by E. N. Joy
While everyone else enjoyed the dinner Mother Doreen had prepared, the cook herself spent her time packing up her things. It was clear that her tenure in Kentucky was over. Amidst the confusion that had initially plagued the dinner, God had managed to work everything out. Sadie apologized to Justice for accusing him of using her just to help his father, the bishop, do his dirty work. Justice accepted the apology. Bishop apologized to Pastor Frey for making him feel as though he were running a cathouse instead of a church, and Pastor Frey accepted it.
While having dinner, Bishop informed Pastor Frey of the recommendation he was going to make regarding the situation at Living Word. He was recommending that he, himself, pastor Living Word and that Pastor Frey co-pastor with him. Pastor Frey didn’t hesitate accepting his offer. Bishop had said it was just to rebuild the integrity of the church, but he knew he was going to be permanently taking over the church when he relocated to Kentucky. Why else would he have uprooted his entire family? Nonetheless, Pastor Frey seemed fine getting back into his old position of co-pastoring the church.
The God in Uriah had really showed up and showed out by forgiving both his wife and her ex-lover. Hudson arrived later with his baby and expressed, with his actions, that he’d gotten over his anger toward his father faking his death. His baby girl helped him with that. Knowing that she’d have her grandpa in her life to spoil her rotten and to raise her to love God, Hudson certainly saw the upside.
All was well.
“God don’t need me here anymore,” Mother Doreen said to herself as she zipped up her stuffed suitcase. “He’s done everything Himself.” It was bittersweet. A part of Mother Doreen wanted to stay in Kentucky, and that part was the part that cared deeply for Pastor Frey. But her interest in him had come with so much sorrow and confusion, and God was not the author of confusion. That was the reason Mother Doreen recited as cause not to pursue the relationship any longer.
Tired from all the packing, she sat on the bed and looked up. “Lord, you fixed everything. You brought everyone together but Pastor Frey and me. So if it was meant to be, surely you would have given me some sort of sign. And since you didn’t . . . Well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” Sighing, she stood up to begin filling her duffle bag with her toiletries. Ironically, she didn’t know of any sign God could have given her when it came to Pastor Frey. He’d proved how great his loyalty was to his superiors. First, it was Pastor Davidson. Who was to say it wouldn’t be the bishop next?
Even though nothing became of her and Pastor Frey, she had to admit that she was grateful for the feelings that man had brought out in her. “Lord, if I never feel that way again, I’m glad you allowed me to feel that way just one last time.”
And with that, Mother Doreen finished packing. By the time she showered and got into her nightclothes, all the guests were gone. This gave her time to tell her family of her plans to immediately return to Malvonia. She’d probably stay in an extended-stay hotel until she could give her tenant notice. There were tears, but all understood. And even though they would miss Mother Doreen, Bethany, Uriah, and the kids looked forward to the opportunity of being a family again.
In bed, Mother Doreen lay down for a peaceful rest with dreams of heading back to her church. But her sleep was fitful. And although she was anxious to dive back into New Day Temple of Faith church business, something told her it was not going to be business as usual.
Chapter Forty
“Mom!” Lorain called out once she arrived back at her place. “Mom, I’m home, and I brought your favorite guilty pleasure—pizza!”
Eleanor had been staying with Lorain ever since Broady had passed away. She’d only left the house to take care of the funeral arrangements and to attend the funeral itself. Other than that, she’d stayed in her housedress that reminded Lorain of the old sitcom, Maude.
Figuring her mother might have taken Valium and was in a deep sleep, Lorain went and set the pizza down on the kitchen counter, and then walked toward the bedroom. With her mind fixed on her mother, she didn’t even notice how spic-and-span the kitchen was.
When she cracked open the bedroom door, she was not only surprised to see that her mother wasn’t in the bed they’d been sharing, but that the bed was made. The bedding had been changed and everything. Now that Lorain thought about it and looked around, everything was clean, much cleaner than any of her feeble attempts. She went into the living room and took notice of the shiny wood and the carpeted floor that didn’t have a piece of lint on it. She peeked back into the kitchen at the sparkling stove and waxed floors.
“Mom?” Lorain called out again, now figuring her mother was somewhere cleaning. She checked the bath and the half bath. Her mother wasn’t in either bathroom, but her cleaning touch was. “Wow, Mom,” Lorain whispered to herself. She had to thank her mother. In all the years she’d lived there, it had never been that clean.
Moving onto the second bedroom, which Lorain had—turned into a computer room—she was certain she’d find her mother there. She was probably putting the finishing touches on some dusting or something. But to Lorain’s surprise, when she entered the computer room, there was no Eleanor. Worry seeping in, Lorain went to the front-room window and peeked out. She let out a sigh of relief when she realized that Eleanor’s car was no longer parked outside, something she hadn’t noticed upon arriving home.
“Hmm.” Lorain couldn’t help but wonder where her mother had gone. Deciding to keep the pizza warm and then try calling her mother, she walked into the kitchen and placed the pizza in the oven, but not before taking a slice to tide her over until she and her mother could share dinner together.
Taking a bite of the pizza and then going back to her bedroom, she passed her computer room along the way. Glancing in, out of the corner of her eye, a blue blur caught her attention. A blue blur that sat on her computer desk. Lorain stopped in her tracks. Her stomach now turned as if it were full of a painful virus. The pizza made her feel nauseous. Having to take a step backward, Lorain pushed the computer room door open all the way and then began her trek toward the blue blur. The closer she got, the clearer it got. The closer she got, the clearer things became. The first time she’d peeked into the room, she’d been looking for one thing and one thing only: her mother. She hadn’t even paid attention to anything else, especially that.
“MY LIFE,” Lorain picked up and read the words on the folder, a folder that she was sure had been placed inside the desk drawer. But now it lay on top of the desk. Lorain pulled the drawer open. It was obvious her mother had run out of things to clean. The staples, paperclips, and rubber bands that had once been scattered about the drawer were now in neat, extra small plastic bowls. Her pens and pencils lined either side of the containers like soldiers keeping them in line.
Lorain’s head started spinning when she realized what had happened. In her mother’s cleaning efforts, she’d stumbled upon the folder. Surely she had read its contents. “Oh, God. Oh, God,” was all Lorain could say while beginning to hyperventilate.
She dropped the folder and left the computer room. No longer having an appetite for the pizza, she hurried toward the kitchen to put it down the disposal. She wouldn’t want it later. It was better off down the drain—just like she wished her life could be; anything to keep from having to face her mother. But it was too late. As Lorain cleared the living-room corner in order to get to the kitchen, Eleanor entered the front door.
Lorain just stood there silently as she watched her mother slowly close and lock the door behind her. “Mom, where have you been?”
Eleanor just stood looking at her daughter with puffy, red eyes. They’d been puffy for days from all the crying Eleanor had done for the loss of Broady. But they were puffier than ever today . . . and red; they hadn’t been red before.
“Mom?” Lorain asked again when Eleanor didn’t respond.
Eleanor snapped out of her daze. “Oh, I had to go home and get this.” She held up something that, from where Lorain was standing, looked like
a notebook. Eleanor walked over to the couch. “I had to look in the garage and all over the attic before I found this thing.” She laid it on the table.
Lorain approached the table. “Wha-what is it, Mom?” she stammered as she sat down next to Eleanor.
“It’s your middle school yearbook,” Eleanor stated, smiling. It was a forced smile. A smile that screamed, “I’m here because I’m tired of crying.” Eleanor sniffled. “Did I tell you that I had to look through the garage and the attic in order to find it?”
“Yes, Mom,” Lorain stated, confused. “But why did you need my middle school year. . .” Lorain’s words trailed off. She knew exactly why her mom needed that yearbook—confirmation. It would be confirmation to what she’d read in the blue folder. As if what had been in the blue folder wasn’t enough, Eleanor had wanted to connect all the dots, cure her suspicions herself.
Lorain closed her eyes, knowing that when she opened them, not only would she have to face her mother, but she’d have to face the truth as well.
“Right here,” she heard her mother say. “I found it right here.”
Lorain opened her eyes to see that her mother had turned to a page in the yearbook. Leaning forward, Lorain saw the page spread out that had her and her classmates’ individual photos on it. Lorain’s eyes landed on her own photo. She was smiling in the picture. But looking back at the picture now, it wasn’t Lorain’s usual smile. This one looked more forced. Her lips were smiling, but her eyes weren’t. She was a child going through the motions.
“And then . . .” Eleanor flipped toward the front of the yearbook. “Here.” She pointed. It was the page in the book that had photos of the staff. And there it was: a picture of Broady.
Lorain began to tremble. The memories were coming back. Way too many memories. The photo in the book; that’s the exact Broady Lorain recalled. Not the man of God that had walked into her mother’s life, her life, all these years later. Not the stepfather she’d just helped her mother bury. Lorain didn’t know what to say. So Eleanor said it.
“You were one of his victims, weren’t you?” Eleanor said the words as if she were describing the weather; cloudy with a high chance of rain.
Lorain affirmed with silence.
“When I found the folder, I couldn’t understand why it had the words ‘MY LIFE’ on it, but yet, everything in it was about Broady. After reading everything in that folder, it didn’t take much work to begin to put two and two together. Then I thought back to how you acted around Broady. How you reacted the first time you met him at my house . . . just everything. Ultimately, it was mother’s intuition, I guess.” Eleanor looked down. “Only the intuition kicked in years too late.”
Lorain remained silent.
“I’ve been feeling real bad, daughter,” Eleanor confessed as she slowly began rocking. “Real bad about Broady’s death. And even had the nerve to be somewhat mad at God. I couldn’t figure out why God had allowed me, in my late years, to find a man like Broady who treated me like a queen . . . who I was glad to have as a king, then take him away, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Sadness, depression, anger, bitterness all rolled up inside of me like a ball of fire waiting to explode.”
A tear fell from Eleanor’s eye as she continued. “This morning I wanted to die. This morning I was gonna die. Didn’t want to live anymore. I’d planned on taking all the Valium I had left. But you know me. Remember when you were growing up, what I used to say when I’d come into your bedroom?”
Lorain chuckled, and then replied, “Yeah. You used to say, ‘Child, you better do something with this room. Tomorrow ain’t promised. You could die in your sleep . . . and I wouldn’t even want to be found dead in this room.’”
Eleanor let out a chuckle of her own. “Yep. And that’s how I felt about your house.”
Lorain looked embarrassed. “I know, and I was going to get around to cleaning up, Momma, it’s just that—”
“It’s just that you were too busy comforting me from mourning the loss of my husband; the man who ra-ra-raped you.” The tears poured from Eleanor’s eyes. “Your computer room was the last room I cleaned. And I’d only opened the folder because I was looking for a piece of paper to write you a note. A suicide note.”
“Mom,” now Lorain’s tears started. Just the thought of her mother leaving her to join the enemy in the pits of hell tore her apart.
“I’m just telling you the truth here.” Sadly, Eleanor looked at Lorain. “I think a mother and daughter need to be able to tell each other the truth. And I thought that’s the kind of relationship we had.” Eleanor began to cry even harder. “How could I not have known? How does a mother not know?”
Lorain embraced her mother. “Mom, please don’t take the blame for this.”
“I was a good mother. I was a good mother,” Eleanor repeated over and over.
“Yes, you were, Mom. You were a good mother.”
Eleanor pulled away. “Then why? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I know?” She pointed to the yearbook. “Why couldn’t I have looked at that picture and seen it in your eyes?”
“Mom, please. It’s over now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” Eleanor stood up in rage. She harshly wiped her tears away, then covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get upset.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
Eleanor closed her eyes tightly. “Will you please stop saying it’s okay when it’s not?” she shouted. “That man raped you. That son of a—” Eleanor balled her hands into fists. “He’d already killed a part of you—your innocence. After finding that folder and reading the papers inside, I wasn’t about to let him take any part of my life, let alone my entire life.”
Turning to her daughter as if she’d just had an epiphany, she stated, “So, ironically enough, the death of the man that had only moments earlier made me want to die, had, all of a sudden, made me want to live. The sorrow, the mourning for that man is no more. The anger and bitterness, especially toward God, is no more. Instead, I thank God for leading me to the truth. That truth; the truth in that folder and the truth right here in that yearbook, it set me free, girly. Yes, it did. There was no way I could feel that way about a man who did what he did to my daughter. No siree. I want to live. I want to live out every day God has for me hating that man. I want to make up now for all the years I should have hated him. I’m gonna hate him just as if what he did to you was yesterday.”
Lorain sighed as her head turned from left to right. “No, Mom. That’s not living. And I don’t want to watch you spending the last of your days walking in hate instead of love. Is that any kind of way to thank God for setting you free?”
Eleanor remained silent, anger for Broady consuming her.
“Mom, don’t take this the wrong way,” Lorain started. “But you really don’t hate that man. You really don’t want to walk around the rest of your days on earth hating him . . . when it’s yourself you really hate.”
Eleanor let out a wail. Her daughter’s stinging words of truth penetrated her soul. She keeled over as if in pain. She was in pain. She was hurt, hurting for her baby girl. There was that cry again. There was that pain. And again, Lorain understood.
“I hated myself too, Mom, for years. And that’s no way to live. It ain’t living.”
“I just feel like the least I could do is hate him for you. To hate him for us both,” Eleanor cried. “My baby. He hurt my baby,” she screamed.
“But, I’m healed, Mom. Can’t you see that? I’m delivered from all that hurt and pain and woe-is-me stuff I used for a crutch for so long. Only a healed woman could have stood by and supported you in that marriage.”
“And that’s what hurts even more. You were there for me, but I wasn’t there for you,” Eleanor stated. “I just started thinking about our conversations about Broady. The times you tried to tell me; you tried to tell me who Broady was and what he had done to you. Like that day right here in your living room.”
Lorai
n thought back to the conversation she and her mother had had. It was when Lorain thought Broady had told her mother the truth about them. She’d thought that because that’s what Eleanor’s words had led her to believe. “. . . Broady told me.” And Lorain had taken those words and ran with them, running in a totally different direction than her mother was going.
“And that day in the church, you really were starting to remember things. And I just couldn’t figure out for the life of me why those things were coming to you; why you were having visions of Broady. Heck, I was just glad you were getting your memory back.” Eleanor began to weep at just the thought. “And I believed him. I believed he was healed and delivered. All that stuff about him making himself accountable to others. I mean, at first I had my doubts because I figured he didn’t make himself accountable to the state board when he came back here. But he said that working with kids was his life, it was all he knew, and he knew if he disclosed that information to the board, no one would hire him. I should have reported him myself.”
“But you didn’t know everything, Mom,” Lorain stated in an attempt to try to make her mother feel better.
“But I should have known.” Eleanor grabbed her stomach as if she was going to be sick. “But he knew. He knew what he’d done to you, and then he turned around and married me. How sick! I guess since he couldn’t have you anymore, he’d settle for me.”
“No, Mom. That man loved you. I believe that with every being of my body. In all honesty, I don’t think he knew who I was.” Lorain went on to tell her mother about the day she’d come to her house, the day Broady had his heart attack. She told her how she believed it was then, when Eleanor had called Lorain by her full name, that Broady had remembered who she was; that ultimately caused his heart attack. Still, Eleanor couldn’t get past her anger toward Broady.
“Mom, I know it’s going to take some time, but you are going to have to ask God for healing and deliverance,” Lorain told her mother. “And He will do it. If He did it for me, there is no reason on Earth He won’t do it for you.”
