Delilah suddenly stopped calling on God because nature was calling on her.
As put-out as she was, she still wasn’t too proud to ask the deacon to use his bathroom.
Chapter 8
“You don’t look too bad, and at least the food didn’t spill out of the containers.” Jessie stifled an urge to laugh. The deacon’s story of unwittingly getting involved in a stranger’s situation that left him less than blessed was funny.
“If you really want a story, you should’ve been out on a call with me last night. I’m telling you, if I have another night like last night, I’m taking off my badge and going upside some heads over there in Crown Heights. Hot as it is and young folks running all over the place over on Lincoln, turning on fire hydrants and slashing tires. Don’t make sense.” Jessie had almost fifteen years on the police force and every other week he threatened to take off his badge.
“Listen, something came up and I got to handle it quickly. I promise it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Go ahead and start eating. If I’m not back in time, then start the Bible study.” Deacon Pillar tried to say everything in a way where it wasn’t a complete lie; a little deceptive, but not a complete lie.
“I guess it’s okay,” Tamara said as she gathered the food to take to the kitchen. “Sister Marty’s working late anyhow. And, as usual, I don’t have a date. Actually, I could have one—I just don’t want one....”
The deacon tuned Tamara out. His mind had gone elsewhere. Have mercy. I’d almost forgotten about Marty. And then the deacon realized he’d left Delilah alone for a little too long.
The hair on Deacon Pillar’s neck suddenly rose and he knew why. He raced to close the door just as Delilah came barreling against it. It was almost a head-on collision.
“Stop with the games, Thurgood,” Delilah barked as she started to knock on the door. “I need to use your bathroom and there’s no negotiation.”
“Deacon,” Jessie asked slowly, “who is that? What’s going on?”
“Uhhhh . . .” That’s as far as the deacon got before Delilah, encouraged by the urgency of her situation, pushed the door open.
Delilah didn’t bother to check out whether there were others there or not. She hadn’t thought that far.
“I don’t need this crap!” Delilah almost tripped when the heel of one of her latest knockoffs became stuck as she tried to cross over the threshold.
Delilah wanted to move out of the doorway, but couldn’t get the heel of her shoe to twist back into place. So she simply took it off. With one tiny foot bare, Delilah entered and stood defiant and lopsided.
She and the deacon had shared a lot in the past, but none of it compared to the Twilight Zone moment they shared then.
Delilah took one look around the living room and fainted, which was also something the deacon wanted to do but couldn’t.
As Delilah slowly came around she peeked through heavy false eyelashes and found she couldn’t see as clearly as she could hear.
Jessie folded his arms and stared. It took him a moment to believe his eyes and another moment to find his voice. “What the hell is she doing here?” Jessie’s angry question shot around the room, and if it had been a loaded gun, Delilah would’ve been dead. “Lord, please help me. I don’t believe this is happening. And you’ve laid her on my sofa.”
If Delilah had wanted to pretend she was still unconscious, she couldn’t have. Deacon Pillar, the bald-faced liar, was literally water-boarding her as he wrung a soaking wet cloth over her face. He looked as though he enjoyed it.
“I just don’t know what to say, Brother Jessie. This is the woman I tried to help. I had no idea you were so against me bringing another woman here unless it was Sister Marty. . . .”
Delilah ignored the deacon’s feeble attempt to throw her under the bus. Instead, she watched her son with curiosity as Jessie’s eyes glared in her direction. She was sure she could almost see—no, feel—his anxiety and pure hatred. Then again, she wasn’t sure if she knew it was hatred for certain. She wasn’t even sure if what she was feeling was some sort of maternal feeling. Could it be that God had thrown some mother wit into the mess?
“Deacon, this has nothing to do with who you bring or don’t bring to where you pay rent. But do you know who you just let into my home?” Jessie’s voice sounded as though he spoke from within a cave. It was just that loud and seemed to reverberate around the room.
The deacon realized that he needed to remain calm during what was certainly turning into a very dangerous verbal showdown. He’d have to chew crow and get Delilah out of there and back to Garden City before his own mess went on display.
With one hand fingering his suspenders, he replied simply, “Yes, I know her. Pretty much—”
At that moment Jessie needed more than simplicity. He needed something to throw, much the same way he needed to believe he’d misheard the deacon. “You’re standing here in my home telling me that you actually know this woman?”
Deacon Pillar nodded toward Delilah. He needed to quickly turn things around. So he tried to sound more confident. “More than forty years, I believe. We used to run in the same crowds back in Harlem where she sang in a few bands. I even played in some of them, too.” Deacon Pillar stopped. He was sure to tell a bigger lie if he spoke another word. It was bad enough tiptoeing across a thick carpet of lies.
It took Delilah’s inability to shut up when she should to break her awkward silence. She didn’t care if it saved the deacon from himself or not. But she did enjoy a conversation about her that was positive, and she’d not heard anything positive. She raised her head and barked with indignation, “Are you two gonna stand here and talk all over my head like I can’t hear?”
Whether he meant to do it or not, Jessie used his hand to hit a nearby wall. The hand immediately started to swell and turned from a pecan color to almost blue right before their eyes.
“This demon dressed up like a woman . . .” Jessie’s mouth began to twist. He felt almost dizzy as the pain in his hand shot up his arm and landed upon his tongue.
Oh, Lord, he’s recognized her. The deacon shuffled a little closer to the door. He hadn’t meant to do that. He’d done it on instinct.
“Repeat that, Jessie.” Delilah leapt off the couch and now stood with her hands on her small hips. This was not how she’d envisioned their first meeting, but she’d be damned if he was gonna come at her in such a manner. Now it was her time to glare and she used it to the maximum. “I’m a little older and perhaps I don’t hear so good anymore.” Delilah stopped and yanked her hands off her hips and shook them at Jessie. “Now when the child I birthed, after more than forty hours of damn hard labor, tries sassing me—”
“Deacon Pillar,” Jessie interrupted, ignoring his pain as his anger mounted. Jessie’s eyes narrowed and issued a silent warning to the deacon before he turned back around. He was saving his next words of rebuke for Delilah.
At that moment his need to put Delilah in her place outweighed his pain. “Maybe you are hard of hearing, ’cause you sure ain’t no kind of mother.”
From across the room Tamara stood with her arms dangling by her side. She’d been in the basement and heard all the yelling. After racing upstairs it was as though she’d flipped to a bad movie on television and couldn’t change the channel. It took another moment before she could speak. “Daddy, what’s going on?”
Waves of spasms attacked Jessie’s mouth, causing it to twist even more as he ignored Tamara’s question. Since he’d buried Cindy he’d kept all his sane and insane emotions simmering. His grief pot was about to boil over. At that very moment all he wanted to do was just lash out, and a conveniently placed punching bag or two stood gift wrapped in his living room.
While the others in the room stared at him as though he’d truly lost his mind, which he was about to, Jessie’s anger soared. Without apology Jessie gave in to his need to lay his salvation down at an invisible altar. He would leave it there just long enough to punch both Deacon Pilla
r and Delilah in their mouths. But Jessie was still Delilah’s son, and the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the tree. He just couldn’t make up his mind as to whom to start with. He knew he’d possibly broken his hand, which meant he’d have to take time off from the job. But a possible broken hand be damned.
“Go to hell!” Delilah suddenly shot back at Jessie. “I know what you’re thinking, and if you ever live to see a hundred I’ll still be older than you and I’ll still be your mama. Come at me, and I’ll whip you until I can’t no more.”
“Who are you gonna whip? And who are you to tell me to go to hell? Join me, because I’m in it now.” Mama or no mama, he was more than a foot taller than Delilah and he’d bend over and hit her if he had to. Jessie wanted to say something even more vicious, but words wouldn’t come again.
Yet in that Twilight Zone moment, as she looked to where Tamara stood, it all became clear to Delilah. What a mighty God I serve. She saw Tamara and almost folded again. “You’ve worked a miracle, Father, and it was here all along. . . .”
“You’ve lost your damn mind.” The pain that shot up Jessie’s arm again seemed more like a punishment; a hindrance to keep him from stopping what was about to unfold.
Delilah’s eyes moistened again as she finally realized that God had indeed delivered. Why in such a crazy manner, she didn’t know.
An easy smile crept across her face when she turned from Jessie and looked at Tamara once more. “God brought me here, Jessie. He truly did.”
The observation had not escaped the deacon. “That’s Tamara, your grandbaby,” Deacon Pillar said, as though the previous conversation had gone smoothly instead of a mother-son cuss out. His move was more to keep her mind temporarily off retribution where he was concerned.
Delilah allowed Deacon Pillar to walk over and take her by one arm to escort her across the room. It was the least he could do after his brazen performance earlier. She’d come back to him later.
He’d gotten her halfway across the room before he realized he had to pass Jessie to get to Tamara. He saw the anger in Jessie’s eyes and almost felt the heat coming off his head. Deacon Pillar wasn’t certain he’d make it. It was a lot safer upstairs in his apartment, for sure.
“Thurgood Pillar, you idiot.” When the deacon stopped just short of Jessie, Delilah shook her arm loose from his grip with ease. “I know who she is.”
“Oh, I ain’t gonna be too many more idiots—” Deacon Pillar wanted to finish the threat, bad grammar and all, but he was caught off guard by the strength she showed when she snatched her skinny arm from his firm grip.
“Just shut up, Thurgood,” Delilah warned, her eyes turned into slits to back up the implied threat. Then, without missing a beat, she turned back to Tamara, saying sweetly with her eyes now loaded with sympathy, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your mama’s funeral. I did read about it and tried to find y’all. I guess by now you know I’m your grandma—”
Delilah started to cough, which quickly turned into more of a hacking sound. The word grandma stuck in her throat like a fishbone and was just as uncomfortable. Not even her beautiful granddaughter could make her feel at ease enough to say the word grandmother. Instead she corrected herself. “I’m Delilah, your father’s mother.”
“Damn, Delilah,” Deacon Pillar barked, “you couldn’t even say grandma? That’s cold even for that refrigerator you call a heart.”
Delilah turned slightly and looked up at Deacon Pillar. “Mind your business. It’s my last warning, daddy-o.” She’d placed emphasis on the daddy part.
Whatever she was thinking was enough to cause him to move a few steps back.
“Don’t even think about speaking to my daughter,” Jessie warned her as his girth seemed to double with the threat. “She doesn’t even know you. You won’t be tiptoeing around her life like you used to do mine.”
The deacon’s conked head turned quickly in Delilah’s direction. He pointed toward her and then turned back to speak to Jessie. “You mean you recognized her because this is not the first time you’ve seen her in years?” The deacon glanced quickly again at Delilah. He’d not known that little bit of information.
“Yes,” Jessie hissed, “I saw this mother impersonator for the first time since I was a toddler when I was about ten years old. She had the nerve to show up at”—Jessie stopped and started to count on his fingers before he continued—“I believe it might’ve been at the second or third foster home I was placed in.”
“It was when . . . ?” Deacon Pillar suddenly felt dizzy, but he couldn’t move and there was no place to fall that was comfortable. That had to be just before Marty’s involvement. Six degrees of separation would always have a special meaning for him.
“Oh, it gets better,” Jessie continued. “She told me—no, she promised me—that she’d go to court and get me back. She told me she’d been on the road with a couple of groups in Europe, to make money because my father had abandoned us.”
“Abandoned you?” Strength returned to the deacon’s legs. He started to move toward Delilah. There was no mistaking his intention.
“Go ahead,” Delilah said as her fingers clutched her purse hard enough to leave fingerprints. “Hurry and get it all out in the open, Jessie.”
“What I’d like to do is split you open,” Jessie hissed.
Perspiration broke out on Jessie’s face and he began to shake as he turned to face the deacon. “This so-called old friend of yours—well, she never returned. And then when I saw her again, Tamara was about three years old. I was a grown man with a wife and child. I didn’t need a mother. So I left her and her lies standing on Forty-second Street in front of Grand Central Station.”
“Daddy—” Tamara felt helpless. Too much was happening and whatever it was, it raced past her at warp speed and it was hurting her father.
Delilah saw the anguish upon Tamara’s face. She took a few steps toward her.
“Don’t even think about it!” Deacon Pillar hadn’t quite reached her yet, as he was suddenly haunted by Jessie’s revelation. He was learning that Delilah—the same old Delilah—hadn’t changed at all.
“Touch my daughter and I swear . . .” Jessie threatened.
Delilah was quicker than Jessie’s threats and certainly quicker than the deacon’s feeble attempt to stop her. By the time the men got it together to block Delilah, she was already inches away from Tamara.
Delilah’s gray eyes never looked away as she honed in on every inch of Tamara. “She’s beautiful. She’s even my height and size and she’s got my gray eyes instead of her father’s light brown ones.”
Suddenly all the ghosts from the past invaded Jessie’s huge living room and discovered even then there wasn’t enough room for all of them and the truth.
“Don’t touch me,” Tamara snapped as she jumped aside when Delilah reached out to touch her. “I don’t know you, and if my father says I don’t need to know you, then I don’t want to know you.”
Delilah knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but Tamara’s words were a punch in her gut. She lifted her head as though it would make her superior by doing so. “Is this supposed to be a room full of Christian folks?”
“She must be kidding.” Tamara inched away from Delilah. She spun around and headed toward the front door. “I gotta get out of here.”
“Forget about this old witch,” Jessie called out to Tamara. “You don’t have to leave, but she does.”
Delilah stood with her arms still outstretched as she watched Tamara race from the living room while ignoring Jessie’s pleas to return. There was nothing more Delilah could do but continue to watch in amazement as her granddaughter raced from the room.
Tamara stumbled a bit, but she kept going until she reached her front door. She left the door wide open as she raced through the front gate and sprinted up the block.
“Damn you, Delilah,” Jessie snarled as he turned around and began to dump more pent-up rage onto his mother. “Get the hell out of my life. I don’t need a prodigal
mother. I won’t ever need you.”
“I see how well you have your house under control.” Delilah didn’t wait for Jessie to respond, and she certainly didn’t need to hear further details of what a bad mother she’d been. She’d be the first to say guilty to whatever the charges.
The heaviness Delilah suddenly felt in her heart for her son was as foreign to her as the notion she wanted to take out after Tamara and just hold her. She wanted to hold both of them and never let them go again.
Jessie’s shoulders turned spastic as he glared at Delilah. With one swollen fist clenched in pain, he turned to the deacon.
“Deacon Pillar, I know I told you that I wanted to go to the ManPower conference in Dallas, even though it was so soon after Cindy’s death. I think I’m gonna use my vacation time and hang around. I need to stay close to home until things get sorted out.”
Torn, Delilah’s eyes still clung to the image of Tamara leaving, and at that moment, she didn’t care what Jessie said or how much he hated her.
Jessie pointed toward Delilah as he continued speaking to the deacon. “Thanks to you, she now knows where I live. I can’t take any more stress. . . .” Jessie couldn’t finish.
“I understand, Brother Jewel.” The deacon really did understand. If there were ever two people that could cause an explosion if placed together, it was Delilah and anyone unlucky enough to be in her presence. “I’m so sorry to bring all this pain to your door. Please forgive me.”
“I’m not really blaming you, Deacon. You’re an honorable man. I’m sure she lied to you.”
The deacon could barely respond above a whisper. Guilt became a steel trap around his spirit and lips that’d seemed to lie more in the past three weeks than before he knew Christ.
What kind of man am I, the deacon thought, to let Delilah take all the blame? I deserve some, too. Lord, please don’t let me turn into that kind of man. Yet he still didn’t say or do anything to make things right. Instead, he did the next best thing; he would offer to do what he’d always done for Jessie since he came to live there. “You go and take care of that hand. Don’t worry about Tamara. I’ll stay here until you get it taken care of. I’ll wait on her to get back.”
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