Child Of God (3) Tamara didn’t believe Mrs. Winters would keep the appointment, the secretary stepped into her office instead of informing her by phone that she was there. But whether she cancelled today or not Michelle would still be seeing a lot of Tamara until she got some answers. On both sides each woman was preparing to lock horns, Michelle told her secretary to interrupt after 15 minutes. “Mrs. Stevens, Ms. Winters will see you now,” the secretary said while motioning for her to go in. Tamara collected herself as she prepared to face the monster, “Makes sense she’s not married”…“She’s just slurry all the way through,” she thought to herself. Michelle stood to address her, this time she didn’t seem as bullish, “Maybe she was just having a bad day,” Tamara thought. “Mrs. Stevens I think we got off on the wrong foot the other day, I will be more than glad to disclose the requested information but I would not be doing my job if I didn’t ask why you wanted them in such a demanding tone,” Michelle said. “Oh I apologize for being so forward, I am truly disappointed as a native to see how bad the community has become and I am told by residences that there have been no measures to fix their problems of poverty and crime other than their sons and daughters being locked up for life,” Tamara chided. “I doubt we will agree on certain issues and I respect your duty of maintaining the law but as a former pastors wife I need to see some healing.” By the time Michelle’s secretary buzzed in with an important call the two were enthralled in laughter. Both attended the same high school, it seemed Michelle’s life was much harder in their childhood stomping grounds. Tamara saw the attorneys intense demeanor was more of a mask of her pain, there was an anger that came from an absent father. Failed relationships and broken promises would follow in her pursuits for love. Drug dealers were her way of getting back at all men. Though Tamara noticed those things she dared not express them, “She’d be like no this heifer didn’t,” she thought. She also confided her past; that she broke from a wayward pastor that was choking the life out of her. “You know it’s funny, I was looking at you like this woman must not know I got street in me but your like a breathe of fresh air,” Michelle laughed while reaching her new found friend a bowl of candy. She instructed her secretary to retrieve all of the information that Tamara had requested. She also told her that she was aware of the fact that there was corruption in the town on a high scale. “I was told off the record that an unsolved murder that could turn some things up,” Michelle added. “It wouldn’t be Monique Richardson would it,?” the sly reported pried. The two locked eyes and a meeting that was suppose to last 15 minutes took the most of the day. It seemed Monique had been messing with a white boy who was pushing a lot of dope through the county. This white boy was also the son of the counties 23 year sheriff Ben Reid. Tyrell was a lover, the biggest dope dealer in the town and as the lure of fast women and money grew so did Monique’s addiction. When this white boy came along she (still had the hour glass figure) had enough game to get high for free. It seems she saw more than she should have of the big scale cartel and threatened to turn them in if they did not give her 30,000. After that her voice was silent and the records of her death lost. As a reporter Tamara volunteered to pull all the information she could on Reid’s son and to get as many tips as she could off of the streets. Both knew their roles would need to be kept quiet in a sea of possible cohorts. After seeing a picture of Destiny, a child born from confusion, and Michelle insisted upon meeting her; something on the inside told her they would soon be friends. Tamara agreed to sat up a play date with her daughter so that she could meet Destiny and handed Michelle a poem she said the Lord had given her about the areas need change. Black girl why do you glide “As if there is no pain inside” Chapter nine The poem was titled “Opposition to poverty,” If I could stand in the middle of poverty and usher out her plaques As daughters dance on the brim of her hat And brothers stand on the block of her finger then Maybe when folks that aren’t from here ride by they Could see the images of hope If I could decrease the volume of bad thoughts and measure the width of insanity Slinging him from the pillar of his kingdom Then more wild flowers would bloom from cracks in concrete where broken glass once littered their glory ‘a stream of painted stars on land’ And the children would not take the character of the bitter pains of adulthood That consume sometimes the starving belly or the stagnate mind Michelle now understood that Tamara enthusiasm came from the thought that she alone would be used to bring about a change in their community. Her position was a humble passion to obtain her healing while encouraging the same for others. She gave her secretary strict instructions on pulling Sheriff Reid’s sons name and finding out as much as she could below the wire. They needed a description on his where abouts. The days were seeming to be so unpredictable and the stallion of litigating was ready to fight this battle while she too bore a misery of her own. None of them knew her pain, none of them knew that her family still thought that she and Carl were together. She’d paid off her ghetto cousins with a 40 ounce a piece and a cartoon of cigarettes. Michelle couldn’t let go of the idea that she wasn’t meant to be alone. She too wanted to believe that God would fix all her personal fragilities. Her long hair and fresh wardrobe added to the mask that she had it all together but pretty and pain sometimes look alike. She had been raped by an uncle that used to baby sit her while her aunt ran the liquor house. There in a smoky back room he’d stolen the nine year olds innocence and warped her womb. Michelle would never have children naturally and that’s why she long to, it was why Carl made so much sense. He chose her in school, so what he loved other ladies as much as he loved her. He was a good lover and could clean the hell out of a house. She’d helped with his child support and made sure he didn’t get locked up since he was always in between jobs. She bought him clothes like he was her child and spoiled him for so long that it seemed impossible that he wouldn’t evolve into the man she needed him to be and see the sacrifices she’d made for him. The accomplished attorney had planned her way through school working two jobs. In law school she worked in the library and the local coffee house throwing in tutoring sessions to make ends meet. She’d shouldered Carl too much for his mutiny, Michelle had been the proud owner of a paid boyfriend. With such a cold disposition and grudge against men she thought it would be impossible to meet another man and train him to act how she wanted. Michelle just felt like God owed her for the loves she’d never known and her pain seemed to be a fuel in her profession. The pain of being alone in her childhood made her want to protect any child she encountered. Destiny didn’t deserve the life she was given, Michelle empathized with Tamara but her core thought was that God acted too much like men. She’d never admit it, she believed but she also understood that God’s favoritism let some people have happy lives and some live hell on earth. Michelle thought life was a warpath in itself and she knew cocaine was a disease crafted from the Devil’s hands. She wanted to rid the community of it and she didn’t care if the man bringing it here was purple, he needed to go down for Destiny and all the other children’s who’s lives he ruined by destroying their families. “Klan wearing new masks” “White girl aka cocaine aka white mans candy” Tamara had some inside connections at the local police department. Gabriel, a beat cop for the pd when she was just starting out at the local paper was now the chief of police. She knew he didn’t like that sheriff and she could at least bend his ear on the matter. Tamara had asked Gab to meet her at her home for lunch. “Hush your mouth and talk out of another one,” she heard through the screen door. “I’m for certain I see an angel.” It was Gab, he had some weight on him and looked good to be a white boy. “You still look like Opie, a sexy Opie,” she said while waving him in. “Oh Lord,” the sheriff exclaimed while hugging Tamara. “You are still beautiful, what a spread.” She scolded the fast mouth sheriff with a dish rag. “O no I mean this lunch you have spread out, pulled out all the stops didn’t ya,” Gab asked. There amid fried chicken, baked macaroni, collard greens, yams, homemade biscuit’s and cream cheese pound cake was a agenda. “You’ve got me,” Gab replied while scanning the feast. “With a doggy bag I’ll give up all my dirty secrets.” When Tamara told her friend about her grape vine information she watched his face seemed to light up. “Your talking about Ben Reid Jr aka Junior,” he informed her while shoveling in a mouthful of greens and chicken. “He…mmh…got some blood disease from shooting up with any bodies needles and is taken care of by Hospice in his father’s home.” He told Tamara that the good sheriff had used his son to testify against all his possible rivals and wasn’t taking care of him because he cared for him but because he needed to make sure a lot of things went with him to the grave. “That little boy is his fathers son, got in trouble so much that he berates my officers saying lock me up but I’ll be out in an hour,” Gab said. He promised to get her pictures of Junior and all the people ever arrested with him before the end of the day. “Keep in mind there will not be any convictions on his sheet, it never went to court,” Ben told her. He said he remembered hearing something about Monique’s murder but since she was found in the county he wasn’t involved in the investigation. With Monique being an addict the two knew she more than likely had arrests in his district. After he left Tamara began pouring through the mountain of evidence against the sheriff and his son. Just last year more than 33.9 million dollars had been confiscated from the county in drugs and property with the sheriff citing it was only 1/3 of what is expected to come through the county. A 20.6 acre lot in (the core of South Statesville) had been used as a dumping ground for recycled drugs in a county with a population of over 40,000. Less than five thousand people lived in a Haiti sort of community to allow the pump of injustice to flow. The pearl of the agriculture good ole boy town had always been its southern white pride attitude and the fact that it possess a clover intersection which pumped all kinds of trade up and down the east coast. They were bolt enough pay thousands of dollars for a mural of a snake like woman god on the county square. Poverty had been deemed profitable and a horde of people had been programmed to lived some sort of modernized slavery, forced to co- exist with depression and addiction. It seemed the sheriff used his sons addictions to secure a market of dealers in the community and then used him to testify against them when he needed to get the heat off of him. She knew it would be hard to get an audience with him. That’s where Michelle would have to pick up. When she called her they arranged to meet at her house at 7p.m., Tamara let her know that she’d be picking Destiny up before she went home. Pretty in purpose ‘And then she smiled’ Chapter Ten “Heard there was some hard chick floating around here that didn’t mind telling a Black man to go to hell,” a whisper sputtered from a blind spot in the hall of Michelle’s office. “Excuse me,” the diva echoed back to the mystery voice. She had her pepper spray, a stun gun and her hand on her service pistol. The mystery however became a pleasant surprise, a familiar face appeared from around the corner, it was David. “You look good ole friend,” she said preparing now for an embrace. “No you,” David said speeding up his steps to greet her. He smelled like heaven, some form of chocolate had to be a base in the formula because a she had a strong urge to at least lick him. “Heard Karl got kicked to the curb baby girl for good,” David jumped in almost anxious to put his bid in for a date. “Ha ha, where in the world did you get that information from,” the career litigator asked. “Well your not the only one who understands the value of a 40 ounce and some spending money in the hood.” Karl and David had been friends for years and she and he had been like brothers and sisters. They weathered the storms of Karl’s outrageous behavior until Stephen could no longer cover for his running partner. He decided he loved Michelle too much to participate in the lies and David came to her like a true gentleman to deliver the information. “Michelle you are one of a kind, an angel in your own right….Your spicy and independent but your weakest area is love,” he told his running mate. “I don’t think he will ever slow down enough to realize who you are and I’m only angry that I didn’t see you first.” That was nearly ten years ago, now he was a successful real estate mogul in Charlotte. David said telling Michelle all the things he knew about Karl meant to him that he had to leave. “I couldn’t face you because I knew you wouldn’t leave him and I loved you too much to watch,” he said. “So you come now after hearing we are over, what’s the catch,” Michelle had to know. “No, I came back because my grandmother died and when Big V came by to by his respect I could tell it was something he was itching to tell,” David answered. It seemed in the shadows of Michelle’s thirst for Karl’s love a shier David simply watched and pondered a forbidden love. He’d dealt with Karl still over the years until he stole money from his job and used that to get a double up. When he got arrested for selling drugs on the corner he gave David’s information. After that he had nothing to do with him. Of course Michelle never knew about the identity theft, at the time her name wore so much weight that the deputies processed him and released on that charge then let it fall through the cracks. Stephen would not be able to stomach that betrayal, the owed money, the assistance in a senseless fight, or the needs for the rides at any time of the wee morning had already done wear and tear on their bond. All Michelle could think about was how much David had matured, definitely started lifting weights she thought. His lips seemed to draw her, his words quaking a inner desire to find out if he could be the man of her dreams. Michelle wasn’t rigid in belief, it would have to be God that would send the man she prayed for in the package of a man that had sat under her radar all her life. Now the question was if David was that blessing or something she knew to well, a lust that lost it’s luster. A prayer will take away your pain “Feeling loved means loving what you can not see” Chapter eleven Tamar rambled through her diary to find a friends number she’d written down. The caramel toned woman seemed to turn pale when she reached March 15. The words she read seemed to echo through her spirit because of the pain that existed in her pen when she wrote it. It was a wayward woman who had floated in and out of the church, the swarm of shark like saints were always ready to detour her. Like the woman at the well when Jesus visited her he had also seen fit the two to cross paths. When she went into the nursery hall to get water from the water foundation Patricia came bobbing pass. “Excuse me mame… I’m in need of prayer,” she confessed. It turned out that she was so broken that the men served as a band aid. Her father was a alcoholic that sexually molested her and her siblings. “I’m confused and afraid…I think he’s going to kill me,” she confided to the sister pastor of the church. Patricia had no idea who Tamar was and she did care at the time, the very principle of the church had been presented, she was in need of pray. Tamar allowed Patricia to take her entire day, she helped her get a bus ticket and secured housing for her and her children back to her home town. The last she heard of her Patricia was a prophet and doing very well for herself. That day had compelled Tamar to write this poem for her sister in Christ. Dear Diary: “She sat against the sunset, the wind against her hair. She knew though he would search for her he’d never find her there. For just one moment she wanted to be buried from her life. His fist had breed the consequence of womanhood. She wanted to be yearned for and loved for so long…invested so much of herself to find that love alone.” What a difference a year makes Tamar thought. She could have stayed and kept up a plush life while managing to touch some souls with the love of Christ but the sea of Judas like worship tightened like a rope around her neck. She hoped her story would turn out like Patricia who was now married and doing very well. She began a women’s shelter to help others. Patricia was a walking sermon, a modern seeker of God’s refuge. “God I hope you continue to use me,” Tamara said looking toward the sky. “I hope you save me and make me whole in this…That you shine a light in this place of my life O Lord God.”
Copyright © 2009 Bridgett Nesbit |