by Carl Weber
“Hey, everything okay?” I asked Tia once we were outside the choir room. “I was worried about you. It’s not like you to be MIA for a whole day. I figured it might have something to do with the hotline or something, though.”
She rolled her eyes, so I playfully wagged my finger in her face, hoping to lighten the mood. “So, I guess I’ll give you a pass for being late. You ready to go to D.C.? The buses will be here in a couple of hours.”
She responded with tears falling from her eyes. “I’m not going to D.C. I’m not going anywhere with you ever again.”
“Tia, what’s wrong? It’s not your brother, is it?”
“If I were you, I’d leave Kareem out of this. You’re lucky he doesn’t kick your ass.”
“For what? Tia, what did I do?” I pleaded. I was now officially frustrated as hell.
She glared at me. “I spoke to Simone. She told me you’ve been to prison.”
I stood there stunned, as if once again I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. But I’d heard her all right, loud and clear. Believe it or not, I’d almost forgotten about Simone’s threats. I’d been so frantic preparing for the competition that I hadn’t spent much time worrying about it, and after awhile I figured that if she hadn’t said anything by now, she wouldn’t say anything at all.
“Have you, Aaron? Have you been to prison?” she demanded.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer her, because I was afraid of what she would ask next.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” She looked horrified, like she was my victim, or my victim’s family.
“Listen, Tia, I wanted to tell you. I should have told you, but—”
“But what?” I tried to reach out and hold her, but she backed away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again,” she said angrily. “If I wasn’t a Christian woman, I’d spit in your face right now.”
Inside, I was berating myself: I should have told her. I should have told her. But outwardly, I placed my anger elsewhere.
“That damn Simone! That whoring bitch!” I started pacing in front of her.
“Don’t blame this on Simone. This is all you.” She pointed a finger at me. “I can’t stand you, Aaron Mackie.”
“But what about forgiveness? You always preach forgiveness.”
“Are you serious? Don’t even talk to me about forgiveness. I hate you!”
Whoa. This was not the Tia I knew. She used to look at me with such admiration, but this look she was giving me now … it was pure hate. I’d seen that look before. From strangers, it was bearable. From Tia, a woman I was falling in love with, it hurt. It hurt really bad.
“I’m sorry, Tia, but it all happened so long ago that I—”
“That you thought I wouldn’t find out?” she finished my sentence.
“I know how this might look, but if you’d let me explain, perhaps—”
“Perhaps you should just go to hell!” Tia spat as a fresh wave of tears fell from her eyes. It pained me to know that I was the cause of her anguish. It was never my intention to hurt this sweet, wonderful woman.
“Tia, please. Let me explain.”
“No, Aaron. No need to explain. Nothing you say could possibly change the way I feel right now. I trusted you. I let you in, let you into my group, and you betrayed me. How could I have been so stupid?”
“You’re not stupid. And you can trust me,” I said in my own defense. “I lied to you, but it will never happen again. I promise.”
“My God, you’re a fraud and a menace to society, and I’m sure everyone else will agree.” She balled up her fist and hit a wall. “You know what bothers me the most is that for all the years I’ve known Bishop Wilson, he’s never been wrong about much. But it looks like you fooled even him. Looks like he picked the wrong person to represent this church, and I’m sure he’ll agree when I tell him. I swear if we didn’t need to win that competition to keep this church, I’d tell him about you right now. When you get back, win or lose, if you don’t tell him, I sure as hell will.”
Tia turned away, leaving me standing there with a million things racing through my head. I wanted to go after her, but my head wasn’t on right, and with her being angry, it wouldn’t do any good.
“Cut! Cut!” I yelled repeatedly as I reentered the choir room. I was frustrated and not in any mood to continue working. What I needed was a drink. “Choir rehearsal is over.”
The confused singers stared at me as if I’d just walked into the room naked.
“I’m sorry. You guys have done great, but something has come up. I need to go for a little while. I’ll see everyone on the bus in three hours.” I looked to Sister Judith, my adoptive godmother. “Sister Judith, can you make sure all the equipment is shut down and the room is locked up?”
I didn’t even wait for her to reply before I rushed out the door, hoping to find Tia. I had to try to explain one more time.
Monique
59
I was down on my knees in the front pew at the church. I don’t think there were many people in the building other than myself and the janitor. Most of the church leaders, including my husband, were down in D.C. for the national choir championship. T. K. had practically begged me to come, but I decided to stay behind because I had a lot of praying, repenting, and thinking to do. I knew Aaron would do what was necessary to win the competition and save the church. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to solve any of my problems. I would still have this sick, disgusting feeling of adultery hovering over me. When I left the church, I was planning on confronting Maxwell with the fact that I knew he’d doctored those papers. There was no better time than when my husband was out of town.
I lowered my head and began to pray.
“Lord, I come before you with a humble heart. Please forgive me for the mess I’ve made of my life. If only I had known Maxwell was lying on my husband. I should have known T. K. would never steal from the church, but those files Maxwell gave me looked so real. I was just trying to do right by my husband.”
Suddenly, I felt a presence as someone slid into the pew behind me. I unfolded my fingers from my praying, pushed myself up from my knees, and turned around to look behind me. There sat Tia, with a lost expression on her face.
“Hey there, Tia. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in D.C. with the choir?” Her eyes were red, and there was no doubt in my mind that she’d been crying.
“I had a change of plans. Why aren’t you at the competition?” Tia got up from her pew and came to sit next to me.
“Well, I thought somebody needed to stick around the church just in case Maxwell and his goons came snooping around,” I replied, and then shot her a puzzled look. “But I’m not in the choir and you are. Why didn’t you go to the competition? Is everything all right?”
Tia sighed, a pained expression on her face. “I guess you’d find out sooner or later.”
“Find out what?”
“I’m not in the choir anymore.”
I gave her a surprised look. “But you’re the choir administrator. Even if you don’t sing, shouldn’t you have gone with them?”
“I’m not the administrator anymore. I quit.”
“You quit?” Oh, Lord, she done caught the man cheating already. “I hope you didn’t let some little lovers’ quarrel get in the way of your professionalism.”
“First Lady, I wish this was only a lovers’ quarrel. That I could deal with.”
“Tia, what did he do?” I stopped beating around the bush, and she didn’t hesitate to give an answer.
“He’s a rapist, plain and simple. And I don’t deal with rapists.”
She might as well have hit me in the head with a hammer because I was floored. A shameless flirt he was, but a rapist? That was almost laughable considering all the women lined up to give it away to him. Then again, maybe Tia wasn’t one to give it up.
“Tia, honey, he didn’t rape you, did he?” I tried to be as sympathetic as possible, but I still couldn’t wrap my he
ad around the idea of Aaron being a rapist.
“No, some woman in Virginia.”
Now I was becoming concerned. Tia was a rape expert. If Aaron was really a rapist, she’d be the one to find out. Forget Maxwell and all his schemes, scandal like this could bring down First Jamaica Ministries once and for all.
“How’d you find this out? Were you checking up on him on the Internet?” I did not want to have to explain all this to T. K. I’d already kept enough from him to start with.
“No, someone told me.”
“Someone told you? Who told you?”
Tia lowered her head. “I’d rather not say.”
“What do you mean, you’d rather not say? If he’s a rapist, it should be public knowledge. How do you know it isn’t a lie?”
She looked at me with eyes wet with tears. “Because he admitted it, First Lady. He admitted it to me.”
“Admitted what?”
“That he went to prison.”
I was skeptical now. “He admitted he was a rapist?”
Tia hesitated a bit, then said, “Yes. He admitted it when he said he went to prison.”
“Tia, he admitted he was a rapist? He said those words, that he raped someone?”
She hesitated again. “I read the report that Simone gave me, all about what he’d done and that he was on the registered sex offenders list for Queens.”
My mouth flew open. “A report that Simone gave you? Girl, how could you be so stupid to believe anything that woman has to say without checking it out? You know how she is.”
“But he admitted it.”
I kept shaking my head. It sounded like Simone had taken a page from Maxwell’s playbook, handing out files of “information” on people they wanted to destroy.
“Look, Aaron is not a rapist,” I said confidently.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know that Aaron went to prison, but it wasn’t for rape. He went to jail for three years when he was twenty-two, and he’s been on probation for eight years. He just happened to get one of the worst parole officers imaginable since he relocated to New York.”
She gave me this puzzled look. “How do you know all of this?”
I paused. “To be totally up front, the other day Aaron and I kind of swapped secrets. Everyone has their demons, Tia. Aaron’s had his since he was twenty-two years old.”
“But he went to prison. That still makes him a criminal. What did he go to jail for?”
“What Aaron told me was that back when he graduated from college, he and some friends ended up drunk at some party. He did the irresponsible thing and drove. Unfortunately, he got into a car accident and killed a man. He’s spent most of the past eight years in church and working to take care of the man’s family. He sends his wife a check every week.”
“Is that why he goes to get those money orders every Friday?”
“Maybe, I don’t really know.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Tia looked hopeful.
“I don’t have to think. I know.” I leaned over and hugged Tia.
“So, why are those men harassing him so much if he’s doing the right thing?”
“Even though he served time in prison and is doing everything correctly, that parole officer won’t give him a break. It turns out that the parole officer had a child who was killed by a drunk driver. He reminds Aaron that he’s a piece of crap just like the lady who killed his child.”
“Oh my God.” Tia put a hand to her mouth. “The guilt Aaron must be carrying around—that is, if what he told you is really true.”
I could see that Tia was going to be a hard person to convince. She had a wall up so high that I didn’t know if God Himself had the strength to tear it down.
“Come with me.” I took Tia by the hand and led her to my office. I logged onto my computer while she stood over me.
“What are you doing, First Lady?”
“Just hold on for a second. You’ll see.” I began putting in keyword search terms into Google. Ten minutes later, I had pulled up Aaron’s case record and the sex offender list, on which his name did not appear. His case records confirmed the story he’d told me, and more so, they convinced Tia that she hadn’t been falling in love with a rapist.
“How could I have been so stupid?” Tia said. “How could I let Simone play me like that? I should have checked this out before I went on a rampage.”
“It happens to the best of us. Believe me,” I told her. “Now, what you need to do is get up there to the competition and be with your man.”
“And I think you need to do the same,” Tia said with a smile. She looked like a huge burden had been lifted from her heart.
I grabbed my purse, feeling one hundred percent better too. “Who’s driving? Me or you?”
Aaron
60
I squeezed Tia’s hand nervously as we waited onstage for the awards ceremony to begin at the National Gospel Choir Championship. It meant the world to me that she had raced to D.C. at the last minute to tell me she knew the truth about my prison sentence. Before she arrived, I was an emotional wreck, and I’m sure it would have affected my performance. I would have to remember to send some flowers to the first lady to thank her for convincing Tia that the papers she saw were forged. And as for Simone, well, I was too blessed to stress about her right now, but I had faith that one day she would get what she deserved.
By the time our choir took to the stage, I was in the right frame of mind, and First Jamaica Ministries gave their best performance ever. “Blessings” was off the chain, if I do say so myself. Of the other two choirs standing onstage with us now, I only considered one to be our competitors for first place. First Baptist Our Savior out of Atlanta had been darn good—much better than I expected, actually. The third choir onstage was South Baptist from Houston. They put on a good performance, but they were not in the same league with us and First Baptist Our Savior. That’s why it was no surprise when the first announcement was made.
“Ladies and gentlemen, in third place in our National Gospel Choir Championship, from the great state of Texas and the fine city of Houston, the South Baptist choir.”
It took everything in me not to jump up in the air and scream, “Thank you, Jesus!” We were one step closer to winning that prize.
I glanced over at Bishop Wilson, who was standing next to the first lady with his arm around her. He gave me a thumbs-up. I knew he was nervous, too, but the one thing I had to say about that man is he never let anyone see him sweat. He was such a nice man, too, a good man, and he had so much riding on this. I really wanted to win it more for him than myself.
I watched as South Baptist went up and received their trophy. They seemed happy, almost as if they hadn’t expected to place at all. It must have been a good feeling for them, because if we had come in second or third, I know I wouldn’t be smiling the way their director was.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now at the point of the competition that you’ve all been waiting for, when we announce the winner of the 2011 National Gospel Championship.”
Well, this is it, I told myself. I couldn’t wait to go up there and collect that prize money for First Jamaica Ministries.
“Now, we have two great choirs who have battled it out since day one of our competition.” He pointed at us. “First Jamaica Ministries from Queens, New York, directed by Aaron Mackie and pastored by Bishop T. K. Wilson.”
I don’t know if it was our close proximity to New York or just because they loved us, but the crowd went crazy.
It took a good three or four minutes for the applause to die down so that the announcer could acknowledge our competitors, First Baptist Our Savior out of Atlanta. They received enthusiastic applause, too, but to me, the audience’s reaction didn’t seem as intense.
When the crowd quieted again, the announcer kept going on and on about nothing. I wanted to scream at him, “Can you shut up and announce the winner?” He must have felt my vibe, because he finally stoppe
d babbling about nonsense and got to the point.
It was tense when he announced the third-place winners, but I almost couldn’t bear the anticipation as I waited for him to announce the second place, and ultimately the winner. “And second place goes to …”
Second place was good, but it wasn’t number one. I wanted number one. I needed number one. The church needed number one.
“The outstanding choir from …”
This guy was prolonging the drama as much as he could, and it was killing me. I wanted him to just spit it out. Just say “Atlanta, Georgia,” so we could get to the business of collecting our first-place prize. But it never came. What came was, “Queens, New York, First Jamaica Ministries!”
I heard what he’d said, but it didn’t register in my mind right away, because there was no way we were supposed to come in second. Yes, I knew there was the possibility that we could lose, but deep down, I never thought it would happen. I thought it was our destiny, that God wanted us to win to save the church. The announcer had to be reading the card wrong. We did not just lose this competition.
I turned and looked at Tia, who had tears streaming down her face, then over at First Baptist Our Savior, whose members were jumping up and down like they just witnessed the Second Coming. My legs got weak, and I dropped to my knees. I felt Tia’s arms wrap around me.
“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how we didn’t win.”
“It’s okay, baby. You did the best you could. Nobody blames you.” Tia attempted to console me, but nothing could comfort me now—nothing but that first-place trophy, and more importantly, the check that came along with it.
“But my best wasn’t good enough. We’re going to lose the church.” I looked over at Bishop Wilson, who was holding his wife. Just like Tia, she was in tears. Bishop looked up and caught my gaze.
“It’s okay, son,” he mouthed.
But I knew it wasn’t okay. Things were far from okay.
Simone
61