Reverend Feelgood (4 page)

Outside the patio door, a gentle wind stirred the dead leaves in the coral-colored clay flowerpots as unseasonably warm temperatures heralded February’s arrival. But Jennifer Stevens didn’t notice. She was too busy looking at the picture that had burned into her conscience from the moment her eyes beheld it the previous Sunday: the sly smile and secretive wink she’d seen her pastor, Nathaniel Thicke, bestow on Simone Noble’s daughter.
Simone’s daughter, for God’s sake! A frickin’ child!

Too keyed up to sit, Jennifer rose from the table by the patio and walked outside. She wrapped arms, clad in a wool sweater, around herself. Despite the bright sun, there was a chill in the air—just like the cold she felt in her heart. Jennifer had been in church her whole life. She knew the games and how they worked, knew the signs of a member slippin’ and dippin’ with the pastor or some other senior sanctuary official. That’s why she knew without a doubt that Simone Noble and Nate Thicke were screwing.
That bitch thinks she’s God’s gift to the universe.
But what was up with the wink?

“Forgive me, God,” Jennifer said out loud. For all the sins her current mood enlisted—jealousy, envy, coveting, etc.—Jennifer truly loved God and tried to live the life of an upstanding Christian woman. Before happily succumbing to Nate’s charms, she hadn’t been with a man for almost ten years. But from the time Nate had preached at her former church a year and a half ago, Jennifer’s focus had been singular: to be by his side. She’d prayed and prayed for a sign from God, one that Nate was meant to be her husband or at the very least that moving to Texas was God’s will. After not getting a message from on high, at least one that she wanted to hear, she’d given a thirty-day notice at her job, gone online to find another one, and it wasn’t long before she was moving from Kansas City to Palestine.

Jennifer had arrived at Gospel Truth Church with a written recommendation from her pastor, King Brook, and—she discovered shortly after her arrival—something to help Nate get what he wanted. A casual conversation with one of the members had clued in Jennifer to Nate’s desire to become a Total Truth member. Jennifer had wasted no time in setting up an appointment, and remembered how making one with his assistant, Katherine, had been almost as hard as she’d imagined it was to see President Obama.
She’s guarding the man so tough you’d think they were screwing.
Remembering that spontaneous thought gave her pause. And then she’d decided there was no possible way a man like Nate would be with a woman like Katherine. Granted, at one time Katherine had probably been a beautiful woman, like her daughter. But Nate had too many choices among the goo-goo-eyed females in his congregation to lay down with a heifah old enough to be his mother.

Jennifer had been so deep in thought that she jumped when the phone rang. “Hey, Patricia.” Patricia Cook was the woman who’d told Jennifer about Nate’s Total Truth member aspirations, as well as confirmed that Simone and he were screwing. Then she’d shared some news that Jennifer hadn’t expected: that Patricia was screwing him too.

“Jennifer, something is going on, girl!”

“What?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you.”

Did Patricia catch the same wink I did, from Nate to Destiny?
Jennifer decided to keep her cards close to her chest and see what more she could find out. “Well, I’m not sure I can help you, Pat. Going on with whom?”

“Who else, girl? Nate.”

“What makes you think something is going on?”

“Well, for one thing, he didn’t come over last night. And don’t start in on me about sleeping with the pastor. I know it’s wrong but I can’t help it. You haven’t ever been with him so I don’t expect you to understand. But if you had, well, suffice it to say you’d know why I’ll never deny that man.”

Oh, but I have…and I know. That’s why I’m keeping my friends close and heifahs like you closer!
The truth was, Jennifer didn’t have female friends, per se. If a woman was older than twelve and younger than sixty, she was considered competition. As such, she was kept at a distance. Still, Jennifer knew how to play the game. Women couldn’t be friends, but sometimes they were unwitting accomplices. Now was one of those times.

“Anyway, that’s not why I called,” Patricia continued. “I’m calling about what I saw this afternoon, when I stopped by the church during my lunch hour to drop off the flyers I did for the upcoming all-night prayer service.”

“Well, do I have to pay admission to view this movie?” Jennifer impatiently exclaimed after Pat hesitated. “What did you see?”

Patricia lowered her voice, even though she was alone in her car and sure no one else could hear her. “Well, first I saw Katherine and Simone out in the parking lot. It looked like they were arguing. But when they saw me pull up, they tried to act like they were just talking.”

Jennifer stifled a sigh. “Is that all, Pat? A mother and daughter bickering isn’t the most unusual sight in the world.”

“Maybe not,” Patricia continued in a conspiratorial tone. “But it’s who I saw afterward that makes this little tidbit interesting.”

“Why? Who was it?” Having to pull this story out sentence by sentence was starting to get on Jennifer’s nerves.

“Simone’s daughter, Destiny,” Patricia answered. “She was walking down the hall to Reverend’s office, and if you ask me, her skirt was a little short for church. I don’t care if she is a teenager. As soon as she got into the office, the door closed.”

Both women were silent a moment, because both knew what could happen behind their pastor’s closed office door.

Finally Jennifer recovered enough to find her voice. “About what time was this?” she asked.

“I took a late lunch so it had to be around two. What do you think it means? Mama and daughter argue while granddaughter goes in to see the Reverend?”

“Girl, who knows?” Jennifer said. She wasn’t ready to share her suspicions yet, but knew when the time was right, Patricia could be an ally.

“Do you think there’s a chance that…”

“A chance that what?” Jennifer asked, more forceful than she’d intended.

“Never mind,” Patricia sighed. “I don’t want to even have an inappropriate thought about the man of God, much less voice it. You know the Word says, ‘Touch not God’s anointed and do his prophets no harm.’”

Well, had you kept reading that Word, you slut, you’d also have read something about not screwing a man who wasn’t your husband.
Jennifer quickly excluded herself from this scripture by reminding herself that hers and Nate’s was a “spiritual union” already, and as such was not sin.

“That’s what it says,” Jennifer agreed. “Which is why we have to keep the man of God in our prayers.”

After making plans to have lunch on Saturday, the two Gospel Truth members hung up their phones. Jennifer picked hers right back up. Because while she intended to keep the man of God in her prayers, she hoped the phone call she was about to make would also keep him in her bed.

“Look at that high-yellow heifah. She thinks she’s cute.”

Destiny Noble held her head high and ignored her classmate.

“Yeah, we oughta kick her ass, snatch that weave off her head. Thinking she’s better than everybody, that bitch bettah recognize!”

Destiny’s loudmouthed nemesis, Carmen, signaled her friends and began walking behind Destiny.

“Hey, Destiny!” a young man shouted from across the street.

“Hey, Adam.”

Adam shot a mean look at Carmen before sidling up next to Destiny on the sidewalk. “Don’t pay those fools no mind, baby girl. They’re just mad they’re not you.”

Destiny shrugged, but was thankful that her best friend had come along when he did. Carmen was always threatening her, but Destiny wasn’t afraid: partly because she felt Carmen was just full of hot air—hating on her because Carmen Cook’s mother, Patricia, couldn’t stand Katherine or her relatives by default—and partly because of the industry-strength Mace she always carried at the ready. Girls had despised her ever since she could remember. “Because you’re chosen,” her grandmother had told her. Destiny wasn’t going to risk getting her face scarred up fighting, but she’d Mace the hell out of anybody who attacked her.

Adam unlocked his car doors and he and Destiny climbed inside. “Baby girl,” he said once he’d started the car and rolled out of the school parking lot. “You want to go with us to the movies tonight? We’re gonna check out Tyler Perry’s new movie.”

“No. I have to study.”

“On a Friday night? Girl, you’re already a straight-A student. What are you going for, teacher’s pet?”

Destiny smiled. “Something like that.”

Destiny and Adam kept up small talk until Adam dropped Destiny off at her house. After promising to hang out with Adam and his friends one day soon, Destiny jumped out of the car and ran inside. She’d managed to sneak Reverend Thicke’s manuscript out of her mother’s bedroom, and had made herself a copy. She was almost done, and the timing was perfect. Because later tonight, she was going to spend an entire twenty-four hours with the reverend. She knew this time would be special, and wanted to be as prepared as possible to impress him.

Destiny stopped in the kitchen, fixed herself a salad, grabbed a sparkling water out of the refrigerator, and hurried to her room. She was anxious to read the last chapter of Nate’s book: “Now…Know It’s Yours.” She knew even before turning the page that this would be her favorite chapter. The title said it all. Her body had fairly tingled as she’d read portions of other chapters, so closely had the words mirrored ones she’d told herself, in one form or another, since she was twelve years old. That’s when she’d gotten up to use the restroom in the middle of the night and had accidentally glimpsed her reverend’s naked backside just before it turned the corner headed back to her mom’s room. She’d been shocked, of course, and in true preteen fashion had gone back to her room and dissolved into giggles, covering her head with a pillow to muffle the sounds. After the embarrassment wore off, however, another feeling had replaced it. A feeling near her private area, one she’d never felt before. The more she thought about seeing his hard, round buttocks, the more the feeling intensified. Destiny had tightened her legs to calm the flutters, but had gone to sleep with a schoolgirl crush that was now full-blown love. The next year she began fantasizing about Reverend Thicke coming to her bedroom instead of her mother’s. And she began employing some of the techniques her pastor preached about, such as speaking about what you want as if you already have it, believing to receive, and asking God without doubting that what you wanted, God could deliver. While other teenagers opted for children’s church or skipped the main service all together, Destiny never missed a sermon. After one of his more rousing ones, where her pastor had spoken specifically about the power of mantras, repetitive declaration, she’d gone home, rewritten a childhood prayer, and began praying it that night:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

God, one thing I want in life,

That I will be Nathaniel’s wife.

She’d prayed that prayer every day since then, for over two years. And then, a few months before her recently celebrated seventeenth birthday, her grandmother—who at Katherine’s insistence Destiny called Kiki instead of Grandma—had come into her room with news she knew would change her life.

“Destiny, you’re a Noble woman,” Katherine had begun after sharing small talk. “Do you know what that means?”

“I know what the word means: distinguished, magnificent, renowned….” Destiny had responded, her 4.0 intelligence and straight As in English shining through in her answer.

Katherine smiled. “Yes, dear, it means all of those things. And for those of us who carry that last name, it means something more. It means we are chosen women of God, here to help the man of God.”

“Reverend Thicke, I mean Nate?” Destiny asked softly. Even though he’d instructed her to call him by his first name at their first meeting, she still viewed him as her pastor first and foremost.

Katherine nodded.

“How?” Destiny asked, as her heartbeat quickened with the memory of seeing his backside going back into her mother’s room. She prayed that that was the kind of help her Kiki was referring to. Upon hearing Katherine’s response, Destiny knew her prayers had been answered.

Destiny finished the last chapter, closed her eyes, held the manuscript to her chest, and began reciting her customized prayer to God. She repeated it seven times, the number of completion Nate taught, and then opened her eyes and looked at the vision board she’d made the year before, on her sixteenth birthday. It was small, the size of a piece of construction paper, but specific in its intent. The theme was clearly
marriage:
cutouts of a wedding dress, wedding cake, platinum diamond ring, doves, and rice pieces she’d randomly glued on the page. In the center was a picture of her taken before a school dance, and a picture of Nate that had accompanied an article on him in the
Dallas Post Tribune
. Destiny remembered feeling a rush of happiness after she’d finished the project inspired after watching a movie called
The Secret
. She made sure to watch it after its executive producer appeared on
Oprah
. Looking at the vision board now, she felt that rush again.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, Destiny’s eyes widened. Where had the time gone? The reverend would be here any minute. And where was Kiki? Destiny hurriedly walked over to where the vision board stood perched against her dresser mirror. She placed both it and the manuscript back in their hiding place: in a locked backpack under her bed. She didn’t want her mother to know about the board, and knew she’d be furious about the copied manuscript. It hadn’t been lost on Destiny that Kiki, not her mother, had taught her the “chosen” lesson. Or that when asked, Simone had suggested Destiny concentrate on school, and let her handle the reverend’s “spiritual needs.”

Two hours after Destiny had read the last page of Nate’s book, she and Katherine prepared to leave her home. “Are you sure you have everything?” Katherine asked. She had no doubts she was more nervous than her grandchild, who seemed unusually calm.

“Yes, Kiki,” Destiny said, smiling. “You already asked me, remember?”

“I’m just making sure.” Katherine turned and looked at Destiny. “This is a special night. I just…I want it to be perfect.”

Destiny felt an unexpected rush of tears and threw her arms around her grandmother. She had tried not to think about the fact that her mother wasn’t here, that what Katherine had done for Simone, prepared her for the inevitable Thicke moment, Simone had not been able to do for Destiny. “Thanks for everything, Kiki,” she whispered after the emotional moment passed.

The two women got in Katherine’s Cadillac and headed to the private location where a town car was waiting to take Destiny and Nate to an equally private airstrip and the chartered plane that would take the two to a clandestine section of Key West, Florida. Of course these secretive precautions were not taken because the Nobles thought what they did was wrong, but because they felt others wouldn’t understand.

“Are you nervous?” Katherine asked after a few moments.

“A little,” Destiny admitted.

“I know you wished it had been your mother, but I’m glad I was the one who prepared you for the covering. My mother did the best she could but, my first time was very unpleasant. Did you bring the oil?”

“Yes.” The nerves Destiny had held at bay all evening began making their presence known.

“Remember to communicate,” Katherine continued. “If it hurts, say so. If you want to stop, say that too. The man of God is a gentle man. Nate will…you’ll be okay.”

Destiny looked at her grandmother. She’d often wondered if there was any chance Nate and her had ever been together, and in this moment, she had to wonder no more. Her brows creased as an unexpected question leapt into her young conscience.
Was it right for Nate to be with so many women?
she pondered.
First her grandmother, then her mother…and now her?
Then another thought occurred to her, one that caused her to sit up straight and take a quick intake of breath.

“What is it, Destiny?”

“Kiki,” Destiny began softly. “Do you think that Nate, I mean, does Nate do this with other women, besides…besides us?”

Now it was Katherine who had the desire to gasp, but she maintained an outward calm. She knew that much didn’t get past her granddaughter, but sometimes she marveled at the child’s astuteness.
She said “us.” That means she knows that Nate and I…

“It is not for us to question the activities of the man of God,” Katherine said quickly, to cover a sudden and rare feeling of embarrassment where the Noble-Thicke legacy was concerned. “It is only for us to do our part. All of us,” she added, letting Destiny know that Katherine knew what Destiny now understood. “Yes,” she continued, deciding to be as forthcoming as she could, to tell everything, in a way. “In the past, I was covered by the man of God.”

“But y’all aren’t still doing it, right?”

“What did I just say about questioning?” Katherine countered, more harshly than she’d intended. She’d almost rid herself of any jealous feelings where Destiny was concerned. Almost. “There are some things I choose not to share right now,” Katherine continued more softly, remembering, among other things, Nate’s desire to be the one who told Destiny about their inevitable union. “Just know that you are doing what you’re supposed to do, and that what is happening between you and the reverend is sacred. Which also means it’s private, not meant to be shared. Don’t tell anyone outside of this family about your involvement with Nathaniel, Destiny. I know you’re a mature young woman, but others still view you as a child.”

Destiny nodded but Katherine didn’t see. “Do you hear me? It is no one’s business what goes on with the man of God, and you have a responsibility to cover the man of God…because he’s covering you. And not just physically, but spiritually too. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Kiki, I understand. I won’t tell anybody, promise.”

Destiny had a million questions she wanted to ask her grandmother, specific questions about the sex act that hadn’t been covered during her and Katherine’s single talk on the matter, questions beyond her comfort and his release. Destiny wanted to know how to make Reverend Thicke fall in love with her. She wanted to know how to make him want to marry her. But somehow she felt her grandmother wouldn’t welcome these questions, much as Simone had preferred that Destiny leave Reverend Thicke to her. The whole situation was confusing to Destiny, and seemed to contradict some of the other teachings she’d heard in church, like those covered when Miss Nettie spoke to the women’s group, for instance. But amid all of the perplexity, one thought was clear: Destiny wanted to become Mrs. Nathaniel Thicke. Beyond that, she decided not to think or worry about it.

The closer Katherine drove to the meeting place with Nate, the more nervous Destiny became, the more unsure she felt.
Will I be able to please him? Am I too young for him to love me? Will I say the right things? God, please don’t let me come off looking immature and stupid!
She took a deep breath and tried to slow her rapid heartbeat. But it was no use. Moments later, when they pulled up next to the town car and six feet three inches of perfection unfolded himself out of the backseat and held out his hand to take hers…her heart would have jumped out her chest had it not been for rib cage, muscles, and skin. And the flutters that the mere thought of Nate had invoked since Destiny was twelve years old were in full effect.