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Authors: E.N. Joy

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BOOK: She Who Finds a Husband
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Chapter Fifteen
“You nervous?” Paige asked Blake as he drove down Interstate 70 with her on the passenger side.
“No,” he replied without letting two seconds go by before repenting. “I take that back. I lied. I repent. I'm nervous as heck.”
Paige laughed. “I knew it.” She flipped down the sun visor and ran her fingertips across her freshly waxed eyebrows. They were arched so thin they looked drawn on.
“It's that obvious, huh?”
“You haven't said two words in the last ten minutes.”
“I guess I'm just rehearsing in my head what to say to them. It's not everyday a guy gets invited to meet a girl's parents.”
“Oh, trust me, my mom and dad are harmless. It's my girlfriends that you'll have to look out for,” Paige teased.
“So tell me about your friends. We've been seeing each other for almost two months, and I haven't met any of them yet.”
“Well, I really only have a couple. There's a sister from the church named Deborah. She and I aren't tight, but we talk here and there. Then there is Mother Doreen, everybody's spiritual mother. And of course there's my best buddy, Tamarra. My spiritual sister in every sense.”
“I'd love to hang out with you and your best friend. Perhaps we can all go out sometime, on a double date or something . . . when Tamarra isn't busy catering an event, of course.”
“That sounds nice,” Paige agreed, not even realizing she hadn't once mentioned to Blake that her best friend was a caterer.
 
 
“Honey, before you sit down, grab me another roll from the basket. I know I'm going to need another soon to slop up all this delicious homemade gravy you done made up.”
That's one thing Paige noticed her father always did; compliment her mother while he was slaving her around. As if he had to butter her up to get her to do anything for him. Her mother would jump off the Empire State Building if that man asked her to; trusting on everything that God would be there to catch her and save her since she was only doing it out of obedience to her husband. Talk about obedience being better than sacrifice.
“Oh, no problem, Samuel,” Paige's mother said gladly, just before she sat back down to dinner, she turned to retrieve the requested roll.
Thus far, her mother had only been able to sit at the table long enough to participate in grace. Immediately after he'd said, “Amen,” Paige's father had already started to, what Paige thought was purposely, have her mother miss a hot meal, only to enjoy a lukewarm one. Paige shook her head at the fact that her mother had managed to give new meaning to the term “lukewarm Christian.”
“On second thought, you better make it two rolls.” Paige's father then looked over to Blake. “Son, you need another one while she's up? I'm telling you, my wife's homemade rolls and this gravy, they go hand in hand.”
“No, sir, I'm fine,” Blake responded.
Paige's mother placed the rolls on her father's plate, then headed back to her chair to sit down.
“Susie, go on and grab the young man another roll before you sit down.” It was as if Mr. Robinson hadn't even heard Blake decline.
“Oh no, really I'm fine,” Blake said to Mrs. Robinson, who then took her seat.
“Trust me, son,” Mr. Robinson said to Blake, “them rolls will make you wanna slap my mamma. I say my mamma because Susie uses my mama's recipe, and it belonged to her mama, and so on. That recipe has got to be about four or five generations passed down.” Mr. Robinson took a bite of one of his rolls. “Delicious as always.” He looked to his daughter but was still speaking to Blake. “You're going to have to get Paige to make you up a batch.” He paused as if in thought. “Although I don't think this one ever learned how to make these rolls. She gon' be the one to break the tradition.”
“Mama never taught me the Robinson family recipe, or any other recipe for that matter.” Paige tried to contain the anger she always felt when ever she thought about her younger years as a growing girl. “She was too busy wearing herself ragged waiting on you hand and foot.”
Blake cleared his throat just to create a sound that would interrupt the few awkward seconds of silence that had circled the dinner table. “So, Paige tells me that you're retired from the construction business,” Blake said to Paige's father.
“Oh yeah,” Mr. Robinson said proudly. “Thirty-five years in the business. Now my son runs the company.”
“Is that so?” Blake sounded genuinely interested. “A family business. What a blessing.”
Paige hadn't told Blake that her family owned a business. She knew he would wonder why she wasn't a part of it. And just as if Mr. Robinson could read Blake's mind, he addressed Blake's curiosity.
“Tried to get Paige here to get involved ever since she graduated high school, but no, she was too highfalutin for the construction business,” he joked. “Instead, she decided to use that business degree of hers and sell movie tickets.”
Although it hadn't been her father's intention, Paige felt degraded by his comment. Then again, maybe it had been his intention. Paige had watched him degrade her mother with snide little comments such as that for more years than she cared to remember. Someone had planted in this man's mind that women were beneath men. He didn't seem to care how many degrees his daughter had. His son would always rank higher than Paige. He hadn't spent a day in college, but got into the construction business his senior year of high school, working part-time after classes.
“I don't sell movie tickets, Dad. I'm the general manager of the theatre,” Paige huffed.
Mr. Robinson gave a puzzled look that went from Paige to her mother. “But honey, you told me Paige met this young man when she sold him movie tickets.”
“Well, that's what I was told,” her mother confessed, then looked over at Paige for backup, clarification, or something. “She told me she sold him two tickets, and she ended up going to the movies with him.” Mrs. Robinson smiled. “Such a beautiful story.” She looked at Blake and winked. It was an expression of approval.
“Yes, I did sell Blake two movie tickets,” Paige explained, “but that was only because I'd just lost an employee, so I had to cover ticket sales until I replaced her. But now I've hired someone, and I don't work the ticket booth anymore.”
“Two tickets?” Mr. Robinson questioned, not purposely changing the topic of conversation, but nonetheless, doing so indeed. “Why were you buying two tickets in the first place?” he asked Blake. “If you didn't meet my daughter until you got to the ticket booth, then how did you know to buy two tickets? How did you know she'd join you for a movie? Or had you planned on taking someone else?”
Paige watched Blake shift uncomfortably in his chair as they all waited for his answer. Up until now, she honestly had cared less about who Blake was supposed to be meeting at the movie theater that evening. She hadn't even questioned him about it, especially since he'd made it clear that he did not like to discuss past relationships. Leave it to her father to try to stir up confusion in her blooming relationship. That's another reason why she never brought any of her past dates to meet her parents. Well, that and the fact that none had ever lasted this long.
“Umm, these rolls are delicious,” Blake said as he quickly stuffed one in his mouth, hoping that with a full mouth, no one would expect him to reply to Mr. Robinson's inquiry. “I think I will have another one.” He removed the napkin from his lap in preparation to stand to go retrieve his roll.
“Sit on down, son,” Paige's father ordered him. “Susie will get it.” He looked at his wife who was about to put a forkful of food in her mouth. “Susie, go get the young man another roll.”
Mrs. Robinson dropped her fork and prepared to get up.
“Oh, that will be all right,” Blake said before Mrs. Robinson could rise. “I don't have a problem getting it myself.”
Paige, try as she might, couldn't keep her lips from stretching into a wide grin. Oh yes, this man was heaven sent all right. He was everything her father was not, which in her opinion meant that he was the perfect man for her.
Before Blake walked away from the table, he looked at Paige's mother who had only one bite of her roll left and asked, “Mrs. Robinson, can I grab you another one while I'm up?”
Mrs. Robinson almost choked. Had this man just offered to serve her? This was a first unless she'd been out at a restaurant and their server was male. “Uh, no, son, I'm fine. But thank you anyway.”
The expression on her mother's face didn't go unnoticed by Paige. Too bad it was Paige's man instead of Mrs. Robinson's own husband who had done so, offered to serve her. It made Paige warm inside to be able to witness her mother see that in this day and age, a woman deserved to be catered to just as much as a man did.
Paige smiled as she dug into her food. What a blessing Blake was. He continued to validate why he was the only man she'd ever brought to her parents' home. He was perfect; unflawed like all those other men she'd dated that could hardly get past date number two. But Paige was convinced that Blake was different, even though during one of the Singles Ministry meetings Deborah had told her many times that if she were waiting for God to lead her to the perfect man, she would be waiting forever and a day. Well right now, at this very moment, her forever and a day had arrived. Blake was perfect in her eyes. How could he not be as he was part of God's divine set-up? God's divine plan in her mission to find a husband? But beneath it all, her perfect encounter with the perfect man wasn't so perfect at all. She'd been set up all right, in more ways than one, and by the person she'd least expect.
Chapter Sixteen
“Who could have done such a thing?” Sister Deborah asked Mother Doreen through the phone receiver. “And I thought there was a moderator that had to approve all postings to the church Web site.”
“There is,” Mother Doreen assured her, “but I don't think everything goes through the moderator first. I think they just have the ability to delete things if need be. Because whoever thought a church Web site would need to be manned in such a way? I mean, this is just another way the world has turned one of God's creations into something perverted. The Internet is supposed to be a source to do Kingdom work, to spread the gospel, but man has tainted it.”
Deborah could visualize Mother Doreen wiping away sweat beads as they spoke. In all honesty, Deborah had pretty much had to do the same thing herself when she got the call from the church secretary about the recent photos posted to the church Web site on the Singles Ministry page. To see Tamarra and Maeyl in such a compromising position made her blush with embarrassment. She could only imagine how Tamarra must have felt when she saw them.
“Tamarra!” Deborah thought out loud. “Has she seen or heard about the photos?”
“Oh my. I'm not sure,” Mother Doreen replied.
“Well, hopefully the Web site moderator will get those things deleted before Tamarra has a chance to see them.”
“Well, they couldn't get a hold of him this morning.”
“Yeah, I guess that's why the church secretary called me this morning; thinking either you or I had the capability to remove the photos,” Deborah assumed. “Who is the Web site moderator anyway?”
Mother Doreen cleared her throat. “Uh, that, would um be, Brother Maeyl.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“I'm telling the truth to shame the devil. Brother Edmondson used to be the moderator, but just a couple months ago the Finance Committee was going over church expenses and noticed several Internet charges. After making a few phone calls, they discovered that several of those nasty ol' pop-ups were being accepted, and the fees to view the Web sites were automatically charged to the bill.”
“Do you mean those pornographic pop-ups?”
“Those would be the ones,” Mother Doreen confirmed. “Pastor asked him to step down from his duties as overseer of the church Web site and has been counseling him on his porn addiction.”
“But his wife, Sister Tonetta, she's so beautiful. I can't imagine him finding a more beautiful woman to look at on the Internet.”
“It ain't about flesh and blood, child, need I remind you. It's just one of those demonic things that Satan uses to steal, kill, and destroy. Funny thing is, until Brother Edmondson started spending so much time on the church computer as part of the New Day Computer Ministry, he'd never in his life looked at porn.”
“Umph, umph, umph.” Deborah shook her head. “Now I'm not that computer savvy. I can write on them, edit, etc . . . , but I know there is a program that disables certain sites from being viewed. There are also pop-up blockers. Why is it we don't have these things in place?”
Mother Doreen took a deep breath. “Once again, dear, who would have thought we'd need to take such precautions in the house of the Lord? I guess Pastor gave church folks the benefit of the doubt.”
“Pastor has a good heart, and I know Pastor doesn't like to make waves with folks, but I pray God uses these incidents to show that Pastor needs to walk in God's given authority.”
“I hear you, child,” Mother Doreen agreed. “When God gives you an assignment or puts you in authority over something, sometimes you can't be caught up in folks' feelings. At least that's what God told Jehu in Kings 1 or 2. I can't recall off the top right now.”
Deborah was in agreement with Mother Doreen, but felt, in a sense, that Mother Doreen held some of the same “save face” characteristics that their pastor did. It often showed in how she handled the women in the Singles Ministry. There were times when Deborah just wanted Mother Doreen to jump up and put those women in check on the spot, but she never did, at least not in the in-your-face manner in which Deborah had wanted to see it done.
“I know you're probably saying to yourself, ‘If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black,'” Mother Doreen said. “I, too, sometimes don't walk in my God given authority.”
For a minute there, Deborah feared she'd spoken her thoughts out loud.
“But that's something I'm working on myself,” Mother Doreen admitted. “There's been plenty of times God has told me to go give a word to someone, but the word sometimes seemed so rough and harsh, I just couldn't confront the person with it.”
“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!
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