Playing Hard To Get

Baba stood up and began to walk away. Tamia turned to see where he was going.

“Baba?” she called but when she turned Malik was standing there. “Oh, no.” She turned back around.

“Just listen to me,” he pleaded, trying to sit beside her on the bench, but Tamia stood up.

“Listen to what? Why?” Tamia asked.

“I can explain what you saw. Why she was there.”

“I’m an adult, Malik. I know why she was there. I’m not blind.”

“I was confused,” Malik said. “Things were the way they’d been between Ayo and I for so long that I was confused. I thought I was supposed to be with her, but when I saw you, I knew it wasn’t true. I knew what I was feeling was more than just play. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” Tamia laughed. “Hurt me? You can’t hurt me. We’re just friends, right? Sister and brother? No…we’re actually attorney and client.”

“If that’s all I can get, I accept it. Just talk to me,” he said.

“You want me to talk? Fine. What I have to say to you is that you’d better get yourself together. Next week is your hearing and we’re going to court. You need to clean yourself up—”

“You mean put on a monkey suit? You know I’m not—”

“You asked me to talk,” she shouted. “Clean up. I don’t care what you do but I know why you need to do it. If you don’t get it tight and come into that courtroom looking like the leader everyone knows you to be, you can forget about the Freedom Project. If you go in there talking about how you’re guilty and fuck the system and police and whoever, the DA is going to bury you and then the Freedom Project will be shut down. So, before you go and make any more of your empty, stupid statements, you think about that. You think about what’s important to you. Your ego. Or your freedom.”

Tamia picked up the bag of tulips she was carrying to plant in Kali’s garden and left.

?

While Sister Myrtle Glover was the first woman of First Baptist Troy ever met, prune pie–making Mother Wildren was the first woman of First Baptist she’d ever met and hated. Back then, when Troy walked into an after-church dinner, Mother Wildren was still Sister Wildren and she had refused to put more than three string beans on Troy’s barren dinner plate. The feisty senior promised Troy that it would be her first and last visit as Pastor Hall’s special guest, explained that one of her offspring was to marry the church’s single leader, and admonished Troy for wearing such a short skirt and sitting on the first pew of the balcony.

This whole bad beginning added up to Troy raising an invisible middle finger whenever Mother Wildren was in her path. She needed allies but didn’t care to make Mother Wildren one of them. The old woman had made her position clear and hadn’t even propped a pillow in the presence of the First Lady to prove otherwise since she had been given the invisible crown.

Saddled with the baggage of Myrtle’s promised house call, which was less than five hours away, and the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing she could do to get the money to save herself, Kyle’s good name, and maybe First Baptist altogether, Troy found herself in the church, trying to pray again. For no reason other than the fact that she’d seen people do it on television growing up, Troy was wearing all black and sitting in the first seat of a pew in the middle of the empty church. While First Baptist wasn’t a Catholic church, she had a rosary set she’d purchased at Betsey Johnson stashed into a Bible—and she would’ve had a Koran if she’d seen that on television too. Her eyes were closed tight, but then she heard a door open and turned to see Mother Wildren wobbling down the aisle with her cane clacking against the ground.

Troy nodded pleasantly, hoping the old woman would keep moving—she was probably a part of Sister Glover’s little scheme. Heck, she’d probably given her the idea. But after the woman stopped and sat in the pew behind her, she knew she’d have to turn around and chat.

“You know ain’t nobody supposed to be in the sanctuary,” Mother Wildren said, her voice wobbly with age, but still direct and demanding. “Pastor say ain’t nobody supposed to be in here unless he knows it.”

“Well, it might be my last time, so I don’t think he’ll mind,” Troy rattled off what first came to mind without turning around.

“I guess that’s supposed to make me feel some kind of way,” Mother Wildren said. “I’m supposed to ask you why you said it and care….” Now both Mother Wildren and First Lady Hall’s eyes were rolling. There was silence. “I’m too old and too busy to care about what’s wrong with you. I’ve got a husband, three kids, five grands, and seven great-grands. All of them are living. You know what that means?” Troy was quiet, but she still didn’t turn around. “I’ve got sixteen children and ten things to care about for each and every day until I die or one of them goes first.”

Troy wanted to laugh and she was sure later she would but her nerves were too tight.

She turned to Mother Wildren.

“Why are you here, child?” Mother Wildren said and just then, being called “child”—even by Mother Wildren—was the most comforting thing Troy had ever heard. It felt like a blue blanket over her chest as she napped, a can of chicken noodle soup in her stomach, her mother’s hand around her shoulders. Troy started to cry. And in ten minutes Mother Wildren knew everything about the money, Troy’s shopping, her failing to get saved, that she was afraid to have sex with Kyle, and Myrtle’s plan of divide and conquer. While the outrageous outpouring might have worn someone else out, the woman with so many children and so much experience, who’d only walked into the church to tell Troy the sanctuary needed to be empty, just sat back and frowned.

“Sounds like a great big old circus to me,” Mother Wildren said and Troy nodded. “But”—Mother Wildren looked through Troy’s show of helplessness and right into her—“the good news about it all is that you’re a woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the circus isn’t complete with a ringmaster. You’re busy in here being a part of the show, when you should be running it.”

&n

bsp; “But I am in the house of the Lord,” Troy explained. “I am trying to pray. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“You ain’t praying, child,” Mother Wildren said. “You’re putting on a show. Playing with God.” She took the rosary and Bible.