Chapter 13

“You go ahead and sign them into children’s church,” Deborah said to Lynox as they headed toward the church building with their two boys in tow. She released Tyson’s hand. “Go on with Daddy.” Lynox was already holding the baby in his carrier.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Lynox asked Deborah with concern in his voice.

“Nothing. It’s just that I left my Bible bag in the car. Can’t go to church without my sword,” she said. “I’ll meet you inside soon, okay?” She smiled.

“Well, all right,” Lynox said. “Or I can run back and grab it for you.”

“No, no, no. I got this,” Deborah assured him as she started to backpedal to the car. “You go on in there. I don’t want to make you any later.”

Lynox hesitated but then gave in. “Okay. I’ll try to get us the closest seats to the front as I can.”

By now Deborah’s back was to Lynox and her heels were clicking as she made her way back toward their car. “Thanks, honey,” she yelled over her shoulder.

She remembered those times she had either prayed for or thanked God for the days when Lynox would enter the church doors with her. To her, there was nothing more intimate than a husband and wife being in the house of the Lord together. There was quite a number of married women at church, but one rarely ever saw their husbands join them. Deborah felt truly blessed for the days when her husband joined her and her sons and they all worshipped together. If the man was going to be the head of the family, then he needed to lead the way into the sanctuary. With one son who was old enough to look to his father to set and be an example, this was a day Deborah should have held dear. Instead, she was opting to allow the males in her life to enter the church without her.

Lynox had driven them to church in his vehicle. Deborah carried a key to his car on her key ring, so she used it to let herself back in on the passenger side. Once inside the car, she grabbed the Bible bag, which she’d deliberately left behind. She’d needed an excuse to come back to the car. This morning had been like a zoo in their home. To the ordinary mom preparing her family for church, it might have been a regular Sunday morning, but to someone with anxiety issues like Deborah, it was enough to make her want to crawl up under her bed and hide until everyone else left the house.

The baby had woken up whining an hour before he usually did. Deborah had actually stayed up later than usual to meet an editing deadline, and so she was exhausted this morning, and the sound of the baby crying was like nails down a chalkboard. She had turned to see Lynox sleeping like a baby himself, totally unaffected by the screaming coming through the baby monitor. Oh, how Deborah had wanted to wake him and ask him to go see about the baby, but last night he’d still been up when she’d gone to bed. He and Reo had spent the past three months putting together a proposal that included an outline and the first few chapters of their joint book, which both Deborah and Reo’s agent had presented to their respective publishing house editors. Reo’s imprint had ended up being the one that would publish the book. After negotiations the book deal had been finalized. Most authors felt the days of lucrative book deals were over, but this deal involved the two African American authors with the most name recognition, and so it was like the nostalgic days of 2005 advances.

Knowing she had a couple more hours of sleep on Lynox, she decided to let him rest and to go take care of their baby herself. No sooner had she gone into Tatum’s nursery than Tyson came in, asking for cereal. She took both boys downstairs and prepared to feed them. She placed the baby in his seater and had Tyson sit at the table. While she warmed the baby’s bottle the old-fashioned way, in a pan of water, she prepared some cereal for Tyson. After serving Tyson, she sat down at the table and said grace with him. As she went to get up, Tyson began telling her about a kid in school who had hit him. In getting to the bottom of it, Deborah forgot about the baby’s bottle and the water in the pan almost boiled away, which meant the milk was scalding, way too hot for the baby to drink.

Deborah had to run the bottle under cold water. The impatient baby fussed. In the meantime Tyson flipped his cereal bowl and its contents ended up all over him. She sent Tyson upstairs to take off his sticky, wet clothes while she finished cooling off the bottle. Finally, the milk was at a temperature the baby could tolerate. She put the baby in her arms and fed him as she went upstairs to check on Tyson. In an attempt to be a big boy, Tyson had dressed himself in the clothes Deborah had ironed and laid out for him the night before, only he hadn’t cleaned himself up first, and so the milk and the fruity cereal had stained his shirt. Not only did she have to help him shower quickly, but she had to pick out and iron a new outfit for him to wear.

In getting Tyson together, she forgot to burp the baby. Consequently, he spit up all over himself, so a sponge bath was in order for him. Once she got the baby clean, she laid him on his changing table to dress him. Before she could get his diaper on him, he started whizzing. Some of it hit Deborah, and before she could cover his wee-wee up with a towel, he’d already gotten his outfit, which was lying on the edge of his changing table, wet. So she had to sponge him clean again, plus pick out a new outfit for him to wear.

After getting the baby dressed, she secured him in his little bouncy chair and went to make sure Tyson had gotten his clothes on okay. He had gotten dressed okay and had brushed his teeth on his own as well. She was about to praise him for brushing his teeth without her help when he turned around, and she saw blue toothpaste plastered on his shirt. She wanted to cuss. She couldn’t remember if she cussed out loud or in her head, but a cussword or two definitely came to mind. She changed Tyson’s shirt, then sat him down on his bed and ordered him not to move a muscle until she came back for him.

When she raced back into her bedroom, Lynox was coming out of their bathroom, looking all cool, calm, and collected. She wanted to slap the smile right off his face and kick him in the chin when he said, “Good morning, honey.” It had been anything but a good morning.

Deborah went into the bathroom to take a quick shower herself. She’d handled Tyson, with all his sticky milk and cereal, along with the baby and his throw up and pee. No way would a wash-up in the sink suffice. She felt so cruddy. She went and turned on the water in the shower, and it shot straight out of the showerhead and onto her. That meant that Lynox had simply turned the water off without first turning off the showerhead. She’d told him about this on numerous occasions. No, he didn’t leave the toilet seat up after he used the bathroom, but to Deborah, not taking an extra moment to turn the showerhead off before turning the water off was just as disturbing.

She quickly fumbled around to turn the water off, but not before the water had dampened her hair. Typically, Deborah wouldn’t be too upset about this. She’d be irritated, but not upset. Today wasn’t a typical day, though. Today she wasn’t wearing her hair in the natural two-strand twist she would set it in at night. No, yesterday she had gone to Synergi Salon and had had it flat ironed. Getting a natural two-strand twist wet and getting natural hair that had been flat ironed wet were two completely different animals. It was only a matter of minutes before her roots would turn into a puffy Afro.

That was it for Deborah. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and she broke down in tears.

Lynox knocked on the door, apparently after hearing her sniffling. “You okay in there?” he asked.

“Yeah. Runny nose. I think I might be coming down with something,” she lied.

Lynox had been tiptoeing around her and handling her like a fragile piece of china. She didn’t feel like dealing with his wannabe Dr. Phil self. So she put on her big girl panties, pulled her puffy, wet hair into a puff on the top of her head, and pressed forward.

Surprisingly enough, they made it to church only a few minutes behind schedule. At one point, while Deborah was doing that quick wash-up in the shower, she hadn’t wanted to go at all. The morning had already been too much. Her mind hadn’t been in a place where she could focus on church. She had refused to give the devil the victory, though. That was probably exactly why he’d had his foot all up in her behind, kicking her around, that morning, trying to get her to give up on church first and then give up on God. Deborah had refused to give in. She and her family had piled into Lynox’s car, and they had headed on to church. All was well until Lynox realized he was practically on empty and they needed to stop and get gas before driving the rest of the way to church.

“We could have taken my car if you knew you didn’t have any gas,” Deborah said, fussing.

“I forgot, babe. It’s okay. We’ll be fine, as long as we get there.”

“It’s not only about getting to church. It’s about getting to church on time. When we have meetings and appointments, we show up on time. We should give God the same respect.”

“I hear you. I hear you,” Lynox said while pulling into a gas station. “But God knows our heart. He sees us trying.”

Deborah simply rolled her eyes, while Lynox got out to pump gas. In her head she was cussing him out, calling him every kind of idiot in the book, then, in the next breath, repenting and asking God to help her control her emotions. By the time they pulled up at church, there were no parking spots left in the main lot. Deborah was completely done at this point. They had to park in the overflow lot. There was no way she was going to be able to sit, relax, and focus during service unless she did a little self-help. Her self-help came in the form of a Baggie with green stuff in it.

“Yes,” Deborah said to herself as she undid the Baggie, closed her eyes, and inhaled the aroma. Time was of the essence, so thank God, Deborah was prepared. She had two joints pre-rolled in the Baggie. She didn’t plan on smoking them both right now; just a couple of hits off one, she figured, would do the trick.

Deborah pulled one of the joints out of the Baggie and dug a pack of matches out of her purse. Before striking one of the matches, she thought for a minute. The vehicle was a small, enclosed space. Deborah worried that if she smoked in the car, the odor would not be cleared out by the time church was over. She feared that a couple of hours might not be enough. She usually smoked in her own car, after telling Lynox she had to run to the store or something, any excuse to get out of the house. And, of course, she’d gone to Persia’s a couple of times since her indoctrination into their green club. One time she had smoked at home, in the upstairs hallway bathroom. No one ever used that one, except for Tyson, and it was where she bathed the baby.

“Bathroom,” Deborah said when a sudden idea entered her mind. She could probably go into the church bathroom and smoke. Not the women’s or the men’s bathroom, but the single family bathroom, which lay between the men’s and the women’s bathrooms. It was the one most mothers would take their sons to if they were around the age of seven or eight, not wanting to send their boys into the men’s bathroom alone. Daddies with daughters around that same age did the same. All the kids around that age were more than likely in children’s church right now, so no one would be using the single family bathroom for quite some time. Her chances of getting caught were pretty slim.

On second thought, though, this wasn’t like being back in high school and sneaking cigarettes in the girls’ bathroom. This was the house of the Lord, and even though Deborah had done her research and discovered that marijuana was grown in the earth, like green beans and collard greens—the earth that God had created—no way could she go inside the church and disrespect God’s house like that. Not when she was one of the members who had brought to Pastor Margie’s attention that parishioners taking cigarette breaks right outside the church was tacky and disrespectful. Wouldn’t that be the pot cooking on the stove calling the kettle right next to it smoky? So with that final thought, Deborah decided to go ahead and smoke in the car.

She placed her smoking items in her lap and then put the key in the ignition and started the car. She leaned over to the driver’s side and rolled down each of the electric windows about two to three inches. She then turned the car off and put the keys back in her purse. She looked around the parking lot. There were a couple of latecomers straggling in, but none of them paid any attention to her, as they were too busy scurrying about, trying to get inside the church as quickly as they could since they were already late.

Deborah lit the joint, took a hit, then leaned back while she exhaled. She took another hit, inhaling the herb that gave her an instant sense of relaxation. “Mmm,” she moaned as she exhaled. She took a couple more hits before she put the joint out. She then placed all her paraphernalia back into her purse. She stayed in the car, with her head leaning back against the seat and her eyes closed. She wanted to marinate right there for a minute while the drug traveled through her veins and to her brain. What had started off as the most hectic day ever was now calmed.

A smile rested on her face. “Dang, I see why Snoop rapped so smooth and laid back,” Deborah said aloud, conjuring up an image of the famous rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, who was known for constantly smoking weed. The weed seemed to have put her on cloud nine. But it wouldn’t take but a few raps on the driver’s side window to kick her right off that cloud and back down to earth.

Deborah nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the sound of knuckles tapping on glass. Her body jerked against the seat. She looked over to see Brother Willard, church security, leaning down and looking in the driver’s side window.

“You okay in there?” he asked through the crack in the window.

“Huh? What? Oh yeah,” Deborah said, jittery. “I was just . . . praying.” Instantly, her spirit was convicted. Could that be considered using the Lord’s name in vain? Even if it wasn’t, it was still a lie, which meant it was still a sin.

“All right. Well, I wanted to make sure,” Brother Willard said. “Sorry for interrupting.” He tilted his security hat, then stood erect and moseyed on, going about his business.

Deborah watched him to see if he looked back or gave any other sign that he was suspicious. He continued to troll both parking lots. Over the past few months some churches in the area had suffered automobile break-ins during church service. New Day had upped security to deter would-be thieves and prevent this from happening to its members.

Deborah looked around the car and started fanning the smoke, which was now barely visible. Even if security hadn’t smelled anything, there was still the possibility that he’d noticed smoke in the car.

“Jesus, help me,” Deborah said as she continued to fan. Once she got a nice-size cramp in her wrist, she stopped fanning. She looked down at herself and brushed away any ashes or marijuana remnants that might have fallen on her. She reached into the glove box and pulled out a bottle of air spray. Not only did she spray the car, but she sprayed herself as well, making a mental note to carry a bottle of body spray in her purse from now on.

After putting the air spray back in the glove box, she opened the door and got out of the car. She stood with the car door open and brushed herself off yet one more time. She grabbed her purse and the Bible bag, then scanned the car’s interior to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind that would expose her. After doing so, she clicked a button to lock the car doors, closed the door, and then headed back toward the church.

Brother Willard had already made his way to the main church parking lot. He acknowledged Deborah from two cars away with a smile and a nod.

Deborah returned the gestures. Then once he looked elsewhere, she rolled her eyes and stomped off into the church, fussing, “Shoot. I went through all that, and that fool messed up my high.”

***

“You smell that?” Lynox said once he was settled in the car and was about to put the key in the ignition and turn the car on. He began looking around the car as he sniffed.

“Smell what?” Deborah asked, shrugging her shoulders. Her heart began to beat a hundred miles per hour. She honestly thought her heart was going to plain old stop and she’d die right there, without a buzz. Any little bit of buzz she’d had left after her encounter with Brother Willard had been danced off when she caught the Holy Ghost in church. Yes, she had blazed in the church parking lot before service and then gone in and praised the Lord.

Lynox looked at Deborah with squinted eyes. “Are you kidding me? You gon’ sit there and try to tell me that you really don’t smell that?”

Deborah tucked her lips in and cast her eyes downward. She was cold busted. She could have kicked herself for thinking that the smell of the weed would be completely gone by now. Now she had no choice but to tell her husband how she’d been self-medicating, controlling her jumping-bean emotions with narcotics that could land her straight jail time if a real officer of the law was ever to bust her, and not Brother Willard’s mall cop self.

Deborah looked back at her children, who were secure in the backseat. Even though she knew this conversation had to go down, she didn’t want it to be in front of her children. She took in a deep breath and turned to Lynox. She opened her mouth to tell him that of course, she smelled it, but that she’d discuss it with him once they got home. Before she could get a word out, though, Lynox spoke.

“Uh-huh. I knew you smelled it,” Lynox said. “It’s that little stinker right there.” He looked at the baby in the car seat, cooing. “What you be putting in that milk you be feeding that boy?” Lynox fanned his hand in front of his nose. He then looked back over at Deborah. “And you tried to play it off like you didn’t smell it, just so you wouldn’t have to change him. Nuh-uh.” Lynox shook his head. He put the key in the ignition and started the car. “You’re the one taking him back inside to change, while I sit here and air out the car.”

Deborah took note of the windows. They were still open a crack. Jesus, she said to herself. She’d forgotten all about rolling them back up. Now Lynox was probably going to ask her why she rolled the windows down, and she’d end up having to tell him the truth, anyway. She couldn’t win for losing today. But to her relief, Lynox hit the buttons to roll the windows all the way down without even noticing they were already open a bit.

On the bright side, at least it hadn’t started raining while they were in church or anything. Because God knows, when it rained, it poured, or at least that was how it seemed to be in Deborah’s life.

“Go on. Get funky man on out of here,” Lynox told her.

“The baby let a stink.” Tyson laughed, then pinched his nose closed with his index finger and thumb.

Deborah had no qualms at all about taking the baby back inside the church and changing him. She needed to get out of that car before she hyperventilated, anyway. There had been way too many close calls today.

A few minutes later, Deborah found herself changing her son’s diaper in the exact same bathroom she’d considered smoking in earlier. All she’d wanted to do was smoke a little bud to calm her nerves after a rough morning so that she could relax during church service. It would have been too much like right for that to have gone down smoothly. Deborah was now more on edge than she’d been before she blazed up. It didn’t seem worth it. Anything God was in had a peace about it. Well, trying to smoke weed had been anything but a peaceful experience.

“You know what, little guy?” Deborah said to her son as she changed his dirty, stinky diaper. “The grass may be greener . . . literally, but it’s still the same ole—”

Before she could utter the expletive that was about to come out of her mouth, the baby let out the last poop.

“Yep. That’s exactly what I was about to say,” Deborah said.

Deborah got the baby changed and then went back out to the car. She placed Tatum back in his car seat and climbed in, and Lynox drove them home. As soon as Deborah got home, she asked Lynox to get the boys out of their church clothes and into some lounging clothes. Meanwhile, she went into her bedroom. She took the Baggie out of her purse and then walked into her closet. She stood on a stool and reached up and pulled down her Coach duffel bag. She opened it and pulled out two big bags of weed. She got down off the stool, then peeked her head out of the closet. Seeing that the coast was clear, she ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. One by one, she emptied the bags of weed into the toilet and then tossed in the one and a half rolled joints she had in the Baggie.

She had honestly thought that marijuana was the answer to her prayers. She had to admit that it did mellow her out. If she hadn’t had to be so secretive about it, and if it were more accepted by society as a medical drug, then she probably would have continued using it. And who knew? It might have been beneficial for her. That wasn’t the case, though. She felt so hopeless as she watched the weed swirl around in the toilet bowl. She closed the lid before she could see it go all the way down. That had to be about two hundred dollars’ worth of the stuff. She couldn’t bear to witness flushing what was essentially money down the toilet. Sure, she probably could have given it or sold it to Klarke, Persia, or somebody else, but she knew the longer she held on to it, the more she was apt to keep using it, simply for recreational purposes.

“Oh, well,” Deborah said, throwing her arms up in the air and letting them fall to her sides as she stood looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. “I tried a therapist. I tried pills and weed.” She shrugged her shoulders, feeling like it was time to give up and just live with the fact that her brain functioned at a level that made it hard sometimes for her to keep up with it.

Before exiting the bathroom, she gave the toilet one last flush for good measure. She then drew an invisible cross on her chest with her index finger. “So long, Mary Jane. You was my homegirl there for a minute. May you rest in peace.”