The Sunday Only Christian (7 page)
Read The Sunday Only Christian Online
Authors: E. N. Joy
Chapter Twelve
“How's your steak?” Lynox asked Deborah.
Deborah was too busy off in la-la land. She had been operating under a spirit of rush for the last hour and just couldn't manage to reel herself back in, calm down, relax, and get it together. She had rushed to get her son cleaned up and changed. She had rushed to get herself cleaned up and changed. She'd rushed to clean up the mess off the floor. Rushing was bad enough alone, her heart rate increasing the faster she tried to go. But add panic on top of that, and it's a high blood pressure moment waiting to happen.
As the clock had ticked and Deborah continued to rush, she realized her mother hadn't arrived yet. She was obviously running a few minutes behind. That wouldn't have been so bad if Lynox hadn't been due to arrive in just a few minutes.
Initially Deborah had felt safe in only allowing a half-hour window in between the time she'd asked her mother to pick up her son and the time she'd told Lynox to pick her up for dinner. Thirty minutes was plenty of time for her mother to pack up her son and be long gone before Lynox ever even pulled up. But she never banked in a million years on her mother, who was always prompt, being late.
“Ma? Where are you?” Deborah had called and asked in a panic once she realized Lynoxâwho she learned not only liked to be on time, but earlyâwas due to arrive at her house in ten minutes.
“I'm sorry. I'm running a little late,” her mother apologized through the phone receiver. “Your Aunt Magnolia called me talking about nothing. But you know how hard it is to get that woman off the phone.” She laughed. Deborah didn't. She just sat there looking stoic, tapping a nervous foot.
“So are you en route?” Deborah asked, looking down at her watch.
“Oh, yes. I'm just around the corner. I was about to call you as a matter of fact.”
“Good!” Deborah exclaimed. Realizing she might have sounded overexcited to be getting rid of her son for the night, Deborah said more nonchalantly, “Because I know how you are about spending time with your grandson, so I don't want you to miss a minute.”
“Oh, don't worry. You let my baby know that Ganny Ban Banny will be there in a minute.”
“All right. Thanks, Mom.” Deborah exhaled. “Thank you so much.”
“Now you know you don't have to thank me. What kind of grandmother doesn't love spending time with her grandkids?”
“I don't know, Ma, but she's certainly not you. See you in a minute.” Deborah ended the call and smiled, feeling all warm inside for the love her mother had for her son. It was surprising to Deborah how good of a grandmother her mother was to her son. In Deborah's opinion, her mother couldn't have even been nominated for Mother of the Year, let alone hold the title.
Deborah couldn't remember, for the life of her, her mother ever being that excited to spend time with her when she was a little girl. Deborah had been on the high school drill team and not once had her mother ever even come out to a game to see her perform. She never sat down with her and did homework with herâeven ask her if she had homework. And not once did Deborah ever recall her mother attending parent/ teacher conferences. What Deborah did remember, though, was her mother fussing, cussing, screaming, and hollering all the time.
“Oh, that's just how black folks raise they kids,” Deborah's Aunt Magnolia used to tell her whenever Deborah was upset and would talk to her about it. “That's how your grandmother raised us. Black people handle they kids; yell, whippings, whatever it takes. It's them white folks that do all that time-out stuff. Yo' momma's mouth might get on your nerves now, but once you all grown up, you'll understand why she had to raise you the way she did. It'll make you strong. Can't make it in this world being all soft.”
No matter what explanation Aunt Magnolia told her niece, Deborah still hated living on pins and needles not knowing when her mother was going to go on one of her yelling and hollering tangents. Deborah had made a promise to herself that if she ever had kids, she would not yell and cuss at or around them the way her mother had. She had done pretty good up until tonight. Tonight, she had broken her promise to herself. Tonight, she had both yelled and cussed. With so much going on, it was like a dam had broken and Deborah had just erupted. In doing so, she'd created a tension in the atmosphere that her young child had easily picked up on.
Instead of loving on him and coddling him the last few minutes she had with him before her mother came to pick him up, she sat there with him nervous and tense. He picked up on it, too, as he tried to stay clear of her, and played over on his blanket covered with toys. When the doorbell rang, both Deborah and her poor child jumped. She answered the door and couldn't ship him off with her mother fast enough. She couldn't even recall if she'd kissed him good-bye. And that was the very thing she now sat thinking about. Her mind was so into trying to remember if she had kissed her son good-bye that she hadn't even heard Lynox ask her a question. So he repeated it.
“How's your steak?” This time Lynox reached over and patted Deborah on the hand.
His touch, not his query, pulled her out of her daze. “Oh, I'm sorry. Did you say something?”
Lynox pulled his hand away, sat back, and just stared at Deborah for a moment. Finally he said, “I know what's going on here.”
“You do?” Deborah immediately sat erect in a panic. Had he read right through her? Was it something she'd said or done that blew her cover for being a mother . . . for being part of the readymade family he so detested?
“Sure I do. I've known all along. I was just waiting for you to tell me.”
Deborah breathed out a huff of air. “You have?” Deborah felt so relieved that she knew her blood pressure had just dropped a few notches. She didn't have a history of high blood pressure, but here, lately, she'd given it a lot of reasons to go up.
“Sure I have,” Lynox said with a serious tone. “But how do I bring something like that up?” He shrugged. “I mean, I'm not a woman, so I have no idea what it's like. Yeah, I have my personal opinion about the issue. Always told myself no way would I ever date a woman who has had one.”
Deborah looked downward, figuring it was coming. That once again Lynox had taken the lead and now, instead of her being the one to tell him it was over between the two of them, he would be telling her. For Deborah, though, at the end of the day, it didn't matter who told who. The fact was . . . it was about to be over.
Chapter Thirteen
“Who told you? How did you find that out?” Deborah nearly shouted.
“Shhh.” Lynox put his index finger over his mouth, then looked around to see how many restaurant patrons were giving them dirty looks because of Deborah's rude outburst. There were just a few. “Look. Maybe I shouldn't have said anythingânot in here anyway. I'm going to have the waitress wrap up our food so we can go talk about it elsewhere.” And Lynox did just that; all the while Deborah sat in her chair steamingâsmoke coming out of her ears and nose.
Once Lynox paid the bill and the waitress returned with his credit card and their boxed food, he escorted Deborah out of the restaurant. “Let me put these in my car.” He held up the food. “As a matter of fact, let's go sit in my car to talk.”
Deborah didn't speak. She just agreed by following Lynox.
“It's the gold Lexus over there.” He pointed to his second car. The Hummer was a gas guzzler so he didn't drive it regularly. Not only that, but it was at the body shop having the door repaired.
Lynox unlocked his car with the remote and then walked to the passenger side to let Deborah in. She didn't even say thank you. She just slipped in and looked straight aheadâas if she couldn't even look Lynox in the eyes.
After walking around to the driver's side, Lynox got in, still holding their food. He looked at the markings on the tops of the boxes and handed Deborah the one that belonged to her. “Here you go.”
Deborah accepted it, knowing darn well she no longer had an appetite.
“You calmed down any?” Lynox asked, looking over at Deborah.
“I just want to know who told you. That was my business to be telling.”
“Does it matter who told me? The fact of the matter is that I know and I'm okay with it.”
Deborah turned slowly and looked to Lynox. “Are you really? You don't think any differently of me? You don't think I'm some monster? Because that's exactly what I felt like.” Deborah, by burying her face in her hand, tried to hide the shame that was creeping up on her. “I mean, what kind of woman denies her baby . . .” Deborah got choked up, but then got herself together and finished the sentence. “Life? That's basically what I did.”
“No, I don't think you are a monster. Having an abortion had to be hard enough.”
“What? Abortion?” Deborah hadn't thought about the late-term abortion she'd had almost seven years ago. That was until Lynox just mentioned it. At first, when he told her that he knew what was going on with herâwhy she was so distantâinstinctively she thought he'd found out she'd given birth to a child, but instead he'd learned that she'd taken the life of a child.
“In all the times we've been talking and telling each other about ourselves, I could tell you were trying to find just the right time to tell me about it. But is there really a right time to tell someone something like that? I have to admit that at first I felt a certain kind of way about it. But, sweetheart, that's your past. And like I said before, I'm not going to let anyone or anything from the past keep us from a future together.”
Although Lynox had spoken with such compassion and sincerity, the entire time Deborah had just been sitting there seething with one thing on her mind. “Who told you? I still want to know how you found out.”
And now, as she sat there in his car, those were still the only questions at the forefront of her thoughts. Still looking straight ahead, and almost robotic, Deborah asked, “Lynox, who told you about my abortion?”
“Does it matter who told me? What matters is that it's out in the open. So now when you're with me, you can be open and free. There's no black bubble hovering over us anymore. It's been burst.” In an attempt to lighten the mood, Lynox took his index finger and poked the air as if he were bursting a bubble. He smiled at Deborah, but she was still stone faced forward.
“It matters to me,” Deborah replied.
“Well, it shouldn't.” Now Lynox was getting a little upset. That was evident by the tone of his voice. “What should matter is that I'm okay with it and we can move on in this relationship.”
With a quick snap of her neck, she was now facing Lynox. “Oh yeah? And who made you God? Since when did you need to be all right with the sins of my past in order for me to be able to live free? Huh?”
Lynox was caught off guard by Deborah's tone with him. He knew she was a strong, independent, headstrong woman, but her tone was on the verge of complete nastiness. “I apologize. That's not what I was trying to insinuate.” Lynox was the one who now turned his face from Deborah and looked straight on.
Instantaneously Deborah realized her ugly side had seeped out. That was a side of her she hoped Lynox never would see. That was a side of her she tried not to let anyone seeâat least the people who knew her well.
Now when it came to the clerk at the grocery store who had an attitude of her own, or the person who took her order at the fast food restaurant and got the order wrong, or the customer service rep she was on the phone complaining to, she didn't mind if they saw that side of her. But she never wanted her church friends or the people she worked with to know she was even capable of being so callous. But most importantly, she never wanted Lynox to see that side of her. So she quickly toned it down.
“I'm sorry, Lynox. I didn't mean to snap off on you like that. It's just that you have no idea how long it took me to get delivered from the shame and guilt of that abortion. And to just hear you talk about it . . . it brought up bad memories. That's all.” Deborah turned her head away like a wounded puppy and looked out the passenger-side window.
“It's okay.” Lynox accepted her apology. “I can only imagine what you're going through. And maybe I should have just waited and let you tell me. It's just that I could see something was eating at you, and I figured this was it.”
Deborah remained silent. Lynox paused for a moment and then said, “Was I right?” He sounded a tad doubtful.
Now facing him, Deborah asked, “What do you mean were you right?”
“Was that what was bothering you, or is there something else?”
Deborah swallowed and began looking out of the window again. Her mind was racing 1,000 miles per hour and so were the beats of her heart. God was opening a window for her to climb through and tell Lynox the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The question was, would she crawl through it . . . or close it?
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