Falling Into Grace

by Michelle Stimpson

  Sunlight poured in through opened blinds, which also afforded an enviable view of the city. To her left, a bookcase filled with white binders and books so thick they had to be stuffed with legalese and other reference guides. This all made sense, of course, because online research showed John David had once been an entertainment attorney.

  To her right, shelves containing more photographs. Most interestingly, John David was married with a daughter.

  John David’s desk itself was a work of art. Heavily lacquered wood, gold accents, the stuff old lawyers’ offices are made of.

  Before Camille could properly savor the moment, John David started. “Let’s cut to the chase. I found some of your old videos on You Tube. Was your voice digitally enhanced?”

  “No.”

  “Great. You’ve got a strong, pure sound, and your face is attractive. You might want to do a little nipping and tucking, file down some rough edges. But overall, your look is hot.”

  Alrighty, then.

  John David detoured to his Apple laptop screen. His fingers danced across the keyboard, then he waited, presumably for a Web page to upload. “So, yesterday, after we talked, I started thinking. Brainstorming.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  Camille sat on the edge of her seat.

  “You ever sung gospel?”

  “Um, yeah, back when I was little. My mom was the church musician. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Perfect. That’s what we’ll do,” he stated.

  “ What’s what we’ll do?”

  “Make you a contemporary gospel singer.”

  Camille stuttered, “But ... I mean, I can ... it’s just not, you know, what I had in mind.”

  He sat back again, put his hands on top of his head. “You heard of Heather Headley?”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Oleta Adams?”

  “Yes. She’s awesome.”

  “They were semihot names in R and B, but now they’re even bigger in gospel. They’ve managed to keep a career going by gaining a new audience. Trust me, if you don’t hit it big in music by twenty-five, you either give up on being a superstar or go back to the drawing board. Those are your only two choices.”

  He had a point. Both of them were excellent, unique mainstream singers who had crossed over into Christian music. Still, gospel?

  “Is there any way I can, you know, do some other type of music. Like light pop, or whatever Bonnie Raitt sings?”

  “Camille, you’re no spring chicken. The only sector forgiving enough to take you back at this point is Christians. They’ll accept anybody at any age and any size, which, by the way, would pose a serious problem for you in the mainstream.”

  “I can lose weight,” she stammered.

  “I strongly suggest it, gospel or not,” he said matter-of-factly. He laid his eyes on Camille’s. “If you’re serious about getting back into this business, you’re going to have to do what you’ve gotta do. If you were a man, this would be a totally different conversation.”

  Camille squinted. “So, men can do whatever they want at whatever age, huh?”

  “Pretty much,” John David concurred. “Take Jonathan Butler. He does gospel and jazz. Kirk Franklin does gospel, but he’s very welcome in the secular crowd. Some might even say he’s better received there than in Christian music, just by looking at the charts.”

  “This is so unfair.” Camille crossed her arms. “The arts are supposed to be universal. Transcend race, class, and gender.”

  “This isn’t art, Camille, it’s business. It’s the way of the world. I didn’t make the rules, but I do understand them and I don’t break them unless I have to,” John David said. “In your case, we need to follow them to get your foot back in the door.

  “Trust me, your best bet is gospel. It’s good music. Some even say it helps people. Maybe you can do R and B again later, I don’t know. But if you’re not willing to reinvent yourself as a gospel singer, I suggest you find yourself another agent.”

  His words bore no hint of compromise. Camille squirmed in her chair. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. I haven’t been inside a church in, like, three years.”

  “Then there’s your starting point. I suggest you join a church. A big one, and we’ve got plenty of ’em right here in Dallas. Become a member. Get yourself connected with the musicians. Get a demo with a choir or something behind you.”

  John David handed Camille one of his business cards. “Come back when you’ve got all that in place, and I’ll get busy working on my end.”

  Camille ran her thumb across the lettering on the card. She felt like her life was slipping away. This one last line had all but shriveled up and left her without a way back to her destiny.

  “Have a good day,” John David shooed her out.

  Camille blinked back tears as she let herself out of John David’s office. She breezed past Timber without a word. It probably would have been best to apologize again, but her pride couldn’t let the woman get a glimpse of the disappointment brewing in Camille’s chest.

  The elevator ride down provided a chance to compose herself long enough to make it to the car, where Camille promptly burst into tears. This meeting had not gone the way she’d planned. John David was supposed to ask her to sing again, be blown away by her in-person sound, then whisk her over to someone’s studio to record a killer song that he would distribute to a major producer. That major producer would, in turn, sign her, next week, with a huge bonus that would allow her to kiss Aquapoint Systems and the entire Fossil Terrace apartment complex good-bye forever.

  But no, no, no. John David would agree to represent her only as a stupid gospel singer, of all things. Not only did he want to make her a gospel singer, he wanted her to become a gospel singer before he’d actually do anything to promote her!

  And the gospel game was certainly different than R&B. Half the attraction with a worldwide audience was sex appeal. Booty-shaking, hip-thrusting, cleavage-flashing dances sold just as many records and concert tickets as great vocals in her old world. Why couldn’t she just capitalize on her body—after she got it back in shape, of course?

  There was also a teeny tiny part of her that didn’t like the idea of singing gospel just so that she could become a star again. This part, Camille knew, came from her mother’s influence (Bobby Junior would have told her to jump on the chance). But Jerdine Robertson would have told Camille point-blank not to play in the Lord’s house.

  With a heavy foot on the pedal, Camille screeched out of the parking lot. She soon discovered that a bad attitude could be just as distracting as text messaging on the road. A fellow motorist honked at her when she stomped on her brake and made a quick right turn without signaling. She honked back. Yes, she was wrong, but she was not in the mood to be chastised by some guy driving a wood-paneled station wagon. He was wrong just for owning that thing.

  Just so happened, a police officer witnessed Camille’s rash antics. His siren startled Camille initially. What did I do? All her tags were current. Insurance active. She slowed to a stop in a restaurant parking lot and waited for the officer to inform her of why he was stopping her, adding insult to injury on one of the worst days of her life.

  She leaned forward for a wider angle in her side-view mirror and soon got an eyeful of tall, dark, chocolate in sunglasses and a uniform. Unfortunately, he was also sporting a metallic clipboard with a pen. And a wedding band.

  Her driver’s window squeaked to the halfway point. “Hello, Officer. Is there something wrong?”

  “You,” he barked, removing his shades. A dark brother with white teeth was a winning combination in Camille’s book. “You were weaving down Commerce, and you cut off another driver at the light. You could have caused an accident. Have you been drinking?”

  Such ugly words from such a beautiful man. “No, Officer. I don’t drink.”

  “Could you step out of the vehicle, please?”

  She obeyed, taking thi
s moment to offer a reasonable explanation. “Officer, I just got some bad news and lost track of where I was going for a second. I’m not under the influence of any illegal substance.”

  Despite her justification, she was still subjected to a field sobriety test. She passed, of course, but the policeman still gave her a ticket for failure to maintain a lane of traffic. What kind of violation is this?

  “Be more careful,” he scolded. “Cars are dangerous weapons, Miss Robertson. Don’t get behind the wheel if you’re psychologically impaired.”

  Camille accepted the ticket. “I understand.”

  Upon entering her apartment, Camille dropped her bag and flipped off her shoes. Life was just plain ridiculous. You think you’re advancing one square forward when, actually, you’ve been pushed all the way back to “go.”

  She plunked onto her couch and fished the ticket from her bag. The back side of the document gave a range for the ticket fine. Two hundred to two hundred twenty-five dollars. She’d have to go to the station to determine the exact amount.

  Already, her mind buzzed with thoughts about what she would have to give up or pull off in order to pay the associated fines without skipping a beat on her bills. Twenty extra leads would cover it. Dang! That wouldn’t work. Camille had thoroughly convinced Sheryl that her phantom cat needed extra TLC. Trying to come in early or stay later now would bust the tall tale.

  Selling twenty CDs in front of the beauty supply might work, if the bootleg DVD man didn’t chase her off his turf. Or maybe she could work a week at a retail store. If she hadn’t burned her relationship with her Mary Kay director, she might be able to host a few shows.

  Ugh! Why don’t police officers think about how they’re messing with people’s lives when they write these tickets?

  No matter what, she’d have to add to her forty-hour work week for a while to keep this thing from escalating to a warrant. Yet, even with a payment plan, there was nothing to spare in her budget.

  Maybe she should just get pregnant and have a baby so she could get free food, reduced rent, and a small fortune every tax season. She’d always wanted a daughter. A little diva named Madison. Camille snuggled back into her couch at the thought of her mini-me. Would she be a prissy mama or one of those tree-climbing, frog-catching tomboys? Would she inherit her mother’s voice and her grandmother’s instrumental talent?

  Then there was always the possibility little Madison would be a complete horror. Drawing on walls, fighting at school so Camille would have to come off her job to attend parent conferences. And what if Madison grew up to be a serial killer? The world would have one more lunatic on the streets all because Camille Robertson couldn’t get one big break. They’d blame Camille, and she’d blame John David.

  Snap out of it!

  Camille placed a hand on her forehead. The whole kid scheme was crazy, but she had to do something. She couldn’t live the rest of her life in a state where two hundred dollars threw her into panic mode. No matter what, she had to work her way out of this. There was no easy path.

  And then it hit her. If she was going to put herself to work doing something she didn’t really want to do—like give birth—she might as well work for something she did want. Seriously, if she was willing to raise a child, she should at least be willing to join a choir and lead a few songs.

  John David had said that if she did her part, he’d do his. That probably wouldn’t help her in the short term with this ticket, but something had to give.

  The counsel Jerdine gave her daughter about her first job working at McDonald’s came to mind. Camille had been complaining about having to clean the men’s restroom. “It’s so nasty!”

  “Well”—her mother had laughed—“they kick the men out before you go in, right?”

  “Yes,” Camille conceded while buckling her seat belt.

  Jerdine was always on time to pick up her daughter. She never wanted any of Camille’s male coworkers offering her shapely daughter a ride home.

  “Baby, sometimes you have to do what you have to do first in order to do what you want to do later,” Jerdine comforted her only daughter.

  Camille sat straight up on her couch now. She closed her eyes and spoke into the air. “Okay, Momma. I know you didn’t mean for me to use your advice in a bad way, but you also said that God lets everything happen for a reason.

  “I don’t know all the reasons, but I’ve got to go for it. Singing won’t go away, Momma. I have to do this.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Hours at the Medgar Evers center yielded a list of the top-ten churches in the Dallas area, by enrollment. The King’s Table, pastored by a man who was probably a household name at that point, ranked number one, with a combined total of twenty-four thousand in attendance at its two Sunday services. Camille scoffed at the idea of attending church twice on a Sunday. If memory served her well, she could barely keep her eyelids apart during the main message every week. And Wednesday night services were even worse with Mother Jackson beating that tambourine all offbeat.

  Second on her list was Northeast Christian Church. Nineteen thousand. One service. But from what Camille gathered on the Web site, the congregation was mostly Caucasian. She’d send John David a text: Does the church have to be black?

  His reply: Yes

  Camille: Think Kirk Franklin. He crosses over races.

  John David: HE’S A MAN

  Okay, you don’t have to holler. Camille X-ed Northeast off the list.

  Next up, Grace Chapel Community Church. They had only fifteen thousand people coming every week. Camille did the math. If fifteen thousand people bought one of her CDs at thirteen ninety-nine each, she’d make only about seventeen thousand dollars after John David took his cut. Barely above full-time minimum wage, annually. Surely, she’d have more than fifteen thousand people buying her music, but the home base needed to be at least twenty thousand to move her into a new tax bracket.

  With The King’s Table, she could at least hope to bring home close to thirty thousand dollars with each release.

  After having performed her calculations, there was no way on earth she could join a church with less than twenty thousand members who actually came to church.

  The King’s Table it is.

  Sunday morning, Camille flicked through the clothes in her closet, looking for something eye-catching to commemorate her walk down the main aisle when she joined the church. No time like the present to start making an impression on the congregation. She selected a black shirt dress with four-inch open-toed, shiny black pumps. Cleaver-ish, yet stylish enough to cause some degree of speculation about her income bracket. The front lace wig would have been over the top, so she decided to sport a sophisticated, black ponytail that bobbed just a little with every step.

  Those pumps, however, proved to be a total nightmare. Camille had underestimated how far she’d have to walk from her parking space to a trolley pick-up stop. Even after the driver cleared the vehicle at the front entrance, she still had to walk up another flight of stairs in a swarm of people who obviously had no respect for corns.

  Once she passed through the arenalike doors into one of the main seating areas, Camille gasped at the sheer magnitude of the sanctuary. The Web site photographs didn’t do this church justice. Oh my God! This place is crazy! It might as well have been a rock concert, except rock fans wouldn’t assemble themselves at eight o’clock in the morning no matter how famous the singer. Shoot, I don’t even get to work this early!

  Rows and rows, columns and columns of people with Bibles, hats, and notepads found their seats next to fellow members and, presumably, a number of visitors. Though the cushioned seats were covered with bright red cloth, few of them remained visible. The church was nearly packed except for the nosebleed seats, and service hadn’t even begun.

  An usher escorted Camille’s bunch of church-goers to one of the last empty sections in the building. She sat next to a woman who’d been smart enough to bring a jacket. And a Bible, which Camille didn’t own, but s
he’d put that on her list of things to get. She’d have to ask John David if she could write it off as a business expense.

  Camille’s feet had barely recovered when some old man dressed in African attire approached center stage with a huge horn-looking device the size of a five-year-old child. He raised the instrument to his lips and blew. The all-encompassing sound was followed by a rousing, almost deafening praise from the congregation. These people obviously had supernatural lung capacity.

  He blew again, and another round of praise circled through the building. By this time, everyone was standing. Camille refused to stuff her feet into those shoes again. The people sitting on either side of her probably didn’t matter one way or another as far as her music was concerned. No worries. She’d let those heels rest until her debut church-joining waltz toward the main platform.

  After the call to worship, five people walked out with microphones in hand, and lights hit the band as well as the robed choir behind them. The audience applauded as a man Camille guessed was the worship leader, a heavy, bald-headed guy dressed in a traditional Sunday suit, asked the question, “Are you all ready to go higher in the Lord this morning?”

  “Yes!” the crowd roared.

  “Are you ready to give the Lord some praise?”

  “Yes!”

  “Has He been good to you?”

  “Yes!”

  “I mean real, real good to you?”

  Louder, “Yes!”

  This was great. Obviously, not much had changed since the days her mother led congregational hymns at their old church. Camille knew all this church jargon like the back of her hand. Leading worship would be a piece of cake.

  “Come on, praise team, one, two, three, four!” Pillsbury dough man cued up the band.

  Camille took note of this designation. Praise team. She listened for the harmony. One soprano, two altos, two tenors. These people must be better singers than the average choir member. This brought things to a whole new level. Being in the choir wasn’t good enough. She needed to get on the praise team. They had their own microphones. More camera time, too, evidenced by the five giant monitors strategically placed throughout the edifice. The media team alternated between faces and words, guiding the audience through songs.