Trying to Stay Saved

by E. N. Joy

  “Put in work was exactly what I did. Maybe if you lost a little more weight, then you could get on top, and I wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

  Paige couldn’t believe her husband was using her insecurity against her, the fact that she felt she was too big, too jiggly to mount her husband. Her arms fell to the side as if made of stone. Talk about her self-esteem shrinking down to nothing. Just that morning as she slipped on her size fourteen pants, she’d felt good about herself. Down two sizes and feeling healthier than she’d ever felt in her life, she thought she was the stuff. The five minutes of quick lovemaking with Blake before they had to hurry out the door had made her feel good inside. The way Blake had made her feel in only five minutes, he had just destroyed with his words in only five seconds.

  “Finally!” Blake huffed as he moved Paige aside and walked into the open elevator.

  Paige just stood there, not wanting to take that first step into her reality; that the person who could make her feel whole was the same person who could break her down to nothing.

  “So are you coming or not? Or are you going to make me late again so that I might as well just turn over my checkbook to the woman?”

  Even though the words had stung her, had cut deep, Paige knew Blake hadn’t really meant what he’d said. He’d never had an issue with her weight before. When he first met her, she was a size sixteen. Well, she wore a size sixteen, but truth be told, a size eighteen is what she should have been wearing. Nonetheless, Blake had loved it. Now she was smaller and healthier, so he should have loved it even more. Once again, Paige surmised that this change in her husband’s attitude had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the stress his mother’s lawsuit was putting on him. Once it was all said and done with, he’d go back to being the man she fell in love with. So Paige made her mind up that she was along for the ride through thick and thin. Not just the ride on the elevator, but wherever else her marriage took her.

  “No, uh, I mean, yes, I’m, uh, I’m coming. I’m coming,” Paige said in a soft voice.

  She hopped into the elevator just before the doors closed and stood by her man.

  “Good, you’re here. I was just about to call your cell phone,” Blake’s attorney, Randall, said, relieved. He’d nearly pounced on Blake as he and Paige exited the elevator. “The plaintiff is already here. Everybody’s waiting in the conference room. It’s right this way.” Randall began leading the way to the conference room. “Oh, excuse my manners,” he said, still keeping up a good pace as Blake and Paige trailed behind him. “You must be Mrs. Dickenson.” He turned slightly to extend his hand to Paige, but still kept it moving.

  “Yes, I am. Pleased to meet you.” Paige shook his hand while she tried to keep up with him.

  “It’s great that you could come. A supporting wife is always a good look,” Randall stated as they arrived at a door with a sign on it that read CONFERENCE ROOM 2. “So are you ready for this?” Randall asked Blake as he put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Are you ready?” Blake shot back at him.

  “Look, I know I mainly deal in real-estate law, but trust me, I got this. From what you’ve told me, this woman hasn’t got a chance at getting her hands on one red cent of your money.”

  Paige ran her hand up and down Blake’s back to reassure him that she was there to support him. “Are you ready, sweetheart?” she repeated Randall’s initial question.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Blake replied. “Let’s do it.”

  “Mrs. Dickenson?” Randall looked at Paige for her reply. She simply nodded that she was ready. “Alrighty then. Here we go.”

  Randall gave the door two small knocks while putting his hand on the knob and opening it.

  “Come on in,” the three could hear a female voice order from the inside. “If your client is here, then we’re all set.”

  Neither Blake nor Paige had any expectations about what Blake’s mother would look like; what she would be like. In all actuality, they hadn’t even shared a conversation on what his moment would be like. Blake hadn’t wanted to talk about the woman he couldn’t even remember, let alone meet her. But now, regardless of whether he liked it, he was standing in the very same room with her.

  Four women were already seated at the conference table. Upon Blake, Paige, and Randall entering the room, one stood. Automatically Paige and Blake knew it was Ms. Turner, his mother’s lawyer. She was dressed in a fire-red pants suit with her hair in a bun. To top off the look, glasses with black frames shielded her thin, slit, slanted eyes. Being a female attorney, Blake surmised that she was more than likely going for the look of strength, power, and domination in an effort to be intimidating. After all, he’d never seen a male attorney in a fire-red pants suit.

  Next to Ms. Turner sat a woman who, without a doubt, was the stenographer. Her fingers rested in place on the machine in front of her like a cop’s would rest on the trigger in the middle of a shootout. A frail little thing with stringy dirty-blond hair, she looked as though she probably lived vicariously through the words she sometimes pounded on that machine.

  Then there were the two other women. They looked like sisters. Each had café-au-lait skin that was a shade or two lighter than Blake’s. One had weaved microbraids with golden blond streaks down her back, while the other simply had golden blond weave straight down her back. Blake couldn’t tell which one was wearing the most makeup. Between the two of them, there was a Mary Kay representative somewhere who had just earned a pink Cadillac.

  “Is that him, Mama?” one tried to whisper into the other woman’s ear, but the entire room could hear her. Her hand was up to her mouth and cupped around the other woman’s ear. One couldn’t miss the two-inch colored acrylic nails or the rings resting on each finger. “Too bad he’s my brother. He’s kinda fine.”

  “Hush now,” the older woman chuckled and playfully smacked her daughter’s leg under the table. She then flipped her golden blond weave over her shoulder.

  Ms. Turner nearly broke her neck to interrupt the embarrassing actions of her client. “Hello, I’m, uh, Ms. Turner.” She extended her hand to Blake and Paige and greeted them with a handshake. She then looked at Randall. “You and I know each other.” Turning toward the older woman and her daughter, she stated, “And this here is my client, Barnita Dickenson, and her daughter, Sharlita Dickenson.”

  Barnita stood. She stared at Blake for a few seconds. “Oh, well, boy, I know we ain’t seeing each other after all these years under decent circumstances, but what the heck.” She opened her arms as if she expected Blake to come around the table and hug her.

  Instead, Blake just nodded and said, “Miss Dickenson.” He then immediately walked to a chair at the table.

  Paige could tell he was holding back a raging fire. Without another word, he pulled her chair out for her first so that she could sit. “Thank you,” Paige said softly as she sat.

  “Oh, so you just gon’ leave Mama hanging like that?” Sharlita jumped in, snapping her neck from side to side while her braids danced along.

  “Shhh, don’t worry about it,” Barnita said as she sat back down.

  “No, Mama, that ain’t no way for a boy to greet his mother.” Sharlita rolled her eyes so hard, everyone in the room thought her hazel contacts were going to pop out. “Shoot, I don’t know who he thinks he is,” she said under her breath as she too flung her microbraids over her shoulder.

  Ms. Turner cleared her throat. “Why don’t we get started here?”

  “Uh, yes, that sounds good,” Randall agreed.

  “Well, first off—” Ms. Turner started before Paige cut her off.

  “If no one minds, I was wondering if I could lead us in a really quick prayer,” Paige requested.

  Every eye shot at her like it was a dagger. Ironically, she felt like the Antichrist in a room full of saints.

  “Honey, this isn’t really the time or the place for that,” Blake said under his breath while squeezing her knee.

  “But, babe, God do
esn’t care about the timing or the place; He shows up and—” The added pressure on her knee halted further words.

  “So this is the wifey, huh?” Blake’s mother asked, giving Paige the once-over. “I see you’re a chubby chaser just like your daddy was. I wonder what other traits of his you have,” she said to Blake.

  Paige’s mouth flung open. Had this woman, her mother-in-law, just called her fat?

  “Look, please, can we get started?” Ms. Turner begged, realizing that there was a possibility that the more her client talked, the slimmer the chances of them coming out of this thing with some type of settlement. “Mr. Dickenson, before we get started with the legality of everything, I know you’ve been estranged from your mother for quite some time. So, with that being said, is there anything you’d like to ask . . . anything you’d like to know?”

  “No,” Blake was quick to say. “I just want to get this over with.”

  “Very well,” Ms. Turner stated. “I guess we can start with—”

  “On second thought,” Blake interrupted, “there is something I’d like to ask my . . . mother.” He hated referring to the woman as his mother.

  “Go ahead,” Barnita said in gangsta mode, leaning back in her chair as she ran her fingers through her weave. “Bring it on.”

  Blake leaned in and glared his mother down. If only looks could kill . . . He then leaned back in his chair comfortably after asking, “Why did you leave me? And why didn’t you ever come back?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Son, please! Will you just come back down and talk to me?” Uriah pleaded as Hudson ran up the stairs, stormed into his bedroom, then slammed the door closed behind him. Hard. Then there was the clicking of the lock.

  Uriah stood outside his son’s door, hoping and praying that eventually he’d unlocked the door and let him in; let him in both his room and back in his heart. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen, not right now, not anytime soon, for that matter. Feeling defeated, he retreated back into the living room to join his wife, daughter, and sister-in-law.

  He’d shown up at the house an hour and a half ago and explained to the children why he allowed them to think he was dead. Why, for the past months, he’d practically lived as a vagrant, depending on the kindness of others in order to survive. In the split moment he’d decided to allow the world to believe he was dead, he never even thought about how he’d pull it off. How he’d survive without a place to call home. After all, ever since he’d started his trucking business, he’d pretty much lived on the road anyway. He’d been up and down the highway and streets more than he’d been in his own home, so what would be the difference?

  There had been plenty of times he’d been out on runs and didn’t have a dime to his name after making sure most of the bills at home were taken care of. But God had kept him. God had shown him much favor by putting people in his path to provide for him exactly what he needed. And believe it or not, that is exactly what God had done for him these last few months. God had kept him, even while he was doing wrong. It was nothing but God’s grace and mercy that even allowed him the opportunity to come back home and try to make things right. Even now it was hard for Uriah to conceive the fact that God had not forsaken him even though what he was doing went against man’s law. Faking death so that his family would receive insurance money and Social Security benefits was against the law. Uriah would eventually have to turn himself in and face the music. He only prayed that once again, God’s grace and mercy would get him through that ordeal as well. But for now, he simply needed favor with his own family.

  “It’s okay, Dad. He’s just a little shocked right now is all,” Sadie said, witnessing the anguished look on her father’s face.

  When Uriah had first walked in the door, Bethany had already set the stage for him by telling the children that he was alive; that it wasn’t he who had burned up in the truck. That way, when he walked in the door, her children wouldn’t think they were experiencing what that little boy in the movie The Sixth Sense was experiencing: that they could see dead people.

  After hearing what her mother had to say, and then hearing her father’s explanation, Sadie was a little on the fence. Of course she was glad to have her father back, but angry for the awful loss she’d felt—and all for nothing. But at the end of the day, her daddy was alive and she was grateful. She didn’t want to think about the time she’d spent without him, but about the future she would now have with him.

  Hudson was flat-out heated. There was no in-between mixed emotions, and he had no problem expressing to his father just how angry he was. “How could you do something so cowardly?” Hudson asked his father as he stood eyeball-to-eyeball with him. Ordinarily, this is something he never would have done, but right about now, things were far from ordinary. “You’re no worse than a couple of my boys who turn to selling drugs on the street, talking ’bout so that their family can survive; so that they can put food on the table. That’s a cop-out, Dad, and you know it.”

  At least the boy had still referred to him as “Dad.” That meant light at the end of the tunnel as far as Uriah was concerned.

  “Do you know the emotional strain you put on this family?” Hudson had asked. “It was far worse than the emotional strain of being broke. We thought you were dead. Yeah, we might have been able to pay some bills off, but at the end of the day, your life was far more important than any material thing.”

  “Look, son, I—”

  “Don’t call me son like you’re my father or something,” Hudson snapped. “My father’s dead.” And on that note, Hudson had run off toward his room.

  Bethany had remained silent as her children expressed their different emotions and concerns. She didn’t know what to feel besides feeling like she was in an episode of a soap opera.

  Mother Doreen, being the peacemaker she always tried so hard to be, was there to support them all, including Uriah.

  “Just give him some time,” Mother Doreen told Uriah as he sat down in the living-room chair. “It’s going to take some time.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Uriah agreed. “It’s just that I didn’t take into consideration that anyone would be mad at me. I just thought everyone would be so glad to see me that the glory of it all would outweigh the suffering I put everybody through.”

  “I can’t lie, Daddy,” Sadie admitted, “there is a little part of me that is upset with you, but there is a big part of me that is just glad that you are alive.”

  “Thanks, daughter,” Uriah replied. “But I guess it’s just the opposite with Hudson. There’s a little part of him that is glad that I’m alive, and a big part of him that is upset with me.”

  “Well, now that you’re home, you two will have time to get things back to normal,” Sadie reasoned.

  Uriah and Bethany shot each other a look that didn’t go unnoticed by Sadie. “What? What’s going on? Why are you two looking at each another like that?” Sadie questioned.

  “Baby, there is just so much going on right now, and so many more decisions that have to be made,” Bethany started. “With that being said, honey, your father is going to be staying at Pastor Frey’s for a little while.”

  “What?” Sadie said, shooting up off the couch she’d been sitting on like a shooting star streaking through the sky. “You mean to tell me that you’re not going to let Daddy stay here but you let that jackleg pastor stay here when he didn’t have anywhere to go? Giving us some story about not turning a man in need away because you never know when you could be entertaining an angel,” she huffed. “Well, the last I checked the Bible, Lucifer had been an angel too.” Sadie put her hands on top of her head to reflect how fed up she was. “I can’t deal with this mess any longer. It’s trifling and embarrassing.” She stood up with her back straight and said to her mother, “So if Daddy goes, then I’m going with him.”

  “Hold on, Sadie,” Uriah said, putting up both his hands. “It’s not that your momma won’t let me stay here. I just need to get some things together in my head i
s all. You know what I did is a crime. So we still need to decide how we are going to go about coming clean on this situation. And I kind of need Pastor Frey’s spiritual guidance to get me through all of this. And your momma allowing me to stay here could put her in jeopardy. They might think she had something to do with it or she could become an accessory after the fact. I don’t know,” Uriah threw his hands up. “That’s why there is just a lot to think about.”

  “So you could actually go to jail for this?” Sadie asked as she ran over to her father. “No!” She threw her arms around him. “We can’t lose you again, Daddy. Don’t turn yourself in. Just get a new identify or something. Repent to God. He’ll forgive you, and then take care of everything.”

  Uriah smiled, warmed by his daughter’s support. “It ain’t that easy, Jellybean,” he said, calling her by the special nickname he had given her. “Nothing is ever that easy. Every moment of your life has consequences. Well, this is one of those moments, and I’m gonna have to face the consequences.”

  Sadie just stood hugging her father and weeping.

  “Come on, child,” Mother Doreen said to Sadie. “It’s getting late, and your father probably needs to go back to Pastor Frey’s before it gets too late. Why don’t you go upstairs and try to relax and calm down, and I’ll warm up some sugar milk for you?”

  Sadie released her father and nodded. She knew it would take more than sugar milk to make things better, but she appreciated her aunt’s gesture. After kissing her father good-bye, she went to her room.

  Mother Doreen let out a huge gust of air. “Whewww. Now that was tough.”

  “Who you telling? And it’s only going to get tougher,” Uriah agreed. “But I do need to get going.”

  Bethany had just remembered something. “But we didn’t even get a chance to eat, and Doreen cooked a mess of—”

  Uriah put his hands up, cutting his wife off. “I’m really not that hungry right now. Besides, it was nice of Pastor Frey to let me borrow his vehicle. I don’t want to take advantage.”