God Don't Make No Mistakes

by Mary Monroe

  CHAPTER 50

  ABOUT THREE WEEKS INTO THE NEW YEAR, THERE WERE SEVERAL news reports on TV about a woman named Paula Jones, as homely as she could be, accusing President Clinton of sexual harassment. Everybody I knew was laughing about it. Even me. Clinton was a handsome man. And with his cute Southern accent and charisma, he could have done much better than Paula Jones. If what that woman named Gennifer Flowers was saying in the tabloids was true, she’d had a very long affair with Clinton. She was a pretty woman, and I could see why the president would have been attracted to her. But this Paula woman was such a straight-up dog.

  “It’s a damn shame how far a female will go to get attention,” Lillimae said after one of the TV broadcasts with that Paula woman grinning into the camera. “This heifer’s nose looks like a man’s elbow. She needs a heavy dose of spiritual guidance.”

  Spiritual guidance was one thing that we all needed on a regular basis to nourish our relationship with God. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to church, or even to one of the frequent tent revivals. Now seemed just as good a time as any for me to do so.

  The tent revival folks had left Richland the last week in December, but they had returned a week ago. This time they had pitched the huge tent in the parking lot of the Second Baptist Church, the church that I went to when I did go to church. Muh’Dear, Pee Wee, Daddy, and almost every other black Baptist I knew belonged to this church.

  This was the fourth time in the last six months that Reverend LeRoy Pritchard, a roving assistant pastor from Columbus, had brought his popular revival to Richland. He and his staff usually set up the tent, which was large enough to accommodate at least a couple of hundred people. Until the beloved reverend replaced the reverend he assisted, or got a church of his own, he would roam around with his tent, spreading the gospel for several weeks at a time each year. And since he had grown up in Richland, and was a first cousin to Reverend Crutchfield, my preacher, he spent more time here than in any other city in Ohio.

  Each week of the revival, the Reverend Pritchard and his associates printed up flyers inviting people to attend the evening services that lasted from seven to nine P.M. The flyers only contained program information that pertained to each individual night. Well, “that modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah,” as Reverend Pritchard called the strip club that Jade worked for, had become such a huge thorn in the side of Richland’s black community that the elders had spent more time condemning it than any other place. Every other day for the past two weeks, the flyers had displayed “guaranteed salvation” to anybody connected to The Cock Pit. All they had to do was attend the service and atone.

  Last Sunday evening, two dozen church members paraded around in front of the strip club with signs condemning it, begging the patrons to “come to Jesus” before it was too late. The bouncers chased them away, but some of the protesters returned later that night during the club’s busiest hour. They blocked the entrance, discouraging dozens of patrons from entering the club. It made the front page of The Richland Review newspaper the following Monday.

  On this particular Sunday evening, just as people were moseying into the tent’s front and only entrance, two SUVs pulled up and parked across the street in front of a deserted feed store. Somebody had built a huge snowman in front of the feed store, complete with a carrot nose and pieces of coal for eyes. What was about to take place would have made that snowman melt, if such a thing could happen.

  Before Scary Mary, Rhoda, Muh’Dear, Daddy, Lillimae, Charlotte, and I could get into the tent and find enough metal folding chairs where we could all sit together, all of the doors on each SUV flew open. It was fairly dark, but there was a lot of light from the streetlights, so we could see everything taking place across the street. And it was a sight to behold. Several half-naked young women, and the same three mean-looking bouncers who had accosted Rhoda and me in the club, piled out. They marched out to the curb like soldiers.

  “Wolves! Nothin’ but the big bad wolves!” Muh’Dear gasped, clutching a thick black muffler around her neck.

  “And them wolves didn’t even bother to dress up in sheep’s clothin’!” Daddy noticed. He wore a black fedora, black suit, and white shirt. And with the grim expression on his face, you would have thought that he was a funeral director.

  This pack of wolves was being led by none other than Jade. There was a mischievous look on her face that could have stopped a clock.

  “Rhoda, ain’t that your girl?” Lillimae gasped, attempting to usher Charlotte inside.

  Charlotte had been very reluctant to attend the tent meeting. As hard as she tried to bargain her way out, volunteering to do laundry and other unpleasant household chores, you would have thought that she was trying to talk her way out of a whupping. Most of the kids who attended the meetings did not do so by choice. My daughter quickly changed her tune when I told her that she had to go either to the revival or to Harrietta’s house.

  There was an amused look on Charlotte’s face now, the kind you see only on the faces of youngsters her age. Had the same look been on my face, people would have thought that I was crazy. “Dang! Jade looks hella cool in that outfit!” Charlotte yelled, admiring Jade’s micromini and halter top. We were still in the middle of one of our worst winters in years, and Jade was dressed like she belonged on a beach. I wore my knee-length, blue wool dress with a thick, lined plaid coat on over it, gloves, boots, a muffler around my neck, and I was still cold.

  “Young’un, you better save your praises for the Lord,” Scary Mary warned Charlotte, using her gnarled fingers to thump the side of my daughter’s head like a cantaloupe.

  “Let’s get inside,” I insisted, standing behind Lillimae. But nobody was moving forward, and I couldn’t because Scary Mary and Lillimae were blocking the way.

  Rhoda’s jaw had dropped so low that her mouth looked like a dipper. In her cream-colored silk dress with matching wool coat, her face beautifully made up, and her hair pinned into a neat French twist, she looked like a supermodel who had just stepped off the cover of Vogue magazine. But from the sudden look of horror on her face, it seemed like she’d gone from looking like a Vogue cover girl to one who belonged on Mad magazine. She looked like she wanted to cuss out the world. “That’s it. I’m not goin’ to let my child go on like this,” Rhoda said in a low voice.

  What happened next was so outrageous, cars driving down the street stopped.

  One of the bouncers produced a boom box and fired up one of the raunchiest rap CDs that I’d ever heard in my life. I didn’t appreciate any of that trash anyway; most rap music was disgusting to me. But this one crossed the line. Whoever the “singer” was, started out chanting “pop that pussy, pop open that bootie ...” Jade lifted her skirt and began to perform a slow bump and grind. Then the other strippers did the same thing as the bouncers clapped, whistled, and cheered them on.

  CHAPTER 51

  REVEREND PRITCHARD WAS A BIG MAN WITH HARD, MENACING features. He was not happy with what was taking place, and I knew he was going to attempt to stop it before it got out of hand. He walked out to the edge of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips.

  “Uh-oh,” Daddy said in a low voice. “Reverend Pritchard’s gwine to put the fear of the Lord into that mob.”

  I agreed with Daddy. And if anybody could put the fear of the Lord in somebody, it was Reverend Pritchard. But as soon as he got close enough, Jade and the rest of her crew looked at him like he was crazy.

  “We done already called the law, so you devils better get back in them hoopties and get the hell out of here! This is private property,” the reverend roared, waving his arms like he was directing traffic. “I don’t know what y’all trying to prove, but you ain’t rackin’ up no points here!”

  “Are you saying that we can’t come to this revival?” Jade jeered, still bumping and grinding. “We need some spiritual guidance. We are sinners and everybody knows that even sinners need love.”

  “Girl, you need way more than spiritual guidance,” Re
verend Pritchard hollered, shaking his fist at Jade. He crossed the street and stood right in front of her.

  “Jade, you need a whuppin’!” an unidentified voice yelled from the entrance area of the tent.

  I didn’t realize that I had put my hand over Charlotte’s eyes until she pushed it away.

  “Us Cock Pit folks got religion too!” one of the bouncers chortled. At the same time, this same man was sipping from a can of Budweiser beer!

  “Amen! And a COCK-A-DOODLE-DO!” one of the other strippers yelled.

  “We can do what we want, wherever we want, and when we want,” another one added, giving us the finger. She used that same finger to pat her crotch. Then, with a sinister giggle, she licked her finger and gave it to us again.

  “Save us! If y’all can parade around in front of our club, we can parade around here!” Jade screeched, laughing and dancing so hard it looked like she was having a spasm. Then she threw back her head, stretched her mouth as wide open as it would go, and roared with gut-wrenching laughter. She went too far when she wrapped her arms around the reverend and started humping him!

  “I don’t think so,” Scary Mary said with a look on her face that would have frightened the Devil. Looking from the spectacle across the street to my face and around to the others in my party, she continued, “Y’all move back. This one is mine. I know just how to straighten out this mess,” she said, speaking calmly now, despite the fact that she was obviously just as outraged as the rest of us. “I may be a she-pimp, but even I know there is a time and a place for everything. A sex sideshow don’t belong this close to hallowed ground!” To this day, none of us knew Scary Mary’s full background. I didn’t know how old she was, or even where she had come from. But one thing I did know was that this old sister had earned her nickname. She had been involved in criminal activity since the age of nine, when she and her outlaw mother lived in a chicken coop on a white man’s sugarcane farm in south Florida. She had only one biological child of her own, despite the fact that she’d been married several times, but she treated me and all of my friends like family. In spite of her age, which was at least late eighties or early nineties, and her declining health, people feared her. She wouldn’t hesitate to bat somebody’s head with her bamboo cane or bite off somebody’s finger (she’d done that to one of her unruly male clients a few years ago). People feared her because she knew where all the bodies were buried, so to speak. She had so many connections that she never had any trouble getting her way, good or bad. She was like a cross between Oprah and John Gotti; she could be your “best friend” or your “worst enemy.” Every Thanksgiving and Christmas she donated dozens of bushel baskets of food to poor families, and she helped serve food at the local soup kitchen on a regular basis. I was glad that I was on her good side.

  We all stood back as the fearless old madam sauntered over to the strippers with her hands on her hips, the tail of her butterscotch-colored tweed coat almost touching the ground. Reverend Pritchard turned around and headed back toward the tent, wiping sweat off of his face with his sleeve.

  Scary Mary stopped with her face inches in front of Jade’s. Jade gasped. Her body was suddenly as rigid as a tree. “Shame, shame, shame! Shame on you, Jade! SHAME!” Scary Mary chanted. “If you was my girl, I’d skin you alive!”

  Jade looked around at her friends and rolled her eyes. Then she looked up into Scary Mary’s face. Jade looked like a midget standing in front of Scary Mary, who was at least six feet tall.

  “What ... what is your problem, old woman?” Jade asked Scary Mary in a voice that displayed a great deal of fear. “Can’t y’all take a joke?”

  “You can call yourself jokin’ all you want to, Devil, but I can assure you that I AIN’T JOKIN’! And who you callin’ an old woman? I ain’t that old, so don’t you call me no old woman, girl. I can still do anything you can do, and better. You think you got this poontang thing sewed up? Pshaw! Sex is my business, always has been. You ain’t lived long enough to know the ropes like you think you do! You wouldn’t know a real dick from an Oscar Mayer weenie. I done been where you tryin’ to go. I got more experience in any form of the sex business in one of my baby fingers than you got in your ass and mouth put together! You can provoke me if you want to and I promise you, you will suffer!” Scary Mary told Jade.

  “I ... I ...” Jade stuttered.

  “I ... I ... I—nothin’!” Scary Mary hollered, mimicking Jade’s shaky voice. “I ... I ... I!”

  The only other sounds that I could hear were of the cars driving down the street. Nobody was laughing, talking, blasting that rap music, or doing anything else, except breathing.

  “You know I was just playing,” Jade stammered, backing a few steps away from Scary Mary.

  With each step that Jade took backward, Scary Mary took one forward. “And what’s my problem? Girl, I ain’t got no problem. But if I had to choose one, I’d have to say my problem was you!”

  Scary Mary kept talking, but in a voice that was too low for any of us to hear now. From the frightened looks on the faces of the strip-club gang, especially Jade’s, what Scary Mary was saying had to be pretty potent because it did the trick. Jade and her cohorts scrambled back into their vans and shot back off down the street like they had just robbed a bank.

  “Rhoda, I was gwine to include you in my prayers this evenin’ anyway, but now I’m gwine to devote my entire prayer request to you,” Muh’Dear said, rubbing Rhoda’s back.

  We all waited until Reverend Pritchard and Scary Mary composed themselves before we filed into the tent and took our seats.

  I had seen the reverend do some serious preaching, jumping up and down and sweating like a pig, even falling off the pulpit once. But I had never seen him preach the way he did that night.

  “He talked about them strippers and that strip club like it was gwine out of style,” Daddy said later that night after we had all gone to my house. “I’ll be the first one to sign that petition he’s about to draw up to get the city to shet that hellhole down.”

  “Once they shet that place down, maybe Jade will come back to her senses and drag her slap-happy ass on back home,” Lillimae said, not sounding very confident.

  From the look on Rhoda’s face now, I had a feeling she no longer wanted her daughter to simply “drag her slap-happy ass on back home.” That was when I recalled what Rhoda had told me the other night, but I didn’t say anything to her about it.

  Later that same night, at my dining room table during a feast of fried cat fish and black-eyed peas that nobody, except Lillimae, seemed to be enjoying, Rhoda whispered in my ear, “Remember what I said I was goin’ to do?”

  At first, I pretended like I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I did. She was going to set up her own daughter to go to jail. “You’re going to plant drugs in Jade’s luggage when you guys go to Jamaica,” I replied.

  Rhoda didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  “Rhoda, do you watch much cable TV?” I asked. “Those documentaries on true crimes?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “A lot of the channels do documentary-type shows about people who get caught up in foreign jail situations. Those Jamaican jails are brutal.”

  “I know that. She won’t get caught in Jamaica. I told you, she’s goin’ to get caught comin’ back into the States. Don’t you remember me tellin’ you that?”

  “Maybe you did, Rhoda, but I am going to be honest with you; I didn’t think you were serious about this. Even now I am wondering if you really mean to go through with this thing.”

  “Well, you can stop wonderin’ about it. I really do mean to go through with this thing.”

  CHAPTER 52

  ABOUT AN HOUR AFTER ALL OF MY COMPANY HAD GONE HOME, I moved from my dining room into the living room and curled up on the couch with the TV on. I watched a Golden Girls rerun and then the news. They were still reporting Bill Clinton and Paula Jones stories.

  It was past eleven and I had sent Charlotte to bed. Lillimae
had turned in for the night, and I was glad to have some time alone to organize my thoughts, again.

  Just as the news was about to go off, Pee Wee knocked on the front door. He had called earlier and told me that he was coming over to bring money for Charlotte.

  Despite the fact that I had spent the evening with family and friends, I now felt so lonely that I was glad to see Pee Wee. He usually called before he came over. But when he didn’t, his unexpected visits didn’t bother me as much as they used to. As a matter of fact, I was happy to see him these days.

  To me, my glee meant that we had made some significant progress. It looked more and more like we would live as man and wife again after all. It had been quite a while since we’d had any close contact, meaning some “action in the flesh,” as the revival reverend had referred to sex. And quite frankly, I needed some now. Especially since I had severed my relationship with Ronald. I had not spoken to him since that clumsy night at the mall. But I had seen him on the street a few times with his wife and children. Each time, he’d looked at me like I was a stranger. I had also finally dropped Roscoe completely from my agenda. That was one relationship that had become useless, to me and to him. For one thing, I was of no more use to him when I stopped doing domestic chores for him. I missed him, but not enough to continue the relationship.

  “I’m glad you had some time for me,” Pee Wee said as soon as he came in and made himself comfortable on my couch. “I know you are one busy lady.”

  “I’m not as busy as you think,” I admitted. “At least not with other men.” I sniffed. “But I do have a lot going on.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  I didn’t know how much Rhoda had told him about how she was going to plant drugs on her daughter, and I was certainly not going to tell him. But I felt that I needed to know what Rhoda had shared with him on this subject. I didn’t want to slip up and reveal information she didn’t want anybody else to know.

  “Uh, have you talked to Rhoda lately about Jade?” I asked, giving him a cautious look.