Soon After

by Sherryle Kiser Jackson

  “What doesn’t make sense is why our best friends in ministry left the banquet like they were being run out of town,” Willie replied.

  “It was a disagreement that escalated between Pat and me, okay? I’ll call her this week and straighten it out,” Vanessa said dismissively. “That’s not what we are here for right now. Unless you or I have a hard copy of the last agenda, then it’s on Luella’s computer. There was quite a bit of old business we didn’t get a chance to discuss. We will never get anything accomplished if we keep tabling things to the next meeting.”

  “Just like these disagreements, these rifts you keep getting into with everyone around you including me. When do these things ever get discussed? I don’t know what’s going on with you lately, Vanessa. You’re up, you’re down, one minute you’re reclusive, the next you’re throwing tantrums. What’s going on? Let’s clear the air.”

  Willie watched her look down while brushing wisps of hair back toward her bun. He could tell she was thinking. Hopefully of a way to relay the truth, Willie thought.

  “We can talk about this later, when we get home,” she finally said.

  “Let’s talk about it now, Vanessa,” Willie demanded. “’Cause it is slowly driving a wedge between us and the people around us. We are alone, in the House of God, with nothing but space and opportunity to straighten it all out. Heck, we’ve even got an altar.”

  He met her on the other side of the desk and sat with her in the chairs there. She brought her purse down in her lap and had a hard time positioning it so it wouldn’t fall. She pulled out a yellow booklet with a woman’s silhouette on the cover and handed it to him. The cover read, “Welcome to Motherhood, Your Pregnancy Guide,” But it might as well have been written in hieroglyphics because he couldn’t immediately interpret its meaning. Every female that he had been in contact with for the past two weeks flashed through his mind before he finally got it.

  “Sweetheart, are you . . .?” He noticed her head nod before he could get it out. “Are we?”

  Willie stood and resisted the urge to pull her to him in a crushing bear hug. He realized what everything had been about and vowed then to take care when handling her, when touching her, even when talking to her. Now he realized that while everyone was being impatient with her, including himself, she was crafting the blueprint God designed for both their lives.

  “God be praised.” He stood, giving God praise. His spirit got carried away, “Woo,” he yelled out in disbelief at God’s favor toward them.

  Willie realized Vanessa was not standing, nor did he hear her voice lifted up in praise. She was still sitting in the same position. A pained expression covered her face. He kneeled before her. “Is everything, okay? You went to the doctor this morning, right? I mean, could they tell if the baby is all right?”

  Vanessa was back to nodding, chasing some of his dread away, but she was so overcome with emotion he couldn’t read her.

  “What is it, baby?”

  “I can’t do this,” came a low hollow voice he did not recognize.

  Willie pushed off of one knee to his chair. “You can’t?” He wished she would just tell him what was wrong. What would prevent her from bearing their child?

  “It’s not so much that I can’t do it, but rather I never thought I could. I’d see pregnant women or other women with their children and think I couldn’t do the whole birthing and nurturing and mothering thing.” Her eyes pleaded for him to hear her out—to understand. “I know it is a subtle difference that doesn’t mean much to you, but I have to carry this baby at forty-three years of age. I have to breast feed or bottle feed the baby when I should be preaching. I’ve got to wipe the child’s nose and tail when I should be leading this church, not to mention the Trinity Conference. You know how much that means to me.”

  “You’re being silly,” Willie reasoned.

  “Oh yeah, Willie Green, you may have scored the goal, but I have to be the mother. And don’t think I won’t be judged as old as I am. I will be left cleaning up the stands and fields while you are treated like the MVP, receiving repeated pats on the back.”

  Willie was hurt, as if he had gone to hug her and got stabbed instead. “Is that really how you feel?”

  “You wished this on me,” Vanessa continued, ignoring him. “I distinctly remember having a conversation not too long ago about your mother wanting me to produce a grandchild. Like she will be willing to babysit from a nursing home. I guess the prayers of the righteous do avail much, huh Willie? I told you then that I was not cut out for this.”

  Willie sat back as if to really look at her. Where was all this coming from? “Wow, you sure do know how to take all the beauty out of this situation.” He got up and stepped back a few feet to see if he ever really knew who she was. “Now I see. This is why you’ve been moping around. How long have you known you were pregnant?”

  “Dr. Sanchez confirmed it last Thursday. I went to a new doctor today who’s both a gynecologist and obstetrician. I’m nearing twenty weeks,” she sighed. “I guess subconsciously I’ve always known.”

  Give her the benefit of the doubt, let her rest, let her gather herself, Willie thought, but he wasn’t listening to himself either. “And everyone else knew except me? Keisha? Pat? Ben?” Willie questioned, “everyone except the father.”

  “No,” Vanessa was bound to the chair, and she craned her neck to follow Willie who was pacing now around the office. “Only Pat knew. That’s why they left early, because she knew how I felt and thought I should tell you.”

  Willie stopped pacing and kept silent, remembering what he said earlier about treating Vanessa gingerly. She was visibly upset. He wondered how much of that stress was affecting the baby. He thought also how easily blessings can turn into curses and decided to change gears.

  “Let’s both just calm down. This is supposed to be a joyous time in our lives, and no devil in hell is going to take that away. I’m just sorry I’ve missed over half the pregnancy. I could have been there to hold your hand,” Willie said, talking to the back of her head now.

  “Yeah, well you were out on the street playing detective and reporter,” she said.

  Willie walked around the front of his desk so she could see his face. “C’mon, Vanessa, don’t even blame this on the Inside 7 reports. You were keeping secrets. You knew where I was.”

  “After the fact,” Vanessa added.

  The telephone rang up the hall, causing the light on his extension to blink. They both shifted to find their cell phones, realizing if it were an emergency with one of their members, that one of their personal phones would be going off next. They waited and regrouped.

  His cell phone buzzed instead of rang because it was set on vibrate. He was tempted to ignore it, but knew few people had that number and it could be important. He flipped the phone over and recognized Alexis’s number. They had just seen her in church the day before, and he wondered what she could be calling about now.

  Willie answered the phone under the watchful eye of his wife and could not help but react to what Alexis was telling him. Roy had apparently been picked up by the police with a few others for drug possession, and the police were trying to tack on a distribution charge. She was waiting to see if they posted a bail for his release until his arraignment. Willie couldn’t believe the timing and asked Alexis to call him back when she had more details.

  He looked at his wife across the desk from him, which brought him back to reality.

  “Another crisis,” she declared as if she had been on the phone. “Go ahead, go.”

  After a few minutes of stalemate, Willie said, “Forget that for right now, forget the report. I think we should go into the sanctuary and pray.”

  “Don’t you think that is counterproductive if we are praying for different things?” Vanessa’s words sounded like pure venom to him.

  Willie turned in his executive style chair and shut down his computer. He picked up his cell phone and shoved it hard into its belt holster. He walked around his
desk and the set of chairs Vanessa sat in.

  “I’m leaving before I say something guaranteed to upset you,” he said once he reached the door.

  “Yeah, right, and you want me to believe it has nothing to do with the phone call you just received.”

  Willie thought about what she just said. Sure, he was concerned about Roy, and would help to raise the money to pay his bail, but his family was more important right now. They both needed space and a clear perspective. He couldn’t sit there and let her gut him out anymore with her words without a few of his own.

  “You know what, Vanessa? This isn’t about anyone else. It’s about us. You are talking as if you don’t want to bring our baby into the world, which right now sounds the same as you don’t want to be married to me. You decide,” Willie said, leaving her with her own puncture wound.

  Chapter 17

  The New It Girl

  The death of an international superstar of stratospheric proportion preempted the regular broadcast of most televised programming, including the Inside 7 segment, as never ending probes into his death, dizzying amount of tributes, and his footage played 24/7. As a young boy on the rise, this star came to Washington DC to attend a gala of the then president, Jimmy Carter. A perky Channel 7 special assignment reporter, Lizzy London, got to meet and interview him. The current production team of the Inside 7 program elected to run the vintage footage in memorial.

  To any other reporter that hiatus would mean death to a series of stories based on lesser known individuals. But to a rising reporter like Alexis Montgomery armed with conviction about an investigative probe of her own and breaking news on her Blackberry, there was no stopping her.

  “Well, that’s the kind of meeting I like, short and sweet,” remarked Lizzy London, who in her seniority no longer felt it necessary to pitch ideas. Alexis wondered why she even bothered to show up. She usually upgraded a top story handed to her from the nightly news anchor desk and used that as the lead-in story for the Inside 7 weekly broadcast.

  The large conference room that was chilly when Alexis first entered with her Frappicino, and last minute research was now warmed with the energy of the Inside 7 production staff. A large calendar with tentative show ideas was written in red marker on a white board.

  “Well, I have some ideas to kick around, so I will know in what direction to move in for my series next week,” Alexis said. She figured since Mark Shaw, the Executive Producer, and his assistant, Martie, looked comfortable in their chairs with their share of sugar-rush snacks at their side, that she should go for it. She held up her all-important Blackberry. “My source at the department told me that they are in the process of extraditing Charley Thompson, who is the deacon at Harvest Baptist Church, from Louisiana. They are charging him with arson in the Harvest Baptist Church case. They think they’ve got their man.”

  Alexis placed her Blackberry directly in front of her on the table as was the custom of everyone else in attendance in respect to their unofficial keep-your-device-where-we-can see-it, no texting during the meeting rule. She couldn’t help but smile at how she bought someone off in Chief Rich’s office after the captain himself called to ream her out about forcing Willie Green in the frame of her last interview to spite him. And Martie said her Starbucks gift cards wouldn’t work as a bribe. She was no longer afraid of his threats. They were hollow at best. He was just desperate to solve his case.

  There was rambling around the table from some of the other writers and production assistants. Alexis heard one say, “I guess she’s never going back to the beat.”

  “Great, so next week we’ll be wrapping this horse and pony show up,” Lizzy said, spinning her finger around for emphasis.

  Alexis’s thoughts were swarming. “Not yet, I don’t think we should rush it. I hate those reports that show shots of a suspect taken in the jail or taken to and from court before anything is officially ruled. Then you have barely enough footage to be called a photo and barely enough accurate information to be called a caption. We might as well be print journalists for that kind of reporting. There is a process to formally charging someone and a window of time before that information becomes official. But in the meantime—”

  “Basically, you are going to drag this out as far as possible, and we are supposed to reserve airtime for you,” Lizzy said, cutting her off. She looked to Mark for back up as if Alexis had just made a ridiculous request.

  “So do they think Abe Townsend is involved?” Martie Hamilton asked with a wink in Alexis’s direction.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the lunched-out preacher, right?” someone else commented.

  “The website got so many hits after that interview of people trying to access the back-story, and emails doubled trying to help the poor cat out,” Martie continued.

  “Pastor Abe, I’m sure, is making plans for a bigger church. His membership has increased, and they have already outgrown the daycare. They are holding service at Central High School auditorium now.

  “You could do a follow-up on him or that other preacher that left the church, Green,” commented Maisy Day, the technical assistant.

  In Alexis’s excitement, she shared that Pastor Willie and Pastor Vanessa were expecting. Willie had shared the information with her in confidence when she called back to tell him they had Roy’s bail set at $5,000. He seemed consumed by the time he met her at the station. She felt guilty overshadowing his happiness with such bad news. Their concern was where Roy would go when they paid for his release. He couldn’t stay with her, so she left that burden on Pastor Willie as they left Roy with the ‘three hots and a cot’ for the next night or two down at Central Booking.

  “That stud. What is he like, fifty?” someone called out and roused scattered laughter.

  “Wait a minute, guys, let’s keep that under wraps. I shouldn’t have shared his business,” Alexis said, although she doubted any of the people she worked with hung in the same circle as Willie or Vanessa Green.

  “Maybe Alexis should do a recap of the pastor’s ending with a follow-up since the public was generally interested. Get their reactions on this new information about the deacon. Plant a flag on this exclusive information so the other stations will know we had it first. That would give enough time for charges to be filed against this Thompson fellow and a trial date to be set.” Mark swiveled his chair toward Alexis. “Congratulations, Montgomery,” Mark Shaw said to a modest round of applause from everyone except Lizzy.

  “But sir, I have an even more pressing story. It’s an investigative probe into the supposed Drug Taskforce and the subsequent sting operations between the DC mayor’s office and surrounding Maryland counties,” Alexis said, using finger quotation marks to highlight the hypocrisy.

  A few aides had come in at the same time to whisper messages to their respective staffer who would have received the message if they were allowed to use their phones. She paused until Mark, who had an aide glued to his right side sifting through his Blackberry, signaled for her to continue. “Well, just like prohibition didn’t decrease alcohol consumption, this task force has spent thousands of tax payers’ dollars and has done little to clean up our streets. I dare say from my research that the police are perpetuating the problem with their unfair arrest history. They are ten times more likely to convict a person for possession than they are for distribution or higher drug crimes. Any Joe Friday can arrest an addict. Take that same corridor from Lincoln Avenue that snakes down to the district line for instance. It’s a known fact that drug users walk into court and get time-served in a detention center or probation with a record and the dealers walk scot-free. They wrangle the users or runners together with trumped up charges to pad the files to justify the cost of the program.”

  “What?” Lizzy said as if Alexis was speaking a foreign language.

  “I’m with Lizzy, way too much altitude, Montgomery” Mark said, then laughed, and when he laughed, his flunkies did also. “Bring it down to earth for us.”

  “Hear me out,” Alexis sai
d, rising from her seat. She could feel the blood coursing through her veins as she struggled to make it more palpable to the show’s producer. “My piece would be a follow up on our last show because Roy Jones, the homeless preacher that I interviewed and the viewers loved, I might add, got caught up in a drug bust. They arrested him since our last show for drug possession, and I believe they are trying to tack on conspiracy charges too. He’s got five co-defendants. He was swept up by these task force goons who know full well who the dealers are on this street, but won’t touch them. He’s getting arraigned next week. Roy told me about these quarterly sweeps and how the DA has got incentive to let some of the big fish go to continue dealing on our streets.”

  “A part two?” Martie assisted.

  “Yes,” Alexis said.

  “Now she’s Mother Theresa.” Lizzy looked as if she was about ready to slap herself she was so outdone.

  “She’s done her homework. Now you all know how I like the whole jailhouse interview,” Mark claimed.

  “Well, he will be out on bail soon. Pastor Willie and I met with a bail bondsman, and Pastor Willie needed a day or two to petition the church for the money. The state is building a case against Roy, and he could be wrongly accused,” Alexis said, holding her breath. “Any drug that he would have on him would be the sealed single-serving size issued to him at the rehab clinic I featured in my piece.”

  “I can see it. One week he’s on the street preaching, the next he’s taking us into the drug underworld,” Martie explained.

  Mark sat back and let his executive style chair drift in her direction. “You think you’re ready for something like this, Montgomery?”

  “I am. I played it too safe last time. I will present the court statistics and keep the interview strictly first person. It will be from his lips to the camera’s lens.”

  “Extend an invitation for someone from the taskforce to respond. Don’t let them off easy either. Drill them about the Jones case in particular. See what you uncover. Who knows, you might just get him off,” Mark said.