By the time church service was over and Keithe had dragged her across the church to meet the guest bishop, Michelle wished she had gone with her first mind and exited to the lady’s room. The entire church service Michelle had dozed into a midday nap. Behind her big hat and big shades that were not needed with the cloudy September’s day, the only thing that woke her was Keithe’s elbow nudge.
“Bishop Perry.” Keithe approached the man who had called on the heavens on behalf of the church’s congregation. The way he had preached, anyone present could tell the knock had been granted. With hands flying high and feet beating the floor at a rapid pace, the holy spirit rested in their midst.
Approaching the man of the cloth as he was in a leisure conversation with his armor bearer, Keithe waited patiently as the man turned toward his opened hand. “Good to see you once again.” Keithe smiled, having met the bishop on previous visits.
“Likewise, Deacon Keithe,” Bishop Ky Perry remarked, laying his eyes on Michelle and losing his voice at the same time. Shocked from seeing the woman he hadn’t laid eyes on for over twenty years, Bishop Perry almost lost his grip.
Not taking note, Keithe continued with his reason for the short interruption. “Your sermon was more than right on time. Me and my wife…” he reached for a stiff and stunned Michelle as he continued. When he didn’t feel Michelle’s palm greet his, Keithe turned with furrowed eyebrows. “Honey.” Keithe sought her by walking two steps and guiding her with his hand on the small of her back.
It wasn’t until she felt Keithe’s hand squeeze and nudge her forward that Michelle caught her breath. What in the world? was all she could think. Instead of the questionable words she would have used if not in the house of the Lord, Michelle blinked and held her eyes shut long enough to utter from her heart, Help me, Lord.
“As I was saying, Bishop, the sermon hit home for me and my wife this morning. We’d been praying—” Keithe said before being interrupted.
“Your wife?” Bishop Perry questioned with the drop of his head, in a tone suggesting that Michelle could be anything but Keithe’s wife. Having acquainted himself with the young deacon a few years back with his visits to the Houston-based church, Bishop Perry couldn’t recall seeing Keithe with a wife, nor ever mentioning a wife. Looking down at Michelle’s ring finger verified the union.
Still not picking up on the subtle hints that were on display between the bishop and Michelle, Keithe, about to continue his praises, was interrupted as Michelle braved the waters. With her hand in a stiff stance out in front of her, she broke the ice.
“Bishop Perry. How do you do?” she greeted him.
“Grateful as the day before,” Bishop Perry muttered and inched close, about to make the fact of their acquaintance more real by asking Michelle how she’d been over the two-plus decades since he’d last seen her. But when she responded, “It’s great to meet you,” he held his tongue.
Nodding, the bishop, Ky, doubted himself. As the woman in her mid-fifties retreated behind her husband and busied herself on her BlackBerry, he had the chance to view the ring on her right hand that he’d given her all those years ago.
“Hmm. Didn’t know you were married, Deacon. Newlyweds?” he asked, keeping his voice to a low range, under the other fellowship going on in the sanctuary.
“No. Not at all. We’ve been going at it strong for fifteen years. And I do mean every bit of that,” Keithe said with a sad smirk. “But your message, it hit home. Just what we needed to keep our marriage alive. Just what Jesus ordered.”
During Bishop Perry’s message on the roles of men and their love for Christ, and showing the women an example of how to love them, as they themselves love the church, Keithe received confirmation in his spirit that he had loved his wife in the right manner.
Dismissing Michelle’s game of not knowing him, Bishop Perry could only imagine what she had taken the poor deacon through. He could only believe, by her actions, that Michelle’s past hadn’t been a part of their courting sessions, nor their marriage counseling. If he were a betting man, he’d have figured that she didn’t plan on discussing her past in order to heal their future.
“Glad God could use me in a way befitting for you,” he said, sealing the short conversation with a handshake. “I won’t keep you from your wife. I know how a wife and children are ready to feast after Sunday service.” The bishop looked over his shoulder to see his own wife and her best friend inch closer. A quick thought raced back of him being in the delivery room with Michelle as she delivered a heavy, bouncing baby girl. As he looked back in Keithe’s direction, no doubt he noticed Michelle slipping farther away from her husband.
“Right,” Keithe continued, with no clue of what was possibly brewing. “Except we don’t have any children.” he let the thought sit for a minute. “It was nice seeing you once more. Have a safe trip back to Dallas, Bishop.” as he turned to beckon Michelle to his side for their dismissal, Keithe noticed his always-stiletto-card-carrying-member of a wife had beaten him by a great distance on their departure.
Biting his tongue as hard as he could, Bishop Perry let the notion go to question about the baby he had held, kissed, and pledged to be the best father to…all before the results came back and let him know he wasn’t the father at all.
“Oh,” Bishop Perry yelled toward Keithe. “Deacon, I want you to meet my associate pastor.”
By the time Marcus Jeffries made it to the side of his best friend and senior pastor, looking past Keithe, Marcus was able to glimpse at Michelle as she made her way out of the sanctuary doors.
While still holding on to Keithe’s hand, not yet responding to his greeting, Marcus looked quickly over his left shoulder to his friend. For the moment he put Bishop Perry’s title to the side. Not laying down his cloth himself, Bishop Ky Perry simply nodded in response to Marcus’s impending question.
“Ni…nice to meet you, Deacon. I’ve heard wonderful things about you from my bishop here, from his visits to your city.” Marcus finally accounted for holding on to Keithe’s hand.
“Thank you, and likewise. I’m glad to have finally made your acquaintance. Next time I hope we all can get together for dinner,” Keithe replied. “Once again, be safe on your journeys, and good seeing you again.”
With a lot of nodding going on, both Bishop and Marcus couldn’t wait for the scene to clear with Keithe’s presence. Just as Bishop Perry was about to expound on the entire ordeal, Gracie and Kendra walked up to their husbands: Grace to Marcus and Kendra to the bishop.
“Honey, Kendra and I are…” Right before Michelle was about to clear the corner, Gracie’s eye landed on the woman who more than once played a part in plaguing her life.
“What were you saying, honey?” Marcus asked his wife, hoping she hadn’t seen who he and his bishop had seen.
“Wait a minute,” Grace eased from her lips, releasing more of a suspicious tone than any anger she’d allowed to subside years ago. “Was that?” she asked more silently than aloud, not waiting for the answer from her husband or the bishop.
Taking her eyes off the exit of the sanctuary, Gracie pulled Kendra in close to her, wanting to get her friend’s attention.
“Sister Gracie?” it was evident to Bishop Perry what his best friend’s wife had taken note of.
“Ah.” Gracie tried to pull her gaze back into their circle. Not knowing the two men had had an up-close encounter with her old nemesis, Gracie tried to play her secret reflection low-key. “Yes, Bishop, I was just saying the sermon was excellent. The power of the holy spirit ruled up in here this morning.”
Still unaware of what was actually happening, Kendra reinforced Gracie’s statement.
“Honey, sister Gracie is correct.” She leaned in for a pleasant hug with her husband. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell our congregation back home that you showed out this morning.” The two middle-aged women nudged each other with a laugh.
Cutting the conversation short, Gracie said, “We’ll meet you guys in the car.” Grabbing at Kendra, Gracie started up the aisle, walking in the direction Michelle had disappeared to.
Thinking it to be a great idea for the two of them to trek behind Gracie and Kendra, Bishop Perry and Marcus were held up once the senior pastor of the church came over to make conversation with the two.
“Tell me what’s the deal, and don’t act as if I didn’t see you, either,” Kendra asked Gracie as she trotted behind her through-thick-and-thin best friend.
“Girl,” Gracie said through gritted veneered teeth. “You will not believe who I just saw up in here. Come on.” Gracie almost dragged her best friend along. “She went this way.”
“Who? Girl…” Kendra’s words trailed off when her eyes were drawn to the missing piece of the puzzle.
With Michelle standing outside of the church’s glass door, obviously waiting for her husband to pull up with the car, Kendra saw her. The woman who had once tried to destroy her was less than fifty feet away.
Gracie stopped, turned, and drove her eyes into Kendra’s surprised eyes.
Then it was Kendra who grabbed Gracie’s hand and made a beeline toward Michelle.
“Girl, now that was weird,” Kendra said about their three-way encounter with a dodging Michelle. Walking back toward their awaiting Town Car, the women conversed about Michelle: not a friend, but an archenemy who never meant either one of them any good. “Just about as weird as that young girl Mercy brought over to the house some weeks ago. I tell you the truth. Something must be in the air.”
“If that’s the case, that means we must have let it drag in with us.” They shared a laugh. “She fidgeted, blinked, and stuttered, acting as though this was twenty-plus years ago and we’re still fighting her over our men. I’m not stuttin that woman,” Gracie confirmed. “She couldn’t even get a ‘hi’ out her mouth.”
Kendra giggled, looked down at her girlfriend’s tightly fisted grip, and understood Michelle’s quandary when it came to seeing the two ladies.
“Well, I see why, Gracie,” a swayed Kendra pointed. “The way you’re holding that gold-plated clutch would have made me rush off too.”
Holding her mischievous grin, Gracie led the ladies out to the parking lot, being respectful and speaking to the parishioners along the way. As they made it to their awaiting car, Gracie picked up the deserted conversation.
“So who has Mercy rescued this time?”
Shutting the door behind her, Kendra rested her pocketbook on the empty space between her and Gracie.
“Chile, you know the young girl you saw that day at the house. She was waiting in Mercy’s car out front of the house. Mercy said she’s been a customer at the drugstore for the past year. I tell you what, I’ll be glad when the fall season rolls on a little deeper and she stays in Houston more. Bringing that girl around…she’s strange.” Kendra added a scared-straight look to her face. “That girl thinks she can save the world,” she said about Mercy.
“What do you expect, Ken?” Gracie reached out and touched her best friend’s hand. “I mean, I know now that God has sustained you, but you have a testimony that Mercy has lived through with you. She probably only wants to help others out, just like people have helped you.”
“I know. She’s my mercy all right, and you’re definitely my grace. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Reminiscing to herself, Kendra knew she could count it all joy when it came to her daughter.
Landing in a waterless pool of depression after Dillian’s death, not taking her medications and giving up on life, Kendra wanted to resign from living. But God.
Finding herself locked in a body surrounded by darkness, Kendra was afflicted by a coma she had slipped into and remained in for almost a year. What no one knew, not even she, was that God had allowed greatness to take place even in the midst of her storm.
The last in vitro procedure she and Dillian had committed to, unbeknownst to her, had paid off. Kendra was blessed to come out of the coma and be greeted with the news of being with child, along with being reunited with a mother she had learned to hate.
Miracles and blessings being dashed from above, Kendra turned her life over to the Lord, and her future gained momentum.
“I remember where I came from, girl. That’s why I just take it in stride when it comes to Mercy. Nonetheless, the friend of hers seems to really need some prayer. I’m going to keep my eye on her,” she confirmed as they made it to the car with the driver standing outside.
“And it looks as though I better send some prayers up for Mrs. Michelle, also,” Gracie added.
“Oh, see there. You done said a word.” Kendra gave her girlfriend their signature high five. Allowing her mind to reel in to her daughter’s friend, Kendra made a note to have a talk with Mercy when she returned home.