From Sinner to Saint

by Jones, Janice

  “Tony!”

  Antonyo and Keisha were so in-tune to one another that neither of them saw the jealous, crazed Lynn approach their table. She had squealed his name so loudly that each and every one of the few patrons and staff in the restaurant halted what they were doing to spy out the person behind the annoying voice.

  “What the—heck?” Antony altered his comment out of respect for his companion just before a more vulgar response was uttered.

  Lynn’s appearance shocked him more than her sudden emergence. He’d never seen her looking so disheveled. She had always been the picture of immaculate perfection. Now, however, she looked as if she had simply awakened, threw on the ragged oversized pink fleece jogging suit, and left the house. Her hair was uncombed, she wore house slippers on her feet, and her normally manicured nails looked as if they had been run through a shredder. Before him stood a terrible alter ego of the bourgeois, pampered princess he had known for years.

  This was the first time he had seen Lynn since he slammed the door in her face more than a week ago, the day she left the beautiful watch in his mailbox.

  “Lynn, what in the world is wrong with you? What are you doing here?” Antonyo asked.

  “No, Tony. The question is what are you doing here with her while you have on the watch I bought you?” Lynn replied.

  “What? Are you serious?”

  Keisha sat confused and unnerved while watching and listening to the uncomfortable scene unfold in front of her. She should have realized that a man as charming and as good looking as Antonyo would come with lots of drama, which usually equated to lots of crazy women and at least one female stalker. Unsure of what she should do, Keisha decided to sit still and be quiet, hoping that Antonyo was experienced in handling women screaming at him in public places.

  “Oh, I’m dead serious, punk! You can’t answer my calls. You don’t want me at your house, but you can floss in my watch while entertaining some other chick. And I know I didn’t just see you reach for your wallet like you were preparing to pay the bill? You ain’t never spent a raggedy dime on me.”

  Lynn screamed as if only she and Antonyo were in the restaurant. A few of the patrons stared at the confrontation like it was a hit box office movie. Others grabbed their things and made ready to leave, probably hoping to escape the possibility of being an eye witness to what could turn into a crime scene.

  “Lynn, you need to check yourself and bounce. You are making a complete fool of yourself in this restaurant.” Antonyo remained outwardly calm, while he was actually quite embarrassed.

  Keisha listened to the calm in Antonyo’s voice, surprised at how he remained calm under the circumstances. He was obviously used to dealing with these types of predicaments.

  Lynn moved closer and bent over the table so that she could get within six inches of Antonyo’s face. “I will bounce, as you so eloquently put it, when you give me my watch back, li’l ghetto boy. I don’t know what I ever saw in you in the first place.” Lynn stood straight again, but made no move away from the table. She then continued to yell at Antonyo while planting one hand on her hip and waving the other around, making it look as if it would detach from her arm at any moment.

  “You got me out here following you around this city just so I can get my property back,” Lynn confessed. “That’s right. I have been following you around for three days now. I saw you and your little brat leave for church on Sunday. I followed you to and from work on Monday, and then I followed you back to church again today. I thought that church was a strange place for the likes of your low-life behind to be hanging out, but now I see why you all of sudden discovered religion.” Lynn made a horrific face at Keisha, staring at her as if she smelled terribly foul.

  Keisha used every bit of Holy Ghost power she posed to stay seated. Her flesh screamed to get up and knock this Lynn chick into the middle of next week. Knowing she would not endure any more of this psycho’s insults, she figured it best to put some distance between her and Lynn.

  “Antonyo, maybe we should leave,” Keisha stated with a calm far greater than what she felt. She then began sliding from the booth in an effort to get away from this soap opera mess, hoping Antonyo would follow her advice. She had ridden to the restaurant with him, leaving her car in the church’s parking lot.

  Before Keisha could fully extract herself from her seat, Lynn shoved her roughly back into a sitting position. “You can just sit back down, sweetie, ’cause this fool here is not leaving until I get my watch back.”

  “Lord, give me strength,” Keisha stated out loud as she tried to calm herself before speaking directly to Lynn. “Please do not put your hands on me again.”

  “Girl, you better pray. Pray that I don’t kill this fool about my property.” Lynn used her forefinger to poke Antonyo dead in the center of his forehead as she spoke her last word, as if she physically needed to demonstrate to Keisha just who she was talking about.

  Before she realized it, Keisha stood up, pushed forcefully past Lynn, and said, “And don’t put your hands on him again either.”

  Initially startled by Keisha’s show of bravado on Antonyo’s behalf, Lynn stood speechless for about five seconds. Antonyo, too, had been shocked into silence by Keisha’s defensive stance on his behalf. The shocked expressions were very temporary, however, because Lynn quickly became very animated. She tossed one hand on her hip and somehow managed to get even louder than before as she wagged the forefinger of her free hand in front of Keisha’s face.

  “Oh, I’m about two seconds from slapping the ugly off your face, Ms. Thang,” Lynn spat. “You better just stay out of business that is not yours.”

  Keisha moved an inch closer and raised her own hand to remove Lynn’s hand from in front of her face. Antonyo quickly stopped her from touching Lynn, however, by grabbing that same hand and using it to lead her out of the restaurant. “Come on, Keisha. This fool is not worth it. Let’s just leave.” Antonyo threw several bills on the table and the couple attempted to leave the diner.

  “I said you are not going anywhere until I get my watch, Tony!”

  Antonyo never saw Lynn pick up the fork she plunged deeply into his upper back just left of his shoulder blade. The obviously crazed woman then yanked the fork from his skin and stuck him again, this time about an inch and a half up from the first stab wound.

  Antonyo fell forward, doing his best to use both arms to break his fall before he hit the tiled floor face first. He was both too shocked and in too much pain to cry out. Blood spurted from both wounds simultaneously, creating a messy pool at Keisha’s feet. She immediately fell to the floor on her knees next to Antonyo, trying to see if he was still conscious. Then she began yelling.

  “Please! Somebody! Call an ambulance.” Tears flowed freely from Keisha’s eyes. Fear painfully gripped her heart. “Antonyo, can you hear me? Oh my God! Antonyo, please be okay. God, please! Let him be okay. Father, I pray right now in the name of Jesus. Save him, Lord.”

  While Keisha held on to Antonyo’s left arm, Lynn bent down and snatched the Rolex watch from his right wrist. “I told you, you were not leaving with my watch.” Lynn then got up from her crouched position and calmly left the restaurant with the Rolex watch in hand.

  Antonyo’s eyes fluttered open. His surroundings were unfamiliar to him. His mouth and throat felt as if they had been packed with pounds of sawdust. His body felt as if he had been lying immobile for weeks. His mind was foggy and his thoughts were very confused right now. What had happened to him, he wondered?

  “Antonyo! Baby, are you awake?”

  Mama? he thought, bewildered. He tried to sit up, using his elbows as leverage to propel him forward. The moment he applied pressure, searing pain shot through his entire body. Every nerve in his being screamed. He, too, screamed out loud, joining them in their song of agony as he slumped back on the stiff mattress. Antonyo had never known hurt like what he was experiencing at that very moment. He would have sworn to anyone willing to listen that his eyelashes even hurt.


  “William, go get the nurse!” Trina frantically gestured for her fiancé to leave the room and do as he was told. She stood by her son’s bed, wanting to touch him, to hold him while he screamed, but she was too afraid that anything she did would bring him more grief.

  Nurse? What in the world was going on, Antonyo thought through his haze of torture. “Maaaaaaa, what is happening? Where am I?” He had not stopped screaming, so the questions came out loud.

  “Shhh, baby. Just try to calm down. William went to get the nurse, and she will get you something for the pain.”

  “Where am I?” he asked again, not changing his tone one iota.

  “Tony, please calm down. You are in the hospital, so you really need to try and stay calm. You are probably scaring the other patients. You are just waking up from surgery, baby.” At that moment, William, the surgeon, and a nurse entered Antonyo’s room. Trina moved away from the bed, giving the doctor access to her vacated position.

  “Hey, champ. No need for me to ask how you’re feeling. This entire floor can hear that you are hurting, man,” the doctor said. “But you won’t feel this badly for long. The nurse here will take your vitals, and then we can get you some pain medication.

  “By the way, I’m Dr. Franklin. I would shake your hand, but then you would probably try to kill me for moving that arm. I performed your surgery this evening to repair the damage done when you were stabbed. We won’t go into all the technical details right now. Just know that you are well on your way to being one-hundred percent again. You should be ready to walk out of here in about two days tops. I’ll come back in the morning to check on you.”

  When the doctor left, the nurse inserted a thermometer into Antonyo’s mouth and then she gently applied the blood pressure cup to his left arm, the side opposite the surgically repaired shoulder. Once everything beeped to indicate completion, the nurse spoke to Antonyo. “Your blood pressure is normal, but your temperature is still a little spiked. I’ll be right back with that pain medication. That should help bring down the fever as well.”

  Once the nurse left, Antonyo’s questions began. This time he spoke without yelling. “I think it’s coming back to me. Lynn stabbed me in the back, right?” he surmised.

  “More like in the shoulder area, but yes, it was Lynn,” LaTrina answered.

  “She stabbed me in a restaurant while I was with Minister Keisha, right?”

  “Yes,” came again from Trina.

  “Did Lynn hurt Keisha?”

  “No. Minister Keisha is fine. She said that Lynn ran from the restaurant after taking a watch from you. The police picked her up from her home soon after they brought you here to the hospital. She is in custody.”

  “Minister Keisha is a special lady, Tony. She has been here since they brought you to the hospital. She even rode in the ambulance with you,” William chimed in.

  The more they all spoke, the more Antonyo began to remember. He was still awake when the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. He remembered Keisha being with him, alternating between speaking softly to him to reassure him he would be okay and praying to God, asking him to make it so. He recalled being wheeled into the emergency room and the hospital staff telling Keisha she had to wait in the waiting area. He must have passed out after that, because the next thing he remembered was screaming in pain when he awakened a few moments ago.

  “Keisha is still here now? Where is she? Can she come in here?” Again Antonyo tried to sit up, but the pain quickly halted his process this time.

  “Calm down, baby. I will go get Keisha and send her in here. The staff will only allow two people in the room with you at a time, so William and I will wait downstairs for a little while. I’m going to go down and call your aunt to let her know you’re up and okay. I’ll come back in about fifteen minutes.”

  The nurse returned between the time Trina left and Keisha appeared. She came in, administered the pain medication as prescribed by the doctor, then left just as Keisha came into the room. Antonyo could not remember experiencing the joy Keisha’s face brought to his heart with any female other than his daughter. Why this woman affected him the way she did astounded him. The fact that she stayed at the hospital the whole time while he was in surgery endeared her to him even more. The pain in his shoulder had lessened considerably, and Antonyo wondered if it was the quick action of the pain medication, or the beauty of his minister friend.

  Keisha sat in the chair by the side of the bed, staring for long moments at Antonyo. She was so happy to see him alive. His stab wounds were probably never life threatening, but the blood that poured from his body scared her so badly that at the time of the stabbing, she feared the possibility.

  “Thanks for staying here, Keisha, and for contacting my mother. I am so sorry you had to witness that whole ugly scene at the restaurant. Lynn has always been a little nutty, but I have never had this kind of trouble from her before.”

  “I was so afraid when I saw you bleeding like that. How do you feel now?”

  “The moment you walked through that door, the pain in my shoulder began to diminish,” he stated honestly.

  How in the world could she allow his words to continue to affect her the way they did, especially after witnessing what she had today? “Why did she do this to you? I know she kept screaming about her watch, but it could not have been that simple, could it?”

  Antonyo had no idea how to answer Keisha’s questions. Yes, Lynn had been ridiculous from day one, but never did he think she would act this crazy. Even when he had tried the monogamy thing with Clarke and stopped seeing her for a while, she didn’t go ballistic on him. She just kept up her pursuit. The stabbing was way out there, even for Lynn. The watch was the most expensive gift she had given him at one time thus far; yet and still, he would have never believed she would behave this way.

  “Keisha, I am at a loss myself about this whole situation. Lynn has always been a bit of a handful, but she has never stalked me before; at least not to my knowledge. If she had simply showed up and started going off, that would not have surprised me. The stabbing, however, is far more than I would have ever imagined.”

  “I know you said you are being honest with me. I believe you are, but I need you to continue the trend with your answer to the next question. Have you ever promised that girl anything? In other words, did you ever tell her that you two were in an exclusive relationship?”

  “Keisha, I may be a lot of things. Am I a womanizer? Yes. Am I a manipulator? Yes. Have I taken advantage of women and their feelings for me? Yes. But I have never, ever told Lynn that we were anything more than friends. I have been seeing her for the better part of five years now, and never once have I even tried to have anything exclusive with her—or she with me, for that matter.”

  Antonyo took a pause to see how Keisha absorbed what he’d said thus far. On any other occasion, he’d been able to pretty much discern what she was thinking. Right now, she wore a solid poker face, listening intently to him describe his association with Lynn.

  As he watched for Keisha’s reaction, Antonyo realized that what she thought truly mattered to him. He wanted to be honest with her, but he also wanted her to look past who he was currently to see what he could become if he had an opportunity with her. So, he kept talking, hoping to impress upon her that Lynn’s actions toward him were not warranted.

  “I told her that I would never see her again about a week ago, because she violated the rules concerning my daughter. I meant what I said. I have not allowed any of the women I dated to meet my daughter. When Lynn showed up at my house knowing Toy would be there, I knew I had to cut it off for good.”

  Keisha shook her head, trying to clear some of the fog Antonyo’s words had left there. She knew Antonyo wanted to engage her in more than a friendly or ministerial relationship. Honestly, she found herself intrigued at the prospect of seeing him on a more social level. But what did it all mean to him, she wondered? How many women was he currently dating, and did he plan to make her a part
of his harem?

  Keisha had not dated much since giving her life to Christ. Even before becoming saved, she had only been in one monogamous relationship, which lasted nine months, so her experience was limited when it came to matters of the heart. These feelings she had begun developing for Antonyo confused her, to say the least.

  Finally, a reaction, Antonyo thought. Her puzzled look gave him something to work with. “Keisha, tonight had to be terrifying for you. Again, I apologize. I like you, though, Keisha. I like you differently than any other female I have ever dated. I don’t want anything material from you. I’m not even thinking about sleeping with you. I know you are not used to hanging out with guys like me. This is different for me, too.”

  Wow! Antonyo probably did not even realize his God-given gift of discernment, a gift he had obviously used before for not-so-spiritual aspirations. While she appreciated what he said, Keisha felt no less confused. Knowing that God was not the author of confusion, she knew that she needed to put some space between her and Antonyo so she could think clearly.

  “Antonyo, I don’t even know what to say about any of this. I thank God you are going to be okay, but that is all I know for sure right now.” Keisha stood from the chair. She gently rubbed Antonyo’s uninjured arm for a moment and then made ready to leave. “I’m going to go home now and get some rest. I’ll come back tomorrow to check on you.”

  “How are you going to get home? Isn’t your car still at the church?”

  “No. Mr. Rucker took me to the church to get it while you were in surgery. I’ll be praying for you, and like I said, I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Good night, Antonyo.”

  Three days later, Antonyo had yet to leave the hospital. The fever that had spiked after surgery had hung around, rising and falling, yet never completely going away. His temperature continually hovered between 101 and 104.