My Son’s Wife
Shelia E. Lipsey
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Shelia E. Lipsey
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to www.smashwords.com Smashwords Store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To All Those Who Are Different
Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother? Malachi 2:10a
Acknowledgements
I honor you, God, for all of your manifold blessings. For loving yourself some Shelia. To you, God, for continually showering me with your unmerited favor, unconditional love, mercy and grace. To you, God, for ordering my steps. To you, God, for never letting me go, for keeping me cradled safely in your arms. You alone are my rock, my sword, my shield, my buckler. I am grateful, grateful, so grateful, for every good and perfect gift bestowed on me by You. I love you, Lord, because you first loved me. In everything I do, may I always give You the praise, glory and honor. God’s amazing girl, Shelia
1
It's not the tragedies that kill us. It's the messes. - Dorothy Parker
“Frankie, listen. Let’s not argue about….”
“What do you mean? Don’t you think it’s a little too late for that? This argument has already started.”
Frankie’s voice rose a higher octave. Rena took a step backward. She had been privy to Frankie’s volatile temper one too many times. And with less than a week left before she walked down the aisle with Stiles, she didn’t want to chance having a bruised face.
“You know that the wedding is already planned and set. The invitations have gone out so even if I wanted to, there’s no way I can back out now. Face it, Frankie; I’m going to marry him.” Rena chose her words carefully as she cautiously moved another step backward from Frankie’s reach.
“No, I won’t face it. What you meant to say is you don’t want to call this wedding off. I don’t believe this.”
“Look, Frankie, listen to me. Please.” Rena inched in toward Frankie again like an earthworm trying to find its way back into the dirt from whence it came. “Frankie, believe me when I say this. I love you. You think I don’t remember what we’ve shared since we were fifteen years old? If only things were different. But they aren’t. So please try to understand.” Rena reached over and gently rubbed the tips of Frankie’s quivering fingers. Tears crested in Rena’s eyes as she witnessed the hurt etched across Frankie’s face.
“But how can you do this? How can you do this to us, Rena? You don’t love Stiles. He’s just convenient. You want him because of who he is and what he can provide for you. But love should mean more to you than a nice bank account or being the wife of the adopted son of the Senior Pastor of some hypocritical church.”
“You know it’s more to it than that,” Rena responded. “Stiles and I share a lot of things in common. So what if he happens to be Pastor Chauncey Graham’s son. The thing about it is he and I both love God. He’s kind. He’s gentle. He’s compassionate and he loves me.”
Frankie moved in closer and Rena’s eye widened as she waited on what she thought was coming next. She cowered and tried to cover her face.
“Please don’t do this, Frankie. Try to understand. See things from my perspective.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.” Frankie stood close up on Rena and caressed her face. “Look at you. You’re pathetic, Rena. Don’t you get it? Maybe Stiles is all of that and a bag of chips to some. But not once have you ever told me that you love him. The two of you have been seeing each other for what, almost eight months, and mostly behind my back? But when I did find out about you two, I thought to myself; maybe you needed to venture out some, then you would come back to me and realize once and for all that we were meant to be together.” Frankie’s voice hardened with each word spoken. “And you’d know that you loved only me.”
“You’re right. I do love you, Frankie. I love you with all of my heart, but it’s a different kind of love.”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s not me who’s living the lie. I’m not ashamed of what we’ve shared. You’re the one who has the reservations. But like you said, we’ve been friends far too long. We love each other. Don’t you see, Rena? I am who I am, and you are who you are. ”
“I can’t believe this, Frankie. I mean look at us.” Rena extended her hands outward, looking at herself and then over at Frankie.
“What’s wrong with us? Tell me, Rena.”
“For God’s sake, Frankie, we’re two women! Where do you think we can go and be happy? How can we ever escape the harsh reality of what people will think about us, and don’t let me even begin to think about our families and what they would say? Or I should say, what God thinks about us. There’s no way I could face my parents, my family, and I certainly couldn’t face my church. You, well you’re stronger than I am. You always have been. I know you don’t believe in the Bible and what God has to say about homosexuality and lesbianism, but I do. I never intended for this to happen between us, but it did. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Frankie.”
“Sorry? How can you say that you’re sorry after everything we’ve been through? You’re a twenty-five year old woman, Rena. You’re grown. But you act like you owe something to your parents, the world and that church you run off to every Sunday. Tell me, if God is so righteous and loving, then why do you keep telling me that he hates what we have together, when all we have is love? What’s so wrong with that?” Frankie looked for some connection in Rena’s dark eyes. But for the first time, there was nothing but a vague emptiness.
“I’m going to marry Stiles. I have to. And I hope you’ll be at the wedding. I need you to be there.” Rena’s dark eyes pleaded with her. “It’s the only way for us to end this madness. I’m sorry,” Rena repeated then turned to walk away.
“Rena?”
Rena paused and looked back. “Yes, Frankie?”
“You think you’re sorry now. But you don’t know what sorry means. Wait until you marry Stiles Graham. Just wait.” Frankie’s voice trailed off into a whisper.
2
Nobody has ever measured…how much the heart can hold.-Zelda Fitzgerald
“Pastor, I have everything ready. I picked up your tux while you were at the hospital visiting Elder Campbell.”
“Audrey, what would I do without you? If our young people would only listen to God’s voice and wait on the mate God has ordained for them, then they could have what we’ve shared together these past twenty-seven years.” A man of short stature, Pastor Chauncey still had to lean over to kiss his even shorter first lady. “I love you, Audrey.”
“I know you do, Pastor, but it’s still good to hear.” Audrey could never make rhyme or reason out of why she called her husband, ‘Pastor’, like any other church member. She just did. The couple had met twenty-nine years ago. At the time, Audrey was a young widow with a three and a half year old son named Stiles.
Stiles’s father had worked as a construction foreman. The day Audrey received the call telling her of that horrible accident changed her and Stiles’s life forever. She’d raced to Methodist University H
ospital, but by the time she arrived, her husband was dead. She learned later that he had fallen over three hundred feet from a scaffold to his death.
Around the same time, Pastor Chauncey became the Pastor of Holy Rock Church. Audrey, a HR administrative assistant at the time, was invited to the church of barely 100 members by a co-worker. Reserved, quiet and mostly keeping to herself, Audrey started to open up a little more each time she heard Pastor’s spirited sermons. She and Stiles attended faithfully for several months, before Audrey made the decision to become a member of Holy Rock. She quickly joined a grief recovery group and slowly moved forward with making a life for her and Stiles.
When Audrey and Pastor Chauncey met, he was a bachelor with ladies at the church vying for his attention. But Chauncey Graham actually had his eye on the beautiful, grieving widow, Audrey, since the first day she walked into the church. The day of the annual church picnic, he finally made his move and started up a conversation with her. Audrey welcomed the conversation and was quite impressed by the ease she felt being around Chauncey. Stiles took to the young minister just as quickly as his mother. That day turned out to be the beginning of their courtship. After dating for a little over a year, and falling madly in love with each other, Pastor Graham asked her to become his wife. Audrey gladly accepted his proposal and four months later they were united in holy matrimony. Without reservation, Pastor legally adopted Stiles and began raising him as his own son. Two years into their God-ordained marriage, Audrey and Chauncey gave Stiles a beautiful baby sister who they named Francesca. But mostly everyone called her, Frankie.
Frankie was furious when Rena told her she was going to marry Stiles. How could she do such a thing? Frankie paced the hardwood floor of her apartment until the shiny waxed glow became dull and brittle. She plopped down on the red micro fiber sofa. Wiping the crocodile tears from her oval shaped face with the back of her hand, she swore out loud. Rena may have been fooling everyone else but Frankie knew that it was her that Rena truly loved. She lay back against the couch and began reminiscing.
Frankie and Rena’s relationship started innocently enough when the girls attended White Station High School. Both of them were reserved and quiet.
Rena Jackson’s family, minus two siblings eleven years older than her, relocated from Andover, Massachusetts when her father’s engineering job transferred him to Memphis.
On her first day of class, Rena walked into the tenth grade AP History room with a terrified look on her face. At the back of the classroom Rena spotted an empty seat, close to a window, and hurriedly walked toward it.
Frankie remembered watching intensely as Rena sat down in the seat next to hers. Rena reminded Frankie of a frightened, lost puppy.
Frankie leaned over and whispered, “It’s not that bad, honest. None of us bite.” Frankie smiled and Rena returned her pleasantry with a smile of her own. At the end of class, Frankie introduced herself. The two girls struck up a conversation. Frankie offered to sit with her during lunch and Rena was relieved to have found someone she could easily relate to. Rena told her about her recent move to Memphis, and Frankie filled her in on happenings around the school and in their East Memphis neighborhood.
Much like Rena, Frankie was used to segregating herself from crowds. Her father, being a minister, made her that much more into herself. But Frankie’s brother, Stiles, seemed to soak up the attention he attracted by being a preacher’s son. He was one of the most popular guys at school. Stiles was the one that was responsible, in an off-handed way, for the two girls meeting and ultimately becoming best friends. It was Stiles who had encouraged his sister to step out of her shell and make friends.
Rena’s family, though none were ministers, were staunch Christians too. The girls discovered they lived close by in the same neighborhood.
It didn’t take long for Frankie to extend an invitation to Rena and her family to attend her father’s church. Right off the bat, the Jackson family fell in love with Pastor Chauncey’s laid back style of preaching. After visiting several churches throughout the city, Rena’s parents settled on Holy Rock and became active members. Like Frankie and Rena, Pastor Chauncey and Rena’s father, David Jackson, became close friends. David was appointed as one of the deacons of the church while Rena’s mother, Meryl Jackson, became a member of the diaconates.
The closeness of their parents brought Frankie and Rena just as close. If not at church, or school, then Rena would be over to Frankie’s house, or Frankie would be at Rena’s house. The two became inseparable. There was nothing the two of them wouldn’t share with each other, well almost nothing.
3
We may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller
At the age of eleven, Francesca Graham’s ideal childhood took a drastic turn that would forever change her life. It all started with Francesca’s first cousin, sixteen year old Fonda, the in-between child of Francesca’s Aunt Lucille. If there was any doubt about the existence of Middle Child Syndrome, Fonda dispelled such reservations. Much like a high school bully, whenever Fonda and her family came to Francesca’s house, Fonda exerted her frustrations by doing whatever she could to aggravate Francesca. With each visit, Fonda’s bullying escalated to the point where she was down right cruel and vicious. Francesca found out sooner, rather than later, that there was no use in telling her mother, or Fonda’s mother, Aunt Lucille, about Fonda. Fonda’s manipulative ways, coupled with the fact she was older, made Francesca appear to be nothing more than a whining little tattle tale, so they didn’t pay any attention to her.
Fonda accused Francesca of being a spoiled brat who got everything she wanted. It wasn’t Francesca’s fault that Fonda seemed never to quite fit in with anyone, and she definitely couldn’t help it if Fonda felt like she had to constantly vie for the attention of her parents. But Fonda sure treated her like she was the one to blame. She treated her meaner than a rabid pit bull.
One hot July evening, Pastor and Audrey had a church function to attend. With Stiles having made plans to spend the weekend with friends at Reelfoot Lake, Francesca listened from around the corner, as Audrey suggested to Pastor that they call and ask Fonda to spend the night and watch Francesca.
Francesca huddled in the corner of the den, and listened to Audrey call Aunt Lucille on the phone. She prayed that Fonda wouldn’t be able to come, but her prayer wasn’t answered this time.
Within an hour, Fonda bolted in the Graham house like she ruled the place. Not even thirty minutes after Pastor and Audrey’s departure, did Fonda reveal the sick side of her personality. Fonda forced Francesca to do unnatural things to her. In return, Fonda did the very same things to her. Francesca begged and pleaded Fonda to stop, but Fonda acted like she was in another world. Her eyes glared, and from her mouth, obscenities flowed like rushing water. After everything was over, Fonda threatened to kill Francesca’s tabby cat, Charlie, if she snitched. To make certain she wouldn’t blab her mouth; Fonda punched her hard in the gut before picking up Charlie and slinging him back and forth like she was going to throw him against the wall. Francesca’s eyed bulged in terror. Laughing wickedly, she released the hissing cat, and then turned and walked out of Francesca’s bedroom. Her violation of little Francesca repeated itself over a period of months, until it miraculously stopped. Fonda’s treatment toward Francesca changed, and she became unusually nice. There were times she even brought along kitty treats for Charlie. There were other times, when Fonda took the time to show Francesca girly things like how to put on make up, and how to choose the perfect outfits to wear to school or church. While Francesca’s mind couldn’t process the reason for the change in Fonda, she was sure glad about it. Soon, memories of the awful things Fonda did erased themselves from Francesca’s mind and life as she once knew it returned to normal.
Unfortunately, soon after the relationship between Fonda and Francesca changed, Audrey’s treatment of her daughter took on a radical change of its own.
Her once kind, loving demeanor toward Francesca evolved into Audrey being short, impatient and mean. Her whippings, for what was deemed as unacceptable behavior, became more frequent. Again, Francesca’s young mind couldn’t grasp what she had done to make her mother dislike her so. Whatever it was, Francesca grew to resent Audrey to the point that she hated her mother for hating her. A wall began to grow around Francesca’s tender heart to shield her from feeling the heartache and pain.
At the age of fifteen, the emotional wall around her heart took root and became stronger and even more impenetrable. Francesca would soon learn just how much she needed the strength of that wall when Minister Travis D. Jones came into her life.
Minister Travis D. Jones was hired as Holy Rock’s Youth Pastor. When Frankie first saw him, she was smitten by his charm and pleasingly nice looks and quickly developed a crush on the young minister. She enjoyed spending time with him at church, helping him with planning youth activities and doing small favors for him like running off copies. There was a time when she believed him to be someone she could trust, so whenever she had problems at school, she’d hurry to talk to Minister Travis. Somehow things didn’t seem so bad after talking to him. Minister Travis doted on Frankie. He called her, his special girl and never referred to her as Frankie, always Francesca.
“I wish Minister Travis liked me as much as he seems to like you,” Rena told her one evening after a weekly youth meeting.
“I know you do,” Frankie snapped her fingers and laughed. “But it isn’t going to happen.”
The changes were subtle. Minister Travis always hugged Francesca, but now his hugs lasted a little longer. Minister Travis always kissed her on the top of her head, so when he began pecking her on the forehead, it was no big deal. Anyone can make a mistake and brush up against her, so Francesca dismissed it when Minister Travis brushed up against her more often. When his hands lingered on her body in places that made her feel somewhat on edge, Francesca dispelled the thoughts and chalked them up to the dreams she’d had about him. Minister Travis was a good guy who happened to like her. He would never think of doing anything inappropriate.
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