Don't Blame the Devil (5 page)

Delilah held the glass of water in her hands and smiled while she sipped.
Jehovah, I thank you for giving me some of that grace and mercy you keep handy. Now all I need to do is stay calm. I can keep Thurgood occupied, with me promising that divorce; that is, if he can help me find our son.

Delilah smiled again. She was proud of the advice she'd just given God. And then, just as she was about to summon the server and order her meal, she was distracted by noises outside the restaurant window. The smile slid from her face faster than a raging mud slide.

 

The deacon hadn't left the table quick enough to suit him. The last thing he needed was for Delilah to know he'd already found Jessie several years ago. He zigzagged between tables as he struggled to keep the phone pressed against his ear, using his chin, while he spoke and carried the bags to the restaurant door. “I know I'm late but I'm on my way. Tell baby girl to hold tight. I've got the crab cakes and I didn't forget the special remoulade sauce she wanted….. No, Jessie, I didn't forget your tilapia with dill sauce, either…. See you shortly…. Marty called? What did she say? Did she say how long she would have to stay at work? Okay…I'm walking back as fast as I can…. No! Please don't you come get me!”

Deacon Pillar had barely gotten the restaurant door open when Delilah sped past, knocking one bag from his hand and slapping his cell phone to the floor.

She didn't even look back. That ended their truce.

“Oh, you have lost your doggone mind for sure….” The deacon was about to add something more, but instead he scooped up his phone and the dropped bag and took off after Delilah. “You won't hit and run this time, Delilah.” And even as his spirit screamed to let it go, the deacon pursued her. Bible study or no Bible study, he wanted her to pay; there was a forty-year payment due.

By the time Deacon Pillar caught up with Delilah, she was standing on the curb. Her body shook as though she stood in the middle of an earthquake, and there were tears streaming down her face.

As soon as he reached her side he saw a tow truck. “Dee Dee, what's going on? Isn't that your car that's booted?” He hadn't meant to call her by that old pet name. Whatever harsh words he was about to use seemed to evaporate when he'd seen her cry. And then he saw her morph right before his eyes. Delilah turned from a helpless female into a pint-sized praying mantis.

Delilah was hot. Her face turned red and her tears dried up. “You know I could just slap the black off you, Thurgood.”

“I guess you could try to carry through on some of those empty threats if your Alzheimer's and arthritis didn't ride for free on your arse.”

“If you hadn't taken up so much of my time back there, I could've been paying attention and gotten out here sooner.”

Meanwhile the reasons for the noise that had caught her attention stood. There were folks on the sidewalk who laughed until they cried outside the Blue Fish. Most were just happy it wasn't them, that time. The other reason for the laughter stood next to Delilah. It wasn't unusual for the young people to see the repo man place a boot on a car so the driver couldn't drive it away. But most of the young folks had never seen a jacked-up conk; at least not in the twenty-first century, unless it was in an old movie.

One second she stood on the curb, the next she was climbing up the back of a big, muscular black man. He looked like a ghetto Hulk in filthy coveralls with a chain in one hand and fighting off Delilah with his other.

And then someone in the crowd screamed, “Oh damn, look at pops. He's going to help his woman.”

More applause and even louder laughter erupted again. The gawkers slapped five. “Crack his head, old playa,” another voice shouted.

But as much as the deacon didn't want to get any further involved, he found himself butting in again. One minute he was threatening Delilah and the next he was hyperventilating and fighting a definite heart attack as he struggled to keep Delilah, with her wig now flipped out, from whipping the repo man's behind, or vice versa.

“I'll kill you if you don't take that damn boot off my car!” Delilah was clawing and scratching with no apparent effect on the repo man.

“I'm just doing my job, lady. You've got three days to come up with the money, and next time pay your damn car note!” He was much quicker than Delilah. In seconds, he'd gently shoved her off and not so gently knocked the deacon off his feet. Before Delilah or Deacon Pillar could string two words together, the man had her car in neutral. With the crowd still laughing, he got into his tow truck and drove off with Delilah's car bumping up and down as it gave off sparks along the street.

“Delilah,” the deacon pleaded with what quickly seemed like his last breath, “it's no use. If you keep it up the police will come.”

“Let 'em!” But all Delilah got for her effort was a sad last look at the back of her car. All she could do was stand on the sidewalk wearing her wig lopsided. The sight of it made her look more like a Phyllis Diller than a Farrah Fawcett. She looked a hot mess.

“Jesus, please get me outta here….” Deacon Pillar had barely gotten to the
amen
of his prayer when it was answered, sorta.

“Hey, Deacon Pillar. You need a ride?” A Crown Victoria Black Pearl cab pulled up to the curb. “I thought it was you, but I ain't never seen you fight befo', so I couldn't be sho,” the almond-colored elderly man called out as he leaned farther out the car window and waved for the deacon to come over. “I was about to head into the garage, but I can take you home if that's where you're going. It looks like you've torn your bags.”

Deacon Pillar sighed as he looked down and saw that the second bag had burst, too.
Have mercy, Jesus. Can this day get any worse?
There wasn't much the deacon could do but accept the offer. “Thank you, Brother Libby. I guess I'll take you up on the ride. I may need to make a stop before then, but it's along the way.”

“Well, c'mon then. I'll only charge you ten dollars instead of the regular fifteen.”

If the deacon had to explain his next move on Judgment Day to keep from going to hell, then hell would be his eternal home. It began when Delilah suddenly started cussing and throwing punches in the air at invisible demons. The next thing he knew, he'd somehow shoved Delilah, albeit as gently as he could, inside the cab.

Of course Delilah didn't say thank you. She was too busy yelling, “Damn, damn, damn!” Delilah wept as she glared out the cab window and stared at the spot where her Navigator had stood. “All I needed was another couple of weeks and at least a heads-up. I could've probably come up with some of the money.”

Delilah's tears suddenly dried up again. Her mouth clamped shut. She'd said more than she'd meant to. After all, she was still acting the part of a diva and a diva wasn't supposed to be on a budget.

“Dee Dee.” There it was. He'd said her pet name again. This time the deacon's voice took on an authoritative tone. “Why didn't you just say something?”

“Say what, Thurgood? What did you want me to say, and when was I supposed to say it?” She turned and faced the deacon with her hands balled into what looked like two golf balls. “Was I supposed to tell you while you cussed me out two seconds after you laid eyes on me?”

“Stop exaggerating, Delilah!”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Perhaps it was three or five seconds after you hadn't seen me in almost four decades.”

“Okay, we're here,” Brother Libby announced louder than he needed. “Don't worry about the fare. Y'all just go ahead and get out. Now!”

“I'm so sorry, Brother Libby.” The deacon wanted to explain what wasn't explainable. “I'd meant for you to make that other stop before we got here.”

“Well, there are cabs going in the other direction, too.” Brother Libby wasn't about to drive another inch with the deacon and the irritated woman battling in his leased cab.

Delilah looked about the neighborhood. The sun had already begun to set, so she couldn't get a real sense of where they were. All she knew for certain was that they were still in Brooklyn. She needed to find a way to get her car back as well as return home.

Brother Libby's cab sped away, leaving them on the sidewalk. Delilah kept quiet, although she couldn't figure out why she should.

“Just wait here,” the deacon said nicely. “Let me take these things inside and I'll take you where you need to go.” He paused, suddenly proud that he hadn't said more.
At least I didn't say Garden City.

“As if I have a choice,” Delilah muttered. “Just hurry up. For the next two weeks I want to get as far away from you as you need to get from me.”

Delilah fought the tears just as hard as she'd fought the deacon's kindness. She wouldn't allow herself the comfort of accepting something as simple as a car ride.

Deacon Pillar gripped the bags by the ends that weren't torn and climbed the porch steps. He'd already made up his mind to hurry inside and make some type of apology to Jessie and Tamara before leaving again. And if God was truly in the plan, the Master would keep Sister Marty away, too.

Father, please help me to get Delilah away from here before it's too late. I just need a little more time, Jesus.

And while the deacon prayed his prayer, Delilah stood resting against the porch stoop and began to advise her God.

Well, Heavenly Father Jehovah, this has been one joke of a day. If this is one of those tests, then I sure hope I passed. I can't take another one. If I need to be praying another kind of way, I wish You'd show me how. I asked You to lead me to my husband, and to my son. Instead, You take away my ride and leave me in the hands of Thurgood. As bad as he's trying to get rid of me and get a divorce, he'd have said something about Jessie if he knew anything. Why do the tables keep turning on me? Or, if Thurgood does know something, You wouldn't let him get a head start and turn Jessie against me, would You?

Delilah suddenly stopped calling on God because nature was calling on her.

As put-out as she was, she still wasn't too proud to ask the deacon to use his bathroom.

“Y
ou don't look too bad, and at least the food didn't spill out of the containers.” Jessie stifled an urge to laugh. The deacon's story of unwittingly getting involved in a stranger's situation that left him less than blessed was funny.

“If you really want a story, you should've been out on a call with me last night. I'm telling you, if I have another night like last night, I'm taking off my badge and going upside some heads over there in Crown Heights. Hot as it is and young folks running all over the place over on Lincoln, turning on fire hydrants and slashing tires. Don't make sense.” Jessie had almost fifteen years on the police force and every other week he threatened to take off his badge.

“Listen, something came up and I got to handle it quickly. I promise it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Go ahead and start eating. If I'm not back in time, then start the Bible study.” Deacon Pillar tried to say everything in a way where it wasn't a complete lie; a little deceptive, but not a complete lie.

“I guess it's okay,” Tamara said as she gathered the food to take to the kitchen. “Sister Marty's working late anyhow. And, as usual, I don't have a date. Actually, I could have one—I just don't want one….”

The deacon tuned Tamara out. His mind had gone elsewhere.
Have mercy. I'd almost forgotten about Marty.
And then the deacon realized he'd left Delilah alone for a little too long.

The hair on Deacon Pillar's neck suddenly rose and he knew why. He raced to close the door just as Delilah came barreling against it. It was almost a head-on collision.

“Stop with the games, Thurgood,” Delilah barked as she started to knock on the door. “I need to use your bathroom and there's no negotiation.”

“Deacon,” Jessie asked slowly, “who is that? What's going on?”

“Uhhhh…” That's as far as the deacon got before Delilah, encouraged by the urgency of her situation, pushed the door open.

Delilah didn't bother to check out whether there were others there or not. She hadn't thought that far.

“I don't need this crap!” Delilah almost tripped when the heel of one of her latest knockoffs became stuck as she tried to cross over the threshold.

Delilah wanted to move out of the doorway, but couldn't get the heel of her shoe to twist back into place. So she simply took it off. With one tiny foot bare, Delilah entered and stood defiant and lopsided.

She and the deacon had shared a lot in the past, but none of it compared to the
Twilight Zone
moment they shared then.

Delilah took one look around the living room and fainted, which was also something the deacon wanted to do but couldn't.

As Delilah slowly came around she peeked through heavy false eyelashes and found she couldn't see as clearly as she could hear.

Jessie folded his arms and stared. It took him a moment to believe his eyes and another moment to find his voice. “What the hell is she doing here?” Jessie's angry question shot around the room, and if it had been a loaded gun, Delilah would've been dead. “Lord, please help me. I don't believe this is happening. And you've laid her on my sofa.”

If Delilah had wanted to pretend she was still unconscious, she couldn't have. Deacon Pillar, the bald-faced liar, was literally water-boarding her as he wrung a soaking wet cloth over her face. He looked as though he enjoyed it.

“I just don't know what to say, Brother Jessie. This is the woman I tried to help. I had no idea you were so against me bringing another woman here unless it was Sister Marty….”

Delilah ignored the deacon's feeble attempt to throw her under the bus. Instead, she watched her son with curiosity as Jessie's eyes glared in her direction. She was sure she could almost see—no,
feel
—his anxiety and pure hatred. Then again, she wasn't sure if she knew it was hatred for certain. She wasn't even sure if what she was feeling was some sort of maternal feeling. Could it be that God had thrown some mother wit into the mess?

“Deacon, this has nothing to do with who you bring or don't bring to where you pay rent. But do you know who you just let into my home?” Jessie's voice sounded as though he spoke from within a cave. It was just that loud and seemed to reverberate around the room.

The deacon realized that he needed to remain calm during what was certainly turning into a very dangerous verbal showdown. He'd have to chew crow and get Delilah out of there and back to Garden City before his own mess went on display.

With one hand fingering his suspenders, he replied simply, “Yes, I know her. Pretty much—”

At that moment Jessie needed more than simplicity. He needed something to throw, much the same way he needed to believe he'd misheard the deacon. “You're standing here in my home telling me that you actually know this woman?”

Deacon Pillar nodded toward Delilah. He needed to quickly turn things around. So he tried to sound more confident. “More than forty years, I believe. We used to run in the same crowds back in Harlem where she sang in a few bands. I even played in some of them, too.” Deacon Pillar stopped. He was sure to tell a bigger lie if he spoke another word. It was bad enough tiptoeing across a thick carpet of lies.

It took Delilah's inability to shut up when she should to break her awkward silence. She didn't care if it saved the deacon from himself or not. But she did enjoy a conversation about her that was positive, and she'd not heard anything positive. She raised her head and barked with indignation, “Are you two gonna stand here and talk all over my head like I can't hear?”

Whether he meant to do it or not, Jessie used his hand to hit a nearby wall. The hand immediately started to swell and turned from a pecan color to almost blue right before their eyes.

“This demon dressed up like a woman…” Jessie's mouth began to twist. He felt almost dizzy as the pain in his hand shot up his arm and landed upon his tongue.

Oh, Lord, he's recognized her.
The deacon shuffled a little closer to the door. He hadn't meant to do that. He'd done it on instinct.

“Repeat that, Jessie.” Delilah leapt off the couch and now stood with her hands on her small hips. This was not how she'd envisioned their first meeting, but she'd be damned if he was gonna come at her in such a manner. Now it was her time to glare and she used it to the maximum. “I'm a little older and perhaps I don't hear so good anymore.” Delilah stopped and yanked her hands off her hips and shook them at Jessie. “Now when the child I birthed, after more than forty hours of damn hard labor, tries sassing me—”

“Deacon Pillar,” Jessie interrupted, ignoring his pain as his anger mounted. Jessie's eyes narrowed and issued a silent warning to the deacon before he turned back around. He was saving his next words of rebuke for Delilah.

At that moment his need to put Delilah in her place outweighed his pain. “Maybe you are hard of hearing, 'cause you sure ain't no kind of mother.”

From across the room Tamara stood with her arms dangling by her side. She'd been in the basement and heard all the yelling. After racing upstairs it was as though she'd flipped to a bad movie on television and couldn't change the channel. It took another moment before she could speak. “Daddy, what's going on?”

Waves of spasms attacked Jessie's mouth, causing it to twist even more as he ignored Tamara's question. Since he'd buried Cindy he'd kept all his sane and insane emotions simmering. His grief pot was about to boil over. At that very moment all he wanted to do was just lash out, and a conveniently placed punching bag or two stood gift wrapped in his living room.

While the others in the room stared at him as though he'd truly lost his mind, which he was about to, Jessie's anger soared. Without apology Jessie gave in to his need to lay his salvation down at an invisible altar. He would leave it there just long enough to punch both Deacon Pillar and Delilah in their mouths. But Jessie was still Delilah's son, and the apple hadn't fallen too far from the tree. He just couldn't make up his mind as to whom to start with. He knew he'd possibly broken his hand, which meant he'd have to take time off from the job. But a possible broken hand be damned.

“Go to hell!” Delilah suddenly shot back at Jessie. “I know what you're thinking, and if you ever live to see a hundred I'll still be older than you and I'll still be your mama. Come at me, and I'll whip you until I can't no more.”

“Who are you gonna whip? And who are you to tell me to go to hell? Join me, because I'm in it now.” Mama or no mama, he was more than a foot taller than Delilah and he'd bend over and hit her if he had to. Jessie wanted to say something even more vicious, but words wouldn't come again.

Yet in that
Twilight Zone
moment, as she looked to where Tamara stood, it all became clear to Delilah.
What a mighty God I serve.
She saw Tamara and almost folded again. “You've worked a miracle, Father, and it was here all along….”

“You've lost your damn mind.” The pain that shot up Jessie's arm again seemed more like a punishment; a hindrance to keep him from stopping what was about to unfold.

Delilah's eyes moistened again as she finally realized that God had indeed delivered. Why in such a crazy manner, she didn't know.

An easy smile crept across her face when she turned from Jessie and looked at Tamara once more. “God brought me here, Jessie. He truly did.”

The observation had not escaped the deacon. “That's Tamara, your grandbaby,” Deacon Pillar said, as though the previous conversation had gone smoothly instead of a mother-son cuss out. His move was more to keep her mind temporarily off retribution where he was concerned.

Delilah allowed Deacon Pillar to walk over and take her by one arm to escort her across the room. It was the least he could do after his brazen performance earlier. She'd come back to him later.

He'd gotten her halfway across the room before he realized he had to pass Jessie to get to Tamara. He saw the anger in Jessie's eyes and almost felt the heat coming off his head. Deacon Pillar wasn't certain he'd make it. It was a lot safer upstairs in his apartment, for sure.

“Thurgood Pillar, you idiot.” When the deacon stopped just short of Jessie, Delilah shook her arm loose from his grip with ease. “I know who she is.”

“Oh, I ain't gonna be too many more idiots—” Deacon Pillar wanted to finish the threat, bad grammar and all, but he was caught off guard by the strength she showed when she snatched her skinny arm from his firm grip.

“Just shut up, Thurgood,” Delilah warned, her eyes turned into slits to back up the implied threat. Then, without missing a beat, she turned back to Tamara, saying sweetly with her eyes now loaded with sympathy, “I'm sorry I wasn't here for your mama's funeral. I did read about it and tried to find y'all. I guess by now you know I'm your grandma—”

Delilah started to cough, which quickly turned into more of a hacking sound. The word
grandma
stuck in her throat like a fishbone and was just as uncomfortable. Not even her beautiful granddaughter could make her feel at ease enough to say the word
grandmother.
Instead she corrected herself. “I'm Delilah, your father's mother.”

“Damn, Delilah,” Deacon Pillar barked, “you couldn't even say grandma? That's cold even for that refrigerator you call a heart.”

Delilah turned slightly and looked up at Deacon Pillar. “Mind your business. It's my last warning, daddy-o.” She'd placed emphasis on the
daddy
part.

Whatever she was thinking was enough to cause him to move a few steps back.

“Don't even think about speaking to my daughter,” Jessie warned her as his girth seemed to double with the threat. “She doesn't even know you. You won't be tiptoeing around her life like you used to do mine.”

The deacon's conked head turned quickly in Delilah's direction. He pointed toward her and then turned back to speak to Jessie. “You mean you recognized her because this is not the first time you've seen her in years?” The deacon glanced quickly again at Delilah. He'd not known that little bit of information.

“Yes,” Jessie hissed, “I saw this mother impersonator for the first time since I was a toddler when I was about ten years old. She had the nerve to show up at”—Jessie stopped and started to count on his fingers before he continued—“I believe it might've been at the second or third foster home I was placed in.”

“It was when…?” Deacon Pillar suddenly felt dizzy, but he couldn't move and there was no place to fall that was comfortable. That had to be just before Marty's involvement. Six degrees of separation would always have a special meaning for him.

“Oh, it gets better,” Jessie continued. “She told me—no, she promised me—that she'd go to court and get me back. She told me she'd been on the road with a couple of groups in Europe, to make money because my father had abandoned us.”

“
Abandoned
you?” Strength returned to the deacon's legs. He started to move toward Delilah. There was no mistaking his intention.

“Go ahead,” Delilah said as her fingers clutched her purse hard enough to leave fingerprints. “Hurry and get it all out in the open, Jessie.”

“What I'd like to do is split you open,” Jessie hissed.

Perspiration broke out on Jessie's face and he began to shake as he turned to face the deacon. “This so-called old friend of yours—well, she never returned. And then when I saw her again, Tamara was about three years old. I was a grown man with a wife and child. I didn't need a mother. So I left her and her lies standing on Forty-second Street in front of Grand Central Station.”

“Daddy—” Tamara felt helpless. Too much was happening and whatever it was, it raced past her at warp speed and it was hurting her father.