While Leotis and Sharvon went toe-to-toe at his front door, Sister Betty got up to wash her tear-streaked face. She was passing by the window in the hallway when she saw Sharvon standing in Leotis’s doorway. She then remembered that she still hadn’t heard from him since Sharvon left a message several days ago. It wasn’t like him to stay away, and she became angry.
Lately, anger had become an emotion that seemed readily available. She concluded that somehow he’d abandoned her. Even though she had protested and hadn’t wanted Sharvon to call him, since Sharvon had, he should’ve come running. After all, it was her running to help him that’d caused so much strife between her and Freddie.
Glaring in Leotis’s direction, she mumbled, “I hope Sharvon is letting him have it!” Sister Betty quickly dropped her head, clasping her hands. “Oh, Lord, please forgive me. Anger is overtaking me, and I’m still so brokenhearted.”
Sister Betty turned away from the window and continued down the hallway toward her living room. She sat on the sofa, whispering, “I need a word, Lord.” She reached for her Bible and began thumbing through it.
Finally arriving at what she believed God had intended just for her, she began reading. “Psalm twenty-seven, fourteen,” she whispered. “Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.”
Sister Betty reread the passage several times before allowing her head and her mind to rest against the back of her sofa. “Thank you, Jesus,” she kept repeating. “Lord, I’ve been with you long enough to have known better. I’m to come to your Word whenever I become weak.” She sighed as she smoothed her housecoat. “You did say this was a journey from the cradle to the grave.”
This time she decided to rest totally upon God’s Word and His promises. She didn’t know if what she’d read meant Freddie would return to her, but she believed that no matter how it turned out, she’d wait. And if she waited, God would strengthen her broken heart. With the Bible still in her lap, she unconsciously began turning the engagement ring on her finger. In no time the sleep that’d evaded her last night and the nights before overtook her. She began snoring softly, and a smile appeared upon her face.
Inside Leotis’s spare bedroom Freddie had finally found the strength to sit up. He was used to his own bed and bedroom, so even in his tired state he couldn’t find rest at Leotis’s home. As he sat there, he listened for a while but didn’t hear a sound throughout the house. He also called out Leotis’s name but got no response. Freddie then remembered Leotis mentioning he was going to get the prescription filled, and so he figured perhaps that was where he’d gone.
With nothing to do and unable to sleep, Freddie reached for the television remote on the nightstand. Instead, his hand landed upon the Bible Leotis had placed there earlier. He hadn’t meant to trade the remote for the Bible. He was too angry with himself, Sister Betty, and yes, even with God at that moment. Yet he picked up the Bible, and without resisting, he began turning the pages.
As he turned the pages, he began complaining. “I’m mad, Lord. You want me to love you, but you don’t wanna let me have nobody to love me.”
Freddie began turning the pages faster.
“I can rest in your Word, but I’m still a man. At my age, I’m not trying to be a lover, but I do wanna rest in my Betty’s bed.” Freddie’s eyes began to water.
He began turning the pages fast enough to rip them, but they didn’t tear.
“Why must I wait? Ain’t it enough I got this cancer riding my body? This multiple myeloma ain’t curable,” Freddie said bitterly. “I’m accepting I gotta leave here someday.” And then he added, pleading, “But, Lord, can’t I have Betty? I don’t care if she never fixes me a meal or stays put in everybody’s business. Lord, I’m tired, but I still wanna love her.”
Freddie’s tears began blurring his vision. He didn’t realize he’d stopped turning the pages of the Bible until he began wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. The Bible passage became sharper with each swipe.
He began reading aloud. “Isaiah forty, the thirty-first verse. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Freddie reread the passage before laying the Bible beside him on the bed. As was his habit, he reached for the sprig of hair, which was gone. His baldness didn’t bother him now. It occurred to him that it must not bother Betty, either. “Perhaps that’s why she’s not said anything.”
He looked toward the bedroom window. From the window he could see past the house next door and through her living room and hallway window curtains. He then lay back against the pillow and began rereading the passage of scripture again. He did not finish the third reading before sleep overtook him.
Leotis couldn’t keep Sharvon from trying to wake the neighborhood. Her mouth was in overdrive, and she made loud accusations about his character and his abandoning Sister Betty for the trustee. He finally closed his front door and headed for his car to escape any possible embarrassment. There was no escaping. Sharvon rushed around the car and jumped in on the passenger side to continue blasting him.
Before he had buckled his seat belt, Sharvon started in on him. “Ever since I came to Pelzer, my cousin has been at your beck and call,” she said as he tried to steer the car out of his driveway without having an accident. “Where is your loyalty? She’s been like a mama to you, so what’s Freddie to you? Oh, don’t tell me,” she hissed, almost spitting from anger. “Is he now the father you didn’t have?”
Leotis didn’t say a word as he drove. In his present state of mind, he knew whatever came out, he couldn’t easily take back. His hands clenched the steering wheel tightly until he felt either his wrists or the steering wheel would break. He had a sermon to preach tomorrow, and all he’d done that day was transport home a delusional and crotchety church mother who smelled like an outhouse and deliver a very sick but cranky old trustee to his house. He still hadn’t done what he really wanted to do. He glanced over at Sharvon, whose mouth was still in gear, and wished he had delivered a punch to Sasha’s rabid mouth. And he was also ready to add Sharvon to that mix.
“And now because of you and your selfishness,” Sharvon told him, “because you can’t handle a skank named Ima that’s trying to get you to the altar or the bed, or vice versa, you’ve caused Freddie to break off the wedding to my cousin. You’d better be glad I’m almost saved, or I’d really tell you what I think!”
Leotis quickly hung a mental RESERVE sign at the altar, along with removing his invisible turned-around collar, before he slammed on the car’s brakes. “What does Ima have to do with any of this?”
“I say she does.” Sharvon turned around in her seat to face him, ignoring the blasting car horns from the other cars, which finally drove around them, but not without calling out a few unkind words as they did.
“Well, you’ve been wrong about things since you showed up on my doorstep,” he said loudly. “She doesn’t play any part in my life.” Yet even as the lie leapt from his tongue, images of the fiery, long-legged, and worldly woman crossed his mind. It didn’t matter that he’d not seen or heard from her in the days since she tried brazenly to seduce him in his pastor’s study with kisses.
However, Ima and Sharvon had something in common. Each knew how to quickly work his nerves, while at the same time making him want to hold and kiss them, making him feel more deeply than he’d ever felt about a woman before.
He quickly dismissed the thoughts of the flesh and then turned to face Sharvon, who was still lambasting him. “Just so you know,” he argued, “I’ve been busy, too. And if I’ve befriended Trustee Noel, it’s because he’s—” Leotis stopped and exhaled. He’d almost betrayed Freddie by telling Sharvon the truth. Yet he knew he’d better say something, because she’d already shown she wasn’t backing down. “He’s been in the hospital for the last couple of days. And before you ask why he was there, I can�
�t tell you, because it’s his business. But I can tell you that he’s now heartbroken that Sister Betty just called off the wedding without telling him.”
“What are you talking about?” Sharvon leaned over the armrest. “He broke up with her.” She paused, taking a breath before adding, “I told you that he didn’t actually say the wedding was off, but he hasn’t reached out since they argued, so she believes he’s changed his mind.”
“Well, that’s not how it went down according to Mother Pray Onn.”
Sharvon looked at Leotis. She leaned back with her arms folded, asking, “What’s she got to do with it?”
Leotis became so heated again, he could’ve activated the car’s air-conditioning. “She’s got everything to do with it. She’s the one who ran her big mouth to Bea, and that’s how the trustee first heard the news.”
Sharvon turned back around in her seat, unfolding her arms and placing a hand across her heart. She fell back against the car seat. “Oh, damn.”
As they continued driving, Sharvon confided to Leotis what she’d told Sasha earlier that day. “It just flew out of my mouth,” she said. “I am too ashamed to tell Cousin Betty.”
“Wow,” he said slowly. “That’s what happened.”
A short time later they returned from the drugstore, and Leotis asked Sharvon if she’d like to come inside and perhaps talk to Freddie. “Perhaps if you told him it was a misunderstanding about what Sasha said, it would help him.”
“Maybe later, but not at this moment,” she told Leotis. “I need to get inside and check up on Cousin Betty. Whether I set it off with Mother Pray Onn or not,” Sharvon confided, “there was already trouble brewing in paradise with the two of them.”
“Well, nevertheless, I’m praying things will get better,” Leotis replied. And as an afterthought, he added, “I know as far as Mother Pray Onn and Blister are concerned, they intend on giving Sister Betty and Trustee Freddie a wedding reception, whether they’re together or not, and whether they want them to or not.”
Sharvon had already put her hand on the car’s latch to open her door. Yanking her hand back, she tilted her head and asked, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you that they told me earlier that they’re determined to use this wedding as a way of showcasing their event-planning skills. They are under the delusion that if they do a good job with the wedding reception, they’ll get, as they put it, paid. So in their minds it doesn’t matter if the wedding is called off. You’d better believe they’ll be up to some immature craziness to interfere.”
“We’ve got to put an end to this.”
“Oh no,” Leotis said, throwing his hands up. “I’ve got enough on my plate.”
“You’re not going to help me?”
Leotis lowered his hands, asking, “Are you going to help me get back in Sister Betty’s good graces while the trustee spends time recuperating at my home?”
“We’ll see what happens when you come over,” Sharvon replied before she left to see about Sister Betty.
Leotis sat in his car and watched Sharvon walk away. Again, guilt hijacked his thoughts. He had allowed her to share what she believed was the reason things had gotten to a bad end for Sister Betty and Freddie. And yet he couldn’t confide in her the seriousness of Freddie’s condition. But, on the other hand, he was grateful that she hadn’t pressed him as to when he’d come by to see about Sister Betty.
Once he walked inside the house, he went into the spare bedroom and found Freddie just waking up from a nap and seemingly in a completely different mood. He laid the medicine on the nightstand and took the shower seat into the bathroom.
“I’m glad you were able to nap while I was gone,” Leotis told him. “You should feel a little better.”
“I truly do,” Freddie told him. “I’m not saying that I’m ready to perform cartwheels, but I believe God’s got this. I feel so good, I’m gonna try to make it to service tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 13
Much to Leotis’s surprise, Freddie woke up earlier than expected this Sunday morning.
“I’d still like to go to the eight o’clock service with you, that is, if you don’t mind,” Freddie announced.
“Certainly,” Leotis replied. “I’m only preaching the one service this morning.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the trustees’ board is in charge of the eleven o’clock service this Sunday, and they’ve asked one of the associate ministers to bring the Word.”
“I’ve got to get myself together. I forgot this was the trustees’ day, and I’m one of them.” Freddie gave a weak smile. “I might as well get started. I don’t want to be the one making you late this morning.”
No sooner had Freddie gone back to his bedroom to get ready than Leotis went to his bedroom and called Sharvon on her cell phone. He didn’t want to take a chance on Sister Betty answering the phone. Not yet, anyway.
“Trustee Freddie just told me he’s coming to the eight o’clock service with me this morning,” Leotis told Sharvon once she answered.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” Sharvon replied, letting him know that he’d not started off the conversation properly. “I’m surprised he’s feeling well enough, since he just got released from the hospital.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” he responded, ignoring her slight rebuke. “He’s actually acting like he’s not been sick at all. Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know, in case Sister Betty was planning on coming to the first service.”
“Really?” Sharvon replied. “That’s funny.”
“It doesn’t sound funny to me.”
“I meant that it is funny because Cousin Betty’s been up for a while. She’s in the kitchen, just humming and praising God.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is, since the two of them was in the valley of misery yesterday. She hasn’t said anything about going to church yet. If she does, I’ll try and steer her toward the second service, even if I have to go with her.”
The conversation went on for another minute. Leotis threw in a remark about how Sharvon’s busy work schedule was not an excuse for not coming to church, to which she did not respond one way or the other. They also concluded that it’d be a good thing if the couple stayed apart for the time being, and away from Bea and Sasha in particular.
The weather outside this Sunday morning was hot, though the usual perspiration-inducing humidity was absent. But at Crossing Over Sanctuary’s eight o’clock service, there was heat and sweat to spare.
Despite all the distractions that past week, and especially yesterday, Leotis was determined to preach. He had donned one of his old robes, a blue, white, and gold short-sleeved one that he didn’t mind getting dirty.
He tossed his handkerchief in the air, throwing his head from side to side while hollering, “Thank ya, Jesus,” preaching as though the apostle Paul whispered every word in his ear. The night before he was so consumed by guilt, he’d been unable to study his Bible. “Y’all just don’t know!” he told the congregation as he brought the sermon to an end. “The enemy will always be at his job.”
“Say that, Pastor,” came a response from someone in the congregation. “Satan’s a sneaky sumpthin’.”
“There’s a reason God wants us to watch as well as pray. The Devil can come at you in all sorts of ways.” He paused and wiped his brow while shaking his head in the direction of the organist, who’d just begun playing a run of staccato notes designed to set the congregation to shouting. “But I’m going to leave that alone,” he said as he laughed a little. “We still have another service at eleven o’clock, and we haven’t had the altar call yet. But one day I’m going to preach in depth about watching and praying and the consequences when one doesn’t.”
Leotis stepped down from the pulpit and went to stand in the middle of the floor. As he stood there with his arms opened wide, a pastor’s aide member removed his robe and wiped his brow. Then Leotis
asked, “Are there any who are in need of prayer? God is not slacking in His promise to forgive your scarlet sins and make you whole again. I won’t stand here in judgment this morning. I stand here with the agape love of the Lord.”
“I’m in need of love,” a soft feminine voice called out. All heads turned in the direction the voice had come from, which was somewhere in the back of the sanctuary. The person to which it belonged was hidden among the many who’d attended this morning. “I need some of that agape love you have.”
A sudden movement from Freddie caught Leotis’s attention. With one hand in his lap, Freddie had begun waving one finger back and forth, like it was on fire. He then quickly began mouthing, “No, no.”
But Freddie’s warning came too late. By the time Leotis’s attention turned back to the rest of the congregation, there was a short line of folks headed his way. Bobbing and weaving down the center aisle was Ima. Two ushers, one on each side of her, were both supporting her by her arms and fanning her at the same time. Another usher was trying to help Mother Pray Onn, but she kept using the tip of her cane to push the usher away.
“Sweet Jesus,” called out a woman with a huge pink hat shaped like a tree stump. She was seated near Leotis. “He’s soon to come!”
“Sho’nuff,” chimed in the woman who sat next to her, whose girth took up two seats. “I know Jesus is in the saving business if that heifer’s tossing in her sin-filled towel.”
Other unkind remarks echoed about the sanctuary, as though none had heard the sermon that morning. And even those who normally sneaked out before the prayer and benediction stayed put.
Sister Betty Says I Do Page 14
