I Say a Little Prayer (9 page)

“I will. I’ll give you a call or e-mail when we decide when we’re going to meet,” Vincent said.

“Do that.”

“Thanks for listening,” Vincent said.

“No problem,” I said.

As I walked back toward the living room, I mouthed, “Upchurch,” and thought,
Naw, couldn’t be.

Early the next morning, my phone rang. I started to let the machine pick it up, but my curiosity got the best of me and I ignored the caller ID.

“Hello.”

There was silence over the line.

“Hello,” I repeated.

“Stay away from my husband, you fucking faggot,” a female voice said firmly.

I suddenly heard a click, then the dial tone. Must have been a wrong number, since I had a strict no-husbands policy. I hoped Jayshawn or Griffin hadn’t got married and forgotten to tell me.

My eighteenth birthday was a special one. The group had our first big gig outside of the South. We were the opening act for DeBarge at the Indiana Black Expo in Indianapolis before a crowd of over 30,000, mostly women, screaming our names.

We wore suits Darron and Barron’s mother had made, and at the time we thought we were cleaner than a hospital operating room. Looking back, we were a hot country mess in polyester suits with huge lapels and wide-legged pants. D and I wore egg-yellow suits, while Darron and his brother wore light blue. It was his mother’s idea that we wear different colors, because she felt like it would make us stand out.

But we turned it out with our fancy dance steps and harmonizing, D on one end and me on the other, stealing glances at each other as we worked up a sweat. D had started this little game of seeing who could wink at each other the most without anyone seeing us. It was a game he always won, because just one of his sexy winks was all that it took to knock me off my game.

After the show, four contestants from the Miss Black America pageant, which was also going on, came to our dressing room for pictures and autographs. Three of them left. One, Miss Nevada, a leggy young lady with an impressive head of hair, took to D and didn’t seem like she was ever going to leave. D did his thing, flirting with her and still winking at me whenever he got the chance. Just when I was certain she had convinced him to go back to her hotel room on my birthday, fate intervened.

There was a knock on the door and in walked Mr. Charles with skintight black pants and a white sweater hanging from his back. There was a well-dressed black man with him who didn’t seem like he was on Mr. Charles’s program.

“Boys, this is Terry Butler and he’s the former manager for the O’Jays, and he wants to talk to you about a record deal.”

“What?” Barron asked. “This is what we’ve been waiting for!”

The four of us hugged each other as the beauty queen looked on. D and I shared a hug, and he whispered, “Stick with me, boy, and I’ll take you places.”

A few minutes later I heard Mr. Charles say, “Honey, we got some business to take care of. You don’t have to go home, but you got to leave here.”

She grabbed her purse and stormed out of the dressing room.

D didn’t even notice.

Two weeks later, we signed a three-record deal with legendary Motown Records, and very soon after we were in the recording studio singing our lungs out. We signed with Mr. Butler’s management company, which gave us each a ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus. Barron and Darron bought matching silver Datsun 280-Z’s. I wanted a Mustang, but D convinced me to save my money because he wanted us to invest in real estate. I hoped he meant a town house or even a house with a pool in Memphis or Atlanta. I was a little surprised when D bought a motorcycle, but even more shocked when I found a helmet for me sitting on the bed in my hotel room.

The next day, after leaving the studio, D took me on a ride down a dusty country road that ended with the two of us throwing rocks into the Mississippi River as a shimmering moon glowed down.

When we got back to the hotel, I felt dusty from the ride. I took a shower while D ordered room service. When I stepped out of the shower, there stood D. He slowly toweled my body dry and touched me in places I didn’t know could be touched by another man. A sudden burst of warmth wrapped around my body.

He whispered, “I think it’s time. You’re legal now.”

In his own nakedness, D looked good, smelled better, and felt best. I found myself falling into him helplessly, not trying to stop myself. D made love to me with a certain caution, as if I were fragile and might break. We made love for hours, and then we slept holding each other like we were protecting each other from the outside world.

When I woke up, I thought that if I had become a man with Rochelle, what was I now?

“Do you think we will always feel like this?” I asked.

“Why not? Just a long as we keep it to ourselves,” D said.

It had been almost two years since I’d met D and my life was changed. I was happy, and he loved me in a way that I never could have dreamed possible.

“What do you think would happen if someone found out?”

“Don’t even think about shit like that. Besides, we’re too smart to get caught,” D said. His voice was masculine and musical, exuding the strength I so admired in him. It was like he had the world in the palm of his hands and I was the center.

The next day moved fast and smoothly. We practiced, met with potential publicists, and had fittings. I was just going through the motions, because all I could do was think of D and the previous evening.

It was late, 2
A.M
. We’d finished a show around midnight and signed autographs until a little after one. When Barron and Darron asked if we wanted to go get something to eat at the IHOP, D told them he had a late date with a groupie, and I said I was tired.

We used those excuses often, and would then go to our separate hotel rooms and wait until we were certain everybody in the group or working with the tour was sound asleep. Then we would get together, meeting in one of our rooms, and talk (and do other things) until just before sunrise.

On this particular night, we sat on the concrete balcony of a downtown Detroit hotel watching the night do absolutely nothing as we ate thick deli sandwiches and drank ginger ale.

When D finished his sandwich, he lay back against the brick wall, his hands locked over his chest.

“When I was growing up in Atlanta, watching my mother work two jobs to keep food on the table, I never thought my life could be this good. I mean, fancy hotels, nice clothes, money in the bank,” D said as if he were remembering his past.

“You didn’t know your voice could make you successful?”

D shrugged. “There were a lot of dudes who could sing on my block. But most of them ended up singing in the joint.”

“The joint?” I quizzed.

“Yeah, you know, the state pen.”

“Oh.”

“So in a lot of ways it was my destiny to move to Greenwood and meet you,” he said as he gave me an engagingly boyish smile.

Whenever he looked at me that way, I fell in love again. “You make me very happy,” I said softly.

“Not as happy as I am, my special friend. Not nearly as happy as me,” he said as he gently touched my face.

I shuddered at his touch, and at that moment I hoped we would always be this way.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I
think you’re ready, Celia. You’ve done a great job,” I said after Celia finished showing me the PowerPoint presentation she had prepared for Wal-Mart.

“I really worked hard on this, and I’m so glad you like it.” Celia nodded gratefully toward me.

“Girl, you’re smarter than a whip when you ain’t trying to find a no-’count man,” Ms. Gladys said as she left my office. I had invited her to view the presentation to get Celia ready for being in front of more than just me.

“Thank you, Ms. Gladys,” Celia said as Ms. Gladys left my office.

“You want to go have a drink to celebrate?” I asked.

“I wish I could, but I got something I need to handle,” Celia said mournfully.

“Is everything all right?”

“It will be. My mother is insisting that I take out a restraining order on Marvin.”

“Is he still bothering you?” I asked, wondering why she didn’t get the restraining order when I suggested it.

“I just keep getting phone calls late at night and early in the morning,” Celia said.

“What does he say?” I asked. My mind wandered back to the strange call I’d received.

“Nothing.”

“I agree with your mother. You should be proactive,” I said. “Would you like me to go down to the police station with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. I’m going to get it done and then go home and get packed for my trip to Bentonville. I’ll be styling with all the outfits Skylar picked out for me. Did I tell you he was even able to get a jewelry store to loan me real pearls to wear?”

“No, but that’s cool,” I said, realizing Celia didn’t want to talk about Marvin and his threats. She was a tough girl, but I hoped she wasn’t taking this fool lightly.

I spent the rest of the day looking up numbers for local producers. I wished that someone had taped my performance on Sunday, but I realized that even if I’d had a tape, I was still going to find myself in a producer’s office, standing in front of a desk, singing a cappella like I was auditioning for
American Idol
.

I then began to imagine what a customer like Wal-Mart would do for my business and my bank account. I might even be able to hire some smart MBA person to run the day-to-day business so I would have more time for my music.

Just as I was getting ready to go home, a sudden storm washed over the evening sky. I watched the rain pour from the heavens and decided to stay in my office a little longer and answer my e-mails.

I scrolled through my in-box. There were a couple of e-mails asking how to order my cards and a few pictures of guys who obviously had liars in their life who told them they were good-looking enough to be models.

There was an e-mail from the Traveling Grands with suggested flight times from Jackson, Mississippi, to Atlanta, and a message telling me to call them so that we could talk about what song I should sing at the revival.

The last e-mail was from Vincent, with a short note thanking me again for listening to him and advising me to check out the attached link. I put the mouse on the blue line and, a few seconds later, I was face-to-screen with my past.

There he was, staring at me. Damien Lee Upchurch. But he was not alone in the photo; sitting next to him was a beautiful woman identified as Grayson Upchurch, and each had a child in their lap. Damien held a little girl with too many ribbons and bows on her tiny head, and his wife was holding a little boy who obviously had been visited recently by the tooth fairy.

As I read about Bishop Damien Upchurch—who was still unforgivably handsome and looked like he was still just in his twenties—and his Restore Ministries, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, anxiety clenched my stomach. It felt like Damien was in my office sitting across from me, and I could smell the musky citrus fragrance he’d favored in his youth.

I continued to read that the mission of Restore was to bring moral values back to the family and to take the battle against gay marriage to the desk of the President of the United States. There was a link to sign an amendment against same-sex marriage in Colorado, and a place to make contributions to Restore Ministries and to Damien’s campaign for the Senate.

I learned from the site that his wife of over ten years was the former Grayson Cunningham, the daughter of the late Theodore Cunningham, the first black oil millionaire in Colorado. Cunningham had served as the state chairman of the Republican National Committee and was a golf partner of the first President Bush. On the Web site, there was a picture of Grayson and her father when she was presented as the first African American debutante at the Denver Country Club just before she entered Harvard. It stated that she had transferred to the University of Miami after her freshman year. How odd it was, I thought, for someone to leave Harvard to transfer to Miami.

I scrolled through the Web site, and memories that were forever tangled in my mind were now front and center. I noticed there was no mention of Damien’s humble beginnings in Atlanta or my hometown of Greenwood, Mississippi, where he and his siblings had lived in a section of town known as GP, for government property. His mother, Merlene, had been a cook at the Crystal Grill, a local restaurant where black people could only order and pick up food, not eat inside, even in the late 1970s.

Of course, there was no mention of Reunion and how we had a No. 1 R & B hit and a multiplatinum album. And since Damien was now trying to instill moral values into people in his new community, there was certainly no mention of me and the time D sat across from me in a booth at the IHOP in Kansas City after a show, sipping chocolate milk shakes and whispering the words that I’d never forgotten: “You are the first person in my life I feel like I can love forever.”