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Authors: E. N. Joy

BOOK: The Perfect Christian
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Chapter Thirteen
“What in the world is going on over here now?” Mr. Tucker asked. It really wasn't until just tonight Doreen realized what a large man he was. Maybe he wasn't. Standing around six foot tall, he was actually pretty average. But his tone tonight and just his aura altogether had made him appear larger than life.
“What's going on is that one of your drunken customers is accusing my daughter of stealing,” Doreen's mother said in her defense.
“
Accusing
my left toenail. She's
wearing
the evidence.” The accusing man pointed to Doreen's feet. “I bought those for my wife, and she said someone lifted them—someone right here in this here juke joint. Who knew the thief would be such a fool as to wear 'em right back up in here?”
By now Mrs. Tucker had made her way over and figured out what was going on. Ol' Willie seemed to keep his distance though.
Doreen looked at her mother-in-law, her eyes yearning for Mrs. Tucker to help her out. Instead, Mrs. Tucker just gave her a look that said, “Ooops,” sucked her lips in, and crept away.
“I'm telling you, we've been running this place for years and ain't never had no problems until you started bringing your wife around,” Mr. Tucker called out to Willie, who was now making his way over to all the commotion.
“Willie, this here is your wife?” the man asked Willie while pointing to Doreen. “As much money as you take from me playing cards, you can't go invest in a pair of shoes for your woman? She got to run around stealing? What kind of man don't take care of his wife?”
Willie's body straightened out as his chest poked out. “Funny you should ask that last question, the one about what kind of man don't take care of his wife.” Willie rubbed his chin, and his lips split into a mischievous grin. Both he and Doreen knew the underlying meaning to Willie's statement.
“And just what are you trying to say?” the man asked, now sticking his own chest out.
Doreen didn't like the fact that this man was challenging her husband one bit. And with the help of a couple glasses of wine, her level of boldness had increased even more. “What my husband is trying to say,” Doreen spoke up in her husband's defense, “is that you're the kind of man that don't take care of his wife, because if you did, when I got home from church on Sunday, I wouldn't have found her shoes in my living room and her crawling out of my bedroom window, and then hightailing it off my property.” Doreen went and stood by Willie proudly, snubbing her nose up at the man as if she'd just told him off. All the while she'd actually told on Willie, not to mention making herself look like the fool Mrs. Tucker had just warned her against being.
Willie shook his head, realizing the stuff was about to hit the fan now.
“Yous a liar,” the man spat at Doreen. He then looked at Willie. “Not only is your woman a thief, but she lies. Word around town is that you don't have your broad in check. I guess the word is true.”
Instinctively, Willie went to swing at the man, but his father caught his fist midair.
“Oh, so you want to hit me?” the man taunted now that Willie's father was holding him back and he didn't fear immediate bodily harm. “You mad at me 'cause you married a klepto.”
“I'd rather be a klepto than a ho,” Doreen spat at the man.
“Doreen!” Mrs. Hamilton gasped at hearing one of her saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost-filled children use such language.
“I'm sorry, Mama, but it's true. I caught his woman in my house with my husband,” Doreen declared. “She left these shoes in my living room—too busy escaping out the bedroom window, and that's the truth.”
“Like heck it is!” the man roared, not wanting to face reality. “My wife would
never
crawl around with the likes of Willie Tucker.” He shot Willie, who was trying to wedge away from his father, a dirty look. “She's much too classy for that.”
“Well, is she too classy for this?” And
bam,
there it was, the ram in the bush. Doreen held up a pair of purple with cranberry trim lace underwear that she pulled out of her purse. “I found these in the bush outside my bedroom window. Did your wife say somebody stole these too?” Doreen dangled the panties in front of the man's face. Everyone around blushed with embarrassment. Willie was humiliated for his business to be put on Front Street like that in front of his parents and mother-in-law, no less. Doreen was the only one wearing a smile of victory on her face. No, the panties in the bush weren't literally a ram, but at least now she couldn't be accused of being a thief.
The man snatched the panties out of Doreen's hands and began to fume as he stared down at them. “That no good, sorry excuse for a . . .” He let out a grunt, and then looked at Doreen. “Look, ma'am, I'm, uh, sorry, for, uh, you know, accusing you, and uh, well . . .” The man started to look heartbroken as he went from being angry to sad.
“It's all right.” Doreen slowly removed the shoes from her feet and handed them to the man. “Tell your wife she's got good taste.” Doreen looked at Willie, then back at the man. “But if I ever see her around my house or my Willie again, the next person who comes looking for those shoes are going to find them shoved up her a—” And on that note, Mrs. Hamilton flat-out fainted, with her armor bearers too late to break her fall.
 
 
“Cursing and drinking and carrying on. Honey, you should have heard her,” Mrs. Hamilton said to her husband while looking Doreen up and down. “You should have
seen
her.” She massaged her temples. “Wearing those hooker shoes, sipping wine, and did I mention cursing like a sailor?” She walked over to Doreen and laid hands on her head. “Satan, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus! Rise up out of my girl right now! Let her be!”
Mr. Hamilton walked over and pulled an overzealous Mrs. Hamilton away from his daughter. Doreen just stood in their doorway, now rubbing her own head. She'd never had a drink in her life, so that little bit of wine her mother-in-law had talked her into drinking was giving her a headache. Two of Doreen's sisters stood on the steps witnessing everything, while baby Bethany slept in her bassinet.
“Girls, why don't y'all take your mother into the kitchen and fix her some tea while I talk to your sister?” Mr. Hamilton ordered.
“Yes, Daddy,” the sisters replied in unison. Shortly thereafter, they made it into the kitchen with their mother in tow, leaving Doreen alone in the living room with her father.
“Well, Daddy, I think I better get going home,” Doreen said. “I just came to see if Mother was okay. She took a hard fall back there at the juke joint.”
“Okay, I'ma let you go in a minute,” he said, walking over to his daughter. “I know you need to get home and take care of that husband of yours. I mean, after all, you're a wife now. You're a grown woman.”
“Yes, Daddy,” Doreen agreed, although she didn't feel like a grown woman at the moment. She felt like she was back in high school, had done something out of the ordinary like cut school or something, and was now about to get into hot water over it.
“But before you go, I just want to let you know that I love you and I am proud of you.”
That wasn't what Doreen was expecting. She looked at her father with surprise. He wasn't joking around or trying to use some type of trick psychology. He meant his words from the bottom of his heart. Doreen could see that. She could feel it. Doreen sniffed, and her eyes filled with tears. “I love you too, Daddy, but right now, there is no reason under the sun why you should be proud of me. Mama was right—I was a complete fool tonight. I was outside of myself and my ways.”
“No, dear, that's not true. Tonight, you were exactly who you are. You were yourself.”
Mr. Hamilton noticed the puzzled look on Doreen's face and continued speaking. “You were true to yourself and who you are. It was God's ways who you were out of. Tonight, daughter, is the person who you are when you step out of God's skin and allow your own flesh to cover you.”
Doreen broke down in tears.
“It ain't pretty, is it? It doesn't feel good being all exposed like that, does it?”
Doreen shook her head as she cried with heaving shoulders. “I'm sorry, Daddy. I know folks are gonna be talking up in the church. I never meant to bring you or Mama any shame, I promise.”
“I know, sweetie.” He walked over and embraced his daughter. “And you don't owe either me or your mama an apology. All you owe one to is God. Just repent, baby, and you know that God will forgive you.” He held Doreen a few more moments while she was able to get herself together. “And when you repent, mean it, and don't repeat your wrongdoing.”
“Yes, Daddy, I'll repent,” Doreen assured him, pulling away from him and wiping tears. “I'm just so blessed to have such a wonderful father and role model of a man,” Doreen cried. “I'm even more blessed that I serve such a forgiving God; a God who can forgive me for my sins and actions.”
“Hallelujah,” Mr. Hamilton agreed as Doreen turned to exit the house. “But just keep in mind, daughter, that even though God forgives us for our actions and sins, there are still consequences.”
Those words stopped Doreen in her tracks. “So what are you saying, Daddy? That I should expect the worst to happen between Willie and me now that I done put all our stuff out there?”
“No, dear, never expect the worst,” he said to his daughter as he walked over to her and rubbed her cheek, causing her to smile. “You should never expect the worst in life . . . just be prepared for it.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Sis, do you know starting this pound cake business is the best thing I could have ever done?” Doreen said as she stood in her kitchen boxing pound cake after pound cake. Sarina, her younger sister by three years, stood assisting her. The two had been at it since five o'clock that morning. Doreen's father had dropped Sarina off on his and her mother's way to a couple's retreat. This single order of a dozen pound cakes was the largest Doreen had had yet. Charging five dollars per cake and with Christmas right around the corner, she was saving to get Willie a watch. That way, maybe he'd look down at it, notice the time, and make it home at a decent hour.
“Is it now?” Sarina asked Doreen.
“Yeah, well, that and marrying Willie.”
“Is that all?” Sarina tapped her foot.
Doreen chuckled, looked down at her slightly protruding tummy, and added, “Oh yeah, and get pregnant with ol' Willie Junior here.”
“Child, you ain't nothing but about eight weeks pregnant. How you know it's a boy?”
“'Cause I've been sick as a dog. Only those belonging to the male species can make me this sick,” Doreen joked as she placed a pound cake inside a box and sealed it in securely.
Sarina wasn't chuckling. “How do you do it, Sis? How do you stay married to an unbeliever?”
Doreen took immediate offense. “Who says my Willie is an unbeliever? Is it them people at the church? Because they got a lot of nerves. Just last week Willie told me how he saw Deacon and Mrs. Smitherson leaving the juke joint hand in hand like they'd had the time of their lives . . . or were about to anyway.”
“And what's so wrong with that? I mean, sure, Deacon Smitherson and his wife probably had no business up in some drinking establishment, but at least they were in there together. At least they're not just so . . .” Sarina searched for words. “. . . different; different as night and day like you and Willie are.”
Doreen poked out her lips. “I guess that would have been more like right if it was Deacon Smitherson and his wife Mrs. Smitherson, but it wasn't. It was Deacon Milton with Mrs. Smitherson.”
“The devil is a liar!” Sarina spat. She'd been drizzling chocolate icing down a yellow pound cake when she yielded.
“You calling my Willie the devil or something? Because he's the one who told me.”
“Oh, by no means would I ever call your Willie a lying devil. Why, he's the most honest man this side of Kentucky,” Sarina said sarcastically with a playful flutter of her eyelashes.
“Uh-huh.” Doreen dipped her finger into the icing and put some on her little sister's nose. “You keep it up and I'ma turn you over my knee and skin you clean.”
“You can't even keep your husband in line. How you gon' try to keep me in line?” Sarina chuckled, but it was Doreen who didn't chuckle this time.
Doreen sighed, wiped her forehead with her sleeve, then went and sat down. Sarina noticed her older sister's sudden change in demeanor.
“I'm sorry, Sis. I didn't mean anything by it,” Sarina apologized.
“Oh no, you're all right. Just getting a little tired and feeling somewhat ill from this baby is all,” Doreen lied. And she wasn't a good liar as Sarina could see right through her and to the truth.
“You tired of people and all what they got to say about Willie, huh?” Sarina sat down next to Doreen at the kitchen table.
“I know I shouldn't let what folks say get to me, and I know it shouldn't mean much, but it does, Sarina. It does, and it hurts sometimes too. Never knew words could cut so deep. It's like from the beginning of Willie's and my relationship, folks been saying we ain't gon' make it. Now I feel like I have to prove them wrong, like I've been challenged, and no matter what, I have to hang in there. Every couple has their ups and downs. But all folks see when it comes to Willie and me is our downs. So they keep right on talking negative things.”
“So what are you going to do about it then?”
“What can I do? Folks talked about Jesus, and He was a man without fault. So do you think they're going to give Willie a break?”
“Tell me this, Sis, why did you marry Willie?”
Doreen shot Sarina an indignant look. “What do you mean why did I marry him? Because I loved him, of course,” Doreen flat-out said, then stood up and went back to tending to the cakes.
“So you never felt like maybe you got tricked into this whole relationship with him?”
“Tricked how? Girl, what in the world are you talking about?”
Sarina stood and walked over to Doreen and watched her finish icing the cake that she had started. “I'm talking about the way Willie came to church just long enough to court you and get you to say ‘I do.' You never thought just once that was a trick of the enemy? And that you fell for it? Hook, line, and Willie?”
Doreen paused but spoke no words. It was clear by the way she looked at Sarina, then turned her attention back to the cake, that she'd had those same thoughts a time or two.
“Then why are you staying in this marriage?” Sarina asked with urgency. “Why do you want to live like this? You just don't seem like the same sister I grew up with back at Mama and Daddy's house. You don't seem to have that same joy and energy. I'm not the only one who notices it either. We think it's because you spend all your energy chasing Willie around town and—”
“We? Who is ‘we'?” Doreen was very defensive and angry. “So you just like the rest of 'em? My own flesh and blood running around town talking about me too? Well, you and all them other folks can go to—” The buzzing of the timer signaling that the last cake was ready drowned out the curse word that had just flown from Doreen's tongue.
“Guess you been hanging around old Willie so long that you're starting to even talk like him,” Sarina said as she turned off the timer, put on oven mitts, and removed the cake from the oven. She set it on the cooling rack, and then continued her conversation with Doreen. “Maybe that's why you don't see nothing wrong with the way he treats you. Maybe that's why you don't mind coming up in church singing all these praises to God like you're the perfect Christian while you know darn well ain't nothing going on in your home to be giving God praises for. It's phony, and it's fake, and everybody can see right through it.”
Sarina grabbed her cheek but still couldn't stop the stinging left behind from the slap Doreen had just placed there.
“Oh, God, Sarina, I'm sorry. I'm
so
sorry,” Doreen apologized as she moved toward her sister.
“Get away from me. Just get away from me,” Sarina demanded as she went looking for her coat.
“Where—where are you going?” Doreen asked as Sarina put on her coat.
“Home.” Sarina stomped over to the door.
“But you don't have a car. Wait and I'll take you.” Doreen started scrambling for her keys.
“No, thanks. I'll walk. As a matter of fact, I'd rather walk than ride in the car with you.”
“Sarina, baby, don't say that. Why are you saying all these awful things to me? What did I ever do to you but love you and take care of you, and all my sisters? This is my life. Why can't you just let me be me?”
“Because I am you! All right? Okay, big sister, do you get it now? I am you. And so is Pauline, and so is Bethany.” Sarina named their other siblings. “You're the mold Mama and Daddy shaped for all us other girls to turn out to be. Trust me, they've made that clear over the years. And for so long I looked at you, admired you, and couldn't wait to be you. After all, you were so blessed, so highly favored. The anointing oil on you just trickled down right to us other girls. But then you got with Willie, and it's like slowly but surely the spigot is being turned off, and the flow is starting to stop.
“I used to see you as this strong woman of God who I couldn't wait to live my life like. And now . . .” Sarina swallowed back tears.
“And now what?” Doreen pressed. “Keep on talking. You've been big enough in your britches to say everything that's been on your mind thus far. Keep talking.”
Sarina inhaled, stood straight, and said, “And now I'd rather be dead if this is the kind of life I have to look forward to living.” Sarina shook her head. “You've ruined it. And with me being next to the eldest, now I'm going to have to battle the family curse you've started.” Sarina shook her head as she opened the door. “It was never just about you, Reen. Couldn't you see that? It was never just about you.” With tears flowing down her face, Sarina stormed out the door to start her three-and-a-half mile walk home.
The revelation that had just hit Doreen felt like lightning striking through her body. Her sister's words had penetrated her soul. She didn't even have much time to take in the words before the doorbell rang. “Oh, God, Sarina.” Doreen rushed to open the door hoping Sarina had returned.
“Oh, Ms. Flanagen,” Doreen said when she saw her customer outside her door.
“I hope you got all my cakes ready, gal, 'cause I'm running short on time.” Ms. Flanagen was a big woman; big enough that one might think all twelve of those cakes were just for her. But she ran a little carryout where she planned on selling the cakes by the slice and by the whole. She'd make the most money selling by the slice. Upping the cost from the five dollars she paid for the cakes to the eight dollars she planned on selling them for, she'd still make a nice profit selling them whole as well.
Doreen helped Ms. Flanagen load the cakes in her car. After receiving payment, she went back in the house and tucked her money away in her top drawer where she'd been keeping the profits from her pound-cake business over the last five months. She hadn't spent one red cent. She had no idea how much a good watch for Willie was going to run her, but she wanted to make sure she had enough to buy the very best or close to it. But now, after once again allowing Sarina's words to play back in her mind, she was rethinking what she'd do with all that money as she thought out loud, “I wonder how much a whole new life would cost me.”
Doreen was serious in thought. She pictured taking all her money and buying a bus ticket right out of Kentucky—away from her family, the church, just everybody, including Willie—especially Willie. But then, as her stomach began to churn, she remembered one person that she couldn't leave behind. She placed her hands on her pregnant womb, and then a horrible thought ran through her head as she gasped. “Oh, God, little one,” she said to the unborn baby inside her stomach, “have I cursed you too?”

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