Cover Girls

by T. D. Jakes

  As she walked through the office, she noticed Tonya standing at Michelle’s desk. Since Delores had returned to work, Michelle hadn’t been much on her mind other than that she noticed Michelle had been much quieter. It was still unusual to Delores, though, to see Tonya and Michelle smiling together. The two women seemed more . . . carefree—happier. Something about the change seemed unnatural and made Delores feel uncomfortable. Besides, today there was something else about Michelle—

  Delores looked at the young woman from behind her shades. That was it—shades. Michelle was wearing shades in the office. She was a most peculiar girl.

  Delores rode the executive elevator to the lowest level, got off, and walked into the nearest restaurant. The waitress seated her in a booth surrounded by ferns and ivy. Her waitress took her drink order and then walked away. It was like sitting in a secluded paradise. She sat back and enjoyed the moment.

  Removing her glasses, she closed her eyes, pretending she was far, far away. Until she heard her waitress’ voice nearby.

  “Is this booth all right?” She recognized the two women’s voices as soon as they answered. She checked the plants around her to assure herself that she could not be seen. Why, of all places, did they have to eat here today? The last thing she wanted to see was someone from the office. The last thing she wanted to hear was Tonya and Michelle.

  “It seems funny eating without Shadrach. Without Coach Shadrach.”

  Delores could hear Michelle laugh. “You got that right, Tonya girl. He’s coach—a big, old, mean coach, too.”

  “Not so mean, though. Just serious, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, Shad is good people. He said that about you, too, Tonya—that you were good people. I didn’t want to hear it then. But he was right. You are. And I appreciate all that you have done.”

  “Oh, girl.”

  “You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t have to stand up to Mrs. Judson for me, Tonya. You didn’t have to risk your own job.”

  “Michelle, the funny thing is, I didn’t have to risk my job. Mrs. Judson was so easy about it. Like there was something else on her mind. I didn’t have to do anything—I guess I just had to be willing.”

  “Well, whatever you did, girl, I appreciate it.” Michelle laughed. “I appreciate you and I appreciate Shad, with his big old self.”

  Tonya laughed. Not convincingly, but it was still a laugh. “It sounds to me like . . . I didn’t know you liked Shadrach.”

  “Why not? What have I got to lose? I’ve bombed out with everyone else in my life. I might as well mess it up with him, too.”

  “Have you all—are you all dating?”

  “Dating? Nobody dates, anymore, Tonya girl. You really are old school, aren’t you? No, we’re not dating, but the way things are going—” Delores could hear Michelle tapping on something. “—I might as well give it a whirl.”

  “Does he know?”

  “There’s nothing to know. I’m in search of a good man, and after this—” Delores heard the tapping sound, again. “—he’s as good as any.”

  “What? Is there something about your glasses?”

  “Come on, girl. Why do women usually wear shades at work?”

  Delores heard Tonya make a clucking sound. Her own eyes widened as she realized Michelle was talking about bruises.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tonya. “I didn’t even think about that. I didn’t think Todd was that kind of man.”

  “Todd? You must be kidding. That man is straight as an arrow. All he knows how to do is love me and watch over me. Todd would cut off his own arm before he would hit me. No, this is Trench’s handiwork—the lover extraordinaire. I guess him talking to me like I was crazy wasn’t enough. He figured he had to hit me before I could get it. A woman can’t build her life just around a man.”

  “We can’t build our lives around anyone. And we put too much on men, like they can make everything wrong with us turn right. They can’t always be perfect or strong either. But you’re right, we can’t build our lives around men. That’s the truth.”

  Delores could hear Michelle laughing. “What do you know about life? What do you know about men?”

  “I may look like it’s been just Jesus all my life, but that’s not true.”

  The waitress came back to the booth to take Delores’s order. She pointed at her drink and then waved the girl away. The last thing she needed was for Tonya and Michelle to think she was listening to the two of them. Even if she was.

  Tonya lowered her voice. “I guess you know about my son and about my marriage? Why wouldn’t you—everyone in the whole office knows. But before then—I went out with some boys, some men before I was married.”

  “Who? Dudley Doright?”

  “Right, Michelle. Thanks.” Tonya laughed, too. “I went with a boy in high school.”

  “And how long ago was that? Was Soul Train even on television then? What about American Bandstand?”

  “Don’t be smart-mouthed, Michelle. I’m trying to tell you something.”

  “Okay, girl, spill it.”

  “I was so in love with this boy, girl. I love-ded him! I mean I looooov-ded him!”

  “I like that, girl.”

  “Well, I liked it, too. But I was naïve. I didn’t know a lot about the world.”

  “Which you do now?”

  “I know more now than I did then.” Tonya stopped speaking for a moment. “Things got serious, too serious. I got pregnant.”

  “Tonya, I didn’t know you had a baby that old.”

  “I don’t.”

  “What?”

  Tonya’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I had an abortion. We were just kids. We didn’t know what to do. I don’t even know where he got the money from. It was illegal where we lived, so we had to go to another state.”

  Delores froze, her glass held to her mouth.

  “You know you hear all of this stuff about how gruesome the procedure is. People try to use scare tactics to keep women from doing it. But fear won’t stop a desperate woman or a desperate girl. You’re already trying to get an abortion because you’re afraid. Somebody else trying to scare you just makes you run more.

  “What nobody told me was about the emptiness that I would feel. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t even associate it with the abortion, but it was like something had died in my life. Because of what I’ve been through with my son Richard Jr.—when I look back, I realize that I was in mourning.”

  Tonya’s voice sounded teary. “And nobody told me about the guilt. You deny that you feel guilty, but you have this secret shame that follows you for years and years. Think about it: you’re having the abortion because you don’t want to deal with the shame, but the silent shame gets you anyway. Even after I got deep into following the Lord—I was going to Bible Study, I was even married—I couldn’t talk about it. If I told my husband, the father of my sons, what would he think of me? If I told the people at my church, what would they say? Can you still be holy and have had an abortion? Is it like adultery for a man—is it an unforgivable sin?”

  Michelle whistled softly. “Still, nobody knows?”

  “One day—I know some people don’t believe in feelings—but this feeling of peace swept over me. It was like the Lord was telling me that He had forgiven me. It didn’t matter what people thought. ‘You don’t serve people, you serve Me,’ I could feel Him saying to me. It was forgiven and forgotten. And He wouldn’t ever bring it up again, because that sin—think about it, Michelle—that murder didn’t exist anymore. It was covered on Calvary.

  “Now I tell people that I’m led to tell. You can’t tell everyone your business; lots of people aren’t strong enough and weren’t meant to carry your burden. But I don’t have to carry it anymore. There’s no more silent shame.”

  Delores could hear them rustling in the booth. She held her breath and told her heart to slow its beating.

  “I never would have imagined, Tonya.”

  “That’s what I tho
ught I recognized on Mrs. Judson the other day. That same kind of fear and deep sadness.”

  Delores’s head jerked as though she had been slapped. Her cheeks reddened.

  “Fear and sadness on Mrs. Judson?” Michelle laughed. “The Iron Maiden?”

  Delores could feel her face grow warmer.

  “Tonya, there’s no way Mrs. Judson could be struggling or sad. Girlfriend has enough money and enough bling-bling for everybody. Mrs. Judson’s white and she’s running things—ain’t no master on her back. What does she have to be upset about?”

  Delores could feel the color draining from her face. She self-consciously lowered her glass.

  “You know, Michelle, you’re right. Mrs. Judson has money, she’s in charge, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s breathing down her neck. But one thing I’ve learned—pain’s not prejudiced. Sorrow and grief don’t care if you’re red, yellow, white, black, or brown. You can be unhappy rich just as well as you can poor. And the only remedy I’ve ever found is available to all. That’s why I love the Lord so much. That’s why I keep getting on your nerves talking about Him.”

  “Oh, Tonya, all that is over, okay?”

  “The Lord really looked beyond my faults and saw my needs.”

  Delores sat quietly. She was afraid to even breathe. Not more superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

  “Tonya, it’s over about the books and everything. All this time that we’ve been meeting I’ve been looking at the books—taking peeks and reading little portions of them. I didn’t want you to know. But I feel guilty. It really wasn’t you. There are some things about my family . . . about my mother. I really don’t want to go into all the details. But there are some things . . .”

  Michelle cleared her throat. “I got saved once. I believe in God. It’s just that I could never figure out how God could let that happen to me. How could He sit by and watch me be raped? I never knew my father . . . I still don’t know him and I haven’t been able to forgive my mother for letting it happen to me. I don’t understand why she would let that man talk to her that way, beat her, and then do what he did to me. Why she would let him use me? She knew it. My mother knew what he was doing to me. I can’t forgive her for pretending that her boyfriend didn’t . . . I was supposed to go along with it and pretend it didn’t happen. I was supposed to accept her worrying about him instead of me.”

  Michelle spoke in hushed tones. “But I’ve been reading that Bible you gave me, Tonya. One day I asked God to help me. To answer me if He was listening to me. I picked up the Bible and it just opened to a page.” She sounded amazed. “There was this passage that caught my eye. I read it and now I can’t get it out of my head. ‘When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me.’6 It was the same passage you sent to me in the card, right? It had to be God, don’t you think? It had to be God, Tonya.”

  Delores turned back to her coffee. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She didn’t understand it, but she just didn’t want to hear anymore.

  When the two women left, Delores paid her check and quietly slipped from the booth as though nothing had happened.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  They knew that I was there! Michelle and Tonya had followed her to the restaurant. They had to have known she was there. It was the only explanation. How else could they have known to say the things they did? They had misused her favor and betrayed her.

  Delores paced back and forth in her office. She had been thinking about it all night. She had been thinking about it all day.

  Could He or would He send someone over the wall?

  It was too pat. It was the kind of thing that people believed and shouted about at tent meetings—and at revivals where the ministers spoke with Southern twangs and wore pomaded hair. There was no God that involved himself in anyone’s life.

  If there was a God, why would He have been so concerned with Delores that He arranged for her to eat lunch in a restaurant she never frequented? Out of all the tables in the restaurant, why would an all-powerful God bother to have two women sit beside her—women who had stories that touched her life? Delores rubbed one hand back and forth on top of her head. She didn’t even believe. She wasn’t shouting about God or sending offerings. If there was a God, why would he be bothered with her?

  Delores was a powerful person. She knew and had studied the behavior of powerful people. No person, let alone a god, would expend the energy it took to set up this afternoon’s coincidental little passion-filled play.

  Those two women hated each other. She had seen and heard them arguing in the office herself. Something was going on; something was rotten in Denmark, and she was going to get to the root of it.

  No one—least of all someone who worked for her—was going to make a fool of her. No one!

  “I had an abortion.”

  What kind of fool did they take her for? No one—not even a fool—was going to believe that Tonya had had an abortion. If they wanted to make it convincing, they should have let Michelle play that part.

  “That’s what I thought I recognized on Mrs. Judson the other day. That same kind of fear and deep sadness.”

  Fear and sadness? She wasn’t afraid of anyone and she wasn’t about to let life make her sad. Tonya had toyed with the wrong person. Delores would teach her what fear was all about.

  And Michelle was going to be sorry.

  “Why would she let him use me? She knew it. My mother knew what he was doing to me. I can’t forgive her for pretending . . .”

  How convenient—did they actually expect her to believe that her Claudia and Michelle had lived the same life? She was going to make Michelle eat those words.

  Delores didn’t know how they knew, but somehow Tonya and Michelle had discovered her secrets. They knew about Claudia and Carl Jr. They knew about the baby and the planned abortion. They knew she had been feeling uncertain. Maybe they had intercepted the signals from her cell phone. It really didn’t matter how they knew; the two of them knew and they were scheming to use it against her.

  Tonya had probably intended to use the information against her when she came to her office that Monday morning for the meeting. They had planned, Delores deduced, to extort promotions from her for their silence.

  Tonya and Michelle were working together against her . . .

  “Pain’s not prejudiced . . .”

  Maybe not, but something had brought the two of them together. Delores hadn’t built a successful business because she was foolish. She wasn’t about to let the two of them undo her.

  Could He or would He send someone over the wall?

  Delores sank into her chair. No one in her life had ever cared enough to go out of their way for her—not unless they wanted something from her. She had done everything for herself. She had made her own fortune. She had built her own family. Delores had learned early that she could only rely on herself.

  Could He or would He send someone over the wall?

  There was no one coming to save her—no knight in shining armor, no super hero, and certainly no caring, benevolent God. No one was coming to rescue her.

  Delores rested her elbows on her desk and laid her head in her hands.

  “My uncle is the father.”

  Delores could see Claudia’s face and her trembling chin.

  “Do you think it’s the right thing?”

  Carl was bewildered and full of doubt. And she could see Carl Jr. All of it was on her. All of it. All of them were counting on her to make some sense of what was senseless. No one was coming over the wall. Delores was going to have to pull herself together. There was no Savior coming. The only answer was within her.

  She reached for her buzzer and spoke to her receptionist. “Please send Tonya and Michelle to my office immediately. Thank you.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When Tonya and Michelle walked into Delores’s office they were all smiles and laughter. Delores played along. “It’s good to see that things are so much better between the two of you.” S
he smiled and nodded at both of them. “I just thought it was time for us to have a heart-to-heart about how things are going. Have a seat, won’t you?”

  Tonya and Michelle sat down in the seats in front of her desk. They were just as sweet and innocent as lambs before the slaughter. Delores needed to do something to make them uncomfortable, to set them off balance. “Michelle, do you mind removing your sunglasses? I want each of us to look the others in the eye.” She forced warmth into her smile. “Like a visit between old friends.” She leaned back in her chair.

  Michelle’s face registered embarrassment as she removed the shades. She turned her head and looked down.

  “Michelle, is something wrong with your eye?” Delores was pleased with the compassionate tone of her voice.

  Michelle shifted uneasily in her chair. “I had—I had an accident, Mrs. Judson.”

  “Really? Did it happen here in the office?” She looked at Tonya. “Did you report it?” Then back at Michelle. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “No, Mrs. Judson, it wasn’t work related. It happened at home.”

  “At home? Well, Michelle, you know we’re all family here. There’s nothing you can’t discuss with Tonya and me. Isn’t that right, Tonya?”

  She was enjoying herself playing the magnanimous leader. It felt good toying with them.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Judson. We don’t need to talk about it.”

  Delores smiled. “All right, if you’re certain.” She shuffled some papers on her desk. “Why don’t the two of you go ahead then and give me a status report?”

  Tonya looked mildly confused but still confident. “I’ll go first if you don’t mind, Mrs. Judson.”

  “You go right ahead, Tonya.”

  “Well, Michelle and I have been meeting regularly and attempting to learn to communicate with each other more effectively.”

  Delores smiled brightly. “That certainly seems to be working. You appear to be quite the little team.”

  “It has been, Mrs. Judson. Since we began meeting, there haven’t been any more incidents between us in the office—in fact, neither one of us have been involved in any angry discussions with anyone in the office. The meetings have cleared the air.”