One Prayer Away (6 page)

F
ive years ago, when any of Virtue's sessions with Beverly came to an end, she would leave the battered women's center feeling like she'd made another stride, overcome another obstacle, defeated another demon. But following today's meeting she felt the onset of depression. Virtue had heard every word that Beverly had said, and she certainly could see how she'd arrived at all of her conclusions; but Virtue knew herself, and regardless of her inability to answer at the time, she knew that she had no love in her heart for the man who had stomped on it and broken it into a thousand unidentifiable pieces.

“No, I don't love him,” she said aloud. She could kick herself for not being able to verbalize it sooner.

Having completed her shampoo and shower, Virtue stepped from the stall and dried herself. Years of exercising and dancing combined with her selective eating resulted in the well-toned body that was reflected in the mirror. Virtue had never fought the battles of the bulge that Beverly had told her about, but, in turn, Beverly had never had Virtue's
physical and emotional battles. In her mind, Virtue reasoned that she'd make the swap any day.

With her hair and her body wrapped in matching thick, rose-colored towels, she stepped from her bathroom and sat on the edge of her bed. Virtue loved her two-bedroom townhouse. She'd purchased it once she finished her year-long therapy and settled into her current job as the leader of the praise dance team at Temple of Jerusalem. There, she trained dancers and taught routines that were performed every Sunday morning during praise and worship services. The emotional, Spirit-filled moves of her students added much depth to the services, and the church paid her well for what her expertise brought to the growing congregation. It was the most fulfilling job that she'd ever had.

Virtue reached in the bottom drawer of her nightstand and pulled out the jewelry box that she kept buried beneath her college yearbook and other collectible papers that she rarely ever reviewed. She hadn't looked inside the box in more than a year. It was such a beautiful ring. From the angle where she sat, the overhead light reflected off the half-carat solitaire and the chips of diamonds that were set in the matching band. It had been a symbol of eternal love and devotion that she'd gladly accepted more than nine years ago. If she and Mitchell had remained married, they would be celebrating their tenth anniversary this Christmas.

 

Virtue remembered the first day she had met Mitchell. It was just after Valentine's Day, and she had made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Holland to Detroit to spend the weekend at home to help her mom as she recuperated from an injury to her arm. While out shopping together the day before she was to drive back to the campus, Virtue and her mother made a stop by Motown Market on West Grand Boulevard to pick up a few items for her to take back and stock in the refrigerator in her dorm room. Mitchell's and her meeting almost seemed like destiny.
Virtue and her mom had already completed their shopping and were loading the items in the car when Virtue decided she wanted to pick up a few more cans of the mandarin oranges that were on sale. That quick run brought her together with the man she'd marry just ten months later.

She'd been in her second year at her four-year liberal arts college, and Mitchell was only a few weeks away from graduation at the two-year, historically Black college that he attended. Mitchell's grandparents died just months after she'd married him, but she had been accepted with open arms into the Andrews family. Her heart went out to him, but nothing she did seemed to be able to console his grief. In the months that had followed, Mitchell's sadness and the hurt from the abandonment of his surviving relatives turned into bitterness and anger. He became short-tempered, unapproachable, and untrustworthy.

Months had passed before Virtue came to realize that he had a drinking problem. He stopped going to work regularly, and the monies that they had been saving to take their delayed honeymoon began mysteriously disappearing from their joint savings account. The first time she'd approached Mitchell about her concerns was the first time he hit her. Virtue remembered being stunned into a speechless oblivion. Her first consideration was to run to her parents' house, but she knew that with her father's temperament, going to them would only exacerbate the situation. Instead, she filled her car with gas and spent the next several hours circling the city. When she was too tired and sleepy to drive any longer, she returned home and was elated that her husband had literally drunk himself to sleep. Virtue justified his lashing out and even blamed herself for provoking it, citing her knowledge that he was already feeling bad enough with his family situation. She also convinced herself that Mitchell's drinking was just a temporary habit brought on by grief.

Instead of getting better, Mitchell's drinking had
worsened; and before long, it had cost him his gainful employment. The tighter their finances got, the more irritable Mitchell became. On the day that his car was repossessed, he trashed the bathroom while Virtue was at work. When she got home, she saw opened bottles of medication strewn across the floor, and she panicked. Mitchell lay motionless on the living room sofa. Her first fear was that he'd overdosed. Waking him turned out to be a mistake that would eternally change both their lives.

As it turned out, he hadn't overdosed or even taken any medicine at all. He was just intoxicated, as had become his way of life. Mitchell awakened angry that Virtue had dared to disturb his drunken afternoon slumber. He began yelling about her being a poor excuse for a wife. There was no dinner on the table, he'd said; the house was a mess, and he'd had to fish underwear from the dirty-clothes hamper because there were no clean ones in his drawers.

She should have just continued to ignore him. Instead, Virtue opened her mouth to defend herself and earned herself a wallop across the face that sent her tumbling. Getting up from the spill was a struggle. Her vision was momentarily blurred, her head spun, and when she touched the sore spot, blood appeared on her hands. It was a life that she had said she'd never live, and if she stayed another day, Virtue knew she'd be sentencing herself to years of this kind of mistreatment. Love made her want to stay, but as Mitchell continued ranting and sputtering foul words at her, it was fear that had led her through the front door with only her purse and the clothes on her back.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she sat on the side of the bed staring at the ring she'd removed from her finger on the day she filed for divorce from her abuser. Maybe she should have seen the possibility, but Virtue had been totally blindsided. No one could have ever told her that her marriage would have turned out the way it had. When she'd met Mitchell in the canned goods aisle at Motown
Market, it'd felt like love at first sight. He was smart, kind, handsome, and destined for success. Mitchell Andrews was everything she wanted in a mate. Early in their relationship, Virtue told her mother that a love like she'd found with Mitchell only came once in a lifetime. How could she have been so wrong? Had her upbringing been so sheltered that it left her ill prepared for the real world? Sometimes Virtue didn't know who it was she was angriest at: Mitchell, for his pretentious behavior that led had her to believe that he was such a wonderful individual, or herself, for being a woman who could be so easily deceived.

Virtue whisked away another tear. Mitchell had been her first everything. He had been her first real boyfriend. Sure, there had been crushes and interests before him, but none of them personified true love. By every definition, Mitchell was
the one.
Virtue had had no real spiritual foundation when they began dating, but with the day of their marriage set in the not-so-distant future, Mitchell agreed to wait. It wasn't easy for either one of them. Waiting tested their commitments and their wills to the nth degree, but they succeeded. Knowing that he wasn't accustomed to waiting made his willingness to do so mean even more to Virtue. Mitchell hadn't just waited for her; he had waited
with
her.

Virtue put the ring away and stretched across the bed. For a moment, she stared at the light fixture that was attached to the ceiling of her dancer-themed bedroom. The border that lined her bedroom walls displayed the repeated image of a dancer holding a long ribbon in her hand as she twirled in her performance garb. The pink and green border not only showed the love Virtue had for her vocation, but the pride she had in her chosen sorority as well. She squeezed her eyelids together and tried to flush out the thoughts of her failed marriage and the circumstances surrounding it. As much as she tried, she found little success. Virtue hadn't thought this deeply about Mitchell in years.
If she could rewrite the recent past, she'd certainly delete the moment that she had made the last-minute decision to turn into the lot of the restaurant in Dallas.

Why didn't you just go for Chinese?
she asked herself while turning over and tightening the towel around her body.

Now that the relationship was over and the marriage was dissolved, Virtue was sure that her former husband had filed her name right along with all of the other women he'd conquered before and after her. The thought of it was sickening. Virtue rarely got to bed before eleven o'clock at night, but since she couldn't rid herself of the thoughts of her past life, she welcomed the heavy eyelids that threatened to mark this evening's bedtime at nine thirty. She reasoned that she'd sleep the night away. Tomorrow was Saturday, and she'd be sure to keep her weekend busy. It was time to shake herself of the three weeks of anguish that seeing Mitchell had brought on. There was no way she could go through this for another week. A month of Sundays would not pass and find her still fighting this seven-year-old battle. She just wouldn't allow it.

Six

C
onfessing the details of the thirty-two-month marriage he'd been keeping secret from even those closest to him had granted Mitchell a sense of relief, but it also fueled his desire to find his former wife and beg her forgiveness for all the hurt and pain that he'd caused her. It was way too late to save their marriage, but for his own peace of mind Mitchell needed to hear her say that she'd forgiven him. Or maybe he just needed to feel a sense of detachment from the dastardly act that he was sure she identified him by. Maybe he needed her to forgive him before he could fully forgive himself. Whichever was the case, Mitchell was determined to own up to his stupidity and beg her pardon. From the way Virtue had cringed in fear at the sight of him and dashed away in apparent panic, it was clear that the turmoil he'd created was still fresh in her memory. The years (even the drunken ones) hadn't been enough to erase it from his mind either.

Arriving late, Mitchell parked his new Toyota Tundra in the lot of Living Word Cathedral. He had overslept
after failing to set his alarm before he dozed off the night before. The usher who stepped aside so Mitchell could enter the sanctuary looked at him with scolding in her eyes. Mitchell almost laughed. It wasn't as if she wasn't accustomed to his late arrival. The reward for his tardiness was always the same. Like most Sundays, Mitchell would have to settle for an empty space near the back of the church; and if he wanted to get a good view of his pastor, he'd have to look up at the large-screen monitors that hung from the ceiling.

The sermon had just begun as Mitchell entered the sanctuary. Living Word Cathedral was the meeting place of choice for roughly three thousand worshipers each Sunday morning; and Lionel Inman, in Mitchell's opinion, could stand up to any top-rated television preacher in the world. Still in his midforties, Rev. Inman possessed biblical wisdom that far exceeded his years. There were certainly more seasoned preachers in Dallas, but a more knowledgeable one would be difficult to find.

Growing up with his grandparents, Mitchell could count on one hand the number of times he'd gone to church, and every single one of them was for a funeral. Isaac and Kate Andrews had been two of the most kindhearted and giving people Mitchell had ever known, but spiritual they were not. Grandpa Isaac would have given the shirt off his back to another man in need, but if anyone ever had the misfortune of crossing him the wrong way, he could curse like a drunken sailor. When he ran out of bona fide swear words to use, he created bogus ones. They may not have been found in
Webster's Dictionary
, but if they were directed at anyone in particular, that person knew he'd just been cussed out.