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But my ears perk at one particular name. And not in a good way.
Sandy Rollins. The one man on planet Earth my mother would sell her soul to see me marry.
“… anyway, you two will have a great time, I know it.”
“What, Mom? Could you repeat that? The reception isn’t great here,” I lie. “I’ll have a good time with what?”
She sighs. “I was saying, Lucinda, that Pastor Sandy is heading… there, toChicago,for a conference. A youth pastor thing. I told him you’d love to show him around. You know, he doesn’t really know the city, and I certainly don’t want him wandering alone. I reminded him what a dirty, dangerous place it is,” she adds.
I’ll bet she told him. Nothing like acting the expert on a place she’s never been.
“Mom, I am super busy with school and work. I can’t promise I’ll be available.”
But what Icanpromise, with almost a hundred percent certainty, is that Iwillbe busy whenever it is that Sandy comes to town. I don’t care if he’s flown in from halfway around the world.
There’s no way I’m spending time with a man who professes to be holy, but has spent more time staring at my breasts and groping my behind than looking me in the eye.
“Well, he has your number. I might even have given him your address. I can’t remember,” she says breezily. “He’s been under such pressure. You know, he’s next in line to be pastor of the whole congregation. He’s taking on more and more responsibility. Poor man has been dealing with the church’s broken plumbing and everything else.”
I steer my car toward the exit that takes me to the club. As always, I’m ahead of schedule. If I have enough time, I can do a little studying in the staff locker room. That is, if Gwen doesn’t decide to talk my ear off. As soon as she figured out she could make money off me, she became a lot nicer. Friendlier. More interested. Like she’s protecting her investment.
“Mom, how much is it to fix the plumbing?”
Given my recent windfall of cash, I’m feeling generous. I can see it now—my parents will proudly brag that their daughter, one Lucinda Braxton, made a generous donation to the church, thanks to her successful career in Chicago.
Successful career,my behind.
And besides, isn’t vanity one of the seven deadly sins?
She pauses, then yells something at my father, which I cannot make out because her hand is over the receiver.
A moment later, she’s back. “I just checked with your father since he’s on the building committee. It’s a couple hundred dollars to fix the plumbing, which is not horrible, but it’s not the best time for something like this to break. They just put a new floor in the gym and well, you know, we never have much in the way of reserves.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
Silence.
I have no doubt Mom is digesting what I so casually just threw out there, like I’m some sort of high roller or something. And while she is, I’m wishing I could reach out, grab those stupid words, and shove them back down my throat.
Not that I don’t want to share what I have, what I look at as recent good fortune, to have work that not only pays more than minimum wage, but that pays at least twenty times more than that.
No, the problem is that my impulsive offer is now going to raise questions. Questions I’m not ready to answer.
With responses that will undoubtedly be lies.
All I can think to do is get off the phone. Fast.
“Where… where did you get money? Extra money?” Mom asks in a slow, suspicious voice.
Can’t blame her.
“I… got a raise at work, Mom. I was… promoted.” I laugh as cheerfully as I can. “I’m not rich by any means, but it would feel nice to help out. You know, share some of my good fortune.”
My mother can suspect the worst of people, which is ironic for a woman who considers herself godly. But what I was learning was that some—maybe not all—of the people I’d grown up alongside were occasionally in the habit of leaping to conclusions about people without reason to do so, and then making ill-informed decisions about them.
So much for giving people the benefit of the doubt. Seeing the best in them. Like I always heard in church every Sunday.
As her daughter, I thought I might be excused. Perhaps not.
