I Say a Little Prayer

by E. Lynn Harris

  I got up from bed, brushed my teeth, and turned on the shower to let the water warm up. Then I walked into the little office off my bedroom. I checked my e-mail, looked at the news headlines, and was headed back to the bathroom for my shower when I noticed the pad with Damien’s number.

  I picked it up and then quickly dialed the number. I listened to his greeting, and this time when I heard the beep, I said, “Yo, Damien, or should I say Bishop Upchurch. This is a voice from your past that would really like to speak with you. Hopefully, my voice hasn’t changed, so you know who this is. I can be reached at 404-555-3421 or 770-555-9834. Both are Atlanta numbers. Hey, it would be nice to reconnect,” I said before I ended the message, which I suddenly feared sounded dumb and needy. Still, I was glad I made the call.

  As I showered, I wondered what it would be like to talk with Damien or see him in person. Would he ignore my calls, or would his curiosity about why I was calling him prompt a call? There was no way for him to know that I had been asked to sing on his opening night, or that I was even a member of Abundant Joy, unless Pastor Kenneth had said something. Would he set up a meeting with me? Would he bring the wife and kids to prove to me that he was now firmly on the other team?

  When I stepped out of the shower, I grabbed a towel and moved to my dressing area. My radio was on V-103 because I loved the Frank and Wanda morning show. Not only could you hear good music, but they had witty conversation and jokes as well. Frank didn’t shy away from controversial topics, and he did a spiritual vitamin segment where he read something inspirational and followed it with a song from one of the more popular gospel artists. I loved starting my day this way, and it didn’t sound preachy or out of place on the popular R & B station.

  But this morning, something very strange happened. It wasn’t Frank’s and Wanda’s voices I heard but Pastor Kenneth and Damien. With just a towel wrapped around my waist, I moved to my stereo system and turned up the volume. The two of them were telling Frank about the revival and how they hoped all of Atlanta would show up. “We hope to have so many people this year that next year we’ll have to move from the church to the Georgia Dome,” Pastor Kenneth said.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and listened intently for Damien to say something hateful about gays, or about reclaiming our country, but all he talked about was how he and his wife were looking forward to visiting Atlanta and helping Pastor Kenneth make Abundant Joy one of the most powerful churches, not only in Atlanta but in the entire Southeast. Pastor Kenneth mentioned how the church had been packed the day before and if that kept happening he would be looking for larger space sooner.

  The tone of his voice and the cadence of his words gave me goose bumps. I thought about Sister Esther and the testimony about her deceased son. Maybe it was time for me to start searching for a new church home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Just as I hung up the phone from leaving my third message in several days for Damien, the telephone rang. I looked at the digital display and recognized the number as my parents’. I smiled to myself every time I realized the fact that they’d had the same number for almost forty years, even back in the days of rotary dials.

  “Hello.”

  “Chauncey.”

  “Hey, Mama.”

  “I’m not bothering you, am I? I know how busy you are,” she said.

  “No, I’m fine, Mama. I was just making a few phone calls and trying to decide what to cook for dinner,” I said, not mentioning that I was doing everything I could to keep my mind off Celia and the Wal-Mart presentation that had happened today.

  “I bet you wish your mama was down there to fry you some chicken. You think you can cook, but I still make better fried chicken than you,” she said, chuckling.

  “That’s because you won’t give me the recipe. You’re worse than the Colonel.” I laughed.

  “If I give you the secret, I may never see you again.”

  “Now, you know that’s not true,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not giving it out today, so you’ll have to get you some Church’s or Popeye’s,” Mama said.

  “I think I’ll pass. How’s Daddy?”

  “Just fine. I don’t know if he’s out in his garden or tinkering with that truck. But let me tell you why I’m calling,” Mama said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Did you get my e-mail with the attachment?”

  “When did you send it?”

  “Just a few minutes ago. Your baby brother finally installed my scanner, and I sent you a little diagram.”

  “I’m not near my computer right now, but what kind of diagram?” I asked. How was it that my mother was so computer savvy when she was slow to embrace other technology? Belinda and I had installed call waiting on our parents’ phone without their knowledge, because both of us got sick of hearing a busy signal. Still, my parents rarely used the feature.

  “It’s a little sketch of the dress I am having Claudine Moore make me for when I come hear you sing. You remember her, don’t you? She used to just make dresses and school uniforms out of her bedroom, but now she’s big time. Claudine even opened a little shop downtown, and she has customers both black and white. Got herself a real nice business,” Mama said.

  I thought for a moment and tried to remember Claudine, and even though I couldn’t picture her, I thought it best to say that I did, rather than have Mama give me her complete history.

  “Oh yeah, I think I remember her. So she’s making you a dress?” I quizzed.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want you to look at the sketch and tell me if it’s good enough for your affair. If you don’t like it, then I might have to go over to Jackson and see what they got in the stores. I still got my McRae’s charge card, even though I haven’t used it since Jonathan was in high school.”

  “I’ll look at it, but I’m sure whatever you wear, you’ll look beautiful.” I still couldn’t tell my mother that I was thinking about not doing the revival. Not only would it break her heart, but she’d start asking questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.

  “Chauncey. Chauncey!” Mama said loudly, interrupting my thoughts. “Look at the sketch and tell me what you think. Belinda loves it.”

  “Then I’m sure I will love it as well. I’ll look at it and call you back,” I said. Before my mother could respond, the call waiting signal beeped on my phone and Celia’s cell phone number spread across the display.

  “Mama, I need to take this call,” I said, anxious to speak to Celia. This is the call I had been waiting for.

  “I don’t know why you and Belinda and them have to have all these gadgets on your phone. If someone else calls, people just need to wait until you get off the phone,” Mama said.

  “I know, Mama, but I’ll call you back later tonight,” I said, rushing my mother off the phone. “Love you.”

  “I love you, too, baby. I’m so happy that you’re going to be singing in the Lord’s house. I feel like I can go on to glory,” Mama said.

  I rolled my eyes in a good way and shook my head at my mother’s going-to-glory talk. If I didn’t sing at the revival, then I was going to have to find a church to sing in, or I’d never hear the end of it.

  I clicked over to the other line, and without even saying hello I asked Celia how the presentation went.

  “It was fabulous, if I do say so myself,” Celia said. “I had them at ‘Good morning.’”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Embassy Suites in some place called Rogers.”

  “As in Roy Rogers,” I teased.

  “Yes, just like old Roy,” Celia said. “But it’s not as bad as I thought. It’s a nice-size city.”

  “So did they place a large order?”

  “Not yet, but I have no doubt they will, because the senior buyer asked me to stay over an extra night. They wanted to discuss doing some major business with us.”

  “That’s great! This is what we’ve been working for.” I couldn’t hold back my grin. “How are you?” />
  “I’m fine. I’m going to dinner with the buyer and her assistants.”

  “Great. When you get back, we’ll take ourselves out to celebrate,” I said.

  “That sounds like fun, but we gotta make it someplace fancy.” Celia laughed.

  “Wherever you want,” I said.

  “Okay. Well, sleep tight. I’ve got to get ready to go do my thang,” Celia said.

  “Have fun, but remember you got a deal to close tomorrow,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. I got this! Good night.”

  “Celia,” I called before she hung up.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you—I’m proud of you.”

  “No, thank you, for giving me the chance.”

  “You’ve earned it.”

  I hung up the phone and leaned back on the couch. Tomorrow at this time, I would officially be one of Wal-Mart’s suppliers. Life was moving in the right direction. I still didn’t have any music connections, but if my luck continued that would happen soon, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Let’s just say Halle Berry wasn’t the only high school beauty in Cleveland,” Skylar said as he took one more bite of his beef stroganoff. “With my Naomi Sims Dutch-boy wig and some Fashion Fair makeup, I gave the most beautiful girls a run for their money,” he added.

  Friday had started with a spitting rain but ended as a dazzling sun-soaked day. Celia returned with the Wal-Mart deal signed and delivered. Skylar phoned me around midafternoon and asked me to make one of my best dishes and then he would give me the Skylar and Tank story, part two.

  “And this guy didn’t know you were a guy?” I asked.

  “No. I knew all the tricks and had an answer for everything. When he wanted to go to public places, like the movies and the mall, I told him I had very strict parents who didn’t allow me to date. So we had our secret places, and we would often skip school and hang out in his basement.”

  “So what happened when he’d pressure you for sex?”

  “I had my ways.” Skylar smirked. “I knew how to tuck my stuff where he could touch around it, and let’s face it, no matter how much sex boys have at a young age, they’re too young to know everything about the female body. Besides, I had no problem pleasing him.” Skylar laughed.

  “I bet you didn’t. Where did you get the money to buy the outfits? From what I hear, makeup ain’t cheap.”

  “I guess you could say I had a fairy godmother. There was a lady in my neighborhood who none of the other ladies liked because she was single, and most everybody called her a whore. Looking back, she probably was one, but even a whore doesn’t like being called a slut. I used to run errands for her, and she worked at Dayton’s department store as a manager, which was a big deal back then for a black woman, even if she was light-skinned with large breasts. I just loved her, and she is probably the only woman besides my mother who I had seen naked.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How did that happen?”

  “Well, let’s just say Miss Angela was comfortable with herself and it wasn’t anything for her to open the door naked. I used to love it when she wore sexy black underwear and she would reach into her bra to get money when she wanted me to go to the store for her,” Skylar said before he paused and took a sip of Merlot.

  “So did she know what you were doing? I mean, fooling Tank about being a girl?”

  “I don’t think so. I told her I needed the stuff for a project I was working on, and she knew I was interested in women’s fashion and makeup. She told me that once I got out of high school and went to beauty school, she would introduce me to the Fashion Fair rep and help me get a job applying makeup at Dayton’s. I was able to order new wigs by saving some of the money I made from Miss Angela and stealing a dollar or two from my mother. She was getting hip that someone was wearing her wigs but thought it was my sister.”

  Skylar went on to tell me that most of the time he and Tank met at the high school football stadium near his house or at the back parking lot of the Kmart after it was closed. Skylar convinced Tank that it was better this way, and while they met during the day, the two also often met after both of their families were sound asleep. One night they got caught making out at the stadium by two policemen, and Skylar thought they had realized that he wasn’t a girl and were going to blow his cover. Instead, when the policemen separated the two and talked to them alone, the officer who took Skylar aside whispered that he was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He told Skylar “she” should drop this high school punk and get herself a real man.

  He laughed louder when he told me how black girls in Cleveland were spreading rumors that Tank Malloy was dating a white girl in Shaker Heights and that he had gotten her pregnant.

  “He would get on that bike and trek halfway across the city to see me. Tank won the state championship in wrestling his senior year, and he gave me the letter jacket he earned. I still have it. He used to always bring me flowers and cheap perfume. Some of the stuff, like the cards and letters, I kept, but the other stuff I gave to Miss Angela, because if I gave them to my mother she would ask where I got them from.”

  “That’s funny,” I said with a muffled sigh as I tried to listen to Skylar attentively.

  “What’s funny?”

  “That you would keep the letters and cards. I did the same thing with the stuff Damien gave me. Matter of fact, I still have them locked in a box I keep in a safe place in my house,” I said. I could picture the dark wooden box where I kept the cards, notes, and cassette tapes that Damien had given me.

  In many ways, Damien was responsible for my current career of making cards. The first card I ever made was a hand-painted card that had Love Is on the cover, and when you opened it there was a photograph of Damien sitting on the corner of a hotel bed, wearing a wife-beater T-shirt and jeans, smiling at me.

  “So our first loves had a few similarities,” Skylar said.

  “Yeah, I guess they did. So what happened to him and the relationship? Did he ever find out you were Skylar, the guy, and not a girl?”

  Skylar took the napkin and slowly wiped his lips, dragging out the silence before he answered my question.

  “I’ve been eyeing that dessert over there,” he said as he glanced at the cheesecake I made. “And no one makes cheesecake the way you do.” He stood and sauntered to the counter where the dessert rested. “I’ll have to answer that question when I tell you part three.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “I guess you’ll want your attorney to look this over, but can you get it back to us as soon as you can,” Pastor Kenneth said.

  I looked over the first page of the contract he’d given me for the upcoming revival. It was pretty straightforward, but I was surprised by the $7,500 honorarium they were paying me. It was more than I expected, even though I knew Donnie would have gotten four times what they were offering me. But that was cool. He was the Grammy Award–winning Donnie McClurkin, after all.

  “I’ll do that, but I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” I said, not looking at Pastor Kenneth. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do, since I hadn’t yet spoken to Damien.

  “We’re so glad you’re doing this for us, Brother Chauncey. Not only are we getting a great singer, but it’s saving us a little money, and I tell you, we’re going to need it. The bishop and his wife required first-class travel, and that means the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Do you know how much that bad boy goes for?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, thinking this didn’t sound like the Damien I knew. When we were singing together, he didn’t flinch when our manager suggested we use a tour bus to save money when we went on tour.

  “It costs two thousand dollars a night. Can you believe that?” Pastor Kenneth said.

  “Wow. That sounds like a Bobby and Whitney suite,” I said. This might be the perfect time to ask Pastor how much he knew about Bishop Upchurch and why he was bringing such a controversial figure to the tiny but loving Abundant Joy.

&n
bsp; “It’s more like a George W. suite for real. I guess they don’t call it the Presidential Suite for nothing,” he said, and laughed.

  “Pastor Kenneth, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, Brother Chauncey.”

  “How well do you know this Bishop Upchurch? The reason I ask is because I visited his Web site and he seems pretty politically conservative. Did you know he was running on the Republican ticket for Senate?”

  “Yes, I know that, Brother Chauncey. I met the bishop at a pastors’ conference in Seattle. Our wives hit it off, and even though I don’t agree with all of his views, I think he is one of the most dynamic young ministers in the country. His wife, Grayson, is equally impressive. Why the concern? You know I try to bring different voices to this church, and I don’t side with either,” Pastor Kenneth replied.

  “I know. It’s just that Bishop Upchurch has some pretty conservative and discriminating views. I just hope he doesn’t bring a divisive force to our church. I know most of the members just love Abundant Joy, and I would hate to see that end,” I said tentatively, not wanting my words to sound like a threat.

  “I appreciate your concern, Brother Chauncey, but trust me, I will keep the lid on everything. Abundant Joy will be just fine.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. I’d said enough. I stood up and shook Pastor Kenneth’s hand.

  As I was walking out of his office, Pastor Kenneth called out my name.

  “Yes?” I said as I turned around.

  “How is the music career going?”

  “I need to start looking for a producer, but as soon as I do, I have some great songs I’ve written, and I’ll share them with you.” I smiled, pleased that Pastor Kenneth would take the time to ask.