“At least you got parents you can see and spend time with.”
That certainly put things in perspective. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess what upset me more than anything was his anger and his attitude. Give him half a chance and he’d line up every homosexual in the city and have them executed. I’m not about to participate in the Gay Pride Parade, but I think he’s extreme. Can you imagine if he ever found out about Kevin?”
Alaysia grimaced. “Oooh, that would be bad.”
“If he ever said any of the stuff he said today around Kevin, it would kill him. He respects my father a lot.”
“He’s old school. This older generation isn’t as tolerant of alternative lifestyles.”
“Like I said, I ain’t about to march, but the anger and hatred he has is a little over the top.”
I took off my shoes and massaged my feet. “Girl, they had me all over Atlanta today.”
“Why don’t you soak and go to bed. I have some lavender bath salts.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
Before I could sink into the tub good, Alaysia pounded on the door.
I sunk deeper into the water. “Go ’way. I’m trying to relax.”
She threw open the door with a panicked look on her face, holding the phone. A look that could only mean bad news. Did something happen to Mommy and Daddy?
“It’s Kevin’s drummer, Ricky. Kevin was in a car accident.”
53
I tapped my foot as the elevator made its slow ascent to the fourth floor. Seems like I’d spent the evening waiting on airplanes, taxis and now this stupid elevator. I was lucky enough to catch the last flight to D.C.
I tried to make myself stay calm. Ricky said Kevin’s injuries were minor, and they expected to release him from the hospital soon.
Kevin smiled when I walked into his room. “I can’t believe you flew all the way here for a concussion. Not that I’m complaining.”
I walked over to the bed and threw my arms around him, then stepped back to inspect him. “What happened? Are you okay? Is it really just a concussion? Did you break anything?”
Kevin held up his hands. “Slow down, Monnie. I’m fine. The only reason I’m in the hospital is because I’m this big star now. If I was a regular person, they would have sent me home from the ER.”
“I still don’t understand,” a deep voice behind me said.
I turned around to see Ricky and Aaron sitting in the corner of the large private room.
“He should be dead,” Ricky said. “No way he should have walked away from that kind of accident. Both the police and the ambulance people said there must have been an angel in the passenger seat because they’d never seen anything like it.”
“Hey, guys.” I walked over to hug them, crying tears of relief now that I knew Kevin was okay.
Aaron said, “I’m telling you, Monica. If I didn’t believe it before, I believe it now. Kevin is a man of God with a serious purpose. The devil tried to kill him last night, but God must have some greater reason for him to be here. The car is completely totaled.”
“Yo, man. Stop scaring my wife.” Kevin frowned at Aaron. “It wasn’t all that.”
“Man, you need to quit lying and praise God. Don’t act like He didn’t work a miracle to keep your black behind on earth. If it was me, I’d be trying to hustle my way inside the pearly gates right about now,” Ricky said.
I walked over to Kevin to examine him again.
“Don’t listen to them, Monica. It wasn’t that bad.”
“What happened?”
“Monnie, it’s no big deal. I—”
“Kevin, what happened?” I clicked the “off” button on the bedside remote to the large TV hanging over the bed.
“I was driving home from rehearsal and next thing I know, the paramedics were pulling me out of the car. I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember? Did you black out?”
“I bet he fell asleep. I told him not to drive. I even offered to drive him. He said—”
“Ricky, don’t you two have somewhere y’all are ’sposed to be?”
“A’ight, man. You can throw us out, but we can talk to her later. We’ll make sure she knows the whole story ’cause you ain’t got the good sense God gave a frog.” Aaron kissed my cheek and walked to the door.
Ricky hugged me and whispered, “Don’t leave ’til he tells the whole truth.” As they left, a waft of air carrying the smell of sickness came in the door. Reminded me how much I hated hospitals.
I sat on the edge of Kevin’s bed. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“They trippin’. The car is a little banged up, but it ain’t as bad as they trying to make it out to be.”
“Kevin, I can get a copy of the police report, and I can have a very intelligent conversation with your nurses and doctors. If there’s something I need to know, you need to be the one to tell me.”
Kevin’s fidgeted with his sheet and looked past me out the window. “I fell asleep behind the wheel. I was driving and felt myself getting sleepy, but figured I could make it if I rolled the window down. I crashed into a median and flipped over three times. The car is totaled.” He looked up at me. “You should be talking to a mortician instead of me. I don’t know why God saved my life, but it couldn’t have been nothing but Him.” He waited for my reaction.
“Anything else?”
Kevin let out a deep breath. “They checked my blood. They found too high levels of the stuff I’ve been taking to help me sleep.”
My mouth fell open. “Stuff you’ve been taking to sleep?”
“Monnie, it’s no big deal—”
“It’s a very big deal. What are you taking and why? Last time I saw you, you weren’t having any trouble sleeping.”
“That’s ’cause you were there. I . . . I don’t sleep at night. If I don’t take the pills, I either lay in bed all night staring at the ceiling, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Or have bad dreams.” He let out a deep breath. “The nightmares are back.”
“What nightmares?”
He shook his head and looked out the window. I moved to block his view of the window. “What nightmares?”
“Nightmares of when Deacon . . . I mean, the deacon, you know, molested me. Nightmares of me and Trey, nightmares of you walking in on us and killing me. And some others.”
“What others?” He wouldn’t look at me. “Kevin?” I lifted his chin. “What others?”
“Monnie, I . . . I didn’t quite tell you the whole story.”
I waited. My heart was pounding. What else was there to tell? Could I take it?
He didn’t say anything. Just sat there fingering the edges of his hospital gown.
“Kevin, the only way we can get back together is if I know we’re completely honest about everything in our relationship. You have to be able to trust me enough to tell me everything, and I have to trust that you’re telling me everything. No more secrets. I’ve grown a lot since we’ve been apart. Whatever you have to say, I can take it.” I hope I can take it.
Kevin lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Remember I told you about when I was ten and how confused I was afterward?”
I nodded.
“Well . . . when I was about thirteen, I was still dealing with all the . . . feelings. I didn’t have anybody to talk to. I went to our youth pastor at the time. He was nice to us kids and would have sleepovers at his house and took us to the movies and out to eat sometimes.” Kevin paused. “One day after service, he told my mom he was gonna take me out for dinner because he wanted to talk to me. I went with him, his wife, and two daughters. I went over his house afterward, and he asked me how I was doing. He said he had been watching me, and I seemed sad all the time. He said that God gave him a heart for young people, and it burdened him to see anybody as sad as me.”
I took Kevin’s hand. God, please don’t let him tell me what I think he’s about to tell me.
�
��So I told him everything. About what happened and all the thoughts I was battling with. I cried and he hugged me. He said he would take care of the deacon and make sure nothing like that ever happened again. He told me I could trust him. And then he started touching me. And then . . .” Kevin put his head in his hands. “His wife and daughters were right upstairs. He had turned the game on real loud and told them men folk were watching football. I screamed a couple of times, but nobody heard.”
I wanted to run screaming from the room. How could this have happened? Both times at the hands of leaders in the church. By men that a young Kevin should have been able to trust. I tried to keep my reaction to myself, but the flood of emotions was too much for me to handle.
“Why? Why would they do that to you? How could they do that to you? They’re supposed to be men of God.” I hugged him tight, like I could squeeze away the memories and the pain. It was all I could do, but I knew that it wasn’t enough. “Kevin, we’ve got to get you some help. You can’t keep living like this.”
“I will, Monnie, I promise. As soon as I finish the tour.”
“Forget the tour!”
“Forget” wasn’t the word I wanted to use, but I was trying not to let the cussing demon overtake me again.
“I can’t forget the tour. I can’t walk away from my career. It’s all I’ve ever worked for. All I’ve ever wanted.” He looked at me, his eyes full of passion. “Music saved my life. When I wanted to die, when I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I always had my music. When I was sad, all I had to do was play my piano and I would feel better. When I woke up with nightmares, I would play my guitar until I could go back to sleep. Sometimes I’d fall asleep with the guitar in the bed with me.” His eyes pleaded with me. “If you take my music away from me, I won’t have anything.”
I ran my fingers across his cheeks. “I’m not trying to take it away from you. I’m trying to help you. Look at you, Kevin. You’re in the hospital because you had to take pills to get to sleep. You fell asleep behind the wheel and wrecked your car. You said it yourself, you should be dead right now. Is that how you want to live?”
“ No. ”
“I’m not asking you to give up anything. I’m just asking you to get some help.”
“You don’t know how it is. People in the church . . . they don’t treat people well who are . . . who have my history.”
“Forget them, Kevin. It’s not about them. It’s about you getting past the drama you went through so you can go on with your life.”
“And what kind of life is that? Without music, without you? What else do I have?”
“Who said it would be without me?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we can get you some help. We can work through this together. I told you about the book I read and the ministry in Atlanta. They’ve been through it. The pastor ’s story was worse than yours. And he’s delivered. And married. With four kids. Four babies, Kevin. Remember our babies we talked about?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “But I tried that before. I thought I was delivered and look what happened. What if I think I’m delivered and it happens again? I can’t go through that again. I can’t put you through that again.”
“There’s more to it than somebody praying for you and declaring you delivered. They take you through this intensive program where you deal with the heart of the issue. You buried it. The program is designed to uproot it. Completely destroy it at the core.”
I could tell he was thinking about it because his eyes were blinking fast. “And you’ll go through this with me? You’ll stay with me?”
I nodded. God help me to be able to do this.
“And if I don’t? Are you saying you’ll only come back to me if I go through this program?”
“I can’t watch you waste away to nothing and have nightmares and sing on stage night after night pretending nothing’s wrong. I can’t be worried every time you leave the house wondering if you’re coming back or whether you’ll wreck the car and not be as blessed as you were this time. I can’t live a lie for the sake of the ministry’.” I mimicked Bishop Walker ’s voice.
“Why do you hate him so much?”
“Because he’s using you. He’s building his ministry on your back and doesn’t even care that you’re almost killing yourself. He knew the struggle you were going through all those years. Did he ever do anything to help you? No, he swept it under the rug and let you build his church with your talent.”
“He’s not like that. After that second episode, when I finally trusted somebody again, he was there for me. He treated me like a son. He never hurt me, ever.”
I put my hand on Kevin’s. I didn’t want to destroy his image of the only real father figure he ever had, but I wanted him to see the truth, as hard as it was to see. “Okay, Kevin.”
I put my arms around him and kissed his forehead. We sat there until a thought hit me.
“Kevin?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened to those two men? The men that abused you.”
He bit his upper lip. “Please, don’t ask me that question.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t like the answer.”
I pursed my lips.
“Aww, Monnie. I promise you don’t want to hear this.”
I wasn’t letting him out of it. He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes blinking fast. “The youth pastor was Pastor Hines.”
He sat for a minute, I guess to let it sink in.
My eyes widened. “Pastor Hines? As in the pastor who Bishop Walker ordained to be the pastor of our Alexandria Church? That Pastor Hines?”
Kevin nodded. “And Deacon Barnes.”
I jumped off the bed. “Deacon Barnes? The head deacon at Love and Faith?”
Kevin nodded again.
I shook my head in disbelief. “How could you not tell?” I paced around the room. “What if you’re not the only one? Think of how many other little boys they may have done the same thing to. Bishop Walker has put them in positions of leadership over other little boys.”
Kevin’s eyes widened. “I . . . I never thought of that.”
“How could you never think of that? How could you not tell?”
“They told me . . . they said they’d hurt me. They said I’d destroy the ministry if I ever told.”
“Destroy the ministry if you ever told what?” a deep voice boomed out.
I whipped around to see Bishop Walker’s tall frame filling the doorway.
54
“Well, ”well, well. If it isn’t the prodigal daughter.”
I gave a polite nod. “Bishop.”
He held out his arms. Last thing I felt like doing was hugging him. For Kevin’s sake, I did, and tried to keep a smile plastered on my face.
“I see Atlanta’s been good to you. You look absolutely beautiful. I heard the reports, but it’s better than I imagined.”
I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I don’t know whether it was because I knew he was running an underground pedophile ring in his churches or because of the way he licked his lips as he looked me up and down. I walked over to the bed and held Kevin’s hand.
“Hey, Bishop. Thanks for coming to see me,” Kevin said.
“Had to come check on my son. You feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, Bishop. They should be discharging me soon.”
“Good. I wanted to make sure I didn’t need to call off the anniversary concert.”
I cleared my throat. “You should call it off anyway. Kevin’s going to need some rest.”
“Monica, it’s nice to know you’re concerned about Kevin’s well being all of a sudden.”
I clenched my fists. OhLawdJesus, help me to hold my tongue.
He looked Kevin over. “Not a scratch. It’s truly a miracle from God. What better way to thank Him but to do the concert? It’ll show the enemy that even though he tried to kill you, he can’t touch a man sold out for God. What a p
owerful testimony.”
Kevin nodded. “Yeah, I do need to give God the glory for saving my life. The concert can go ahead as scheduled.”
I stared at Kevin. Was he serious? “I thought we talked about you needing some time off to get some rest, Kevin.”
“Monica, I’m not sure you’re in a position to know what Kevin needs right now. You’ve haven’t seen him in how long?”
I turned with my hand on my hip. “Bishop, I—”
“What she means is,” Kevin slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me to him, “we’ve been talking about me taking some time off after the tour and going to Atlanta to recuperate.”
Bishop glared at me like I was his archenemy. He smiled at Kevin. “Sure, Kevin. Looks like God is finally answering our prayers.” He smiled like he was responsible for bringing us back together. “Why do you need to go to Atlanta, though? I would think Monica would want to come back here. Spend some time with her parents, time at the church.”
“I think Kevin needs to be where he can focus on relaxing.” Did he really think I was coming anywhere near his church?
“And what about the choir? You know people are coming to Love and Faith just to hear you. Are you going to walk away from your ministry as it’s getting off the ground?”
“He’s not walking away. Just taking a break so when he comes back, he can be refreshed and rejuvenated,” I said.
Kevin’s eyes went back and forth between me and Bishop like he was watching a tennis match.
“Monica, when you left here, Kevin was a broken man. Through our time spent together, the Lord has begun to put the pieces back together. I know you’re concerned about him because of this accident, but how do we know you won’t hurt him all over again after the emotions have passed? I don’t think he could survive that.”
I clenched my teeth. “You don’t know anything about the pieces coming back together. If anything, he’s fallen more apart. You don’t know—”
“Monica, please.” Kevin pulled me to him and pressed his head into my stomach.
“Kevin.” I ran my fingers over his hair.
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