Don't Blame the Devil (13 page)

“What do you mean, Thurgood?”

“I'm sure it was God who must've nudged him toward the church altar a bit, because soon after he'd beaten the charges of forgery and misappropriation of monies, the Almighty let a Mack truck kiss the rear end of Tight Ben's Pinto. It was all the emergency folks could do to extricate his huge, yellow butt, and his even bigger noggin from what was left of that car.”

“He got hit by a Mack truck?” Delilah was truly surprised. “Did the truck survive?”

“That truck looked like Ben's head had used it for an accordion.” The deacon stopped and snickered. “Have mercy, I tell you there was a hickey so wide on that skull that it required some brain surgery. That Mack truck busted his fat arse, from his tooter to his rooter. It surprised no one that after that accident no real pretty woman or even one who looked like a moose wanted his little five-foot-two-inch butt. He couldn't get a female gorilla to kiss him, not even with a wad of cash wrapped in a banana peel dangling from his zipper. So I suppose there was nothing left for him to do but finally marry Marty. I heard she seemed to be the only one who wanted him. Later on he truly found Jesus. He and Marty took Jessie in. Thank God they did. I only found out about it a couple of years ago when Cindy introduced me to Marty.”

“I don't know quite what to say.”

“You still want to go through with making my life miserable?”

“That hasn't changed.”

“You might want to think about it some more when I tell you why I'm here.”

“You want me to give you a divorce? And you know I want a relationship with Jessie and Tamara. So what's changed?”

The deacon sat down next to Delilah and explained Jessie's latest request. “Jessie wants me to get information from you.” He watched her eyes glass over as she struggled with it. “He doesn't quite believe that you've turned maternal. He's a fan of that medical show,
Grey's Anatomy.
Jessie feels you really popped back into his life because you wanna use a kidney or one of his organs.”

“Thurgood, you know none of that's true.” Delilah couldn't believe what the deacon told her. “Besides, I doubt if he would give me a kidney if I needed one.”

“Not if you needed it today, he wouldn't.”

“What are we going to do? I just want my family; my son. He's my only child, Thurgood.” Delilah plopped down onto the sofa. “Maybe I should have a heart-to-heart talk with him.”

“And say what to him?” the deacon asked. “‘Oh, by the way, Jessie, not only do I love and need you and Tamara in my life, but that fella that's been living over you—well, he's my husband.'”

“We need to do something. You certainly can't be the one to tell him. If you do, then he might break off all ties with you, too. Neither of us will be in his life.”

“Then I don't know what to do, Dee Dee. And for the life of me, I can't figure what's changed him over the past few weeks. Why he won't embrace the mother who's trying so hard to be in his life. He should do it, regardless. He's close enough to the Lord to forgive you. At least I think he is.”

Delilah got up and stood by the living room window. She took her long hair and twisted it into a ponytail before pulling out a clasp seemingly from thin air to tie it back.

“I know why.”

“You do? Well, I certainly wish you'd tell me. I don't have a clue that makes sense.”

“It's that damn Marty Madison. She won't say or do nothing to my face, but I know she's the reason. Jessie don't need me because he's got her living within a rock's throw.” Delilah looked at the deacon and added, “She wants everything that's mine.”

“She was his foster mother, Delilah. Of course she feels a connection to him. She's also Tamara's godmother and was Cindy's best friend. There's history there.”

Delilah began to unravel the hair she'd just pinned back. “Well, then I'll send her a thank-you card and some flowers, but I'll be damned if I let her keep me from my family.” She stopped once more before adding, “And I mean my entire family.”

Deacon Pillar once again was clueless. But he wasn't stupid. He didn't bother to mention the divorce. Yet he was dumb enough to ask, “I am his father, ain't I, Dee Dee?”

Within moments after asking his dumb question the deacon fled her house holding his mouth. And Delilah fled to her kitchen and went to work on her hand, which already had started to swell. She quickly thrust it into a bowl of ice. She didn't know she could still land a punch like that.
That fool almost caused me to fracture my hand. After all this time, how in the world could he ask me if he was Jessie's daddy? As far as I know, he is.

“H
old still, Thurgood. I can't get the swelling to go down if you don't stop squirming like a baby.”

Sister Marty had raced over to the deacon's side as soon as Tamara had called. She'd sounded alarmed. “Somebody's mugged the deacon!” When Marty arrived, he lay in his apartment blubbering. His lips had swollen to almost twice their normal size. The deacon looked like he had two balloons taped between his nose and his chin. It didn't take her long to discover it was Delilah who'd beat him up again. And that's when Marty laid into the deacon for the second time.

“My goodness, Thurgood, maybe you should leave Delilah to deal with her anger on her own. You can't take too many more beatings like this at your age. At this rate she's not leaving much for you to divorce or for me to have.”

Deacon Pillar wanted to speak, but it would have to wait. He'd driven home scared to open his mouth, as if he could without some teeth falling out, too. Delilah had hit him with something, but he didn't know what it was. He refused to believe it was her small fist that caused the damage; although he'd not seen anything in her hand. But then again, he hadn't seen the punch coming, either.

Shortly after Marty had begun working on Deacon Pillar, Tamara walked into his apartment after going to get her father.

“Tamara told me what happened, Deacon. This is my fault. I shouldn't have asked you to do what I needed to do.” Jessie put his hand on the old man's shoulder to comfort him as best he could. “I'll handle things from this point on. I'll just come out and ask her what she's really after.”

“What are you going to do, Daddy?”

“Don't worry about it. God's got all this under control.”

Jessie sat down and held an impromptu family meeting. He'd decided to share with them his need to find out all he could about Delilah. No matter how much he didn't trust her—or really like her, for that matter—they still shared blood. He just wanted to know, and then they could go their separate ways.

“I don't ever want you to feel that I don't appreciate all you and pop did for me,” Jessie told Sister Marty. “Even Delilah showing up after all these years has not diminished one bit of love I have for you, and it never will. But I'm sure I didn't have to tell you that. You know where you stand in Tamara's and my heart.”

Marty's spirit should've soared. It didn't. All the conspiracies and the lack of trust that ruled her actions over the last few weeks had pulled back a veil. She thought her salvation was more solid than it was. She wanted to tell him so bad that the deacon and Delilah were married. She couldn't. “I won't pretend to understand or particularly like Delilah. She wouldn't be my cup of friendship even if she weren't your mother—your natural mother. But that's something I'll have to pray about. It won't be for her sake but for my own.”

Marty continued anointing the deacon's swollen lips with the ice pack. This time she bore down a little harder. She intended to send him a message that there was a new game on the table, called
truth.

“Well, if you're about to confront Delilah,” Sister Marty continued, applying ice to the deacon's lips a little more gently since he'd almost leapt off the sofa a moment ago, “you'd better put on the whole armor of God and take a bat along with you.”

“Mama Marty,” Jessie said, laughing. He hadn't called her that in years. “I know it's going to take time. I think she and I need to get to a place where truth can't hide behind a lie. But I've got to start somewhere and sometime. I'm still fasting and praying about it.”

If any of them saw the deacon's eyes go wild they never said a word. His body became stiff like a corpse. Time was running out for him. Delilah was already thinking about coming clean.

“I'm going with you,” Tamara announced. “If you're going into enemy territory, I'm going, too.”

“She's your grandmother. She's not the enemy!” Jessie barked. He was just as surprised as the others at his outburst. “I'm sorry, Tamara. I didn't mean to yell. But we cannot allow Delilah's issues to become ours and make us cynics.”
Who am I kidding? I'm going over there because I'm already cynical. Father God, help me to rule over my tongue.

“Don't worry about it, Daddy.” Tamara was indeed hurt. In all her twenty-one years, her father had never raised his voice at her. Yet in the past several weeks since Delilah showed up, nothing was normal. Despite what her father said, she was beginning to not just dislike Delilah, she hated the woman. She couldn't wait to get Delilah told off. “I'll drive. You need to take better care of that hand.”

Despite his protests, Tamara followed her father to the car and slid into the driver's side.

 

Since leaving Brooklyn, Tamara and Jessie hadn't said much to one another except to share information about the best route to Delilah's home and his cautioning that she slow down. And though she hadn't driven her father's car in quite some time, Tamara quickly found the “play” button on the CD changer. If they weren't going to share conversation, music was the next best thing.

From the very first eight bars Tamara knew she'd lost her battle plan to stay angry until they reached Delilah's house. She hadn't been prepared to hear the last album the church recorded earlier in the year. Her father hadn't removed it from the CD changer.

Jessie knew immediately how his daughter felt. He'd felt the same each time he played it. With a nervous laugh, he said, “Let's never forget that when your mama sang she took it straight to the Throne of Grace.” He quickly turned his head away.
Speak to your daughter's heart, Cindy.
Jessie's eyes moistened but it wasn't the time to cry.

“I Go to the Rock” was not only one of her mother's favorite songs but Tamara's, too. Was her mother sending her a message? Tamara felt rebuked by the song's words and her mother's memory, and she didn't like it. Yet Cindy wasn't the type to get or stay mad. So Tamara kept on driving, a bit slower and a little less angry.

 

However, back inside the deacon's house anger was just getting started.

Sister Marty put away the ice pack. She looked over at the deacon. He looked as though the effects of the painkiller she'd given him were kicking in and the swelling was almost gone. So she leaned slightly over him. With her pocketbook swinging from side to side like a pitcher winding up, she eyeballed the deacon. The more she thought about the havoc he'd begun to play in her life, the angrier she became. She was like a dog with a fresh bone to pick and she was ready to gnaw.

Sister Marty opened her mouth and grinned. And that's when she took the first bite of his behind, knowing he could do nothing but listen. “When are you gonna come clean, Thurgood? Huh? Besides being that woman's husband, are you Jessie's daddy?”

The deacon's head rolled over to the side. He imagined he was dreaming. What happened to the sweet thing who'd just bathed his lips?

Yet she'd thrown it out there.

“Say whaaa…” He couldn't answer without a prepared lie.
Damn Delilah
. His masculine Garden of Eden life was quickly disintegrating. Delilah had sowed seeds of discord at every turn. One thing he knew for certain, if he wanted to keep his garden peaceful, he'd need to retool his hoeing skills.

And he needed to do it quick because Marty now looked like the Queen of Winter, coldhearted.

Deacon Pillar managed to sit up on the sofa. “Listen, Marty,” he said with a slight lisp. “I honestly can't say for sure.”

“What does that mean?” She came over and took a seat. “Either you are or you're not. That routine you did the other night about you and Delilah getting married when Jessie was only two is not gonna work with me this time. What I should've asked was, when did you and Delilah hook up? Not when y'all got married.”

“It was about a week after we met, honey. By the time I learned she was pregnant, we were head over heels in love. So we thought, anyway.”

“So why didn't you marry her then?”

“Delilah wasn't sure if she could handle a baby. She'd even thought about an abortion.” He grew more agitated as he tried to explain. “I don't believe in abortion!”

“Neither do I, Thurgood. What happened next?”

“I got arrested for some petty stuff. You don't need those details. By the time I got out of Upstate, she'd had the baby and Jessie was almost two.”

“And you didn't marry her soon after you got out?”

“No. I didn't. It was another six months before I even found them. By that time Delilah had moved on and hooked up with some pretty shady folks….”

“More shady than you were?”

“That is possible, you know.” She'd insulted him. And her pushy attitude was beginning to get on his nerves. He'd never seen this side of her. The deacon needed rest, not an inquisition. “The bottom line is that Delilah was about to get into some serious trouble when I finally found her and Jessie.” The deacon's smile came easy and sudden. “I immediately fell in love with him. He was so handsome there was no way I'd believe he wasn't mine….”

“Are you serious?”

“That's the way I felt back then. I'm not quite that conceited anymore. Anyway, she saw things my way and we ended up getting married on Jessie's second birthday.”

“You really are serious.” Sister Marty was about to set the deacon straight about his current level of conceit, but she needed him to stay focused.

“This pain is coming back,” the deacon said quickly, “so here's the short version. Delilah had already started making quite a name for herself singing at different spots up in Harlem and eventually downtown, too. And just when it could've sent her star rising, she stabbed a gangster who tried to take what she didn't want to give. I'd just arrived at the club that night when it happened. I guess I was running on emotions because I got her out of there and we went and picked up Jessie. We left Harlem that same night and went up to Poughkeepsie, New York. Long story even shorter—the cops came knocking and I immediately took the rap. I couldn't have Delilah go to jail and I certainly wasn't able to take care of a two-year-old, and I already had a record. The one letter I received from her while I was doing her time said she'd placed Jessie in temporary foster care until she could get on her feet.”

“My Lord, Thurgood. No wonder no one can stomach the woman. She's a selfish—” Marty stopped herself. She was trying to reclaim her own status with the Kingdom. Her hands weren't all that clean, either.

Her outburst again caught him off guard. It was as though he'd begun to see Sister Marty with new eyes. Either that or his pain was returning with a vengeance.

He tried to rise off the sofa. “I sure hope I have some of those blue pills left.”

“You take Viagra!” Sister Marty hadn't meant to shout at him. In all the time they'd been seeing one another, there was never an occasion to bring up sex.

“Hell no!” the deacon shot back out of embarrassment. “I was talking about Aleve. You're giving me a migraine.”