Somewhat Saved

by Pat G'Orge-Walker

  Zipporah glared at Chandler.

  Chandler’s grin betrayed any apologies he silently tried to issue. They’d already finished the payroll, so there wasn’t much else for Zipporah to do at the office.

  Zipporah finally gave in to the futility of the situation. She glared again toward Chandler. She didn’t care who saw her as she mouthed the words, “You owe me.”

  Sister Betty and Bea sat in the first-aid station side by side while they waited for Zipporah and Chandler to return from getting Bea’s pain medication prescription.

  “She seems to be such a sweet young lady,” Bea said. If she’d noticed that Sister Betty wasn’t in a talking mood, she ignored it.

  Sister Betty turned and looked at Bea as if meeting her for the first time. Something was off about Bea. In all her years of knowing Bea, they’d never exchanged more than ten friendly words at a time. Unintentionally, Sister Betty spoke out, “Maybe it wasn’t God speaking to me. It could’ve just been something I ate . . .” It was to late to take back what was supposed to be a private thought.

  The confused look on Bea’s face told Sister Betty that Bea probably thought she’d lost her mind. “She’s very pretty,” Sister Betty added, quickly.

  Bea’s face relaxed. “And she has such a lovely voice,” Bea added.

  “How would you know?” Sister Betty faced Bea. It was her turn to think Bea had lost her mind.

  “I was listening at the doorway when you came along and shoved me and caused me to hurt my pinky toe.”

  Sister Betty was about to challenge Bea’s edited version of reality when Chandler and Zipporah returned.

  “You’re just in time.” Sister Betty had stood up faster than she’d meant. She became light-headed and couldn’t finish speaking.

  “She’s been talking crazy ever since you left.” Bea let her chubby fingers circle her head.

  While they prepared to take Bea back to her hotel Chandler took Zipporah aside. He tried explaining Mother Blister’s and Sister Betty’s idiosyncrasies to Zipporah. “They’re really sweet once you get to know them.”

  “And if I don’t want to get to know them?”

  “Please don’t make me play the boss card.” He tried to act stern but couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Please don’t make me play my I-don’t-give-a-crap card.” She placed both hands on her hips and let her neck roll, showing she still had a little “hood” left and available.

  Zipporah and Chandler were getting along like old friends. They finally made a deal. He’d take her out for a late dinner once they got Mother Blister situated. He hoped that Mother Pray Onn could handle whatever business they had at the conference alone.

  Back at the Luxor Sasha sped around her room snatching things from the dresser drawers. She stuffed her things into her a suitcase. She hadn’t been shopping and yet it seemed difficult to repack. She’d already called the airline, with the help of the hotel’s concierge service, and got a flight. She’d balked at having to pay the extra fee to do so but she’d had no choice.

  Five minutes after she’d finished packing, Sasha gave her suitcase to a bellhop. He explained to her that the bag would be waiting for her when she came down to the front desk.

  It was completely out of character for Sasha, but she tipped the bellhop. Now, all she had to do was wait on the car service to take her to the airport.

  Zipporah had finally gotten Bea into a cab. On the way back to the Luxor Bea had done nothing but chat. Zipporah wished she’d had a roll of duct tape to tape Bea’s mouth. Plus, Bea had forgotten to put in her dentures and it was like looking into a cave when Bea spoke.

  Zipporah stepped off the elevator with Mother Blister limping beside her. Both women focused on trying to get to the hotel room without any further damage to Bea’s swollen pinky toe. Neither saw Sasha entering the other elevator.

  But Sasha had seen them. She nearly had a heart attack when she spied Zipporah leading Bea off the elevator. She lowered her head and rushed inside another waiting elevator. She pressed against the back wall, trembling. “Jesus. Oh, Jesus,” she repeated as the elevator descended. She thanked God for the elevator being empty and not being seen.

  Zipporah felt like a suspect as Bea continued her relentless interrogation after they’d entered the hotel room. Somehow, she’d gotten Zipporah to tell her everything except her dress and shoe sizes.

  “I wonder what’s holding up Mr. Lamb?” Zipporah said. “I didn’t think it would take him that long to take Sister Betty to her room.”

  “She’s probably running her mouth,” Bea replied. “She’s kind of nosey, but she is his godmother, so she thinks she’s got a right to ask about things that ain’t none of her business.”

  Without meaning to do so, Zipporah laughed at Bea’s accusation. She just hoped she wouldn’t be that crazy when she reached old age.

  “So tell me,” Bea pressed as she tried to reposition her foot, “how long have you been singing?” She couldn’t let a little thing as excruciating as pain keep her from her task.

  A smile spread across Zipporah’s face. The old woman had finally touched on a subject she could spend hours talking about.

  Sasha raced from the elevator hoping to avoid anyone else she knew. She thought she’d gotten away clean.

  The last thing Chandler expected to see when he entered the hotel lobby was Mother Pray Onn. She seemed in a hurry so he didn’t bother to call out to her. Instead, he watched her as she barely used her cane, hasten to a waiting car. She carried a suitcase. By the time he’d regained his wits the car had pulled off.

  I wonder where she’s off to in such a hurry, Chandler thought. Mother Blister had probably worked her last good nerve.

  Chandler pushed Mother Pray Onn to the back of his mind and entered the elevator. He’d promised Zipporah he’d rescue her from Mother Blister as soon as he could. Stepping inside, he recognized a familiar face. Ms. Cowing, the talent coordinator for the Luxor’s musical shows.

  “Hello, Alicia,” Chandler said, smiling. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in quite some time.” A smile spread across his face as he recalled the one time they’d met for drinks. They’d laughed when each ordered a virgin daiquiri. It was pleasant but strictly business.

  “Hi, Chandler,” Alicia replied. She took her time smoothing an invisible wrinkle in her dress. She’d never forget their business dinner date. He hadn’t tried to take it further and she was only a little grateful. She was also a bit perturbed because she’d taken time to look appealing. On that evening and even now, his good looks disarmed her. She’d never dated a black man, but for him she’d make an exception. “It has been a while. What brings you over to the Luxor?”

  “I’m visiting.” He gave her an appreciative wink before asking, “What floor are you heading to?”

  “Oh, really, visiting?” she said, returning the wink. “I’m heading to my office.” She leaned back and watched him press the button before continuing. “So, I imagine there’s not enough work for you at the Jaeger. You’ve got to scope out the casino competition and call it visiting.”

  She bent down and turned her ankle ever so slightly, running her fingers lightly down an invisible seam. “I’m going up to my office and attack today’s trials and drama.” She took her time returning her hand to her small waistline. It was another of her feminine attributes that always caught an eye.

  She’d performed the first act in her white woman’s flirtation waltz. She smiled, showing a perfect set of teeth barely covered by red-painted thin lips as she continued the enticing dance of possible social death, for the black man.

  Chandler suppressed a smile as he leaned against the back wall of the elevator. Her moves were transparent. He remembered that silent taboo, the racial divide, the forbidden dance that still existed in the twenty-first century. He also remembered from years of living in the South that a black man never led the waltz.

  “My godmother and some of her church members are visiting,” he said, noticing her shocked
look followed by a second of disappointment as he expertly sidestepped her silent invitation.

  But Alicia wasn’t giving up without a fight. Loneliness kept her libido ready. “Sure hope they can do something to improve our Sodom and Gomorrah image.” She puckered her lips, thinking it made her appear sexy. She, too, knew the sidestep dance.

  Chandler smiled at her feeble attempt. Her sun-kissed, freckled skin and dyed blonde hair paled in comparison to the beauty he’d just spent the afternoon enjoying. Zipporah’s beauty was hard to imitate, even by those who, like Alicia, at least had a head start in the good looks department.

  Chandler’s eyes didn’t totally share the conviction of his mind as they traveled about Alicia’s body. Again, he smiled. He had to admit her legs were extraordinary. “You’re gonna need special prayer,” he teased. “Thou shalt not tempt a young man.” He laughed at his feeble attempt to revise a bit of scripture.

  “What I need is a special singer for tomorrow night.” There wasn’t a hint of tease when she spoke. “Can you handle this?” she asked while tossing her long hair to one side and handing him a piece of paper.

  Chandler read the paper and immediately began laughing.

  “Come on, Chandler, it’s not funny. I’m in trouble.”

  “I may have your answer.” Chandler’s eyes grew large.

  The elevator stopped, allowing several people to enter. Chandler and Alicia moved closer and continued chatting. The move wasn’t necessary because no one was paying attention to them, but they’d done it anyway.

  Several floors later, the elevator was empty again. Chandler and Alicia were laughing, exchanging quick sound bites about casino and hotel drama. Her mood had changed for the better and so had his.

  “I’m depending upon you,” she said softly, while allowing her eyes to widen and appreciate every inch of Chandler’s well-toned body.

  “I got you.” Chandler winked.

  Alicia knew that Chandler was good for his word.

  They’d first met at a casino management workshop. It’d been about two years ago. He’d walked in—no, it was more like a stroll. He’d had a quiet strength and she could tell she wasn’t the only one at the workshop who noticed. There were nothing but eyes on him from both men and women. He’d worn a dark blue, pin-striped, power suit. His shoes were polished to outshine the sun, and his physique . . . She looked over and saw that he was smiling back at her. She must’ve looked ridiculous while lost in her thoughts.

  Embarrassed, she told him, “Well, I’m gonna hold you to your promise.” It was the best she could come up with and it was lame at best.

  “Call me later,” Alicia said softly as the elevator door opened and she stepped out. She left the invitation open to interpretation.

  Chandler couldn’t help but laugh as the elevator door closed. “What I won’t do for success.”

  23

  Sister Betty was unapologetic on her need for privacy as she unplugged her hotel room telephone and placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob outside. As much as she loved Chandler, the unplugged phone and privacy sign were just as much to keep him out as the others. This trip was turning out to be more of a hassle than she’d wanted.

  She checked the time. There were about two hours before she was scheduled to return to the conference center for another round of battle with the Mothers Board members. She had to be honest. She really wouldn’t mind avoiding another confrontation.

  Lying across the bed, Sister Betty grabbed the television remote. She’d turned it on just in time to catch one of Bishop T. D. Jakes’s sermons already in progress. He was speaking about Christians who’d accepted Jesus but still weren’t saved.

  The power of Bishop Jakes’s conviction had left Sister Betty’s state of mind in tatters. She’d become too comfortable. She couldn’t let her salvation come under attack from her disobedience and not fight.

  Reaching for her Bible, she flipped through it until she found a particular verse. She let the powerful words wash over her mind and connect with her spirit.

  And, for the first time in a very long time, Sister Betty accepted the truth. She wasn’t as saved as she’d thought. She’d become what she’d despised in so many religious people—a hypocrite. And it didn’t matter to what degree. Her Bible told her that if she were neither hot nor cold, God would spew her from His mouth.

  And then on her knobby and arthritic knees, she repented, over and over. Her regret wasn’t necessary. God and most of the other occupants on her hotel floor had heard her the first time, she was so loud. There was no doubt that her sincerity and remorse had reached the throne of grace.

  While Sister Betty repented in her room, down the hall Bea peppered Zipporah with more questions, and Chandler devised a plan to reenter the entertainment business. Throughout it all, Zipporah mourned the day she’d become involved with the geriatric set.

  And thousands of miles away, Sasha’s plane landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, twenty minutes sooner than scheduled and thirty years too late.

  As preplanned by Sasha’s sister, Areal, Sasha hurried to a waiting car service that would rush her from LaGuardia Airport to the upper Bronx.

  She sat in silence while her mind raced to find some rationale to her dilemma. Sasha might’ve been quiet but the chatty driver decided to tell her about every inch of highway they drove over.

  “I would have to get a motormouth driver,” she murmured, and gnawed away at her bottom lip. Her eyes rolled in aggravation as she tried not-too-subtly to ignore the driver’s idle chitchat. But the driver, an enthusiastic young Puerto Rican man, had no way of knowing that it wasn’t Sasha’s first time in New York.

  “If we were going in the opposite direction,” he said with a heavy accent, “you’d be able to see the site of the old World’s Fair in Queens. It’s a dilapidated mess now, but it was something back in the sixties.”

  Sasha could take the driver’s intrusion no longer. “Will you please just shut up and take me to the Bronx!”

  The driver’s body stiffened. He glanced quickly into the rearview mirror as though his eyes would clarify what he’d heard, but stayed quiet.

  The rest of the drive to the Bronx was happily in silence. It helped Sasha to gain control of her blood pressure. She was certain it had soared to dangerous levels since she’d left Las Vegas.

  Sasha did notice that the Bronx had changed since the last time she’d visited in the early seventies. There were now high-rise apartment buildings replacing the wooden structures she’d remembered. All along the Major Deegan Expressway, there were busloads of people, too many people compared to her small town of Pelzer.

  By the time the car finally arrived, on the posh tree-lined street where Areal lived, Sasha’s exhaustion had doubled. She saw Areal inching her metal walker down her walkway, destroying flowerbeds along the way, and dreaded what was to come.

  Within an hour both Sasha and Areal sat in the living room, crying.

  “You promised me that everything was taken care of.” Areal reached for her walker and moved slowly toward the living room window. “All the embarrassment of being set down in front of the congregation. Was it all for nothing?”

  “How was I supposed know that thirty years later the dirty laundry could air?” Sasha’s voice rose in anger. “How could I know things would change?”

  One thing that hadn’t changed was Areal’s home. The same plaid gray and brown fabric held a wooden sofa’s frame a prisoner. There was the same plastic, five-foot-tall fern in a once-bright clay pot standing guard in a corner. The temperature was just as humid inside as it was out, but Areal had refused to change the blood red velvet drapes for something cooler or put in air-conditioning.

  Not much had changed in the house but its occupants were another matter.

  “Back then, you might’ve been the youngest but you definitely ran the show,” Areal argued. Venom coated her words. She glared, permitting her nasty attitude to punctuate the air. Without thinking, she grabbed at strands o
f her long white hair that had come undone. No sooner had she managed to grasp one part, another fell. The tresses refused to return to the hairpins.

  Areal let her hair fall about her shoulders and sank further back onto the sofa. “It was always your way or the highway.” She stopped and pointed to a far corner of the room. “We both know what you came for. Go and get it yourself. I haven’t touched it since you left.”

  Sasha took the verbal abuse because for once she had to admit she deserved it.

  She was exhausted and struggled to make her way through the maze of ottomans and a collection of unread and unwrapped magazines. From the outside, Areal’s house looked as lavish as the others in her neighborhood. Inside it was a collection of short- and long-term memories. Most of the memories were bad.

  As though she’d just secreted it there yesterday, Sasha went straight toward a small nook in the bookcase. She took a small book from it. Balancing it in one hand, she shuffled, moving as if she were playing hopscotch, and then risked sitting down next to Areal.

  Sasha’s small mouth grimaced as she untied the fragile bow. The yellowed paper inside bore a small raised seal and was as delicate as the situation that lay before them.

  Sasha looked at the paper, examining the writing several times. She then offered it to Areal.

  Areal slapped Sasha’s hand away as though Sasha were a small child.

  Again, Sasha said nothing, knowing she probably deserved much worse. “Does Jasper still have his copy?”

  Areal let the question linger in the air as she leaned back and released a sigh. “Yes,” she finally answered. Her voice was sad and almost contrite. She was the total opposite of the spry old woman who’d just slapped at Sasha. “Jasper asked for it not long after his wife died. He’d contacted me only a couple of years after I’d left everything, and everyone, behind. I’d hoped he’d put it behind him, too.”

  “Why would he?” Sasha accidentally dropped the paper but managed to catch it before it hit the floor. “That baby was his. He had a responsibility even if he didn’t have a say-so.”