God Has Spoken
Theresa A. Campbell
www.urbanchristianonline.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One - Tiny’s Story
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
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
About the Author
UC HIS GLORY BOOK CLUB!
What We Believe:
Copyright Page
I dedicate this book to my mother, Maxine A. Allen.
You are a beautiful woman of strength, courage, and faith.
Thank you for your love and encouragement and for always reminding me that it’s not over until God h spoken.
Acknowledgments
“Every praise is to our God . . .” (singing and dancing). Lord, thank you for taking me on this wonderful, soul-fulfilling journey. I have faith that you will finish the wonderful work that you have started in me!
Thanks to my biggest fans, my brothers, Warren Osbourne and Gregg Allen, for rooting me on when I need it the most. You guys are the best!
How do I say thanks to my editor who brings out the best in me in writing? Mrs. Joylynn M. Ross, you rock!
Warmest thanks to all the readers who supported my first novel, Are You There, God? and are holding this one in their hands. I know you have a lot of choices out there, and I appreciate you giving the “little guy” a chance. God bless you!
“God has spoken plainly, and I have heard it many times: Power, O God, belongs to you.”
Psalm 62:11
New Living Translation
Prologue
“They are hypocrites! Big fat liars! Traitors!” Dupree yelled furiously as she hammered her fists into the leather couch on which she perched. “Tiny! Officer Gregg! You are disgusting! I hate you!” She spoke as if both parties were present.
Sitting on the other couch across from Dupree, Jas, Dupree’s friend and roommate, nervously nibbled on her thumb.
“All these years I wondered if my mother was dead or alive. And all this time she was here in Kingston, living the big life without any concern about the daughter she left behind or the woman who had raised her,” Dupree said angrily.
By now Dupree’s voice had raised a few octaves higher. She jumped up off the couch and began pacing the carpeted floor like a restless monkey.
“We suffered, Jas. My aunt is confined to a wheelchair and is living with strangers, while Tiny is here living it up.” The word “Tiny” was said with distaste and disrespect. “Then she thought if she gave me a job and an apartment to live in, everything would be okay. I don’t think so, Tiny!”
Dupree’s voice grew higher and louder with every word she spoke. Her eyes lit up with fury as she pounded her right fist into the open palm of her left hand. “Oops.” Dupree placed her right hand over her mouth dramatically; her eyes widened as if a light bulb just went off in her head. “I forgot that she is no longer Tiny.” Her hands now rested on her small waist as she rocked back and forth on her heels. “She is now the big shot executive, Mrs. Eleanor Humphrey. Who knew?”
Jas watched her friend helplessly.
“And what about the kind police officer who suddenly decided to help me after I was almost raped and murdered? The Good Samaritan who paid my college tuition for me to attend NYU next spring? That’s right. He is my father. Yup, meet the great and wonderful, Officer Gregg,” Dupree spat nastily.
“Where were you, Daddy, when we struggled to find food?” Dupree screamed. “Where were you when I needed money to pay for my college entrance exams? When I had to work from sunrise to sunset so my aunt and I could survive?”
“Dupree, please try to take it—”
“I don’t want to take it easy!” Dupree turned fiery eyes on Jas before she continued on the warpath. “Where were you, Daddy, when the man I trusted like a father brutalized me? Huh? Where were you when I needed my father? Nowhere.” Dupree answered her own question. “That’s where you were, Officer Gregg. You were nowhere to be found.”
Jas slowly stood up and carefully approached Dupree. Dupree ran into her friend’s arms and began sobbing on her shoulder.
“Even Tony, who I thought was my best friend, deceived me,” Dupree said of Anthony Gregg, Jr., the boy she’d just found out was her biological brother.
It was the last summer of high school during Daily Vacation Bible School (DVBS) as Dupree got ready to watch the play, Little Baby Jesus, when Tony asked to sit beside her and officially introduced himself.
“Well, Pree, my name is Anthony Gregg Jr., but please call me Tony,” he whispered in her ear.
Dupree knew who he was because his parents and grandparents were longstanding members of her church. Dupree and Tony were about the same age, attended and graduated from the same high school, but they had never officially met before.
“And mine is Dupree, not ‘Pree,’ so please call me Dupree,” she replied testily.
Instead of being insulted, Tony threw his head back and laughed out in delight.
Tony was very polite and friendly and expressed an interest in getting to know Dupree.
“I just want to talk to you some more and get to know you,” Tony had said to her after she refused the ride home that he had offered after the play.
“Why?” Dupree asked. No boy had ever shown interest in her before, but there stood a handsome, rich, popular boy wanting to get to know her.
“You seem like a nice person, and I just want to be your friend,” Tony said sincerely.
“Let me tell you something, pal,” Dupree began, pointing her finger at his face, “if this is some bet or game you and your obnoxious friends are trying to play with me, you better keep right on steppin’ because I am not that type of girl. Got that?”
“No no no, this is no game,” Tony stammered, his sincere eyes pleadingly interlocked with Dupree’s fiery ones. “I have seen kids teasing and making fun of you at scho
ol, but you never got in a fight with them. At first I thought you were just scared, but then I realized that you were just taking the higher road. You behaved like a good Christian girl should, and I think that makes you the bravest of them.”
Dupree lowered her eyes to the ground as the anger slowly tiptoed away. She was at a loss for words.
“Perhaps some other time.” Tony’s smiling voice snapped Dupree’s head up. She shyly smiled at him and nodded before she turned and walked away.
At first Dupree wasn’t sure what to make of Tony, but she finally let her guard down and interacted with him more. They sat together at DVBS, laughed, and talked about silly things and began spending more time together. It wasn’t long before a great friendship developed between Dupree and her new best friend, Tony.
“Okay, let it all out,” Jas said as she gently rubbed Dupree’s back. “Let out all the pain.”
Dupree followed her friend’s instructions and continued to vent. “Mrs. Eleanor Humphrey aka Tiny, where were you when I trusted the first man I thought loved me and he betrayed me?” Dupree whispered into the back of Jas’s neck. Her body felt drained and weary as the fight gave way to despair. “Where were you, Tiny, when I needed my mother?”
Jas held her, and the two friends wept.
“Where was I when my daughter needed me?” Mrs. Eleanor Humphrey sobbed on her husband’s shoulder as they lay in the middle of their king-size bed. “I have failed her and Aunt Madge. Oh God. I didn’t even know that my aunt had a stroke years ago and was confined to a wheelchair. What kind of person am I?”
“Sweetheart, you had it pretty rough yourself in the beginning,” Dwight said in her ear as he soothingly ran his fingers through her long, straight hair. “This is not your fault but the monster who took advantage of you.”
By now Dwight was getting worked up as he talked about Officer Gregg, Dupree’s natural father.
“Baby, I was also a willing participant.” Eleanor lifted her head and turned wet eyes to her husband.
“You were a misled child,” Dwight spat as he raised himself into a sitting position. “He was a grown man and should have known better. You are a good person. Back then, you were Tiny, the young, confused fifteen-year-old girl. Today, you are Mrs. Humphrey, the woman I am proud to call my wife. If I’d been there to protect you back then . . .”
“Okay, okay, sweetheart. Please calm down,” Eleanor said. “I know how much this upsets you.”
“Upset? I’m furious!” Dwight shouted. “I still would like to get my hands on that scumbag. And he called himself a police officer. There to protect and serve. Well, he served himself all right.”
Eleanor gently reached up and pulled her husband back into her arms. He inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, allowing his tensed body to slowly relax in her embrace.
“I’m going to run you a warm bath,” Dwight said to his wife a few seconds later. “By the time you get out, I’ll have something ready for you to eat.” He popped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her with concern.
His wife mutely stared back at him with sunken, solemn eyes. Leaning over, Dwight kissed her softly on the lips before he hopped off the bed. Walking quickly, he entered the adjoining bathroom.
I have to make my daughter understand, Eleanor thought. I have to explain to her and Aunt Madge why I left and stayed away.
“Okay. I’m ready for you.” Dwight’s voice interrupted the thoughts in Eleanor’s head. “Lift up that cute little butt so I can slide you out of this skirt.” Dwight attempted some humor.
His wife gave him a small smile and helped him undress herself. He lifted her into his arms and took her to the huge bathtub, where he gently lowered her into the warm, sudsy, scented water.
“This feels so good,” Eleanor purred in pleasure. “You knew just what I needed.” She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “Like always.”
“Yeah, this will help you to relax,” Dwight said. “Later, we need to figure out where we go from here.”
“I have to make my daughter understand.” Eleanor began tearing up again.
“Baby, I strongly believe that the Lord is going to work out everything for you and Dupree,” Dwight replied tenderly.
His wife searched his handsome face for any doubt, but saw only his love and confidence staring back at her.
“I love you,” Eleanor whispered. “I don’t deserve you.”
“No. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you,” Dwight replied softly. The couple smiled at each other, their strong love transparent in their eyes.
“I’ll leave you to enjoy your bath,” he said. “When I get back, we’ll have dinner.”
Eleanor watched him walk away and sighed wearily. “What am I going to do now?” she said to the silent room as she slid down lower in the bathtub, suds reaching up to her mouth. Eleanor remembered asking that same question many years ago and the response she got had sent her on a journey to hell.
Chapter One
Tiny’s Story
Falmouth, Trelawny, Jamaica, West Indies, Year: 1978
“Tiny!” Aunt Madge shouted, her squinted eyes looking out the window into the darkness of the night. “Tiny! Chile, you better get in this house right now.”
Her small voice echoed over the small boarded houses sitting on the outskirts of Falmouth, Trelawny, before disappearing into the night. Aunt Madge paused and listened but only her heavy breathing filled her ears.
“Lord, please, give me the strength to deal with that chile,” Aunt Madge mumbled as she moved away from the window and anxiously paced her small one-bedroom home that she shared with her niece. “I swear she is going to be the death of me. I bet she is with that little force-ripe woman, Dolly.”
Oblivious to the calling of her aunt, a few miles away, fifteen-year-old Tiny and her best friend, Dolly, sat on Dolly’s dilapidated house steps sipping orange juice and rum from two big, chipped enamel mugs without a care in the world.
It was almost midnight, and the countryside was pitch-black except for the small flittering lights from the peenie wallies that danced in the humid air. Dolly Bell aka Rockin’ Dolly as she liked to call herself was also fifteen years old. She shared a home with her thirty-year-old absentee mother, who spent more time at her boyfriend’s house than home with her only child.
Dolly was a big-boned, light-skinned girl with a voluptuous figure. She had men of every age, shape, and size panting after her, and she used this to her advantage. She slept with numerous men for money and material goods and changed her lovers as frequently as she did her underwear. Tall or short, fat or slim, young or old, leg or no leg, Dolly wasn’t partial. But her specialty was older, married, or committed men, who did anything to be with the overgrown child and everything to keep her silent. This earned her the nickname “Battabout” in the small community. Battabout was a Jamaican term for a loose woman.
“Old Jezebel!” the bitter women who had shared their men with Dolly would shout from afar when they’d see her in passing. This, meant as an insult, was taken as a compliment by Dolly.
“You got me confuse as ain’t nothing old about me,” Dolly would respond, spinning around to show off her bootylicious body. “Ask your man and he’ll tell you.” Dolly laughed and sashayed away in her four-inch platform sandals, her huge behind held hostage in the tight miniskirts or booty shorts she favored, rolling from side to side in victory.
“Aunt Madge is probably having a fit that I’m out so late.” Tiny giggled and belched loudly. “Oops. Sorry.”
“You are so drunk.” Dolly threw her head back and laughed out loud. “The warden is definitely going to kill you when you get home,” she said in reference to Aunt Madge.
“Oh, please.” Tiny sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes before taking another sip from the mug. “This is some good stuff right here.” She lifted up the mug in salute.
“Yeah, we just finished two bottles.” Dolly giggled and daintily swung her long braids over her shoulder. “Tomorrow I’ll ge
t some more from my baby, Blacker.”
“Your baby, huh? Wait until Mrs. Blacker catches you,” Tiny said and doubled over in laughter. The alcohol that swam in her veins made everything even funnier.
“Girl, I’m not scared of Mrs. Blacker,” Dolly replied. “She’s the missus, and I’m the mistress. It’s all good.”
“Chat bout!”
The girls high-fived and whooped until tears ran down their faces, their loud laughter disturbing the silence that blanketed the night.
“Okay. Now let’s get back to your lesson of love,” Dolly said when the laughter died down. “Look at me and learn, girlfriend. Professor Dolly is here for you.”
Tiny giggled and gave Dolly her undivided attention.
“Now when a man looks at you, bat your eyelashes like this.” Dolly flicked her eyelashes rapidly as she demonstrated. “Then you slowly swipe your tongue across your lips and flash that bright smile.”
Tiny blushed and hung down her head in embarrassment. “I won’t be able to do anything like that,” she mumbled.
“Tiny, look at me,” Dolly demanded in a stern voice. “This is nothing to be ashamed of,” she said after Tiny’s doelike eyes met hers. “Remember, you are doing this so things will get better for you and the warden.”
Tiny nodded shyly and glanced away. Dolly had been giving her these lessons of love for a few weeks now.
“Do you want to get away from this boring back-a-wall place?” Dolly asked Tiny as she used a match and lit the marijuana spliff she held in her hand. She slowly took a long drag and blew the smoke in the air. “Well, do you?”
“Yes,” Tiny said in a meek voice. “But I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Well, there has to be a first for everything,” Dolly replied. “I’m going to Kingston as soon as Big Dread sends for me.” Her eyes lit up as she stared off into her make-believe future. “I’m going to become an actress and star in plays at the National Pantomime.”
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