Heaven Forbid Read online

  It wasn’t the “known sins” Mama Max read that she had a problem with. Nobody wanted to go against the Ten Commandments, and everybody knew that fornicating and masturbating and most other kinds of “atings” were abominations before God. Nobody had to think twice about homosexuality and pornography. Anybody with an ounce of home training didn’t have to be schooled about these.

  But some of the other ones on the list were bound to cause problems, items added to the list—according to the reverend—to “help with housecleaning.” Mama Max enjoyed an occasional splash of Baileys Irish Cream in her coffee, but the rules outlawed any and all forms of alcohol, including beer, wine, even NyQuil. Smoking anything except some meat on a grill was forbidden, as was cursing (I’m sure as hell going to have problems with that one, Mama Max thought with a giggle), gambling (including the lottery, bingo, and card playing…and Mama sure liked a scratch-off now and then), wearing makeup, and watching television (except a list of shows sanctioned by the Gospel Truth Moral Board). For women, dresses had to be worn loose and hang below the knee, and arms were to be covered to the elbow, even in summer. For men, ties were required at all times, except when involved in physical labor, such as repairing or cleaning the house of God, and jewelry was limited to watches, cuff links, and sensible chains. Earrings on men—forbidden. Hair for both sexes was to be neat and trim, and tattoos, especially new ones done after hearing the word of God as delivered by Obadiah Brook, were expressly forbidden. Hugging between male and female church members who were not married to each other was no longer allowed, and when conversing, a distance of two feet must be maintained at all times. The new Gospel Truth Member Manual, passed out to members at the end of Reverend Doctor O’s first sermon, was fifty pages long. Many of the members who read it—the table of contents, much less the whole book—hadn’t bothered to attend the following week, and ever since, attendance had continued to dwindle.

  Mama Max set the last loaf of banana bread into the oven, took out the two that had been baking, wiped her hands on an apron, and looked at the clock. “Reverend!” Mama Max went into the hallway and called again. “Obadiah!” A slight frown creased Mama Max’s forehead as she walked toward the study. That man has been closeted away in there for hours. She stopped in front of her husband’s home study. Just as she raised her hand to knock, she heard a low moan.

  “Reverend, you all right in there?” Mama Max tried to open the door but it was locked. “Obadiah!”

  “Oh, God,” she heard her husband whisper.

  Mama Max pressed her ear against the door. “Got some warm banana bread out here whenever you’re ready.”

  Mama Max listened for another moment but hearing nothing more, shook her head and walked back to the kitchen. Obadiah had always had a strong relationship with God. For years, his study had been his sanctuary, and for the most part, Maxine left him alone when he was preparing to deliver the word of God. But it seemed like ever since they moved to Texas, Obadiah had been spending more and more time cloistered behind those doors. Mama Max wasn’t one to get in the way of the Lord’s work, but she worried about how hard her husband was toiling to save, she sometimes felt, ungrateful saints.

  She worried about other things, too, but most of the time was able to chase away the devil’s thoughts. “That rascal’s even been plaguing my dreams,” she’d recently confided to Nettie. And while Mama Max tried to do her part in aiding the ministry, and was delighted to be living close to her good friend Nettie, she still had to admit one thing—she was lonely. Back in Kansas, she had any number of church members she could call and gossip with or invite over for coffee. Once or twice a week, sometimes more, she’d gone to the gym or out to the movies with her daughter-in-law, Tai, and her grandkids were always stopping over. She hadn’t thought she’d miss them so much. But she did.

  “Now, you just shape up, Maxine Fredonia Brook. God has been too good to you to even think about sulking.” Maxine began bustling around the kitchen, cleaning up and thinking about Passion and the marital problems she was having. For the most part, Maxine was satisfied. She decided to be thankful that things were as well as they were, and after finishing up the dishes, picked up the phone.

  “Nettie, this here’s Maxine.”

  “Hey, Mama Max!”

  “Girl, I got a loaf of banana nut bread over here that will make you slap your mama and some ice-cold milk to go along with it.”

  “What kind of nuts did you put in it?”

  “Black walnut, child. Ain’t no other kind of nut for banana nut bread. Should I cut you a slice?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Obadiah leaned his head back, thankful for the cool leather of the navy blue sofa in the library portion of his study. This small room was his sanctuary, filled with books, about a dozen different Bibles, study guides, concordances, tapes, and DVDs—everything a man might need to prepare to preach. But this room also contained other things, things that had nothing to do with Obadiah’s fiery sermons, things that nobody, not even Mama Max, knew anything about.

  Obadiah reached up and wiped the sweat from his face, closed his eyes as his breathing returned to normal. Once his heartbeat slowed and the shaking stopped, Obadiah got up, put everything back in its secret place, scanned the room to make sure all was in order, and went to break bread, banana bread to be exact, with his wife.

  7

  God’s Princess

  Princess Brook stared long and hard at her grandmother’s number. “Grandmama Max will understand,” she whispered, trying yet again to convince herself to make the call. She picked up the receiver and had punched in nine of the ten numbers needed to complete the call before she hung up the phone and placed her head in her hands. “Father, Mother, God,” she prayed, “please give me the strength to do Your will.”

  God’s will. This was whose will she’d been trying to live by for the past two and a half years, ever since she’d closed the door on her own desires and declared herself to be “God’s Princess.” Ever since leaving college in shame and after a summer surrounded by her father’s sermons and her mother’s love, returning in victory. Princess walked to the minifridge in her cluttered UCLA dorm room, grabbed a soda, popped the top, and remembered.

  The future had looked bright that sunny day in August three and a half years ago, when her mother and father had driven her to Kansas City’s international airport for her LA-bound flight. She was leaving home for the first time, shaking with excitement at the prospects of her first year as a freshman at UCLA and at the blank canvas called “adult life” that stretched before her. Those first days of college had been all that she’d dreamed and more. And once she hooked up with basketball star, campus heartthrob, and almost-a-cousin-but-not-quite Kelvin Petersen, Princess’s life had never been the same.

  The ringing phone jolted Princess out of her reverie. She looked at the caller ID and smiled. “No, I haven’t called,” she answered.

  “I knew it!” Joni screamed. Joni was Princess’s best friend, former roommate, and former favorite party partner. When Princess decided to turn her life around and live a Christ-like lifestyle, she figured her days with “ole Joni girl” were numbered. But Joni had surprised her. Joni had not given Princess a hard time for “finding Jesus,” and after seeing the change in her former roommate, Joni had allowed Princess to lead her to Christ some months later. The shocks continued when, during their junior year, Joni confided that she had led someone else to salvation, her former weed-smoking, pill-popping boyfriend, Brandon. Joni and Brandon were now married, with plans to start a family after Joni graduated college. Brandon, who came from old money and had bypassed higher education, was already making a name for himself in the world of finance.

  “I’m going to call her,” Princess whined. “I just know that once I tell her—”

  “Yeah, yeah, the entire world will know. Or, more specifically, Tai and King Brook will find out that at one time you were a very, very bad girl!”

  “Quit playing,” Pri
ncess admonished, but the reprimand was halfhearted. At one time, she had been a bad girl. And outside of Kelvin; Brandon; Joni; Kelvin’s mother, Tootie; and a few people in Germany, nobody knew just how bad Princess had been.

  “Look, you’re always telling the girls that who the Lord sets free is free indeed. Am I right? Well, you’re not going to be totally free of your past until you are ready to not only face your history but also embrace it. You know that there are other girls out there just like you, suffering from the guilt and shame of their secrets. These are the same women who look up to you, because in their eyes you’ve got it so together. Just think of how much more they will respect you once they find out how far you’ve come. They’ll figure that if you did it, turned your life around, then they can do it too.”

  “I agree with everything you’re saying. It just seems so hard to put everything out there. Grandmama Max will be so disappointed. And I don’t even want to think about Mama, or Tee…”

  “That’s exactly who you should be thinking of. The best way for your baby sister not to follow in your footsteps is for her to know about the path that she shouldn’t go down.” Joni softened her voice. “Princess, you can do this. You’ve got to do it. Because only then can you follow the voice of the Spirit…and write that book.”

  After a few more minutes, Princess disconnected from Joni and dialed her grandmother. She paced the floor, waiting for the phone to be picked up on the other end. After five rings, she was about to give up. What she had to say could not be left on voice mail.

  “Hello?” Mama Max sounded out of breath as she answered her phone.

  “Hey, Grandmama.”

  “Princess! Child, as I live and breathe, I just asked Tai about you this morning. Whew, let me catch my breath. I was just coming in from the store.” Mama Max was quiet for a moment, taking off her shoes and fanning herself with a hastily grabbed newspaper. She plopped down on the sofa and took a long swallow from the ever-present glass of water on the coffee table. “Now, that’s better. Okay, baby. You’ve been coming to me in my dreams. I was wondering when you were going to call and tell me what’s what.”

  Princess smiled in spite of her nervousness. “Well, since you knew I’d call, do you know what I’m calling about?”

  Mama Max’s pause was short. “My guess is that it involves God, men, and probably some stuff you either should or shouldn’t have been doing with one or the other. How right am I?”

  Too right. “I’ll have to talk to God about His sharing my business with you. But since you’ve pretty much sketched out the general picture, you might want to sit down, Grandmama Max. Because I’m getting ready to color it in for you.”

  8

  His Baby’s Mama

  Kelvin Petersen leaned his lanky, six-foot-five frame against the shower tiles. He closed his eyes as the water pulsated over his body, and then turned so that his knee would feel the liquid massage. He’d just finished another round of physical therapy with the team doctor and wasn’t too happy with what he’d heard: It would be another month before his knee was a hundred percent. The doctor was recommending that Kelvin’s modified practice schedule continue and wouldn’t confirm that he’d be ready to start at the beginning of the NBA season.

  Kelvin turned so that the hot, pulsating water worked the muscles in his back, much as his masseuse would do in another hour. He didn’t want to think about what the therapist had said, because that would mean thinking about Guy Harris, the man who dared threaten him for the position that last year was his alone—right point guard. Nobody questioned that Kelvin started in this position, every game. Not only did he dominate it on the team, but he was a dominating force in the league as well—that is, until the benefit game played a month ago, when the Denver Nuggets’ lumbering center had become a tree, one that had sent Kelvin’s attempted layup into the stands while the center became entangled in Kelvin’s feet. All three hundred twenty-five pounds of this former Nebraskan came crashing down hard on Kelvin’s right knee. Word had it that Guy was on the phone to their coach the very next day. And as of right now, Kelvin’s nemesis was also in the starting lineup. Kelvin abruptly turned off the water, toweled off, and moments later was dressed and heading out of the training facility.

  “KP! What up, dog?” It was Kelvin’s friend and fellow baller, Jakeim.

  “Nothin’ to it, son,” Kelvin said, reaching out for a brother’s handshake.

  “There’s something to it, to hear your boy Guy talkin’.”

  “Aw, I ain’t worried about that fool. He’ll get put back in his place as soon as my knee’s straight.” Kelvin stepped back and feigned a fade away jumper. He tried not to wince as an ache sliced through the lower portion of his leg.

  “Take it easy,” Jakeim cautioned. “We got a long season ahead of us, and I’d definitely prefer to have you healthy for the homestretch.”

  “Don’t worry, Keim. I’m going to be back on the court, full press, in three weeks. And I’m planning to work my way back into that starting position before the first game.”

  “Just know a brothah has your back,” Jakeim said. He cocked a knowing smile at one of the secretaries who worked in the building and was looking at him the way a thirsty man would water. “Lookie here, dog, let me get with this feline and hollah back atcha.”

  “Aw-ight, Keim. Later.” Kelvin deactivated the alarm on his cherry-red custom Ferrari Fiorano Coupe, opened the door, and slid inside. Something about sitting down in this creamy, off-white leather always made him feel good. But once his iPhone vibrated and he looked at the caller ID, his feelgood didn’t feel so good anymore.

  “What.” Kelvin voiced the word like a statement, instead of a question. A man heading to the electric chair would have sounded happier.

  “Is that any way to greet the mother of your child?”

  The woman’s silky voice grated like steel wool on soft skin. “I ain’t up for no yakkity yak, Fawn. What do you want?”

  “What I want,” Fawn spat, all pretense of friendliness gone, “is some time and attention for me and my child. Little Kelvin hasn’t seen you in a month! He misses his daddy!”

  “That boy barely knows me.”

  “Yeah, and whose fault is that?”

  “Look, I’m not in the mood for this bullshit, Fawn. I’m not the one who spent the end of last year in Miami, chasing another jock, courtesy of my child support. You weren’t worried about me seeing my son then, now, were you? But now that he got cut and I’m healing, your ass is back on my side of the world talking about your son miss his daddy. You think I’m ’bout to bite down on that bullshit, you out your muthafuckin’ mind.”

  “You know why I went to Miami, Kel.” Fawn turned her voice silky again, almost childlike. “I was trying to get back at you for fuckin’ my best friend.”

  “If she’d been your best friend, then she wouldn’t have been in my bed, now, would she?”

  “Any woman who gets the chance will climb into your bed, Kel. You know you’ve got it like that. Now, baby, can we come over? Please! Your son misses you; he really does. Here, baby, talk to your daddy.”

  Kelvin rolled his eyes. Aw, here we go. This son-as-a-pawn bullshit all over again. He tried to steel himself against the range of emotions he knew would accompany hearing his son’s voice.

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  Kelvin’s heart melted. “Hey, Little Man. What you doing?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “You been a good boy?”

  “Uh-huh.” Kelvin heard Fawn’s voice mutter something in the background before his son continued. “We comin’ over, Daddy?”

  I can’t stand that bitch. “Put your mama on the phone.”

  After agreeing on a time and giving Fawn his new gate code, Kelvin ended the call. He reached into the console and pulled out a blunt, breathed in the smell of pungent weed mixed with vanilla-flavored tobacco and lit up. He loved the smell of vanilla. It had been one of his ex-girl’s favorite scents. His ex-girl Princess. Kelvin allowe
d his mind to roll back as he took a long drag off the cigar-wrapped weed, punched in his iPod, and cruised through Phoenix’s light afternoon traffic. At one time, he’d had Princess Brook wrapped around his finger. When he told her to jump, she’d simply ask “how high?” At one time, that girl would have done anything for him—and had. But that was almost three years ago, before Fawn got pregnant, and before Princess turned into a Holy Roller. That’s what he’d heard, that Princess was like a campus preacher, trying to convert the campus crowd to Christ. Kelvin took another long hit off the blunt before rolling down the window and flicking the small remainder out the window. He turned up Lil Wayne and bobbed his head to “Lollipop,” remembering when Princess had treated his body like one. But that seemed as if it had happened a whole other lifetime ago. Because in their last conversation, Princess had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that what they’d had was over….

  “What do you mean, you’re not coming down here? After I had to call all over LA to track you down? Why aren’t you and Joni in the condo? And why aren’t you using the cell phone I sent you? Look, never mind that. I just set up a roundtrip, first-class ticket for you, woman. You better get your ass on that plane.”

  In the beginning, during those first few weeks back at UCLA following their breakup, Princess had considered Kelvin’s offers. But she’d known those gifts came with strings attached. It had taken all of the previous summer to get him out of her system, and truth be told, he still wasn’t completely gone. All the more reason for her to do what she knew she had to do—stay strong. “Things are different, Kelvin. I’m living for God now.”

  “Living for God?”

  “I’m not the same girl who left college in May. For instance, I won’t continue this conversation if you insist on using foul language. I’m God’s Princess now.”

  “Oh, so I’m supposed to believe you all, what, celibate and shit? That you’re not getting your smoke on, your drink on, or fuckin’? Oh, my bad, making love?” Kelvin looked in the mirror at his rock-hard abs as he paced the floor of his home gym. “This is Kelvin Petersen you’re talking to, baby. I know I turned that shit out right there. You gotta come, because the ‘KP’ is callin’.”