All About Eva (13 page)

The next Sunday rolled around, and I got my behind up bright and early in order to be front row and center at the Bread of Life Christian Academy, which was a church that Tameka credited with helping her keep her faith strong while she was going through her painful divorce from Jamal.

They say if you're scared, go to church. And facing a long stint in prison for something you are innocent of will definitely make you seek the Lord more diligently.

The Bible says, “Raise a child up in the way they should go, and they will not depart from it.” However, I had. Growing up, I stayed in church, and was in attendance pretty much every time the doors opened. However, the only saints I had been acquainted with in the last couple of years were Saint Bart's, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, and Saint Maarten, and I had visited the Virgin Islands rather than the Virgin Mary.

It was shameful. Mama Nita would have a fit if she knew, but fortunately or unfortunately, she may never know the details of the circumstances I had found myself in, because Alzheimer's disease was ravaging her memory.

From the minute the news broke about Donovan, I had longed to hear my grandmother's voice and get some guidance and advice on what I should do, but the last few times I called back home to Chicago to talk to her, she had no idea who I was. She kept calling me “LeAnn,” the name of her oldest daughter who had died in a car wreck when she was just two years old.

As far as the rest of the family goes, they were all crazy as June bugs in a bottle of liquor, so I could not call any of them for good, sound advice.

The only one I could turn to was God, who unfortunately I hadn't realized was all I needed until God was all I had.

After getting dressed, I went downstairs and waited in front of Vance's building in what I felt was my not so Sunday best.

Since I did not have much to choose from, I'd had to make the best of a bad situation, and was wearing a recession-inspired number that consisted of a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress from two seasons ago and a pair of flip-flops. It was late November, and my feet were freezing. I was thankful that Tameka had agreed to let me borrow a pair of her heels, because I just could not bring myself to enter the house of the Lord with my bare feet exposed.

Again, Mama Nita would have had a fit. “Don't you
ever
let me catch you going to church dressed like some bummy orphan!” she had told me years ago after noticing that the dress code in churches was becoming much more lax than it had been in her day. “Folks coming in any kinda way, with their toes all out, wearing jeans, and doo-doo rags on their heads. . . .”

“They're doo-rags,” I said.

“Doo-who?”

“Doo-rags! That's what they're called, Grandma. Not ‘doo-doo rags.' ”

“Well, whatever it is, it's a mess!” she said. “As for me and mine, we shall serve the Lord, and we shall enter the house of worship with some respect and dignity!”

Amen.

Shortly after I had walked outside, Tameka pulled up to the curb and I was dismayed to see that she had brought her rugrats along with her.

Now, I love Tameka's three boys, the youngest of which is my godson, but they are not the best-behaved children in the world. Six-year-old Jamal Junior was the oldest, and the first thing he said to me when I got in the car was, “Ooh, you ball-headed !”

See what I mean?

“Boy, watch your mouth!” Tameka said, reaching back to swat J. J. on his legs. “And Eva's not
bald,
her hair is just a lot shorter than you're used to seeing her wear it. By the way, girl, you are rockin' that new 'do. It's fierce!”

“Thanks, Meka, I like it,” I said, sticking my tongue out at J. J., which made him laugh.

“She looks ball-headed to me!” said four-year old Chavez, and that comment earned him a couple of swats on his legs as well.

Tameka had barely touched him, but the boy started yowling as if she had whipped him within an inch of his life.

I shook my head and thought,
This should be fun!

Going to church with small kids in tow was distracting to say the least, what with them fidgeting, whining, having to pee every five minutes, and playing peek-a-boo with the people in the row behind them. With Tameka's kids, I was certain it would be all of that times twenty-four, but I made up my mind right there in the car that I was going to tune out all of the distractions and stay focused on receiving the word.

The Bread of Life Christian Academy was a megachurch, similar in size to Madison Square Garden. As someone who is used to much smaller, intimate church settings where everybody literally knows everybody, it felt less like a place of worship and more like a concert hall.

Master Prophet Bishop Londell Gordon was the man in the pulpit, and was nicknamed “The Hip-Hop Reverend” because of his large following of rappers and other music industry moguls.

He was a dark-skinned man in his late forties, and not only was he gregarious and handsome, but Pastor was buff, too!

Instead of the usual pastoral robes, the Master Prophet wore black slacks and a matching vest over a white short-sleeved shirt that showed off his bulging biceps and well-developed upper body.

Hello, sexy hip-hop reverend!
Not for me, mind you, but looking at the faces of some of the women around me I could tell that they were feeling his vibe, despite the fact that he was a married man of God.

When Tameka and I walked in with the boys, service had already begun and the Master Prophet Bishop was berating people for not paying their tithes, offerings, and love gifts like they were supposed to.

“Listen now,” he said like a stern daddy. “I know times are tough all over for everybody, but no matter how little you have, you must give
GOD
his share. It is an act of faith that
GOD
will provide for you and bless you with supernatural favor and abundance. But you must first give unto him, as he has already given unto you!”

At that moment, about fifty ushers sprang into action and started passing silver collection plates around. Tameka wrote out a check for two thousand dollars, and when she passed the tray to me, I saw that it was filled with plenty of other personal checks written for large amounts, and there were a lot more fifty and hundred dollar bills than there were any other denomination. I added my little twenty dollars to the collection plate thinking it might as well have been fifty cents.

The day's sermon was on Ezekiel and the dry bones. “No matter what you may be going through, brothers and sisters, I serve a God who provides hope in the midst of hopeless situations, even if we are left for dead!” The mothers of the church cosigned by moaning,
Mmm-hmm!

“Whatever your trial, and whatever your dilemma, it's all about faith,” continued the bishop. “You will be tried and tested in ways you never imagined. But oh, ye of little faith . . . put your breastplate on, strap on your helmet, and fight the good fight of faith!”

I took a small notepad out of my purse and wrote down, It is all about faith! Hold on to it even when you think things are dead and hopeless.

It was a good word, one I hoped that I would remember as I tried to dig myself out of the hole I was in.

After church, Tameka dropped her kids off with her soon-to-be-ex-husband in front of FAO Schwarz, and I stayed in the car while they made the exchange. Tameka had said it had come to that, with her and Jamal dealing with each other only in public places to keep verbal and physical confrontations to a minimum.

To me, Jamal Harvey looked like a six foot six almond, with his bald, shiny head and dark brown skin. It was well past Labor Day, but he was dressed in a white linen shirt and pants and wore Carolina blue Florsheim shoes made of alligator skin. With no socks. A hot swamp disaster.

Jamal fancied himself a ladies' man, but he was country to the bone. Tameka kept the exchange brief. She kissed each of the boys good-bye, and as she made her way back to the car, I could see anger and tension in her face.

“Ooh! He makes me sick, I can't stand him!” Tameka said through clenched teeth when she got back in the car. “Smiling all in my face like he doesn't owe me almost three months' worth of child support and money to pay the bills. I am literally living on credit cards right now, me and his kids just might be out on the street soon, but oh! He can take some barely legal eighteen-year-old white girl on a ten-day vacation to Turks & Caicos, though!”

Tameka was seething, and I could totally see where she was coming from. I had heard all the rumors and seen all the items in the press about how Jamal was tricking dough on groupie hos like it was going out of style. According to the grapevine, Jamal was splurging on expensive jewelry and all-inclusive trips, and just recently, one chick even got an Escalade.

Meanwhile, little Chavez had just had his fourth birthday and all Jamal could manage to spring for was an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese's, which was a long way from the elaborate party that Tameka had planned for him.

Jamal had simply refused to pay $15,000 for the party, and that was that.

“Ooh! If I hadn't just come from church, there were some words I would have loved to say to him.”

“Yeah, but you two have got to develop some kind of friendship for the sake of your kids,” I said. “Maybe it would help if you kept in mind that you were madly in love with him at one point and time.”

“And now I would just
love
to see him floating facedown in the Hudson River.”

I looked over at Tameka and saw that she was dead serious.

That really blew my mind, because Tameka and Jamal had been college sweethearts back at the University of North Carolina, and until just a few months ago had been totally codependent, joined at the hip like Siamese twins.

Socially, you just did not see one of them without seeing the other, and now she wouldn't mind if he were pushing up daisies? Scary.

“Girl, don't say that. Jamal is the father of your children. I know you guys are going through it right now, but to wish death on him? It's not that serious.”

Tameka stared straight ahead as she drove, looking almost as if she were in a trance. “You know, I was watching that show
Snapped
the other day, where these women just went off one day and killed their boyfriends and husbands.

“Okay, now you're
really
starting to scare me. Will you stop talking like that?” I laughed nervously. “Besides those women on
Snapped
are stupid, and you're a smart girl. I know you wouldn't do anything to jeopardize your kids' future.”

Tameka looked over at me and smiled. “No, Jamal is definitely not worth me being locked up in prison and away from my children, but I'm just saying, I don't condone what those women did, but I do understand.”

From FAO Schwarz, we headed over to Bubby's restaurant in Brooklyn, which, surprise, surprise, was actually open that day.
Gasp!

Bubby's had one of the best brunches in town, and it always felt like eating at Grandma's house, but the eatery didn't bother keeping regular, set hours, so all the regulars knew that it was a fifty-fifty chance that they would be open on any given day.

Luckily, they were open that Sunday, and Tameka and I had a long, leisurely brunch. My treat. Since I was making decent money working at Visions, I wanted to start paying Tameka back the money I owed her, money that as I was finding out she could not afford to loan me in the first place.

“It's not much compared to the grand total of my debt, but I want you to have this,” I said, sliding three one-hundred-dollar bills across the table. “And thank you again for coming through for me the way you did.”

“We're friends.” Tameka shrugged. “You would have done the exact same thing for me if I needed it.”

I certainly would. And if I didn't have whatever she needed, I would try to move heaven and earth to get it, because that is just what real friends do for one another.

Looking at Tameka just then, I realized that life is too short to waste time with superficial friendships.

People like Zoë Everett do not know the meaning of the word, and only want to be connected to you if the association can raise their profile and status in some way.

Just in the relatively short time that I had been in that circle, I had seen many a “friend” come and go, acquired and discarded the way most people go through toothbrushes. Every two to three months, it's time for a new one.

When it came to chicks like Zoë, there was no such thing as BFF, only BFFN (Best Friend For Now)

Sure, she had been a blast to hang out with, but like Kyle said, friendships should have more depth to them than just hanging out and having fun.

Genuine friends like Tameka and Kyle added depth to my life and were irreplaceable. They also served as reminders that true friendships continue to grow, even over the longest time and distance, and we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

Because I needed as many jobs as I could get for the time being, I stopped in to Belle's to check the status of my application, and to pick up some tasty treats for my coworkers at Visions. Call it bribery, sucking up, or whatever you want, but when you are the new girl in any situation, bringing in fresh baked goods is a great way to win friends and influence people.

On my way in, I noticed that the
HELP WANTED
sign was no longer in the window.

“Welcome to Belle's Bakery, how can I help you?”

This time it wasn't Steve who asked the question when I entered the bakery, but a short, pretty woman in her early fifties who I assumed was Belle herself.

“Hello, my name is Eva Cantrell, and I applied for a position a couple of weeks ago. Has the position already been filled?”

“
Yes, my son Steve told me about you, and you're every bit as cute as he said you were,” she said, offering me her hand. “Hi, I'm Belle.”

“Nice to meet you!” I said, shaking her hand.

“No, sweetie, the position hasn't been filled and it won't be filled after all,” Belle said. “You see, all of that was Steve's doing. I had a little heart trouble, and he wanted to bring somebody in and train them so that I wouldn't have to work so hard, but the truth is, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep the doors open around here.”

There was so much pain in her eyes when she said those words that I instantly wanted to reach out and give her a hug. I only stopped myself because I know that everybody is not the ‘hugger” that I am.

“I'm so sorry to hear that,” I said. “You have a great place here, and I would really hate to see you go.”

“Well, thank you, sweetie. This little bakery was a lifelong dream of mine, and I never saw losing it this way, I'll tell you that.” Belle went on to explain that she was a widow whose husband had left her a substantial insurance policy. Per her husband's stipulations, Belle opened the bakery with part of the money and invested the rest with Dorsey Capital Management. One million dollars. Gone.

Belle's money woes, she believed, were the direct cause of her recent “heart trouble.”

And it was all because of Donovan Dorsey.

Standing face-to-face with one of Donovan's victims was surreal, and the magnitude of what he had done hit me in a devastating way.

Not only had Donovan stolen from the super-rich, he had also stolen from a sweet, hardworking woman whose first, and probably only, million came from the death of her husband. I thought of how utterly unfair it was for Donovan to have swindled this poor, sweet woman out of her husband's legacy, and I started to cry.

“Oh, no, don't cry for me, sweetie,” Belle said, coming from around the counter to give me a comforting hug. “I'm going to be all right, because God doesn't give us more than we can bear. Besides, I got family down in North Carolina where it is much cheaper to live. But if I can give you a bit of advice, it's never put all your eggs in one basket.”

“But I just can't stand how the rich keep getting richer and it's almost always at the expense of decent, hardworking people who are just trying to make it for themselves and their families.”

“Unfortunately, it's the way of the world, at least it's been that way since I can remember, and I've been around for a while,” Belle said, “but you just have to remember that you can't control what happens to you, but what you can control is your reaction to what happens to you. Remember that, all right?”

I nodded and dried my eyes. “I'm sorry to fall apart in the middle of your shop like this, but I'm going through some things myself, so I've been overly emotional lately.”

“No, no, don't apologize, that's fine by me. I have found that it's best to cry if you need to, when you need to, for as long as you need to,” Belle said. “Holding it all in is what gets you in trouble.”

I felt so much genuine warmth coming from her that I gave her a hug before I left and promised to drop in on her from time to time, just to say hello.