Becoming Mrs. Right

by Sherri L. Lewis

  “How you gon’ get here every day? You know how many buses that is?” Sherice asked. “And what you know about some fancy food?”

  “I be watching Master Chef and Emeril Live and all them shows on the Cooking Channel and the Food Network. I can cook all that stuff Shauntae been talking about. I can even make filet mignon and sushi.”

  It was Shauntae and Sherice’s turn to look at Candy with respect. “For real, girl?” Shauntae said.

  “I may not can talk smart like you, Sherice, or be gorgeous and good in bed like Shauntae, but everybody knows the best way to a man’s heart,” Candy said.

  Sherice snapped her fingers. “A’ight den, girl. You got it.” She and Candy high-fived each other.

  “What about me?” Shauntae whined. Just when she was starting to feel better, Candy had to go and bring up cooking and cleaning. Her mother had never taught her nothing about no cooking and cleaning. When she was growing up, the house was always nasty and they always ate fast food.

  “Hmmm . . . Candy cooking for you could only last for a little while. And that would be a whole lot of gas money.” Sherice scrunched her nose up, thinking real hard. She snapped her fingers. “Have you been to the doctor yet?”

  Shauntae shook her head.

  “You gotta go soon. You needs to get yourself on bed rest.”

  “Bed rest? I’m only about four months. I’ll go crazy with five months of bed rest.”

  Sherice rolled her eyes. “You won’t be on bed rest for real, simple girl. He’ll just think you are. You wanna clean this house and cook a gourmet meal every day?”

  Shauntae shook her head again.

  “A’ight den. Here’s what you gotta do.” Sherice carefully explained all the symptoms Shauntae needed to complain of. “Don’t go overboard or you’ll end up having to stay in the hospital. Then you’d be on bed rest for real. Let me write it down so you don’t mess it up.”

  Shauntae got up to get her food out of the microwave while Sherice scribbled out the symptom list. “Humph,” Sherice said when she finished writing. “You probably get to go to some nice doctor and get to deliver in one of them nice hospitals.”

  Shauntae ignored Sherice’s jealousy. “I don’t like lying to the doctor. I could end up on some medicine or having to take some tests I don’t need.”

  Sherice waved Shauntae’s fears away. “Ain’t I had four babies? I know what I’m doing.”

  Candy shrugged and gave Shauntae a doubtful look.

  Sherice spread out all Shauntae’s lists and the new notes they had made. “Okay, let’s go over everything again.”

  Shauntae put her head down on the table. “Aw, come on. I’m tired. I need a nap.”

  Sherice pulled her back up. “Girl, it ain’t time to sleep. You got church this Sunday and a meeting with the ex-witch and the brats sometime next week. We gots work to do.”

  Eight

  Shauntae turned and looked at herself in the mirror. She and Candy had gone “church shopping” and she had gotten herself a sassy new suit, hat, and high heels. She was going to play the part of a church girl for real.

  Shauntae came out of the guest room as Gary came out of his bedroom. He looked her up and down and his eyes got big like they did when she spoke bad English.

  Shauntae couldn’t understand why he was looking like that when she was looking so good in her classy church outfit. What had she done wrong this time? She looked at his clothes. He had on jeans and a button-down shirt.

  “I thought you said we was . . .” Shauntae coughed. “I thought you said we were going to church.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I forgot to tell you. My church is very casual. You look absolutely beautiful, but I think you’d feel uncomfortable if you wore that to church today. Most people wear jeans and some even athletic wear.”

  Shauntae wanted to ask what kind of church that was, but instead she turned and walked back to the guest room. “Be down in a minute.”

  By the time they pulled out of the driveway, Shauntae was still looking sharp, but was dressed down in a pair of cute, boot-cut jeans and a white blouse. Her jewelry and makeup was perfect and she knew she was looking like a model. She wore a black wool coat and some gloves that Sherice had loaned her. After being in California the last three months, Atlanta’s February weather seemed extra cold.

  The building they pulled up to looked more like a high school than it did a church. It was one of those huge, fancy mega churches. Shauntae wondered if the pastor was some rich dude who wore expensive suits and drove a Bentley. Ugh. Not only was she about to spend the morning with a bunch of church hypocrites, they were probably snobby, rich ones. The only good thing was she probably wouldn’t have to worry about doing a holy dance.

  When they got inside, Gary led her by the elbow up some stairs at the back of the huge lobby. “We’re late, so we have to sit in the balcony.”

  Shauntae preferred the balcony. The farther away she could sit from the crooked pastor, the better. She’d had a few pastors as sponsors over the years. They were supposed to be so holy, but they would meet her for a good time on Saturday night and still be in their pulpit on Sunday morning.

  One of Shauntae’s best sponsors was a pastor who had got her pregnant. His hush money was sweet. When he threatened to stop paying, she’d shown up at his church looking gorgeous, and had stood up to speak during testimony time. Next thing she knew, a very big, very strong usher was escorting her out of the church. But her payments continued, so she had got her point across. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage with that baby. Otherwise, she definitely could’ve been set for life. But no baby, no DNA test.

  They had barely gotten into their seats when the music started. Shauntae didn’t know church music could sound so good. It sounded more like some smooth jazz she and her girls listened to when they was drinking a nice bottle of Boone’s Farm.

  And they had these people dancing—not like a bucking, jumping, holy dance, but a real pretty dance. Shauntae remembered when one of her sponsors had taken her to see some modern dancers at the Fox Theatre. She had expected it to be all corny and lame but it was real nice. These church dancers were dancing like that.

  The choir sang about how much God loves us no matter what we do; and the people was dancing, but it was like a play. They were acting out scenes of people messing up—one was drinking and stumbling all over the place, another girl was dressed all trashy and then she had a big belly like she had gotten pregnant, another person was stealing and shooting up drugs. But at the end, this big, tall dancer guy hugged them and loved them anyway.

  For some reason, the dance made her cry. Shauntae figured it was hormones. Gary kept squeezing her hand. He was so sweet to her. She decided if for no other reason, she was going to like church, just for him.

  After they took an offering, the pastor got up. He didn’t have no expensive suit on. Just a pair of jeans and a sports coat.

  Shauntae had never seen no black church like this. The people were nice. They hugged her and shook her hand during the visitors’ welcome. The girl sitting on the other side of her kept talking to her between songs and handed her tissue when she started crying. Funny how coming to church was the first time she didn’t feel like she had to be nobody smart or cultured.

  The pastor read a few scriptures, then started talking. His voice wasn’t all preachy and wheezy like most black pastors. He didn’t scream or yell. He talked like he was having a regular conversation with somebody he was cool with.

  Shauntae paid attention to most of what he said. A couple of times she got distracted by the big screens behind the pulpit. Most of the time they showed the pastor speaking. But sometimes they had cameras pointed on the people in the audience. Shauntae looked at the women to see if she was finer than them or dressed better. When she looked at the men, she realized Gary was one of the finest men in the building. There were a lot of men with money in this church. She was going to have to tell her girls they needed to come out of the upscale clubs and start com
ing to church on Sunday mornings.

  When the camera went back to the pastor, Shauntae made herself focus on what he was talking about. Gary might want to talk about it over dinner and she didn’t want to look stupid.

  The pastor talked about how much God loves us, no matter what we do. That even if we’d lied, cheated, stolen, or even killed, Jesus already paid the price for our sin. Shauntae had never heard nobody preach like that before. Most of the time, preachers talked about how you go to hell for sinning and how you better get saved if you don’t want to burn forever and ever after you die.

  Shauntae had always wondered why people could serve a mean God that could let His so-called children burn forever. What kind of love was that? But this guy was saying that as long as she accepted Jesus as her Savior, He had covered her sins and it was like they had never happened. Shauntae thought about all the evil stuff she had done with men and how she had treated Brianna. God could love her even though she wasn’t a good person?

  This preacher made God sound all nice and loving, like He really was a good Father that cared about His children. Could that really be true?

  At the end, Shauntae found herself crying again. Durned pregnancy hormones, messing up her perfect makeup.

  When he was finished preaching, the pastor handed the mic to another guy and sat down. The new guy holding the mic held up his hand. “If you’ve heard God speaking to you today and you want to invite Him into your heart, please come on down to the altar. Jesus is here waiting for you. He wants to take you in His arms and love you with a love you’ve never experienced before.”

  Shauntae had sat through this part of a church service before. Where they begged you to get saved or become a member of the church. But this was different. She didn’t know if it was that the message was good, or if it was the pregnancy hormones, but she felt like something was pulling her.

  She locked her feet in place. There was no way she was going to that altar. She reminded herself that she hated God. He had never done nothing for her and had let a whole lot of bad things happen to her. Even though He had helped her get pregnant by Gary on the first try, that didn’t make up for a whole lifetime of hell. She wasn’t about to let no hormones make her do something silly like get saved. She could see Sherice and Candy rolling on the floor laughing if she told them. And plus, Gary thought she was already saved. She couldn’t go down there and blow her whole game.

  The man with the microphone kept bothering her. “Jesus wants to show you how much He loves you. I don’t care what you been through, when you experience this love, it will make it like it never happened. Come and receive His love today.”

  Maybe she should go. She could say she was joining the church so she could be a member with her future husband. That’s what she would tell Gary afterward. She started moving toward the stairs down from the balcony. One little step. And then another and then another. Gary looked at her with a question in his eyes. She didn’t want to stop to explain, because then she would lose her nerve and wouldn’t go.

  Shauntae got all the way from her seat to the first step that led from the balcony to the main floor of the church and then looked up.

  There on the big screen behind the pulpit was a face she recognized. The camera that went through the audience had landed on a little girl’s face.

  Her little girl’s face.

  Shauntae froze in her tracks. The camera moved slightly to the left and Shauntae gasped. There stood Devon and Cassandra.

  Nine

  Shauntae half ran, half stumbled from the balcony stairs that led down to the main floor of the sanctuary to the stairs that led down to the lobby. She didn’t get a chance to trace the location of the camera to find out where Devon, Cassandra, and Brianna were sitting. She had to get out of there before they saw her. She ran down the back stairs and headed straight for the bathroom.

  Of all the churches in Atlanta, Gary had to go to the same one as Devon? For real?

  She had almost fallen for the preacher’s mess about how much God loved her. Just when she thought she might be okay, that her life was gonna get better, here was everything going wrong all over again. God had proved, once again, how much He hated her.

  What if, instead of the camera putting Brianna’s face up on the screen, it had put her face on the screen? Devon and Cassandra would have seen her instead of her seeing them and they would have known she was back in Atlanta. That skank Cassandra probably would have dialed 911 right there in the church and the police would have been waiting for her when she walked out of the building with Gary.

  Shauntae locked the bathroom stall and tried to catch her breath. Now what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t hide in the church bathroom all day. But if she came out and tried to find Gary, she could run smack into the three people who could ruin her new life.

  Shauntae’s cell phone vibrated inside her purse. Her hands shook as she fished it out. “Hey, honey,” she said in a loud whisper. “My stomach got real upset and I had to run to the bathroom. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Aww, baby. Sorry you’re not feeling well. Which bathroom? I’ll come down and get you.”

  “Gary, you can’t come into the ladies’ bathroom.”

  He laughed in that sexy, bass voice. “I know that. But it’s a huge church and there are thousands of people swarming around. If I don’t know where you are, we could be looking for each other for the next hour.”

  “Oh, okay. I’m in the lobby. The bathroom directly across from the balcony stairs.”

  “Be right there, baby. I’ll be waiting outside.”

  Now what? She could go out and explain that she had thrown up and didn’t know when she might do it again and rush him to the car. If there were thousands of people in this church, they probably wouldn’t run into Devon, Cassandra, and Brianna.

  A few minutes later, she heard Gary’s voice outside the door. “Excuse me, ma’am. Could you help me out? My wife is in the bathroom sick. She’s pregnant. Can you check on her for me?”

  “Of course. What’s her name?”

  Shauntae froze at the sound of the woman’s voice. It couldn’t be . . .

  “Her name is Shauntae. Shauntae Jackson,” Gary said.

  The outer bathroom door opened with a rusty squeak. “Shauntae Jackson? Are you in here?”

  Shauntae had only heard that voice a few times, but each time she had heard it, it made her so mad she would never forget it. Of all the people Gary could have sent into the bathroom to find her, of the thousands of people supposedly walking through the lobby right now, he had to pick Cassandra?

  Think fast, girl. Think fast or you going to jail.

  Shauntae put on her best Angela Bassett voice and talked as proper and perfect as she could. “I think I’m the only one in here and my name is Angela.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  The door squeaked open and closed again. Shauntae let out a deep breath. Her forehead was sweating and now she really did feel sick.

  She heard Cassandra tell Gary, “Sorry, there’s no one in there named Shauntae Jackson. Must be the bathroom on the other end.”

  Shauntae heard Gary say, “Really? I thought for sure this is where she said she was. Okay, thanks for checking.”

  Even though she knew he did it because he was embarrassed that they weren’t married, Shauntae was glad Gary had told Cassandra to look for his wife, Shauntae Jackson. If he had said her real name, Cassandra might’ve known it was her.

  As she was about to come out of the bathroom stall, Shauntae heard a little girl’s voice she recognized. “Miss Cassandra, I gotta pee. Can you take me?”

  “Sure, sweetie. Come on.”

  The rusty door squeaked again and Shauntae heard the clack of a woman’s heels followed by the sound of squeaky little girl’s shoes. She could almost see Brianna’s bouncy walk. Shauntae always used to yell at Brianna to stop running and dancing everywhere she went. It got on her nerves.

  “Miss Cassandra, are we going to Gammy and Poppy�
�s house for dinner?”

  Shauntae hated the silly names Brianna had for Devon’s parents.

  “I don’t think so, chickadee. Your daddy is taking us to a nice restaurant.”

  “McDonald’s?” Brianna’s voice was all high and excited.

  Cassandra laughed. “No, silly girl. Not McDonald’s. Somewhere nice.”

  “What’s nicer than McDonald’s?”

  Cassandra laughed again. “Come on out, Bree. Don’t forget to flush.”

  Shauntae’s cell phone rang. Gary had probably sent somebody into the other bathroom to find her and they told him she wasn’t there. She couldn’t answer now.

  She heard Brianna skip out of the bathroom stall and turn the water on. “I can’t get the soap to work.”

  “Here you go, sweetie.”

  “Thanks, Miss Cassandra. Can you come to the house after we eat?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Brianna answered. “We didn’t get our godmommy time after art class yesterday. I want to show you my new dolly that Gammy bought me.”

  “Of course, Bree. Dry your hands. Hurry up and let’s go. Your daddy is waiting. We need to get you some food soon since church lasted longer than we thought. You feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Brianna said in that singsong voice of hers that aggravated Shauntae’s last nerve. Every move she made was like dancing and she talked like she was singing.

  None of it seemed to bother Miss Cassandra. She was laughing and helping Brianna do stuff her grown behind should’ve been able to do. She wanted to spend time with her. Made Shauntae sick.

  It sounded like Brianna didn’t even miss her. Miss Cassandra had come in and took her place like she never existed. Looked like Cassandra ate dinner with Brianna and Devon after church on Sundays and sometimes it was at his parents’ house. Shauntae had never been there for a family dinner.

  That rusty door squeaked one last time and finally Shauntae heard their footsteps blend in with the other people walking through the lobby. They’d be hurrying to get Brianna to a restaurant so her sugar wouldn’t drop too low. Shauntae wouldn’t be trapped much longer.