look in her eyes.

“What do you mean thrown away into?” Lorain asked, curiosity probing her to do so.

“They ain't blood. The family I grew up with, they ain't my blood.”

Unique gave Lorain a look, debating whether or not she should share with her the story she was about to tell. But after deciding she'd already told her too much anyway, she decided to go for the gusto, really give Lorain something to talk about.

“See, my moms used to babysit for the woman and her husband who lived next door to her,” Unique started. “It was a double family housing unit. My mom lived on the left and the woman and her husband lived on the right. The couple was my foster parents. I got placed with them when I was four months. Before that I had been in the system since birth, after some man found me in a trashcan.”

Lorain sat frozen, hanging onto Unique's every word, as Unique shared the details of her life with her.

“I stayed with them until I was three years old.” Unique looked to the floor as if the details she were about to give were painful to recollect. “The woman and her husband paid my mom to keep me for two weeks while they went out of town to visit relatives in one of their hometowns. One of them, I can't really remember which one, landed a good job offer while they were there. It was an offer that evidently they couldn't pass up. After talking it over, the couple decided to make the move, to relocate, but they didn't want to take me with them. At first they were going to just give me back to the State, but by the same token, they didn't want so easily to give up that monthly check they were receiving to care for me. So they made a deal with my moms.”

“What kind of deal?” Lorain was almost afraid to ask, but once again, curiosity had forced her to.

“Well, as luck would have it, their luck, they'd been assigned a new caseworker while they were away. It was some woman who was brand new on the job, who had never met my foster parents before. To make a long story short, the couple bribed my mom into keeping me by offering her a piece of the pie. So when it was time for the social worker to come check up on me, my moms pretended to be the woman. She watched for the social worker to show up the day of their appointment. She met her on the doorstep and convinced her that somehow the wrong address had gotten on the paperwork, that it was the unit on the left and not the unit on the right that she needed to be coming to.

“The social worker penciled in my moms's address and said she would change it in the system when she got back to the office. Well, she did, so a check steadily came to my moms's address. She, in turn, sent half of it off to the foster parents and kept the other half for herself. I don't know how many years that went on. All I know is that I got thrown away by the system too.”

“How so?” Lorain asked.

“That social worker never came back. She called a couple of times because I remember my mom telling her that her husband was away working and unable to talk or whatever. Of course my mom didn't have a husband, so I knew it was just her lying to the social worker. So much time passed and everything appeared to be kosher, I guess, as far as the system was concerned. Eventually the social worker stopped coming or calling, got fired and another social worker was never assigned or something. But nonetheless, the checks still came and that's all that mattered to my moms.” Unique shook her head. “I found out by my older sister that my moms had written my foster parents a letter telling them that the State had taken me back. That way she no longer had to send them half of the money anymore and was able to keep all of the checks for herself.”

“How was it that your mother could even cash the checks? Didn't they have the foster mother's name on it?”

“Oh. Before the woman and her husband packed up and left for good, she let my mother use her social security card and birth certificate to get a picture ID with my moms's face on it. Cashing those checks wasn't a problem, especially at the little check cashing place my moms always went to to get it cashed. They welcomed government checks of any kind.”

Lorain shook her head. “All that for a lousy monthly check. I can only imagine what you thought of your moms and the foster mother once you found out.”

“Oh, I ain't got no beef with them,” Unique said nonchalantly and to Lorain's surprise. “They found a hustle, and they freaked it. It's that dirty witch who threw me away in the first place that I have a problem with.” Unique stared off into a daze as her jaw tightened. This was the first sign of anger Lorain had seen Unique express since she began confiding in her. “My life might have turned out so different hadn't she thrown me away in the first place. Coward!” Unique shook herself out of her daze, then stood up. “So you can see why I don't need someone like you always looking down your nose at my kids like they trash or something. It's their mama who is the one that's trash. Or at least my mama thought I was trash anyway. She threw me away like I was. So the last thing I need is someone like you making my kids feel like they ain't nothing.” On that note, Unique walked over and gathered her children and headed toward the exit door.

“Wait! Where are y'all going?”

“Home,” Unique said.

“Look, Unique, it's not like that. Let me just take you home, and we can talk. I really think we need to talk.” Lorain started to gather her purse and keys. “I believe God—”

Unique put her hand up. “You can go play church with somebody else. Me and my kids would rather walk,” Unique said in a snappy tone.

Before Lorain could insist on giving Unique and her children a ride home, they were out the door.

“You okay, ma'am? Should we call somebody?”

Lorain looked up to see the manager of McDonald's standing over her with a concerned look on her face.

“Here you go.” The manager extended a few napkins to Lorain.

Lorain was confused as to why the woman would be handing her a handful of napkins until she realized that tears had been pouring out of her eyes and that her nose was running profusely. Unbeknownst to her, it had been ten minutes since Unique and her children had left the restaurant. She'd been sitting there the entire time in shock, crying and heaving.

“Thank you.” Lorain accepted the napkins from the manager. “I'll be fine. Can you just tell me where your restroom is so I can go get myself together?” Lorain let out a nervous and embarrassed chuckle before the manager directed her toward the restroom.

She got up and made her way into the women's restroom. She stood in the mirror and began to wipe her face with the napkins given to her by the manager. As she looked at herself in the mirror, her face transformed into the scared little girl she remembered staring at in the restroom mirror at Crestview Middle School when she was only thirteen years old.

“God, I now know what this is about,” she whispered as fresh tears fell down her face. For the first time, Lorain knew why God had allowed her and Unique to cross paths. Now she only hoped He would tell her what to do next.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Mother Doreen asked her sister as she gripped her hand. “I can go in and do it if you'd like me to.”

“No, no,” Bethany said softy. “I can do it. It may be the last thing I ever get to do for him, but it's the least I can do for him. To stand up and say, ‘That's my husband,'” Bethany said proudly. “I know I probably wasn't much of a wife while he was—” Bethany's words trailed off and her tears trailed down her face.

“Now, now,” Pastor Davidson said as he and his wife stood with Mother Doreen and Bethany in the corridor of the lowest level of the hospital. Pastor Davidson said he'd tried to phone Pastor Frey because he knew he'd want to be there, but all he'd gotten was his voice mail. “It's not your fault that you were in and out of the hospital. You were the best wife you could be.”

Bethany shot Pastor Davidson a look that could almost kill. “I wasn't, and you know it,” Bethany replied, with disdain in her voice. “What good was I to him always laid up in the hospital?” She turned to face her sister. “Like you've always told me from the jump, I needed to walk in my healing.” She buried her face on her sister's shoulder. “I should have walked in it. I should have walked in my healing and been a better wife to my husband,” Bethany cried.

“It's okay,” Mother Doreen said as she stroked Bethany's hair. “It's okay.” After a few more moments, Bethany pulled away from her sister, and Mother Doreen asked the initial question once again. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Yes, yes,” Bethany said as she regained her composure. “I can do it.” She looked up at the doctor and the two police officers who'd showed up at her doorstep less than an hour ago to tell her that her husband's truck had been in a fatal accident and that he was believed to be the fatality, the body pulled from the burning truck. After Bethany came to after a few minutes of being unconscious, the police asked if she could come to the hospital and identify the body. They warned her that it was pretty much burned beyond recognition, but that they'd retrieved items and belongings that might have been able to help her confirm that it was him. If she weren't able to confirm, their next and only option would be to retrieve his dental records. So now here she stood, prepared to do just that, identify the remains of her husband. “Where is he?”

“Right this way,” the doctor said, taking Bethany by the elbow.

Halfway to the big glass window that was the final destination, Bethany stopped in her tracks and turned back to look at her sister. “Come with?” she said.

Mother Doreen smiled at the words. She remembered her baby sister using those words more than once whenever Bethany was trying to get Mother Doreen to allow her to “go bye-bye” with her when they were younger. “I'll come with,” Mother Doreen replied as she joined up with her sister. A few seconds later, Pastor Davidson and First Lady watched as Bethany cried and slivered down to the floor, yelling the word, “Nooooooooooo!”

 

 

 

“Baby, aren't you up and getting ready for church yet?” Mother Doreen asked her niece as she peeked inside the cracked door to Sadie's room.

Sadie was lying in bed on her back, staring up at the ceiling. It had only been less than a week since Uriah's funeral, and Sadie had been taking her father's death quite hard. Although she hadn't yet returned to school, Mother Doreen thought it would be a good idea if the family at least went to Sunday worship. It was obvious since church started in less than an hour that Sadie thought otherwise.

“I'm not going to church today.” Sadie's tone said that it wasn't up for discussion. “And to keep it real, I'm not going next Sunday, or the Sunday after that, or the Sunday after that either.”

Mother Doreen sighed and entered the room. “Look, baby,” Mother Doreen said as she walked over and sat down on the bed next to Sadie, “I know you miss your father and that you are probably asking that million dollar question: ‘Why did God let my daddy die?' but I assure you that God doesn't make any mistakes.”

“Tsk.” Sadie rolled her eyes and turned her back to her aunt. Her vivid disrespect shocked Mother Doreen. “Maybe God doesn't make mistakes, but His children sure do make a heck of a lot of them—way too many for me to want to be one of His children too.” Sadie sat up in bed. Before Mother Doreen could even ask what Sadie was referring to, Sadie freely gave her the answer. “Do you think just because I don't say anything that I don't see what's going on around this place?”

With raised eyebrows, Mother Doreen replied, “Look, I understand what you're going through, child, but don't be talking to me like I'm one of your little homegirls,
a'ight
?” Mother Doreen said with a sassy attitude to reflect that she was just hip enough to know that she was being disrespected by the way her niece was coming at her.

Ignoring her aunt's contempt, Sadie continued in her same disrespectful tone. “It's just like in church. Yeah, us younger kids might joke around, talk and pass a note here and there while pastor is preaching. We might even laugh at Sister So-and-So who's singing off key, but we hear and see everything that's going on. Us kids could tell you everything Pastor taught on while the grown ups thought we weren't paying attention.” Once again, Sadie gave off a tsk sound. “You grown folks always talking about how God is in the midst of everything. Well, if He's been in the midst of everything that's been going on around here and in that church, then I don't want any parts of Him.” She folded her arms adamantly and flopped back down on her bed. She then lightly mumbled, “No wonder Hudson got a girl pregnant.”

“What?”

The loud voice forced both Sadie and Mother Doreen to turn their heads toward the bedroom doorway, the direction from which the voice had come.

“Did you say—” Bethany grabbed her two month baby bump and gasped, “—that your brother—”she gasped again,“—got a girl pregnant?”

Bethany had already shared with everyone the information she'd known since two weeks after she'd missed her last period, that she was pregnant. She couldn't have hidden it much longer anyway, even if she'd wanted to. Due to her small, petite, thin frame, even though she was only a little bit pregnant, it was still obvious that she was with child.

Of course, prior to Bethany letting the cat out of the bag, Mother Doreen had already suspected as much, but Bethany had refused to confirm it since a part of her hadn't known exactly what she was going to do about the pregnancy. She'd never been an advocate for abortion or pro-choice. She'd always been pro-life without wavering, that was until she turned up pregnant at a time and an age in her life when the last thing she wanted was another child. She understood perfectly that split second thought Sarah Palin spoke of when learning she was pregnant with her last child. But with the recent death of Bethany's husband, being the cause behind the loss of another life was something she was not going to be a part of. An abortion was out of the question.

“I think you heard her right,” Mother Doreen replied to her sister's query. “I think we both heard the child right.” Mother Doreen hadn't taken her eyes off Sadie since the words had escaped from her mouth. She prayed that if she stared at her long enough, the words would find their way back in. That it wouldn't be so; that she wasn't about to be a great aunt. That her sister wasn't about to become a grandmother.

Sadie threw her hands up in the air. That secret was out now too. Hudson had just shared with Sadie the night before the fact that he'd gotten the girl he had been dating pregnant. He made Sadie promise that she wouldn't tell anyone, but Sadie knew her brother. She knew Hudson well enough to know that he knew she couldn't keep a secret to save her life. He was only telling her because of the very fact that he knew she would blab. Sadie telling the secret would let him off the hook from having to tell their mother. He figured that this way, by the time his mother confronted him about it, she'd already have had her initial outburst of anger and would perhaps go a lot easier on him than she would have had he been the bearer of such news.

“Oh, Jesus!” Bethany cried out.

“Bethany, honey, sit down.” Mother Doreen immediately ran to the aid of her sister, guiding her over to the chair at Bethany's work desk. “Are you okay? Can I get you some water or something?”

“Heck no, I ain't okay,” Bethany said, breathing deeply, still rubbing her belly. “Did I just hear that my seventeen-year-old son is going to be a—going to be a—a—”

“A daddy?” Sadie finished her mother's sentence. “That's exactly what you heard. Looks like little Frey the second there is going to have a playmate around here.” Sadie laughed sarcastically.

Both Bethany and Mother Doreen's mouths dropped open in complete shock.

“Like I said,” Sadie snared at Bethany, “I know what's going on around here. Daddy might not have because he never stayed around long enough to figure things out, but I'm not a fool. I may not be the brightest bulb on the string of lights, but I'm smart enough to figure out that Pastor Frey has been sniffing around you, Mama, way more than Daddy has. So when you turned up pregnant, I did the math. Either that baby is Pastor Frey's, or you're another candidate for the Immaculate Conception, because it sure as heck can't be Daddy's.”

Bethany covered her mouth with her hand and began to shake her head in shame. She'd been so tangled up in the covers of the messy bed she'd made for herself, that she never stopped to think for one minute that her children had an inkling of what was going on.

Sadie chuckled at the surprising look on her mother's face. “Yeah, I thought so.”

It was evident that Sadie was directing her hurt at the loss of her father toward her mother. She had to blame someone, and from the sounds of things, Bethany and God were running a tight race. Mother Doreen was sympathetic with her niece's pain, but still, she wasn't having it.

“Do you think this is funny, little girl?” Mother Doreen spoke in a tone in which her niece had never heard her speak. Her voice was loud with much authority.

To Sadie, this was uncharacteristic of her Aunt Doreen. All of a sudden, there was something different about her aunt's demeanor; like she meant business. The woman she was looking at now seemed to have a no nonsense aura about her. “Do you?” Mother Doreen said sternly as she marched back toward Sadie.

“No, ma'am,” Sadie said. She cowered down at first, but then it was like whatever had gotten into her aunt had gotten into her also. She lifted her head and puffed out her chest. Her shoulders were straight as she challenged Mother Doreen with her eyes. “But are you even surprised, Auntie, that Hudson's in the predicament he's in? I mean, look at the predicament his own mother is in.”

Bethany gasped. “Sadie, trust me, you have no idea what you're talking about.” She'd not wanted her daughter to know that her cruel words were getting to her, but the tears that dared to fill her eyes and roll over her bottom lid gave her away. Bethany was hurt. Mother Doreen was infuriated.

“Look, child, grieving or not, I will not allow you to disrespect your mother like that,” Mother Doreen scolded. “The Bible says to honor thy—”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Sadie covered her ears as if she didn't want to hear it. “I don't care about that Bible or God anymore. Look where it's all gotten this family! We're like some trashy chick lit novel turned
Lifetime
movie. Starring Bethany the whoremonger and co-starring Doreen, the Bible toting sister who—”

Before Mother Doreen knew it, her hands were on her niece's wrists, snatching her hands away from her ears. Sadie was in shock as her auntie gripped her wrists with a death grip. Sadie tried to snatch away, but Mother Doreen was locked down on her like a parking boot on a car with ten unpaid parking tickets.

“Reen!” Bethany said hysterically at the now physical altercation that was taking place between her sister and her fourteen-year-old daughter.

Mother Doreen and Sadie were so involved in their tussle, that they never even saw Bethany leap up from the chair, trip over the throw rug at the foot of Sadie's bed, and land flat on her stomach.