The Perfect Christian (12 page)
Read The Perfect Christian Online
Authors: E. N. Joy
Chapter Twenty-five
“Willie, oh God, Willie?” Doreen cried just as soon as the guard walked her out to the visiting room where Willie was waiting on her. “A hundred thousand dollars? That judge set my bail at a hundred thousand dollars.” Doreen hadn't even sat down yet when she started going on about the high bail the judge had set. “Can you believe that? I'm never going to get out of here. Oh, God, Willie.” Doreen buried her face in her hands and bawled.
At first Willie just stared at his wife. He didn't really know what to say. As he watched Doreen weep he searched for some comforting words. “Come on now, Reenie, you know I could never stand to see you cry. Don't do that now. Everything is going to turn out just fine. I done hired that law firm to take care of you. Everything is going to be all right. You'll see.”
Wiping her eyes and calming down, Doreen looked up at her husband. His words, although try if he might to make them tender and sincere, weren't. Willie was just going through the motions, and Doreen knew it. He was just saying what he thought a husband should say. The look in his eyes didn't match his demeanor. He sat in the chair like the strong, supportive husband, but his eyes were full of hurt. They were full of pain. It wasn't worry and heartache that he should have felt for his wife. No, he was feeling something else for somebody else. Doreen could discern it.
“Little girl, you've got the gift of discernment,” her father would always say to her. “God done blessed you to just get a feeling about people, places, and things. To just be able to tell things by strong feelings.”
That indeed was true. Doreen could sometimes just tell things weren't right. That's why she'd popped up out of Bible Study that day and went to the juke joint. That's how she was able to catch that floozy in Willie's lap. She had a feeling. That same feeling that sent her to the juke joint was the same feeling she ignored in her gut when she knew she should have walked away from that motel room.
“That gift of discernment is special,” her father had continued to say. “Make sure you tune into it real good. It can help keep you out of trouble. It can help keep you away from the wrong people, places, and things.”
If only Doreen had followed her father's advice. Speaking of her father, Doreen asked Willie, “My daddy and my mamaâdid you call them? Do they know?”
“Naw, I, uh, figured I'd let you be the one to do that. I mean, I didn't even know if you wanted them to know. I guess I was figuring you'd just do like some of the folks do back at home when they get out of line and Pops has to call the man on them. They usually just spend a night or a weekend in jail and that is that.” Willie put his head down. “But it ain't looking like that is gonna be the case.”
Once again, Doreen observed how Willie appeared to be more broken in spirit than she was.
“So do you want me to call your folks?” Willie lifted his head.
“For God's sake, no!” Doreen was quick to say. “No, don't do that. There is no way they can find out about this. It would destroy them and possibly ruin their ministry.” Doreen thought for a moment. “. . . and my little sisters . . .” her eyes filled with tears. “My little sisters can never ever know their big sister done gone and got herself thrown in jail.”
Willie pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and slid it to Doreen. He didn't even look up at her when he did.
Feeling a coldness coming from Willie, Doreen picked up the handkerchief while looking at him in a peculiar way. She wiped her tears away. “I tried to call you while I've been in here. I never got an answer.”
Willie repositioned himself in his chair. “Yeah, well, I, uh, probably was out.”
“Oh,” was all Doreen saidâat first. “Where were you?” she asked on second thought.
Once again, Willie repositioned himself in his chair. “At the hospital.” His words were hardly audible, but Doreen had heard them. Still she wanted to make sure she'd heard Willie say what she thought he had.
“Where?”
This time he straightened himself up in the chair and spoke louder and more clearly. “I said I was at the hospital.” Now he was looking at Doreen. His eyes were almost daring her to ask why he'd been up at the hospital.
Never one who was big on dares, Doreen couldn't let this one slide. “At the hospital for what?” she chuckled nervously.
“I needed to be there with herâto see what was going on with her and the baby.”
“Oh, I see.” The fact that Willie had been sitting up at the hospital with his mistress stung a little bit, but Doreen played it off. “How is she doing?”
“Not good. She's all messed up in the mind.” Willie shook his head as if he was trying to shake away the tears that were forming in his eyes. “It was a boy. He was almost eight pounds. He was light as a feather too.” That last comment had brought a slight smile to Willie's face as if he was reminiscing on something nice.
Doreen did a double take. Was this the same Willie sitting in front of her getting all emotional over the loss of another woman's baby? The same Willie who had acted like he couldn't have cared less when the two of them had lost their own baby just months ago? Although Doreen had been thinking it, eventually she spoke it to Willie and waited on him to respond.
“This was different. This was a full-grown baby pretty much,” Willie reasoned. “He could have lived and functioned outside of this world if you hadn't of . . .” Willie's words trailed off. He sniffed and wiped a tear that hadn't made it as far as the corner of his left eye.
All Doreen could do was sit back in her chair feeling like the monster everybody probably thought she was. She felt like a monster because at this moment, she honestly couldn't have cared less about that woman and her baby. All she cared about was why her husband cared so much. With the right questions, she was hellbent on finding out.
Chapter Twenty-six
Before she spoke, Doreen sat and dissected the few words Willie had spoken to her thus far. She worded her questions carefully in her head before she spoke them. In the past, Willie had been able to lie at the drop of a dime and make it sound believable. It was as if he had mastered the art of lying. Well, today, Doreen was going to see to it that Willie met his match.
“You said the baby was as light as a feather,” Doreen started. Her next question normally would have been, “How do you know?” but that was too general. That left open far too many options for Willie to dig up a lie about. She needed to close up the margins, so instead, she asked, “Did you hold him?” There, all that required was a yes or no answer. There wasn't too much room for him to twitch and squirm on this one.
What tripped Doreen out was that Willie didn't even try to weasel his way around answering the question. He flat-out said, “Yes.” Then he had the nerve to add more. “The doctors said it was okay. I mean, the boy was gone and all, but he was still warm. Still fresh.” Willie paused for a minute, and then that smile that had appeared on his lips before was back. “He had the biggest hands I'd ever seen on such a little fella. He would have been a ballplayer for sure.” Willie had the proudest look and the proudest tone in his voice ever.
“So the mother was okay with letting you hold the boy, huh?” Doreen stated, then once again calculated her words before she spoke them. “How did the daddy feel about that? I mean, not too many men are gonna be in a good way about another man holding their child.” Doreen knew she should have stopped there, but the woman in her just pressed right on. “Especially under the circumstances. Most people would already be disgusted at the fact that you was running up inside another woman while she was with child.” Doreen expressed her own disgust with the look on her face. “I mean, really, Willie, of all the women here in West Virginia, you pick the unwed pregnant soprano girl from the choir. You couldn't have messed with somebody else?”
Maybe not at the moment did it make sense to Doreen, but the more she kept talking, the more sense she started to make of things. “I mean, is that why you dragged me all the way here to West Virginia, so that you could shack up with a pregnant woman? Is it, Willie ?” Finally Doreen had taken a breath long enough to let Willie answer. Once again, Willie didn't even try to square-dance around the situation or make up a lie.
Willie simply said, “Yes, Doreen. That's exactly why we needed to move here to West Virginia.” He lifted his eyes from the ground and directed them to Doreen. “I knew it would be next to impossible to be there for my child with me living all the way in Kentucky.” He'd said it. He'd just come right out and said it without Doreen even having to have poked and prodded him.
“Your . . . your child,” she muttered with trembling lips.
“Her cousin lives in Kentucky. She'd come up for a two-week visit. You was all into sitting up in church dang near every day of the week. When you was home, all you focused on was baking them pound cakes. So I just hung out with her. She headed on back to West Virginia. We kinda sorta kept in touch. She came back to visit a couple more timesâonce on my dime.”
Okay, Doreen had not asked for all this, and she surely wasn't prepared to hear it. But Willie continued anyway, and she listened.
“The next thing I know she calls me and tells me she's pregnant. I tried to talk her into . . .” Willie's words evaporated.
Doreen decided to finish his sentence for him, “. . . going to see the same doctor Agnes went to see?”
Willie's eyes shot up at Doreen. He couldn't believe she knew about that. There was no need in trying to lie about it now. “Yeah, that's what I tried to get her to do. She wouldn't hear of it, though. She insisted on keeping the baby and made it known how she intended for her child to have his daddy in his life too. She was gon' move to Kentucky, Doreen. We had to move here. It was easier that way.”
Doreen honestly couldn't believe what she was hearing. She was dumbfounded. “Now I see why you put up so much of a fight about us attending that church. You knew that was the church she attended.”
Willie didn't deny it.
“And the way you'd look up in the choir stands like you was filled with the joy of the Lord. Heck, all you was thinking about was being close to her and her baby.”
“My baby. He was my baby too. That baby you beat to death was mine too, Doreen. I know it hurts your soul to hear that, and I've never wanted to hurt you, but that baby she was carrying was mine. And I moved here from Kentucky to help take care of it the best I could.”
Doreen wanted to pretend like she was a little girl and throw her hands over her ears and block out Willie's words. But instead, she just sat there and took it. She took it like she'd taken all Willie's mess for years until she had finally exploded inside that motel room.
“I can't do this, God,” Doreen cried out. “It's too much. It's too much for me to be knowing.”
“I'm sorry, Doreen, but I had to tell you the truth. They was gon' tell it in court, so I knew you had to hear it from me first. I'm sorry.” For the first time Willie reached over and touched Doreen. He cupped one of her hands into his. “But I just want you to know I'm not gon' leave you. I'm gonna be here for you no matter what. I don't hold it against you what you did to my baby. I know I brought it all on myself by living a lie. But I promise you, when you get out of here, I'm going to be waiting for you. And I promise you one other thing. I'm going to be a better man.” By now, tears were streaming down Willie's face and his nose was running. “I'm going to be a better husband to you, baby. I know it shouldn't have taken all this, but at least I learned something from it. At least I learned from my mistakes. I'm hurting, baby. I feel like I done lost the two most important things in my life.” Willie gripped Doreen's hands. “I can't bring that baby back, but I still have you. And when you get out of here, you can give me another son. We can start freshâeven move again where nobody knows us for real this time.”
Willie had never been so emotional in his life, at least not that Doreen had ever witnessed. Although she managed to keep it together and hide her true pain, which she'd sort of mastered thanks to Willie and her many attempts to try to be the perfect wife and the perfect forgiving Christian, Doreen was hurting inside. She was hurting because of the lie Willie had lived. She was hurting because she was watching her husband suffer more from the loss of the baby he'd made with a mistress, rather than the one he'd made with his own wife. She was hurting because she'd done the unthinkable. She'd taken away a child's life. She was hurting because she didn't have to imagine, but she knew how that woman must be feeling as a result of her loss.
“Okay, Willie,” fell from between Doreen's lips. “I forgive you, and I pray you can forgive me for causing the death of now two of your babies.” Doreen broke down just hearing herself say those words. She pulled herself together so that she could finish saying what she had to say. “I want to get past this. We will get past this. I know the God I serve will bring us through this, and we can start over and live the life we were meant to live together as husband and wife. Okay?”
“Okay, baby. Okay,” Willie nodded.
“All right, it's time for Mrs. Tucker to return to her cage,” the guard said in a slick attempt to refer to Doreen as an animal. “I mean her cell.” She scooped Doreen up.
“I'm going to go talk to your attorney and see what he can tell me; see how much time you could be looking at,” Willie called out to Doreen. “But just remember what I said; no matter how much time it is, I'm going to be waiting when you get out. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Doreen cried as the guard pulled her off. “And I'm so sorry, Willie. I'm gonna pray for that baby's soul. And I'm going to lift the mother's name up too.” That's when Doreen realized she had no idea what the woman's name was. She knew she sang in the church choir and had spoken to her a time or two, but was never officially introduced by name. “What's her name?” Doreen asked right as the guard got her to the exit.
“Huh?” Willie called out.
“The woman's nameâthe baby's mother. What's her name?”
As Doreen was pulled from the room and out the door she heard Willie call out, “Lauren. Her name is Lauren Casinoff.”
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