The Perfect Christian

by E. N. Joy

  Mother Doreen stood there not finding one thing funny. “I agree, Mr. Casinoff . . .” she’d gone back to being informal. “I was a different kind of woman back then, but I’m a new creature in the Lord. I’m not that woman anymore. She’s dead.”

  Terrance looked Mother Doreen up and down. “Then I guess I’m like that little white boy in that movie, Sixth Sense.” He leaned in and whispered, “I see dead people,” then pulled back and burst out laughing. “’Cause from what I can see, Doreen Tucker is alive and well; living her life like it’s golden.” He frowned. “Well, she was about to anyway.”

  Now Mother Doreen was the one who snickered. “You can stand here all day and insult me any kind of way you want to. You can bring up my past all you’d like, but I ain’t going back to live in it. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll stand here and take it. If you want to stand here and say to me what your momma never got a chance to, I’ll allow that. Because I can only imagine the pain your mother must have felt and probably still feels to this day.”

  “Oh, my momma isn’t in pain anymore. Her pain is long gone. See, Lauren Casinoff is dead now. For real. Not the old her, not the new her, just her, period. She’s gone.” Terrance looked as though it was taking every bit of strength he had to hold the hurt inside resulting from thoughts about the loss of his mother.

  “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry to hear that.” Mother Doreen slowly extended her hands. “I can see that you’re hurting. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to pray for you.” Her hands lingered in the air while Terrance stared down at them, almost contemplating on whether to allow Mother Doreen her request. “Please, son, let go and let God. Don’t let the past haunt you. Allow forgiveness to enter your heart. I’m telling you, keeping all this bottled up inside will drive you crazy.”

  Terrance’s eyes darted from Mother Doreen’s hands to her eyes. “What do you know about something driving a person crazy? Trust and believe, you don’t know crazy.” Terrance, still shooting daggered eyes at Mother Doreen, began closing up the space between them. “But here in a minute you are going to know just what crazy is.” Terrance reached into his pocket before saying, “Because I’m about to show you exactly what crazy looks like.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Mother Doreen stared down at what Terrance had pulled out of his pocket. She stood there breathless with no words to say. She looked into the eyes of the woman in the picture Terrance held in his trembling hand. She’d remembered the first and only time she ever really truly looked into those eyes. It wasn’t when she was on top of her beating her and her unborn child. It hadn’t been when she’d been in the choir stands singing praises to the Lord. It was that day in the courtroom when Mother Doreen had been sentenced after pleading guilty—per the advice of her attorney. Plea deal. Just as Mother Doreen’s thoughts had traveled back to the past earlier when she was in the sanctuary, that’s exactly what her thoughts did again.

  Soon, the eyes on the Kodak paper turned into real live eyes that Mother Doreen stared into as she was escorted out of the courtroom after having been sentenced to prison. “I’m sorry,” Doreen managed to let come from between her lips as the guards escorted her out of the courtroom.

  “Too late to be sorry now,” the guard snorted.

  Later, as Doreen was driven to the prison, she thought the entire time of whether she’d done the right thing by taking the plea. One year tops if she plead guilty to felonious assault.

  “You could spend that much time in jail waiting for a trial date,” her attorney had told her while they discussed her options prior to her agreeing to take the plea.

  “But, but it was an accident,” Doreen had told him. “It just happened. I didn’t wake up that morning planning to do that. Even when it was happening, I had no idea that she was pregnant.”

  “Well, that’s not what the court is going to say. What the court is going to say is that you were jealous. You were jealous that another woman was pregnant by your husband. Not only that, but you were angry because you yourself had miscarried your husband’s child. Now here’s this other woman giving him what you couldn’t.”

  “But that’s a lie!” Doreen blurted out.

  “Oh, really now?” The attorney began flipping through the file he had before him. “So the information I have here is incorrect? You didn’t miscarry in the first trimester of your pregnancy? Ms. Casinoff wasn’t pregnant by your husband, and your husband knew the child was very much his? As a matter of fact, hadn’t they even planned the pregnancy? Your husband, while telling you his job relocated him, had actually put in a transfer request to his boss to relocate him to West Virginia, right?” While the attorney made all his statements in question form, Doreen shook her head. “He wanted to be closer to Ms. Casinoff. Raise their child together and eventually leave you to be with his mistress and child, isn’t that true?”

  “No! No!” Doreen stood up and yelled. “That’s not true.”

  “What? What part isn’t true?” he scanned his files. “Please tell me, because your husband has been interviewed, Mrs. Tucker. Most of this information came straight from the horse’s mouth.” He slammed the folder shut and looked Doreen squarely in the eyes and began to speak in a whisper. “Come on, girl, you and I both know you did this.”

  “Not on purpose,” Doreen interrupted.

  “Yeah, but you did it. I mean, you’re lucky they are not trying to charge you for murder for that baby. There’s really no precedence for that right now, but I’m sure that judge would love to set one and make a name for himself using you. Me, personally, I’m sure prosecution would much rather take the easy route with a plea. So if I were you, I’d take the plea before everybody decides to try to make a name for themselves while dragging your name through the mud.”

  Doreen sat and thought about it.

  “You’re a preacher’s kid, right?” the attorney asked her.

  “Yes, sir. My father has a ministry back in Kentucky. He—they—him and my mother—they don’t know anything about this.”

  “Well, if this thing goes to trial, they are certainly going to find out about this. Do you really want everybody’s named dragged in the mud along with yours? I mean, what would become of your daddy’s church if his members found out that his daughter had beat a poor woman half to death and killed her—”

  “Okay, okay!” Doreen cut him off. She didn’t want to hear one more time how’d she’d killed a baby—how she was a baby killer. She might have been in jail for what she’d done to the grown woman, but mentally, everybody was charging her for killing a baby. It might as well have been on the books.

  “Okay, what?” the attorney wanted to be specific.

  “Okay, I’ll take the plea. I’ll take it,” Doreen broke down.

  The attorney exhaled. Doreen buried her head down on the table and cried.

  “Now, now,” her attorney tried to comfort her by patting her arm. “You’re doing the right thing.” His thoughts mirrored Doreen’s when he said, “Because look at it this way. Even though you’d be in that courtroom being charged for a crime against an adult, all that the jurors are going to have planted in their heads is that dead little baby who didn’t have a chance in the world of surviving after the beating it took.”

  Doreen cringed. The way he’d just described it sounded so vile, so vicious, so evil. He made it sound like she’d taken this poor little innocent baby and pummeled it to death with her fists. If that’s the way they would portray her act in the courtroom, then there was no doubt the jurors and judge would lock her up and throw away the key. Doreen had made up her mind; she was going to take that plea. And she had.

  Now, after taking the plea and being sentenced, she was in a van on her way to begin serving out her sentence. Her heart ached. She’d have to go a year without being next to Willie. She’d have to go a year making her family feel she’d abandoned them to be up under Willie. It was a lie, but she’d rather hurt them a little with a lie than hurt them a lot with the truth. She
’d write letters to her family to keep in touch with them, letting them know she was okay. She’d tell them she was going on a sabbatical for a few of the months she would be locked away. She’d figure out a way to get a call through here and there without them knowing it was from a jail. She had to do something to keep them at bay so that they wouldn’t try to come looking for her. Lord knows she didn’t want them to find her there.

  By the time Doreen made it to the prison, she had convinced herself 100 percent that accepting that plea and making that courtroom think her actions had been carried out according to some devious plan was the right thing to do. It beat her going through a long drawn out trial and having lies and theories made up about her that, nine times out of ten, people would believe. No, she couldn’t do that to herself, and she couldn’t do that to her family.

  She decided she would serve her time like a woman, accepting the punishment God had for her. Because although what she ultimately did that day at that motel might not have been intentional, she did it nonetheless. She committed a crime against man and God. There was a price to pay, but after only a week of coming to terms with her decision, Doreen would find out just how costly that price tag was.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The days of Doreen’s time served in prison thus far had felt like a lifetime. In real time, it had only been two months—two months of absolute hell. She wouldn’t wish her predicament on her worst enemy. She didn’t feel like herself. She wasn’t her own person anymore.

  Once upon a time she’d felt like she belonged to God—that that’s whose she was. But now she felt like she belonged to the State of West Virginia. Some mornings when she woke up she didn’t even know who she was, let alone whose she was. On this particular morning, waking up in her prison cell, she didn’t even know where she was.

  In a panic, she looked around her empty cell. She shared it with no one. She’d opened her eyes only to be staring up at the bottom of the top bunk above her. Quickly sitting up, she examined her surroundings, and then it dawned on her—she was incarcerated.

  Her heavy breathing slowed as she tightened her lips and fought back tears. At least three times a week, this was how Doreen’s day started. That was how many times she’d close her eyes at night and dreamed of an ordinary life. It was just her and Willie. They were back in Kentucky—had no reason to ever travel to West Virginia. Doreen was still baking pound cakes. As a matter of fact, in a few of her dreams she owned a cake shop, a very successful cake shop at that.

  Her sisters helped her run things. When Willie got finished with a long day’s work, he’d come straight to the cake shop and help her close it down. No juke joint. No gambling, drinking, cussing, or lying. No other women. Just Doreen and Willie. They were happy.

  “Stop dreaming and get ya behind out of that bed if you plan on eating this morning.”

  The male guard’s booming voice snapped Doreen out of her daze. Even if she hadn’t recalled where she was just moments ago, that guard sure would have reminded her.

  Doreen pulled her legs over the side of her bed and rubbed her eyes.

  “Yep, that’s right,” the guard snorted obnoxiously. “You’re not dreaming. Still in paradise. Now get your skank butt up and get to moving. You’re a preacher’s kid, right?” he asked Doreen.

  She nodded.

  “Then God done showed you favor. You got a job. Starts today. Means you’ll get to earn money for luxuries. You know, things like Little Debbie Snack cakes, stamps, paper, envelopes.” He snorted again, and Doreen wondered if he had something against speaking in complete sentences. “Got bathroom duty. You know how many broads would kill to have that job? Beats laundry, that’s for sure. Least that’s what I hear, anyway. Dunno, personally. Can’t say I’d care too much for cleaning up after a bunch of nasty womenfolk. I got a wife and three teenage daughters. Bloody pads floating around in the commode. And you know how the food is in this place. Toilet full of sh—”

  “If you don’t mind,” Doreen interrupted before he could release his expletive, “I’d like to use the bathroom and change clothes.” Doreen nodded over to the toilet that sat out in the open in her cell.

  “Oh . . . oh, no problem. No problem at all. Go right ahead,” the guard told her.

  Doreen stood up and walked over toward the toilet. Clearly that’s what most people did the first thing in the morning. She went to pull her prison-issued bottoms down when she noticed the guard was still standing there, watching her.

  “Uh, excuse me,” Doreen stammered nervously. “Do you mind?”

  The guard looked Doreen up and down, then rolled his tongue across his top row of teeth. “As a matter of fact, I do. See, my job is to keep an eye on you; a special watch. If I took my eye off of you for even a minute, anything could happen. You wouldn’t want me to lose my job on the count of not doing it well, would you?” He had lust in his eyes as he eyeballed Doreen.

  “Please, sir. I, I just want to—”

  “Do you think I give a rat’s behind about what you want? Now do what you need to do or stay in here and starve to death.”

  Doreen wanted to scream inside. She wanted to cry out for help, but who was there to come to her rescue? Certainly not Willie. He’d been to visit Doreen a few times, but not as much as he should. At least not as much as Doreen thought he should. And when she wanted to talk to him—when she really needed to talk to him—he never picked up the phone. She just hoped he was saving up all that money from all the overtime he was claiming he was doing.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” the guard snapped.

  Doreen slowly gripped the waist of her pants and slid them down an inch or two—slowly. Just as slowly as Doreen moved her hands, the guard moved his . . . toward his private area. By the time Doreen’s pants were mid-hip, the guard was fully clutching his manhood.

  “Go on now, girl,” he moaned, rubbing himself. “You hungry, right? How about I give you a taste of a li’l something else other than that slop they got prepared for you?”

  Doreen couldn’t believe her ears. Not only couldn’t she believe the words that were coming out of the guard’s mouth, but she couldn’t believe the sound of his zipper being undone either.

  “Please,” Doreen pleaded, her insides trembling while she tried to keep her exterior calm, cool, and collected.

  “Oh, you don’t have to beg me, pretty chocolate,” the guard cooed. “Now come on over here and do me right.” By now the guard was exposing himself to Doreen as his hand moved back and forth along his flesh.

  Doreen swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and said a prayer to God. Well, she didn’t really pray. Prayer was supposed to be a conversation. She was doing all the talking asking God to get her out of that situation. To direct her path. She didn’t know whether she should just do what the guard wanted her to do. She feared perhaps by not doing it, the guard would make her time in prison even more hellish than it already was. Whatever she was going to do, she needed to do it fast, as she really needed to go to the bathroom.

  Doreen stood there talking to God and twitching her legs, trying to hold in her body fluids.

  “I see you squirming,” the guard snorted. “Got you all wet down there, huh? You know you want it. And I don’t mind a little chocolate myself.” His snort was mixed with a laugh.

  With her hands still on the waist of her pants, Doreen went to move her pants another couple of inches or so, but this time it was upward instead of down.

  Disappointment flooded the guard’s face. “Wha—what you doing?” he said, no snorting, just a hint of anger is all. “Ain’t you gon’ do me?”

  Doreen said nothing. She just stood there, securing her pants above her waist. She was hopeful her actions spoke louder than words and answered the guard’s question.

  “You black slut,” he spat, tucking himself back inside his pants. “Ashy, black nigger witches ain’t no good at going down nohow. But I thought I’d teach you a thing or two.” He threw insults that Doreen was not moved by. “Think I c
are if you eat or not? Can stand to lose a few pounds. All y’all do is sit around eating chitterlings and pig feets, gaining weight. Bunch of nasty black pigs.” He continued his insults using incomplete sentences. Still, Doreen never said a mumbling word. “Think you won this, don’t ya? Well, you might not want to eat, but you still gotta take a morning piss.”

  The man standing before Doreen was as vulgar as she’d ever met. He was simply not going to let her be. She glared at him, his eyes burning through her like the devil himself. But she would not give in to him. She would not.

  As the lust had begun to fill his eyes again, he looked Doreen over from head to toe. His eyes traveled from her head, appearing to peel the clothes off of her as they made their way down to her toes. That’s when the look of lust suddenly turned into disgust. That’s when the next sound Doreen heard was him zipping his pants back up. He turned up his nose and grunted as he walked away.

  Doreen let out a sigh of relief. She looked down at her toes, the liquid now surrounding her feet. She felt disgusted too. But she had to do what she had to do. All of a sudden she stood there and let out a chuckle. “I heard that garlic keeps the vampires away. But who knew a little bit of pee could keep Satan away?”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Doreen’s stomach growled as she attempted to listen to the female guard’s instructions. Hopefully that devil of a male guard from earlier that morning was right; that this job cleaning the bathrooms would afford her the luxury of snacks. Because if they sent that piece of work to escort her to breakfast every morning, she’d be missing the most important meal of the day for the next ten months.

  “Those chemicals are kept track of,” the guard warned Doreen, “so don’t think of doing any funny business. You got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Doreen replied as she held on to the mop handle.

  The guard looked down at her watch. “And I’m timing you too. You best be finished up in here in forty-five. Don’t try to milk the job. That’s the best way to lose it.”