Chapter Forty
“Sister Deborah, I was expecting you.” Pastor Margie stood at her front door, holding the screen open for Deborah to enter. She'd been standing in her living room picture window for the last few minutes. She'd been looking for headlights to pull up in her driveway. Just as soon as she saw them, she turned off her alarm system and went and opened the door.
Mother Doreen had called her a few minutes ago, giving her the heads-up on what had just gone down at Deborah's house. After apologizing for the slip of her tongue, Pastor Margie told Mother Doreen it was okay, the two prayed; then Pastor Margie waited. It was safe to say that the wait was indeed over.
“Let me guess; your tag-team partner called and gave you a heads-up?” Deborah snapped. “Figures.”
“I know you are upset,” Pastor Margie said to Deborah as she brushed by her pastor, “but I'm willing to talk about the matter with youâlike adults. Like Christian adults.”
Deborah didn't respond to Pastor Margie's statement. She just strutted in as if she would have whether Pastor Margie had invited her in or not. She headed over to the couch and sat down.
“If you don't mind, can we talk in my office?”
Deborah stood and followed her pastor to the back of her house, where the home office was. Pastor sat behind her desk and went to signal for Deborah to sit in the chair on opposite side, but Deborah had already taken the liberty of sitting down.
“Let me just start by saying that, yes, I am the one who called Franklin County Children Services on you,” Pastor Margie admitted. “And I'm sorry. I'm not sorry that I called them, but I am sorry that I didn't talk to you first.”
“Pastor, I'm so disappointed in you. How could you bring that agency into my business based on something Helen told you? And for the record, that wasn't a bruise on my son's arm. It was some kind of rash. I have a doctor's statement to prove it.”
“I don't know anything about a bruise on your son's arm. Besides, I would never involve FCCS based on hearsay. I called them after what I witnessed, or should I say after what I heard.” She shook her head. “Deborah, listening to you on that phone had me scared to death. The way you were going off, I didn't know what you were going to do next. I almost called the police and was going to have them come over to your house.”
“What are you talking about, Pastor?” Deborah was clueless.
“That day you and I were on the phone. We were talking about that single shoe dinner or whatever it is you were talking to me about having for the singles ministry.”
Deborah recalled the conversation just fine. But what she didn't recall was something that took place during that phone call that would prompt her pastor to report her to Children Services. “I remember,” Deborah told her pastor.
“Well, after we got finished talking and said our goodbyes, you must have thought you'd hung up the phone, but you hadn't. I put the phone on speaker trying to get back to the recording function on the phone. The next thing I know I hear this woman's voice roaring through the phone. I hear cursing, yelling, screaming . . .” Pastor paused and reflected. “It was something about a messed-up manuscript. I'm not sure, but I just heard this child crying.” She closed her eyes to hide the emotion behind them. Once she'd gathered her composure, she continued. “It didn't take me long to realize that it was you. I can't tell you how shocked I was. But even more so, I was so scared. Sister Deborah, you sounded so angryâso full of rage. I didn't know what you were going to do. I didn't know what I should do.”
Deborah couldn't recall every single thing she'd said that day her son had messed up the manuscript she'd been editing. She did know that it wasn't anything she would have wanted her pastor to hear. But even so, it wasn't anything that deemed her being reported to the system. “Well, you shouldn't have called Children Services, that's for sure. And on top of that you exaggerated and told them I was abusing my son.”
“But it wasn't a lie. You were abusing him.”
“I never laid a hand on my child,” Deborah shot.
“Oh but how you tore him to pieces with your words. You said the word âstupid' more times than I could count.”
“Sure, I might have said the word âstupid,' but I never outright called my son stupid,” Deborah reasoned.
“Whether you were calling your child stupid or you were referring to his actions as stupid, all his little mind hears is the word âstupid.' Do you get what I'm saying here, Deborah?” Pastor Margie asked. “Because I'm not going to sugarcoat this thing for you. What I witnessed through my ears was verbal abuse; verbal abuse that can ultimately have a very negative effect on your son.”
“My son!” Deborah pointed to her chest. “My son!” This time she pounded on it. She hated the fact that she was disrespecting her pastor with her loud tone, but she was pissed. This was personal. Her pastor had jeopardized the custody of her son. “I'm sorry, Pastor, but how I see it, how I raise my son has nothing to do with you.”
Pastor, as kindhearted and as sweet spirited as she was, was not one to be bullied. With conviction she said, “And how I see it, my nieces and nephews, cousins, whatever, have to grow up with your child. So if you've created this angry little monster, then it does affect me. Oh it affects me tremendously.” Pastor Margie rolled her eyes as flesh tried its best to take over. “And parents wonder why there is so much bullying going on these days. The kids are being bullied at home by their own parents. So what do these kids do? Mirror that same thing and come take it out on other people's kids.”
“Tsk,” Deborah said, brushing off Pastor Margie's comments. “You are being soooo dramatic right now, Pastor. I mean no disrespect, but the black and white cultures are just so totally different. You guys take things way out of proportion. Calling and tattling on somebody because they whooped their child in a Walmart parking lot. That's nonsense. And that's not abuse; it's called discipline.”
“I don't have anything to do with that incident. I didn't witness a woman physically abusing her childâor whooping a child at Walmart, as you refer to. And I didn't call it in. What I did witness, and, I repeat, through my own ears, was a woman verbally abusing her child. And that I did call in. Now what?” Pastor shot. She was tired of going back and forth with Deborah. In her heart, she had no regrets. What she heard on the phone made her cringe. She'd bet if Deborah had heard it, she'd cringe too. Then that's when something dawned on Pastor Margie. “Hold on a second,” she said to Deborah, then raced over to her cell phone.
“Forget it, Pastor. It's clear we will never see eye to eye on this thing.” Deborah stood and picked up her purse.
“No, please wait,” Pastor Margie insisted as she fiddled around with her cell phone. She pushed a couple of buttons, and then her recorded voice filled the atmosphere:
“In the Kings James version the scripture saysâ”
Pastor Margie stopped the recording. “Oh, wait a minute. I'm sorry. That's not far enough.” She fiddled around with the phone again, and then it was Deborah's voice that filled the atmosphere:
“Oh, me too, Pastor, and I'm sorry I interrupted you.”
“No problem. God bless you, woman of God, and have a wonderful week.”
“Will do, Pastor. Bye-bye.”
It took a moment to register, but then Deborah realized what she was listening to:
“Do you know what you've done? Why can't you just sit your simple self down somewhere? Why you always messing with stuff you little . . .”
Deborah grabbed her stomach as if someone had just shot her a lethal blow. Her jaw dropped. Her throat was empty as she stared down at the phone. She gasped for air as the vulgarities she heard suffocated the room. They were vulgarities being directed toward a child. Her child. She looked up at her pastor. “You, you recorded it?”
“Not on purpose,” Pastor Margie replied. “Remember when I mentioned that I had been recording some Bible Study notes when you called? Well, I hadn't stopped the recording.” Pastor Margie looked down at the cell phone. “I guess the both of us need to learn how to work our cell phones a little better, huh?”
Deborah didn't reply, she just stared back down at the phone and listened to her go on and on and on, fussing and cussing and yelling and screaming and hollering. But then something else seemed to drown out her voice. It was her son, crying. His little wail. He just wouldn't stop crying. And she wouldn't stop her rampage. Eventually Deborah covered her eyes and fell down into the chair.
Pastor Margie raced over to attend to her.
“Turn it off, Pastor, please,” Deborah pleaded. “I can't listen to anymore.”
“I'm sorry, Sister Deborah, but I can't turn it off. I think you need to hear it. I think you need to hear yourselfâhear what you sound like. You need to hear what your child hears.”
Deborah just began to cry out and shake her head as if she was being tortured. By the time the recording ended, Deborah had no idea how much time had passed. She was drained. She was disgusted. She was humiliated. She was embarrassed. She was . . . she was sorry.
“I'm so sorry, baby,” Deborah cried as she rocked back and forth.
Pastor Margie just held her, knowing that the apology was directed toward Deborah's son.
“Baby, Mommy is so sorry. She'll never do it again. She'll never talk to you, treat you, that way again. Oh, God, I'm so sorry.” She sobbed uncontrollably in her pastor's arms. After a while, she cut off the waterworks almost instinctively, looked up at her Pastor, and said, “I need help. I've got some deep-rooted stuff, some generational curse that I need to work through. I'm just so bitter and angry that it's destroying me. I'm like a bad weed and nothing good can survive around me for long. I need help, Pastor.”
“Oh, Deborah, honey.” Pastor kissed her on the forehead. ”I knew there was something going on with you. That day back at my office when I had that talk with you and Sister Helen,” Pastor recalled, “I tried to get you to be real with me, but you insisted everything was just fine with you. I should have listened to my gut instincts and pressed harder.”
“No, Pastor, you did all you could,” Deborah said, thinking back to that day when Pastor had seen right through Deborah's forgiving Helen and Helen forgiving her, and then each of them riding off into the sunset on their merry way. Deborah remembered Pastor telling her that she could confide in her if there were some deeper issues going in her life, other than her issues with Helen. Deborah had assured Pastor all was well. So much had been wrong.
“No, I didn't do all that I could, but I'm going to now.” She looked Deborah in the eyes. “I'll be happy to counsel you, Deborah, but the first thingâ”
“No, Pastor Margie; I need another kind of help. From a doctor. Yes, I'm going to need your spiritual guidance through all of this as well, but I need clinical help.” Deborah shook her head and began crying again. “Something's wrong with me. This losing it and going off, it's like an addiction. It's something I feel like I have no control over and can't stop. It's this pull that I can't explain.”
Pastor Margie gave Deborah a sideways glance. “And you said my people were overdramatic,” she joked, and then squeezed Deborah close to her.
“I know, Pastor, and I'm sorry. It's just that black women are expected to be so strongâto do so much. But it's killing us. Black women are losing their minds. They are killing themselves and their children. I honestly used to think it was a white thing. âBlack people don't hurt themselves or their children,'” Deborah mocked. “But women, black women, are dying. We are killing ourselvesâmentally, physically, spiritually, and literallyâand expectations are killing us.”
Pastor Margie pondered Deborah's words. No, she couldn't relate to the black woman's plight specifically. But she could relate to the plight of women, period. And she agreed that when it came to women trying to make it in the world, it wasn't a black or white thing. “I hear you, Sister Deborah, and I know it's hard. But please know that I'm here to help you any way I know how. I'll talk to Children Services. I'll be there for you. As your pastor and your friend, I want to see you delivered, healed, and set free. And I want you to walk in that deliverance and healing. Claim it. Own it. Keep it. It's yours, Sister Deborah. If you want it bad enough, it's yours.”
“I do want it, Pastor. I do. After hearing myself on that phone . . .” Deborah choked. “Thank you, Pastor.”
“For what?” Pastor Margie asked.
“For being loyal to God and not me. For being concerned about my son's wellbeing and not how I would feel. For calling Children Services. If you hadn't, no telling how bad things might have gotten. Children Services being called on me could have been the one thing that really pushed me over the edge. And the devil knew that, too. But what the devil meant for evil . . .”