Forgiven (5 page)

“Move out of my way, I’m going to kill him,”
the man said as he stomped his way into the room.

Caught off guard, JT stumbled backward. His
foot got tangled in the cords. As he tried to extract his foot from
the cords, he unplugged Lamont’s heart monitor. The big man
advanced on JT and tried to push him away from Lamont. Leaning
against Lamont’s bedrail with his hands outstretched, JT tried to
keep the big guy from knocking him to the ground. “Hold up. Wait a
minute!” JT yelled authoritatively.

The man stood in front of JT. Although he was
no longer trying to push JT out of the way, he was clearly still as
angry as sin. “He shouldn’t have rode my sister on that motorcycle
of his.”

JT righted himself as he prepared to stand in
the gap for Lamont’s life. He waved his hand toward Lamont and told
the man, “Can’t you see that he’s at death’s door himself?”

At that moment, a nurse ran into the room.
“What’s going on in here?” she demanded.

JT didn’t want to cause this man any trouble.
He saw the pain in his eyes and knew from what he had said that his
sister was dead. “You don’t want to do this,” he said to the big
guy and then turned to the nurse. “This man is upset. He just lost
his sister. Can you please get some help so we can calm him
down?”

“JT?” the nurse asked.

JT hadn’t looked at the nurse when he spoke a
moment ago. He was too busy trying to keep this big guy off of
Lamont. This time when he turned toward the nurse he looked at her
and recognition hit him in the gut. “Erica?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m going to get security and
then I’ll be back,” she said as she backed away from the door.

JT looked at the man. He could barely
concentrate on him. Images of his first love, Erica Swell, danced
through his head and made him a little incoherent. He shook his
head, trying to release the past so he could concentrate on the
angry man standing in front of him. “You don’t want to go to jail
do you?” JT asked the guy.

The man pressed his palms against his head
and let out a loud roar. “I want my sister back,” he said as tears
streamed down his face.

JT pulled the man into his arms and embraced
him as if he were a two year old child in the middle of a tantrum.
“It will be all right. You’ve just got to have faith and believe
that God can see you through this.”

The man pushed JT away from him. “Go ‘head on
somewhere with that religious stuff.” He walked toward Lamont’s
door and then turned back around. He pointed where Lamont lay still
unconscious and said, “You better hope he dies, because if he
doesn’t, I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”

JT had no doubt that the big man could do
exactly what he threatened. He bent down and plugged Lamont’s heart
monitor back in, then turned back to Lamont as the giant left the
room and prayed, “Lord, help Lamont get out of this situation and
learn to live for You. I speak peace over this young man’s life. In
the name of Jesus, victory will be his.”

After praying over Lamont, JT sat down in the
chair next to his bed and took his Bible out of his duffle bag.
Just as he was getting comfortable, the door burst open again, but
this time it was Erica, backed up by two body guards. “He left,
huh?” she said as she looked around the small room.

JT sat up and put his Bible in his lap.
“Yeah, I don’t think he wanted to go to jail.”

Erica smiled as she said, “We’re going to
post a guard at his door for the night.”

“Thank you,” JT said as he stood up and
walked over to her. JT hadn’t seen Erica in twenty years, but she
hadn’t changed much at all. She was still as pretty as ever with
long hair that flowed down her back. She had it in a ponytail now.
“How have you been? I didn’t know what became of you.”

She posed in her Sponge Bob smock and said,
“Now you know. What about you, JT? The head nurse approved a clergy
to stay in the room with Lamont. That can’t be you?”

“In the flesh,” JT said with a smile.

“Well, I’ll be. I’ve wondered what happened
to you many times, but I never pictured you as a preacher. God is
good.”

“Yeah, I figured that out.”

“Well, I’ve got to get back to my other
patients, but it was nice seeing you,” Erica said as she turned to
walk out of the room.

“It was nice seeing you again, Erica. I’ve
thought about you so much over the years,” he said before she was
out the door.

“I’ve wondered about you too, so I’m glad I
got the chance to see you again. Since you know the Lord, may I
suggest you pray hard for this boy? He’s going to need Jesus to get
through the night.” She pointed a finger in the direction of the
hall and then said, “That girl who just died two doors down was
riding on his motorcycle without a helmet and her family is
fighting mad.”

“I know. I just met the brother of the dead
girl,” JT said.

Erica waved him off. “Just be glad the mother
didn’t come in here. She probably would have slit his throat before
I got a chance to ring the guard station.” She walked over to the
white board that was on the wall, erased a name and then wrote
hers. She turned back to JT and said, “I’ll be here the rest of the
night with Lamont.”

“Lamont doesn’t appear to have any family
with him. So do you mind if I spend the night here to make sure he
doesn’t receive any more unwanted visitors?”

“We’re posting a guard outside his door for a
few hours, but I’m okay with you staying.” She pointed to JT’s
Bible and said, “Why don’t you read to him. That might help him to
heal a bit better while he sleeps.”

JT sat down and grabbed his Bible. But his
mind was playing too many tricks on him to read a word from the
Lord. Had he really just seen his first love after all these
years?

Six

“Girl, why are you running around here like a
Thanksgiving turkey being drug to the slaughter house?”

Cassandra had invited her mother to spend the
night so that she would have help with the kids while JT was gone.
Big mistake. “What are you talking about, Mother?”

They were in the kitchen. Cassandra was
washing the dinner dishes, while Mattie sat at the table drinking a
cup of bitter black coffee. She put the cup down and told
Cassandra, “Why don’t you wake up and see what everyone else can
see? You don’t want to be here. And who would? That no count
fornicator is God knows where, sleeping with God knows who, while
you’re left here to babysit his ill-gotten seed.”

Cassandra cringed at the way her mother spoke
of her sweet baby girl. Because as far as Cassandra was concerned,
Lily was just as much a part of her as Jerome and Aaron were. There
were days when she wondered if Lily had anything to do with the
reason she was having panic attacks, but those questions quickly
fell away when she held the little girl in her arms. Nothing that
sweet could cause something so harmful.

“I need you to stop talking about Lily like
that,” Cassandra said as she put the last dish in the strainer,
unplugged the sink and then sat down at the table across from
Mattie.

“Oh, so you don’t allow no truth talking in
your house, is that it, Cassandra Ann? Just act like everything is
okay and then,” she lifted her arms in the air and quickly flared
her fisted hands and said, “poof, like magic everything will be as
it should.”

“You need to respect the fact that I love my
husband and am-”

“I don’t need to respect nothing,” Mattie
interrupted. “That fornicating husband of yours is the one who
needs to respect your love.”

Cassandra slammed her hand on the table and
stood up. “He’s not cheating on me. Stop saying things like
that.”

“Now look here, Cassandra Ann, I know you’re
not getting flip with me.” Mattie stood up with her hands on her
hips.

“When you say things like this, it really
makes me wonder what Susan said about me when I was a child.”

Mattie sat back down. “Susan has nothing to
do with this.”

“She has everything to do with it. I was the
same child that Lily is… born from an adulterous relationship. But
Bishop and Susan took me in.”

Mattie scoffed. “Those people never had to
take you in. Not like you’ve done for Lily. They kept you on the
weekends, big deal. Till this day, that man still hasn’t admitted
to anyone outside of his immediate family that you are his
daughter.”

One of the kids started crying. Grateful for
the distraction, Cassandra went upstairs. She knew even before she
reached the room that Aaron had woken up. His cries, which turned
into screams, always alerted her that his nap was over. She didn’t
understand why some babies wake up peacefully while others always
had to start a riot. But maybe Aaron was protesting the fact that
he had to leave beautiful dreams to once again enter an unfair and
cruel world. Cassandra wanted to scream herself awake sometimes
too.

She opened the door to Jerome and Aaron’s
room, and like she suspected, Aaron was sitting up in his Spiderman
toddler bed screaming his head off. Jerome, thankfully, hadn’t
stirred at all. Cassandra put her finger to her lips as she tiptoed
over to Aaron. She picked him up and rushed him out of the room. As
they headed back downstairs, she rubbed his back and said, “Its
okay, honey. Nothing to worry about, I’ve got you.”

Aaron wiped his eyes and then wrapped his
arms around his mother’s neck as if she alone could save him from
the boogie man that chased him awake.

“Grandma Mattie is here. Do you want to see
her?”

Aaron lifted his head off Cassandra’s
shoulder and smiled while vigorously nodding his head.

“Yeah, she wants to see you too.”

Mattie met them in the hallway and took Aaron
out of Cassandra’s arms. “Hey my little man, I missed you all day
today.”

“I saw you,” Aaron said, in that mumbled tone
of a nineteen month old.

“Yeah, but that mean old daddy took you away
from me.”

“Mother,” Cassandra’s tone was rebuking.
“Don’t talk about JT in front of my children.”

“Whatever.” Mattie waved her hand in the air
and turned to walk into the family room with Aaron on her hip.

Cassandra shook her head but followed behind
them. The phone started ringing, so Cassandra picked up the
receiver in the family room. “Hello.” The line went dead so she
hung it back up and turned on the television.

“Who was it?” Mattie asked.

“I don’t know. They hung up.” Cassandra
picked up the remote and put the television on the developmental
cartoon station for Aaron. Aaron jumped down from his grandmother’s
lap and sat in front of the TV and watched the ABCs float across
the screen.

“Why don’t you and the boys pack your stuff
and come back home with me?” Mattie asked.

Cassandra noted that her mother did not
invite Lily as she sat down in the chair across from the couch
Mattie was sitting on. “I can’t just up and leave. I don’t even
know when JT is coming back home.”

Mattie harrumphed. “You’re back home less
than a month and that no-account is already out of town on a secret
rendezvous.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes at that comment.
“JT is at the Charity Hospital in New Orleans visiting the son of
an old friend, Mother. Nothing more. I really need you to stop with
all your accusations against JT. I’m having a hard enough time as
it is adjusting to being back home.”

“That’s because you never should have come
back here. You should have shook the dust of this bad marriage off
your feet and kept on trucking ‘til you found something
better.”

Mattie’s words hit Cassandra right where she
lived. She had wondered if she had come back too soon, or if she
should have come back at all. Cassandra knew that she loved JT. But
was he truly the best God had for her? At that moment, Cassandra
was sure that if she listened to her mother long enough, she would
go upstairs, pack their clothes and leave her husband. So she
lifted her hand and said, “Mother I need you to stop.” She looked
at Aaron as he sat glued to the television and then added, “JT and
I have asked you not to say these things in front of our
children.”

Mattie waved her hand, dismissing Cassandra’s
comment. “I’ve got another joke. Do you want to here it?”

Cassandra didn’t know where her mother came
up with so many jokes. But they were almost always offensive or
something she didn’t want to hear. “If it’s anything like the jokes
you normally tell, I don’t want to hear it.”

“You always say that and then you listen to
them anyway.”

“That’s because I’m in the room with you when
you tell your offensive stories.”

“Hush, girl, ain’t nothing offensive about my
jokes. Just listen,” Mattie said as she looked over at Aaron to
make sure he was still transfixed by the television. “Okay, it goes
like this. The CIA is having this training for operatives. So they
put this man in a room and the director hands him a gun and tells
him, ‘In order to be a CIA operative you need to be committed and
be willing to do anything we tell you to do.’ The man had just been
laid off his job and he was a little crazy anyway, so he said,
‘Sure, no problem.’ The director then told him, ‘I want you to kill
the next person that walks into this room.’

The director left, and when the door opened,
the man’s daughter walked in. The man put down the gun and left the
room with his daughter. He told the director that he couldn’t take
the job. He would never shoot his own child.

The next potential employee was a young
woman. The director went over the same drill with her. He left her
in the room with the gun and then her mother walked into the room.
The girl burst into tears, and like the man before her, she told
the director that she could not do what they asked.

The final woman to be tested that day stood
in the room with the gun in her hand, when the door opened she saw
that it was her husband. He closed the door and then the director
heard the gun go off three times. Then he heard another sound that
he wasn’t familiar with; clickety-clickety-clack,
clickety-clickety-clack, clickety-clickety-clack. The woman opened
the door and walked out. She handed the director the gun and asked,
‘When do I start?’