Falling Into Grace

by Michelle Stimpson

  CHAPTER 9

  Now that Camille believed her days at Aquapoint Systems were numbered, she had a much better attitude about going to work. Bringing her lunch actually morphed into a pleasurable part of her plan to eat healthier and lose weight.

  Even Fluffy seemed to benefit from her new attitude. “The doctor says she’s never seen such a remarkable recovery,” Camille remarked to Sheryl. Actually, she needed to do something to stop this woman after she’d inquired about the feline for two days in a row. The way Sheryl carried on, Camille wondered if her boss had lost sleep behind Fluffy.

  “Oh, wow! You’ve got to give me your vet’s name!”

  “Okay, I’ll have to remember to pick up a card the next time we’re there.” Camille nodded with a straight face.

  Sheryl whipped out her cell phone. “Wait. Before you go back to your desk, let me show you the pictures I took of Lillie last weekend.”

  Camille oohed and aahed over a shot of Sheryl’s purebred cocker spaniel, then quickly darted back to her office before Sheryl could ask to see a photo of the invisible Fluffy.

  Good humor translated into a genuinely cheerful tone, which meant mega leads for Camille. Already, she was at twenty-nine appointments, and it was only Wednesday morning. All this, of course, meant she’d bought herself some time to handle church investigation while on the company’s clock. The more she accomplished at Aquapoint, the less stuff on her plate after hours. Good thing, too, because after her last two workouts on Medgar’s treadmills, Camille was too pooped to do much else.

  She figured it would take a few days for the church secretary—or whoever input new members’ information—to put her name on the church roll. Since she’d already received a postcard from The King’s Table, she hoped Grace Temple wouldn’t be too far behind with processing.

  Now for the real business. Camille skipped on over to her church’s homepage and found the link to church staff. She recognized the praise team leader’s photo. His name was Ronald Shepherd. According to his biography, he’d earned a bachelor of music degree from the University of North Texas and some kind of theological degree from a Dallas seminary. There were no graduation years posted, but Camille guessed he was probably a few years older than her.

  His e-mail address and phone extension popped up when she hovered over his handsome face. She took note, glanced at her watch, and decided she’d better wait until a more casual hour, say ten o’clock, so she wouldn’t appear as though her entire existence depended on this call. Besides, she needed some time to get her verbiage together.

  She struggled to find an appropriate angle on this one. How could she introduce herself and ask to be on the praise team in the same breath? She needed some history, a real reason for Ronald to thrust her into the limelight. She needed what saints at the old church would have called a “blazing-hot testimony,” one where God had picked her up, turned her around, and placed her feet on solid ground. Or did he take her feet out of the “miry clay” first? Was “miry” even a word?

  Hmmm. What could she say that was maybe at least partially true. She didn’t mind lying about an animal, but she didn’t want to jinx herself. Think! Think!

  Okay, there was one time, during her grade school days, when she got lost in J.C. Penney and a little old lady with almost transparent skin led her to the gift-wrapping department, where a lady paged Jerdine to claim Camille. When she and Jerdine searched for the good Samaritan in order to thank her, she was gone. Momma had remarked, “Must have been an angel in disguise.”

  That story actually brought goose bumps to Camille’s arms every time she recalled the incident, but it had nothing to do with her singing. Other than maybe a song about lost souls, she couldn’t find an inroad.

  What else?

  Her mind blank, she opened up a Word file and brainstormed all the potentially life-threatening events in her life that God might have delivered her from:

  1. Cut leg on Slip ’n Slide

  2. Got whole bunch of water in mouth @ Wet ’n’ Wild water park

  3. Swallowed penny

  4. Walking pneumonia

  Hold up. Pneumonia was serious. People died from it. She could have died from it or maybe lost a lung if her parents hadn’t taken her to see a doctor, which they did—but whatever. Point was, it could have happened, and that’s what mattered.

  She thought through her testimony: As a child, she’d suffered from a bronchial problem. Clearly, the devil had been trying to steal her voice. But her mother, a prayer warrior, prayed her through so that God could use this instrument of praise for His glory. And once the Lord healed her from all those breathing-related issues that threatened to swipe her off the earth, she opened her mouth and the most beautiful sound on earth came through loud and clear. She’d been singing ever since!

  By midmorning, Camille had rehearsed the narrative so many times she almost believed it. Confident of her ability to garner support, she dialed the church’s main number and waited for the prompt to enter Ronald’s extension.

  2286.

  “Hello. You have reached the office of Ronald Shepherd, director of music at Grace Chapel Community Church ...” Blah, blah, blah.

  What on earth could he be doing at ten o’clock? She imagined Ronald behind his desk surfing the Internet, browsing Facebook profiles, basically doing what she did at work. So why couldn’t he take her call?

  “Hi, Mr. Shepherd, my name is Camille Robertson. I joined church Sunday and I’m anxious to get busy ministering through song. Could you please return my call at your earliest convenience?” She left her number and tacked on, “Have a blessed day,” for good measure.

  Dang! Now she’d have to write down her story so she could remember it whenever Mr. I’m-too-busy-Web-surfing got back with her.

  Camille activated the “vibrate” option on her phone and placed it right next to her keyboard so she wouldn’t miss his call. At lunch, she checked again to make sure she hadn’t accidentally enabled some feature that might have blocked her phone’s reception. She asked Janice to dial her number.

  The signal came through, no problems.

  By quitting time, Camille was furious. How dare he not return her phone call by the end of the business day? Even if he wasn’t in the office, didn’t he check voice mail remotely? Even if he wanted to call her today, he couldn’t now because of midweek service.

  Anger at Ronald’s brush-off fueled her workout. She probably burned an extra hundred calories because of him.

  Drenched and sore, Camille returned home from the recreation center to find a yellow note taped to her door. Am I being evicted? Couldn’t be. She’d paid her rent and the late charges. Plus it wasn’t pink.

  She snatched the note from the door, inadvertently ripping off a smidgen of the underlying paint. Not my fault.

  The paper read, YOU HAVE A UPS PACKAGE AT LEASING OFFICE. CLAIM BY 7 OR COME BACK AT 9 TOMORROW.

  She checked her phone. Six fifty-four. She could make it. With gym bag still in hand, Camille cut across the center courtyard where a cluster of unsupervised elementary-age kids were flinging empty swings so high the seats wrapped around the top bar, elevating the swings to a height that none of them would be able to reach if they kept it up.

  She shook her head. Kids today are so destructive.

  Up ahead, the main office parking lot was mighty desolate. Camille glanced at her phone again. Six fifty-seven. Twenty feet later, it was pretty clear that these people had vacated the premises. Are you kidding me?

  Nope. Lights out, doors locked, curtains closed.

  “I can’t believe this.” She grunted. She walked around the building to a side entrance. A sign listing the maintenance man’s number was her only hope. Camille called, tried to explain the urgency of her situation, but the complex’s answering service informed her that an unclaimed package from UPS did not fall under the category of “emergency.”

  “But I need that delivery.” Camille added a tearful twang.

  The responder wavere
d. “Is there medication in the box?”

  “Yes.” Why didn’t I think of that?

  “Hold on a second.”

  Camille waited, happy that her precious parcel, whatever it was, would soon be in her hands.

  “Ma’am, I’ve talked to the manager. She says she’s willing to page the maintenance man and have him come to the office, but you have to open the package in his presence and show him that the content is medically necessary or else she’ll charge you for his overtime.”

  Camille went off. “What? How she gon’ charge me for him to do his job?”

  “Because, ma’am, the office is closed.”

  “What time you got?” she baited the operator.

  “Three minutes after seven.”

  “Yeah, now that you and I have been talking for five minutes. What time did I call you?”

  “My monitor shows seven.”

  Camille reasoned, “That’s what I’m saying! If I called you at seven, they must have been gone before then.”

  “Okay, ma’am, do you want me to call the maintenance man or not?” the operator asked point-blank.

  “What about security?”

  “For your location, you need to hang up and dial nine-one-one if this is a life-or-death situation.”

  “Oooh! You wait until I see them tomorrow,” Camille hissed as she concluded the conversation improperly through the push of a button. She marched back to her unit and slammed the cheap, hollow door behind her. These people were worse than Ronald Shepherd!

  Good old Fluffy’s dialysis would have to come through the next morning. Camille couldn’t be at her job on time because she had to be at her complex’s office at nine o’clock to deal with whoever found it acceptable to discard posted work hours. Though she recognized the irony in her situation, she rationalized that her case was different. No one depended on her to be anywhere at any particular time. A leasing agent, however, needed to be in place for a plethora of dire reasons. It all boiled down to customer service.

  Eight fifty-eight a.m. Camille took the “future residents” parking spot nearest the door. What could they do—tow her? She sauntered into complex headquarters wearing a dark paisley-print halter dress with a black half cardigan. She had thought about wearing the too tall heels again so she could appear slightly intimidating and overly professional, but patent leather heels wouldn’t give her any clout here. Judging from times she’d had to come to the front desk to explain why she needed a few more days to pay rent, tattoos were king with this crew.

  Camille immediately recognized LaNetra, the manager who’d actually signed the dotted line on her leasing agreement. For the most part, LaNetra was cordial, which dampened all hopes of a vigorous debate followed by this angry tenant’s threat to call the home office and a manager’s subsequent offer of reduced rent in order to keep Camille quiet.

  She approached LaNetra at the circular reception desk. “Hi. I live in A-fifteen. Yesterday, I got a note on my door saying I had a package that I could pick up before seven—”

  “Yes!” LaNetra remarked as she stood to shake Camille’s hand. “I remember you. Mrs. Robertson, right?”

  Attitude still intact. “Miss Robertson.”

  LaNetra shifted her weight to one side as she slipped her hip into classic girlfriend stance. “You know what? Somebody told me you used to sing with the group that sang that song ‘Meet Me in the Hot Tub.’ Is that right?”

  A smile escaped. “Yes, I was the lead singer.”

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s you. My sister used to play that song like it was going out of style! Why didn’t you tell me who you were when you first moved in?”

  Camille recognized the star-struck look in LaNetra’s eyes. People, particularly Americans, were suckers for anyone they had seen on television or heard on the radio.

  “I didn’t want everybody to know.” Camille lowered her lashes. “People try to charge you more when they think you have money.”

  LaNetra rolled her eyes. “Girl, tell me about it. The other week, my baby daddy took me to a car dealership in his Escalade. Next thing you know, they tried to tell me my car note was gonna be seven hundred and sixty-two dollars a month. For a Honda Accord!

  Camille tried to register her complaint during the brief lull. “Well, I’m not—”

  “That’s exactly what I said! I am not going to pay that,” LaNetra echoed. “Now, I know my credit is jacked, but it ain’t that jacked to where I gotta slap almost a thousand dollars a month on the table for a ride that ain’t even all that. I mean, they got good trade-in value, but let’s be for real.

  “Anyway, that was all because we drove up on the lot in his car. The next day, I took my momma’s old Chevy Cavalier. Got the exact same Honda Accord car for way less, plus I got a warranty, so, I feel you, Miss Robertson. If people try to get over on me because of a Cadillac, I can’t imagine what they try to do to you.”

  Whether through the adoration or the long-winded chronicle, LaNetra’s gabbing had singlehandedly disarmed Camille. “So, you want your package? I love getting packages. Makes me feel like I really done something, even when I know all I did was just order something online.”

  Fluffy’s dialysis wouldn’t account for too much more missed time this morning. He might have to die if this girl kept rambling.

  LaNetra bent down to retrieve the shoebox-sized parcel. “Here you go.”

  Camille looked at the return address. Alexis? Suddenly, she remembered the impromptu promise of a birthday gift. The last time someone relished her birthday was when her former supervisor had the baker include Camille’s name on the monthly employee birthday celebration cake they dumped in the break room.

  Just the thought of unwrapping a present that wasn’t from the near-mandatory corporate Secret Santa system made Camille tuck both lips between her teeth to keep them from trembling.

  “Are you okay?” LaNetra asked.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Tears trailed down Camille’s face as she sat in her car opening the precious cardboard container. Beyond the tape and foam peanuts, she discovered a beautiful scented candle and a book entitled A Woman’s Wisdom from Proverbs. She read the heart-shaped sticky memo attached to the cover.

  Now that you’re thirty, a proverb for each year. You probably can’t see too good at your age, so I got you a candle, too. LOL! Happy Birthday!

  —Alexis

  The joke sent a wave of laughter through Camille as she leaned back on her headrest. Alexis’s sense of humor has always been refreshing. There was always something about her that drew people, made people feel good in her presence. No doubt, Alexis was probably one of the best teachers on campus because she had a way of bringing out the best in people. Even people like Camille.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Hello, Camille, this is Ronald Shepherd, minister of music at Grace Chapel, returning your phone call.”

  She turned down the volume on her radio, a futile attempt to hide her mysterious penchant for T.I.’s music. Rap wasn’t really her forte, but something about his style pulled her into his world.

  “Yes, umm, thank you,” Camille prattled through, hoping Ronald hadn’t heard too much. “Thanks for returning my call.”

  “Is this a good time for you to talk? Sounds like you’re on the road,” he cautioned.

  She sidestepped his concern. “Oh, I’m okay. Go ahead.”

  “Let me first apologize for not getting back to you before now. I was out of town at a funeral.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she stated with a tinge of curiosity.

  “Thank you.” He welcomed her sympathy but didn’t offer additional information. “How can I help you?”

  It had been more than forty-eight hours since Camille last practiced her mighty testimony. Frankly, she had given up on Ronald and decided to seek out that friendly drummer instead. Musicians were like a family. Get to know one, and you got to know all of them.

  Again, she scuffled through her words. “
I joined the church Sunday. And. Your music was amazing. It really moved me.” What am I saying? “I enjoyed the praise team. And the choir, But the praise team ... what a team.”

  “Thank you. To God be the glory. You mentioned something about ministering through song in your voice message?” Ronald kept the conversation moving.

  “Mmm-hmm. I used to sing in the choir. Well, actually, believe it or not, I was almost unable to sing because I had asthma as a child.” That’s not the segue! That’s not even the right story!

  Ronald said, “Praise God you’ve been delivered.”

  She hadn’t counted on the fact that Ronald wouldn’t ask questions about her miraculous healing. His prodding was supposed to lay out the red carpet for a staggering account of how God zapped her with abilities that could only be fully appreciated if she were immediately placed on the praise team.

  Instead, Ronald’s silence pressed her to steer toward a point. Soon.

  “So, anyway, I just wanted to know how I can be a part of the music ministry.” There it was. He’d yanked it out of her in less than sixty seconds.

  “Do you play an instrument? Sing? Write music?”

  “I sing. Soprano.”

  “Great. Well, descriptions of all our choirs and their rehearsal schedules are on the church’s Web site, but just to let you know, the church has several choirs, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t be interested in the men’s choir.”

  He expelled a slight chuckle. Camille was careful to follow his humor with a breathy snicker of her own.

  He continued, “We have the women’s choir, the children’s choir, youth choir, young-adult choir, adult choir, senior choir, and the unity choir, which is a combination of people in existing choirs who are available to sing on fifth Sundays. The choirs’ rehearsals vary because they rotate serving on Sundays and Wednesdays. Really, the only way to keep up is to check the Web site. Sometimes, even I have to consult the Web site to figure out who’s doing what.”

  Again, she trailed his laughter. “Okay. I’ll be sure to check the Web site.”