So You Call Yourself a Man (24 page)

“Hey, Charlene, you ready to get started?”

My good friend and confidante, Alison Williams, smiled as she walked into my hospital room. I tried to smile back when she kissed my forehead, but the abdominal pains I was experiencing wouldn't allow it. So, I lay there in my bed, grappling through the pain as I watched her sit in the chair next to my bed and pull out a notebook and pen. I pressed the button that controlled the morphine drip in my arm, and Alison waited patiently for my pain reliever to kick in. Six months ago, I refused to use any type of pain medication, but now I understood why the Lord invented addictive drugs like morphine and Demerol. Without them, I probably would have died from the pain of my cancer weeks ago. As it was now, I was pushing the damn drip button every fifteen minutes and I was on the highest dose there was, which meant I only had a few weeks left to live.

I wasn't afraid of dying, though. I'd lived a good life, married a wonderful man, Bishop T.K. Wilson, raised two fantastic children, and had the honor of being the first lady of absolutely the best church in Queens, New York. If the Lord was ready to call me home, although I considered myself still pretty young, I was ready to go. The only thing I was afraid of was what would happen to my family—more importantly, my husband, T.K., after I was gone. So, I was making preparations to make sure my man was taken care of from the grave.

You see, as good and honorable a man of God as T.K. was, he was still just a man with desires and needs; and men, no matter how bright they may appear to be, are very naive when it comes to women,
especially
slick-ass church women. I could see it now. Fifteen minutes after they put my body in the ground, those church heifers would be in my house trying to figure out the best way to redecorate my shit out. Say what you might about my choice of words, but I'd seen these so-called church women in action too many times in the past.

Last year when Sister Betty Jean White passed away, within six months her worst enemy, Jeannette Wilcox, had weaseled her way into that woman's house and was sleeping with her husband. A few months after that they were married, and if you walk into that house today, there's not one memory that Sister Betty even lived there. So, I could envision T.K. in his moment of grief and loneliness letting somebody manipulate him into doing just about anything she wanted, and I was not about to allow that. That's why, with the help of Alison and possibly my daughter Donna, I was making plans to stop her and any other threats to my family.

I hope you don't get me wrong. I wasn't trying to stop my husband from moving on with his life after I was gone. On the contrary, I wanted him to find someone to spend the rest of his days with and be happy. I just wanted to make sure that whoever the woman was, she had his best interests at heart and wasn't just some ambitious, gold-digging floozy disguised in a church hat and a flowered dress.

I felt the pain medication finally kick in, and Alison helped me as I struggled to sit up. She placed a pillow behind my head then sat back in her seat to take notes as I began to dictate the fourth of seven letters to be given out after my death. The first one was to T.K.; the next two were to my son, Dante, and daughter, Donna. The final four letters, which we would write this day, were to the four women I thought were possible candidates to one day replace me as T.K.'s wife and become the first lady of First Jamaica Ministries.

I started my dictation with a letter for T.K.'s first love, Marlene, the mother of his illegitimate daughter, Tanisha. I never really told anyone this, but I liked Marlene. She had spunk, and from what I heard, a loyalty to T.K. that almost rivaled mine. I must admit, though, that I liked her more when she was living in D.C. with her daughter and my son, who, believe it or not, were married. But that was before I was diagnosed with cancer, when I made it a point to keep any women that might interest T.K. as far away as possible. Now I was happy to hear that she had recently moved back to Queens and had even shown up at a few church services. She, unlike any of the other candidates, had a connection to my family, which made her a very favorable competitor in the race for T.K.'s heart. Her only flaw was that she was a recovering drug abuser…but then again, so was my husband.

The next letter was to be written to Ms. Monique Johnson, the first lady of plastic surgery and implants. I'm sorry, but there was no way a forty-year-old woman with two kids could have a body like hers without something going south. Not only was her body fake, but so was her personality. I'd never met a phonier woman in my entire life. She was always smiling in my face and grinning at my man. She knew she wanted him. Rumor has it that she'd had relationships with at least two high-profile members of the church, both of them married. In fact, when Monique was around with her flirtatious self, every wife in the congregation had her man on lockdown. Like I explained earlier, there was no doubt in my mind that Monique had her sights set on T.K. Some of my girlfriends from the church confirmed that her overtures toward him had become even bolder since I'd become hospitalized. I was sure T.K. hadn't even given the woman a second thought with me being sick and all, but a question still remained: Would he be strong willed enough to stay away from her after my death?

After we wrote Monique's letter, the pain was starting to come back, but I fought through it as we started on Savannah Dickens's letter. Savannah was the church's new choir soloist. She was a quiet, attractive woman in her midthirties who kept to herself. I didn't know much about her because she was new to the church and the community, but I will admit I wasn't much for quiet folks because they were usually hiding something. She was, however, the niece of Trustee Joe Dickens, one of the more prominent older members of our church. Joe was looking to become the chairman of the Board of Trustees. I was sure that after my death he would be trying his best to push T.K. and Savannah together in an effort to consolidate power. It was a move I wasn't against, because it would probably benefit T.K. in the long run. What I didn't like was the fact that she was only thirty-five years old. I wasn't objecting to her age so much; she was only ten years younger than T.K. What I was worried about was the fact that she was thirty-five and didn't have any children. A woman under forty who hadn't had a child probably wanted kids of her own, and that was out. The last thing T.K. needed after raising Dante and Donna and putting them through college was another baby to support.

Right before we finished the sixth letter, the pain hit me hard and I had to push the drip. I lay back down and Alison insisted that we'd done enough for the day. God willing, we'd finish the seventh and final letter the next day. It was to my good friend, Sister Wilma Mae Jenkins, one of the church's Holy Rollers. Although I'm not going to reveal its content, I can assure you that it would shake up a whole lot of people. Six months from now, I'd be dead, but I could guarantee my presence would still be felt.

Can you dictate the lives of your family, friends and enemies from the grave? Those were the thoughts I contemplated as I waited for the new dose of pain medication to take effect. I could picture the scenario now: The first lady of First Jamaica Ministries is dead. Who will win the bishop's heart and become the next first lady? Time would only tell.