Practicing What You Preach. Vanessa Davis Griggs
It’s almost like it’s some sort of setup.”
After a minute, with the phone at her ear, Angela looked up at the ceiling. She clicked the end button and slowly placed the phone back into its base.
“What happened?” Gayle asked.
“The number is no longer in service.” Angela went over to the couch and gingerly eased down onto it. I could see she had just had the wind knocked out of her. I knew all too well what that felt like.
Gayle sat down beside Angela. “I’m so sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have brought it up now. I should have followed my first mind and just kept this information to myself.” She leaned over and hugged Angela. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to forget I ever said anything. Okay? You know your grandmother’s name. It was Arletha. We don’t know where she is or even if she’s still alive. You’re getting married on Saturday. So let’s just get back to the happy place we were before I opened my big fat mouth. Let’s finish seating family and friends and concentrate on the glorious day you’re about to embark upon. Angel, please don’t let the devil steal your joy. Not now.”
Angela shook her head repeatedly. “I can’t.” She looked at Gayle. “And I’m not sorry you said anything.” Angela looked down at the paper again. “If this Arletha Brown happens to be my grandmother, I want to know. I know other family members and close friends are going to be attending my wedding. But can you imagine how much it would mean, not having my mother alive to be here for this, not having Great-granny here, but finding my grandmother, if she’s still alive, and to have her sitting out there in the audience?”
“We don’t know that she is still alive, and we definitely don’t know that this Arletha Brown is your grandmother. Chances are more likely that she is not. All of this is sheer speculation. It’s a distraction. And even if you wanted to, we have no way of locating Arletha Brown to find out one way or the other,” Gayle said.
I sat there debating what, if anything, I should do at this point. If I kept my mouth closed, maybe they would drop this, at least until after the wedding. But if Angela’s thoughts were on finding this woman, we might not get anything done, and everything she and I had worked so hard to accomplish these past months would be ruined.
“Well, I’ll just see what I can do. I have to at least try and find her. I’ll get on the computer. I’ll start calling around to see if anyone has heard of her,” Angela said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to give up so easily when I could be so close. I’m not.”
“I think I may know where she is,” I said. Both Angela and Gayle turned and looked at me. “Arletha Brown. I believe I know where she lives. At least, I used to.”
Gayle and Angela exchanged looks, then Angela stood as she looked at me. “Melissa, can you take us to her house? Please. Can you take us now?”
I nodded. “Sure. But I don’t want you getting your hopes up. I don’t know if she still lives there. She may be in a nursing home. She might have died. And like Gayle said, it’s very likely this Arletha is not the woman you’re looking for. I just know we have a lot of work here to do on this wedding, and you really don’t need to be distracted right now. So if this helps you to get back on track, I’ll take you, but only on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Angela asked.
“If she no longer lives there or if she says she’s not who you’re looking for, that you’ll drop this. You’ll put this out of your mind, at least until after the wedding,” I said.
Angela shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again before she nodded again and said, “Of course. Of course. If you take us and it turns out she’s not the person we’re looking for, we’ll come back here, finish what we need to do for my wedding, and I’ll work on searching for her after I get back from my honeymoon.”
Angela looked toward heaven. “Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You.” She looked over at Gayle. “Now, don’t tell me this isn’t God. Don’t tell me it’s not God.”
Chapter 7
These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.
—Jude 1:19
Sasha called Marcus. This wasn’t his weekend to have Aaliyah, but Sasha said it was an emergency and she really needed him to get her.
“And if you don’t mind, instead of bringing her back on Sunday, could you possibly keep her until Thursday for me?” Sasha asked. This was becoming a habit.
“Okay, so what’s the emergency this time?” Marcus asked.
“Look, Marcus, either you can get your daughter this weekend and keep her or you can’t. I told you it’s an emergency. Now if you just don’t want her—”
“Sasha, don’t do that,” Marcus said. “You know I have never said I didn’t want my child. Never. And I’m not going to allow you to even try and go there with me.”
Sasha’s voice changed to a softer, more patronizing tone. “Oh yeah, that is right. You were the one who was pushing hard for me to have a child when you knew good and well I wasn’t ready. I married you when I was twenty; had her when I was twenty-two. I’m only twenty-seven now. Maybe if you had listened to me more, things would have turned out differently between us.”
“So what are you trying to say, Sasha?”
“I’m just pointing out the fact that at twenty-two, I wasn’t ready to have a child and that you were the one who kept pressuring me until I finally gave in. You knew I was dealing with a lot of stressful things, being married for only a year. Maybe, just maybe, if you and I had waited to have a child, things might have turned out differently for us. Not that I don’t love our daughter, because you know I do.”
Marcus sighed. No matter what else he may have thought about his ex-wife, he did know that she loved Aaliyah. “Sasha, all I asked you was: What’s the emergency?”
“And the answer is: It’s none of your business. In case you’ve forgotten, you and I are no longer married. Remember that little thing called a divorce that became official two years ago? You know, that legal piece of paper you fought me on tooth and nail, causing us both to have to spend more money than we would have, had you just signed the thing. Well, here’s a quick refresher course on what that document means. It means you, Marcus Antoine Peeples, no longer have a right to know what I, Sasha Antoinette Bradford Peeples, am doing.”
“I know what it means, Sasha. All I asked is: What’s your emergency this time? Last month…” Marcus stopped and began to count to ten.
He and Sasha did this very same thing every single time something like this came up. She would ask him to do something, claiming something either came up, happened, or some other reason she desperately needed his help. He would find out later the only emergency was some party she wanted to go to, a shopping trip to another city with one or several of her girlfriends or some other type of girls’ night or girls’ weekend out, or her just feeling like she needed a break.
A few times her emergency had turned out to be a weekend trip with some guy she had “fallen in love with” who, at the time, was definitely “the one.” The same guy who would later send her into a state of depression. She would then need Marcus to keep Aaliyah because she was too depressed to take care of her. He knew about some of these guys because during a few of her bouts of depression, she also needed someone to talk to. She ended up talking to Marcus, the only person who seemed to care enough to reach out and check on her when she withdrew, to try and help her get better.
“Sasha—” Marcus began speaking again after he reached his count of ten.
“Marcus, either you can keep Aaliyah or you can’t. If you can’t, then don’t worry about it. I’ll get—”
“I’ll keep her, Sasha. Okay.” He knew Sasha was headed toward dumping Aaliyah on anyone she could get to take her no matter how incompetent