Can I Get an Amen

by Janice Sims

  Looking around, she spotted Gayle and Ruben with the kids in the middle section. Gayle waved her over. She’d saved her a seat. As she got closer, she noticed a tall man sitting next to Ruben on the outside. His back was turned, but there was no mistaking his carriage. It was Jared.

  Her legs went weak. She wasn’t prepared to see him so soon. Why was he here? Selfish, she chided herself. He has the right to come to church like anyone else.

  When she began moving down the row toward them, she saw Ruben get up and vacate the seat next to Jared’s. It was clearly a conspiracy. Had he and Jared gotten together and planned this?

  She kept moving. What else was she going to do, bring attention to herself by turning and running in the other direction? She was resigned to sitting next to Jared during the service. A little embarrassment never killed anybody.

  “Good morning,” she said to everyone when she finally arrived and sat down.

  “Good morning,” said Gayle cheerfully.

  “Mornin’, boss lady,” Ruben said. “Good to see you didn’t actually work yourself to death like I thought you were tryin’ to do yesterday.”

  Alex had still been upset about how things had ended between her and Jared Friday night and had tried to work off her frustrations. All she’d gotten for her efforts were sore muscles.

  When Alex turned her head to gaze at Jared, he smiled at her and said, in barely a whisper, “Good morning, Alexandra.” His intonation was really saying, “I love you.”

  She stared at him as if she’d never seen his unique juxtaposition of dark skin, nappy-wavy hair, honey-brown eyes, and sensually contoured lips before. Nor how he filled out his Sunday-go-to-meeting suit. Or how big his hands were. “Good morning,” she said, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat.

  For his part, Jared’s heart had not stopped hammering since he’d laid eyes on her. He willed himself to calm down, but it wasn’t easy. The next few minutes had to go smoothly. He reached into his inside coat pocket and retrieved a small envelope. He handed it to her. “This is for you. Please read it, now.”

  Alex accepted the envelope, opened it, reached in and pulled out the vellum card.

  On it was written in Jared’s careful cursive, “First Corinthians 7:9. ‘But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to be inflamed with passion.’”

  Alex’s pulse raced. It had suddenly gotten very warm in there. She raised her gaze to his. Tears gathered in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks.

  “Where you’re concerned,” Jared whispered. “I have no self-control. I love you with all my heart, Alexandra Cartwright. And if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it. Will you marry me?”

  He reached for her hand. Alex gave it to him. He slipped a beautiful five-carat white-diamond solitaire onto her finger.

  Alex hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. “I love you, too, Jared. And my faith in you will forever be as strong as my love for you. Yes, I will marry you!”

  They shared a chaste kiss.

  Gayle had been listening closely to their conversation, and when she heard Alex say “Yes,” she got up and signaled Cheryl in the front of the church, who, in turn, signaled the choir director, who then rose and began leading the choir in an energetic rendition of “Oh, Happy Day!”

  For it was, indeed, a happy day.

  Love and Happiness

  Kim Louise

  Dedication

  For my grandmother, Goldie Mae Bratton Downing, who took me to church every Sunday.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank God for everything I have been given. Through ups and downs, my life has been a miracle. I thank Salem Baptist Church in Omaha for their warm welcome during my visit. Lisa Jackson, thank you for your continued friendship and for setting the example of Christian womanhood. Bless you and your family. Maurice Gray, thank you for being a writer-friend for all these years—we knew each other when.

  Thank you, Sister Lasley—you did it again!

  One

  The woman standing in Renata Connor’s office looked like she’d just walked straight out of the Amen Corner. Rich, camel-colored suit—matched perfectly with hat, earrings, gloves, and shoes—she stood flagpole straight. She held a Bible in her right hand and had eyes that looked straight down into Renata’s soul. The only thing that kept Renata from shouting, “Glory be to God!” was the pound cake in the woman’s left hand that smelled freshly baked and made her mouth water.

  “May I help you?” Renata asked, recognizing more than the woman’s countenance.

  “I hope you can help me eat this cake,” the woman said, setting the delicious-looking dessert on the desk between them and taking a seat.

  Renata smiled, and for the moment forgot about the past-due utility bill for her agency, Success Unlimited. “I think I can help you with that,” she responded, against her better judgment. She chastised herself in her mind. She didn’t know this woman from Eve. She could be a crazy cook who put cough medicine in the cake mix and had no idea where she was right now.

  “I’m Mother Maybelle. I attend Red Oaks Christian Fellowship Church, and I was at the Farmer’s Market yesterday.”

  Now it came back to her. Renata had been pouring her heart out to her assistant, Gidget, while shopping for fresh vegetables at one of the town’s most popular attractions.

  Renata’s business was failing. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to provide “world of work” assistance to at-risk young men. The economy was taking a toll. Just last week she’d had a meeting with one of her most ardent business supporters. But even B and B Tele-marketing, one of the largest employers in Red Oaks, Georgia, couldn’t contribute in the way that they had in the past.

  Renata had noticed Mother Maybelle. The older woman had been searching through bushels of greens like a woman on a mission. She just stood out from the crowd. She was impeccably dressed for an afternoon of shopping for collards in an open-air market.

  But soon the impressive image of the woman was overshadowed by her own concern over the dire straits of her agency. The woman must have heard Renata’s tales of woe and was here trying to cheer her up.

  “I remember you,” Renata said. “Those greens looked awfully good.”

  “And they will be, sugar. As soon as I cook ’em!” Mother Maybelle chuckled. “If you come by the church tomorrow for our Saturday evening potluck, you can have you some.”

  Renata searched her brain, hoping to find an appointment. The last place she wanted to be was in anybody’s church.

  “Thanks for the invitation. I’ll probably be trying to drum up some support for my business,” she said.

  Mother Maybelle sat forward, and Renata’s eyes darted over to the pound cake, looking utterly delectable in the cellophane. She knew that at any moment her stomach would growl like a wild animal.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Mother Maybelle said, breaking Renata from her hunger. “I heard you talking about your business like it had one foot in the grave. So, I came to see if I could help.”

  Hope rushed inside Renata as if she’d just been handed a check for a million dollars. But what could this little old lady do to help her, she wondered. Maybe she’s rich and is about to hand over a check along with her cake.

  “How?” Renata asked eagerly. “How can you help?”

  “Well, not me personally, but my church.”

  Renata’s hopes fell like the stock market on a really bad day. Her mind flooded with images of bake sales, fish fries, and, worst of all, prayer circles.

  “Now what you lookin’ so down in the mouth for? A church on a mission is one of the most powerful forces on Earth. Against that, no evil can prosper. Now, we have an outreach ministry at Red Oaks that may be able to sponsor one or two of those boys you’re trying to help.”

  Mother Maybelle sat back in the chair and folded her arms, letting her words settle into Renata’s mind. Renata liked the sound of her proposal.

  “Th
at would be wonderful,” she said, knowing that if even one young man could be sponsored, that was one less financial drain on her dwindling budget. It might just keep the agency going for a while.

  She glanced at that past-due bill, along with all the others piling up on her desk. “That’s…that’s…I mean…I don’t know what to say or how to thank you.”

  “Well, chile, it’s still up to the members of the ministry as to whether to take you on. But I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

  Renata was celebrating early and thinking about Malcolm Goodwin. He was the next youth on her growing list of young men who needed job training. Already she was restructuring her week in her mind, hoping to meet with a representative from the church as soon as possible. She was imagining talking about her agency and conveying all the wonderful aspects of it with warmth and enthusiasm—enough enthusiasm to make any person jump at the chance to work with her organization.

  Mother Maybelle strummed her arthritic fingers against a Bible that looked like it had seen decades of use. “Well, I can see the wheels are already turnin’ inside that cute little head of yours.”

  Mother Maybelle rose, tucked her Bible under her arm, and offered her hand. Renata shook it with full appreciation.

  “Someone from the outreach ministry will be by to see you. Next week.”

  “I’ll be ready, Mother Maybelle,” Renata said, sounding and feeling happier than she had in days. “I’ll be ready.”

  Devin McKenna sat ramrod straight in the pew. Reverend Terrance Paul Avery was delivering his usual “take all sinners” sermon, the kind no unsaved soul could resist. Devin believed that Pastor Avery probably had the highest conversion rate in the entire South. Over the years, he’d learned that if one entered the Red Oaks Christian Fellowship Church as a sinner, chances were that they wouldn’t leave that way. By the time the call to a church home came at the end of the sermon, God found his way into all unholy souls and turned them to his face.

  By the shouts, testimonies, and body praises of the parishioners, Pastor Avery’s talk was especially moving.

  Too bad Devin couldn’t feel it.

  He hadn’t felt it, the spirit that is, for some time now. And it wasn’t the fact that his wife had divorced him and joined another church. It was as if he’d lost the taste for good sermons, along with a thousand other things which involved leaving his house and being social.

  Devin grunted and stood for the doxology along with several others who’d chosen that particular moment to show the youth choir just how much their rendition of “The Sweet Name of Jesus” was appreciated. He wanted to encourage them. Keep them moving in the footsteps of the Lord.

  Even though he tried to make it clear with every action that he was enthusiastic about what was happening, underneath lay a different reality. Devin’s life had become too monotonous. Too tedious. Too routine. Since he and Helen had divorced, he’d stopped pushing himself in new directions, stopped growing, both personally and professionally. He’d just settled for the same ol’ same ol’ and thought he would be comfortable with it.

  He was wrong.

  The change he’d planned was drastic. He looked around, settled back down on the pew, and pushed out a breath. He would miss this church, but a clean break would do him good. His writing held the only excitement in his life right now. He’d written freelance magazine articles for eight years, and he could do that anywhere—not just Red Oaks, GA.

  His goal was clear. He would turn in his resignations from the outreach ministry and the entrepreneurial ministry in a few days. Devin was determined to start over. He had been a decent ministry member and steady church-goer. He anticipated that there may be some—especially Mother Maybelle—who might try to persuade him to stay. But his mind was made up. And nothing was going to change it.

  Devin recognized her march and tried, unsuccessfully, to thread his way through the throng of parishioners funneling out the church doors. That march, and the determined gaze of the eyes that came with it, told him one scary thing: Mother Maybelle was on a mission. And, although he was having difficulty just keeping up with the flow of people who were headed in his same direction, Mother Maybelle was having no trouble at all.

  Damn it, he thought. Then cursed himself for cursing in church. Whenever Mother Maybelle came after someone in the church like that, it meant that she had a job for them to do. And, more than likely, she believed that job was requested by God and it was his Christian duty to fulfill it.

  He had to make a decision. Either he made a quick-step to the door and tried to out walk the old lady, or he let her do what she was bound and determined to do, which could delay the much needed changes in his life.

  As she approached and a sense of inevitability fell upon him, he decided that Mother Maybelle wasn’t changing his plans to leave the church. Just postponing them.

  “Brother McKenna,” she said, placing a wrinkled but surprisingly firm hand on his shoulder.

  “I know,” he said, feeling a smile lift his spirits. “You’re on a mission from God.”

  Two

  Renata moaned in her sleep. She knew she was sleeping. And she knew she had a meeting in less than half an hour. But being pumped up about the prospects of finding a job for Malcolm hadn’t kept her from dozing.

  But right now she was preoccupied with the man in her arms. She’d been fantasizing about him for weeks now. The first time he’d come to her, she’d been shocked that for once she wasn’t dreaming about someone she knew. And glad that it wasn’t a nightmare about her brother. No, this gentle stranger had come to her nightly, held her close, and, for the first time in many years, quieted her terrible dreams. So this afternoon, during her catnap, she’d decided that to repay the favor, she would hold him. And she did, right up until the time Gidget Lawless came into the multipurpose room and woke her up.

  “Renata wake up now,” she said, voice lowered. “There is a man in the conference room and he is too gorgeous to be believed.”

  Renata sat up and stretched, knowing that the man waiting for her in the conference room couldn’t possibly be as good-looking as the man in her dreams.

  “Is it Mr. McKenna from the church?”

  “Yes,” Gidget said, still whispering. She put on her best I’m-a-fine-black-woman stroll and walked toward the door. Before stepping out, she stuck out her chest like Lil’ Kim. “Just remember…I saw him first,” she drawled.

  Renata did a quick retouch on her makeup so that she wouldn’t appear as though she’d just awakened, grabbed the stack of papers off of her desk, and headed to meet the man she hoped would be Success Unlimited’s new benefactor.

  When she stepped into the conference room—dossier, annual report, and client list in hand—she realized that Gidget was wrong. She hadn’t seen Mr. McKenna first. Renata had. In her dreams.

  The papers made a swooshing sound as they fell from her hands and onto the floor.

  “Let me help you,” he said, with a voice that couldn’t have rendered her any more shocked than if it had whipped around the room and smacked her on the butt. He knelt before her. She knelt, too. And their eyes never left each other’s as they gathered the papers and then stood. Renata smiled. Then he smiled, just like in her dream.

  “Sweet Jesus keep me near the cross,” Renata breathed, fingering her necklace.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I just wasn’t expecting…you.”

  “Oh? I have a 2:30 appointment.”

  She cleared her throat. “No. That’s not what I meant. You just don’t look like a church guy to me.”

  He came closer. “Really? What do church guys look like?”

  Not like you, she thought. You look like you belong on a stage in a coffee shop somewhere, reciting spoken-word poetry next to a man playing a stand-up bass.

  She didn’t say that, though. She just stared at his cinnamon-brown hair, honey-brown skin, topaz-colored eyes, and said, “You know, leisure suit, leather shoes, Bible super-glued to his palm.”<
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  He shook his head and smiled. “I can tell you haven’t been in a church for a while. I’m Devin,” he said, extending a hand.

  “I’m Renata,” she offered, and wanted to add, “and you’re right. It’s been a long time since my behind has been in pew.” Instead, she shook his hand and enjoyed the strong, firm grip of a man who looked like he was used to getting what he wanted.

  She motioned to the conference table. “Please, have a seat.”

  Tall, dark, and handsome began to describe him, but there was so, so much more—strong forehead, thick eyebrows, narrow sultry eyes, sharp cheekbones, and lips that whispered kiss me for a long time. And instead of a suit she expected, he came in jeans and a knit shirt which fit snugly enough to show off more muscles than she could count. Where did you come from, Devin? The church of neo soul?

  His hair was a walk on the wild side. Thick two-inch twists of brown hair just this side of dreads. What kind of church does this brother go to? she wondered.

  Her closet of a conference room was barely large enough to accommodate herself and a man of Devin McKenna’s size and stature. She’d had to furnish the room on a tight budget, which meant the furniture was not only cheap, but also considerably smaller than a better-quality brand. With Devin in the room, it looked more like a conference room in a Barbie dream house than a real place to meet.

  They’d only just sat down when Gidget poked her head, and her breasts, into the room. “Do you guys need anything? We’ve got coffee, bottled water—”

  “Mr. McKenna?” Renata asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  There was no mistaking her assistant’s muffled reply of “You got that right.” And the smile on Devin’s face confirmed it.