“I know how you use people and—”
“I never used you, Joyce Ann!”
“Well, it’s mighty funny how you always come out on top with me standing right under your feet. Your life is always so great, and my life is nothing!” Joyce Ann struggled to keep her voice confined to the four walls. She was amazed at how carefully she still guarded Gloria’s secrets.
“I can only take so much blame for your life, Joyce Ann. You made some bad choices on your own.”
“I ain’t the only one who made bad choices, but it seems like I’m the only one still payin’ for mine. You walked away smellin’ like a rose.” Joyce Ann laughed and pulled both elbows. “Not a scratch on you.”
“Believe me, I’ve got scratches. I’ve got wounds, slashes, gashes—I’m just doing my best to keep them from taking over my life.” Gloria blinked rapidly. “And I have taken care of you—”
“Don’t start that silly crying,” Joyce Ann ordered.
“I’m not crying. I’m just trying to tell you that I have always done all I can to repay you for what you did for me.” Gloria willed the tears to be still while she relieved herself of a load she’d been meaning to get off her chest for more than half her life now. “I know that I owe you. But it is not my responsibility to make sure you are happy.”
“Not your responsibility? I tell you what is your responsibility. It is your responsibility to see to it that I’m taken care of. I took care of you; now you take care of me. If you don’t, your husband’s going to find out how much of a Rucker woman you really are,” Joyce Ann promised.
Gloria eyed her sister and leaned into Joyce Ann’s face. Years ago this was a mirror. “Don’t threaten me. Don’t you ever threaten me again. I’m not the one who got hooked on drugs.”
“And I’m not the one with all the baby-daddy issues, either,” Joyce Ann reminded her, wagging her head for emphasis. “Wonder if Richard knows that. Ain’t he some kind of reverend, too? For somebody who’s trying not to go into a marriage with secrets, I bet you ain’t told him that one.”
Gloria backed up. Steadied herself. “What do you want from me, Joyce Ann?”
“I want a life.”
“No, you want my life.” Gloria shook her head.
“It’s not easy being the black sheep of the family. Maybe I do want your life,” Joyce Ann admitted, more to herself than to Gloria.
It was unreasonable, and they both knew it.
For as much trouble as Joyce Ann had always been, they were still sisters. Gloria knew that Joyce Ann loved her, even if Joyce Ann did forget this every now and then. “I’m going to go and get married now. Stay if you want to.”
As Gloria turned, Joyce Ann grabbed her sister’s arm. “Where’s your blue?”
Gloria’s face contorted in confusion.
“You know, something old, new, borrowed, blue,” Joyce Ann spat the words out.
“I’ve got the old and new,” Gloria touched her earrings and necklace respectively, her breath still labored.
“Here.” Joyce Ann unbuttoned her sleeve and slipped off a silver-faced, indigo-banded watch. “You’ve borrowed everything else; you might as well borrow my watch.”
“Thank you.” Gloria clipped her words as she took the watch and fastened it to her wrist. It was always like this between them: love-hate.
“What about new?” Joyce Ann asked.
Gloria managed to loosen her lips a bit. “Time is always new.”
Joyce Ann’s breath slowed to its normal pace. She studied her sister for a second. “You do make a beautiful bride, Gloria.”
“So, you’re staying for the ceremony?”
“I want my watch back.”
Gloria formulated a makeshift plan in her head, one that would have to do until she figured things out. “You stay at the hotel until tomorrow. I’ll bring it back to you then. Order room service and do not leave that room. Dianne is in town.”
Joyce Ann held her throat as though the name choked her. “Dianne?”
“Yes, Dianne. She’s so terrified at the thought of seeing you that she’s not coming to the ceremony.”
Joyce Ann shook her head and rocked it back once with a sinister laugh. “Guess I’ll have to carry that blame to my grave, too?”
Gloria looked away from her sister. “Stay if you want to.”
“What if I want to stay in Dentonville?” Joyce Ann proposed her plan as though she hadn’t already settled on the idea of moving back to Dentonville. Everything she owned was in that hotel room on Main. Shame what she had to do with Billy for transportation, but he was the only one with a truck that might actually make it more than a hundred miles without breaking down on one of the lonely roads into this small town.
“I can’t talk about this right now.” Gloria massaged her throbbing head.
“Fine. Go on and get married like everything’s okay.”
“I will.”
“And I’ll be waiting for you when you get back from your little honeymoon.”
Joyce Ann left the room, her hands trembling as she pulled out a small package from her purse and practically threw it on the pew nearest the choir room door. She said to her nieces, “This is for your mother. Tell her I said congratulations and best wishes.” Joyce Ann let herself out.
Regina unfolded her arms and swaggered over to the pew. She scooped up the gift, mumbling, “It’s the least she could do.”
Gloria emerged from chambers wearing a strained expression. Her steps were quick and purposeful. She glanced down at the watch—Joyce Ann’s watch—and announced that it was time for the wedding. “We ain’t waitin’ on nobody else. It’s four o’clock straight up.”
“See, I told you we shouldn’t have let her in!” Regina fussed at her sister. “She got Momma all distracted.”
Yolanda agreed.
“Look, today is my day,” Gloria said to calm them both. Then she grabbed her bouquet and announced, “Now, let’s go have this wedding.”
Chapter 8
Yolanda asked Dianne to come to church with her on Sunday morning, but she refused, saying that her man James wanted to get out and do some shopping with her money since they would be leaving that afternoon. She’d arranged for another cousin of theirs to take them back to the bus station so that Yolanda wouldn’t have to miss the service.
“It has been too long since I’ve seen you,” said Yolanda. “I know we talk every now and then, but I miss you, girl.”
“I miss you, too. I miss everybody.” Dianne lowered her voice. “I’ll call you next week.” After she’d hung up with Yolanda, Dianne emptied her last load of apprehension. The sooner she could leave Dentonville, the better.
Yolanda’s church, the Master’s Tabernacle, was twenty miles out of the way. Traffic was hectic and parking was atrocious, but it was well worth the hassle. If there was one thing she loved about her church, it was the way the Spirit filled the massive building at every service. Whether it was with the praise dance, the choir, the youth-in-action Sunday programs, or (most frequently) the Word itself, she loved going to church and getting a Holy Ghost fill-up. There was so much power there, it was absolutely contagious. Regina and Orlando were members there, too, but without actually carpooling, there was no way they could expect to sit together. Just as well— Yolanda could always get a closer seat when she came alone.
The interior of the church reminded Yolanda of a stadium. During her first visit the spaciousness was disturbing. Having grown up in the small church where Gloria and Aunt Toe served in Dentonville, Yolanda was intimidated by the Master’s Tabernacle. How on earth was she supposed to find God in a place like this, where you had to ride a shuttle to the sanctuary? Yet, for all that overwhelmed her, there was something about the fact that everybody didn’t know everybody that drew Yolanda to this place of worship. When the offering basket was passed anonymously through the crowds rather than having the offertory reduced to a fashion show, as it often was at the smaller Dentonville church, Yolanda quickly saw one
of the benefits of worshipping with a larger body. For every positive in one church, there was a negative in the other, and vice versa.
When Pastor Rollins took his stand behind the podium, Yolanda’s heart was ready to receive a word from the Lord. She didn’t know why it always seemed the preacher preached on exactly what she needed to hear.
The topic was “What’s your Damascus Road?” Pastor Rollins started off by telling them how young elephants are trained for zoos or circuses.
“When an elephant is young, they take him and tie a rope or a chain around one of his back legs and anchor it to some sturdy, fixed object so that when he tries to move, he feels that yank on his hind leg. At that particular time in an elephant’s young life, he’s relatively small and weak. And so he soon learns that when he feels that rope or that chain around his leg, he might as well be still, because he’s not going anywhere. He’s immobile. How many of you have heard that elephants have good memories?”
“Amen,” the congregation answered.
“Well, when that elephant matures and becomes an adult, memory and his recollection are the very things that keep him subservient. At this point, the trainers and other persons working with this adult elephant know that the elephant is strong enough to break the rope they put on him, but guess what?”
A silence.
“The elephant doesn’t know that.”
There was a slight buzz in the building, clapping as some people already saw where the pastor was going.
“That’s right,” the pastor informed them. “The elephant has been trained and conditioned to believe that when a rope is laced around his leg, he is frozen and unable to move. So all the trainers have to do by the time the animal is an adult is just tie a rope around his leg and he’ll be still. They don’t even have to anchor it to anything. Because of what happened in the past, the elephant believes in his heart that he is powerless when he feels that restriction. Little does he know that there is nothing holding him back. Little does he know that even if there was something attached to the other end of the rope, he is strong enough and powerful enough as an adult to break whatever they tie to the other end!”
A few “Hallelujahs” and “Glorys” went out.
“Now, in the ninth chapter of Acts, we find Saul making a journey. Now, you have to understand who Saul was. He was a man who had persecuted the Lord’s people for quite some time. Says here in verse one that Saul was handing out murderous threats. He had made up in his mind that this Jesus was not for him.”
“Mmm-hmm,” the congregation agreed.
“Now”—Pastor Rollins removed his glasses—”we all know what happened to Saul at this point. According to verses eight and nine of this same chapter, the power of God knocked him off his feet and rendered him blind.”
“Well…” People swayed.
“There’s a reaping and a sewing going on here, and that’s nothing new. But what I want to point out today is the way that God delivered him from the chains of his past. God took Saul and turned him into a great preacher.
“Sometimes we have chains that we put on ourselves. Or chains that our parents wore, and they got handed down to us. Chains that we didn’t know we had on until we couldn’t move anymore.”
Yolanda nodded her head, though she wasn’t quite sure why.
“Saul, who would later be known as Paul, did what many of us don’t do, he started praying.” The minister drove it home. “He prayed during his blind time, and God sent healing in a matter of days.”
“You right,” someone remarked.
“See, some of us have chains that God is willing and ready to break. Some of these chains we deserved, some we didn’t. Doesn’t matter. They’re on you, and you need them off! You’ve been there long enough. It’s time you got your healing and got off of Damascus Road and continued on with the work of the Lord.
“Don’t sit there like those elephants. That chain that the devil used to have tied to your back leg is no longer tied to anything! Don’t be like the elephant!”
“Yes!” the audience rang out.
“We’ve been bought with a price. We’ve been set free. We’ve been redeemed, but the minute we feel Satan creeping up and trying to pull that fast one on us, we become immobilized. We don’t even look down to examine the situation and see it for what the word of God says that it is. We don’t even look down at our ankles to see what the rope is made of.
“Maybe it’s just a thread. Maybe it’s just a tiny little nothing that we could shake off in a second. Maybe it’s just an illusion, like when you’ve worn glasses for so long you can feel them on your face even when you’re not wearing them.
“Then, many of us think that just because that’s the way it always was, that’s the way it will always be. Momma didn’t have, so that means I can’t have. Daddy didn’t try it, so that means I shouldn’t. The last time I tried to do it, it didn’t work out, so I’m not going to try again.
“But it’s just a rope! It ain’t tied to nothin’!”
“Yes!”
“It’s just a rope! It ain’t anchored to nothin’!”
“And even if it is anchored to somethin’, that somethin’ ain’t nothin’ but a lie, and you got enough power by the Holy Ghost to break it!”
“Yes!”
“You got enough power to pull it all the way out of the ground! Say ‘yeeeeeeah.”
“Yeeeeeeah!” And they buzzed back into their seats. The saints swayed their heads, made those serious faces.
Yolanda took notes throughout the whole sermon, determined first to examine herself with the Scriptures. Am I being an elephant about anything? Men, maybe, but I don’t have to have a man to be a Christian.
Then she thought about Dianne. She envisioned her cousin standing next to a flimsy wooden stick with the unattached chain around her leg, being whipped and tortured by someone so small she could have stepped on him if she wanted to, yet she stood there. Dianne received her torment because she believed she should. Quickly Yolanda pulled a “Just a Note” card from her Bible bag and wrote a note to Dianne that she’d mail later. Just the Scriptures and a hello would do.
Back home after church, Yolanda fixed herself some chicken Alfredo, watched a good Hallmark movie, and caught a nap before getting ready for her night shift at the pharmacy.
Brookelynn, her coworker, was ready and waiting to leave when Yolanda arrived. Yolanda spoke briefly to Shelley, the assistant, who was also preparing to leave. After greeting them both, Yolanda took note of Brookelynn’s makeup.
Brookelynn was in her mid-thirties, straight out of the suburbs and very much out of place in Dentonville. Things were starting to look a little more like home for her, but she was still waiting for a movie theater.
“Got a hot date, Brookelynn?” Yolanda teased her.
“I guess you could say that.” She smiled. “I met him at church.”
“You go, Missy.”
“Pray for me, girl.”
“You know I’m always praying for you,” Yolanda said by way of reassurance.
Brookelynn gave Yolanda a quick hug. “Yolanda, sometimes I wonder where I’d be if I didn’t have you praying for me.” Though she and Yolanda were both Christians, sometimes it seemed to Brookelynn that she was way back at the starting line while Yolanda was sprinting on down the road.
“So, is this one the one or was the last one the one?”
“That last one doesn’t count,” Brookelynn laughed, charting her last few items on a ledger. “Turns out he was married.”
“How did you find out?”
“I had one of those Internet research companies do a background check on him. He’s been married for seven years. He has two kids and awful credit.”
“You learned all that through the Internet? Legally?”
“Yes, it was legal. You’d be surprised what you can find out about everybody on the Internet if you’re willing to pay. Save yourself two, maybe three months’ worth of dating. It’s worth every penny.” Brooke
lynn took off her lab coat, revealing a formfitting black pantsuit. She pulled off the sturdy, flat Naturalizers and slid into a pair of excruciatingly stylish high heels. “How do I look?”
“You look great,” Yolanda told her.
Brookelynn’s intense, long red hair surrounded her fair face and landed softly on her shoulders. She was model thin, with emerald green eyes that almost glowed when the light hit them a certain way.
Brookelynn stopped. Tilted her head. “You know, Yolanda, I’m tired of being single. And I do not want to be sixty when my kids walk across the stage.”
“You sound like a kid! Remember when you used to think thirty was old?” Yolanda reminded her. “And remember when you thought a hundred pounds was a lot?”
“These days a hundred pounds is a lot,” she laughed. “Have you seen these magazine covers around here?”
Miss Marva, the assistant for the night, breezed into the room to relieve Shelley. Yolanda liked working with Miss Marva. They were sisters in Christ, and sometimes, when it got really slow, they would catch each other up on Sunday sermons. “Tell Brookelynn, Miss Marva, the answer to all her problems is not a husband and kids.”
“Girl, please.” Miss Marva shoved Brookelynn out of her way. “A man is the last thing you need to add to your problems.”
“Oh, Miss Marva, you don’t miss having a man around?” Brookelynn asked her.
“Yeah, sometimes I miss my husband, God rest his soul,” she admitted, “but I have no desire to get married again. I ain’t got the time nor the energy to break another one in.”
When the following Sunday morning rolled around, Yolanda found it very hard to hop out of bed. She prayed for extra strength to make it through the morning. She’d bargained away the next two weekends in order to get time off for Gloria’s wedding, and the constant working was starting to zap her strength. Funny, though, how walking into the sanctuary, hearing the music, and feeling the Spirit made Yolanda laugh at herself for even thinking of staying at home that morning.
Near the end of the service, Yolanda scurried toward the hospitality room. Sister Willis and Brother Nichols helped her prepare for the first-time visitors. After the benediction, the ushers showed the guests to the hospitality room.
Divas of Damascus Road Page 7
