be sorry I hired you, Unique.” Tamarra smiled, grateful to see such determination and excitement in the twenty-three-year-old mother.
Tamarra didn’t know a whole lot about Unique. She’d only really started getting to know her since Unique had taken over the position of co-leader of the New Day Singles’ Ministry. For the past month or so, with Lorain being on a sabbatical, Unique had been serving as the interim leader. She’d been handling both her duties well as she now stood in a party house with Tamarra about to serve food to more than seventy-five women of all ages.
The women were members of a national book club with various chapters throughout the country. Every other year one of the chapters hosted an annual book club meeting with a featured author. This year the Columbus chapter was hosting and the guest author was someone named Tysha. Tamarra had never heard of the author, but Unique seemed to know exactly who the young lady was.
“Not only do I have a job, a real paying job, no under the table flim-flam stuff, but I am about to serve food to an Essence magazine bestselling author.” Unique clapped her hands together. “God is good.” She noticed that Tamarra wasn’t as excited. “You do know who Tysha is, right?”
“With the way you’re acting, I guess I should, but sad to say, I don’t. Does she write Christian fiction?”
“Oh, no, far from it. She writes that street lit stuff—hood books—and I love ’em.”
“Then that explains it. I try to stick to Christian fiction and some clean chick lit.”
“I feel you,” Unique said, putting on some plastic gloves.
Tamarra smiled. The girl had listened when she’d explained to her how important it was to wear gloves when handling food.
“Street lit probably would be a bit much for someone your age.” Unique looked Tamarra up and down. “No offense. I can just tell that you’re not the typical street lit following.”
“’Scuse me,” Tamarra said playfully, hands on hips. “I’ll have you know that I own and have read every Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim book ever written. Now, you wanna talk some real gangsta lit…boom!” Tamarra sucked her teeth, snapped her neck, and rolled her eyes. Both women burst out laughing. Forty-something or not, Tamarra could be hip when need be.
“Okay, all right, Sister Tamarra. I see you, boo,” Unique said. “I had you pegged wrong. My bad. You do know a little somethin’-somethin’ ’bout that gangsta stuff.”
“Know a little somethin’-somethin’ about it? Girl, back in high school you might as well have called me gangstress.” Tamarra gave a snap around the world.
“Okay, Sister Tamarra, now you’re exaggerating just a little too much.” Unique chuckled.
“Hmm…” Tamarra slouched her shoulders and stared off as if reminiscing. “I wish I was, Sister Unique.” She shook her head at some of the things she had done back in her hoodlum stage of high school, back when she was rebelling against her parents, and God, for all the bad things they’d allowed to happen to her.
She had been suspended and assigned to Saturday school more times than she could count. As a freshman in high school, she missed more classes than she attended, always cutting to hang out with some upperclassmen boy. She got a reputation by doing so, but not a good one. Still, by the time she was a junior, deep inside, a part of all the girls wanted to be just like her. She was their alter ego, that chick who wasn’t afraid to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to do it.
Tamarra’s mother missed so much work having to take off and go up to the school that she lost more than one job throughout Tamarra’s high school years. Just once, Tamarra wanted her father to come all the way from Maryland and show up at one of the meetings. She just wanted him to show that he cared. She wanted him to love her more than he loved protecting her brother, the brother that had raped her as a child and stolen her innocence. She wanted the charade to be over. He never came. So, Tamarra would always top off her last incident with something worse, hoping eventually her father would come. Still, he never came.
Thankful for Tamarra, though, in her senior year, Missy Swanson, the new girl, did come. Missy, too, was a girl who did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. She was a rebel, but she was a rebel for the Lord. When told she had to do a book report of some sort, Missy did it on a book in the Bible, reading her Bible during study hall and free time in class. During lunch, she’d hold her own little Bible study, a big no-no since, like Mary’s little lamb, Missy’s lamb, Jesus Christ, wasn’t really allowed in school either. Missy and her lamb were kicked out, from the cafeteria anyway, but that didn’t stop her. She and her growing group would pack their lunches and hold their Bible study outside.
“Jesus is the answer,” were the four words Missy said to Tamarra one day in passing. It was those four words that planted the seed that ultimately led Tamarra to her salvation. It was also the beginning of a friendship for the two girls.
For some reason, Tamarra was led to tell Missy of the things she had endured in her young life. She shared with her the details of her brother raping her and how her parents dealt with it. Well, she didn’t outright tell Missy that the things had happened to her; she told Missy that they’d happened to a friend of hers. But Missy knew, and Missy never judged her; she only prayed for her. Not once during that school year did anything that Tamarra ever said to Missy get back to her.
Missy was an army brat, so before the school year was even over, she and her family were off to another state. She and Tamarra never even vowed to exchange phone numbers and addresses to keep in touch. It was unsaid, but they both knew that God had placed them in each other’s lives for a mere season, and for that they were grateful.
A smile now covered Tamarra’s lips as she stood in the party house thinking back to who she used to be, just like it was yesterday. She couldn’t help but thank God that she was no longer that person.
“The author has arrived,” the Columbus chapter president said, sticking her head in the kitchen. “You ladies can begin serving now.” She smiled, then quickly disappeared again.
“You all set?” Tamarra asked Unique.
“All set,” she confirmed, then picked up a tray of barbeque meatballs and exited the kitchen.
“I’m right behind you,” Tamarra told her.
After Unique was out of sight, Tamarra took a long, deep breath. Thoughts of the past about high school and Missy had momentarily taken her back to a place she wished she could completely forget. She knew, though, that no matter how hard she tried, those memories would always be embedded deep in her heart.
She picked up a relish tray and held her head high before exiting the kitchen. With the turn of events that were about to take place in her life, how long she’d be able to keep her head held high was yet to be determined.
Chapter Seven
“Are you sure your business in Kentucky isn’t over with yet?” Deborah asked Mother Doreen over the phone. “You sure you don’t want to come back to New Day and run the Singles’ Ministry?”
“Is that the only reason why you want me back there? To work me?” Mother Doreen teased. “And I thought you really missed me.”
“Now, Mother Doreen, you know I miss you something awful, but somehow I got dragged back into working with the Singles’ Ministry.”
