Praise Him Anyhow - Volume 1

by Vanessa Miller

  “Have a seat, Dontae.” Rose said as she grabbed Joy’s hand and walked her out of the hospital room. They stood a few doors away from Carmella’s room as Rose told Joy, “Listen to me, hon, your mom is going to get through this nightmare. But I don’t think it’s good for Dontae to see her like this.”

  “But what if something happens to her while we’re gone?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to Carmella. The doctors just have her over sedated, if you ask me. So the next thing I want you to do is to go to the nurse’s station on your way out and demand that they hold off on giving Carmella any more medication until she climbs out of the fog they have her in.”

  Joy took a deep breath then nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Okay, now can you help me get Dontae out of here? And don’t let him come back here until tomorrow.”

  Joy shook her head. “He won’t agree to leave. He’s too worried about Mama.”

  Rose grabbed hold of Joy’s hand. “I promise you and your brother that even if I have to get on my knees and pray all night long, Carmella is going to be all right. Tomorrow is a new day. Dontae needs to see her then, but not now.”

  “Okay Aunt Rose, I think I have an idea to get Dontae out of here.”

  They went back into the room. Carmella was still lying motionless, with her face toward the wall. Dontae was seated with his head in his hands crying, the same way he’d cried when he was seven years old and his dog, Samhad died. Joy put her hand around his arm and pulled him up. “Come on Dontae, I need your help with something.”

  Joy headed towards the door, but Dontae stopped her. “We can’t leave Mom. She needs us.”

  Joy shook her head. “Mom needs some rest right now. The best thing we can do is to allow her to rest without hearing us crying and talking back and forth over her head. Now, I’ve got some things I need to do at my apartment and you can help me with that.”

  Dontae looked back towards the bed.

  “We’ll be back in the morning to check on Mama,” Joy assured him. “Now will you help me or not?”

  He hesitated, then put his hands in his pockets and nodded as he walked through the door with his sister.

  Joy peeked back in the room and told Rose, “Give her a kiss from me and Dontae and let her know that we’ll be back in the morning.”

  “I’ll do that,” Rose said. Then as Joy closed the door behind her, Rose got on her knees and began petitioning God on her friend’s behalf.

  ***

  As Joy and Dontae headed out of the hospital, she made sure to stop by the nurse’s station and requested that her mother not be given any more medication until she was alert enough to ask for it herself. She also explained to them that she was in law school and her father was a judge, so they knew how to file lawsuits if need be. She and Dontae then stopped by a local grocery store, grabbed a few empty boxes and then headed to her apartment.

  “What are the boxes for?” Dontae asked.

  “I’m moving out. I’ll be staying with you and Mama for a little while.”

  Dontae’s eyebrow went up as he questioned Joy, “Why would you do that? Dad pays your rent.”

  “In the back of my mind, I was kind of hoping that he would continue to pay my bills even though he’s divorcing Mama. But after seeing her in the hospital like that, I don’t want anything from that man.”

  “It’s going to be pretty hard not taking anything from him since you work for him and he signs off on your paycheck.”

  She patted her purse and said, “Got my resignation letter right here. I will be mailing it off to him in the morning.”

  “You act like all of this is Dad’s fault,” Dontae said as they pulled up to Joy’s apartment.

  “Who else do you think I should blame? Mom didn’t wreck our home; Dad did that all on his own.” She got out of the car and grabbed a few of the flattened boxes.

  Dontae grabbed the remaining boxes and followed her inside. As they were taping the boxes and placing them around the room, Dontae told his sister, “I blame Jasmine. She was always coming to our house acting all nice and innocent and all the while she was putting moves on our dad.”

  “Just remember, it takes two to tango.”

  Dontae threw a box to the opposite side of the room. “I know you’re not defending that snake. It sounds like you still want to be friends with her, even after what she did to Mama.”

  “Stop throwing my boxes around. And no, I’m not defending Jasmine. And I certainly am not friends with her. I just think that Daddy should have known better. Jasmine obviously doesn’t care who she hurts. But Daddy should have known that his actions would hurt the family.” She stood up with two boxes in hand. “Let’s box up as many of my clothes as possible and get them over to the house. I think I’m going to put my furniture on eBay, so I can earn a little money while I look for a job.”

  Dontae followed his sister around the apartment, doing as she instructed. After about two hours of boxing and moving things around so Joy could take pictures to post on eBay, they finally left the apartment and headed home.

  As they pulled up to the house and noticed that their father’s car was parked in the driveway, the brother and sister had two different thoughts.

  “The nerve of him. He has no business being here,” Joy said as she turned off the car.

  “Maybe he’s sorry for what he did and is ready to come back home,” Dontae said as they got out of the car.

  Joy rolled her eyes and ignored her brother. He was acting like a sap, wishing for something that simply wasn’t going to happen. Because Joy knew in her heart that her father wasn’t there looking for forgiveness. He was probably just trying to move more of his things out before their mom was released from the hospital. She stormed into the house, looking for a fight. Her father had been her hero. Now he was just the man who’d done them wrong. “What are you doing in here?” she asked, with hands on hips as she stepped into the kitchen and found her father tinkering with the faucet.

  Nelson grabbed a towel and wiped his hands, then he closed the cabinets below the faucet. “Your mom asked me to fix the sink, so I came over to take care of it.”

  “Oh you’re quite a prince, aren’t you?” Joy said with an exasperated expression on her face.

  Nelson’s finger wagged in her face. “Now look here, young lady, you might not like what I’ve done, but I’m still your father and you will respect me.”

  Joy scoffed at that and folded her arms around her chest. “Respect you? Are you kidding? I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Stop yelling at him, Joy. Dad’s just trying to make things right again.” Dontae turned to Nelson and asked, “Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  “Of course I want to make things right between us, son.” Nelson turned to Joy and said, “I want to make things right with you, too, Joy Lynn.”

  Her father used to call her Joy Lynn when she was a little girl, when he had seemed like Superman to her. Today she didn’t want him to use her first name, let alone her middle name. “Is the sink fixed?”

  “Yes, tell your mother that I took care of it.” He shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable in his own house.

  Joy didn’t say anything, just kept staring at her father with her arms folded and her lip twisted.

  But Dontae piped up. “I’ll let her know when we go back to the hospital in the morning, Dad.”

  “Thanks, son.”

  Joy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Why are you sucking up to this man? He wouldn’t even give me the money I needed to get you out of jail the other day… told me that you needed to spend the night in jail to teach you a lesson.” Joy pointed an accusing finger at her father. “He’s the reason Mama is in the hospital half out of her mind right now. If he would have given me the money, I wouldn’t have even bothered Mama. She wouldn’t have known that you had been arrested at all.”

  Dontae turned to his father. “Did you really tell Joy to leave me in that place?”

  Seeing his one
ally slipping away, Nelson hurriedly said, “I just wanted you to understand that there are consequences for actions, son. That’s all.”

  “See what I’ve been trying to tell you, Dontae. This man—”

  “Stop calling me, this man. I’m your father.”

  “Then you should act like it.” Joy opened her purse and pulled out an envelope and handed it to her so-called father. “I was going to mail this to you. But since you’re here, I might as well hand it to you now.”

  “What is this?” Nelson asked.

  “My resignation.”

  He tried to hand the envelope back to Joy. “You don’t have to do this. I already told my office that you need a little time off.”

  “I need a whole lot of time, Dad. I’m not coming back. Matter-of-fact, I don’t think I ever want to see you again.” There, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Joy thought as she glared at her father.

  “Don’t do this, Joy. Okay, I know that you’re upset with me right now. But don’t forget who I am. My relationship with your mom might be over, but I’ll always be your father.”

  “You are such a hypocrite, Dad. You want Dontae to understand the consequences for his actions and you want me to forgive and forget. But you don’t seem to care at all that you’re bailing out on a twenty-five year marriage. So tell us, Dad, what are the consequences for your careless actions?”

  “What do you want me to say to that, Joy?”

  “I want you to answer me. What are the consequences for your actions? Do you even feel the slightest bit guilty that your wife is in the hospital because of what you did to her?”

  Nelson stood in front of his children with eyes that were void of answers. When the silence became uncomfortable, he took his wallet and keys off of the kitchen counter and headed for the door.

  “Dad, where are you going? I thought you wanted to make things right. You need to stay here with us. This is where you belong.” Dontae was practically begging as he followed his father to the front door.

  “Stop begging him, Dontae. He is not interested in us. He would rather be with a woman who only wants him for what he can give her, rather than stay with the woman who helped him get to where he is in the first place.” The venom and contempt was laid bare in every word Joy spoke.

  Nelson snatched open the door, but before he walked out, he turned back to his children and said, “Tell your mother that I have paid all of her bills and will continue to do so for the next three months. But if she wants to keep this house after the divorce, she’ll have to find a way to pay for it.”

  When Nelson closed the door behind himself, Dontae turned to his sister, looking every bit the seventeen year old, rather than the grown man his height and muscles projected. “So that’s it? He’s just going to leave Mom to figure out a way to pay for this house?”

  Joy wasn’t about to let up on her father. She angrily pointed out, “And don’t forget, this is the house that Daddy wanted in order to impress his peers. I guess he’s decided that he doesn’t care about impressing them, us or anybody else anymore. But you mark my words, Nelson Marshall will get his.”

  “How?” Dontae asked.

  “Daddy isn’t invincible, Dontae. And his job isn’t secure at all. Judge Marshall has to be re-elected if he wants to remain a judge. Suppose it gets leaked to the papers that the so-called “family values” judge divorced his wife for his twenty-three-year-old mistress?”

  Dontae rubbed his hands together. “Who can we call?”

  Joy lifted her hands. “Hold up. Let’s not be too hasty. Mom would never forgive us if we ruined her husband’s career. But the minute he’s not her husband,” Joy shrugged, “all bets are off.”

  7

  When Carmella woke the next morning, she didn’t feel as if she was in a fog and couldn’t think or make sense of anything. However, she was still in a bad place, mainly because she didn’t understand why God had allowed all of this to happen to her. For more than two decades now she had loved and served God. Carmella had served in the choir, on the usher and greeter team and the marriage ministry.

  Carmella thought that as long as she was handling God’s business, He would, in turn, handle hers. But then her brother had a heart attack and died at the young age of forty six. She’d tried to deal with that tragedy by telling herself it wasn’t God’s fault that her beloved brother ate double and triple cheese burgers with bags of fries three to four days a week and was a hundred and fifty pounds overweight.

  However, the problem Carmella now faced was that she was having a hard time not blaming God for the end of her marriage. It was His job to look after her, wasn’t it?

  Malachi 3:10 told her that if she gave her tithes to her church that God would pour out a blessing that she wouldn’t have room to receive. But with the way things were going, it looked as if she had some extra room for some of them delayed blessings.

  Her favorite bible verse came from Psalm 37:25: I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.

  That verse always made her feel as if God had her back and that nothing could ever harm her or her children. But now that she knew God wasn’t always on His j-o-b, what was she supposed to do now? Life had changed for her. But Carmella didn’t know how to change with it. She didn’t know how to live in a world where God no longer made sense to her.

  For years she had projected the image of a super Christian who had it all together. Carmella had doled out so much God-centered advice to struggling Christians, that at times she wondered why she hadn’t gone to school for counseling. But in her time of need, who did she have to guide or inspire her? Her parents were gone, her brother had recently joined them and even Nelson had left her. Carmella was searching for a reason to get out of the bed so she could leave the hospital. But the more she searched, the more she wanted to close her eyes and never open them again.

  “Mom, you’re awake!” Joy said as she and Dontae stepped into the room.

  Carmella’s eyes shifted towards the door, a brief smile crossed her lips as she watched her children walk into the room. “Hey, you two.”

  “Hey yourself,” Dontae said as he walked over to his mother’s bed. He bent down and kissed her forehead. “You had us worried yesterday. But you’re looking more alert today.”

  Her teenaged son sounded so grown up, as if he had aged overnight. What was she doing with herself? Why was she lying in this bed and letting her children worry about her, when she should be the one worrying about them, like mothers normally do?

  “Mom?” Joy’s voice held concern after Carmella didn’t respond to Dontae. “Are you okay?”

  An involuntary tear rolled down her face as she said, “I’m trying to be.”

  “Dad fixed the faucet,” Dontae told her in an upbeat tone.

  Joy grabbed hold of her mother’s hand and squeezed. “He paid the bills, too, Mom. So, you won’t have to worry about that when you come home.”

  “Did he say if he was coming back home?” Carmella asked, hating herself for even needing to ask something like that, but she couldn’t deny that she wanted her husband and her life back.

  “He didn’t stay at the house last night, but I’m sure he’ll come back home, Mama. You just have to keep the faith, like you always tell us. Isn’t that right, Joy?” Dontae looked to his big sister for support.

  “Stop doing this to yourself, Dontae.” She moved him away from the bed and told him to sit down. Joy then turned back to her mother and said, “Dad said that he’s going to pay the bills for another three months, but after that you are on your own. I’m sorry to tell you this so flat out, but I don’t want you to keep your hopes up for a man who may never come back to you.”

  “What else am I supposed to do, Joy? I’ve been married to your father for twenty-five years. My parents and my brother are gone… he’s all I have.”

  Joy sat down next to her mother’s bed and held onto her hand. “That’s not true, Mama. You’ve got me and
Dontae. And we will never leave you.”

  Tears sprang to Carmella’s eyes. Her children brought her so much joy, and she never meant to insinuate that they weren’t enough. As Joy and Dontae grew, she and Nelson made sure that they had all they needed and then some. From vacations to cars and education… you name it, her children had it, because Carmella required no less. She and her brother grew up in poverty. Carmella never wanted her children to experience the pain and embarrassment of being financially broke. But now she had allowed them to see her emotionally broken. As tears continued to fall down her face, Carmella wondered which was worse.

  “Don’t cry, Mama. I’m a dope. I shouldn’t have said any of that to you today.” Joy put her head in her hand and shook it.

  “What Joy is trying to say is that we just want you to get better. Don’t worry about what Daddy’s doing. And you don’t need to worry about the bills either because they’ve been paid,” Dontae said.

  There he was sounding all grown up again. Just two months ago she couldn’t get him to stop playing his video games long enough to take out the trash, now he was admonishing her to keep the faith and encouraging her to worry less. Pretty soon he’d be leaving home, headed off to Harvard, his dad’s alma mater. Carmella had imagined that she would convince Nelson to travel the world with her once Dontae was settled in college… she wiped away the tears, hating the fact that Nelson’s betrayal hurt so much. “I’m sorry about losing it the way I did. Seeing your father with Jasmine just caused something to snap inside of me.”

  “It’s been hard on you, Mom, we know that,” Dontae encouraged.

  But Carmella lifted a hand, stopping him from saying anything further. “I don’t care how hard this is on me. I’m ashamed of myself for allowing you and your sister to see me like this. All I can do is apologize for what I’ve done and make a promise to both of you that once I get out of here, I’ll never lose it like this again.” Carmella had no idea how she would keep that promise, but she knew she had to say something to reassure her children.