by E. N. Joy
And You Call Yourself A Christian
Still Divas Series Book One
E.N. Joy
www.urbanchristianonline.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Other Books by E.N. Joy
Dedication
Acknowledgment
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Readers’ Group Guide Questions
About the Author
Be Who You Want Your Kids To Be
UC HIS GLORY BOOK CLUB!
What We Believe
Copyright Page
Other Books by E.N. Joy
Me, Myself and Him
She Who Finds A Husband
Been There, Prayed That
Love, Honor or Stray
Trying to Stay Saved
I Can Do Better All By Myself
Ordained by the Streets
Even Sinners Have Souls
(Edited by E.N. Joy)
Even Sinners Have Souls Too
(Edited by E.N. Joy)
Even Sinners Still Have Souls
(Edited by E.N. Joy)
The Secret Olivia Told Me
(Children’s book written under the name N. Joy)
Dedication
Why, of course, this book is dedicated to you. Yeah, that’s right; I’m talking to you. You with this book in your hand reading this very dedication. If it were not for you, what would be my purpose to even write? If it were not for you supporting what I do, I wouldn’t even be able to continue to write. If it were not for you telling any and everybody about me and my work, this book might not have even been possible. Your support is what drives me. Knowing that you deemed my work worthy to invest time, which is priceless, to read it means more than you will ever know. These are two very, very small words to show the enormous gratitude I have for you, but here it goes anyway: Thank You. You are the wind beneath my literary wings. Now, turn the page and come fly with me ...
Acknowledgment
God, we did it again. There is nothing in this world I can even almost do without you.
My husband and four children, I can’t thank you enough for dealing with me during my creative craziness. I owe you all so much for supporting and believing in me. Jesus, I hope this really pays off ... It just has to.
Prologue
It had to be the hottest day of the year in Malvonia, Ohio. It wasn’t even noon yet, so Unique could only imagine how much hotter it was going to get throughout the day. As Unique drove her sister’s car through the hood, she became even more motivated to earn that pink Cadillac every Mary Kay cosmetic representative dreamed about. She needed her own car; one with air . . . one with automatic windows. And the fact that as a result of pushing cosmetics, skin, and facial care products she could have one for free only sweetened the pot.
“Phew.” All Unique could do right now was thank God that she wasn’t still pregnant with the twins. Otherwise, this summer heat might have been unbearable.
She rubbed her hand across her forehead and looked in the backseat at her three sons. Her oldest, catching her glance at them in the rearview mirror, gave his mother a smile, and then went back to looking out of the window.
Her boys, ages five, six, and seven, squinted their eyes as the wind roared through the car. It looked as if they could hardly breathe from the pressure of every single window in the car being rolled down. But they didn’t have any choice. Although the breeze was nothing but a hot wind, it was the best they had.
I’ve got to do better for my boys, Unique thought to herself, steering her eyes back on the road. Her entire purpose for not keeping her twin girls to raise was so that she’d have an opportunity to do better for her three boys. That’s exactly what she was determined to do; better. That’s why she’d been pushing Mary Kay products like dope boys pushed crack rocks. She was tired of living with her sister and her sister’s two kids. She was appreciative of all her sister was doing for her, but it was fine time she began to do things for herself; by herself.
“Be who you want your kids to be,” were words the pastor of New Day Temple of Faith had once preached during a sermon. As a matter of fact, the pastor had declared June 1 as “Be Who You Want Your Kids to Be Day.” Unique, in celebrating the holiday, pledged, along with parents across the world, “Today, I, as a parent, commit to doing, saying, typing, texting, wearing, and thinking only things I would want my children to. I will not do, say, type, text, wear, or think things that I would not want my children to do. Today, I am going to be who I want my children to be. Today, my children will see me love, smile, read, help a complete stranger, and turn the other cheek. Today, my children will see me be who I want them to be.”
Those words were embedded in Unique’s mind. She was determined to be who she wanted her children to be. And what she didn’t want them to be was teenage parents with a bunch of babies by a bunch of different babies’ mamas.
That’s who Unique had been; a project chick with a bunch of babies all with different daddies. That’s who she was. She did not want that life for her children. Heck, she didn’t want that life for herself.
After getting saved and joining New Day, she set out to be a changed woman. She did it for herself as much as she’d done it for the sake of her children. But being saved hadn’t been all that she thought it would be. Once she got saved, she didn’t instantaneously stop doing those things she’d done while in the world. She still kicked it every now and then with her girls. She still got her drink on and took a hit from a blunt every now and then. Under the influence, she even fornicated. And even though she’d engaged in those things after being saved, she was proud to say that she hadn’t done those things for some time now; not since getting pregnant with the twins.
The twins; those two adorable little girls who were now being raised by another woman. It wasn’t just any woman, though. It was Lorain, Unique’s mother. Although Lorain wasn’t the mother that had raised Unique, she was, in fact, her biological mother. This is something the two women had found out by fate only a couple of years ago.
Initially angry with Lorain for abandoning her like trash when she was just a newborn infant
, Unique grew to accept the fact that having her biological mother in her life was a blessing. It was double the blessing considering when Unique popped up pregnant with what was her fourth and fifth child, Lorain didn’t hesitate to offer raising the girls.
Unique’s intentions had been to give the babies up for adoption to a complete stranger. She knew it would have been a hard thing to do, but she really didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have a place for the babies to stay. There were already seven people living in her sister’s leased three-bedroom house with a finished basement. Of course, the basement was Unique and her boys’ quarters. There was no way she could squeeze in room for two more. There was no way she was going to give birth to two newborn babies and have them living in somebody’s basement.
Not only did she not have a roof to put over the babies’ heads, she didn’t have a car to drive them in either. She barely had transportation to get to and from the doctor’s office for prenatal care herself, let alone having to take the babies to the doctors once they were born. If it wasn’t for Lorain running her back and forth to her appointments, the twins might not have turned out as healthy as they did.
Not only did all those material things play a part in Unique’s decision to give the babies up for adoption, but the fact that she wouldn’t even be thirty years old yet with five babies played a part as well. How crazy would that look?
See, before she was saved, she wouldn’t have thought that it looked crazy at all. Where she came from, it was the norm. Her mama had a bunch of babies with all different fathers. Her sisters too, along with every other chick who lived back at their old projects in Columbus, Ohio. But now that she was saved, in the church with those good old saints of God, there was no way she could continue such a pattern. That’s why when Lorain came up with idea to not only adopt the twins herself, but to tell people that Unique was doing her a favor by carrying the children for her, Unique jumped on it.
“A surrogate,” Unique had said approvingly. It didn’t sound too believable at first to Unique. Did black women do that; have babies for each other? But at the end of the day, Unique concluded that being referred to as a surrogate was far better than being referred to as a ho any day.
That little white lie between Unique and Lorain kept a lot of the chatter down at the church about Unique’s pregnancy; at first it did anyway. That was because everybody just thought that Unique and Lorain were close friends who had served as leaders of the Singles’ Ministry together. But then, thanks to the church secretary’s eavesdropping on Pastor’s counseling sessions, the entire church eventually found out the two women’s secret; that they were mother and daughter. Those New Day divas had no idea that Unique wasn’t carrying Lorain’s seed, but that she’d backslid and fornicated with one of her son’s fathers. The result was her being knocked up.
“I can hear those church hens now,” Unique had told Lorain as she began mocking some of the things they might have said about her at the church had they known the entire truth. “She got three babies already with three different baby daddies. She’s livin’ up in her sister’s house on welfare with no car. Now she’s about to have two more babies out of wedlock, no husband ... And she calls herself a Christian. Humph.”
No way; that last insult was like nails down a chalkboard to any Christian. No Christian took kindly to their Christianity being questioned. Thank God for Lorain, because Unique had not had to deal with that type of criticism from the church. Unique could also thank Lorain for hipping her to that Mary Kay stuff as well. A former representative herself, Lorain had invested in a start-up kit for Unique and had trained her on everything she’d learned over the years. Unique had gained quite the clientele, as Lorain had even turned over her client list to her.
Once again, Unique looked in the rearview mirror at her boys. She then mumbled under her breath, “Don’t you worry, boys. Momma’s going to be driving y’all around in that Cadillac before you know it.”
Turning down a numbered street in the Linden area of Columbus, Ohio, Unique spotted the house she was looking for. Unfortunately, there were several cars parked directly in front of the house, so she had to park about three houses down.
“Where we at, Mommy?” Unique’s youngest son asked her.
“Where are we at?” her oldest son corrected him.
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” the youngest son replied. “Where are we at?”
Unique looked over her shoulder and nodded toward her oldest son. “We’re at your brother’s daddy’s job.” Next, she looked at the olive-green double family home that sat in between a yellow and a pink one.
“His daddy works in a house?” the middle son asked with a puzzled look on his face. He chuckled and looked at his brother. “Man, yo’ daddy work in a house. I thought people was just ’pose to live in a house.”
“Yeah, well, some people have gotta do what they gotta do, son,” Unique replied. She knew that better than anybody. Unique sighed as her eyes left the house, and she turned back around. “Yep. That’s where he works all right.” That’s pretty much where all of her babies’ daddies worked. Not all in that same house, but in ones similar to it. Unique knew that it was some Section 8 house that a young mother, like herself, was renting out to the neighborhood dope boys to sell dope out of. Her oldest son’s father just happened to be one of those dope boys.
Refraining from correcting both his younger brother’s and his mother’s use of bad English, the oldest boy asked, “Oooh, then, can I go with you to see him?”
“Uh, no, baby,” Unique stammered. The last thing she wanted to do was to take her son to some drug spot. The last thing she wanted to do was be there her own self. Her son’s father hadn’t answered or returned her phone calls all week, and he hadn’t thrown her any cash toward the well-being of his son in a month. Unique was not having that. She needed every dime she could get to help with the care of her boys.
After finding herself pregnant a fourth time, she made a vow to do everything within her will to be an example to her children. There was no more blowing money on just any old thing. She was now saving her money. She had almost twenty-five hundred dollars tucked under her mattress that she refused to touch. All that was the money she’d made from her Mary Kay sells. Prior to selling Mary Kay, Unique had worked a short period of time for a catering company one of the women who used to go to her church owned. She spent that money on clothes for her and her kids, a couple pieces of jewelry for herself, and on eating out. She’d made a nice chunk of change too, with nothing to show for but “stuff.” Like the prodigal son who spent up all of his inheritance, she was not going to make that same mistake twice. She was going to have something to show for her labor this time, and that something was going to be a house. Not a subsidized apartment somewhere or a Section 8 house, but a house with a mortgage note. That’s what she wanted for her children. And one day, as part of her and Lorain’s agreement, once the twins learned that she was their real mother, they’d have a nice place to come over and visit and play with their brothers.
That’s why hunting her baby daddy down for his contribution in taking care of the life he contributed in making was so important now more than ever. Never mind she was about to clown and be the stereotypical ghetto girl. The baby mama from hell. Making sure the fathers of her children paid up and helped to support them used to be a nonchalant thing for Unique. She used to be cool with them throwing her a little somethin’-somethin’ every now and then whenever they could or whenever they felt like it. A conversation with Lorain, though, helped her realize that that wasn’t fair for the boys. They deserved better from both her and their daddy, and Unique was on a mission to make sure they got better.
Perhaps she was about to embarrass herself by clownin’, if that is, in fact, what she had to do in order to get her oldest son’s father to give her some child support money. Perhaps she was even about to embarrass him in front of his boys. None of that kept Unique from throwing that car in park and getting out of the car to head toward
that dope house though. This was for her boys; it was all for them. That’s what she kept reminding herself with every step she took. Anything that this resulted in would be all worth it. That’s what Unique thought when she got out of the car anyway. Better ... I gotta do better for my boys. But, oh, God, how things would take such a horrific turn for the worse. Would any of this have seemed worth it several hours later when Unique would hear the words, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sons are dead.”
Chapter One
“Church cost too much money,” Unique’s friend, Joelle, spat. “It’s cheaper for me to go to the club. I mean, after all, all I gotta do is pay my cover charge to get up in the club. Heck, if it’s ladies’ night, and if I get there before eleven o’clock, I don’t even have to do that. On top of that, as long as I’m looking fly, I dang sure won’t have to worry about buying any drinks. You know them ballers up in there got me on that.”
Unique shook her head as she chuckled. “Joe, you a mess.”
“Don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. After all, you roped you three ballers. You had babies for ’em on top of that. I know dem fools be breaking you off something real properlike. The same way when they knocked you up you were eating for two, now dem dudes got to pay for two.” Joe sounded so matter of fact, like Unique had run game on her sons’ fathers and it was now paying off big time. That could have been the furthest thing from the truth.
“You wish it was all like that,” Unique huffed. “Huh, who am I kidding? I wish it was all like that. But trust, sweetheart, if it was all like that, would I be living up in my sister’s crib? Would I be at the bus stop whenever I have to go somewhere?”
