One Sunday at a Time

by E. N. Joy

  The girls were two of the sweetest kids at the church. They made Deborah want to try for a little girl. But, heck, she could hardly handle the two boys she had. Deborah looked at the picture and admired the creamy, light caramel complexion of Norma, the youngest girl, and the deep chocolate complexion of, Adele, the older one. With that brown hair somewhere between curly and kinky that both girls had, those brown eyes, and those pudgy noses, they had clearly been swallowed up by Paige’s genes.

  “They look just like their mother,” Deborah said, shaking her head at how they were Paige’s identical mini me’s.

  “Right.” Dr. Vanderdale turned the picture back in his own direction. He smiled as he stared at the little girls. “They look exactly like their mother, who, it goes without saying, is black.” Dr. Vanderdale chuckled, then said, “I remember when Adele was first born. My housekeeper, Miss Nettie, who is also black, said, ‘No way is she going to get a pass. She doesn’t even pass the brown paper bag test.’”

  He stopped laughing. “I had no idea what she meant by that, so I asked, and she explained it. I was appalled to learn that back in the day, some blacks weren’t admitted into clubs if they were darker than a brown paper bag. I felt so ashamed. Here I’d been working with African Americans practically all my life and had never bothered to learn anything about their culture and their oppression as a people, other than what had been portrayed on television or what they’d shared with me. And then I had the nerve to be the grandfather of black children. Not only did I go back to college and enrolled in some African American studies courses, but I also did my own research. I asked questions. Had sittings with some elders and soaked in everything they shared with me.”

  Deborah was amazed. “Wow. I commend you.”

  “No need to commend me. This is something I should have done when I decided to work with and try to help anyone outside of my own race. Different cultures operate differently. I was doing myself, my patients, and my staff a disservice by not knowing the depth and the history of who they were.”

  Deborah’s shoulders tightened. She shifted her body, trying to find comfort, to no avail. Her eyes were cast downward.

  “What was that?” Dr. Vanderdale asked, jotting something on the tablet that rested on the desk in front of him.

  “What?” Deborah shrugged her shoulders.

  “You tensed up and cut off eye contact with me.”

  Realizing she had, Deborah purposely loosened up and looked the doctor square in the eyes. She was well aware that she looked like a kid who claimed she didn’t steal the cookie from the cookie jar but who had crumbs all around her mouth. Apparently, the doctor was well aware too, at least according to the expression on his face. But Deborah decided if the doctor didn’t say anything else about it, then she wouldn’t, either.

  “Can I offer you a bottled water? Coffee or something?” Dr. Vanderdale asked, pushing his chair away from his desk and then standing. Deborah was new to his roster of clients. He hadn’t yet gotten a chance to feel her out or gain her trust. He wasn’t going to push. Not yet.

  Deborah was on the fence, but not regarding her thirst. She questioned whether or not she wanted a therapist who didn’t call her on her stuff. Otherwise, how else would he or she really get to the bottom of things? But at the same time, did she really want to get to the bottom of things? The therapist she’d seen before had merely scratched the surface. A scratch could be dealt with. And Deborah had dealt with it, thanks to what she called her “happy pills.” The pills had helped with her anxiety, her quick temper, her depression, and mood swings. In a nutshell, those were all the things the old therapist had diagnosed Deborah with. If pills were what it would take to keep Deborah from popping off, then she’d gladly pop them instead. And she had up until learning that she was pregnant with her second child.

  After only a few months of being on the meds, Deborah could see where the pills were benefiting her. Between the pills and talking with her therapist, she had functioned in a manner that was pleasing to her and to those around her. Especially her son, who once had had to bear the brunt of Deborah’s behavior, thanks to him being the only one around who she could take things out on. But then came Lynox. Even though now she realized that as her husband, he was the best thing that could have ever happened to her, back when she had reconnected with him, he had been her main stress trigger. It had all been unbeknownst to him, though.

  As an aspiring author with a huge ego to match his larger-than-life aura, Lynox had reached out to Deborah to possibly edit and then agent his manuscript. Her reputation had proceeded her not only in their small town of Malvonia, Ohio, but in the literary world as well. After a game of cat and mouse, Deborah finally gave in to Lynox’s advances. Even after she found out that he was the leftovers of a church member named Helen, she still continued seeing him. But then her first love came back into the picture. Ballin’ out of control, literally, as a high-paid athlete who played professional basketball in Chile, he talked Deborah into thinking they could pick up where they’d left off prior to him leaving the country.

  Wanting to right a haunting wrong, one that had tormented Deborah for years, and praying that the grass would be greener and that God would give her and her ex a baby to replace the one she’d aborted years ago, she sacrificed her present with Lynox for a future with her ex. Sure enough, Deborah got pregnant. She wanted to believe God had planted the baby she’d aborted in her womb again. All would be well. But there were no words for the devastation Deborah experienced when she learned that halfway around the world her baby daddy already had a wife and a kid. That alone would have been enough to drive any woman insane.

  Realizing she was never going to be any more than the secret side chick, Deborah headed back to Malvonia and picked up her life again, and Lynox too. This time it was Deborah who had to do the pursuing, but eventually she became Lynox’s girl . . . again. Unfortunately, though, she didn’t have time to tell Lynox about her child before he revealed that his deal breaker in a relationship was a woman who already had children. He wasn’t a ready-made family kind of guy. Instead of coming clean automatically with Lynox, Deborah had this bright idea to get him to fall in love with her first so that when she did tell him she had a child, he would be in too deep to even care. Hiding her son and dealing with the judgment of her mother and pastor ultimately pushed Deborah to her maximum limit.

  Deborah realized she was on a razor’s edge when her pastor reported her to children’s services. Pastor Margie had overheard what she considered Deborah verbally abusing her son. Pastor Margie had also happened to record the incident with her cell phone. It was when Deborah heard herself, in her own voice, treating her son like a dog in the street that she knew she needed help. She got help. Therapy and happy pills made for a perfect combination to improve her mental state. Then, in spite of finding out that she had a son from a previous relationship, Lynox proposed to her. They married, and just three months ago she gave birth to their own son together. Even though upon finding out she was with child, Deborah had to stop taking the pills, marital bliss and a blessed pregnancy kept her on cloud nine . . . or so she thought.

  In the midst of everything, her therapy visits became far and few between, then dwindled right down to no visits at all. Joy still filled her spirit, though, even after giving birth to her youngest son, Tatum. But then, when he hit his two-month-old mark, Deborah started falling into a familiar slump. This didn’t go unnoticed by Lynox, who suggested that she consider calling her therapist.

  “Maybe you should go back to counseling at least,” he suggested to his wife.

  “Why?” Deborah snapped. “So he can put me back on dope to cope? What? You can’t deal with the real me?”

  “The real me,” Deborah now whispered under her breath.

  “Pardon me,” Dr. Vanderdale said as he returned to his desk with two water bottles. He held one in front of Deborah.

  “I didn’t say I wanted water,” Deborah told him.

  Dr. Vanderdale
grinned. “Mrs. Chase, you’re going to find that with me, there is a lot you are not going to have to say. I’ll just know. Even when you don’t think I know, trust me, I do.” He winked and then opened his own bottle of water and took a sip. He then placed the cap back on the bottle and said, “But I think it would make for a much better process if you would come out and say things on your own.”

  Deborah remained silent.

  “The real you.”

  “Huh? What?” Deborah asked.

  “When I was walking back to my desk, I heard you mumble under your breath. You said, ‘The real me.’ That’s why you clammed up a moment ago. Right?”

  Deborah’s eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets. Darn, this man is good, Deborah thought. Still, she chose not to respond.

  “Like I said, Mrs. Chase—”

  “Can you call me Deborah please?” she interrupted. Mrs. Chase sounded so professional. She didn’t want to constantly be reminded that she was receiving professional help. She’d rather it seem more like she was simply talking to a friend. “All my friends call me Deborah.”

  Dr. Vanderdale smiled. “Certainly.” He folded his hands in front of him, intertwining his fingers. “Like I said, Deborah, it will make the process much easier if you tell me things and don’t make me guess. That makes me feel like a psychic you are paying two dollars and ninety-nine cents a minute to speak with and gives me the impression that you are trying to test me by making me do all the talking to see if I get it right.”

  Deborah chuckled. A part of her had kind of sort of been doing just that. And she practically was paying this man $2.99 per minute, if not more. Thank God she had top-notch health insurance that was covering 90 percent of her sessions.

  “I do know some things based on the forms and questions I had you answer online prior to your appointment. I printed everything out and read your file last night. But I prefer not to rely on what you put on paper. I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “Understood.” Deborah nodded her understanding.

  “Then can we address your clamming up a moment ago?”

  Deborah took a deep breath. It was clear this man was not going to move on until Deborah spelled it out for him. “I’ve never wanted my husband to experience the real me, to know what I refer to as the dark side of me. The ugly side of me. The side of me that pops off. That cusses and says hurtful things simply because I’m hurting. The depressed me.” Deborah spoke it like a true champ, owning up to it. But inside she wanted to cry for having to admit that this who she was. She’d managed to hide it from everyone around her. No matter which one of those emotions she was experiencing, she had always known how to paint on a smile. But lately, she hadn’t been so skillful at it. Out in public, yeah, she’d still been able to hide any depression, pain, hurt, and anxiety she might have been experiencing within, but at home, it had become harder and harder to be a fake. “I don’t even want to know that person, let alone introduce her to the one person whose opinion of me I truly care about.”

  Dr. Vanderdale didn’t interject anything, since Deborah seemed to be on a roll. He listened.

  “So it struck a nerve when you said that you’d be doing your grandchildren a disservice by not knowing the depth and the history of who they are.” Deborah paused.

  Dr. Vanderdale figured this was the time for him to speak. “Why did that hit a nerve?”

  “Because even though I might have known who I was marrying, I made sure my husband didn’t know who he was marrying. I made sure, deliberately, that he never knew the depth of me. That he never knew what was underneath the phony smiles, or even which smiles were phony.”

  “So he didn’t know about you previously seeing a therapist and being on medication?”

  “He did, but not the extent of it all,” Deborah confessed. “He even thought that he had something to do with me having to get on meds.” Deborah briefly explained to Dr. Vanderdale the situation regarding Lynox not wanting a ready-made family. She relayed some of the side comments he’d periodically made, not knowing Deborah had a child. “He knew that all the cartwheels I had to do in order to hide my son from him became too much for me. He even apologized.” Deborah stared off into space and thought back to the day she had shared with Lynox the fact that she’d been seeing a therapist and taking pills.

  “Forget about those pills,” Lynox had said. “Those are temporary. The same way a person never forgets how to ride a bike or how to love, they never forget who they truly are inside. Or as you church folks would say, who God called you to be.” Lynox had pointed to Deborah’s heart. “She’s in there, and with God’s help and mine and your son’s, you aren’t going to need a pill to be that person. You got that?”

  A tear slid down Deborah’s face as she replayed Lynox’s words in her head. He’d had so much faith in her mental healing. She truly felt as though she was letting him down by even being in this doctor’s office. “I failed him. He thought I’d get better, and I’ve only gotten worse, only he doesn’t know it. And it’s been killing me, trying to keep the beast at bay.”

  Dr. Vanderdale raised an eyebrow as he began to write. “Beast? You think you’re a beast?”

  “I can act like one. I even went as far as to cut up in church one time, although no one witnessed it, except for the person who I was cutting up at. I knew I was getting out of control then. Usually, I’m good on Sundays, at church anyhow. But I learned that it’s much easier to be a Christian at church than it is at home. At home we have our walls of Jericho. The walls hide our sin and actions from the public, of course, but not from God.”

  Dr. Vanderdale looked at his tablet, where he had written a few things down. He then looked back up at Deborah. “You said you’re good on Sundays at church. What about when you’re not at church?”

  Deborah closed her eyes and exhaled. “Sundays are the worst days for my depression. I don’t know what it is about Sundays, but when I open my eyes to daylight, it feels so dark. Sometimes merely thinking about having to get out of bed and go to church makes it worse. Who wants to see all those happy, joyful, praising folks when I’m feeling miserable inside? During service I find myself rolling my eyes and sucking my teeth, thinking that half of them are acting just as phony as me. That underneath all that ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Praise the Lord’ is a sad and depressed person too. Lately, I don’t want to go to church more times than I do.”

  “Then why do you go?” Dr. Vanderdale asked so that he could analyze Deborah’s response. “You don’t have to go.”

  “I do if I want to keep the title of Christian. How can I call myself a Christian if I won’t even go to the house of the Lord to fellowship with other Christians? Plus, don’t get me wrong, but church isn’t a bad place. I love the people. I love the atmosphere, and what I love most is the possibility. The possibility that one Sunday I’m going to walk out of there and really be a changed person. They say the church is a spiritual hospital for the sick, so I go on a wing and a prayer of getting healed. So you see, I do have to go.”

  “Deborah, you do know that God can heal you right in your own living room, right?” Dr. Vanderdale wasn’t trying to discourage Deborah from attending church at all. His wife and his former daughter-in-law both attended New Day. He’d witnessed himself the change in his wife’s life when she started fellowshipping at New Day. But this wasn’t about his wife. It was about Deborah. “God is everywhere.”

  A lightbulb went off in Deborah’s head. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Dr. Vanderdale saw a glimmer of hope in Deborah’s eyes. “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to church, seeking a healing, but as a Christian, you must know that God is omnipresent. His miracles, signs, wonders, and blessings are not confined to the church walls.”

  Listening to Dr. Vanderdale made Deborah glad she’d chosen his practice from which to receive her treatment. He wasn’t a Holy Roller who felt that the only way she could be healed was through the laying on of hands and prayer. But at the same time, he wasn’t afra
id to speak on God or include Him in the healing process. That was a plus for Deborah.

  Once upon a time she’d visited a Christian counselor, and the woman had been gung ho about making everything about Jesus’s healing stripes and not about how Deborah could participate in the healing process. The fact that Deborah was even taking medication at the time hadn’t sat well with this counselor, and she had had no problem expressing this. That had turned Deborah off a tad. It had also confused her with her therapist, who had also been a Christian and who had prescribed the pills, contradicting the counselor, who had felt Deborah didn’t need them. As far as Deborah was concerned, though, the verdict was still out. Maybe the pills had been nothing more than a temporary fix, and maybe not. Maybe it had all been in Deborah’s head, and the pills had worked only because Deborah had so desperately wanted some type of help. Heck, they could have been sugar pills, for all she knew. But that was neither here nor there. What mattered was what would work for her now.

  “I know that God is everywhere,” Deborah assured Dr. Vanderdale. “When you first said that, it reminded me of something that took place a few years ago.”

  “It must have reminded you of something good. I saw the way your eyes lit up.”

  “Yes.” Deborah nodded. “Years ago I got an abortion. The guilt and shame of it was one of the things that was painful, making me hurt. That’s not the good part, of course,” Deborah explained. “The good part is something I’ll never forget, which was getting delivered from that pain and shame right on my living room floor.” Deborah’s eyes filled with tears of joy. “It was so amazing.” A tear slid down her face. “I wish God would purge and deliver me from all the other mess that’s plaguing me as well. All the other mess that is tearing up my mind and making me cra . . .” Deborah’s words trailed off.

  The fact that Deborah was about to say a certain word didn’t go unnoticed by Dr. Vanderdale. Even though he had a PhD, that didn’t necessarily mean it took one to know what his patient was about to say. “Go ahead, Deborah. Finish your thought.”