by E. N. Joy
“Well, I’ll pray in that area for both you and Pastor, Mother Doreen. But in the meantime, I’m going to try to get a hold of Tamarra. Whether the moderator gets the photos off the Web site before she sees them or not doesn’t really matter. You know folks are going to get to talking and make it seem worse than it really is.”
“All right, dear, you stay blessed, because you already are.”
“Thank you, Mother Doreen, you too.” Just then, Deborah’s cell phone rang. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was Lynox . . . again. She rejected the call . . . again. Eventually he’d realize that persistence would get him nowhere with Deborah.
“Oh, Sister Deborah, before I forget, I just wanted to give you a heads up that I gave a woman I met your phone number regarding a book or something. So she’ll be contacting you if she hasn’t already.”
“Okay, Mother Doreen,” Deborah said, more concerned with rejecting Lynox’s call and focusing on Tamarra’s situation. Besides, someone was always giving her number or email address out to the tons of people who had written a book, or wanted to write a book and needed direction. “I’ll talk with you later.”
Deborah ended the call with Mother Doreen, then prepared herself to call up Tamarra. She said a quick prayer that God would go before her and touch Tamarra’s heart and mind so that receiving the news would not weigh too heavily on her.
Deborah dialed Tamarra’s phone number. When she received the greeting on the other end of a loud, angry, “Hello!” Deborah knew her prayer had been a moment too late.
Tamarra was seething as she looked at the set of four pictures of herself and Maeyl plastered on the Singles Ministry page of the church Web site. The pictures made it appear as though she and Maeyl were smooching in the church parking lot. Although in reality they had just been praying, and then leaning in to give each other a godly hug, the person who snapped the photo did it in such timing that it made it appear as though they were going in for a kiss.
Tamarra could tell from the poor quality that the pictures weren’t taken by a professional, like a private investigator or anything like that. From the looks of it, it seemed as if they were originally taken from a cell phone or something. Nonetheless, Tamarra was outraged.
“Son of a—” Tamarra caught herself before cursing. Prior to getting saved, she didn’t have a filthy mouth, and now that she was saved, she wasn’t about to let the devil get the victory of being able to say his cursing demon was stronger than the spirit man in her. No way no how. But boy oh boy did she just want to let one loose.
Tamarra didn’t even bother to properly exit the church Web site and shut down her computer. She wanted those pictures to go away—and fast. She yanked all the plugs associated with her computer out of the wall, jumped up from her computer chair and began pacing across her bedroom floor.
“Why, God? Why is this happening? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough in my lifetime? Now I’m going to be the talk of New Day for years to come.”
Tamarra’s rant to the Lord was interrupted by her ringing telephone. “Uggghhh,” she screamed as she walked over and pulled that cord out of the wall too. “If that phone rings one more time!” That had to be the tenth time her phone had rung in the last ten minutes, which only meant that the news of the photos were spreading like a California wildfire.
Just ten minutes ago, Tamarra had rudely answered her phone only to find Deborah on the other end. Tamarra felt bad for the un-Christlike greeting she’d given her and apologized, explaining to Deborah that people from New Day who had never called her in the past had been ringing her phone all morning asking her about the photos posted, as if she’d posted them herself.
“Now why would I have done a thing like that?” Tamarra had posed that rhetorical question to Sister Deborah, who surprisingly gave her a response.
“I don’t know. Maybe some people think you could have been trying to pull the covers off Brother Maeyl or something. A woman scorned or something. Now I know you better than that, but some people like to write, star in, and direct their own drama series. So they could come up with all kinds of things. But who knows, Tamarra? Just keep your head up and know that God will take care of everything. Pretty soon, those pictures will be removed from the Web site, and all will be forgotten.”
Deborah had been partly right, Tamarra had concluded. The pictures would eventually be removed from the Web site, but not from people’s minds. And what if someone had copied, downloaded, or even saved the pictures? Those pictures would never go away.
Exasperated, Tamarra collapsed on her bed. This was not the way she had anticipated spending her Saturday morning. She laid there for a moment, thinking about all the phone calls she’d received that morning. “The nerve of people to actually think I would post those pictures to the Web site.” Sure, Tamarra eventually wanted to bring her and Maeyl’s relationship into the light, but she didn’t want to do so before she knew exactly where the relationship was heading. She and Maeyl, just last week, had even had a similar conversation.
Maeyl felt that the two months they’d been seeing each other had been a long enough test period. He proclaimed that his feelings for Tamarra had surpassed the brothers and sisters in Christ type of connection and was well on its way beyond the “just friends” stage.
“It looks like we’re sneaking around by not making mention of our seeing each other,” Maeyl had stated to Tamarra as they fed the ducks at a local pond. “When people do things in the dark, it’s as if they have something to hide. Well, I don’t have anything to hide. Do you?” Maeyl had asked without getting a response. “Everyone is going to know eventually. I’d like to at least have something to do with that. If anything, we owe it to Pastor to at least mention that two New Day members are in a relationship, a godly relationship,” Maeyl pointed out. “Besides that, Malvonia isn’t but that big.” He snapped his fingers. “Heck, there’s probably somebody we know here right now that is spotting us.”
“Spotting us?” Tamarra had brushed off Maeyl’s last statement with a chuckle and shoo of her hand. She then broke a piece of bread from the last slice she had left and threw it into the pond. “You make it seem like we’re fugitives on the run or something.”
“No, Tamarra.” He removed the last slice of bread from her hand and threw it down. He then took her hands into his and looked at her while she stared off at the pond. “You make it seem like we’re fugitives. At least that’s how you make me feel anyway.” Maeyl released her hands, then stood. “I’ll meet you back at the car.”
Now that Tamarra thought about it, ever since that conversation a week ago, Maeyl had been more distant than usual. They’d only talked on the phone twice and gone out together once. The time they did go out wasn’t so pleasant. Maeyl had wanted to go to Family Café, but Tamarra put up a fight, and they ended up having lunch at a restaurant in Columbus. Maeyl knew the only reason why she didn’t want to go to Family Café was because they were bound to run into someone they knew, especially someone from church. Though neither one of them expressed their true feelings regarding the matter, they didn’t have to. It was clear and evident, just like things were now becoming more clear and evident to Tamarra.
“Everyone is going to know eventually,” she repeated the words Maeyl had said that day at the pond. “I’d like to at least have something to do with that,” she recalled him saying. No sooner than she recalled those words, she remembered Maeyl telling her during their first date how Pastor had just asked him to temporarily fill in for Brother Edmondson as the church Web site moderator. Things were indeed clear and evident. Maeyl had obviously been set on spreading the word about their seeing each other, and obviously, he’d had help in doing so; help from someone with a camera.
“So you at least wanted to have something to do with everyone finding out about us, huh, did you ol’ Maeyl?” she spat as she stormed over to her dresser drawer in search of something to throw on. “Looks like you had everything to do with it, and if you thought you were
going to get away with it, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Tamarra quickly slipped on a pair of jeans and threw on a T-shirt. She was so anxious to leave the house and go confront Maeyl that she didn’t even realize she’d forgotten to do something with her hair. It stuck straight up in the air without the usual water and setting lotion she typically used to tame it. On top of that, she didn’t notice that her shirt was on both backward and inside out. But none of that mattered to her anyway. She had bigger fish to fry, and from the looks of things, someone was about to get burned!
Chapter Seventeen
Tamarra had knocked on Maeyl’s door for the third time, ringing the doorbell twice in between. His car was parked in his assigned parking space in front of his apartment building, so she knew he was home. He’d probably peeked out of the window and saw that it was her and knew why she’d come to his house, so he was hiding behind closed doors like a coward.
“Answer this dang blasted door, Maeyl. I know you’re in there,” Tamarra said to herself as she beat on the door once again. She had made up in her mind that if she had to stand on that porch and knock until morning, then so be it. She knew he had to come out in the morning in order to go work the church sound booth. He’d never missed a Sunday that she could remember. He was dedicated to New Day; always in position. So she knew that if he wouldn’t even allow the devil himself to keep him from his Sunday morning duties, he surely wouldn’t let her.
With arms folded, Tamarra stood on the stoop of Maeyl’s doorway, tapping her foot. After a few moments, she rang the door bell again, then resumed her stance. After a few more moments, she snapped her fingers. “The back patio,” she said to herself. She turned to go around to the back of the apartment complex, and that’s when she heard Maeyl’s door creek open.
“Tamarra, is everything all right?” Maeyl asked in a panicked tone. “What’s going on?” He opened the door and gestured for her to come in.
“You know exactly what’s going on, and, no, I’m not okay.” Tamarra stormed into his place. Maeyl kept the door open, a little something he’d learned from Tamarra that she had learned from the Singles Ministry. It was behind closed doors that the devil often liked to present sin to a person; tricking them into believing that the sin would stay behind closed doors. And once again, Tamarra wanted to avoid the appearance of evil; not that it had worked for her up to this point.
“You’ve been beating on my door for the last fifteen minutes.” The worry in Maeyl’s voice was sincere. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”
“If you heard me beating on your door for the last fifteen minutes, then why in God’s name didn’t you open it? Oh, let me guess, Too busy trying to get your story together?” Tamarra was on fire. Maeyl had never seen her in this rare form.
“Will you calm down?” Maeyl requested. “I was down the basement in my prayer room praying. I don’t allow anything or anyone to interrupt my prayer with God. You know that. I don’t answer the door or the phone when I’m in sweet communion with the Lord.”
“Oh, pahleeeeeze!” Tamarra spat. “If I did happen to buy that line, I’d hope to God that you were praying for forgiveness.” Tamarra’s eyes watered. “Maeyl, how could you?” She fought back tears of hurt. “I know you really wanted people to know about us, you thought I was hiding you—ashamed of you or something perhaps, but I swear I wasn’t. You don’t know what all I’ve gone through, and I just wanted everything to be right. I’ve been praying about us, you and me. I know how I feel about you, but it’s not about me. I’ve made mistakes before when I made things about me. I wanted this, me and you, to be about God. So I was waiting on Him. I was waiting on Him to tell me to move. But you . . . you just couldn’t wait, could you? And now, although things might look good on your end, you might look like the man, the mack daddy, but I look like a fool, a cheap—”
Maeyl caught Tamarra’s fists when she raised them. He had no idea what their final destination was, and he didn’t want to find out. “Tamarra, honey,” he said with such tenderness in his voice, that Tamarra had quickly forgotten how he’d put their relationship on blast in such a manner. She allowed her forehead to rest forward on his chest, exhausted from arguing. She felt drained, so drained she could barely hold her head up.
“Why?” was all Tamarra could say.
Maeyl allowed Tamarra to release several more ‘whys’ before he spoke. “Tamarra, I honestly have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tamarra looked up into his eyes, and then pushed herself away. “How dare you patronize me like I’m some fool? But if games are what you want to play, then I’ll play. I guess all of this was just a game to you in the first place. It had to be for you to do something like this. Just like a man, can’t ever seem to get that ego in check.”
“If you are going to stand here in my living room insulting me, the least you can do is let me know why.”
“The Web site!” Tamarra finally blurted out. “The pictures, the ones of us—me and you. The ones that you posted on the church Web site.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maeyl said, walking toward Tamarra.
“Oh, just stop it.” She pushed past him to the door. “I expected as much from you. I don’t even know why I came here in the first place. I don’t know how you did it, or if you even had help, but none of that matters now. Goodbye, Maeyl.”
“No, Tamarra, wait!” Maeyl called after her.
He started to chase after her, but paused when he realized his feet were bare. He never wore shoes into his prayer room and had yet to slip some on. He didn’t have a chance. Once he’d prematurely closed out his prayer, his only concern had been to see who was beating on his door. He could tell by their persistence that they were not going to go away, and their constant banging had stifled the Holy Spirit.
He had planned on resolving the matter that awaited him outside his front door, and then return to prayer, but now his mind was just too consumed. Tamarra, the woman he had actually been praying for and about, was furious with him and he needed to make things right. He looked around for something to slip on his feet, but nothing was in sight. He then barged out the door anyway.
“Tamarra!” he called out as he stepped down off his porch to go after her. “Ouch!” he screeched after stepping on something. He immediately grabbed his injured foot and hopped around on one leg in pain.
Seeing that Tamarra was not going to oblige his request for her to come back and speak with him, Maeyl watched her get in her car and drive off. Unfortunately, so did the church secretary who had decided to pay Maeyl a visit after so many failed attempts to contact him by phone. The church secretary sat in her car. Her mouth dropped when she saw Tamarra come storming out of Maeyl’s house in a rush, so much of a rush that she’d put her shirt on inside out. And her hair looked as though she and Maeyl had been doing God only knows what. And then there was Maeyl in his bare feet.
The church secretary clasped her chest in disbelief. When she decided to take it upon herself to drive over to Maeyl’s house, she never thought for the life of her that she’d stumble upon a lover’s quarrel. If the church thought the mere pictures of the couple were bad, wait until they heard about this.
Chapter Eighteen
“Ain’t no devil in hell gonna keep me from my Lord,” were the words that played on the radio as Tamarra drove to church.
She’d be a liar if she said that she hadn’t thought all night long about not coming to church, but there was no way she was going to let Maeyl feel as though he’d gotten to her with his little stunt. He’d tried calling her house and cell phone a dozen times, but she wouldn’t take his calls. Paige, after hearing about the pictures and then going online to see them for herself, tried calling Tamarra several times from work. Tamarra finally did take her call after hearing how worried she sounded. Paige offered to come by her house after she got off work at eight o’clock. She said she had a date with Blake, but could cancel it, but Tamarra told her friend that
she’d be fine.
Tamarra was surprised when Paige showed up at her door anyway at eight thirty. She’d cancelled her date in order to be there for her friend. The two talked and prayed well into the midnight hour before Paige finally left, offering to come back in the morning to pick Tamarra up so that the two could go to church together. Tamarra knew it was Paige’s way of making sure she went to church, but she assured her that she would be there, joking that she didn’t want anybody having to do a drive-by if she didn’t show up.
“On top of that,” Tamarra said out loud as she drove to church, “I didn’t do anything wrong. There’s no reason why I can’t show my face in New Day. Nope. There is no need at all for me to be ashamed of anything, anything at all.” If anybody should feel ashamed, she reckoned it should be Maeyl.
Tamarra pulled up into the church parking lot prepared to go get her praise and worship on and hear the message of God just like she’d done any other Sunday. But just as soon as she stepped foot out of her jeep, she knew this wasn’t going to be like any other Sunday.
“They had just done what?” were the words Tamarra heard when she stepped into the ladies room at church.
Because of the memo always posted in the church programs about limiting getting up and down doing church service, Tamarra always made it a point to go to the bathroom before service started. She didn’t want to be one of those saints who were always up, being a distraction in the sanctuary.
It was never a surprise for her to walk into the ladies restroom and find a couple of hens plucking away at the latest gossip, but never had the gossip been about her. Tamarra could tell the two women who’d been chatting away had been talking about her, because as soon as she entered and they locked eyes with her, she could see the canary’s feathers hanging out of each of their mouths.