When All Is Said and Prayed

by E. N. Joy

  Miss Nettie looked at Mr. Vanderdale. “But you helped me, Mr. Vanderdale. You were a godsend. I was days away from taking a sheet and hanging myself in my prison cell. I felt I was a lost cause and life just wasn’t worth living anymore. But you saved me. And I was hoping . . . It was my prayer that maybe . . . just maybe . . . you would save my boy too.”

  The discomfort of being put on the spot like that showed in Mr. Vanderdale’s expression. “Miss Nettie, I honestly don’t know if that’s possible.”

  Miss Nettie was taken aback. “I guess I don’t understand your response. Helping folks in that manner is your calling in life.”

  “Nettie, you know I retired from that field a long time ago,” Mr. Vanderdale reminded her.

  “You retired from it as far as getting a paycheck for it. But I know you still got the gift, Mr. Vanderdale,” Miss Nettie reasoned as she walked over to Mr. Vanderdale. “You saved me when I thought there was no saving me. You know what I went through, Mr. Vanderdale.” Tears of pain filled Miss Nettie’s eyes. “You know what they put me through before you came into the prison to help me. . . . I mean the so-called treatment. The ECT.”

  Mr. Vanderdale stared into Miss Nettie’s knowing eyes. He could only imagine the pain she’d been subjected to prior to him working with her. The doctor who had been treating Miss Nettie before him had diagnosed her as a psychotic depressive. He’d ordered her to have ECT, which was electric shock therapy. This was a treatment Mr. Vanderdale was strongly against. It included a huge amount of electric current passing through the brain. The treatment had been known to fry a patient’s memory, stealing hunks of their life from their memory bank . . . forever. This could very well have played a part in Miss Nettie’s inability to recall details about the birth of her son. At the mere thought of this, Mr. Vanderdale felt a huge amount of empathy for Miss Nettie.

  Mr. Vanderdale put his hands up. “Okay, Nettie, okay.”

  Miss Nettie immediately got excited and bounced up and down.

  “Whoa. Hold up. Okay, I’ll think about it. I can’t promise you I’m going to do it, but I will at least think about it,” Mr. Vanderdale promised.

  “And I’ll pray,” Mrs. Vanderdale added. “But, Nettie, regardless of Norm’s decision, I must reiterate that your son is not welcome in our home.”

  “You say that now, Mrs. Vanderdale,” Miss Nettie said. “But I’m believing God that when all is said and prayed, He’ll soften your and your husband’s hearts regarding the matter. With the help of God and His vessel”—she looked at Mr. Vanderdale—“my boy is going to be a changed man. The same way I’m a changed woman.” She looked at Stuart. “The same way Stuart here is a changed man.” Miss Nettie had tear-filled eyes. “Isn’t it just amazing? You will be responsible for the healing of my entire family.” She looked up to the heavens. “Thank you, dear God. I praise you in advance. Thank you.”

  Stuart hugged Miss Nettie, who was about to start shouting praise. He kissed her on the forehead and led her out of the room.

  Mr. and Mrs. Vanderdale were left there, alone in their thoughts about the entire matter.

  “Well, honey, what are we going to do?” Mrs. Vanderdale asked her husband.

  “Just like you said to do.” Mr. Vanderdale looked at his wife. “Pray.”

  Paige looked down at her ringing cell phone. Once again, she allowed the call to go straight to voice mail and didn’t answer it. That’s pretty much what she’d done for the past two days whenever Ryan called. Whenever anyone called, for that matter. The only person she wanted to talk to about the whole Blake situation was God. And that was just what she’d been doing.

  Ever since Ryan had driven Paige home after leaving the Vanderdales’, she’d been on her knees. The ride home had been silent. The girls were in the car and not too much could be said in front of them. After dropping them off at home, Ryan told Paige he would call her. And he had. She just hadn’t picked up the phone to talk to him.

  Paige didn’t want anyone in her ear right now. She didn’t even want to hear her own voice. She’d been through so much in her life. She’d made decisions without thinking—without praying. She’d allowed others to make decisions for her. When she felt God wasn’t doing what He should be doing or what she wanted Him to do, she would even kick Him to the left, like a boyfriend who wasn’t spoiling her rotten and giving her everything she wanted. But all the while, God had been giving her everything she needed.

  She’d come a long way for sure in her relationship with God. She didn’t have time for wishy-washiness. She’d learned her lesson about that. Not following God’s lead only made the journey longer. Now she was bound and determined to do whatever the Lord sayeth, even if it meant drowning out everyone else’s voice.

  Paige looked at the clock. The girls still had two and a half hours of school left. She decided she would go up to the school and volunteer to make copies for the teachers. Time alone in the copy room was another opportunity to hear from God.

  In the year and a half that Blake had been out of jail, Paige had not run into him once. She had not heard from him or his attorney. She’d felt safe in the comfort of God’s bosom, knowing He’d protect her from any evil Blake wanted to spew her way. So even though she didn’t understand why God had allowed Blake to resurface in her life—and not just in her life, but in the lives of darn near everybody she was connected to—she was not angry. She didn’t even question God. For the first time in a long time, she simply trusted Him.

  Paige gathered her purse and keys, then slipped on her booties that were in the laundry room. She was just about to set the alarm and walk out the laundry room door that was connected to the garage when she heard her doorbell ring. She paused in her tracks, wondering who it could be.

  “It could be anybody,” she told herself. After all, she’d been dodging everybody. Any one of them could have come to see about her. At first thought, Paige was just going to let them knock until they went away. But what if they stayed out there and saw her pulling out of her garage? She didn’t want to seem like a prisoner in her own home. So with that thought, she decided to go answer the door.

  When she looked out the peephole and saw that it was Miss Nettie, her heart rate sped up. She no longer saw her as just Miss Nettie, her friend and confidante. She was now the mother of her psycho ex-husband. She looked out the peephole again at the older woman standing on her porch. Paige loved Miss Nettie. Loved her to life and death. She could not—she would not—make her pay the price for her son’s sins. After all, the fact that was the mother of her psycho ex-husband meant that she was Adele’s grandmother.

  Paige unlocked the front door and opened it. She pushed the screen open enough for Miss Nettie to enter her home. Miss Nettie looked up at Paige with what looked like regret in her eyes. She then entered the house. Paige closed the door and locked up. When she turned around, Miss Nettie was just standing there, looking at her. Both women seemed to fill up with emotions. Before either one of them knew it, they had charged toward one another to embrace in a heartfelt hug. The tears were unstoppable as each woman cried.

  Miss Nettie spoke first. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Miss Nettie, you don’t have to apologize,” Paige said.

  “I do. I owe you several apologies.”

  The women hugged for a few more seconds, then finally separated. Paige went and got them both some tissue to wipe their faces.

  “Thank you,” Miss Nettie said, taking the tissue from Paige and then blowing her nose with it.

  “You’re welcome.” Paige wiped her tears away. She then looked at Miss Nettie. “You said you owed me several apologies. I don’t understand.”

  Miss Nettie took a deep breath and then gave her one of those “Here it goes” looks. “First off, let me just say that I honestly had no idea who my boy was. I didn’t even know if my child was a boy or a girl. I would have never asked you to help me search for him, had I known.”

  “I know that, Miss Nettie,” Paige said.

&n
bsp; “Wait. Please let me finish.” Miss Nettie found the courage to continue speaking. “I did know who he was, though, by the time I brought him to the Vanderdale house to meet everyone.”

  “Miss Nettie,” Paige said with such disappointment.

  “I didn’t do it that way to hurt anyone. I just felt it was better that way. I knew if I had told you all in advance, he would have never been allowed to step foot in the house. No one would have ever given him a chance.” She put her head down. “Not that anyone gave him a chance this way, either.”

  Paige just stood there. She really had no idea what to say about Miss Nettie’s confession.

  “I wasn’t betraying you or trying to trick you,” Miss Nettie offered. “I love you like a daughter. Like you was my own child.” Miss Nettie’s eyes filled with tears. “You truly are the daughter I never had. And to think that once upon a time you really were my daughter, my daughter-in-law. . . but because of me, my son treated you like a dog on the street.” Miss Nettie keeled over in tears.

  “Miss Nettie, I won’t let you blame yourself for what your son did to me,” Paige said, putting her hand on Miss Nettie’s back. “You weren’t the one who raised him to treat women like that.”

  “Exactly. I wasn’t there for him in the beginning . . . from the start of his precious life. That’s when I really needed to be there, and I wasn’t. I might not have been the one who raised him to treat women like that, but I wasn’t there to raise him on how, in fact, he is supposed to treat women. When a mother fails her son, she fails all the other women in his life too. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Paige. Will you forgive me?”

  Miss Nettie was crying hard. “I was such a broken woman when I gave birth to Blake. His father was another woman’s husband at the time. He was born into a broken situation. He was raised broken by a woman who I’m sure was broken as a result of the role I played in breaking up her marriage. My boy was then abandoned by yet another woman, who at the time he thought was his birth mother. Even though he was a man when he married you, that broken boy was still inside of him. Still controlling his life. He was angry inside. He might have been good at hiding it, but only for so long.”

  Paige could almost feel the pain that Miss Nettie was in as she cried out, apologizing. Just watching the woman caused tears to fall from Paige’s eyes. Paige still didn’t feel as though Miss Nettie owed her an apology for what Blake had done to her.

  “I’ve apologized to Blake. He’s forgiven me. Now I have to apologize to you,” Miss Nettie said to Paige. She took Paige’s face in her hands. “Baby, I’m sorry for what my son did to you. I’m sorry I was the first female in his life to show him that he couldn’t trust women. I left him in the hands of another woman, who ended up leaving him. And I can only imagine what he felt like when he found out that the two mothers he had had both abandoned him. We taught him that a woman would hurt him, leave him. I’m sorry that I didn’t nurture him with the love a mother ought to nurture her child with. I’m sorry I didn’t teach him how to love a woman, how a woman loves, and how to receive that love. I’m sorry for my role in breaking him. I’m sorry that he broke you. Dear Jesus, I’m sorry,” Miss Nettie cried out.

  Paige threw her arms around Miss Nettie. “I forgive you. I forgive you, Miss Nettie.” Following the instructions of the Holy Spirit, Paige forgave Miss Nettie, even though at first she didn’t feel as though an apology was owed to her. But hearing Miss Nettie speak, and hearing the proverbial chains break and fall with her every word, Paige knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Miss Nettie’s apology wasn’t for anyone but herself. It was for her own deliverance. Her own freedom. And if Paige could help set that woman free by simply accepting her apology, so be it.

  The women once again found themselves in a tight embrace as they cried, their shoulders heaving up and down.

  “I forgive you, and I love you, Miss Nettie,” Paige repeated once the two women had finally separated.

  Miss Nettie brushed her hands down her coat. “Dear Lord, I must look like a crazy woman.”

  “Oh, no,” Paige said, begging to differ. “You look like a free woman.”

  Miss Nettie nodded. “Yes, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.” She exhaled. She took Paige’s hands in hers. “Thank you so much for forgiving me. It means a lot.”

  “You are welcome, Miss Nettie. God has forgiven me so many times without hesitation. Who am I to deny forgiveness?”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Miss Nettie said. “Because there is someone else who needs your forgiveness too.”

  Paige stopped breathing for a moment when she heard the next word that came out of Miss Nettie’s mouth.

  “Blake.”

  Chapter 23

  “Mommy, I can’t. I can’t stand in that man’s face and give him the pleasure of hearing me say that I forgive him,” Paige said to her mother as she paced the kitchen floor of her mother and father’s home. “I don’t want to be in his presence. I’ve forgiven him in my heart as much as I can. I’ve confessed my forgiveness to God. Why do I have to say it to him? God knows my heart.” Paige paused for a moment, then continued her rant. “I’m questioning whether I’ve ever truly forgiven him in my heart at all. Even if I’ve forgiven him, the man, perhaps I haven’t forgiven the things he’s done. Is that possible? Does that make sense?” Paige grabbed her head. “I don’t know. It’s just all so confusing.”

  “Shhh. Calm down, baby, before the girls hear you,” Mrs. Robinson said.

  Adele and Norma were out in the living room, watching television with their grandfather. That was their favorite pastime when spending time at the Robinsons’.

  “How much do the girls know about all this, anyway?” Mrs. Robinson asked. “And come over here and sit down with me at the table. You making me dizzy with all that walking back and forth.”

  Paige stopped pacing and walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. “Adele doesn’t know anything. All she knows is that Mommy got upset at Miss Nettie’s son, who is a monster.”

  Mrs. Robinson shook her head. “This is all just a mess. Have you talked to your pastor?”

  “I’ve talked only to God. I’m asking Him to soften my heart.” Paige made a fist in anger. “All the trouble Blake has caused in my life has resurfaced and has taken over my mind. Now, all of a sudden, there is a part of me that wants him to pay for all he’s done, not be forgiven for it.”

  “Paige, honey.” Her mother raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I know that’s an awful thing to say.” Paige stared off into space for a moment. “Besides, I think he’s already paying for it.” Paige looked at her mother. “Mom, you should have seen him. He looks bad. Well, not bad bad, but he’s not the Blake you would remember. I almost didn’t recognize him at first. As a matter of fact, I didn’t recognize him immediately. I had to look into his eyes. He’s bone thin. He’s covered in so much facial hair, like he doesn’t own a razor. His GQ wardrobe is no more.”

  “Miss Nettie said he’s homeless now, right?”

  “Yeah, but I just don’t understand how.”

  “Didn’t he pay you quite a bit in the alimony settlement? Then there’s the money for Adele, not to mention that woman who raised him suing his pants off. He was in jail for what? Four years? He surely wasn’t making any money while locked up. Sounds like he lost everything.”

  Paige thought for a moment. “Or gave it all up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know when I found out I might have HIV, it felt like a death sentence. I had one foot in the grave. For a split second it felt like I didn’t have anything to live for. But I did. If nothing else, I had Adele. Well, Blake didn’t even have that as a motivation. I took that hope from him. And maybe that’s why he just wants to give up. Why he gave up.” Paige began to feel an ounce of sympathy. Once she realized that was the emotion taking over her, she quickly snapped out of it. “No, no, no. I will not feel sorry for that man.” Paige tried to shake it off.

  Mrs. Robinson took
her daughter’s hands in her own. “Baby, so much compassion has been shown to you by so many others. If you couldn’t find it in your heart to have compassion for someone else, wouldn’t that make you the monster?”

  Paige looked down. What could she possibly say to that? “I know this is something I might have to do. Just seems like every time I look up, I’m continuously having to forgive him, though. I haven’t had anger for him in my heart. I can honestly say that. I haven’t felt anything about him. I’ve completely blocked him out. When you aren’t forced to deal with something, you don’t think about it one way or the other. I figured I could either be that person who clung to all the wrong someone has done to them in order to justify hating them, or I could let it go and live life. Well, I chose the latter, and I’ve been living life. I never stopped to think about Blake being Adele’s father and how I would handle it.”

  “That’s probably because you felt that if you didn’t think about it, it would just stay under the rug and never come to pass.”

  “Out of mind, out of sight in my case, huh?” Paige chuckled. Her chuckle then died down and became a sigh.

  “It’s going to be all right, baby girl.” Mrs. Robinson patted Paige’s hand. “What’s Ryan saying about all this? After all, he is your fiancé.”

  “Why did you say it like that?” Paige asked, not missing the emphasis her mother had put on the word fiancé.

  “Maybe because this man has been in and out of your life for some years now, yet whenever the rough gets going, so do you,” Mrs. Robinson pointed out.