Falling Into Grace

by Michelle Stimpson

  “Great. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Camille wondered if maybe she should wait until she’d attended a few practices before springing the praise-team question on him. But time was of the essence, and he seemed to be a straightforward guy. He could take it. “Is there information about the praise team on the Web site as well?”

  “No, not right now. We do hold open auditions twice a year, but we generally end up selecting our most faithful members of the various choirs to serve on the praise team because it requires a higher level of commitment in terms of time and dedication,” Ronald explained.

  Yada, yada, yada. “I understand. So, when’s the next praise-team audition?”

  “Let me see,” Ronald drawled. “Second Saturday in August.”

  “This fall August?” flew up from Camille’s heart and out of her mouth. I could have stayed my happy behind at The King’s Table! This is false advertising!

  Ronald reiterated, “Yes. August, four months from now.”

  Other words had to be suppressed. “Oh, okay. Thank you.”

  “I look forward to meeting you at choir rehearsal,” Ronald said.

  “Definitely. Good-bye.”

  “Bye.”

  August! Good thing Camille was already parked between the white lines when he delivered that blow. Stunned, she slowly exited her car and transported herself and her gym bag up the staircase to her apartment, on autopilot.

  Would she be able to prove herself “faithful” in four months? Exactly how faithful is faithful? How was she supposed to keep John David waiting a third of a year for this demo CD? And why was everything working against her?

  After showering and eating her last ration of rabbit food for the day, Camille consumed three hours of reality talk shows. Though pay day had come again, there was no reason to celebrate. Whatever money she had left over would go toward the citation, which she still hadn’t investigated. The ticket showed she had thirty days to contact the clerk. She’d call them at the last minute.

  Right now, Camille felt like singing the blues. Literally. “A lady at the casino,” she recited the first line of Johnnie Taylor’s “Last Two Dollars” and instantly sensed the song’s dismal vibes course through her. It was good to know somebody else understood what it meant to lose everything by means of gambling.

  Though Camille hadn’t lost everything in Shreveport or Vegas, she wondered if she might have had better odds on a slot machine. Nights like this, when she realized she was just as broke on Friday as she was on Thursday, she could just kick herself for betting against family.

  She closed her eyes and pushed the mental “replay” button on the night before the Sweet Treats’s debut album went on sale. All four of the group members were bunking in a Comfort Inn just outside Durham, NC. Stripped of wigs, heavy makeup, and glamorous stage costumes, they looked as though they could have been college roommates. By this point, they had all grown comfortable enough with each other to share a single bathroom with ease.

  Courtney was in the adjacent room, and he’d called the girls’ room more than once, asking them to stop all the racket, but they couldn’t help it. The prerelease buzz and promotion had positioned them to make a significant boom in the industry. It wasn’t every day that a group of nineteen-year-olds fell asleep penniless but woke up the next morning with six figures each to their names.

  Hunkered over a pizza they’d ordered at midnight, the girls gibbered and made up songs as they ate.

  Tonya started off another groove to the tune of the happy birthday song. “We’re gonna be rich.”

  Alexis added, “Tell your momma ’nem this.”

  Camille snatched the featured line, “Tomorrow starts our future.”

  They’d waited for Kyra to round out the melody. Her silence sent them all to the floor, rolling in laughter. That girl was not one for thinking on her feet.

  “Wait. Wait, I got it.” Kyra cleared her throat and topped off with, “So you betta recognize.”

  Alexis, Tonya, and Camille had laughed even harder, leaving Kyra confused. “What’s wrong?”

  The fact that she didn’t get it only made things worse.

  Kyra grew angry. “What? Y’all don’t think I can sing as good as y’all?”

  Alexis, the peacemaker, gained her composure long enough to enlighten Kyra. “You need to end with something that rhymes with ‘rich’ and ‘this.’”

  Kyra had crossed her arms. “Oh, I got a word that rhymes with rich, but I don’t think y’all want to hear it.”

  “Kyra, calm down,” Tonya scolded. “Why you always gotta take everything to the streets? Here. Eat some more pizza.”

  Offended but hungry, Kyra obeyed. The others reclaimed their spots on the bed as they found their wits.

  The phone rang again.

  “You answer it this time,” Camille told Alexis. “I don’t want to hear my brother’s mouth anymore.”

  “Hello.” Alexis had giggled. Her expression dulled. “Oh, we’re sorry. Okay, we’ll lower our voices. Good night.” Eyes wide, she faced her comrades. “That was the manager. He said one of the guests complained about us. We’ve got to keep it down for real now.”

  The girls, sobered by the warning, ate in silence for a moment.

  Camille was the first to speak again. “I’ll be glad when we can stay in real hotels. The kinds where we have our own suites, or maybe the whole floor could be ours.”

  “Not me.” Tonya shook her head. “Courtney says that’s how artists go broke.”

  Camille countered, “I know Courtney is my brother and all, but sometimes he acts like he doesn’t want us to spend any money. He’s so cheap. I mean, Sweet Treats is not broke. We deserve to splurge on some things. What would our fans think if they saw us in this cheap hotel? We have an image to keep up, you know?”

  “That’s probably the same thing TLC said before they filed bankruptcy,” Alexis took sides.

  “And Toni Braxton, and MC Hammer, too” Tonya added.

  Camille rolled her eyes. “They were just stupid. I mean, how do you make, like, ten million dollars one year and then you’re broke the next year?”

  “’Cause if you make ten million dollars, you basically owe five million dollars in taxes,” from Alexis, whose parents were both educators. Sometimes that girl was too smart.

  “Okay, but still. How do you go in debt in one year when you have five million dollars?”

  “Easy,” Alexis chirped, “spend five million and one.”

  Unconvinced, Camille had smacked her lips. “I don’t care what y’all say. All of them should be set for life with that money. They stupider than a mug.”

  “I know, right?” Kyra jumped in Camille’s corner.

  The fact that Kyra agreed with her should have been Camille’s first clue that she was off track. Turns out, five million dollars flies away quite easily, especially after all the help gets paid and what’s left over has to be split four ways.

  When Courtney was the manager, he had done his best to keep the girls grounded, make them realize this money wouldn’t last forever. He even tried to get them to invest in different stocks and options. Tonya listened. Alexis listened because her parents agreed with Courtney. Kyra told him to kiss her where the sun didn’t shine, she’d do what she pleased with her money.

  Camille never felt she had a choice. Courtney and Bobby Junior all but insisted she had to stash some in some fund she couldn’t even touch until she’d reached the ripe old age of twenty-five. It was like having your parent be your teacher. Double supervision, double punishment.

  Courtney’s real-life “big brother” heavy-handed tactics quickly forced Camille to push a Sweet Treats vote. The group was split down the middle about keeping Courtney as a manager. But when Camille proposed a management deal with the smooth-talking, good-looking Aaron Bellamy, who promised them the moon, Alexis and Tonya gave in. Courtney was terminated—with Aaron’s help, of course, because none of the girls actually knew how to fire someb
ody.

  Looking back, more than a decade later, Camille realized that severing Courtney’s contract was perhaps the most stupid decision she’d ever made. Stupider than spending five million and one dollars in a year. Sweet Treats lost the one person who believed in them enough to take out a title loan on his car to pay for their first costumes.

  Worse, Camille lost the one person who shared memories of making Rice Krispies treats and dying Easter eggs with their mother. The only one who laughed every time Jerdine had chanted the silly banna-fanna-fo-fanna rhyme.

  Melancholy sank deeper into her aching body now. At the gym, she’d done thirty-eight minutes on the elliptical rider, burning two hundred calories according to the machine display. But her temporary soreness paled in comparison to losing the only person she’d ever be able to call brother.

  As she hoisted herself off the couch, a saying from the old church suddenly thrust itself into the forefront of her mind. At least I have my health and strength.

  How many times had she heard that one growing up? And every time she heard it, she thought about how silly it was to be thankful for something as intangible as “health and strength” or “a sound mind” and “the activity of my limbs.” They should have added twenty dollars to that list, as far as Camille was concerned. Money couldn’t buy health, but it probably could have bought some pretty good doctors for Momma.

  One painful step after another, Camille plodded back to her bedroom. The creaky mattress begged for a replacement. Her faux down comforter also needed a successor since Camille had experimented with washing it in the gentle cycle rather than spending extra cash to have it dry-cleaned. Actually, the stale scent of her sheets advised Camille she needed to get to the washateria soon. Hope I have enough coins and washing powder.

  She settled her head into the pillow and took one last look ahead. There, on the night stand, was the book from Alexis, which Camille still hadn’t cracked open. Camille was a singer, not a reader. Like most people, Alexis had given the type of gift she wanted to receive—not what the recipient desired.

  “Well,” Camille told herself, “it’s the thought that counts.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Willie Nevils used to have A-plus credit. So did Mattie. Never a missed bill, never a lapse in phone service. God had been good to Alexis’s parents. Though they were far from rich, Alexis couldn’t remember a time when her parents had said they couldn’t give her something she wanted or needed because they couldn’t afford it. They might have said, “You’re not old enough yet,” or, “Let’s see what your report card looks like,” but no hint that money was a deciding factor. In fact, Alexis had been shocked the first time she heard someone at school talk about their lights being turned off.

  “What do you mean off?” she had asked, wide-eyed.

  Michelle Stars, one of the smartest girls in first grade, enlightened Alexis. “Like when you turn on the light switch, the light doesn’t come on.”

  “Oh.” Alexis had sighed with relief. “You just have to change the lightbulb.”

  “No, silly.” Michelle laughed and pushed her dirty blond bangs behind her ears. “There’s no electricity in my house. Nothing works. Not even the TV.”

  Horror ripped through Alexis’s tiny frame. “Why not?”

  “Because my mom didn’t pay the bill.”

  “Why didn’t she pay the bill?”

  “’Cause we don’t have enough money.”

  Aside from the fact that she’d never heard of such a predicament, Alexis pondered in awe before asking her next question. “Doesn’t your mom have a job?”

  “Yes, she works, but when she got her check, she didn’t have enough money still.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “I don’t have a dad.”

  Alexis decided she’d better stop asking this girl questions because, in a minute, Michelle might confess to being from outer space. Everyone had a daddy, unless they were some kind of alien.

  The Nevils family bubble had been a soft, happy space. At the end of Alexis’s private school elementary education, she entered public school and her teen years simultaneously. Only then did she begin to see how cruel people could be. They lied, cheated, and stole. Boys fought, girls got pregnant. Most teachers sat behind their desks reading newspapers while the students did nothing more than copy definitions from a dictionary or answer the questions at the end of a chapter.

  Her only saving grace was choir. School choir, church choir, community choir, didn’t matter. Alexis seized every opportunity to sing, and her parents supported her efforts. She’d even earned a partial scholarship to Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.

  Of course, the Nevilses hadn’t been too happy about sending their baby girl hundreds of miles away, but Alexis was itching to try her wings. Too bad they didn’t work quite as well as she’d wanted them to. Academically, college was no trouble. The social aspect, however, disheartened Alexis. Her roommate, Dionna, robbed her blind and broke every dorm rule possible. Frightened by one of Dionna’s boyfriend’s advances, Alexis had asked for a new roommate, which, of course, led to what everyone called “snitching.”

  Dionna’s imitation “sorority” sisters had it in for Alexis after that. The Kitty Phi Sleepers, an unauthorized, newly formed social club, wore red and black and couldn’t really decide if they were supposed to be little sisters to the Alphas or the Kappas. Just depended on which frat had the most liquor on any given night.

  Anyway, their club/gang put Alexis on the hit list. One of them even keyed her car. Campus security acted like their hands were tied without solid proof. Halfway into the second semester, Alexis was ready to drop out, move back home with her parents in St. Louis, and transfer her fifteen hours to a community college. She’d live with Momma and Daddy as long as possible if it meant safety from bullies and irrational people.

  Again, the only reason she’d remained at the college for as long as she did was the choir. She couldn’t let them down. In their own little geeky way, they had bonded. Not that any of them had her back with Dionna’s crew, but at least she had some kind of haven from all the madness.

  When her choir director, Mr. Allen, told her about an audition for a female singing group in Houston, Alexis had jumped at the opportunity. She didn’t call her parents to seek counsel. Honestly, Alexis didn’t think it would amount to much. The world was filled with so many professionally trained singers who had spent their lives connected to microphone stands, Alexis presumed the small-time audition would just be a life experience she could learn from, something to tell the grandkids about.

  Mr. Allen must have thought the same thing, too, because he hadn’t planned on being at the studio all day. “Alexis, I’m going to have to come back for you. Call me when you’re ready. Good luck!”

  Turned out, Mr. Allen was nowhere to be found at nine thirty. Alexis ended up hitching a ride back to her dorm with strangers—Camille and her brother, Courtney.

  A week later, Camille was more like a cousin, Tonya a sister. And Kyra ... well, she was the crazy aunt Alexis never had. Kyra got into a huge fracas with one of Dionna’s friends at a social event on the college campus Alexis had invited them to. The bad news: Kyra lost four braids and an earring in the scuffle. The good news: Dionna’s people now thought Alexis had some kind of backup, especially after Kyra threatened to “come back and bust a cap in everybody up in here wearin’ a red and black shirt!” This threat, of course, was followed by a load of expletives only an experienced cusser could skillfully handle. That kind of profanity was not to be tried at home.

  Afterward, a security officer had questioned Alexis about the young lady who’d made a terroristic threat.

  “I don’t know her all that well. She’s a girl I sang with a few times,” Alexis had bent the truth.

  Kyra’s hair-trigger attitude might have violated campus and perhaps federal policy, but Alexis wasn’t about to mess up the best protection plan she had going. Besides, where was security when she needed th
em?

  The decision to take a semester off from school to establish Sweet Treats didn’t go over well with her parents, to say the least. They fussed and stomped, threatened and warned. Alexis was not hearing them.

  She realized now that if her parents hadn’t been distracted and monetarily stretched in their efforts to underwrite Thomas’s issues with T. J., they would have driven to Texas and dragged eighteen-year-old Alexis back, boo-hooing all the way.

  The situation with their grandson, however, took precedence. He had managed to get himself all tangled up in a life-or-death court case. Thomas didn’t want to leave his son’s fate to a free attorney. Wouldn’t be able to live with himself if T. J. got the death penalty. The cheapest independent lawyer they could find cost them two hundred twenty-five dollars an hour. And T. J.’s case needed a whole lotta hours.

  That was the beginning of change in her parents’ financial condition. Daddy stopped buying Domino’s Pizza two and three times a week. Momma canceled her long-standing Thursday-evening hair appointment at Miss Olive’s salon. Daddy even worked during the summers to help out.

  T. J. got a lesser sentence. From what Alexis could tell, he probably wasn’t guilty of the charge—at least not the way the prosecution presented it. T. J. had something to do with a man’s death, that was for certain, but he didn’t pull the trigger and he wasn’t actually there when it happened. He probably knew about it ahead of time, though, which always made Alexis uneasy in her nephew’s presence.

  Right was right, wrong was wrong. If T. J. kept up his crazy lifestyle, it was only a matter of time before he did something stupid again, and the next time, there would be no money left for an expensive lawyer.

  In the midst of her family’s struggle, Alexis had come through for everyone with her sudden windfall of success. Thank God, she was able to dig her parents out of debt. She refused to give anything directly to T. J., but Momma and Daddy shouldn’t have to suffer. They’d raised Thomas right. Thomas had probably raised his child right, too. Everyone had their own mind, though.