Chapter Thirty-three

“Heeey, now. Glad I didn’t miss the meeting,” Mother Gladstone said. “Move on back now.” Mother forced Charlene to walk backward, back into the office.

Beep, beep; she hit the horn on her scooter. “Gul, you moving too slow.” Mother Gladstone zoomed around a stunned and wordless Charlene in her prescribed motorized wheelchair.

“Y’all ain’t all the way finished, is ya?” She knew the answer to it. “I’ll only be just a minute.”

Pulling forward, then backward, trying to make a space for herself in her son’s office, Mother Gladstone finally turned the key off.

“Baby, you gots to be ready when you gets one of these here. Sit down, sit down. Go’n and sit back down, baby,” she said, realizing that Charlene was still standing.

Charlene obliged.

“You too.” She threw a hand at her son without looking his way.

Pastor Peters did the honors. He didn’t try to protest or talk his mother out of her ... whatever it was she was up to. He knew her peculiar way of ministering to the women was her wisdom given to them the best way she knew how.

“I know the pastor and wife usually do the dual counseling, but under the circumstances, I understand my daughter-in-law is at home with the flu. Is that right, Pastor? Bless her heart.” She showed what she really thought about everything on her face: lips turned under and rolling her eyes.

“So I’m here for any womanly”—Mother looked over her glasses—“questions or womanly”—she looked again—“advice.” Mother sat with her hands in their usual spot: on the top of her stomach, underneath her breasts. “Do tell what all you all counseled about.”

Pastor Peters filled his mother in on how he led Charlene back to Christ. How she had released all the pain in her heart.

“So how you feeling now?” Mother asked Charlene.

“Like he said, Mother, I just poured myself into my ministry from the very beginning. You know how hard it was for women to be accepted as anything more than being by a man’s side in the ministry. It was heaven forbidden if she called herself preaching. It was like a competition.” Charlene had nothing to lose and was willing to share all she had been battling.

Charlene’s eyes were two times the size they normally were. All she could think was how now in her mid-fifties she’d be alone. But surprisingly, it was all well with her spirit.

“Okay. Well, that’s quite good to hear. But I would like to know, are you repenting to God for bringing others along for the ride, or just because you sinned against His Word?”

Pastor Peters looked between the two women.

“Every day I’m regretful of what I’ve done. I have nightmares that remind me of me being lukewarm.” Charlene stopped as the tears gathered. “My aunt used to watch me while my parents would go to the church and pray early in the morning, and at night when service would run long, she’d take us home for them. They were so into the ministry sometimes I couldn’t tell if they knew I was there or not.” She wiped her face with a used Kleenex. “Back then you couldn’t stay home alone and you sho’nuff couldn’t tell your parents who you wanted keeping you.

“I promised when I got older I would not put church before my kids. Having someone watch my kids who couldn’t care less about them was out of the question. Then I just decided I wasn’t gonna have any all together.”

“Why would you decide that?” Mother asked.

“Until I was thirteen years old, she molested me. My aunt molested me every single time I had to go home with her. Every time!” she yelled and threw her hands to her face.

Pastor Peters jumped and walked around his desk once more.

“Charlene, I’m so sorry.” He laid his hands on her shoulders. Mother grabbed at Charlene’s hands.

“You don’t have nothing to be ashamed of. The devil has tried to destroy your life, sweet angel,” Mother Gladstone said.

“He has destroyed it! I’m no angel! You see, I turned around and did the same thing ... only this time I got so-called willing participants. I’m no better!”

Squeezing Charlene’s hands tight, Mother’s glassed-over, cataract-filled eyes filled with tears. “In all my life, a sin has been a sin, regardless of what is done. You were a child with no one to protect you—”

“But they were supposed to. My daddy preached and prayed for so many people but never listened to me. I tried ...”

Shaking her head, Mother wasn’t going to allow Charlene to lose herself on what her parents didn’t do. “They did what they knew to do at the time. Now was it right to not listen to you? No. But if no one taught them, they didn’t know.”

Charlene knew this to be true. The older she had gotten the more she shared with her parents about being molested. And it was true. They had only done what they knew to do at the time. The heartache and break she had witnessed on her parent’s faces so many years ago reminded her they were just as pained as she was.

“Have you forgiven your parents?” Pastor Peters asked.

It took Charlene only seconds to nod.

“And have you forgiven your aunt?” he asked.

“She died,” Charlene said between huffs. Having never shared her being raped with anyone besides her family, she didn’t realize how long ago her aunt had died. “She died when I was twenty. Beat to death when her boyfriend found out she was gay. That’s when everything in my life went even further downhill.

“When I heard people saying she was gay because all the things she did with other women, I figured I was gay. How could I not be?” She looked between Mother and Pastor Peters.

“Because you were a victim, Charlene.” Having grown up in the church together, Pastor Peters thought back on their youthful days and how Charlene was always secluded and standoffish. He wished he would have known something then.

“But thank God you don’t have to remain,” he said.

“Honey, you can put down that curse and never pick it back up,” Mother said.

“I know... .” she answered with her eyes closed.

“But you have to want to, Charlene. Yes’m, you have to want to. You can’t know it’s wrong and delibrly—” Mother Gladstone said.

“Deliberately,” Pastor said.

“Deliberately.” Mother chopped up the sound while squinting her eyes toward her son. Then she mouthed, “I’ma bust you in your eyes.” Never missing a beat she continued. “You can’t keep doing what you’re doing. Or you will keep dying a slow death. A death that’s going to place you in hell,” she said.

“I know. And everything within me, the freedom I feel now, I’m only looking toward the hill,” Charlene said.

“Because, honey, that’s the only place your help is going to come from,” Mother Gladstone agreed.