Second Sunday (25 page)

Latham was outraged that a man he viewed as no better than a jackleg country preacher would talk to
him
like that. He jumped up from his chair and was about to snatch the paper out of George’s hand when he saw the expression
on his face. It was straight up from the street and clearly said, “If you snatch this paper out of my hand, I will forget
I’m a preacher.”

Latham weighed that look a moment and decided to back down, turning his anger on Rosie instead. “Just look at you,” he spat
out. “You are far more trouble than you’ll ever be worth, Rosie, trying to tear down your husband with the help of this ignorant
fool. Women like you do everything in their power to suck a man dry.”

George had heard enough. He said, “You are way out of line, Latham. You don’t have a right to talk to a rabid dog like that,
let alone your wife.”

Latham swung around to face George, so full of bitter anger that his face had turned a dark purple.

“What would you know about a wife, George?” he said in a voice so nasty, it sliced through the air like a machete. “From what
my good buddy Marmaduke Clark says, you couldn’t hold on to your own ex-wife, Glodean Benson. She had to find another man—or
should I say, men—to take care of her right.”

George, who had long been over his ex-wife, didn’t dignify Latham’s statement with so much as a blink of his eye. He turned
to Rosie, who was sitting there with her head hung in shame over Latham’s awful behavior, and said, “Rosie, you don’t need
to keep taking this off of him. I know I’m the pastor, and it’s my job to save marriages, but don’t nobody need to take this
kind of abuse from another person. I don’t care who they are.”

George thought of what Sheba had tried to tell him—that Rosie would be better off with Latham out of her life. He had not
wanted to hear it at that moment, but he understood now.

“Get up,” Latham ordered Rosie. “We are leaving. He,” he said, nodding in George’s direction, “isn’t worthy to advise me—or
even someone like
you,
for that matter.”

“No, Latham,” Rosie said softly but firmly.

He looked at her, eyebrows rising up so far that George thought they were going to fall off of the back of his head.

“Ex-cuse me?”

“No, Latham, I am not leaving here until you apologize to me and to Rev. Wilson. You ought—”

“You ought to kiss my black behind, with your illiterate self,” Latham said, slapping Rosie across her face. George jumped
up and grabbed Latham’s arm. He started to resist but quickly gave up when he couldn’t break George’s iron grip. Latham was
a surgeon and wasn’t going to risk hurting his wrist struggling with Rev. Wilson.

When Latham’s arm relaxed, George let it drop. Then Latham snatched away from him and walked to the door, nursing his arm,
and taking a few seconds to get his words just right.

“Rev. Wilson, you know nothing about women. You married that Glodean Benson, a known tramp, and now that man-eating hustler
Sheba Cochran got you whipped. That hussy will lay up with any man she can, and the whole church knows it. She even chased
after my uncle Cleavon till he could get her straight.”

George momentarily forgot he was working and stepped toward Latham, who laughed and held up his hand. “No need for violence,
Pastor. You, not me, have a . . . hmmm, shall we say,
thing
for women with character flaws—if you know what I mean.

“So, Rev. Wilson,” Latham went on haughtily, “normally I find church politics beneath me. But I am going to make an exception
in your case. I am going to join my uncle in his campaign to rid
our
church of riffraff, and run you and that tavern wench, Sheba Cochran, clean out of town.”

Latham turned back to Rosie, eyes narrowed, and mouth turned down in disgust. “You have one second to get over to this door
or we are history.”

Rosie made a move to follow after him. But George was quicker than she was. He came around to her, placed a firm hand on her
shoulder, and snapped, “Don’t you even think about moving.”

Latham walked out, slamming the door behind him as hard as he could, and Rosie broke down, sobbing. George handed her the
whole box of tissues, feeling that he had failed miserably. He had wanted to help Latham and Rosie, but it seemed that all
he had done was help turn a big problem into a big mess. A part of him wanted to start crying with Rosie, but his heartache
eased up a bit when he thought about Miss Mozelle and all of those years of unnecessary suffering.

Then, he flashed back to the day Glodean left him for another man. Like Rosie sitting here and practically falling to pieces,
he had thought that his heart would disintegrate and never ever be whole again. But after some time passed and he began to
heal, he realized that her leaving him was a blessing in disguise. “Rosie,” he said, “Latham may have just done you a favor.
Anyone with a spouse who spends more time tearing her down than building her up needs that person prayed out of her life.
I know that doesn’t sound right coming from a pastor. But I just don’t think the Lord wants us ripped to shreds in our own
homes. Just don’t seem right to me.

“So, do yourself a favor and let Latham go for now. Let him go with forgiveness for all the hurt he has caused you and with
a prayer that he can turn himself around to become the kind of husband God wants him to be. But if he can’t, pray that God
will open up the windows of your life and bless you beyond that which you could possibly imagine at this moment. You know,
if Latham doesn’t turn around, I suspect that in a relatively short time, you will have a completely new life—great career,
happiness, peace of mind, and a new man who simply adores you.

“Now, what is your mother’s number?” George asked, picking up the phone.

“393-9778.”

The phone rang one time and Rosie’s father, Melvin Sr., answered, sounding like he was waiting on this call. “You need me
to come and get my babygirl, Reverend?”

“Yes,” George said.

“That . . . that negro showed out, didn’t he?”

“How’d you know that, Melvin Sr.?”

“Humph” was all that Melvin Sr. said, adding, “Tell Rosie it will be alright and that her daddy is on his way to get his baby.”

“Okay, man,” George said.

George hung up and told Rosie, “Your daddy is coming to get you. Have him pick up your kids, and all of you should stay with
your parents tonight. And then tomorrow, you need to call Phoebe Cates, so she can get busy protecting you.”

“My marriage is over, isn’t it, Rev. Wilson?” Rosie asked through a sniffle, knowing the answer but needing someone to say
what she could barely begin to think about.

George looked at Rosie’s tearstained face and took both of her hands in his. He did not understand her soon-to-be ex-husband.
This was a good woman, the kind of woman any man with some sense would be proud to call his own.

George thought about what Rosie was asking him. It was a hard question to answer when put in that way. He looked her straight
in the eye and said, “It may be, Rosie. Your marriage may have ended when your husband walked out of that door.”

As soon as Melvin Sr. left with Rosie, George felt the hard memories of his own bad marriage pushing through. It was a painful
day when he came home to find his wife, Glodean Clayton Wilson, packing her clothes. And worse, to find another man, Rev.
Teasdale Benson, a prominent pastor in the Gospel United Church, sitting in
his
house, with his feet under
his
kitchen table, eating food
his
wife had cooked for him, and waiting patiently for her to finish packing so they could leave.

Rev. Benson had been a bold so-and-so, too. He didn’t even stop eating when George, who had just gotten off his job as a night
security guard, walked into that kitchen. When the man didn’t have the decency to look uncomfortable, George went straight
over to the table and snatched the food he was eating right out of Teasdale Benson’s mouth.

“What you doing here, man?” Rev. Benson demanded, mad when collard green juice dripped on his white silk tie and ran down
his navy silk suit, ruining the tip of the white silk handkerchief stuffed in his breast pocket. But George didn’t give him
a chance to think too much on why he was at his own house after working all night. He just grabbed Benson by his tie and lifted
him clean out of the chair, holding him by the throat so tight that the man’s face started losing its color—and Teasdale Benson
was black as ebony wood.

“Let him go,” Glodean yelled, looking breathtaking in a pink raw silk suit.

But George was so hurt and angry, he found that he couldn’t let go of Rev. Benson’s tie. So he pulled on it harder, oblivious
to the blue tint on Benson’s lips.

At that point Glodean, fearful that her soon-to-be ex-husband was going to kill her husband-to-be—and thus killing as well
all of her carefully laid plans—got desperate. She picked up the sterling silver tray George’s grandmother had given her and
slammed it hard across his back, stunning him long enough to loosen his grip on her lover’s necktie.

As soon as George let go, Benson struggled away from him and fell on the floor, gasping for breath. Glodean ran over to him,
loosened his tie, and held his head in her lap. When Benson regained a bit of composure, Glodean helped him to his feet and
then walked out of George’s life without so much as a backward glance.

For many months after that, George hated preachers and refused to set foot in church. But the Lord had other plans for George
Wilson. God pulled on him so hard that George had no other recourse but to go to church one Sunday morning, desperate only
for peace. And that morning, he not only found peace, he got saved, got baptized, received the Holy Ghost, joined the church,
and got a calling to preach before service got started good.

George sat in his chair with his feet up on his desk, eyes closed, listening to the Ohio Players’ “Heaven Must Be Like This”
on the radio, thinking that the Lord had brought him a mighty long way from the day he came close to killing another preacher.

Sheba knocked, then pushed at the door, saying, “George?”

“Yeah,” he answered, not moving, with his eyes still closed.

“That bad, huh?” she asked, hating to see him so upset.

“Worse,” he replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“You couldn’t help them, could you?”

“What do you think?” he snapped.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked softly, hoping to pacify him a bit.

“No, Sheba. There is ab-so-lute-ly nothing you can do for me right now—or for Rosie, or for Cleavon’s idiot nephew Latham,
for that matter. I guess you know firsthand what the men in that family are like.”

“What, did Latham say something about Cleavon?”

“It seems there’s a lot ‘the whole church,’ in his words, knows about you that I don’t.”

Sheba was very hurt by that statement and, blinking back tears, started for the door. But then she decided that she wasn’t
letting George Robert Wilson—or anyone else, for that matter—talk to her or treat her like less than what she was. No one
but God had the power to judge her, forgive her sins, or redeem her soul, so no man was going to throw stones at her and get
away with it.

“George Robert Wilson,” Sheba began, in a voice that had “mama” all over it, “most times I let people think what they will
about me. One, because I don’t give a care about what people think who have never lifted a finger to help me and my children.
And two, because I know I am a good woman.

“But I have always believed, George, that you of all people could see the real me and that you knew that I was a good woman
who deserved to be treated with respect.”

Sheba waited a moment and then, when George didn’t respond, continued, “You’re absolutely right that I know how difficult
a Johnson man can be. And it’s no secret at all that my four children have four different daddies. But it’s a lie that I just
ran out in the streets and got all of those babies because I was hot, fast, and trifling. What I did wrong was to fall in
love and believe, like a fool, that those four men knew they had found a treasure and wanted to claim me as their own.

“And I made some other mistakes. Cleavon was a mistake. Just like your first marriage was a mistake.”

George sat up in his chair and opened his mouth, but Sheba ignored him and kept right on talking.

“Mr. Louis Loomis told me that you were once married to a woman who was so crazy and fixed on preachers, she was stupid enough
to leave a good man like you for a pastor who dumped her for someone else before the ink on the marriage license could dry.”

All George could think at that moment was that the CIA didn’t have a thing on black church folks’ spy network.

“But you know something, George,” Sheba went on, “I asked the Lord to forgive me my mistakes. And if the One who made the
heavens and the earth could forgive me, surely a mere mortal like yourself could find it in your heart to do the same.”

George said nothing, and Sheba bit back another rush of tears. It was a shame and so frustrating that he was being so hardheaded,
refusing to see that the Lord had placed her in his path. Because Sheba knew deep down in her heart that she was George’s
wife. It hurt that he was fighting so hard against himself and his own blessing. Her only comfort was the knowledge that God
was in control of this situation, so it would work out as He saw fit. No matter how hopeless it might look to her right now,
she had to remember that nothing was impossible with God.

But when George finally spoke, he didn’t apologize. Instead, he opted to “put a little tear in his draws” with Sheba. He stood
up and in his “preacher voice” said, “I need to address some important church business before I get off work. So,” he continued,
not having sense enough to pay attention to the expression on Sheba’s face, “we’ll have to have this little talk later, when
I get some free time.”

Sheba was so mad at George for that dismissal, she couldn’t even cry. Her eyes fell on the piece of German chocolate cake
she had brought him, still sitting on his desk. Before George could even blink, she snatched it up and smashed the entire
piece of cake right onto his immaculate, carefully groomed, shimmering Afro Sheen– sprayed head.