Let the Church Say Amen (11 page)

R
ACHEL LOOKED AROUND
the dingy, musty room. It had to be one of the dirtiest places she had ever been in. She still couldn’t believe she was there. She had never been in any real trouble. The worst thing she’d ever done was skip school a couple of times. Sitting in a jail cell was something totally new. Actually, they called this a holding cell, but it might as well have been a jail cell. The four walls were bare, a pale, dusty gray color. There was a small window, but that was it.

Thankfully, they had let her keep on her own clothes and she didn’t have to change into one of those awful orange jump-suits.

When are they going to let me make my phone call?
Rachel had been downtown for over an hour and she still hadn’t gotten the one phone call she was entitled to. If she didn’t learn anything else from her years of watching
New York Undercover,
she knew she was supposed to get one phone call.

“Hey!” Rachel started banging on the window. “Can I make my call now please?” The white-haired lady sitting at the desk outside the cell didn’t look up from her magazine. Rachel knocked harder. “Excuse me! Can I make my phone call now?”

The woman looked up, irritated. She muttered something to herself, then picked up the phone and dialed a number. After a few minutes on the phone, she pulled out a set of keys, then walked over to the holding cell.

Without saying a word, she opened the door and stood back for Rachel to come out. Rachel looked at the lady, contemplating saying something smart, but decided against it. The officer looked at her like she dared her to say something.

“Thank you very much,” Rachel said instead, with as little sarcasm as she could muster.

“You got three minutes,” the officer snapped. She pointed to a phone sitting on an empty desk.

Rachel hadn’t given much thought to whom she’d call. The last people she wanted to call were her parents, but she knew they were really the only ones that could help. Twyla would be useless. She was about as broke as Rachel.

Rachel took a deep breath, then picked up the phone to dial her parents’ number. Part of her hoped no one would be at home. The other part, the part that desperately wanted to get out of this dump, was praying that someone would answer, preferably her mother. But, of course, luck wasn’t on her side.

“Reverend Jackson speaking.” Her father picked up the phone on the first ring. Rachel hated the way he answered the phone. He had done that for as long as she could remember. Why couldn’t he answer the phone like normal people. His brass demeanor scared off many of the boys who were interested in her.

“Hello, is anyone there?” Simon said.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Rachel?”

“Daddy … I’m in some trouble … I need you.” Rachel could just picture the look on her father’s face.

Simon sighed heavily. Rachel knew he was thinking about how much of a disappointment she was. “What kind of trouble is it this time, Rachel? I know you better not tell me you’re pregnant again, because if you are—”

Rachel cut off her father before he got on a tirade. “No, Daddy, it’s nothing like that. I’m … I’m downtown.”

“Downtown where?”

Rachel hesitated before responding. “In jail,” she whispered.

“In
where?”
Simon screamed.

Rachel started crying, partly to manipulate her father and partly because she was truly upset. “Daddy, please, can you just come get me? I got into some trouble over at Bobby’s and—”

“Bobby? Rachel, when are you going to leave that boy alone! He’s done made it clear that he don’t want you. You got Lester trying to give you a chance and you won’t give him the time of day!”

“Daddy, please. Now is not the time. Can you come get me? They say they’ll release me into your custody. Please, Daddy, I can’t take it down here.”

Simon grunted. He paused for several seconds before saying, “You should’ve thought about that before you did whatever you did to land you down there.” He hesitated again. “What did you do?”

“Daddy, please,” Rachel begged.

“What did you do?” Simon repeated.

Rachel lightly banged her head against the wall. No sense in trying to dance around it, she had to tell him straight. “I pulled a knife on Bobby and his girlfriend.”

Simon was quiet a moment before saying, “Father Jesus.”

“Will you come get me?”

Simon didn’t respond quickly. “Rachel, I’m sorry you got yourself in that predicament, but I’m due over at Ebenezer Baptist Church for their vacation bible school finale. I’m on the program,” he finally said.

Rachel couldn’t believe her ears. “Daddy, did you not hear me? I’m in jail. I need you.”

“So do the folks at Ebenezer. They’re counting on me to be there to represent Zion Hill, and unlike you, I honor my commitments.”

Rachel was in a full-fledged crying mode now. “Daddy, please don’t do this to me.”

“Rachel, you did this to yourself. Now, I will leave a note for your mother. She had to go visit Brother Thompson in the hospital. She can come see about you when she gets back.”

“So what am I supposed to do until then?” Rachel cried.

“I suppose you should just sit down there and think about what you did to land yourself in jail and how this should be a sign for you to get your life together.” Simon paused again, then inhaled deeply. “Now, I’m sorry, I know you think I’m being harsh. But we keep bailing you out of these predicaments and you’ve got to learn. Sometimes that means you have to learn the hard way. You had one child and we stepped in and made everything all right. Then you had another, and, reluctantly, we did again. It’s time for you to grow up and think about the consequences to your actions.”

Rachel couldn’t be sure, but she could’ve sworn she heard her father’s voice cracking.

“I have to go now,” Simon continued. “The vacation bible school program starts in an hour and I don’t want to be late.”

Rachel heard the phone click in her ear. She held it for a minute, in stunned disbelief, then she fell to the floor in tears. She was crying for the hurt she heard in her father’s voice, but more so for the fact that he was actually going to leave her here.

The lady officer raced over to her. The coldness in her face had softened. “Hey, come on now.”

“He’s just going to leave me here!” Rachel cried. “He’s leaving me here for another church’s vacation bible school!”

The officer didn’t say anything. She just gently patted Rachel on the back and handed her a box of tissues. Rachel snatched two out of the box and wiped her face. Her father had missed many of her youth activities because he was so busy with the church. He had missed her first date because he was at a revival out of town. She always believed she came second to that damned church. Now she knew that to be the case without a shadow of a doubt.

S
IMON STOOD OUTSIDE
the church conference room doors and leaned in. He was trying desperately to hear what the deacons were saying.

“I tell you I saw the boy and he was all hugged up,” he heard a voice whisper. It sounded like Brother Davis but Simon couldn’t too sure.

“Maybe you were mistaken,” another voice said. “You know your eyesight ain’t been too good these days.”

“I know what I seen!” Simon could tell that it was definitely Deacon Elijah Davis talking. But who was he talking about? And why were they whispering? Simon didn’t take part in the church gossip, and he had never paid it much attention, even with all the horrible rumors swirling about Rachel. But his curiosity had peaked these last few days due to the nonstop whispering that always seemed to end abruptly when he entered the room.

“Tell him exactly what you saw, Brother Davis. They won’t believe me.” That was the voice of Deacon Jacobs.

“It was him sure as I’m standing here,” Deacon Davis repeated. “And they was looking all lovey-dovey.”

“Well, maybe you just read too much into it.” That was Simon’s friend, Mitchell Baker, talking. Simon felt guilty standing there. Maybe he should just walk in and ask them what they were saying.

“I didn’t read too much of nothing,” Deacon Davis responded. “What I want to know is, is anybody goin’ say something?”

Deacon Baker spoke up again. “No, I think you ought to just let this drop. You ain’t got no proof and y’all know Brother Davis ain’t got but one good eye anyway.”

Deacon Davis huffed. “Fine. This one good eye know what it saw. Just don’t say I didn’t try and tell y’all when he shame this church.”

Simon couldn’t take it any longer. If one of his members was doing something that could shame the church, he wanted to know about it. He pushed open the door. All of the deacons immediately sat up, a tense look across their faces. “Deacons,” Simon said, nodding in their direction. “No need to stop your conversation.” He scanned the room. Every man in the room had a nervous look about his face. “Somebody wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Several deacons cast their eyes down.

“Who are you talking about?” Simon asked.

Elijah stood up. “It’s your son.”

Everyone looked at Elijah surprised. Simon took a deep breath. “Okay, what has David done now?”

Mitchell took the opportunity to jump in. “I’ll handle this,” he said.

Simon looked at his friend. “Don’t beat around the bush, Mitchell. Just tell me what you know. Ain’t nothing you can tell me about David that is goin’ shame me more than he already has.”

Mitchell cleared his throat. “Well, a couple of our members saw David and some woman at the mall shoplifting. They didn’t get caught, but we’re still worried.”

Elijah let out a long sigh and shook his head. “You wrong, Mitchell,” he said.

“No, I feel we need to tell Simon. He needs to know what’s going on in case someone brings it up to him.”

“They were shoplifting?” Simon hung his head. Would David ever stop embarrassing him? “What about him being hugged up? I heard someone say something about that.”

Mitchell looked around nervously. “That’s how they were getting the things they were stealing. They would act like they were hugged up together as they stuffed the items in their jackets.” Mitchell paused and looked around the room. “Well, we just wanted you to know.”

“I appreciate that, Mitchell. I’ll do my best to handle it.” Simon couldn’t quite make out the look on the other deacons’ faces. Maybe they were just as sick of David’s shenanigans as he was, but, somehow, Simon wondered if there was more to the story.

Simon couldn’t believe he was parked again in the front of David’s beat-up apartment. He didn’t even know how he’d ended up there. The last thing he remembered was leaving the church, his vision clouded in anger. He was sick and tired of David. What if he had gotten caught? They probably would’ve found drugs on him. It would’ve been all in the papers. Simon felt he had to do or say something, anything. He had given up on trying to get David to turn his life around. That was a cause only for the Lord to work out. He had come here today to try and talk David into moving out of Houston.

Simon had a brother in Philadelphia who worked with drug offenders. He’d invited David to come stay with him for a while and Simon was now determined to get David to go.

A loud bang against the car window startled Simon out of his thoughts. A dark-skinned man with long, dirty dreadlocks and food stuck in his matted beard was knocking on his window.

“Hey, you wanna buy a VCR?” the man asked.

Simon waved for the man to go away.

“Forty dollars,” the man said, holding up the dual-deck Sony.

Simon looked at the man’s hands to make sure he didn’t have any weapons. When he saw nothing but the VCR, he stepped out of the car. “No, I don’t want to buy a hot VCR.” Simon closed and locked his car door and started toward David’s apartment.

“Okay. Thirty dollars then,” the man yelled, following Simon. “You can’t beat this for thirty dollars, man. You can watch two tapes at the same time.”

Simon shook his head. “I said no, thank you.”

“Aww, come on,” the man called out as Simon quickened his pace. “Twenty dollars then; that’s as low as I can go. Come on!”

Simon looked back over his shoulders with disgust. If he could ever get his hands on the person who brought drugs into their community, he probably would lose every ounce of his Christianity.

Simon knocked once and the door to David’s apartment opened. Tawny was sitting on the sofa, her head, tied in a black scarf, hung low. She looked worse than she did at his house.

Tawny looked up. “What’s up, Pops?” Her words were slurred.

Simon stiffened. “Hello. Is David here?”

“Somewhere around here.” She yelled for David, then said, “He’s probably in the back.”

Tawny struggled to get up, then slowly made her way to the back of the apartment. Simon waited in the living room.

Tawny’s scream sent him running down the hall.

“Oh, my God! David! David! Wake up!”

Tawny was on the floor, next to David, whose eyes were rolled up in the back of his head. Drool was coming out of his mouth and a thick rubber band wrapped was around his forearm. A needle stuck from the bend of his arm. Tawny snatched the needle out and began violently slapping David. “Wake up, baby!”

Simon stood there in shock.

“Mmmmmm,” David moaned.

“Wake up! Wake up!” Tawny kept repeating.

Simon looked at his son lying on the bedroom floor. His emotions changed from sickness to anger to disgust. Most of all he felt sorry for what his son had become.

“Is he dead?” Simon stoically asked.

Tawny slapped David’s face some more. He flinched, then moaned again.

“No, no. He’s still alive,” she cried. “Baby, wake up. Damn. I knew that shit was too strong.” She was shaking her head, blubbering and crying.

Simon pursed his lips together, then turned around and walked out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Tawny called after him. “Pops? I can’t believe you just gonna leave him! Asshole!”

Simon ignored her screams as he walked through the living room, out the front door, and back to his car. As he unlocked it and stepped inside, his mind replayed the horrible scene of his son lying on the floor, near death, with a needle stuck in his vein.

Simon buried his head in his hands and for the first time in his life, cried uncontrollably.