“That’s why we have to keep the faith and believe that God will protect us and work it all out for the good of those that love the Lord, no matter how it may look ‘in the natural.’ We cannot let what folks who operate completely under the auspices of ‘the flesh’ affect what we know our God is capable of doing and working out on our behalf. And God sure did show up and show out on your behalf tonight, didn’t He?”
Yvonne nodded, tears trickling down her cheeks.
Curtis lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips.
“I know your back was against the wall after the meeting this morning. But even in the midst of all that was happening, God kept speaking to my spirit. He let me know that you were not going anywhere and that you had a job.”
“Thank you, Curtis,” Yvonne whispered through her tears. She felt so bad. She’d been so scared this morning. And as much as she knew to trust the Lord, she couldn’t help being afraid. It had been so hard to have her livelihood threatened like that, and especially after all that she’d been through. In that moment, Yvonne had gotten tired—tired of always getting surprise announcements of horrible news that threatened to rip her life to shreds.
“Baby,” Curtis whispered. “Don’t cry like that. God understands how you felt and He knows how scary it was. Just seek His forgiveness and give thanks for His goodness.”
“Okay, Curtis,” she whispered as the tears continued to flow.
“Oh, baby,” Curtis said softly. “You’ve had a horrible time of it, haven’t you? And every time you thought it was over, one more horrendous thing happened to make it feel like it would never end.”
“Yes. I can’t even begin to describe what this has felt like.” She sniffled and wiped the tears that were now streaming down her cheeks. “Some folks don’t know how good they have it. They’ve never had to worry about where their next paycheck is coming from, they get paid fairly and on time, and their livelihood is secure just because it’s never been threatened. They have never known what it’s like to not know how you are going to pay your mortgage and keep a roof over your babies’ heads.”
“And guess what,” Curtis said, wondering what in the world was going on with him in this car. Every word that came out of his mouth qualified as something he would have expected Gran Gran, Maurice, Trina, or better yet Obadiah and Lena to come up with. He wouldn’t have thought he was capable of issuing a “thus sayeth the Lord,” and certainly not one of this magnitude.
“You are so blessed and highly favored, Yvonne. It’s true. Folks like that probably don’t know how good they have it. But did you realize that what you have is even better?”
“How so?” She couldn’t figure out what was so much better about what she had been going through.
“Baby, you know. I mean you really know what the good Lord does when one of His saints’ back is against the wall. You know better than most people that everything you have comes from God. You know that no matter how good you are, how successful, etcetera, you have to depend on the Lord for everything.
“Yvonne, do you realize that without these trials and tribulations Jesus promised you in His Word that He had overcome, you would not have been able to witness the scripture literally come to life on your behalf? You are living proof that ‘eyes have not seen, nor hath ears heard’ what the Lord has in store for those who love Him is absolutely true.”
Curtis turned onto her street and pulled into the driveway. It was ablaze with lights. Yvonne hoped that nobody would be peeking through the blinds as soon as they heard a car motor sound as if it was close by. But that hope was in vain. D’Relle, Tiffany, and Danesha were all pulling at the blinds trying to get all up in “her grille.” They hopped away from the window when they saw Yvonne watching them intently out of the car window.
Curtis turned off the car and lights and leaned toward Yvonne, and wiped the residue of tears off her cheeks.
“Can’t send you back home looking like I did something to make you cry.”
“Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to break down like that. But what you said hit home so hard, I couldn’t help it. You surprised me, Curtis. Didn’t know you had it like that.”
“Neither did I,” he told her in all sincerity. “God has really been dealing with me lately. And I’ve been on my knees so much I have blisters on these old knees. But I know what I’m talking ’bout, baby. Remember, my back was against the wall, too, until you came into that meeting and fixed it so that my best players would play in the game with Bouclair College. I couldn’t have done that on my own. That, and some very helpful information from Charles Robinson, came directly from the Lord.”
Yvonne smiled at the mention of Charles Robinson. That boy was a trip and needed to give his life over to Christ. It was like he was running so hard from salvation he couldn’t even see that he was catching up with his own secret desire to make Jesus Lord of his life.
“Baby, I have to tell you the truth. These last weeks have been just as rough and crazy. And I have not spent a minute during that time when I didn’t think about you. Yvonne, I never thought I’d tell a woman this. But girl, I’ve got it bad for you. You know that?”
Yvonne wanted to say that she didn’t know. But that would be a bold-faced lie. She had strongly suspected as much at Maurice and Trina’s house. But if she hadn’t known it then, she’d known it as soon as they met up at the meeting this morning. It seemed like an overnight thing but it wasn’t. God’s hand was all in this. And when the Lord made a move in your life, it could feel as if it were happening suddenly. But in reality the Lord had been putting that thing into existence before you had an inkling of the mere possibility.
“Yes, Curtis,” she whispered so sweetly, all he could do was lift her chin with the tip of his finger and touch his lips to hers.
Another tear dropped down Yvonne’s cheek. She hadn’t been kissed at all in over two years. And she’d never been kissed like that in her entire life.
Curtis kissed the tear and then kissed her mouth again, only this time with more insistence and heated passion. He slid his hand to the nape of her neck and then slid his tongue into her mouth and moaned softly. He didn’t know a kiss could work its way over his entire body, making him feel as if he were making love in this car.
“I’m falling in love with you, Yvonne.”
“I’m falling for you, too, Curtis.”
All of a sudden Yvonne felt as if she’d been hit with a splash of ice-cold water. She couldn’t go forth with this, not with a man who had not made Jesus Lord of his life. She’d been there, done that, and it didn’t work. It didn’t work for her, it hadn’t worked for Veronica Washington, and sadly, it wasn’t working for her friend Marquita Sneed, either. That biblical edict about not being unequally yoked was no joke and shouldn’t be tampered with.
Curtis pulled away.
“Did I do something wrong?”
She shook her head. How was Yvonne going to tell this wonderful man, whom she had it bad for, that they couldn’t be together if he didn’t want to turn his life completely over to the Lord? But she had to tell him. To do otherwise would be bold disobedience to the Lord. And after all that she’d had happen to her today that was the last thing Yvonne was going to do. Even if it meant she never had another man in her life, she was going to do what the Lord was leading her to do and let the chips fall where they might.
Yvonne took Curtis’s hands in both of hers. She said, “I can’t be with you if you don’t want to make Jesus Lord of your life. I don’t care how much we love each other, have in common, and want to be together, it won’t work without Jesus in the middle of it all.”
“What do I have to do?” Curtis asked.
He had planned on going straight to the altar this Sunday. So much had happened over the past weeks. And if Curtis had not been convinced then, he certainly was convinced now. He didn’t know how he’d gone this far living like he did. He remembered reading Psalm 42 one night and understood what the Psalmist meant when he wrote that h
is thirst and longing for the Lord was so great, he could only compare it to a deer panting desperately for a drink in a cool, sparkling stream.
“This. This is all you have to do,” Yvonne told him. “Curtis, do you believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross, and on the third day rose from the dead and is now sitting on the right hand of God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ? That Jesus is the Holy Son of God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you confess and repent of your sins here in the sight of God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord?”
“Yes, I believe it with all my heart that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
“Do you want to receive the Holy Ghost?”
“Yes, baby, I want to have the Holy Ghost and the gift of speaking in tongues. And Lord, bless me with that gift in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Curtis, do you want to totally rededicate your life to Christ and be quickened in your spirit as a new creature in Christ?”
“Yes,” Curtis whispered in a broken voice full to the brim with his tears as he felt the light of God’s love, forgiveness, deliverance, and redemption sweep through his soul.
By now tears were streaming down Yvonne’s face. She dug into her purse for her anointing oil, poured some into her hands, and laid hands on Curtis as she prayed this prayer.
“Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask that you bless Curtis Lee Parker with salvation, deliverance, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and the gift of speaking in tongues. Thank You for coming into his life and becoming the Lord of his life that he so longs for You to be. Set him free of all strongholds of the enemy. Forgive him his sins, and bless him with the desire to know Your Word, to seek You in prayer, and to be obedient to You.”
By now, both Yvonne and Curtis were crying together. They held hands a moment and Yvonne finished the prayer.
“Lord, we thank You for this incredible moment in eternity and claim the victory in Jesus’s name.”
She grabbed his face between her tiny hands and kissed him on the lips. “I love you, Curtis. Lord knows I do.”
He smiled, wiped his eyes, and said, “We need to get you inside. Plus, I don’t think you need to face the tribunal without me at your side to help and explain how you left looking like a million dollars, came back with a million dollars, and now look broke off.”
“Yeah, I guess you better do that, baby,” Yvonne told him, enjoying watching Curtis blush when she called him “baby.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Curtis stood in center court taking a mental count of all of the players who were on time and present for this practice. Everyone but June Bug Washington and DeMarcus Brown was here and ready to do what had to be done to get ready for Tuesday’s game. It was clear just by his looking at the young men standing before him that they were going to put a hurting on Bouclair College and earn their rightful place in the play-offs at the SNAC Basketball Conference during March Madness. They had not forgotten the brutal beatdown they’d suffered at the hands of Bouclair when they played them earlier in the season. And now, after weeks of hard-core preparation, the Fighting Panthers of Evangeline T. Marshall University were ready to go out on that court and turn Bouclair College every which way but loose.
Both Curtis and Maurice were confident that the Lord was going to bless them with victory and that they were going to win this game. How it happened, how close or how wide the score would be, was something they couldn’t and didn’t care to know. But what they did know was that victory was imminent. It couldn’t be any other way. As Trina had written in her e-mail to both him and Maurice this morning—how could God get the glory if they were defeated by Bouclair College?
They were on the side of the Lord and Sonny Todd was of the world. How could it possibly be any other way? No matter what it may have looked like to the natural eye and as a result of natural circumstances, it could not and would not be any other way. This was supported by the Word of God. And it wasn’t any secret that God’s Word did not return void. God was not going to let the enemy win and get up in Eva T. to run a reign of terror and ultimately destroy the basketball program Curtis and Maurice were working so hard to rebuild.
Coach Sonny Todd Kilpatrick may have won every game he played. But he destroyed every program he ran. His players rarely received their degrees. The incarceration rates for the teams he coached were way too high for college students. He did not put any significant amounts of money back into the programs he worked for. And in all of the years that Sonny Todd had coached, he had only two NBA draft picks under his belt—one of the two was dead as a result of a shootout in the player’s old neighborhood with a rival gang member.
And as Charles Robinson and Bay Bowzer had recently discovered, many of Sonny Todd’s wins were actually losses. Bay Bowzer had gone down in the back alleyways of black college basketball. He discovered that Sonny Todd had a very elaborate system of picking and buying off the referees for each game he was concerned about losing. Consequently, Bay and Charles managed to get a jump on old boy when they bought back the refs for Tuesday’s game—paying them double to be honest over what Sonny Todd had paid them to cheat, and therefore tripling their take at this next game.
Charles and Bay had Pierre cracking up when they told him what they’d done. Then Charles said, “I cannot wait to see old boy’s face go old-school-white-boy red when those referees get to making the right calls during the game. You know the red-face flush I’m talking about when a white boy like Sonny Todd gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”
Pierre pulled out a C-note. “My bet is that he’ll lose at the end of the third quarter.”
“I’ll raise you a hundred. Because it’ll happen somewhere during the second quarter,” Charles said and laid two hundred-dollar bills on his desk.
“You both are going to lose your money,” Bay told them and laid five hundred dollars on the table. “He is going to bust a gasket towards the end of the first quarter. Y’all in or are you too punked out to go there with me?”
“Oh … Hell naw …” Charles said and laid another four hundred dollars on the table. “I ain’t nevah skeered. What about you, Pierre? You want to teach this youngblood a lesson or two about doing business with us?”
“I’m in, Boss,” Pierre said, and put down five hundred dollars.
“All I can say,” Bay told them as he put down his extra hundred dollars, “is that I am going to have a very very merry merry Christmas on da house.”
The team was hyped about this game and had done and was doing everything that Coach told them to do. There was too much to lose if they didn’t win this game—and so much to gain from a win over Bouclair College. First, due to Bouclair’s high ranking in the league, the team who beat them automatically won that spot in the Conference play-off games. And second, the team knew that such a win would raise their status in their league—which translated into attracting NBA scouts from across the country.
Because what a lot of folks didn’t know about Curtis’s best players was that they all had NBA potential. His top draft picks were Apostle Grady Grey’s son, Sherron, who although only six feet six was the top center in the state. Then point guard Kaylo Bailey, at five foot ten, would bring back fond memories of the days when Spud Webb set the courts on fire.
Curtis and Maurice glanced up at the clock. It was eight-thirty, the team had just completed their warm-up routine, and Coach Bivens and Coach Palmer had yet to arrive. Maurice pulled out his cell phone but Curtis shook his head. He needed them to be more than an hour late to make his next move.
It was the oddest feeling to experience God moving in his life in such a powerful and provocative manner through a basketball game. Curtis would have thought that “a mighty move of God” such as the gospel artist Norman Hutchins sang about with such fervor would come about through something dealing with traditional church life. But as Gran Gran
had to tell him, this was not about “church” but the Kingdom of God. And since the Kingdom could not be confined to a building, no matter how sacred the edifice, it shouldn’t have surprised him that the Lord wanted to play this one out on center court.
The side door of the gymnasium opened. June Bug and DeMarcus strolled in, dressed to the nines in full-cut baggy designer jeans, their leather team jackets, and throw-back jerseys. Two of the cheerleaders that Maurice swore were the long-lost descendants of the biblical Jezebel were hanging on their arms. The squad captain, ShayeShaye Boswell, and her best friend, Larqueesha Watts, gave the other players a y’all are so lame sneer, and then went to sit on the benches even though this was a closed practice.
As Curtis made his way over to where they were sitting, he thought that those two had to be some serious skoochies. Because only overheated hoochie mamas could wear those tight lowrider jeans with identical black sweaters that came off the shoulder and stopped right under the curve of their breasts, revealing some buffed and cut abs and waistlines. As much as he couldn’t stand those little heifers, he had to admit they did look hot and good—and it was cold outside.
“You and your skoochies are excused,” Curtis told the four of them in an icy voice that made the brisk winds outside feel like a warm Caribbean breeze.
DeMarcus, who looked so much like his father, Reverend Marcel Brown, it was uncanny, stood up and stepped up to Curtis. “We have practice, Coach.”
“No, you don’t have practice, son. But we do,” Curtis told him firmly as he got up in DeMarcus’s face. He didn’t know who this little boy, with milk still on his breath, thought he was. But he was getting ready to find out who he wasn’t.
DeMarcus backed down and moved away from Curtis.
“My grandfather is not going to be happy,” June Bug said, trying to pick up where he felt DeMarcus should not have left off.
Up at the College Page 28