My Soul Cries Out

by Sherri L. Lewis

  Shavon said, “Girl, I heard this radio interview where they was doing that mess, saying crazy stuff like Jonathan and David were gay, or that God wasn’t against homosexuality as long as it was two people in a committed relationship. He’s only against it when homosexuals are promiscuous. I even saw this thing on the Internet about gay Pentecostal churches. They believe that because they speak in tongues, the Holy Spirit is proving that homosexuality is okay.”

  “Girl, that don’t mean nothing. I’ve seen plenty of hellions in our church speaking in tongues,” Janae said. “That doesn’t mean God is cool with what they do. They can roll right out of their fornication bed and right into church, speaking in more tongues than anybody.”

  Trina laughed. “I’m a witness.”

  Shavon and Janae gave Trina a shocked look.

  Trina sucked her teeth. “Don’t act like y’all virgins ’cause you ain’t. And if you haven’t fornicated, you’ve lied, or gossiped, or . . .” she glared at Shavon and peeked under the table, “spent your tithes on some shoes.”

  Shavon giggled. She had a serious shoe fetish.

  “Whether it be homosexuality, fornication, or just having hatred in our heart toward our brother; sin is sin. It’s not like God has two different levels of hell. Upper hell is for the regular people and lower hell—where it’s hotter—is for the homosexuals.”

  Trina looked over at me and must have realized I’d had all of this conversation I could take. “So, Shavon, what happened to that cutie you were dating from the choir? Last time we talked, I could hear wedding bells.”

  Shavon rolled her eyes. “Girl, please. That trifling Negro . . .”

  I was quiet in the car on the way home. Trina turned on the smooth jazz station to fill the silence. The saxophone stylings of Kim Waters took the edge off my nerves.

  Trina patted my arm. “Sorry, girl. If I had been thinking, we woulda gone somewhere else.”

  “It’s okay, Trina.”

  “You don’t look like it’s okay.”

  I shrugged. “It’s just . . . I guess I know it’s not gonna be like that anymore. I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna stay at Love and Faith after, you know, me and Kevin get divorced. And you’re leaving, so I not only lose my husband, but I lose my church and my friends. I gotta start all over. I liked my life, and now I don’t have it anymore.”

  “So that’s what you’ve decided? That you and Kevin are gonna get a divorce?”

  I frowned at her. “What other choice do I have? You can’t possibly think I would stay with him.”

  “I just hadn’t heard you use the “D” word, that’s all.”

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sat quiet for a minute. “Kevin called the other day, saying Bishop wanted to talk to us. He seems to think we can work this out and stay married.”

  “Are you gonna meet with them?” Trina turned into her subdivision.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. At least to hear what they’re thinking or to see what they’re suggesting. You know, you’re gonna have to talk to Kevin, even if you do plan to get a divorce. He’s not gonna disappear.”

  “I can’t believe you’re recommending I talk to Bishop Walker.”

  “He is your pastor. Plus, it might be safest for you to talk to Kevin with Bishop present.” Trina chuckled. “That way he doesn’t get hurt.”

  “Oh, you got jokes, huh?” I playfully smacked her arm.

  “I’m serious. You can’t sit around the house and pretend it’s all gonna go away. Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to deal with it.”

  “I know.” I nodded. “I just . . .”

  “What?” Trina turned into her driveway and parked the car.

  What could I say? She was right. I had to pull my head out of the sand and deal with what was going on in my life. “Nothing. I guess I better call Kevin and schedule that meeting.”

  10

  The Sunday morning I was dreading finally came. I pulled up at the airport with Trina and a car full of luggage. I let out a sigh. “Well, here we are.”

  “Monnie, it’s not too late. Just say the word and I’ll cash in my plane ticket and we’ll go buy a freezer full of Strawberry Haagen Dazs and a case of Butterfinger BB’s and microwave popcorn.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Trina, God knew this was gonna happen, and He knew you were leaving. Obviously, He’s got some kinda plan lined up for me to make it through this.”

  “That’s a good way of looking at it.”

  “Come on. Get out and get on the plane. The women of the bush need you.” That was the worst part about it. Trina couldn’t pick a mission trip in a big, modern African city. Nooooo, she had to go to a remote village with limited access to the phone and Internet. I didn’t know when I’d get to hear from her.

  After the skycap loaded all her bags, Trina turned to me with tears in her eyes. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”

  I started crying too. “Nowhere near as much as I’m gonna miss you.”

  She looked at me. “You’re gonna be fine, Monnie. I just feel it in my spirit that in spite of everything, and maybe because of everything, your life is gonna end up being so much better. Like that Scripture, what Satan meant for evil, God is gonna turn around for your good. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but I just believe it. Can you believe God for that?”

  I nodded. Not because I believed it, but because I wanted her to feel like she could get on the plane and know that I would be okay.

  We said our goodbyes, and I watched my best friend walk away for the next two years.

  After Trina left, I settled into the business of escaping. It was amazing that a part of me could function on autopilot while the rest of me went to this faraway place to hide from reality. The only problem was that to stay in that faraway place required too much sleep, too many fake smiles, too many hours of television, too many false “I’m fine’s”, and waaaaay too many pints of Tom & Larry’s ice cream. I started venturing out. I used to only eat Chocolate Walnut Brownie Crunch. Now I was discovering the pleasures of Snicker Bar Sundae, Bananaberry Pecan, and Caramel Rum Raisin. Things might have been okay if it was only the ice cream I binged on, but I had made way too many trips to Popeye’s, way too many phone calls to Domino’s, and way too many drive-thrus at McDonald’s.

  Every so often, I would pinch myself, hoping I would wake up and get my wonderful life back. All I got were a bunch of little broken skin marks.

  My whole life became working, eating, sleeping, and watching television. Oh, and of course, listening to the dreaded answering machine. I kept the phone’s ringer off and let the machine catch the calls. Kevin left messages at least twice a day. He’d be playing the piano or the guitar or singing a capella, some song he had written for me. He used to do that when we were dating. One of the many things he had done to steal my heart. I knew he was at his mom’s because I recognized the clangy, off-key timbre of her old piano.

  I ignored the messages from choir members, asking where I was, asking me to go shopping and to the movies and out to eat and the usual places we used to go. I ignored Bishop Walker’s messages, telling me God was with me and he understood if I needed to shut in with the Lord for a while to allow Him to heal my heart.

  It was hard to ignore the calls from my mother. She left almost as many messages as Kevin, wondering where I was, why I hadn’t come to visit, why I hadn’t called. Normally, I called my mother twice a week to check on her.

  One night, a message from Mommy got my attention.

  Monica, I’m concerned about you. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m coming to visit.

  I didn’t worry too much. She always threatened to come visit me in order to get me to come visit her. We didn’t live too far from one another. She lived in Baltimore. I lived in Silver Spring, right outside of D.C. To my mom, though, it was a major day trip.

  A few days passed and I was awakened from my daily after-wor
k nap on the couch by the sound of a key in the front door. I was afraid for a minute, but realized a burglar wouldn’t use a key. My heart leaped at the thought of seeing Kevin. I had this confused feeling of love-hate-desire-repulsion—with a little violence sprinkled on top.

  I heard footsteps in the hallway, accented by the swish-swash of stockings being rubbed together by thick thighs. Oh, no.

  “Monnie?” she called out.

  “Mommy? What are you doing here?”

  “I had to come check on you. I left you a message to say I was coming.”

  “I know, but I didn’t think . . . Did you drive yourself?” I couldn’t remember seeing my mom drive anywhere but to work, to church, and to the neighborhood grocery store.

  “Chile, you D.C. people drive crazy, almost as crazy as them people in Baltimore, but I had to come check on my baby. Why you sitting in the dark?” She flipped on the light and propped her hands on her wide hips to catch her breath. She wiped beads of sweat from her forehead and fanned herself as if the five steps up to the house placed a major stress on her heart.

  “How did you get my house key?”

  “Kevin came to visit me. He said I needed to come check on you. What’s going on wit’ you two? All he said was you was having some problems and was takin’ some time apart.”

  I knew he did it out of concern, but I didn’t appreciate him dragging my mother into this.

  “That’s about right,” was all I said.

  “But why? One minute y’all in love and now you need time apart? Y’all young people and these new-fangled relationships is a mystery to me. Time apart to what? I never heard—”

  “Mommy, please.” I rubbed my temples. I got up to throw away the empty pizza box on the floor beside me.

  “Look at you. When the last time you got your hair done? And I hope you don’t wear that house dress when Kevin is around. You young women got to learn how to keep yourselves for your men.”

  “Mommy, did you eat dinner? Can I get you something to drink?” The last thing I needed was her advice on how to make a marriage work.

  “I’m just saying, men need they women to act like they care. Put on something nice. Cook dinner every once in a while. Get you some lingerie. You gotta keep the romance in the relationship. Even a good man will stray if he sees something better in the street than he has at home.”

  “Too late, Mommy. He already did.”

  She didn’t look surprised, sorry, sympathetic, angry, or any of the emotions any normal mom would have at such a moment. Like men were supposed to cheat. “See, that’s what I’m talking ’bout. Don’t worry, honey. We’ll get you fixed up. He’ll come back.”

  “Did you ever think I might not want him to come back? I’m not like you.”

  The strained look on my mother’s face made me wish I could get my brain to work faster than my mouth. She smoothed a few gray hairs back from her face.

  “What I mean is I need some time to deal with this.”

  “I understand. Take some time, baby. Y’all be okay in no time.”

  There was no way I was going to tell my mother what really happened. She’d tell my dad and I’d never hear the end of it. My dad was intensely homophobic. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d heard him say “faggot this” and “punk that” and “sissy that” whenever he read something in the newspaper or saw something on television.

  Plus, if Mommy rationalized that I should stay with Kevin—for whatever reason, she thought women should stay with men no matter what they did—I would lose the little bit of respect I had left for her.

  I got up and wandered into the kitchen. I swore off Tom & Larry’s two days ago and had done pretty well. Mommy was getting on my last nerve, though. I would just scoop out a spoonful. Or two.

  My mother stared at the trash. Pizza boxes, Popeye’s boxes, and empty pints of ice cream spilled over the top. I followed her eyes right to my hips.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I wasn’t gon’ say nothing. ’Cept you need to watch out. You don’t want the Calvin curse.”

  Calvin was my mom’s maiden name. Most of the women in her family had wide hips, thick thighs, and big butts. They also had high blood pressure and diabetes, and died of heart attacks or strokes.

  “Too late, Mommy.” I patted my butt. “Already got it.”

  “You don’t want to end up like me, Monica.”

  I closed the freezer. She was right. I wasn’t going to eat myself to death because my husband wanted to “find something better in the street than he had at home.”

  I turned toward her with a snappy reply on my lips. When I saw the years of sadness in her eyes, I swallowed it and put my arms around her. No matter how much I disagreed with the choices she had made in her life, I still loved my mother.

  We went back to the living room and sat on the couch.

  “Yeah, this might be what you and Kevin need. Remember when you were ten and me and you moved in with Grandma?”

  I nodded.

  “I had caught your father cheating on me. It was a lady at our job at the post office, so every body knew about it. I had to go to work every day and look in those people’s faces, them knowing my husband was dogging me. I wasn’t gon’ stand for it. That’s why we left.”

  Did she think I didn’t know the whole story? From listening to my grandmother and nosy aunts, I probably knew it better than she did. I had heard about all the different times he cheated on her and about all the different women. I knew the full effect of my father’s cheating on their marriage.

  “Your father did everything he could to get me—us—back. I wasn’t gon’ take him back, but the Lord stepped in—bless His Holy Name—and He worked a mighty miracle on our behalf—Hallelujah—and for the first time, your father gave his life to the Lord. That’s what turned things around for us. Your father was so glad to have Jesus in his life, he gave his all and started truly walking with the Lord. I ain’t gon’ say he hasn’t had some slip-ups from time to time, but his heart is with the Lord. Sometimes a man will stray, but if he’s a good man, he’ll always come back home.”

  Was this supposed to make me feel better?

  “I hate to bring up your father ’s unfaithful past, ’cause Lord knows women should never point out a father ’s faults to his children. But if it helps you at this time in your life, that’s why I went through it.”

  Why did Christians always put stuff on God? Did she really believe God wanted her heart broken a million times just so she could “comfort” me at this moment? That ranked right up there with God giving people cancer to teach them a lesson.

  “I appreciate you sharing, Mommy, and I’m glad God worked things out for you and Daddy. Keep praying for me, okay?”

  “I will, baby. God’ll do it. You’ll see. When I think of all the things He’s done in my life, my soul looks back in wonder, yes Lawd, yes Lawd.” She started humming “How I Got Over” in her thick, Mahalia Jackson voice.

  She rubbed my back. I laid my head in her lap and stretched out on the couch. She went from humming to singing and smoothed back my hair. Something about her warm, mothering touch and the melancholy tinge in her voice hit a painful spot in me and I started crying. She didn’t even flinch. My pain was familiar to her.

  “That’s it, baby. Let it out. Momma’s got you,” she whispered.

  I cried until I was empty, and then sniffled like a little kid after a whipping. She kept rubbing me and singing. God knows He did something special when He created mothers.

  I must have fallen asleep because next thing I knew, she was nudging me. “It’s late, baby. You need to get in the bed so you don’t wake up with a crook in your neck.” She tucked me into the guestroom bed where I had been sleeping since the incident. She kissed me on the forehead like she did when I was little, then sat down on the bed.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, baby.”

  “You didn’t upset me. I’m glad you came. I should’ve called you sooner, but I didn
’t want to talk to anybody.”

  “It’s not good to keep stuff to yourself, baby. You gotta get it out, like you did tonight. Have you met wit’ Bishop Walker?”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t about to elaborate. In Mommy’s eyes, no man of God could do anything wrong.

  “Good. You can be sure he’s praying for you.” She took a deep breath. “I know Trina’s gone and you feel all alone. Have you thought of calling Alaysia?”

  I sat up. “Alaysia? Why would I call her?”

  “You two were such good friends. She always seemed to know what to say or do to make you feel better. I still don’t understand why you stopped being friends. Too many women get rid of they women friends when a man comes along. It’s the women friends you should hold on to because even when the men act up, you can trust your girlfriend to be there.”

  “That wasn’t it. Our personalities went in different directions.”

  “They was always in different directions. It never bothered y’all before. I hope Kevin didn’t turn you against her. Sometimes men can be jealous of—”

  “It wasn’t that. We just grew apart.” My tone let her know to leave it alone.

  “Okay, baby. Whatever you say. It wouldn’t hurt you to call her, though.”

  My mom adored Alaysia. When we were in college, Alaysia came home with me a lot of weekends for my mom’s home cooking. After a while, she started to call my mom “Mommy.”

  I had to admit, I had thought of calling Alaysia, but too much had happened and too much time had passed.

  Mommy patted my head. “I don’t want my baby alone. If you want to, you can come stay at the house awhile.”

  “No, Mommy.” The last person I needed to be around right now was my dad. “I’ll be okay, I promise. Now you go get some sleep. I know you got your volunteer work tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yes, Lawd. I forgot tomorrow was Saturday. All right, baby.” She smoothed my hair back one last time and kissed me again.

  Saturday. My meeting with Kevin and Bishop Walker was tomorrow. I stiffened.