Playing Hard To Get

“It’s just not right. It’s not pure. That…thing shouldn’t be anywhere near my mouth!” She struck the table and fell back in her seat dramatically. The sisters on either side of her leaned in to provide comfort.

“When did it start?” another sister asked after Sister Oliver gathered herself. Her voice held high a focus on disdain, but still there was a hint of sheer nosiness. “I mean, when did Deacon Oliver start asking you to…you know”—dagger eyes from around the table stopped her midsentence—“do that?”

“It was last month,” Sister Oliver started. “He went away on his business trip to Jamaica and came back asking me to…do it. He tried to pull the car over on the highway on the way back from the airport. We were on the Long Island Expressway! I couldn’t do that! Not on the expressway!”

While a solemn hush of shame eased about the room, across the table from Sister Oliver was one member whose snickering at the thought of the roadside romp could not be contained.

Troy was trying so hard to focus. She held her hands on her Bible and bit the inside of her upper lip whenever her mind drifted away from Christian thought. But just as it had when she had gone to church with her Grandma Lucy as a child, this technique was failing her now. Her upper lip was already numb and the thought of Sister Oliver playing headmistress7 on the side of the expressway was…well…sinfully hilarious.

The latest Sister Oliver was the second Mrs. Oliver to a sixty-year-old widower who’d spent more time enjoying his newfound sexual freedom than mourning his wife’s death before he settled on courting Mamie, the short and plump middle-age daughter of an older, well-respected deacon. Never married and ridiculously prudish, Mamie wasn’t exactly the best fit for Deacon Oliver, but she was the only single woman in the church in his age group who didn’t have children and grandchildren he’d have to worry about.

Sister Oliver seemed to come to each meeting with some new complaint about Deacon Oliver’s bed acumen and at each meeting Troy was forced to shake her head and bite her upper lip until it bled.

“I tried it for my husband once,” another sister started, “but it made my jaw hurt and I bit my tongue.”

Troy’s snicker blossomed into a giggle that could be heard by her neighbor, the president of the Virtuous Women, Sister Myrtle Glover.

“Now, now,” Myrtle said, rolling her eyes at Troy. “We won’t hear of that. We all know that such behaviors are hedonistic and we must protect our husbands from falling to these worldly desires. The penis is meant for two things—the toilet and the vagina during sex.” She looked at Troy. “And that’s it.”

“I know, Sister Glover, and we’ve talked about this before, but it’s easier said than done,” one of the younger sisters comforting Sister Oliver declared. “How am I supposed to keep my husband from cheating on me, if I can’t even keep him happy in the bedroom?”

“And what about us single sisters? What are we supposed to do?” asked Kiona, a younger member who’d, on account of her outspokenness, long been on Myrtle’s list of people to vote out of the organization. “I’m a proud Virtuous Woman and I know we don’t have sex before marriage or masturbate, but it’s hard. I have needs.”

“Sisters in Christ, let us not confuse worldly desires with Christian needs,” Myrtle warned sternly. “These vile and deviant behaviors of which you speak are proof of the weakness of the flesh.”

Everyone, including a salty-mouthed Troy, nodded in dreaded agreement. Troy looked at Myrtle and it seemed as if steam was billowing from her ears.

“The Bible tells us that the flesh is lustful and if you live after it, you shall die!” Myrtle added.

“That’s in the Word,” another sister said, opening Troy’s Bible to a verse in the Book of Romans and pointing to it for Troy.

Troy nodded along and sank farther into her seat. She’d been struggling with all of these ideas, these rules of religious order and sainthood, since she’d accepted Kyle’s offer of love and realized that being with a leader of men of God also meant loving his church and living that life. More often than not, she’d failed, fallen super short of what the people around her said she needed to be to wear the First Lady crown. And what made it worse was that it seemed that no matter how she went about the thing, no matter what she did, she still couldn’t seem to get saved—to hear the voice of God in the way the other people in the congregation claimed she would when and if she’d been chosen. This distinction, while small in any other circle, and in a few other churches, was the ax splitting Troy from really being accepted in the church. Sadly, it allowed members to question the pastor’s choice in selecting an “unsaved” mate who wasn’t “equally yoked” in the Lord.

“And if you should fall, my sisters, there are demons waiting to fall with you,” Myrtle went on.

“The incubus and the succubus!” cried Sister Oliver. “Demons!”

Troy’s ears perked up and her eyes widened. She’d been listening to Myrtle’s weekly warnings at each prayer meeting.

“That’s right,” confirmed Myrtle, “the demons of sexual perversion that will come into your bed and have sex with you…and your spouse! Sisters in Christ, you’d better beware.”

Something in Troy’s stomach twisted and gave way. She felt full and then ill, like something rotten was growing in her gut. She kept imagining Kyle standing naked, oiled and with the little silver ring around his penis. Had the demons been in her bedroom? Were they having sex with her and her husband? It sounded unreal, ridiculous, crazy to consider, but the women before her knew the Word, and one was sitting beside her thumping on pages of the Bible, confirming what they were saying was real.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Troy said, jumping up from the table in the middle of Myrtle’s continuing tirade. She saw the woman roll her eyes exaggeratedly. She felt pressure pushing through her pelvis and leaning on her bladder.

“But I was about to start the closing prayer,” Myrtle warned. Everyone looked at Troy expectantly. She couldn’t leave and miss the prayer.

“Okay,” Troy said, squeezing her thighs tightly like a schoolgirl and getting back into her seat. She sat back and heard, at length, what remained of Myrtle’s speech about the incubus and the succubus. The prayer wouldn’t come for ten more minutes.

?

The Virtuous Women of First Baptist weren’t the only residents of the Big Apple facing the presence of demons. Tamia was in the middle of a professional death match with a demon of her own.

After Tamia sat in a team meeting for two hours and took more notes than anyone else—simply to prove that she was paying the most attention—Phaedra requested a private meeting in her office. Once Tamia made it inside and was instructed to close the door, she was informed that she was no longer a part of the team and was being reassigned.

“But I’ve do

ne most of the work on the Lucas case. I’ve had the most contact with the client,” Tamia pleaded. She didn’t want to be moved. It was such a big case and it would look good on her list of achievements when she was up for partner in a few months.