The Sunday Only Christian

by E. N. Joy

  “God, no, Lynox,” Deborah huffed.

  “Thank God.” This time he sat down, but on the way down a thought entered his head. “It’s not your health, is it? You did say you had a doctor’s appointment the other day, that was why you couldn’t meet me out for lunch.”

  “No, yes, I mean . . .” Deborah began to stammer. Yes, she had told Lynox she’d had a doctor’s appointment, which was just another lie to add to the collection. There was no doctor’s appointment. She just hadn’t been up to dealing with him. As snappy as she had been, he was liable to call it quits with her whether she had a kid or not. That’s just how ugly and nasty Deborah had been lately.

  “Oh, no, Deborah.” Lynox stood again. “What happened at the doctor’s?” He walked toward Deborah just in case she needed some comforting.

  “Nothing, Lynox. The doctor didn’t say a thing.”

  Lynox exhaled. “Then what is it?”

  “If you’d stop playing the guessing game, I’ll tell you.” She was snappy.

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, you had me worried when you called me.”

  Deborah put her hands up. “Please, Lynox, just let me say what I have to say,” Deborah pleaded.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Lynox walked back over to the couch. “Go ahead. It’s just that, to be honest with you, I was scared to death after I got your call. On the entire drive over here all I kept doing was replaying the last time you asked me to meet you so you could tell me something. I know that’s in the past, though, and we said we wouldn’t let the past dictate our future. So nothing in the past can affect our future.” Lynox plopped back down on the couch, crossed his legs, and opened his arms spread eagle across the couch. “I promise, no more interruptions. Go ahead.” Lynox zipped his lips with his fingers.

  Deborah’s jaws filled with air and then she let it out. “First of all, I apologize for not telling you this a long time ago. I wanted to tell you several times.” She laughed and shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe how many times. But it seems like every time I went to tell you, I was interrupted.”

  And this time would be no different as there was a knock on the screen door.

  “Are you kidding me?” Deborah groaned those words to no one in particular. She then huffed and turned around to see who in the world was at her door—unannounced at that. Heck, she’d at least shown her face at church on Sunday, so it better not have been a New Day Temple of Faith drive-by.

  She held her index finger up at Lynox. “Wait one second, just one second.” Deborah turned and walked over to the door. “Yes?” she said to the suited-up woman standing on her porch.

  “Hi, I’m looking for”—the woman looked down at the paperwork in her hand—“a Miss Deborah Lucas.” She read over the paperwork again. “Deborah Lewis.”

  “It’s both Lucas and Lewis, and I am she,” Deborah confirmed. Deborah had already made up in her mind that whatever this woman was selling, she wasn’t buying. “But this isn’t really a good time.” Deborah was going to give it her all to try not to reflect the agitation she was feeling right about now.

  “I’m sure it’s not, Miss Lucas-Lewis, and I apologize if I interrupted you, but I need to speak with you.” The woman reached in her front jacket pocket and pulled out her business card. She held it toward the closed screen door. “My name is Pricilla Folins. I’m with Franklin County Children Services.” Next, she extended a badge that she wore around her neck.

  Those words and that ID got Deborah’s full attention as she wondered why Children Services would be at her door. She slowly cracked open her screen door and took the business card that was being extended to her.

  “Miss Lewis, I’d like to talk to you regarding a report we received regarding possible child abuse,” Ms. Folins explained to her.

  “Child abuse?” Deborah had opened her mouth to say those words, but she was in such shock that nothing came out. So Lynox had asked the woman standing in front of her what Deborah had wanted to ask, but couldn’t find her voice.

  Deborah looked over her shoulder to see Lynox, who had made his way from the couch, standing there.

  “You’ve obviously got the wrong person here,” Lynox said to the woman in Deborah’s defense.

  “Please, Lynox, I can handle this.” Deborah had found her voice.

  The woman at the door looked confused. “You did say that you were Deborah Lucas-Lewis, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then I have the right person.” The woman looked down at her paper and confirmed the name once again. “I’m here regarding child abuse allegations against you that—”

  “Pardon me for interrupting again, but I assure you that you have the wrong person.” Lynox chuckled. “She doesn’t even have a kid to abuse.” Suddenly a thought entered Lynox’s mind. “Oh, that’s right, your nephew.” He looked at Deborah. “Or rather that close friend of the family’s kid.” He looked back to the Franklin County Children Service caseworker. “But she’d never hurt him.” He placed his arm around Deborah. “She wouldn’t hurt any kid.”

  The caseworker shook her head and her blond, bouncy curls did a jig. She took a deep breath, puckered her lips painted in soft pink lipstick, then fluttered her hazel eyes. “Look, Miss Lewis . . .” That was her way of ignoring Lynox. “Can I please talk to you? As you know child abuse is a very serious allegation. I’d just like to talk to you for a moment and maybe see your son.”

  Again, Lynox laughed. “I’m telling you, she doesn’t have a son. Don’t you get it, lady?” Lynox was trying his best to keep his cool, but this woman was irking him with such nonsense. “You’re wasting your time here when it’s somebody else’s doorstep you should be on right now.” Lynox pointed outside. “There’s some poor crumb snatcher out there being mistreated as we speak because the system is so messed up that you can’t even get paperwork, names, and addresses straight.”

  “Please, Lynox.” Deborah found her frozen voice again. It was beginning to thaw out slowly but surely. Perhaps it was the heat caused from the rising fear inside of her. Child abuse. Children Services at her doorstep. This was heavy. She turned to the woman. “I assure you, no child abuse has been going on here. I’d never hit my sss . . . son.” She looked down because she knew Lynox’s eyes were glued on her in shock. She could just feel it.

  “Deborah?” Lynox said under his breath as he continued to hold a steady stare at the caseworker. “What are you talking about? What’s going on here? You don’t . . . you don’t have a son.” He looked down at Deborah. “Do you?”

  After taking a deep breath, Deborah was able to look Lynox in the eyes. “Yes, Lynox. I do.” She closed her eyes. She didn’t want the tears forming to escape. She didn’t want Lynox to see the shame and guilt in her eyes. Even worse, she didn’t want to see the disgust in his, that same disgust that was in his eyes when he talked about that woman he’d dated who had a kid. That same disgust that was in his eyes when he’d seen Helen at the mall and thought the boy she was pushing around in a stroller was her kid.

  “Wha . . . what did you say?” Lynox’s hand slowly slid from around Deborah.

  Deborah opened her eyes, but she didn’t look Lynox in his. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I invited you over today.”

  Lynox stepped away and put his hand on his head and cupped the throbbing headache of confusion that was coming on. “A son? But it doesn’t make any sense. . . .” Lynox’s words trailed off momentarily; then he snapped his fingers. He looked up at Deborah with a gleam of hope in his eyes. “I get it. You’re adopting your nephew. His mother—she’s the one who has been abusing him. So you’re just rescuing him from her. And now the caseworker here needs to talk to you about it. Yeah, that’s it,” Lynox said as if he’d just come up with a wonderful plot to a story. Shamefully enough, if that woman hadn’t been standing at the door to counter the story, Deborah probably would have rolled with it. But she was tired of lying. She was just tired, period. She was tired, but
on top of that, anger was starting to form.

  “Look, Lynox, this is not one of your stupid books. You can’t write everybody’s story,” Deborah shot at him, “and you dang sure can’t write mine. Trust and believe that,” she added with a head snap. “I have a son. I don’t have a nephew; I have a son. I’m an only child and I don’t have any friends, let alone a close enough friend where I’d keep their kid. I have a son. He’s mine. Mine and Elton’s.”

  Dumbfounded, Lynox asked, “Why? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Ha! Are you serious? The way you continuously make it a point to let me know how you feel about women with children? How you don’t want the readymade family? How you don’t want to be a father to another man’s kid?” Deborah brought up everything Lynox had said about women with kids. “And now you ask me that like it should have been the easiest thing in the world to tell you. You made me feel tainted. You made me feel as though something was wrong with me because I’m a single woman with a child. Why didn’t I tell you?” she mocked. “That’s why!”

  The woman at the door cleared her throat to remind the feuding couple that she was still there. As interesting as the soap opera unfolding before her very eyes seemed to be, she had a job to do.

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” Deborah said to the woman. “Please come in so we can get this straightened out.” Next Deborah looked to Lynox. “He was just leaving . . . for good.” Deborah stepped to the side and opened the door, for the woman to enter and for Lynox to leave . . . for good . . . forever. It was breaking her heart inside for him to leave, but for the first time since reconnecting with Lynox, there was something more important she had to focus on, and that was her son.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Franklin County Children Services, Mom? Really?” Deborah roared at her mother. “You called the people on me? Seriously?” Deborah could not have confronted her mother about her surprise visitor soon enough. She immediately knew that her mother was behind this nonsense. She didn’t know how she did, but she just knew.

  Deborah being so sure her mother was responsible for the claims probably had a lot to do with the arguments they’d had lately. Mrs. Lewis had not bitten her tongue about how she disapproved of some of Deborah’s parenting techniques. In turn, Deborah had not bitten her tongue on what she thought about her own mother’s parenting skills when it came to how she’d raised her. Deborah knew she was somewhat out of line in the way she had come at her mother. Had she known this was how her mother would retaliate, she would have most definitely held her tongue.

  Deborah had watched enough episodes of Judge Judy and Judge Mathis where folks had falsely called Children Services on a person they were beefing with. She just never thought her own mother would do that to her. The people on the court shows had done it out of spite. The judges had seen right through the defendants’ vindictiveness, awarding the plaintiffs money for their suffering and loss as a result. Deborah didn’t have any plans of suing her mother, but she had every intention in the world of confronting her about it.

  Once Miss Folins, the woman from Children Services, had left Deborah’s house after over an hour of questioning her and her son, Deborah couldn’t wait to get on the phone and let her mother have it. But after picking up the phone and dialing the first few digits of her mother’s phone number, she slammed the phone down.

  “This requires a face-to-face,” Deborah had spat as she gathered together her son and their things and made a beeline out the door—straight to her mother’s house. As soon as Deborah’s mother had opened the door, Deborah burst through the door in rage.

  “First of all, you need to calm yourself down,” Mrs. Lewis shot back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Children Services . . .”

  “Oh, so now you’re going to act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Deborah rolled her eyes up in her head. “Puhleaze.”

  Mrs. Lewis tightened her lips. She tried to count to ten, but only made it to four. “Now for the last few years I’ve been trying to be a different person—a better person. But I’m warning you, Deb . . .” She walked up to her daughter and put her finger in her face. “You gon’ make me go old school on you for real.”

  Deborah was taken aback. For a moment there, she felt like a little kid again. This feeling was brought on by the look in her mother’s eyes. There was a hint of the expression she used to wear whenever she used to go on her tangents when Deborah was coming up. Deborah had never met a real, live madwoman. But she’d bet the farm that back in the day her mother bore a close resemblance.

  Put in her place, Deborah found a more respectable tone. “Look, Mom, I really don’t want to come over here disrespecting you. No matter what, no matter what I think about how you raised me, God only gave me one mother. That is what forces me to strive to want to have a halfway decent relationship with you, but you calling Children Services on me, making accusations that I might be abusing my son, that’s kind of hard to look past.”

  “Deborah, I honestly have no idea what you are talking about,” Mrs. Lewis assured her daughter. She said it with such a sincere tone and expression that Deborah knew her mother was telling the truth. Deborah could feel it in her gut that her mother had not been the one to call “the people” on her. Deborah began to soften, preparing herself to apologize to her mother. “But I can also honestly say that I thought about doing it.”

  Deborah’s mouth dropped open.

  “I’m just trying to tell the truth and shame the devil,” Mrs. Lewis admitted. “Now you know I’m not the praying kind—not on a regular basis anyway—but I even prayed to God about whether to make the call. I ain’t too clear on deciphering God’s voice, so I don’t know what His response was. Obviously He told me to make the call, and when I didn’t, He found somebody else to do it.”

  Deborah threw her hands on her hips. “Now if that just ain’t the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re grasping at straws, Momma. But it’s all good. I see how you’re playing this game.”

  “I’m not playing any games with you, Deborah. I’m trying, and I have been trying, to be as real with you as possible. When I look back at how I treated you, I don’t want that for my grandbaby. That’s why I try to give him all the sweet kindness and love that I never showed or gave you. I want to break the cycle with him. But then you counter everything I do with your own hateful actions.”

  “What I don’t get is why you dog me out for acting the same way you did.”

  “Because I know better now, Deborah! How many more times do I have to tell you that? I was wrong. Dead wrong. But I can admit that I was wrong. Now you need to step up and admit that you’re wrong. Because, like the saying goes, you can’t quit it until you admit it.”

  There was a lot of truth to what Mrs. Lewis was speaking and Deborah knew it. But rather than acknowledging that her mother was right, Deborah would prefer to be wrong.

  “Just forget it, Ma. I don’t have time to stand here and do this with you, my baby is out in the car and the car is running. I gotta go.” Deborah headed for the door.

  “I didn’t call those people on you, Deborah.”

  Deborah stopped right when she got to the door. She turned and looked at her mother knowingly. “If you say so.” Deborah just couldn’t bring herself to fully believe her mother; not now. Not after her little spiel about she was going to but she didn’t—blah, blah, and blah.

  As sincere as her mother had seemed in her earlier comments, the latter comments almost Xed them out. Besides, there was no one else who came to mind who would have done something like that. It just so happened that she and her mother had been disputing over the way Deborah was treating her son. Now out of nowhere Children Services showed up at her door questioning how she treated her son. How Deborah saw it, one plus one equaled two.

  “I love you, Mom. God knows I love you. And I’ll keep loving you until the day I die. But forgiving you . . . I’m not so sure anymore, Momma. Just not sure.” Deborah sighed and then walked o
ut the door.

  “Deborah, please,” her mother shouted after her. “We can’t keep doing this. We have to mend this broken bridge between us.” Deborah kept walking as her mother came out on the porch. “You don’t even have to meet me halfway. I’m willing to walk all the way across the bridge and meet you where you are. Please, Deborah.”

  “I love you, Mom,” Deborah said, then got in the car and drove off. Tears spilled from her eyes. She was saddened that there was such a huge wedge in her and her mother’s relationship. Mostly, though, the tears were of anger. If the person who had called Children Services on her had been anyone other than her mother, she would have done them bodily harm. That’s just how angry she was. But the woman was her mother. So she’d have to keep all her frustration sealed up like a can of soda. But it wouldn’t be long before, like a soda that had been shaken up, she would explode.

  “Thank you, Zelda. The food looks delicious,” Debora said to her waitress as she and her son sat in Family Café. No matter what she ordered from Malvonia’s local restaurant, she knew it would be delicious. Over the years, she’d tried almost everything on the menu. Her son, on the other hand, had never eaten anything from the diner other than chicken fingers and fries. That would probably go for most kids though.

  “Thank you, Deborah. I hope you think it tastes as good as it looks.”

  “Quit being modest, girl. You know your family makes the best food this side of the map,” Deborah complimented her. “And good thing, too, because after the day I’ve had, the last thing I felt like doing was cooking.” And Deborah was telling the truth there. Had her son not begun to beg for fruit snacks, yogurt, and a list of his other favorite foods, Deborah would have forgotten all about dinner. After her conversation with her mother, she’d been way too mad to eat. Hopefully, though, a good meal would relax her mind. Prayer hadn’t seemed to be helping her mind, God, church, Jesus—nothing. If food didn’t work, she was running out of options.