Mama B - A Time to Dance (Book 2) (7 page)

If I didn’t
agree, he might carry on with that funny dance. “Okay, okay. Salsa next week.”

I could hardly
get that image of Frank dancing out of my mind as I drove home.
Salsa
dancing
. Goodness, Libby was going to have a good laugh when I told her
about my plans to take the town with Dr. Wilson again.

As I stepped out
of my car, I cut a little step of my own.
Yeah, I still got it. Thank You,
Lord
.

But my smile
faded as I walked up to my screen door and saw the business card wedged in the
doorway. I grabbed the exposed half and opened the door simultaneously.

Dallas County
Sheriff’s Office
. I
gasped. In all my years, hadn’t never had the police come up on my door. The
name on the card read
Lieutenant R. Gonzalez
.  And somebody
hand-wrote “Call me at your earliest convenience” on the card.

Father?
But before I could get the prayer fully
formed, the answer hit me: This got something to do with Derrick.

I prayed my
nerves back down, then waited up for Derrick like he was my own child out on a
date. Only thing was, I didn’t have a curfew time for a grown man. Actually,
this was the first time all week he had been gone this late in the evening. Had
to be almost ten o’clock before he came rushing through the door.

And I was
sitting right in the front parlor to greet him. “Evening.”

“Evening, Mama
B.”

I thrust the
card at him. “You had a visitor today.”

He took one look
at the card and fumed, “Aw, snap! They’re watching me!”

“Who’s watching
you?”

“The
prosecutors, the judge, the cops, everybody!”

“Wait a minute
here. Why is the law after you, Derrick? Are you on the run?”

“No. I’m on
house arrest.” He
heitched
up his pant leg and
showed me the black box strapped to his ankle.

Lord, I ain’t
never seen one of those with my own eyes in all my life! My hand flew to my
chest. “House arrest! For what?”

He closed his
eyes and took a deep breath. “Mama B, it’s a long story and I really, really,
really
don’t want to go into it. It’s better if you don’t know. Besides, I’m not
guilty.”

“No, siree. You
gon’ have to tell me more than this so I can decide if it’s wise for me to let
you stay here or not. I ain’t gon’ have no police officers and drug dealers and
loan sharks stakin’ out my house!” He already done pressed my kindness enough
comin’ in here with that unannounced radio transistor remote control tracking
device. For all I knew, they had my whole house wired.

He held his
hands in surrender position, palms facing me. “Oh, no, it’s not like that.
You’re not in any danger, and neither am I. I just have to be in this house at
a certain time. There are no bad guys involved. Only me awaiting trial.”

‘Bout this time,
my chest was beating so fast I had to stop talking. Good thing I’d stayed on
the couch. Derrick still stood, I guess waiting for me to kick him out. But I
couldn’t do that just yet, not without calming down and getting a few more
answers.

“Did you hit
Twyla?”

Derrick’s nose
snarled up. “No, Mama B, I would
never
put my hands on a woman. I
haven’t had a fight with
anybody
since, maybe, seventh grade.”

I was relieved
to see him get so indignant about my question. Showed me he still had some kind
of sense about himself. Some boundaries. Next question. “Did you steal
something?”

“No. This has
nothing to do with dishonesty.” He continued with his defense, “It’s not about
violence or drugs or money. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the
police barged in and accused me of something they
thought
I was
doing—along with half the other people in the club. But I wasn’t. So,
really, it’s all a huge misunderstanding.”

I crossed my
arms and studied him for a minute. “What you gon’ do now?”

He shrugged.
“Can’t do nothin’ but wait for my hearing. Hope I get off. Hope Twyla gives me
another chance.”

Inside, I asked
the Spirit to let me know what to do next. Kick him out or let him stay? With
no clear answer arriving inside, I knew all I could do was pray. Better yet,
we
needed to pray.

“Derrick, it
sounds like you got something going on that you need the Lord’s help with.” I
motioned for him to sit next to me.

He whistled. “I
really don’t think the Lord is on my side on this one, Mama B.” He flounced
down in defeat.

“God is
for
you,” I assured Derrick, putting my hands on top of his. “No matter what you’ve
done, no matter what you haven’t done, He’s always standing right there waiting
for you to turn to Him so He can get involved in your life and
stay
in
your life for His glory.”

He escaped my
grip and put both hands on top of his head. “Yeah, but I’ve made a lot of
broken promises to God, you know? I told him I’d start going to church if He’d
help me do this, or I’d stop drinking if He’d get me out of that. I mean, why
would He do it now after all the times I’ve lied to Him? I know
I
wouldn’t help me if I were Him.”

I smiled at my
nephew. “God is better than you. And He’s better than you think He is.”

“But why? Why
would He take me back after all the times I messed up?” Derrick inquired.

Tell you what,
the sincere question mark in that boy’s eye let me know everything leading up
to then had been for God’s glory. Right then, that night, I knew Derrick was
ripe for the picking. Took everything in me not to start my holy dance!

“Because He
loves you. Listen, Derrick, God knows the end from the beginning. He already
knew how many times you would betray Him. If He knows it’s gonna be
eighty-three times you get off track, He doesn’t get upset when you mess up the
sixty-third time. He knows you’re one step closer to His heart. What good does
it do getting all upset when you only have twenty more times to go?”

I seen that
twinkle in Derrick’s eyes. “I never thought of it like that.”

“If there wasn’t
any hope for you, you wouldn’t still be here,” I said. “It’s obvious the Lord’s
been talking to you. And it’s obvious you gon’ make a real big mess of your
life if you keep runnin’ from Him. Are you ready to exchange your life for
Christ’s yet?”

Chile, Derrick’s
knees beat mine to the floor. “Yes, ma’am, I’m ready. I’m
past
ready.”

And right there
in my front room, my nephew gave himself to the Lord, ankle monitor and all.

Derrick beat me
gettin’ up Sunday morning. For the previous couple of days, he had joined me at
the kitchen table during my Bible study. Asked me all kinds of questions, some
of ‘em I couldn’t answer and didn’t want to. “You gon’ have to ask the Lord
about that one,” I told him more than once.

And he’d look at
me like I had a tree growing out of my ear. He shook his head and said, “Mama
B, I don’t know. I’m scared of Christians who say God talks to them.”

I cocked my
noggin to the side and advised him, “It’s the Christians who
don’t
hear
from God you ought to be afraid of.”

Bright and
early, he marched into the church with one of my kids’ old Bibles in hand and
sat right between me and Ophelia on the second pew.

Henrietta had
done found herself a seat clear on the other side of the church from us. Now,
she know the mothers and the deacons are supposed to sit on the frontmost rows
in case somebody get to hollerin’ uncontrollable-like, then we got to take ‘em
to the back and keep an eye on ‘em while the Lord finish purgin’ ‘em.

But I wasn’t
gon’ worry about Henrietta. She’d made up in her mind I was a villain. I
couldn’t do nothin’ but pray and wait for God to move.

Meanwhile, I
felt kind of sorry for Derrick sandwiched between two old ladies. But he didn’t
look like he paid it no mind.

Wasn’t until we
had the announcements followed by greeting the visitors that I realized a whole
lot
of folk at Mt. Zion was payin’
Derrick
some mind.

“Would all of
our guests please stand
,” Angela,
the church
secretary, requested like she did every Sunday.

I glanced at
Derrick to assure him Angela was indeed talkin’ ‘bout him. He set his Bible in
the case directly in front of him and stood up, straightening his jeans with
both hands. He shot a quick look at his ankle, I guess to make sure his monitor
was covered.

“Please tell us
your name, your home church, and what brings you here this morning.”

Derrick cleared
his throat. “My name is
Derrick Jackson
.
I’m…kinda lookin’ for a home church. And I’m a guest of Mama B. She’s my aunt.”

“Well, Brother
Derrick, you are welcome, welcome, welcome!” Angela bellowed despite the fact
that she was already wearing a microphone. “Mt. Zion family, please join me in
welcoming our guest.”

Clive
began playing the usual guest-greeting song,
I Was Glad
When They Said Unto Me
. All of a sudden, a swarm of young ladies come buzzing
around us. Every last unmarried woman under the age of forty in the building
must have noticed his bare ring finger and come rushing up to make herself
known to him. And I mean all of ‘em – Henrietta’s niece, Pastor’s cousin,
Angela’s sister, too.

I don’t mean to
be sizin’ up my nephew, so…well…let me say it like this: Derrick ain’t been
beat with the ugly stick, but he don’t look like the kind of young man that
would be on a book cover, neither. And there were lots of single men in Peasner
for these young ladies to swamp to.

Didn’t take a
genius to realize something was going on with Derrick. He had a woman-magnet on
him, and the Lord didn’t put it there. Whatever kind of situation Derrick got
himself into was all about spiritual warfare – he had been runnin’ from
God while the enemy been bombarding him with temptation.

I done seen it
too many times. Sometimes with women, but mostly with men. Women ain’t studyin’
him until he get married. Then all of a sudden, he’s ‘bout the most handsomest
thing to the woman at his job or the lady he done seen
every week
at the
check cashin’ place. Only, now that he done tied the knot with somebody else,
the devil got a reason to loosen it (the enemy don’t like nothin’ to remind him
of the Trinity).

Next thing you
know, the married man’s got way more attention on him than he gon’ get from his
wife, ‘specially if they got little ones. Don’t take but a little praise and a
few bats of the eyelashes to turn a good man bad. Or, if it’s a woman, a couple
of compliments and a teaspoon of attention. She’ll be doing things she never
thought she
could
do.

Plain and
simple: Derrick and his marriage were under attack. And just like the enemy was
working on my nephew, he had to be working on his wife, Twyla, too. Probably
hardening her heart with mean words about her husband, making her feel like a
fool for marrying him in the first place.

I felt like
shooin’ those hot little temptations away from Derrick. They ain’t had no clue,
either, how the enemy was usin’ them. You ask me, most folk don’t know nothin’
‘til they hit 50 years old anyway.

Pastor preached
on keeping the faith. When service was over, Derrick looked at me and beamed,
“Mama B, that was just what I needed to hear today.”

“Well, God is
good. Let’s get on back across the yard.” I held tight to his arm as I promptly
escorted my nephew back to my house so this spontaneous hospitality committee
wouldn’t sidetrack him.

No sooner than I
got in the house and changed clothes so I could get ready for Son and Cameron
to come eat with us, here come somebody beatin’ on the back door. I knew it had
to be somebody from the church, and I was prepared to give whichever young lady
it was a good tongue-lashing.

But when I
opened the door, I could see Henrietta was ready to give
me
one.

“You ought to be
ashamed of yourself!” she hollered in my face, her wide-brim hat flapping up
and down with every syllable. Didn’t help that her finger was within an inch of
my nose.

Lord knows, I
had to step back because ain’t nobody been up in my face like that since
the 1960s,
when a
white man told me to get out of his store despite the desegregation laws. I’ll
be a monkey’s uncle before I let it happen again!

“Henrietta, you
can come back here when you can talk to me like you got some sense,” I
declared.

I tried to shut
the screen door back, but she grabbed the wood frame. I heard Derrick’s
footsteps coming toward us, thank God.

“What’s going
on?”

“Derrick, if
this woman don’t get off my back porch, I’m gonna call the police.”