But all of that mannish thinking was just arrogant foolishness. Things didn’t always go straight from point A to point B. Sometimes it required that nonlogical, nonlinear, topsy-turvy path, invisible to the left-brain-trained eye, to get to the truth. Sometimes the truth could only be seen with spiritual eyes—with that wondrous gift that only came from the Lord. That’s why she always remembered to thank the good Lord for making her left-handed and in her “right mind.”
Lamont had drained his glass of orange juice and was smacking his lips. His aunt’s orange juice had to be the best in Durham County. She made it fresh several times a week from the sweetest and juiciest oranges she could find, using a selection process she’d explained over and over to Lamont. But try as he might, Lamont couldn’t seem to pick oranges as good as his Auntee’s.
“Of course you can’t,” she’d thought when he had shared that with her, “not with that left-brain thinking clouding your vision.”
She watched her nephew push his chair back from the kitchen table and get ready to leave.
“Mister Man,” she said, “before you hightail it out of here, we got some business to take care of. We need to pray.”
Lamont started to protest but her stern expression stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Okay,” he said, desperately hoping it wouldn’t take too long.
Queen Esther gestured toward the place where she wanted Lamont to kneel. She opened the decanter and, while still holding the stopper, stretched her arm up in the air. She lowered that arm and stretched out the other one.
“Lamont,” she said, “commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him . . .”
Lamont unwillingly bowed his head as she continued to speak the words from Psalm 37, while bending and stretching out her torso.
“Why,” he thought, “does Auntee have to do warm-up exercises like she is getting ready to go on a run before praying?”
Queen Esther knew that most people, her nephew being one, viewed prayer as a passive activity. But to her, praying was linking up with the Lord, coming to Him for help in every area of life; giving praise for His blessings; thanking Him for His salvation, praising Him for being God and God alone; for defeating life’s problems; for offering healing, overcoming trials and tribulations, going through the storm and coming out of it as pure as the purest gold. Praying was anything but passive—it was doing battle and waging spiritual warfare. As far as Queen Esther Green was concerned, praying had to be one of the most aggressive acts any Christian worth her “salt-and-flavoring” could do.
Queen Esther finished her stretches and then started jumping up and down like a fighter waiting on the first-round bell to ring. She cracked the kinks out of her neck and poured some oil onto her hands, placing them on her nephew’s head as she began to pray in tongues. Lamont started to squirm a bit, like he used to do when he was a little boy, and Queen Esther felt a need to hold on to him in prayer.
She took his hands in hers and prayed, “Lord, this baby need Your help and guidance, and he needs to feel You moving in his heart and soul. ’Cause he runnin’ round here thinking that hard work and thinkin’ and plannin’ and frettin’ and controlling how he and all the rest of his team at Green Pastures work and handle this thing, gone be what truly makes the difference in what he trying to do. But while hard work and thinkin’ and frettin’ and bullying folks and plannin’ will . . .”
Queen Esther paused a moment as she thought about the words she’d just spoken. Rev. Quincey was always cautioning them to put a stop guard on their tongues as written about in the Book of James. Words were some mighty powerful things when a body considered the words in the first chapter of the book of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”
“Well, not bullying, Lord. Nobody ever got anywhere in a decent way by bullying and threatening and subjugating and mistreating folks, even if they were right on their concerns about the issue that prompted this behavior in the first place. So, Lord, in continuance of what I was saying, let the baby know that while the other means will help, only Your will truly makes the difference. And as for the frettin’ . . . well, that’s better left to those folks who’ve just made Jesus’ acquaintance, and don’t know enough about him to know better than to sin by scurrying up a fret.”
She studied her nephew a moment, amused at his pitiful efforts to act like he wanted to be kneeling here listening to her pray. Lamont was a very good man. He had given his life over to the Lord when he was twenty years old and, for the most part, had endeavored to live right. But living for Jesus required a steady prayer life, going to church, reading the Bible, and growing stronger each day in your walk with the Lord—which was a whole lot more than he had been doing over the past few years. Yes, he was saved—technically, that is. But he had to get right and let Jesus rule over his life for a change—and to be in the pastor’s office talking about Jesus and not just strategies to rebuild the Cashmere.
“Can I get up now, Auntee?” Lamont asked, trying hard to keep the impatience out of his voice. He knew that the absolute worst thing he could do was to rush his aunt during one of her infamous prayer sessions.
“No,” she answered, clinging tightly to his hands as he began to pull away.
“Lord, in the name of Your precious Son, Jesus,” she prayed, “I ask that You lead Lamont in the way that You would have him to walk. Lord, Lamont needs You to bless him with that contract to rebuild our old neighborhood. And Father, I ask that You do it in such a way that this hardheaded, think-the-business-strategies-of-the-world-is-the-way-to-go, left-brain-dominated, linear-thinkin’ boy can’t help but bow down in praise and worship before Your throne, simply awed by Your miracle-working power. Let him know, Father, that when his back is to the wall, all he has to do is call You up and tell You what he wants in accordance with Your perfect and holy will.
“And Lord, it’s getting to be past high time for this boy to get married again. Ain’t right for a man as fine and sweet as my baby boy to be running around alone and loose, with his male nature working on him and making him prone to lying up with those loose-legged women like that Table Wine girl, and the one with that big ole panther tattoo on her booty that he think I don’t know about.”
“Auntee!”
Queen Esther put Lamont in his place with barely a flicker of a narrowing of her beautiful topaz eyes. Lamont grew quiet, annoyed his aunt would try to dip into his personal business like that. He was a grown-tailed man, and big and bad enough to run his own life. But he knew better than to say so.
Finally, Queen Esther took a very deep breath, and then let it go, releasing all that she had just prayed on into the very expert and capable hands of God.
She loosened her grip on Lamont’s hands, opened her eyes, and gave him the sweetest smile. Lamont always thought his aunt was most beautiful when she finished praying. More beautiful still was the thought that now he’d be dismissed at last, for Queen Esther was saying, “Come here, baby,” as she drew him to his feet. “You better head on over to your office and study on this prayer, so you can hear the Lord speaking to you and telling you what you need to do to be blessed with the contract.”
Lamont kissed his aunt, thanked her for breakfast and the prayers, and got ready to leave.
“Oh, don’t forget to call the pastor before the day is out.”
“Why?”
“Because James told me that you are volunteering to play Santa this year. You want to tell him that and also let him know that you will be at the meeting for the Christmas Festival next Sunday, right after service.”
“I’ll do that if I run into Rev. Quincey before the meeting. I wasn’t planning on attending the morning service,” Lamont said.
Queen Esther frowned. She never did like it when folks came to church asking for help but didn’t think enough of it to participate in the morning wor
ship service. Politicians, especially white politicians, were notorious for skipping out right in the middle of the service after coming to ask black church folk for some much needed help and votes.
“You’ll be asking the church to raise a lot of money,” she scolded Lamont. “Enough to make a dent in your closing-cost program. You are also depending on Rev. Quincey to back you, using his savvy and good standing here in Durham, to persuade some more preachers to join him. Now, I don’t know about you, Lamont. But if it were me, I’d be ashamed to ask for all of that from some people I didn’t think enough of to sit through church with. You either want the church’s help or you don’t. Don’t be trifling about something this important.”
She opened the door.
“All right. I’ll come to service and then attend the meeting.”
“And the dinner? Don’t you want to come to that as well?”
“I would think that sitting through the entire service would suffice,” Lamont answered in the same voice she’d heard him using when giving orders to people working for him.
But since she didn’t work for him, and certainly wasn’t inclined to take orders from him either, she said, “Well, I guess it would suffice, if all you wanted was a few sufficient words about yourself from Rev. Quincey during Sunday morning service. But if you are aiming for some real support, and some help from above, it suffices me to say, that taking some extra time out of your day to spend with your pastor, at his church, would suffice.”
“Just make sure you get me my plate, so that I don’t have to stand in that long line, trying to convince one of your girls on the food service committee to part with an extra leg of chicken.”
Queen Esther stuck out her hand and said, “Deal,” suppressing a small smile of victory. She’d done her part by getting Lamont back to church. Now God would do the rest.
Charmayne had been driving around the neighborhood where the old Hillside High School used to be for close to an hour, taking mental notes. She wondered if Jethro Winters should back off of trying to get the property in this area. The historically black North Carolina Central University was so busy expanding and building that she seriously doubted that he would be able to bulldoze the powers that be at the school. She pulled over and picked up her cell to dial Jethro, wishing she’d put his number in her voice recognition system.
After several rings the voice mail came on. And just as Charmayne was about to give a quick report, she saw Lamont Green coming out of his aunt’s house. She clicked the phone off and then back on, this time speaking, “Chablis,” into the receiver.
“This is the Jackson residence,” Chablis’s mother, Miss Shirley, answered, in that stiff and proper voice, with over-pronounced words, that she used when answering the phone. Charmayne always wondered why Miss Shirley didn’t use her regular voice because she still sounded ghetto and country, especially when she put “ers” on the end of everything when attempting to talk proper.
“Hey, Miss Shirley. Has Chablis left yet?”
“Naw, baby,” Miss Shirley answered in her regular voice, which was flat, slow, and always sounded like she was chewing on a wad of gum when she spoke. “Blee still hangin’ ’round the house.”
“May I speak to her?”
“Sure, baby,” Miss Shirley said and then yelled, “BLEE, Charmayne Robinson on the phone.”
“Okay, I got it, Mama,” Chablis yelled into the receiver.
As soon as Miss Shirley hung up, Charmayne said, “Do y’all always have to holler and scream in the phone like that?”
“What’s going on, Charmayne?” Chablis said, ignoring her comment.
“You hungry?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Let’s go over to Mama Dips for breakfast.”
“Why don’t she come over here and eat?” Miss Shirley boomed.
A silent moment passed.
“Mama,” Chablis finally asked, “when did you get back on the phone?”
“When I felt like it,” Miss Shirley answered and hung up.
“I’m in your driveway,” Charmayne said. She turned off the car and walked up on the Jackson porch. But she felt compelled to linger there to let her gaze sweep the block, with its small, well-tended lawns and homes with warm personal touches—a red door here, white window boxes filled with colorful flowers there, and across the street, a small neighborhood park with swings, a seesaw, and a modest picnic shelter.
“What are you staring at?” Chablis asked, wondering what was so intriguing about this street, with its old-school ranch houses, to Charmayne. She had visited their home many times.
“Never realized how nice this street was,” Charmayne said, feeling a slight ache in her chest. What a shame that it was on Jethro’s “must-hit” list.
“Well, get off the porch,” Miss Shirley admonished, pulling on a pair of yellow rubber cleaning gloves and heading back to the kitchen, mumbling, “Don’t know why you two heifers think Mama Dips’s food better than mine.”
“Why,” Charmayne wanted to know so badly, “does Chablis’s mama always wear those things?” She knew Miss Shirley’s elevator bypassed a few floors on the way to the top, but did she always have to let everybody know how many stops it missed by wearing those big, hot, yellow rubber gloves?
“Okay, Mama,” Chablis said tightly, trying so hard not to snap at her mother. “We’ll eat breakfast here.”
Charmayne followed Chablis into the small but immaculate kitchen, the floor shining and smelling so fresh that she really could have eaten off of it. As soon as they sat down at the gleaming pinewood table, she pulled out the Cashmere business plan that she’d been working on all morning.
“Look at these numbers, Chablis,” Charmayne said and pushed the paper over to her friend.
Chablis’s eyes scanned the spreadsheet quickly before coming back to rest on Charmayne.
“Impressive. But what does this have to do with me? Maybe you’re making money from this, but I’m not.”
Charmayne rolled her eyes and blew air out of her mouth. What was she thinking? Chablis was very self-centered and a little obtuse at times. Of course she wouldn’t give a hoot about these numbers or anything else until she saw how it affected her directly. Charmayne flipped through the papers in front of her and pulled out the building plans.
“Look at this section of the new neighborhood.”
Chablis took the sheet and studied it. She was about to hand it back to Charmayne when her eyes fell on the building designated for a blend of living and business spaces. The stores proposed for the larger slots were all very high-end and chic, but interspersed with them was an assortment of small, more affordable retail spaces.
Although Chablis had built a thriving event- and concert-planning business out of her home, she believed that it would soar if she could find the right location. Right now, she got customers through word of mouth and advertising in the Black Pages, or the black-owned-business phone book, the radio, and targeting the black Greek associations, along with a growing number of churches who wanted to celebrate anniversaries and annual choir concerts in a big way. But to go further and expand her clientele across both color and economic lines, she needed a location-location-location.
And then, maybe she could even afford—at last—to indulge in a home of her own, where she could kick up a little dust whenever she wanted.
“Perfect for your business, isn’t it, Soror?” Charmayne cooed, forming her fingers into a dainty triangle. She knew she was fighting dirty by playing the Delta Sigma Theta card on Chablis. But what else could she do? She was desperate and needed help to get the skinny on Lamont Green. Chablis was the only one associated with Charmayne who could possibly get next to him and be willing to share what she knew with her.
“What do you want?” Chablis knew there was a price.
“Lamont’s strategies. I need to know what my boss is up against—”
“Mama, you all right?” Chablis called out, as flames shot from the stove and her mother doused what wa
s supposed to be their bacon with baking soda.
Miss Shirley whirled around to glare at Charmayne, who stared back as hard as she dared without risking a reproach. “There’s some trickery going on,” Miss Shirley proclaimed, seemingly out of the blue.
Chablis handed the plans back to Charmayne, torn between wanting to guarantee her space at the fancy new building and those big yellow warning signs on her mama’s hands. There were times when her mother simply wasn’t as crazy as she wanted folks to believe.
“So, what do you think?” Charmayne asked, determined not to wilt under Miss Shirley’s withering gaze.
“I’ll see what I can do,” was all that Chablis dared to respond. She wanted store space so badly that she could practically taste sawdust. But she was also on the outs with Lamont and unsure of how to get back into his good graces.
“Let’s go to Mama Dips,” Miss Shirley said, brandishing the hot, baking-soda-smothered bacon skillet like a weapon.
“Good idea,” Charmayne replied. But having made her point, she knew she’d never win by confronting Miss Shirley head-on. She checked her watch and hurriedly collected her papers. “On second thought, I’d better head on over to Jethro Winters’s office.”
“You sure you don’t want to tag along, baby?” Miss Shirley asked sweetly, as she took off her gloves and stashed them in her voluminous fake burgundy patent leather purse.
“No, ma’am,” Charmayne mumbled as politely as she could and left, feeling that she’d at least planted a seed.
Chapter Six
CRAIG UTLEY STOMPED DRY, RED DIRT OFF HIS SHOES as he walked around the brick ruin of one of the remaining buildings of the original Cashmere Estates.
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