Chapter 8
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that
puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken
also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!
—Habakkuk 2:15
Gabrielle went home, lay across her bed, and cried. She couldn’t believe how badly things had transpired. When she’d gone to Lawrence’s office, she wasn’t quite sure what she would say or how she would bring up what she’d ultimately gone to his office to do.
From the beginning, she never intended for any of this to have happened. Not her getting pregnant, and especially not being with a married man, let alone a married man old enough to be her father.
Lawrence Simmons had been so different the first time she met him. He was so caring and he listened to her. He was Paris’s father—a man that loved, provided for, and protected his little girl. Something she couldn’t help but admire and wish she had in her life; something she honestly had never had. Paris had been nice enough to let her move in with her when she discovered from another friend that Gabrielle had nowhere to stay after her aunt and uncle put her out for no good reason. She and Paris had never even been friends, remotely or otherwise. So she was surprised when Paris approached her about coming to stay at her place until she could get on her feet.
As it turned out, Paris was a bit of a slob when it came to housekeeping. Gabrielle didn’t mind cleaning up after her and all her friends that came over. In fact, it felt like being at home for Gabrielle, since she’d always been the one to clean up after everyone at her aunt Cee-Cee’s house. Paris never included her in the things she did, whether at the apartment or outside of it, which was also fine with Gabrielle, since she didn’t care for all of it anyway. And when Paris was gone (which happened a lot), she had the apartment all to herself. She could twirl around the room and dance at will like no one was watching, which, of course, no one was.
Paris’s father showed up one day when Paris wasn’t there. He knew who she was; he’d met her earlier and checked her out. She’d just finished cooking and offered him something to eat. The two of them had a great time laughing and talking. He then asked her what she wanted to do.
“Excuse me?” Gabrielle had said.
“With your life,” Lawrence said. “What would you like to do? Do you want to go to college? Are you looking for a full-time job? And if so, doing what?”
At first she thought he was telling her she couldn’t stay there, essentially living off him and his daughter. She worked a temp job. The pay wasn’t much and work was inconsistent, but so far it had been enough to cover her share of the expenses.
Lawrence refined his question. “What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about whether you were paid or not?”
That was easy. “Dance,” she said with a huge smile. “I would dance.”
He tried to get her to dance for him, but she wouldn’t. A few days later he just “happened” to stop by again, and again, Paris wasn’t there. This time, he brought Chinese food and two bottles of Moscato d’Asti. She’d never had wine before (she wasn’t of legal age to drink). But the glass he poured for her didn’t taste anything like she thought it would. It was sweet and fruity, so she drank more than she probably should have. But then again, he’d kept refilling her glass.
“Dance for me,” he’d said again. “Let me see you dance. Come on. Do what you love.”
So she danced. And she was like the wind. Dancing was her place of refuge. It was where she could always go and be completely free.
That night was the first time she’d ever been with a man. And he had been so wonderful after it was over. So when he showed up the next time (again when Paris wasn’t there), she was already falling for him. And again, they slept together. Three times they were together, and apparently one of those times produced a baby.
She thought when she told him that she was pregnant he would step up and do the right thing. That’s when she saw a totally different man. A man that was not all that loving or caring. He was mean and he said some horrible things to her. He indicated that he thought she was someone who did nothing but sleep around with whatever man that came along.
But she wasn’t like that. She hadn’t cared about men and dating at the time. Well, maybe there had been this one guy at school she’d liked, but that never really went anywhere. She’d cared only about dancing and trying to figure out how she could do what she loved for the rest of her life. She missed Miss Crowe so much, even more right then. Gabrielle had no one she could talk to, no one to confide in, no one who could guide her in the right direction. She was all alone.
She definitely couldn’t talk to Paris about this. Gabrielle thought she’d have time to sort everything out. But Paris changed on her and told her she had to leave. She didn’t even know what she’d done to make Paris become so upset with her all of a sudden. Gabrielle was pretty sure that Paris’s father hadn’t told her about the two of them. Lawrence had all but let her know that he didn’t want the baby she was carrying, even if it was his, which he maintained that it wasn’t. He’d given her money to “take care of it” and some extra to, what she now believed, make her completely go away. Immediately after Paris told her to get out, she tried to call him a few times, hoping he might drive her someplace. But he wouldn’t take and didn’t return her call.
It was never her intent for Lawrence to know she hadn’t aborted the baby as he’d instructed . . . had given her money to do. Instead, someone she barely knew saw her, picked her up off the streets, invited her to stay at his home, giving her time to think. Shortly, she found her way to a place for soon-to-be mothers in predicaments.
And had everything gone as planned, she would have given the baby up for adoption (which she had) and the baby would have grown up in a good and loving home with good and loving parents and had a great life. From all she could tell from these past months of talking to Jessica Noble (the woman who adopted her baby girl) over the phone, the little girl was indeed loved. But the adoption should have been the end of it. Unless and until, of course, the child had wanted to find her biological mother and sought her out. Which in that case, her baby girl would be eighteen and an adult.
But things weren’t going as planned, not at all. The eight-year-old was in life-threatening danger and time had almost run out. Her doctors weren’t optimistic that she would even make it to see her ninth birthday on March thirtieth unless a matching donor was found and soon.
A bone marrow transplant seemed easy enough, at least from the donor’s standpoint. You found someone to match. Marrow was taken from the donor using a special needle under general anesthesia (the hip bones were said to be rich in marrow stem cells) and the donor was on his or her way. The one who went through the most was the one receiving the transplant. So much advance preparation and all of the things that had to be done afterward. But if the receiving body didn’t reject the transplanted cells taken from the spongy tissue found inside of the bone, in a matter of four to six months, the patient was completely healed. That sounded simple enough.
But Gabrielle had quickly learned that black folks weren’t so hot on being donors, even when they don’t have to be dead to do it. She’d been tested, but found not to be a good match. That’s why she’d gone to find Lawrence. He was Jasmine’s biological father, and maybe he would be a good match. And if not him, she’d been told that siblings had an even greater potential of being the best match of all. Lawrence had three children (that she knew of). She didn’t really want to involve his children, but if that was the only option left besides merely allowing the child to die without them doing everything they could to save her, she was willing to go there.
Gabrielle picked up the phone to call Zachary. She was so upset with herself at how things had gone today. She sat there with the dead cordless receiver in her hand as she reflected on how all of this had honestly begun in the first place.
She was living with her aunt and uncle because her father had killed her mother and she had nowhere else to go. She hadn’t had a say-so about where she would live at the age of close to four. Her uncle had come on to her several times after she turned seventeen, even as much as coming into her room when everyone else was in bed asleep, attempting to kiss her and touch her in his own sly way. After he came on more forcibly, she’d told her aunt Cee-Cee. Nothing was done. When it happened again, she told her again. The next thing she knew, her aunt was telling her that as soon as she graduated from high school and turned eighteen (which would be in a few months) that she would have to find someplace else to live because she couldn’t stay there. Her aunt acted like what happened to her had been her fault, her doing, instead of her scumbag husband’s.
And as though things couldn’t have been worse already, during that same time, Miss Esther Crowe (the only person in the world who had ever shown her love, kindness, and compassion, and would most certainly have opened her door to her if she had needed a place of refuge) had gone to see about her relatives up north. Miss Crowe was in an accident and she never returned to Alabama. There was no one to tell Gabrielle what had happened with her. And for the longest, she was certain Miss Crowe was dead.
She met Zachary Wayne Morgan, who turned out to be Dr. Zachary Wayne Morgan or Dr. Z, as many of his patients called him, who turned out to be the nephew of Miss Esther Crowe, who ended up taking her to see the woman who had made such a gigantic difference in her life. Gabrielle began to cry.
The phone started to ring, even as she held it, causing her to jump. Looking down at the caller ID, she started smiling.
“Hi there,” she said, quickly stifling her sniffles so he couldn’t hear them.
“What’cha doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Thinking? About what?”
Gabrielle smiled. “You, for one.”
“Good things, I hope,” Zachary said.
She let out a sigh loud enough she was sure he heard it. “Some.” She sniffled.
“Hey? Why do you sound like you’re crying?” Zachary asked with concern.
“I’m okay.”
“Gabrielle, what’s wrong?” His voice escalated slightly.
“I finally got to see somebody today I’ve been trying to catch up with, and I didn’t act at all in the way that I should have. I didn’t act like a Christian, that’s for sure. I don’t know what happened with me.”
“Who did you see?” Zachary asked.
Gabrielle hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t told Zachary everything just yet. Sure, he knew about the baby she’d given up for adoption. He knew she’d been tested to see if she was possibly a match for the bone marrow transplant. He also knew she hadn’t been a good match and how extremely disappointed, but not deterred, she’d been about the news. He’d asked her about the father of the baby. But she could tell he’d been averse to even go there with her.
Here they were, having agreed to make a go of it as a couple. Leslie Morgan, Zachary’s mother, was not fond of the idea, and that was putting it mildly. Leslie had made that more than clear. But she’d also told Gabrielle it was nothing against her personally. She’d said she really liked Gabrielle as a person. Leslie just felt that Gabrielle had too much other baggage she didn’t want ending up in her doctor son’s closet.
But Zachary had been able to convince Gabrielle that it was their lives to live and their decision to make and not his mother’s or anyone else’s for that matter. Gabrielle understood that Zachary’s mother was merely looking out for him and his career as an up-and-coming doctor. How could Gabrielle ever be upset with a mother who loved her child so much that she would put herself out there to protect that child no matter who else it might hurt? Leslie knew she would likely draw her son’s wrath when she said something, even if all she was doing was trying to protect him from her.
When Zachary had asked Gabrielle about the baby’s father, she didn’t tell him much. Only that she was going to see if she could locate him and speak to him. She wasn’t exactly sure what all he’d taken from that. Still, Zachary had been considerate enough not to push her for any more details than she was willing to give.
But the truth was that she didn’t have to find the baby’s father. She knew exactly who Jasmine’s biological father was and pretty much where she could find him. However, getting to him would be another matter entirely. Maybe that’s why she had come off the way she had today with Lawrence. His staff had given her such a runaround. For a man whose job it was supposed to be to represent the people, he wasn’t so easily, or readily, accessible to their voices.
Her intent had never been and was not now to hurt him. That’s why she’d insisted on speaking to him and only him. Her plan was simple: tell Lawrence what was going on, and he, being sympathetic to Jasmine’s plight, would voluntarily, unprompted, agree to be tested to see whether or not he was a match. Prayerfully, he would somehow be the donor Jasmine needed without anyone ever having to know any of the details. And if he turned out like her, and wasn’t a match, that he would somehow involve his children to see if one of them might be. If one was, they would donate the marrow, and that would be that. Everyone could go back to their respective lives, without anyone’s life being completely disrupted. And Jasmine would have a life to live.
Jessica Noble would continue being Jasmine’s mother and the only family Jasmine would know, just as things were right now. Lawrence would be the politician on his journey toward reelection. And she would be . . .
What would she be after all of this?
“Gabrielle?” Zachary’s voice broke through her wandering thoughts. “Are you there? Are you okay?”
She was really crying now and hadn’t even realized it. And before she could stop herself, she let out a loud wail.
“Okay, I’m coming over!” Zachary said. “I have a few more patients to—”
“No, I’m all right.” She took in a deep breath and tried with all that she had to pull herself together. “Zachary, I’m okay.” She said it as convincingly as she could. She forced a smile hoping it would alter her voice’s tone. “Really. I’m all right. See?”
“Are you sure? Are you sure you’re all right?”
She nodded as though he could actually see her. She continued the fake smile; it was working. “Yes. I’m okay. I’m fine. Just a momentary breakdown, but I’m fine now.”
“Well, you’re not fine, because if you were fine, you wouldn’t have broken down like you just did. I can come over as soon as—”
“No, you stay there and take care of your patients. I’ll be okay. It’s just hormones,” she said. “You know how emotional hormones can make folks. And then everything else I’m thinking about. You know how it is.”
“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay.”
“I am.” She shook herself. Her voice was steady and strong, reassuring. “I’m fine.”
“Okay. But when I leave here, I’m coming over to see you.”
She nodded. “That will be fine. I’ll see you then.”
She hung up and began to sob loudly. “God, please help me. I don’t know what to do. I know I didn’t handle myself with Lawrence the way You would have desired for me to. I lost my temper. I know that Your Word says to be angry but to sin not. Well, I missed it. I even went so far as to threaten him. But it’s because I just don’t know what to do. Please guide me in the correct way. I know this is not my battle alone, that You’ve already got this. And, God, I know I have to tell Zachary everything. But what’s he going to think when he hears the rest of it? So far, he’s been wonderful. But it’s starting to look like as soon as I’ve disclosed one secret part of my life to him, another secret part pops up. Maybe his mother is right about me. Maybe I’m not the right person for him. Maybe the things in my life are too toxic and will be the very thing to ruin his. Please, God, I’m lost down here. I just need You to tell me what to do. What should I do? Please tell me. What? What do I do?”