Mama B - A Time to Speak (Book 1) Read online

All he kept writing was he had to get in touch with so-and-so, and this one here on vacation, got to wait a little longer. Just stalling while the church go untended. Couldn’t blame him all that much. Since the church air conditioner was still out, not like there was much meeting going on anyway. Ha! Seem like everybody took a break from meeting except all the folks who needed to meet at my house.

  Well, we couldn’t get the deacons together, but the Mother’s Board come over early Friday afternoon. Me, Ophelia, Henrietta, and the oldest mother, Ruby Simon. Mother Simon really not always in her right mind since she had the stroke back in ‘09, but me and Ophelia make it our business to make sure Mother Ruby always at the meetings ‘cause…well, mostly ‘cause we hope people don’t throw us away when we get old. You reap what you sow.

  I don’t know what on earth possessed Henrietta to invite one of the women from the Dukes’ bunch to our Mt. Zion meeting, but here come some woman in a bright yellow muumuu and some 1980’s jellies walkin’ up my porch steps with Henrietta. Not the kind of jellies that’s done came back in style. I mean, she had been havin’ them actual shoes for over thirty years.

  Lord, forgive me for judgin’. This ain’t the Christ in me. I wasn’t so much upset about the shoes as I was her being there. But that wasn’t her fault, either. That was Henrietta’s doing. I’m sure she put two and two together and figured out why I left church Sunday. She must have known this Mother’s Board meeting wasn’t gonna be in Pastor Dukes’ favor, so she brought somebody along to be in her corner.

  “B, This here is Mother Dorcas Powell. She want to join our Mother’s Board.”

  She got to join our church, first. “Morning, Mother Powell. You welcome to sit in.”

  “Thank you, B. You have a lovely home.” She looked me up and down first, then checked out my drapes, even craned her neck to get a look down a hallway we was not going to visit.

  “Bless God,” was all I could say.

  Mother Powell hobbled on past me, but I caught Henrietta’s arm and whispered to her, “She’s not a member of Mt. Zion.”

  Henrietta snatched her arm away. “So long as Pastor Phillips is out, we got to make it our business to be hospitious to Pastor Dukes’s church members.”

  I clenched my teeth. “He ain’t got no church.”

  “Far as I’m concerned, he ought to have a church, or stay and help Pastor Phillips. Since he been preachin’, I done won on almost every lotto ticket—at least a dollar every time. Last week, twenty-five! You can’t tell me God haven’t changed my luck on account of Rev. Dukes.”

  My Momma used to tell me all the time, “Book of Proverbs say you can’t argue with foolishness.” She was right, and I know the word is right, so I didn’t say anything else to Henrietta on the matter. Just led her right on into the living room and served her fruit pizza right along with everybody else.

  Ophelia had her yellow legal pad ready to take notes soon as she finished with the prayer. She and I had already discussed some things for the agenda, including prayer for Geneva and Pastor, so she started with those items. Then she got to what was chewin’ on both our minds.

  “Mothers, B and I wanted to lead a special prayer for our church body, and also discuss the direction the church is going since Pastor Phillips has been out on leave of absence,” Ophelia said. She real good at saying stuff in a way where people won’t get so mad—when she tryin’ to be nice.

  Henrietta sat up, squared her shoulders. “What direction you mean, Ophelia?”

  “I mean in the direction of preaching the scriptures out of proper context or preaching with no scriptures at all,” she explained real proper-like.

  “I, for one, think Rev. Dukes is doing a great job. We got more new people visiting than we ever had,” Henrietta said.

  “But some of our regular members are skipping out,” Ophelia opposed. “Including my own niece, Shantay, and her husband.”

  Henrietta mumbled, “One monkey don’t stop the show.”

  “What you say?” Ophelia asked, turning her head to the side.

  I jumped in, “Well, the purpose of our gathering is to pray and to figure out how to speak our peace with the deacon’s board.”

  “I got nothing to say to them,” again from Henrietta. “Rev. Dukes word workin’ for me.”

  “Always work for me, too,” Mother Powell added.

  I decided to ask our visitor, “Mother Powell, you more familiar with Rev. Dukes than the rest of us. How long you been under his teaching?”

  “’Bout two years, since the Lord brought me back in. I spent most of my life doing my own thing—in the clubs, drinking, and smoking. But my daughter started going to church, and she brought me. I heard Pastor Dukes preaching and teaching on the abundant life. Now I go to her church every time I see Pastor Dukes is preaching on the calendar.”

  “Your life is certainly a wonderful testimony,” I had to admit. It’s always better to be in the church than in the club.

  Henrietta nodded.

  I worked up to my real question. “So maybe you can answer this for me. Do he always preach about money and how to get what you want from the Lord? Do he have other things he preach on like, for instance, the fruit of the Spirit?”

  “Naw. He don’t talk about food too much.”

  Mother Simon sniggered. First peep we heard out of her all day.

  “How about holiness? Serving the Lord with your life?”

  She shook her head ‘no.’ “He don’t preach on stuff like that, and I’m glad ‘cause I would probably be nodding off in church!” She laughed so big her cheekbones nearly made her eyes shut closed.

  Nobody but her and Henrietta thought that was funny. I was beginning to wonder if Mother Powell was a church mother or if maybe she was just Rev. Dukes’ mother.

  When she finally realized the rest of us didn’t find respond to her joke, she straightened up her face. “Listen, I know what you’re trying to say. You all don’t like Rev. Dukes. Y’all think he ain’t good enough for your church.”

  “Nobody’s saying we don’t like Rev. Dukes,” Ophelia corrected her.

  “No, hear me out.” Mother Powell put up her hand like a stop-sign in Ophelia’s direction.

  All I could do was pray to the Lord for a split-second ‘cause one thing I know about Ophelia: she slow to get angry, but once she get there, she definitely there.

  “All he doing is trying to get us all to a point where we not struggling anymore. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, choosing between paying for medications or the water bill every month. But by the looks of your house and your high-dollar clothes, and all your kids’ certificates and degrees and so on, I see you can’t understand where the rest of us coming from.”

  Once again, Henrietta hissed under her breath, “You sure right about that.”

  I realized I didn’t have to answer to either one of them, but, you know, once somebody drag your kids into the situation, now we got a real problem on our hands. “Mother Powell, I’ll have you to know my husband and I didn’t have the best education or the best background, but we put God first in everything, and He honored His word. All this you see and all the blessings you don’t see, we got by His grace. That’s how real prosperity works.”

  Mother Powell shook her head and declared, “Not in my book.”

  “What book you readin’?” I asked. Soon as the question left my lips, the Holy Spirit whispered inside me, that’s enough.

  He must have said the same thing to Ophelia. She stood up and held out both arms. “Ladies, let’s close in prayer.”

  I grabbed Ophelia’s hand on the right. Didn’t have no choice but to grab Henrietta’s on the left.

  Ophelia prayed. “Father, You are perfect in all Your ways. Show us Your ways and let us line up with them. And now as we depart, we thank You in advance for Your protection, which You promised in Your word to all who would abide under Your mighty shadow. Help us to abide there. It’s in Your precious Son Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”

  “Amen.”
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  Shame how fast everybody cleared out. Usually, we all sit around talking and laughing. Not this time, though. Henrietta and Mother Powell left while Ophelia was still getting Mother Simon situated in the car.

  Once Mother Simon’s seatbelt was buckled, Ophelia closed the car door and said to me, “Well, the Mother’s Board can’t go to the deacon’s board divided.”

  “Sure can’t. May be just me and you on behalf of all the folk that’s done already stopped coming to church, and some of the other ones that’s just waitin’ it out.”

  “Or maybe we should just wait Rev. Dukes out,” she suggested. “May not be too long before God move one way or another for Geneva.”

  I took a deep breath. “I hear you, sister, I hear you. May be the best thing, God willing, for us to wait and see.”

  Chapter 16

  After all that nonsense with Henrietta and Mother Powell, I really didn’t feel like having the book club meeting at my house. The church “theft investigation” was complete, according to Dustin. We were innocent, of course. Now, it was just a matter of the usual estimating and processing and whatnot before they cut the check. Might take the bank a day or two to release the funds.

  My thinking was to postpone the book club meeting until they could take it back to Dukes territory. But when I told Libby a little about my feelings, she recommended I didn’t change things. “Now, B, remember you don’t want to be the cause of strife and revenge. God ain’t in that.”

  I followed her advice and kept my word about hosting.

  Nikki could hardly wait to start the meeting. Much as her nose had been buried between the pages of No Ways Tired, I knew she would have a lot to say. She had her library copy sitting front and center on the coffee table like a centerpiece when the ladies arrived.

  Seem like Cynthia had calmed down. She hugged me and kissed me when she walked in, thanked me again for allowing them to meet. I was glad, too. Last thing I wanted was another hostile situation in my home.

  Not as many people came to the book club meeting as the “Bible study.” Too bad, though, ‘cause I sure put my foot in that potato salad.

  “Mama B, I have not had potato salad this good since my family reunion two years ago,” one of the girls from the other congregation praised. “You must give me the recipe.”

  “Honey, I don’t have no recipe. You’ll have to come watch me make it one of these days.”

  Karen hummed, “Mmmm mmm. That’s the best kind of cooking.”

  This time, Karen opened up the group with the prayer. Then she shuffled through her giant purse for a second, finally putting her hand on her book. “Okay. Y’all, this book was soooo good. I could not stop reading it!”

  “Me, either,” Nikki cooed. “I have never read anything so real. I mean, this is how black people act, for real!”

  I sat back in the love seat, pleased to hear my granddaughter gushin’ over a book. I knew the more she read, the more Cameron would read. Kids don’t do what you say, they do what you do.

  Since I hadn’t been able to pry the book out of Nikki’s hands, I planned to listen to the conversation and decide if I wanted to read it for myself later on.

  “I was caught up in the first chapter.” Karen smiled and flipped a few pages while everyone else followed suit. She ran her finger along the side of a page and started readin’ out loud. “If my husband knew what I knew, he wouldn’t spend so many hours at the gym trying to get buff. He wouldn’t spend so much time at the office trying to get rich. In fact, if he had a clue about what I do while he’s trying to keep up with the Jones’s, he’d bring his behind home. But I wouldn’t want him home because then he’d keep me from Pastor Flexner. I got to have me some Pastor Flexner at least three times a week.”

  “Oooh wee!” Jada Sutton nearly screamed. “When I read that part, I was like—man! She’s sleeping with the pastor?”

  The air left my chest. “Lord, have mercy.”

  All of ‘em laughed at me like my reaction was just so funny.

  “Well, it does happen,” Karen said, dipping her chin in Jada’s direction. “Pastors do cheat on their wives.”

  “My cousin is a pastor,” Cynthia added, “and he had two or three children by other women.”

  “Did his wife ever leave him?” one of the ladies wanted to know.

  “Never. He made too much money.”

  Nikki fanned through her copy. “I think that’s why Maxine stayed. She must have known Pastor Flexner was cheating, but she didn’t want to give up her lifestyle. Right here, on page two-hundred and thirteen, she says, all men cheat. So you might as well pick one with some money because no matter what, you’re going to get played.”

  I tell you, my head was going side to side like I’m watching a tennis match. They talked about one crazy scene after another. And the more they talked, the more I wondered about this here book. I had to ask, “Well, did the pastor ever repent?”

  “No!” They all said in unison.

  Karen explained, “By the end of the book, his wife left him, but he’s still preaching and looking for a new wife. He has not learned his lesson yet. That’s why we have to read the next one.”

  Another young lady smiled. “I can hardly wait until part three comes out.”

  They got to talking about some of the other stuff going on in the book—all the folks the pastor was sleeping with, how he paid off the elders of the church to stay quiet, how one of the teens in the church was pregnant by the pastor but his wife paid for the girl to have an abortion, but the girl kept the money and she still pregnant. All that, I supposed, would get discussed in book three.

  “But this was my favorite part,” Jada spoke again. “When Maxine finally walked in on Pastor Flexner and her hairdresser.” She found a spot in the book and read off a tell-everything love-making scene followed by a whole bunch of choice words I can’t even repeat.

  Look like they done made up some new cussword-matches, ‘cause some of them combinations I hadn’t never heard before that night.

  Guess I got the church book club to thank for adding those to my vocabulary.

  Chapter 17

  Just like the last time, all I could do was steal away from the meeting and make myself busy with something else in the kitchen. Nobody really invited me to the club anyway, no rule saying I had to stay and sit up and listen to them talk about a man of God—even if he wasn’t real. Dangerous territory, if you ask me. God don’t like folks makin’ a joke about His kids any more than you want folks to paint a likeness of your kids and start talkin’ bad about ‘em. Even if they is wrong.

  I know it was just a make-believe book. But still. Kind of like I thought the Bible study was supposed to be upliftin’ and pointing toward godly things, looked like the same thing was goin’ on with the “church” book club.

  After I nit-picked all the little cleaning jobs in my kitchen and dusted from my room to the front parlor, the meeting was over. Apparently, the women liked that book so much, they decided to read six more books from that same author. Said they was gonna focus on her the rest of the year.

  Karen closed the gathering in prayer, and most of them left in one big swoop. Only Karen, Cynthia, Nikki, and I were left.

  “Mama B, you can read my copy now,” Nikki said as she put the last of my magazines back in place.

  “That’s alright, Nikki-Nik. You can take it back to the library tomorrow.” God is my witness, that’s all I said. This is a free country. Folks free to read whatever they want.

  Promise to God, I was planning on keeping my mouth shut and ridin’ it out ‘til Pastor Phillips came back. That’s what me and Ophelia agreed to. Plus, since God hadn’t said too much to me about this whole church situation in a while, I figured all this with Rev. Dukes and book clubs was just meant to show that the Mothers and I needed to spend more time with the younger women in the church.

  Then Cynthia—almost out the door, had her foot on the silver part between my wood and the porch—stopped and asked me, “You d
idn’t like the book?”

  I shrugged my shoulders real quick and sort. “Don’t sound like something I would be interested in.”

  She drug her foot back inside and let the screen door close. “Mama B, forgive me, but I really thought this book club would be an opportunity to make up for our misunderstanding last time.”

  I’m not the one with the misunderstanding. Before I said another word, I had to think: am I mad? A little. Sad probably a better word, though. Took my mind a second to push aside the mad thoughts and decide on words to bring us toward a solution.

  I walked over toward the doorway, Nikki and Karen behind me at that point. “Cynthia, I know you’re trying to reach the church women, trying to encourage them to do more with their lives, to read—”

  “You’re exactly right. So why did you walk out of the room with a frown on your face during the book discussion? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re trying to undermine everything I do. Are you jealous? Upset because I can get the women do get together but you can’t?”

  Karen’s hand come into my side-vision. She touched Cynthia’s arm. “Sister, don’t.”

  Cynthia pulled away. “No, I’m tired of this. What is the problem, Mama B?”

  “Well, right now, my problem is you disrespecting me in my own house.” I warned her with my eyes she that better watch her mouth.

  She clicked her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  I could see a little pool forming in her eyes. “Apology accepted.”

  She blinked a few times. “What’s wrong with church women meeting up, spending social time together? If the world can do it, so can we.”

  “I got no problem with church women meeting up. God started the idea of fellowship when he created Adam, so the world is copyin’ us. And I’m sure God don’t mind seein’ his daughters get together.”

  In a tiny voice, Karen asked, “So what’s the issue? We want to know what you think we’re doing wrong. I mean, it is a Christian book.” She stood next to Cynthia.

  Nikki must have stayed in her place because I didn’t hear her feet move.