Pastor Needs a Boo (2 page)

Her heart ached in the most horrible way and pulled down in her chest like it was too heavy for her body. How in the world was she going to get through this? There was her son's college tuition. There was the rent. There were bills. There was her health insurance. There was her hair!

There was too much to think about and worry about and take care of without the security of a job. She didn't know what to do. And she definitely didn't know how in the world she was going to get up out of this chair, open that office door, and walk out past all of those people—especially Yolanda Richardson.

Marsha picked up her phone to call her friend Veronica Washington but stopped when she remembered Veronica was starting her new job today.

She went down the contact list on her phone, and stopped again when she heard the loud mall security cop golf cart outside of the office window. “Let me get my black behind up out of here and quick,” Marsha whispered to herself, while staring out of the window like she was a fugitive running from the real police. There was no way she was going to be escorted out of Sebastian-Fleur like she was the mall thief. And in front of Yolanda and those people? No way … nada.

She hurried and looked in her desk drawers and found two of those reusable Sam's grocery bags and filled them up with her things—fancy pens, calculator, folders, stationery, designer paper clips, and staplers. She saw a box of her business cards with the Sebastian-Fleur logo all over them.

“No way in hell I'm taking those with me.”

Marsha threw the box of fancy business cards in the trash and took one more fast look around her tiny office.

“Oh, snap,” she whispered. “The plans for the skin care line. Yolanda will never get her nasty, monkey-fool paws on this information—not on my watch.”

She scooped up those folders, with all of that information in them, stood up, and placed the big, heavy bags on each shoulder. She tossed the remaining folders with the information for her newest work assignments in the trash can with the business cards, snatched up her purse, and grabbed the laptop.

Marsha sighed in relief that she had everything she needed. The only thing left to do was to call her folks at Eva T. Marshall and tell them to pull the plug on their project with stuck-up Sebastian-Fleur. Marsha looked at her watch. She had about ten minutes tops to get out of the store with her dignity intact.

She took in a real deep breath, balanced all of the stuff she was carrying, and opened the door.

Yolanda had been all on the door trying to hear what Marsha was doing and hoping she was in the office crying herself silly. She fell right into the office as soon as the door swung open because Marsha jumped aside to make sure she didn't block the fall. Yolanda grabbed the inside of the doorframe to stop from tumbling on her face, and winced when it squeezed in on her fingers.

“Maybe Cato Fashions will want to hire you,” Yolanda snarled through a pained smirk. She was trying to regain her balance by attempting to stand back up on the outsides of her boots. Yolanda's ankles were twisted down toward the floor. It was a very awkward and painful position. It was also an opportunity to give Marsha a peek at the red soles of her boots. The price tags on Christian Louboutin boots was not for the faint of heart. And Yolanda knew that Marsha couldn't even afford a pair of these bad boys at the consignment shop.

Marsha didn't know why people like Yolanda didn't know when to leave folk alone. She'd already messed with her livelihood. She was trying to humiliate her by calling security to escort Marsha to her car. And now, Yolanda thought she was adding an additional insult to this injury by practically standing on her ankles to reveal the red soles of those fancy boots.

But Marsha was now so beyond responding to the antics of her brand-new former boss. And she certainly wasn't paying heed to Yolanda's attempts to profile those shoes—the newest status symbols for working folk with high salaries. Marsha didn't even dignify that gesture over the boots with a passing glance.

“Yolanda, why do you care where I work, since I no longer work for your stank butt? And for the record, there's nothing wrong with Cato Fashions.”

“You
would
say that,” Yolanda said, and scanned Marsha's white denim capris and the white denim jacked trimmed with ruffles, her black-and-lavender tank, and her black-and-lavender, patent-leather, T-strap–styled pumps.

The irony in all of this was that Marsha's suit really had come from Cato Fashions even though her shoes had been pulled from the clearance-clearance rack bin at this very store. Marsha always found the best and cheapest shoes, because the brother in charge of pulling shoes and putting them on clearance was her buddy. He always kept as many pairs of shoes for her in the back room as he could.

She glanced down at her stylish shoes, which were accentuating her shapely legs, and then let her eyes focus on those superexpensive boots gaping out from Yolanda's stick-figure legs. Unfortunately there was not a pair of boots expensive enough to compensate for that.

“You know something, Yolanda,” Marsha said quietly and evenly. “You spend all of that money on all of those clothes and high-end designer shoes, and you still look like an untrained zoo monkey.”

“At least I have a man,” Yolanda spat out. She knew she was not all that cute and always hoped she could hide it with her clothes.

“Yes, you do,” Marsha replied evenly. “And you treat him like he is supposed to stand on his head and bark because the ugliest and most ill-mannered woman in Durham gave him some after her husband died.”

“Daaannnng,” somebody whispered in the crowd of onlookers. Nobody had ever talked to Yolanda Richardson like that. And nobody had ever told her the truth about her looks.

“You are just jealous because nobody wants you, Marsha Metcalf. You can't keep a man or get a man. Why, for all of your so-called talents and smarts, you can't even keep a job,” Yolanda spat out.

Yolanda started to walk away, and then paused, “Just so you know, Miss Marsha Metcalf/used-to-be Mrs. Bluefield, your late ex, Rodney, had you waiting on him many an evening while he was finishing up with me.”

Marsha had always suspected Rodney went creeping with Yolanda while they were still married but could never prove it. Rodney was dead. But it still hurt to have it confirmed that he had cheated on her with this woman.

Yolanda was laughing. There was nothing better than reveling in the pained look on the face of a woman who discovered you had slept with her husband.

“Yeaaahhhhh … that's it, gurl!” Yolanda yelled out, and laughed some more. The horrified expression on Marsha's face confirmed that she knew the only way Yolanda heard that phrase was when Rodney had yelled it at her during the most explosive heat of the moment.

Marsha had started walking away. She stopped and said, “Go to hell, Yolanda. Oh, my bad. From the looks of your face, you've already been there.”

“Yeaaahhhhh … that's it, gurl!” Yolanda yelled out again, hoping to get another pained look from Marsha. That zoo monkey comment hurt a lot. When Marsha didn't react a second time, Yolanda said, “You know your man told me that because I was rocking his world real good.”

Marsha made sure she repented in advance, gave Yolanda the finger, and then repented again. She walked off and out of the store as soon as she spied the security guard making his way in her direction. She hurried to her car, threw her things in the backseat, and hopped in and locked the door. The guard tapped on the window and raised the clipboard with the dismissal slip employees had to sign when escorted to their cars.

She acted as though she didn't see that man, started her car, and drove off, not caring that he had to jump out of the way to avoid getting hurt. Marsha remained calm until she pulled out of the store's parking lot and turned onto the street. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. By the time Marsha was on 40 East, headed to Raleigh, she was sobbing uncontrollably.

 

Chapter One

“New Jerusalem Gospel United Church. This is Dayeesha Mitchell. How may I help you?”

“Put me through to Reverend Flowers.”

“Excuse you,” Dayeesha said, frowning. She blew air out of her mouth loud enough to be heard by the caller. She couldn't stand Mr. Rico.

“What part of, let me speak to the pastor, don't you understand?” Rico Sneed spat out into the phone.

“Oh, no, you didn't,” Dayeesha shot back. She looked over at the door leading to the pastor's private study, or the “inner sanctum,” as her husband, Metro Mitchell, always called it.

“Look,” Mr. Rico began, “I know your daddy is the big, bad, Big Dotsy Hamilton. And, you need to know for the record that I'm not scared of him.”

Dayeesha started laughing. She'd always thought Mr. Rico Sneed was a big, bellowing poof of punk-time hot air. Now she knew he was that, and a big liar, too. Her daddy pimp-slapped Rico Sneed back in the early 1990s, before Big Dotsy Hamilton got saved and started working for the Lord. The word on the street was that Mr. Rico got slapped so hard, a man asked, “So, tell me, player. What does next week look like, since you just got slapped there?”

Mr. Rico had wanted to haul off and slap that man. But he managed to hold on to a remnant of his already ragged and deficient swag. Plus, Rico knew the man was Big Dotsy Hamilton's friend. He was also the person who told Big Dotsy that Rico was trying to steal one of his women away from him. Rico Sneed told the woman that he'd seen Big Dotsy down at the courthouse getting a marriage license to marry Dayeesha's mama. It was a bold, brazen, and outrageous lie. That day Big Dotsy had been dragged down to the courthouse at gunpoint by Dayeesha's mama's big brother to sign over one of his houses to her mother.

Unfortunately for Rico Sneed, Big Dotsy got wind of Rico's ploy, found him at the Sock It to Me strip club in Warren, North Carolina, and beat him like he stole something. According to Dayeesha's daddy's fans, Big Dotsy kicked Rico's butt and then made him run in front of his brand-new Buick LeSabre. When Rico got tired and bumped into the LeSabre, Big Dotsy put the car in park and pistol-whipped Rico for getting sweat on his new ride.

“You oughta be scared of my daddy, butt hole,” Dayeesha said, laughing, and hung up the telephone. She stared at the phone a few minutes, hoping she had a good comeback line when Mr. Rico called back. Because a loudmouth like Rico Sneed always had to call back and have the last word.

The telephone rang, causing Dayeesha to jump. She hadn't had enough time to come up with good comeback lines.

“New Jerusalem Gospel United Church. This is Dayeesha Mitchell. How may I help you?”

“Dayeeeeesshhhhaaa,” Marsha sobbed into the telephone. “IIIIII got fiiiirrrrrreddd. What am I going to doooooooo?”

Dayeesha Hamilton Mitchell stared at the phone. She'd been the church's administrative assistant for three years and had never heard Marsha Metcalf sound like this.

“Let me put you on hold,” Dayeesha said quickly, and pushed the button before Marsha had a chance to whine some more into the telephone. She didn't want to hang up on the girl. But that whining was getting on her nerves real fast.

Dayeesha started to buzz the pastor's line but remembered that he had gone to get them both something to eat. She was about to hit him up on the cell when she thought it best to try and get to the bottom of this before calling Reverend Flowers. Sometimes the pastor needed a buffer when folk called the church hollering and crying on the telephone. He had enough on his plate and didn't do well when he was forced to try and understand what somebody was saying in the middle of a crying and sobbing and calling on the name of the Lord fit.

“What to do? What to do?” Dayeesha said out loud, taking a moment to admire her manicure. She loved the new manicurist at the Raleigh store for her husband's Triangle-based chain of hip-hop stores, Yeah Yeah. Shontaye Reed was the only nail specialist in the area who could silk screen pictures onto your nails and make it look like she had painted the pictures with nail polish. The three Mitchell children's pictures were screened onto the second, third, and fourth fingers of each of Dayeesha's hands.

She looked at the image of her younger son, Jeremiah Crentwan, on her right ring finger and frowned. She needed to call his teacher and talk to him about Jeremiah's science project. Dayeesha flipped the phone off of hold, hoping Marsha had calmed down enough to be understood when she started to speak. She wasn't in the mood to listen to somebody talking like one of her kids when they were crying all over the place.

Dayeesha could hear Marsha sniffling and blowing her nose.

“Girl, calm the heck down and stop all of that sniveling. You are getting on my nerves,” she said.

The phone was quiet on Marsha's end. But Dayeesha could hear that her breathing was calming down to a lower “drama index” rhythm. Sometimes folk who breezed through college in four years, and were all smart and good acting like Marsha Metcalf, had trouble handling the inevitable storms that could rage in your life no matter how good and perfect you tried to be.

Dayeesha's daddy, now the saved and redeemed Elder Dotsy Hamilton, always said, “People who pride themselves on doing everything just right can get the misguided notion that those degrees, and following all of the rules, will stop them from having to deal with the hard times life will lay at your feet. Sometimes the storms of life make you stop trying to control everything in your life. They make you stop being so prideful in yourself and all of your
accomplishments
, and throw in the towel and say, ‘God, I need you because I can't do this all by myself.'”

Dayeesha Mitchell definitely wasn't one of those folk who had been real good and did everything the right way. She didn't always have a degree from Evangeline T. Marshall University or a job running the entire administrative division of a large church. And she hadn't always been a married woman who went to church regularly, either.