Selling My Soul

by Sherri L. Lewis

  I laughed and shook my head. “The guy . . . yeah . . . what can I say?”

  She leaned forward on the edge of her seat.

  I shrugged. “He’s a nice guy. Real heart for missions. In love with God. He’s cool.”

  “Don’t even try it. When you were e-mailing me and on those brief phone calls you made, it sounded like you were head over heels in love about to get married at any minute.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re tripping. I did not, Monnie.”

  Her eyes widened. “I can’t believe you. You made him sound perfect, almost like Jesus Himself came back to earth.”

  I shrugged and laughed. “He’s cool.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you doing it again? That fear of commitment, fear of giving your heart away, fear that it won’t end up right so you do whatever you can do to sabotage it before it can go anywhere thing again?”

  I stood and walked into the kitchen to get another bottle of water out of the pantry. It seemed crazy to see rows and rows of bottled water lined up on the bottom shelf. I looked at the rows of food—junk food with absolutely no nutritional value that Tiffany insisted on eating.

  I came back into the den and sat back on the chair, pouring my water over the ice this time. I couldn’t believe how good the ice cold water tasted. It wasn’t like we had ice in Mieze. I looked down at my watch. “How long are you staying in town? Much as I’m enjoying catching up with you, I gotta get up the road to see my mom. I think something might be really wrong and she and Tiffany won’t tell me.”

  Monica pressed her lips together and looked down at the floor.

  “You know something? What is it?”

  She looked up at me and bit her lip.

  I stood up, towering over her. “What is going on? Why won’t anybody tell me anything? I can’t believe you know and won’t tell me what’s going on.” Tears started flowing down my face. I knew I was overly emotional from being jet-lagged, but still, they were all wrong for keeping the truth from me.

  Monica reached up for my hand and pulled me back into the chair. She reached over and took my other hand and squeezed them both tight. “When I called Tiffany a week ago to let her know I wanted to be here for your homecoming, she burst into tears and told me she was glad I was coming because she didn’t know how to handle this all by herself. Your mother wouldn’t let Tiffany tell you what was going on because she knew you were coming home soon anyway and didn’t want you to end your trip early.”

  The sad, serious expression on Monica’s face and the somber tone in her voice had my stomach churning in knots. “What . . . what is it?”

  “About three months ago . . .” Monica hesitated for a second and took a deep breath, “. . . your mother was diagnosed with cancer.”

  Four

  I let out a gushing breath like someone had let the air out of me. I felt like Monica had just kicked me in the gut. “Cancer? What kind? Oh, God, I can’t believe this.”

  Monica squeezed my hands. “Lung cancer.”

  I put my hand on my chest. “Lung cancer. Oh, God. That’s bad, huh?”

  Monica looked at the floor again. She was a nurse, so I knew she understood more than she would probably tell me. “I’m not sure how bad it is. If it just stayed in the lung and didn’t travel anywhere else, she could do pretty okay. It depends on the kind, how large it is, how aggressive it is, whether it’s spread . . . all sorts of stuff. If it’s localized and they can cut it out and maybe do radiation and chemo . . .” Monica shrugged, not making me feel any better.

  I stared at Monica like she was speaking Swahili. “What are you saying? Or not saying? Just tell me the truth. Don’t try to protect my feelings. I need to know what’s going on.”

  Monica reached over and took my hand again. “I don’t know yet, Trina. I don’t want to say too much until I get more information. Okay?”

  I nodded and sat still for a few minutes. Then I got up and marched over to the bottom of the steps. “Tiffany, get down here now,” I yelled as loud as I could.

  Monica rose and waddled over to me. “Don’t get mad at her, Trina. She’s been a wreck handling this all by herself.”

  “Well, she didn’t have to. She should have called me the minute she found out.” I called up the steps again. “Tiffany, I know you hear me. Get your butt down here.”

  Monica put a hand on my arm. “Trina, please don’t give her a hard time. Your mother threatened her and made her swear not to tell. She was scared to death when she talked to me. You know how your mom can be.”

  I softened. I did know how Moms could be. As much as she was loving, she could be stubborn, mean, and downright scary at times. Even at thirty, Tiffany was still scared of her and would do anything to please her.

  When Tiffany finally emerged from her room and came down the steps, her eyes were bloodshot red and swollen. She must have been crying in anticipation of Monica telling me about Moms’s diagnosis. Instead of yelling at her, I took her in my arms. “Come here, baby girl.” I squeezed her tight, and she sobbed.

  “I was so scared Moms was gonna die before you got home. And that she’d be mad at me if I told and that you’d be mad at me if I didn’t. She looks so sick, Sissy. I can’t handle it anymore.” She melted into a puddle of tears.

  I led her over to the couch and sat her down beside me. I cradled her in my arms and rocked her until she stopped crying. I was sorry she’d had to go through this without me.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine, Tiffy. Moms isn’t gonna die. She’s gonna be just fine. Okay? Don’t worry. And I’m not mad at you. I know how Moms can be. Stop crying, okay?”

  She nodded and sniffled on my shoulder. “Everything’s gonna be okay?”

  “Of course, baby girl. Everything will be fine.” Instantly we were transformed back to years ago, after Daddy left. Nights when Moms worked late, and we were home by ourselves huddled in my bed, afraid of thunder and lightning or the boogeyman, or the bad men on our Baltimore row-house block. Or like the time when Moms was in a car accident, and our stupid Aunt Penny told us she was almost dead when all she had was a broken wrist. Or when one of Moms’s awful boyfriends would come over drunk. We’d hear them arguing and Moms getting slapped around before she could get to the kitchen to get her skillet or knife.

  I held Tiffany now like I had all those times to try to protect her from the pain of the world. No matter what was going on, I had always wanted to make sure she felt safe.

  “Come on, let’s go see her.” Monica brought Tiffany some tissue, and she blew her nose. She took both of our glasses into the kitchen, then came back and picked up my two empty water bottles and her still half-filled one.

  I watched her take them to the trash can. “Wait! You’re not gonna throw that away, are you?”

  She stopped with the bottles hanging midair over the trash can. “What?”

  “That water. The bottle is still half full.”

  Monica looked down at the water bottle and back at me like I was making a big deal out of nothing. I reached out for it. She brought it to me and I drained the rest, then gave her the bottle to throw away. Both her and Tiffany stared at me like I was crazy.

  “What, they don’t have water in Africa?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Tiffany. “You have no idea.”

  “I don’t know why you drank all that water. You’re gonna have to stop and pee at least three times on the way to Baltimore,” Tiffany said.

  I chuckled at the thought of shocking them by stopping on the side of the freeway and digging a hole behind the bushes to use the bathroom. “I’ll be fine. Just let me grab some toilet paper to take.”

  They both stared at me again.

  “Oh. I guess they’ll have it wherever we go . . . never mind. Tiffy, you ready? Monica, I’ll get to see you tomorrow, right?”

  Tiffany bit her lip. “Well, actually I was hoping Monica would take you. I need to stay here and clean out your car since you’ll probably need it back now.” She looked down
and to the right.

  My eyes widened. “What? You need to . . . what?”

  She burst into tears again. “I can’t do it, Sissy. I can’t go see her today. I’ve seen her every day this week. Every time I see her, it makes me more sad and depressed. And I can’t handle being there the first time you see her.” She looked up at me, her doll eyes wide open. “I have a job interview tomorrow. I need to be ready. I know you want me to get this job so I can get my own car and get my own place so you can have your life back. Right?” She blinked her long lashes a few times.

  I couldn’t look at her. I just turned to Monica and said, “Do you mind driving me?”

  “Of course not. That’s what I’m here for. And we have so much more to catch up on anyway.” She winked, and I knew I wasn’t off the hook with telling her about my uninvited romance.

  I thought about the newspaper tucked in my suitcase, wondering if she even knew what was going on. “Yeah, you’re right. We do.”

  Five

  I’d thought my carsickness on the way home from the airport was because of Tiffany’s crazy driving, but once we got on 495 headed to Baltimore, it felt like Monica was zooming at a hundred miles an hour too. I gritted my teeth and clutched the door handle.

  Monica looked over at me. “You okay?”

  I nodded, then shook my head. “I think I just need to get used to being in a car again.”

  “Well, I assure you I’m a safe driver. Kevin would kill me if I let anything happen to me or his baby.” She grinned.

  It made me happy to see her so happy. When she dropped me off at the airport two years ago, I never imagined that when I got back, she and Kevin would still be married, and she’d be pregnant with his child.

  Almost as if she heard my thoughts, she said, “Remember when you were about to get on the plane to leave for Africa, and you gave me that scripture that says what Satan meant for evil, God was gonna turn it around for good and that somehow, my life would end up being better than it ever had been before?”

  I nodded.

  “Isn’t God awesome? He did just what you said. Even more than I could have imagined.”

  I decided it was a good time to broach the subject. “So, what ever happened to Bishop Walker and the guy that molested Kevin?”

  Her face clouded over a little. She gestured her head toward the backseat. “Grab that newspaper back there. You’ll see. A bunch of drama just broke. I was afraid this would happen.”

  “I read the article while I was in the airport waiting for Tiffany,” I admitted. “I was trying to see if you knew.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I know. Kevin mailed off the letters to the Bishop’s council last July. I guess it took them this long to do their investigation and find out that what he said was true. What saddens me is that a couple of the boys that came forward have been molested in the last year. I wonder what would have happened if Kevin had come forward sooner. I wonder how many other boys there were in the last twenty years. It’s scary when you think about it. How many men’s lives were potentially destroyed like Kevin’s would have been if we hadn’t come across Exodus ministries?”

  “What if . . .” I didn’t want to mention the unthinkable.

  “What?” She glanced over at my face. “What if during the investigation Kevin’s past gets leaked out?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’d do. Our life has been great for the past nine months. Our marriage is better than I could have ever imagined. His first album has been off the charts since it debuted. He and our friend, David, are working on a new project with a group they’ve started down there. We just moved into our new house. And we’re gonna have a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I don’t want it to get leaked. I’m happy now, and I don’t want anything to mess that up.”

  I pried my fingers from their death grip on the seatbelt to rub Monica’s arm. “I hear you, Monnie. It’s gonna be okay. God didn’t work all this stuff out to let things go bad now. He’s gonna take good care of you guys.”

  She smiled and took my hand. I wanted to tell her to put it back on the steering wheel, but reminded myself that Monnie was the safest driver I knew, in spite of being a little heavy on the gas.

  “You’re right, God has been too faithful for me to even worry.” She put her hand back on the steering wheel. “You know the craziest part? Kevin says he wouldn’t mind. Since he finished his classes, Kevin’s worked closely with Pastor Ford, the head of the deliverance ministry who wrote the book I told you about. Kevin feels like if his story came out, he would use the platform to minister to people who have experienced sexual abuse and are struggling with their sexual identity. He says that since God sent people into his life to help him get delivered, he should reach back and do the same. He says he’d be able to represent as a successful gospel artist with a strong healthy marriage and children—that if he could overcome, so could they.”

  I considered it. “He may be right.”

  Monica gripped the steering wheel tight and squeezed her eyes shut for a second, almost causing me to have a fit. “No, I can’t handle that. I have to admit, sometimes it’s still a little embarrassing to me. And what if the gospel world rejects him and they don’t buy his albums or go to his concerts? What would he do? This might sound bad, but I’ve gotten used to being the kept wife. Other than spending a few hours a week doing personal training and step classes at me and Alaysia’s gym, I like not having to work. And when the baby comes, I definitely don’t want to work.”

  “Girl, you know that’s where me and you differ. I wouldn’t ever depend on a man to support me. I would never trust a man that much.”

  “Yeah, girl, we’re still praying for your deliverance in that area.”

  “I don’t need deliverance. I’m happy being just how I am.”

  “What, untrusting and lonely?”

  “No, independent and self-sufficient. And I’m not lonely.”

  “Girl, I don’t see how you do it. I thought I would die in the eighteen months without Kevin. I like having a man in my life.”

  I shook my head. “Naw, girl. I ain’t like that.”

  Monica snuck a peek at me. “Come on. You don’t ever get lonely?”

  I shrugged. “I always got something to do. I ain’t got time to be worried about no man. I don’t need anybody slowing me down or distracting me from my purpose.”

  Monica sucked her teeth. “I ain’t got that anointing. Maybe you’re one of those women who’s called to be single. I never realized you were like that. I just thought you were taking a break because of your battle with the fornication demon. I didn’t know you planned to stay alone forever.”

  I had to laugh. I didn’t grow up in church and before I got saved, I had my share of sexual encounters with more than a few men. Even after I gave my life to Christ, it was awhile before I could give it up. It took many days of crying out at the altar, immersing myself deep in the Word, and being mentored by an awesome women’s ministry at my new church to get free. I wasn’t ever trying to get entangled like that again.

  In spite of the number of men I had slept with in the past, I had never been in a committed relationship. On my introspective days, I had to admit that I was afraid to give my heart to a man. I never wanted to experience the heartbreak and devastation I had seen my mom go through when my father left and in the few relationships she’d had after. I don’t think she ever recovered, and I wasn’t trying to let any man mess me up for life.

  “So what about the guy in Africa then?” Monica brought me out of my thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, what’s his name anyway? How old is he? What does he look like? Give me some details. You know a girl needs details.”

  “There’s really nothing to tell. We got close while I was over there and ministered a lot together. But now he’s there and I’m back here and that’s all there is to it.”

  I wished that was all there was to it. Because as much as I had tried to prevent it, Gabriel Woods had maneuvered his way into a place
in my heart where no man had ever been allowed before.

  “Dang, Trina. Humor me. Just give me a few details.”

  I exhaled to let her know I was annoyed by this conversation. She grinned to let me know she didn’t care nothing about me being aggravated with her relentless questions.

  “His name is Gabriel Woods. He’s thirty-nine years old. He grew up poor in Detroit, and that made him want to become an urban community developer. He transformed some neighborhoods in the inner city there and made a huge amount of money in the process. And then God turned his heart to Africa. He’s been instrumental in building houses, roads, wells, and hospitals in the area where I was stationed. He pours most of the money his businesses in the States make into Africa. He’s lived back and forth between Mozambique and the States for the past ten years. There. Is that enough details for you? Not that any of this matters.”

  “Wow . . . he sounds intriguing and worldly and smart . . . and rich. You sure you don’t feel anything for him?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can you stop at the nearest rest stop? I have to pee.”

  “We just passed an exit. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

  “Because you were grilling me about Gabe.”

  “Gabe? So he has a nickname. That’s a good sign.”

  I exhaled loudly. “Monnie, just pull over and let me pee in the bushes.” I opened the glove compartment to her rental car to see if there were any napkins in there. I should have brought my roll of toilet paper like I’d planned.

  “Eeeeww, no way. You’re back home now. Like the Bible says, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In America, we use toilets.”

  “Fine, Monnnie. I need you to stop somewhere soon, then.” I chuckled. “Do as the Romans do? Where is that in the Bible? I thought you told me you’d been studying the Word more since you started going to your new church.”

  “I have. That’s in the Bible . . . somewhere.”

  We both laughed.

  After about five more minutes, we pulled off the freeway and into a gas station. We both got out and hurried through the little convenience store to the restrooms like we were afraid we wouldn’t make it. Me from all the water I drank, Monica probably from just being pregnant. Monica walked in first. She turned back around quickly and bumped into me. “Oh gross, it stinks in there and it’s dirty.”