Mama B - A Time to Dance (Book 2) (11 page)

“Come on
, Kionna
. Let’s go outside and look at some of the
flowers in my back yard. Right out the back door.” I pointed and she took off
running ahead of me.

I said to
Derrick and Twyla, “Y’all need to have this conversation without your baby in
the room. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t act a fool in my house, you
hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,”
from both of them.

Kionna
and I walked through the back yard
hand-in-hand, examining the fall mums.

“Mama B, can I
have a flower?”

“Oh, sweetie,
these flowers have to stay in this here pot with their brothers and sisters.”

“I want a sister,
too!”
Kionna
announced.

She nodded
proudly and patted her stomach. “Yes. In my mommy’s tummy. She said it might be
a girl. But it might be a boy. We don’t know.”

My heart sank
deep into my chest. Derrick was about to be a father again, and he didn’t even
know it.

Just
as Kionna
was about to practice skipping across the
stone path, Twyla come rushing out the back door with the two bags swinging
from one arm. “Thanks for the offer, Mama B, but baby girl and I are going home
tonight.”

She grabbed her
daughter’s hand and, instantly, Kionna started hollering, “No! I wanna stay
with my daddy! I wanna stay with Mama B! Pleeeeeeeeease!” She fell all out on
the ground.

Twyla snatched
her up so hard, I thank God the child’s arm didn’t come out the socket.

“Please, Twyla,
don’t be so rough with her. It’s not her fault.”

“I wanna stay!”
the baby wailed.

“Shut up!” Now Twyla
was crying, too.

“Sweetheart, I
can’t imagine what all you’re going through right now. And I’m sorry Derrick
has made such bad decisions. But woman-to-woman, you gon’ have to get a hold of
yourself. For you, Kionna, and the new baby.”

Twyla froze for
a second. Then she pleaded with me, “Don’t tell Derrick. I shouldn’t have told
Kionna. I don’t even know if I’m gonna have this baby.”

With that, she
scooped up little bit and stomped toward the side gate.

“Twyla, wait!”

“I’m sorry, Mama
B. We have to go.”

I left Derrick
to himself for the evening because it was clear to me, by the way he was
scrapin’ the food into the trash and clangin’ those pots in the sink, he needed
some time to collect himself.

Me and the Lord
had a serious conversation about Derrick and Twyla that night. He brought back
to remembrance the time my Albert called himself carrying on with a woman at
the YMCA. I mean, goin’ swimmin’ at that gym every day of the week!

Once I got wind
of him walking back to the car with her and such-and-so after the workout (plus
he wasn’t slick enough to not act overly happy about going to the YMCA), honey
I formulated me a plan to keep my husband. When Albert got ready to go
exercise, I packed me and all four of our kids into that car and we sat right
there on the side of that pool while he swam. I wanted the enemy to know he was
gon’ have to go through all five of us plus the Lord to break up my family!

But the Lord
showed me Twyla didn’t know how to stand. Neither did Derrick. Most young folk
ain’t used to hardship. They think whenever somebody ain’t makin’ you happy,
the love is gone, and you supposed to bail out. They hadn’t been married long
enough to figure out that the secret to stayin’ together is to stay together.

Those two needed
some intercedin’, and that’s what I intended to do until He said otherwise.

Lord, seem
like that’s all I do is intercede for people all day!  First Henrietta,
then the nurse, now Derrick and Twyla’s family.
No sooner than I prayed that, the Holy
Spirit brought Hebrews 7:25 to my remembrance.
Therefore he is able to save
completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to
intercede for them.
Apparently, me and Jesus both be standin’ in the gap for
people all day every day. I was in good company.
Thank you, Father, for
using me
.

With a heavy face and even heavier steps,
Derrick followed me to church. He didn’t sing no songs, didn’t clap his hands
with the choir. He stayed on the outside when the congregation gathered around
the altar for prayer. And he barely moved his lips when Pastor directed, “Say
yes!” toward the end of the sermon.

Back at the
house, I got tired of him pushing my candied carrots around on the plate,
messin’ over good food. I dropped my fork, wiped my lips with my napkin, and
called him on it. “Derrick, me and you ‘bout to have a come-to-Jesus meeting.
Now, let’s start at the beginning. What is your trial all about?”

He didn’t waste
no time; must have wanted to get it off his chest. “I went to a club. A strip
club.”

I didn’t flinch.

He stopped.
Peered at me. “You know what a strip club is, Mama B?”

“Of course I
know what a strip club is. I live on
earth
.”

“Okay. I wanted
to be sure, since you didn’t have a reaction.”

“I’m waitin’ to
hear the story, boy.”

“So, there I was
at the strip club,” he continued, “just watching the ladies dance. Nothing’s
going on – it’s just one of those places that’s more like a restaurant
than a club. The strippers are just kind of…there. Like entertainment. Then
this one dude says one of the girls likes me. She wants to give me my own
dance…you know…at a discount. So I was like, cool. I’m a
man
. I ain’t
gon’ turn down no lap dance, you know?”

“Um, excuse me,”
I interrupted softly, “how is this part
not
cheatin’?”

He got all
animated, hands flying everywhere, “Because, I mean, she’d only be dancing the
same way she’s dances on stage, except she’d be…closer.”

“In your face.”

“Right,” he
says, “but not naked. Not
totally
naked.” He sighed. “Mama B, I don’t
know if I can talk about this with you.”

I flicked my
hand toward him, then crossed my arms, “Go on, Derrick. I ain’t gon’ say
another word ‘til you get finished.”

“Okay. So, when
I get to this, you know, kind of like a back room, you know, I’m sitting down,
she’s dancing and, you know…she’s
dancing
all over me. All of a sudden,
we hear this commotion in the club. A few screams. So she locks the door, jumps
into my arms telling me she’s scared. Cops come busting through the door and
arrest me!”

He leaned back
and threw both arms out to his side.

“Arrested you
for what?”

“That’s the same
thing I asked! When I got down to the station, I learned that they were raiding
the club because the owner had underage girls dancing. Some of them were even
being forced to work there, like modern-day slaves. I think that’s terrible,
but I didn’t know. I’m just an innocent customer, you know? How was I supposed
to know the club owner was smuggling people and hiring underage girls? I mean,
I assumed he was a regular man running a regular business.”

I
shrugged. 

“Now they’re
trying to lay this indecency with a minor charge on me, which is…kind of…part
of the reason I needed to stay with you and why I couldn’t stay at the hotel. I
can’t dwell within a thousand feet of a school, a daycare, or a playground,
which is hard to do in the city. So, I really, really, really thank you for
letting me stay here.” He reached into his pocket. “By the way, here’s my
rent.”

I took the wad
of money. Thanked him.

He quizzed me,
“So, you believe I’m innocent, right?”

“Maybe innocent
of the
charge
…” I insinuated.

“Right.” He
nodded. “But guilty of being a man.”

I looked at him
above the rim of my glasses. “You think that’s the definition of a man? Running
to strip clubs?”

“No, but it’s
just a strip club. I mean, even Jesus hung out with prostitutes, right?”

The devil is
a liar!
“Who told you
Jesus
hung out
with prostitutes?”

He frowned. “I
think I saw it on TV. It’s in the Bible, right?”

“Let’s get this
straight. The prostitutes and tax collectors flocked to Jesus because they
wanted to be in His presence. And another thing, the prostitute Jesus
did
know wasn’t a prostitute after she met Him.”

He conceded for
a second, “Oh.” Then he digressed, “But everybody knows we men are visual
creatures. I mean, those girls…they’re just eye candy. There’s nothing wrong
with admiring a woman’s body,” he argued. “It’s a beautiful thing and—”

“That’s the
problem,” I stopped him. “We’re women. Not
things
.
Kionna’s
gonna grow up to be a woman someday. She
gon’ have boobs and a behind and hips just like them girls dancin’ on your lap.
You want somebody to look at your daughter like a
thing
?”

He put his hands
on his ears. “No! Don’t say that! Me and Twyla are gonna raise our daughter
better than that. She’ll know better than to work in a strip club.”

“Well, if it’s
good enough for you to go, might be good enough for her, too. Plus, I know Roy
James and Winona raised you right. And here
you
are strapped to an ankle
monitor!”

He turned his
attention back to the carrots and muttered, “So much for no condemnation.”

“You missin’ my
point. No parent says, ‘I want my child to grow up to be a
thing
.’ 
And they sure don’t want them on legal lockdown, either. Just like those girls
have gotten themselves into a bad predicament, so have you. You got no business
lookin’ down on them to justify your manly temptations, which you don’t have no
business satisfyin’ apart from Twyla anyhow.”

“But Mama B, I
am
a man.”

“Derrick, you a
man
of God
. Christ lives in you. You know that?”

“Yes, ma’am, I
know.”

“Well, let me paint
a picture of who you are in Christ.” Chile, I rattled off every scripture I
could remember to build Derrick up in the knowledge of the new man he had
become. Then I topped it off with Psalm 119:10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 so
he would know he ain’t got to do all the work, the Lord would keep him if he
wanted to be kept.

Once I got done
speaking life into my nephew, I do believe I felt like Jesus did when the woman
with the issue of blood touched his garment; the power of God had left out of
me and flew across that table as Derrick sat there looking like he’d seen his true
reflection in a mirror for the first time.

Libby and I were
halfway through with our Wednesday walk when I got texts from Frank and Deacon
Martin almost at the same time. Both saying Henrietta was pulling out of the
coma. We hopped right into Peter’s truck and headed for the hospital. I called
Ophelia, and she said she’d meet us there.

After four days
of being laid up in the bed with her arms and legs tied to the posts, Henrietta
was meaner than a whole hive of Africanized bees.

“I can’t survive
off of no IV! I need to some
real
food!” she screamed at the nurse’s
assistant.

“But your
doctor—”

“You tell my
doctor I said to kiss my grits!” Her countenance was wild with anger.

Libby tried to
calm her with a soothing tone. “Henrietta, you’ve got to give your stomach a
chance to revive. Maybe tomorrow, they’ll start you off slow with Jell-o.”

Henrietta looked
past Libby’s shoulder and bugged her eyes out at me. “What you got this white
woman in here for?”

“Oh, please,”
Libby coaxed, “I’m not just some white woman. I’ve been knowing you for years.
You know who I am, right?”

“Yeah, I know
you Libby. But you still white as a lily, Libby. Always have been, always will
be.”

One thing was
for sure, Henrietta hadn’t lost her way with words.

Libby took a
step around me and sat in the visitor’s chair.

“Now, Henrietta,
you got to stop this foolishness,” I advised. “We’re all here because we love
you and we want to see you get better. You got to stop being so mean.”

The nurse got my
attention by putting an arm on my shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay. She
doesn’t mean what she says. She’s irritable and confused, as many patients are
under these circumstances. She probably won’t remember much of what happened
right before the coma or much of what she says today, either. See, look. She’s
asleep already.”

In just a few
seconds’ time, Henrietta had slipped back to sleep. Her mouth slacked open, her
breathing deep. I never knew a person could go from sixty to zero that quickly.

“Is this normal,
too?” I asked the nurse.

“Well,
technically, she’s still in the coma. She’ll probably sleep twenty-two to
twenty-three hours a day, similar to a newborn. Her body is repairing and
rebuilding itself. In a couple of days, she’ll be up more until, finally, she’s
back to her regular schedule. She’s very lucky. She wasn’t unconscious long,
and we were able to bring her sugar down from fourteen hundred steadily.”