Up at the College (25 page)

“Well, baby, it’s about time I got myself a new man. You know it’s been four years since Booth passed. Girl, I loved that
man. Had thirteen babies by him. And Lawd, if Booth didn’t have some good loving. That man put it on me almost until the day
he died. Sweet man, too.”

Rochelle started blushing and Miss Hattie Lee just laughed and then said, “You know something, Elaine. I didn’t think that
I would ever want to be all cozy with another man after Booth passed. But then I got to know Tommy and it’s like I’ve been
given a new lease on life. And Tommy sweet, just like Booth—neither one of them got issues with my dancing.”

Whew
, Rochelle thought.
Old people know they be getting busy. Stripping and getting a blonde touch-up ’cause you have a new man. And Mr. Tommy at
church
? She knew Mr. Tommy, who was a widower, still had a playah’s card tucked away somewhere in his usher suit. But now it appeared
as if he’d closed down shop on account of Miss Hattie Lee Booth—one of the hottest old ladies in Durham County.

“Come on, Miss Hattie Lee. Rochelle’s sister is stuck in some traffic and running late. I’ll have you colored up by the time
she gets here.”

Miss Hattie Lee sat down in the first comfortable chair she saw.

“Not there, Miss Hattie Lee. Come on over to the bowl.”

Elaine washed and rinsed out Miss Hattie Lee’s short and very stylishly cut hair. She dried her hair and mixed up some color—dark
gold with just a touch of reddish brown in it.

“This is some pretty color, Miss Hattie Lee,” Elaine told her. “Mr. Tommy is going to love how this looks. And knowing that
booger, he might snatch you up and try to run off to the nearest hotel with you.”

“Well, if I’m at work, won’t be no need for all of that. There are plenty of hanky-panky rooms at Rumpshakers if you really
need one,” she answered with a wink.

“What kind of rooms?” Rochelle asked.

“Hanky-panky.”

“What goes on in a hanky-panky room, Miss Hattie Lee?”

“Why, hanky-panky, baby. That’s what goes on in a hanky-panky room. I thought that you would know that.”

“But isn’t that illegal?” Rochelle asked her carefully, wondering how Charles managed to do such a bang-up job getting around
the law like that.

“No money changes hands. It’s just hanky-panky. It ain’t right, baby, but that is what goes on. Only a handful of high rollers
with special membership perks have those privileges. Charles is something else. But that boy ain’t never been stupid about
anything that he does. And he sho’ ain’t trying to get in trouble with the law.

“There some men who would love to get up in a hanky-panky room and cut up. But they ain’t going there. Charles barely letting
them through the front door of Rumpshakers as it is.”

“I bet Rico Sneed is one,” Rochelle said.

Miss Hattie Lee’s lips curled up at the mere thought of Julia Sneed’s son Rico. She had been sent to dance for him and his
boys simply to get rid of them. But Rico had been cheap, and he talked ugly to her and the rest of the girls in that harsh
and mean voice of his.

She said, “Yeah, Rico is one of the men who’ll never find out the location of one of those hanky-panky rooms. That boy walks
around like he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. But he ain’t worth a dried-up piece of dog doo-doo.”

“You have a point” was all Rochelle said, nodding her head.

“Rochelle,” Elaine said as she brushed the color into Miss Hattie Lee’s hair. “Get that DVD case off the shelf and look for
a recent airing of Grady Grey’s program. We need something refreshing to think about after all of that talk about Julia Sneed’s
son.”

Rochelle reached down to the bottom shelf of the TV stand and pulled out a stack of DVDs in a clear case with GRADY GREY marked
on it in a red permanent marker.

“You know,” Rochelle said, “Grady Grey was in school with Yvonne at Hillside. But that was before he became an apostle. Remember
when he used to run that hot office supply store out of the shed in his grandmother’s backyard?”

“Girl, yeah,” Elaine said with a chuckle. “Don’t you know that a whole bunch of black folk in Durham shopped in that shed?
’Cause Grady Grey had the hookup. His stuff was better than what you could get at the regular office supply store—and a whole
lot cheaper, too.”

“And did you know that you could put your stuff on layaway? That boy would just charge you a small rental fee for storing
your merchandise until it was paid off. Because you know Grady Grey didn’t take checks or credit cards, and a lot of the people
shopping in that shed didn’t have enough money to pay their bill in full and up front.”

“How do you know about this, Miss Hattie Lee?” Elaine asked as she rinsed the excess color out of her hair.

“How do you think I know that?” Miss Hattie Lee answered her. “I used to be a dancer at the Lucky Lady Club. I still do a
little bit of dancing, and I’m almost seventy years old. Do you really think I had problems putting anything on layaway in
Grady Grey’s Office Max shed?”

Elaine smiled, dried off the excess water in Miss Hattie Lee’s head, and put a plastic cap on her head.

“I see your point. Come on. Let me get you under the dryer for a few minutes to bake this pretty color into your hair.”

“But I wanted to watch the DVD with you babies.”

“Okay,” Elaine said, took the plastic cap off, picked up a bottle of water, spritzed Miss Hattie Lee’s head, and put the cap
back on. “I don’t want your hair to get too dry before you get up under that dryer. Mr. Tommy’s not coming over to my shop
getting on me about you and this hair.”

“What made Grady Grey stop his business and get into preaching?” Rochelle asked as she looked through the DVDs, trying to
find the best, most recent episode.

“His baby mama, Linda, got mad at Grady when she found out that he was sleeping around with a
very young
Prudence Baylor when Linda was pregnant with Sherron—the one playing ball for Coach Parker up at the college,” Miss Hattie
Lee told her. “That Linda saw the two of them going into the motel that used to be behind the Lucky Lady Club.”

“What? The Good Sleep Inn?” Elaine asked.

“Thhhhaaattt’s the one,” Miss Hattie Lee said, and then started laughing. “I bet a quarter of Durham’s black population born
before 1990, when the motel and the strip club finally closed down, can thank the Good Sleep Inn for helping them get into
the world.”

“Yes, Lawd,” echoed Elaine. “There was some stuff going on up in that motel but I can’t really say it was about sleep.”

“You all are crazy,” Rochelle told them. She remembered the Good Sleep Inn when she was at Hillside. She and her friends used
to go to the confectionery across the street from the hotel after school and watch who went in and out of that building.

“Well, I can tell you that Linda Grey followed Grady to the Good Sleep Inn. She sat in that parking lot for a good twenty
minutes, and then she walked herself right into that little dinky lobby, asked to use the phone, and reported every single
thing Grady Grey was doing to the police. They shut Grady down, and then put him in jail when he couldn’t ‘rightly ’member’
who any of his suppliers were.”

“You know,” Elaine added, “I remember running into Linda while Grady was in jail, and her telling me that he had gotten saved
and turned his life around. With the exception of his Jheri curl, Grady came out of jail a changed man who was determined
to marry his baby mama and live right. Linda’s mama said that as wild and crazy as Grady can be, he has been a model husband
since the day they said ‘I do.’”

“Well you know they started out at Jubilee Temple Holiness Church in North Durham,” Miss Hattie Lee told them. “And they would
have stayed there if the pastor had not asked Grady to start Jubilee Temple Holiness Church II over near Hoover Road.”

“You mean that church over near that hotel with who knows what going on in it is Grady Grey’s church?” Elaine said.

“Yep. The first Jubilee Temple has some members who used to hang out at that hotel before they got saved. They begged the
pastor to put a church over there. Said there were a lot of lost souls who needed to find Jesus. And a whole lot of those
people were not going to come all the way to North Durham—many of them didn’t even have decent transportation.”

“So where is the TV show taped?” Rochelle asked.

“At Grady’s church,” Miss Hattie Lee answered.

“How do you know so much about that church, Miss Hattie Lee?”

“I go there when I go to church because Grady Grey and his staff is real understanding about the struggles of people like
me,” she told Rochelle. “He’s been getting on me about joining and turning my life over to the Lord but I’ve got cold feet.
I know I’ll have to stop the dancing and stop wearing my costumes. And that’s just about impossible for me to do right now.”

Rochelle thought about a Bible-study series her first lady, Lena Quincey, had taught the Women’s Ministry on spiritual strongholds.
Miss Hattie Lee was encased in a spiritual stronghold that had come from doing striptease dancing for all of those years.
Sometimes, her heart ached when she thought about all of the seemingly innocuous ways the enemy used to get strongholds erected
around people. And stripping was an open doorway for the Devil to come into your life—she didn’t care what folks said to the
contrary.

“Miss Hattie Lee,” Rochelle said, “nothing is impossible with God—not even blessing you with the ability to stop the dancing
and wanting to wear those costumes.”

Elaine could feel the warring tension going through Miss Hattie Lee. Rochelle was right. But Miss Hattie Lee was stubborn
and didn’t want to give in to what the Lord had been calling her to do for many years. Elaine diffused some of the tension
when she said, “Then that explains the interesting set. ’Cause I swear they must be taping that thang out of Mr. Mobley’s
old cleaners. You know the one that was off of Miami Boulevard.”

“That is exactly where the show is taped,” Miss Hattie Lee said, her heart feeling the sting of the double-edged sword of
God’s Word. She hoped she sounded more light and carefree than she felt.

“Grady bought the cleaners from Mr. Mobley and has started building a brand-new church on the old parking lot and land out
back.”

“Rochelle, have you picked out a show yet?”

“Naw, Elaine. The titles all look so good until I’m not sure which one to choose.”

“Get the one where Grady Grey’s old cellmate, Huge Hotsy, was a guest.”

“Big Dotsy, Miss Hattie Lee,” Elaine said as she checked the color and moisture in her hair underneath that plastic cap. She
raised it up and spritzed a few times.

“Have you seen that one, Rochelle?”

“Uh-huh. But I want to see it again. Girl, that thang was so good until I had to sign up as a yearlong partner with Apostle
Grady Grey Ministries.”

“Me, too,” Elaine said. “I heard that after the airing of this particular segment, Grady Grey’s ratings went up, and his show
is now the hottest underground TV program in the Triangle.”

“But have you seen the commercials before and after the show?” Rochelle asked, laughing.

“Girl,” Elaine said as she slipped the DVD in and turned on the television, “sometimes I watch the broadcast just for the
commercials. I have learned about some of the most ghetto-fabulous establishments in all of Durham County watching Grady Grey.
But folks tell me those ads have paid off. And right now, I’m wrestling with taking out one myself.”

Rochelle cracked up.

“Girl, I can just see you now, with a three-foot lacquered burgundy-and-blue-dyed do to emphasize that you have skills.”

“I don’t even think I have any blue hair color in the shop,” Elaine said.

“So, what you’re telling me is that you do have burgundy. ’Cause you know sisters love that burgundy hair color.”

“I am ignoring you, Rochelle Fountain,” Elaine said as Yvonne rushed into the shop, all ready to get her hair done.

Elaine, Rochelle, and Miss Hattie Lee all waved and pointed to an empty chair.

Yvonne plopped down in the chair and looked at the three of them with a big question all over her face. She touched her head.
“But my hair. You are still doing my hair, aren’t you, Elaine?”

“Ummm, hmmm. Right after we watch this DVD.”

Y
vonne moved to a more comfortable chair and got settled just as a pulsating high praise song came on while still photos of
Grady Grey, along with his wife, First Lady Prophetess Linda Grey, and their four children flashed across the screen. The
choir, which had roughly eighteen members on the set, sounded like a powerful seventy-five-voice mass choir.

Their attire was simple, neat, and on the conservative end of ghetto-fabulous. The women were dressed in black oxford cotton
shirts, white knee-length A-line skirts, black stockings, and white flats with black patent-leather bows on the toe. The men
wore the same style of shirt, baggy khaki pants worn low on the hips, and black Timberlands.

Yvonne, who had never paid any attention to the
Half an Hour of Holy Ghost Power
when her kids were watching it, said, “Do they have on white skirts and black stockings?”

“Shhh!” was the only answer she got.

Those black stockings under those white skirts definitely got Yvonne’s attention. She scooted her chair up closer to the TV
screen to get a better look at the pastor and first lady, who were dressed in a vivid display of urban fashion wear that could
only be purchased at the stores you didn’t even know existed until you passed them on the way to your cousin Naye Naye, Boo
Boo, June Bug, and ’nem’s house.

First off, they only adorned themselves in matching his-and-her “Saint Suits” in turquoise, red, powder blue, hot pink, lemon
yellow, peach, and purple. On this particular show Linda Grey was wearing a lime-green brocade satin suit with matching lime-green
hat, shoes, and stockings. The hat had a very flat crown with a wide brim that had been fashioned from yards of pleated lime-green
satin that was further accentuated with the rhinestones that were sprinkled across the entire hat. And her husband, Apostle
Grady Grey, had on a lime-green clerical robe with a silver collar that had been made from the same bolt of fabric used to
make his wife’s suit. His shoulder-length Jheri curl was freshly done and styled so that the silver in his hair picked up
on the silver on his robe.