Man Enough For Me (30 page)

When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee … when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned.

Jules opened her eyes and glanced at LeTavia’s red dress. It sure looked enough like fire for her.

With those words rolling around in her mind, she pulled down the brim of her cartwheel hat, which she had dug out of the back of her closet that morning, and walked smoothly down the main aisle to the front, slipping into the row behind Easy’s.

“Hiding from someone?” Tanya asked.

She had slid in beside Jules only moments after Jules had sat down.

“Why would you think that?” Jules asked, feigning ignorance.

“No reason,” Tanya said dryly. “Except that if I hadn’t recognized my Gucci pumps on your feet, I wouldn’t have been able to tell who you were.”

Jules silently chided herself for not returning Tanya’s shoes months ago after she had borrowed them to wear to the hospital’s volunteer banquet.

“Shhh,” Jules hissed, trying to quiet Tanya and change the subject at the same time. “Pastor Thomas is about to start.”

“Oww!” she exclaimed quietly as she felt Tanya pinch her hard. She rubbed the sore spot on her arm and glared at Tanya as much as she could from under the wide brim of the floppy, elegant hat. But Tanya was already ignoring her.

“This morning I want to talk to you church about surrender,” Pastor Thomas began. “Have you truly surrendered your life to God?”

Pastor Thomas’s message seemed to hit a chord in Jules’s heart. She knew that it was the type of sermon he usually gave when someone was about to give his or her heart to Christ, but that morning she felt as if he was speaking directly to her.

“Surrendering means trusting God to lead even when things don’t look the way we think they should. Sometimes it may
even feel like God is not there. But I tell you, friends, all of this is often a way for God to get us to look to Him.

“I know a lot of you are going through some hard times. I know because I can see it in your faces. In the tired smiles you bring with you on Sabbath morning. I know because many of you have shared these concerns with me. But I tell you that even though things look bleak, never should you think that God is not there. Sometimes God does not reveal Himself immediately because He is waiting to see if we will trust Him.”

Had she really trusted God fully? Jules wasn’t sure she had. Instead of trusting, she had been sulking about how much things hadn’t been going her way. But what if what seemed wrong to her was right in God’s eyes?

“I will tell you another thing, friends,” Pastor Thomas continued. “Sometimes surrendering means walking in a path that doesn’t feel right. The book of Proverbs, chapter 16, says, ‘there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.’ God sees the end from the beginning, and sometimes, by leading us in a path that feels uncomfortable, He is saving us from an evil end.”

The words hit Jules like a ton of bricks. What if she was supposed to lose her job, so that God could open a door to something else? And with that thought came an even more difficult one. What if she was supposed to lose Germaine?

Jules closed her eyes and sank a little lower in the pew. She didn’t know if she wanted to hear that. Earlier in the week, she had thought she just might be able to let go, but seeing him this morning had made her a lot less sure. How could God make her get so attached to someone, only to have him taken away? That didn’t seem right.

The thought bothered Jules so much that she didn’t even notice when Pastor Thomas sat down and Sister Crawford took the mike. It was only when the small woman’s strong contralto voice began to fill the church that Jules sat up and took notice.

“In the morning, when I rise. In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.
”

Jules felt the words wrap around her and seep into her soul.

She knew this song. Momma Jackson used to sing it in the kitchen on a Sunday morning as she kneaded the dough for the homemade bread she used to bake every Sunday up until the week Jules’s father left. Jules remembered sitting on the steps to the back porch and listening to her mother’s sweet voice. She had never grasped fully what the song meant then, but as she sat there thinking of all she was willing to give up, and all that Easy was prepared to give up for Jesus, the full meaning came to her.

She couldn’t stop the tears that filled her eyes as the last few words of the song hung in the air. It was true; the only thing she needed was Jesus. He alone knew what was best for her, and if she trusted Him, in His wisdom, He would give her exactly what she needed.

A few minutes later, when Easy came out of the water, Jules found that she wasn’t the only one crying. In fact there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

As Jules watched different people embrace Easy, she became overwhelmed by the warmth that the members at Scarborough Memorial showed to her newly converted friend. To many of them, he was a stranger, but still they welcomed him in and celebrated him as if he was one of their own.

“I am so proud of you,” Jules said at the end of the service, as she pulled Easy into a bear hug in the church courtyard.

“Thanks, baby girl,” he said, smiling. “If it wasn’t for you and Grams on my back, I don’t know if any of this would have happened. But I can’t say I’m not grateful.”

Jules beamed at him. She hadn’t been sure this day would ever come, and she was so glad it had. She had always had a special place in her heart for Easy, but now he felt more like family than ever before. Now he was part of the eternal family.

“Hey, I hope you don’t think you’re gonna have him all to yourself,” Maxine said, squeezing in beside Jules and throwing her arms around Easy. Jules laughed and made space for the throng of well-wishers who were lined up to congratulate Easy. There would be plenty of time to talk with him later.

Not wanting to linger much longer, Jules retrieved her keys from her purse and began to make her way to the exit. But before she could stop herself, she found her eyes searching the crowd.

It didn’t take long for her to spot him. He was standing near the front exit to the church, and he was all alone.

Jules found herself frozen in the churchyard, watching him. A big part of her wanted to walk over and say hi. She desperately wanted to know what was going on with him. How were things going at the Lounge? Maxine had told her that he had shut down the place and was planning on moving to a new location. Had he found somewhere yet? How were his mother and Soroya doing? And of course there were her own selfish questions, like if he ever thought about her at all.

As if hearing her thoughts, he looked up and caught Jules’s eye. Even though he was a good distance away and half the church population stood between them, Jules’s stomach still began to churn nervously.

Somehow in the midst of her panic, she managed to muster up a small smile and a tiny wave. He smiled back, and Jules let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She was almost sure he was about to offer a wave, but a slim female figure cloaked in red stepped right in front of him, cutting off Jules’s line of vision.

LeTavia.

Jules had almost forgotten about her.

As she watched the girl slide her hand seductively down Germaine’s arm, she wondered if it was laziness, or just plain maliciousness that made LeTavia go after every man Jules happened to be involved with. And if the latter was the case, she wondered what she had ever done to the chick to make her hate her that much.

It didn’t matter now anyway.

Exhaling loudly, Jules turned around and made her way to the parking lot alone.

Guess it’s just You and me, Jesus.

“Yo, J!”

Jules glanced back and was surprised to see Truuth walking toward her.

“Let me holler at you for a minute.”

She stopped and stood shading her eyes from the bright midday sun as she waited for him to catch up with her. She wondered what it was he could possibly want.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Truuth said when he was close enough.

Even though he was standing right in front of her, his eyes were darting down to the side as if he was nervous about what he was going to say.

“What’s up?” Jules asked.

“I know I been giving you a hard time, but I just wanted to say thanks for holding it down at the hospital with G and ‘Roya the other day,” he said quietly.

Jules shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Yeah, but I know you and him got some issues, and me an’ you wasn’t really cool like that, so you could’ve easily walked it off, you know? But you didn’t, and I respect that.”

Jules nodded. She could still see Germaine standing in the churchyard with LeTavia over Truuth’s shoulder.

“How’s his mom doing?” she asked hesitantly.

Truuth shrugged. “It’s been hard for her. And G won’t talk about it much. But I think she’s doing a lot better. She’s out of the hospital, and she’s staying at his apartment with ‘Roya until they can find another place to stay.”

Jules nodded. She wanted to press for more, but knew it wasn’t her place.

“Tell them hi for me next time you see them, okay?”

Truuth nodded solemnly. Then he cocked his head to the side and looked at Jules curiously. “You really care about them, don’t you.”

Jules nodded.

“You’re not a bad chick, Jules Jackson,” Truuth said. “Maybe I was too hard on you.

“That don’t mean I forgotten about all that mess from before,” he added quickly. “But if you was willing to step up like that,
then you probably okay. Plus, we both believers, and you know God ain’t down with that malice stuff.”

Jules smiled at Truuth’s roundabout way of patching things up.

“Thanks, Truuth,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “Did Max put you up to this?”

“Nah, J, this was all me,” he said, grinning. Jules rolled her eyes. Maxine had definitely been chewing his ear off.

“But on the real, though,” he said, getting serious again. “We cool?”

“Yeah, we’re okay.”

He nodded his head in approval and gave Jules a quick hug.

“A’ight. I catch up with you later then, Jules.”

Jules watched as he loped through the parking lot toward the church gate where Maxine was standing and pretending not to watch him.

“Hey, Truuth!”

He stopped short, and Jules walked the small distance to catch up with him.

“Tell Maxine to swing by me tonight. I wanna take her out to dinner,” Jules said.

“A’ight, I’ll let her know.”

“And, Truuth?”

He looked back at Jules one last time.

“Tell her to make it just the two of us.”

“So I notice you’ve been missing lately. That morning sickness got you on lockdown, don’t it?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe, girl,” Maxine said, rubbing her tummy. She had barely started showing, but she had already adopted the pregnant woman stance. “It’s more like all day sickness. It never really ends,” Maxine said, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, well, you’re a nurse. You should know how to take care of that,” Jules said.

Maxine shook her head. “It’s different when you’re on the other end.”

After much persuasion Maxine had agreed to go with Jules
to Mandalay, a small Southeast Asian restaurant near the corner of Markham Road and Lawrence Avenue, to catch an early dinner. Jules was glad that Maxine had come, for Jules was starting to feel guilty about how little time she had spent with Maxine lately. Jules knew that with everything going on in Maxine’s life, Maxine would need her support now more than ever—even if she was too stubborn to ask for it.

“Ladies, what will you be having this evening?”

“Pan-seared salmon with pad Thai noodles,” Jules said, handing her unopened menu to the waiter. She had been here enough times to know exactly what she wanted.

Maxine glanced through the menu a bit longer before ordering the same thing. It wasn’t until their drinks came that Maxine turned to look at Jules seriously.

“Okay, so what’s this about?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Jules asked, trying to feign innocence.

“Why’d you make such a big production of asking me to dinner and telling me not to tell Tanya?”

“It’s not a big production,” Jules said defensively. “Is something wrong if I want to have dinner alone with one of my best friends?”

Maxine gave Jules a look that told her she wasn’t buying it.

“Okay, fine,” Jules said, dropping the act. “I wanted to talk to you about the fact that you’ve been missing from church lately.”

After the service earlier Tanya had told Jules that Maxine had been absent from church almost every week during the past month. And the one week Tanya had convinced her to show up, she had left halfway through. It seemed that Maxine had shut down on Tanya and had refused to talk about it, so Jules figured she might as well try to break through on her own.

“I didn’t know if it had something to do with you and Tanya, so I didn’t want to call you at the house or ask you in front of her,” Jules continued.

“Oh,” Maxine said. She looked down at her drink but said nothing more.

“So? What’s happening with you? Are you and Tanya having a fight or something?”

“No.”

“So how come you haven’t been to church, or even to the studio for the last couple of weeks. Is the morning sickness really that bad?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Maxine sighed and began stirring her drink with the straw, still not looking at Jules.

“Max …”

“It’s because … It’s because I don’t feel comfortable, okay?”

Jules looked at Maxine in confusion.

“I’m not following you.”

“I’m starting to show, Jules,” Maxine said, looking purposefully down at her stomach and then back at Jules.

“So?”

“So … now everybody’s got something to say,” Maxine said, visibly upset.

“Everybody like who?” Jules asked, getting annoyed herself.

She loved Scarborough Memorial, and most of the people there were warm and supportive. But she knew that Maxine was right—there were always a few people who felt that their mess didn’t stink and that that gave them the right to talk down to others. But all Jules wanted was a name—just one name, so she could tell that person where to get off.