But no, no, no. John David would agree to represent her only as a stupid gospel singer, of all things. Not only did he want to make her a gospel singer, he wanted her to
become
a gospel singer before he'd actually do anything to promote her!
And the gospel game was certainly different than R&B. Half the attraction with a worldwide audience was sex appeal. Booty-shaking, hip-thrusting, cleavage-flashing dances sold just as many records and concert tickets as great vocals in her old world. Why couldn't she just capitalize on her bodyâafter she got it back in shape, of course?
There was also a teeny tiny part of her that didn't like the idea of singing gospel just so that she could become a star again. This part, Camille knew, came from her mother's influence (Bobby Junior would have told her to jump on the chance). But Jerdine Robertson would have told Camille point-blank not to play in the Lord's house.
With a heavy foot on the pedal, Camille screeched out of the parking lot. She soon discovered that a bad attitude could be just as distracting as text messaging on the road. A fellow motorist honked at her when she stomped on her brake and made a quick right turn without signaling. She honked back. Yes, she was wrong, but she was not in the mood to be chastised by some guy driving a wood-paneled station wagon. He was wrong just for owning that thing.
Just so happened, a police officer witnessed Camille's rash antics. His siren startled Camille initially.
What did I do?
All her tags were current. Insurance active. She slowed to a stop in a restaurant parking lot and waited for the officer to inform her of why he was stopping her, adding insult to injury on one of the worst days of her life.
She leaned forward for a wider angle in her side-view mirror and soon got an eyeful of tall, dark, chocolate in sunglasses and a uniform. Unfortunately, he was also sporting a metallic clipboard with a pen. And a wedding band.
Her driver's window squeaked to the halfway point. “Hello, Officer. Is there something wrong?”
“You,” he barked, removing his shades. A dark brother with white teeth was a winning combination in Camille's book. “You were weaving down Commerce, and you cut off another driver at the light. You could have caused an accident. Have you been drinking?”
Such ugly words from such a beautiful man. “No, Officer. I don't drink.”
“Could you step out of the vehicle, please?”
She obeyed, taking this moment to offer a reasonable explanation. “Officer, I just got some bad news and lost track of where I was going for a second. I'm not under the influence of any illegal substance.”
Despite her justification, she was still subjected to a field sobriety test. She passed, of course, but the policeman still gave her a ticket for failure to maintain a lane of traffic.
What kind of violation is this?
“Be more careful,” he scolded. “Cars are dangerous weapons, Miss Robertson. Don't get behind the wheel if you're psychologically impaired.”
Camille accepted the ticket. “I understand.”
Upon entering her apartment, Camille dropped her bag and flipped off her shoes. Life was just plain ridiculous. You think you're advancing one square forward when, actually, you've been pushed all the way back to “go.”
She plunked onto her couch and fished the ticket from her bag. The back side of the document gave a range for the ticket fine. Two hundred to two hundred twenty-five dollars. She'd have to go to the station to determine the exact amount.
Already, her mind buzzed with thoughts about what she would have to give up or pull off in order to pay the associated fines without skipping a beat on her bills. Twenty extra leads would cover it.
Dang!
That wouldn't work. Camille had thoroughly convinced Sheryl that her phantom cat needed extra TLC. Trying to come in early or stay later now would bust the tall tale.
Selling twenty CDs in front of the beauty supply might work, if the bootleg DVD man didn't chase her off his turf. Or maybe she could work a week at a retail store. If she hadn't burned her relationship with her Mary Kay director, she might be able to host a few shows.
Ugh! Why don't police officers think about how they're messing with people's lives when they write these tickets?
No matter what, she'd have to add to her forty-hour work week for a while to keep this thing from escalating to a warrant. Yet, even with a payment plan, there was nothing to spare in her budget.
Maybe she should just get pregnant and have a baby so she could get free food, reduced rent, and a small fortune every tax season. She'd always wanted a daughter. A little diva named Madison. Camille snuggled back into her couch at the thought of her mini-me. Would she be a prissy mama or one of those tree-climbing, frog-catching tomboys? Would she inherit her mother's voice and her grandmother's instrumental talent?
Then there was always the possibility little Madison would be a complete horror. Drawing on walls, fighting at school so Camille would have to come off her job to attend parent conferences. And what if Madison grew up to be a serial killer? The world would have one more lunatic on the streets all because Camille Robertson couldn't get one big break. They'd blame Camille, and she'd blame John David.
Snap out of it!
Camille placed a hand on her forehead. The whole kid scheme was crazy, but she had to do something. She couldn't live the rest of her life in a state where two hundred dollars threw her into panic mode. No matter what, she had to work her way out of this. There was no easy path.
And then it hit her. If she was going to put herself to work doing something she didn't really want to doâlike give birthâshe might as well work for something she
did
want. Seriously, if she was willing to raise a child, she should at least be willing to join a choir and lead a few songs.
John David had said that if she did her part, he'd do his. That probably wouldn't help her in the short term with this ticket, but
something
had to give.
The counsel Jerdine gave her daughter about her first job working at McDonald's came to mind. Camille had been complaining about having to clean the men's restroom. “It's so nasty!”
“Well”âher mother had laughedâ“they kick the men out before you go in, right?”
“Yes,” Camille conceded while buckling her seat belt.
Jerdine was always on time to pick up her daughter. She never wanted any of Camille's male coworkers offering her shapely daughter a ride home.
“Baby, sometimes you have to do what you have to do first in order to do what you want to do later,” Jerdine comforted her only daughter.
Camille sat straight up on her couch now. She closed her eyes and spoke into the air. “Okay, Momma. I know you didn't mean for me to use your advice in a bad way, but you also said that God lets everything happen for a reason.
“I don't know all the reasons, but I've got to go for it. Singing won't go away, Momma. I have to do this.”
CHAPTER 7
H
ours at the Medgar Evers center yielded a list of the top-ten churches in the Dallas area, by enrollment. The King's Table, pastored by a man who was probably a household name at that point, ranked number one, with a combined total of twenty-four thousand in attendance at its two Sunday services. Camille scoffed at the idea of attending church twice on a Sunday. If memory served her well, she could barely keep her eyelids apart during the main message every week. And Wednesday night services were even worse with Mother Jackson beating that tambourine all offbeat.
Second on her list was Northeast Christian Church. Nineteen thousand. One service. But from what Camille gathered on the Web site, the congregation was mostly Caucasian. She'd send John David a text: Does the church have to be black?
His reply: Yes
Camille: Think Kirk Franklin. He crosses over races.
John David: HE'S A MAN
Okay, you don't have to holler.
Camille X-ed Northeast off the list.
Next up, Grace Chapel Community Church. They had only fifteen thousand people coming every week. Camille did the math. If fifteen thousand people bought one of her CDs at thirteen ninety-nine each, she'd make only about seventeen thousand dollars after John David took his cut. Barely above full-time minimum wage, annually. Surely, she'd have more than fifteen thousand people buying her music, but the home base needed to be at least twenty thousand to move her into a new tax bracket.
With The King's Table, she could at least hope to bring home close to thirty thousand dollars with each release.
After having performed her calculations, there was no way on earth she could join a church with less than twenty thousand members who actually came to church.
The King's Table it is.
Sunday morning, Camille flicked through the clothes in her closet, looking for something eye-catching to commemorate her walk down the main aisle when she joined the church. No time like the present to start making an impression on the congregation. She selected a black shirt dress with four-inch open-toed, shiny black pumps. Cleaver-ish, yet stylish enough to cause some degree of speculation about her income bracket. The front lace wig would have been over the top, so she decided to sport a sophisticated, black ponytail that bobbed just a little with every step.
Those pumps, however, proved to be a total nightmare. Camille had underestimated how far she'd have to walk from her parking space to a trolley pick-up stop. Even after the driver cleared the vehicle at the front entrance, she still had to walk up another flight of stairs in a swarm of people who obviously had no respect for corns.
Once she passed through the arenalike doors into one of the main seating areas, Camille gasped at the sheer magnitude of the sanctuary. The Web site photographs didn't do this church justice.
Oh my God! This place is crazy!
It might as well have been a rock concert, except rock fans wouldn't assemble themselves at eight o'clock in the morning no matter how famous the singer.
Shoot, I don't even get to work this early!
Rows and rows, columns and columns of people with Bibles, hats, and notepads found their seats next to fellow members and, presumably, a number of visitors. Though the cushioned seats were covered with bright red cloth, few of them remained visible. The church was nearly packed except for the nosebleed seats, and service hadn't even begun.
An usher escorted Camille's bunch of church-goers to one of the last empty sections in the building. She sat next to a woman who'd been smart enough to bring a jacket. And a Bible, which Camille didn't own, but she'd put that on her list of things to get. She'd have to ask John David if she could write it off as a business expense.
Camille's feet had barely recovered when some old man dressed in African attire approached center stage with a huge horn-looking device the size of a five-year-old child. He raised the instrument to his lips and blew. The all-encompassing sound was followed by a rousing, almost deafening praise from the congregation. These people obviously had supernatural lung capacity.
He blew again, and another round of praise circled through the building. By this time, everyone was standing. Camille refused to stuff her feet into those shoes again. The people sitting on either side of her probably didn't matter one way or another as far as her music was concerned. No worries. She'd let those heels rest until her debut church-joining waltz toward the main platform.
After the call to worship, five people walked out with microphones in hand, and lights hit the band as well as the robed choir behind them. The audience applauded as a man Camille guessed was the worship leader, a heavy, bald-headed guy dressed in a traditional Sunday suit, asked the question, “Are you all ready to go higher in the Lord this morning?”
“Yes!” the crowd roared.
“Are you ready to give the Lord some praise?”
“Yes!”
“Has He been good to you?”
“Yes!”
“I mean real, real good to you?”
Louder, “Yes!”
This was great. Obviously, not much had changed since the days her mother led congregational hymns at their old church. Camille knew all this church jargon like the back of her hand. Leading worship would be a piece of cake.
“Come on, praise team, one, two, three, four!” Pillsbury dough man cued up the band.
Camille took note of this designation.
Praise team.
She listened for the harmony. One soprano, two altos, two tenors. These people must be better singers than the average choir member. This brought things to a whole new level. Being in the choir wasn't good enough. She needed to get on the praise team. They had their own microphones. More camera time, too, evidenced by the five giant monitors strategically placed throughout the edifice. The media team alternated between faces and words, guiding the audience through songs.
The only problem so far was the women wearing dresses. Was it a coincidence or would she have to wear a dress, too?
Two songs later, the male alto took his turn at the center. “Saints of the most high God, take one minute to just glorify Him!”
A whole minute!
Camille waited impatiently while the mass of people worked themselves into an emotional frenzy. Again, familiar territory. She had seen people shout, cry, fall out. None of that fazed her. The same people did the same things at the clubs she used to frequent shortly after Sweet Treats's downfall.
Church folk were probably the same everywhere, in her opinion. The only real Christian she'd ever seen was her mother. But she was dead. After all the times Camille had walked into her mother's room to find Jerdine bent over the foot of the bed in prayer, all the gallons of blessed oil Jerdine had slathered on her family's foreheads, and all the forgiveness Jerdine had given Bobby Junior, she'd still died a laborious death at age thirty-nine.
God's motive for taking Jerdine so early hadn't made sense when Camille was a junior in high school, and it didn't make any sense now. So while all this whooping and hollering taking place around her might make people ecstatic, Camille had her own truth. God might be powerful and He might have His mysterious reasons for doing things, but He sure wasn't in the business of making people happy.
The minute passed, and a man erupted in a sweet, soft ballad about God's love. Camille tried to concentrate on his voice, but the words of the song, “More precious than a mother's love,” poked at her heart.
She focused, instead, on counting the number of rows in each section and multiplying by the number of seats in each row. It helped that there were a number of peculiar hats to observe as well. Next, she tried spotting white or Hispanic people. There was maybe one per hundred people present who appeared to be of another race. Despite John David's insistence that she join an African American church, he would probably be pleased that there was some representation of other ethnic groups here. The more exposure the better.
The female alto boosted the tempo with an old-time call-and-response song. Camille was glad for the change of pace, but when that woman bleated out a long “Wee-eee-eee-lll, I turned it over to Jesus,” Camille had to stop herself from gagging. She sounded like an old billy goat caught in a barbwire fence!
Yet, the people clapped and cheered her on.
Are they not hearing what I'm hearing?
It reminded Camille of those early Mary J. Blige songs, back when her untrained voice was equivalent to the scratchy whine of someone whose half-deaf aunt told them they could really sing. Like Mary, this alto on stage had exceptional music and soulful lyrics to smooth things out. Maybe, with some help, she could get better. Camille would have to pull her aside, give her some tips.
After Goat Woman's song, the praise team shouted and danced for a while. The band was clearly having a good time. Their heads nodded and their bodies swayed awkwardlyâa sure sign they'd gotten lost in the music and no longer cared how they appeared to the audience. Camille appreciated seeing a band in “the zone” again. She loved tapping into the musicians' groove, following the song wherever it led.
Finally, the lone soprano gave a breathy speech, as though she'd just finished running a marathon. If Camille was going to keep up with this praise team, she'd need to build up some stamina.
“He is worthy!”
The crowd echoed.
“I said, He is worthy!”
They heard you the first time.
“Our God is an awesome God! He reigns ...” she sang.
Camille's chest sank. This girl could blow. She'd give any major female artist a run for her money, including the former leader of the Sweet Treats herself.
Supersoprano Girl performed a medley of tunes, showcasing her ability across tempos and ranges. This was
not
good. Camille would either have to convince the man in the black suit that the praise team needed two sopranos or find some kind of way to push this girl back into a choir robe.
Wait!
Camille waited for a camera to display a full-body profile of the soprano on the nearest screen. She scrutinized the woman's side view.
Yes!
She was pregnant. Very pregnant, actually. Once this girl had the baby, she'd be holed up for at least six weeks, and that was all the time Camille needed to work her way onto this elite praise team and into the spotlight.
With a plan in place, the rest of the service was insignificant. The pastor's words of encouragement were nice, but the call to fellowship was all Camille cared to hear. When the invitation to accept Christ was given, she pressed her feet back into her shoes. Any minute now, they had to ask for people who wanted to be members to come forward. Camille decided she might as well get up now to start the trek.
“And if anyone would like to join our church,” the preacher announced, “meet us in the Mockingbird room, which is directly across from the bookstore, after church.”
Camille stopped in her tracks.
Mockingbird room?
What kind of church doesn't give new members the chance to parade before the congregation?
She huffed in disgust and made an about-face and headed toward the exit doors.
Mockingbird room.
Nobody gets the right hand of fellowship in a Mockingbird room.
She found the meeting place and joined about fifty other people waiting for this obscure enrollment to begin. Camille parked herself on the first row and sat to rest her feet again. Some women dressed in white distributed cookies, juice, and warm smiles. “Thanks for being here.”
“You're welcome.”
Almost immediately following the benediction, which they could all hear through the room's speaker system, several men wearing “Ambassador” badges entered the room and stood behind the front table. The cookie women passed out folders now, and before any ambassador could explain the documents therein, Camille had already flipped to the first page and read something that turned her off right away:
The membership process takes six weeks to complete. Upon completion, you may participate in the ministry God places on your heart.
Six weeks!
She didn't have six weeks! John David was ripe now! Her future was now! And besides all that, pregnant Soprano Girl would be back in action by then!
Camille raised her hand before they even started. “Um, is there any way to expedite the membership process?”
The oldest ambassador, too old to be wearing cornrows, answered, “We'll talk about the requirement in a second. But to answer your question, no.”
Requirements?
Since when does joining church have requirements? This wasn't a job or the Department of Motor Vehicles. It was
church,
for goodness sake, and she needed to be
in, in, in
!
She swung her foot in little circles throughout the presentation. The month-and-a-half-long process seemed more like a college course. Six classes, ninety minutes each, on Christian living, how to study the Bible, how to honor God with talents, gifts, and treasure. Someone would also come to visit her home and conduct a one-on-one “guidance session,” which would give her an opportunity to ask questions about her personal salvation, the church, or any other concerns she might not want to address in front of her group. Then and only then could she join the church on the first Sunday of the month
after
successful completion.