The Church House “Excerpt”
SYNOPSIS
As a child, Tangela Houston experienced “sanctified” cruelty at the hands of her doctrine driven mother. Had it not been for her father’s kind, faithful heart and a desire to find her “true” self, she would have gladly exchanged Christianity for a pair of Manolo Boots. But when she accepts and invitation from Felecia Williams, her mentor and direct supervisor, to visit Greater Tabernacle Christian Center, Tangela rededicates her life to God at the feet of Pastor Keith Mitchell, a man who would do anything to keep secrets from his past hidden. She even bumps into college crush turned professional football player, Eric Parker, and rekindles the old flame.
Her confidence in her newfound relationship with the Savior and Eric is shattered when she finds herself accused of murdering Felecia and in the arms of David Moss, the newly appointed minister of music, who is tied to her in a way that will change her life forever.
Prologue
TANGELA WAITS IN ANTICIPATION for her mother’s loud, commanding voice to disturb her last few moments of peaceful silence. She lays on floral, Egyptian cotton sheets surrounded by down pillows, staring at the pale pink ruffle trimmed canopy covering her white washed, solid oak four-post bed. It won’t be long now. She could hear Momma stirring in the hallway.
Her mother, who only smiles at church, is a big, dark skinned woman who would rather have her teeth knocked out than allow her daughter to live a normal life. Other kids could watch television, go swimming, and ride the bus to school.
“Amy can do whatever her parents allow,” Tangela’s mother told her after she asked to go to the girl’s birthday party. “No child of mine is going to a pool party. Good girls don’t wear swimsuits and should not be seen in public in soaking wet t-shirts. You will do as I say.”
Tangela always wakes up early. Monday through Friday she is up and out of the house by 7:30 a.m. sitting in the back seat of her mother’s Lexus ready to be driven forty five minutes north of her home to the prestigious, Holy Lambs Christian Academy. It’s a private school. She doesn’t understand what is so private about the school because she knows everyone there. Her mother told her that it is private because unruly children cannot attend school with good kids like her. Public schools are for them, the bad kids.
On Saturdays, Tangela awakens even earlier to have breakfast so that she could accompany her parents while they witnessed to sinners. She liked visiting sinners because they usually had children. While the grown-ups talked in the living room or the kitchen, the kids could play outside or stay indoors to watch television in another room if it was cold or rainy.
A few Saturdays ago her parents went on vacation, so she went witnessing with Leroy and Judy Rice, members of Tangela’s father’s church who happened to teach at Holy Lambs. Tangela likes Mr. Rice more than she liked Mrs. Rice. Judy is mean to her.
The sinner she visited with the Rice’s lived in Open Arms Housing projects located on the poor side of town. Tangela looked fearfully at the broken windows and graffiti brick as Judy urged her to walk faster. A man wearing a torn, red plaid shirt and white tight underpants limped quickly towards the trio shouting cuss words, angry that Leroy refused to acknowledge him as he begged for money. The sinner woman opened the door just in time.
Tangela had never seen a home so poorly kept. Papers with crayon scribbles were scattered all over the glass coffee table, stuffed animals were piled high on the blue velvet love seat, and the carpet had visible dirt stains. But the woman, who introduced herself as Karen, proudly offered everyone a seat then called for her children to come into the living room.
Two girls, they appeared to be seven or eight, ran into the living room still in Barbie pajamas, their Barbie was African American. They were not dressed properly for company but they looked happier than all the kids that went to church with her.
Tangela looked around and waited for the rest of the family. There was just a mommy, no dad.
Although her parents were not there, Leroy and Judy followed the same routine, adults in the front talking, kids playing somewhere else. The mom with no dad for her children told the kids to play in her bedroom because it was the only one with a television and the crime was too bad for them to play outside.
The girls decided to play dress up. Tangela stared around the room in amazement at all of the grown up girly stuff. There were red dresses, see through animal print scarves, perfume bottles, and even make-up. Karen’s clothes looked like they belonged to a rich woman, nothing like the old-lady clothes her mom wore. A thick, satin red bedspread with matching pillows covered her heart shaped bed.
The oldest girl, who couldn’t have been more than a year older than Tangela said, “Before we get started, we should introduce ourselves. I’m Mercedes and this is my sister, Lexus.”
Tangela laughed and said, “Those aren’t your real names. You’re trying to trick me; Mercedes and Lexus are cars.”
“We know they’re cars but they’re our names, too.”
“My name is Tangela. I’m sorry for making fun.”
“That’s okay, your name sounds like a fruit,” Mercedes said while looking in her mom’s vanity mirror trying to untie the knot in her headscarf. “You are pretty and light skinned like my sister. I’m black ’cause my daddy is real black. Is that your momma and daddy up there talking to my momma?”
“No. My mom and dad are on vacation.”
Mercedes rolled her eyes. “So, who do you look like?”
“I don’t know,” Tangela said after she thought about it for a few moments.
“Your momma and daddy must be light just like mine,” Lexus said.
“Nope. My mom and dad are the same color as Mercedes.”
Both of the girls looked confused. Mercedes said, “Then your momma don’t know who your daddy is. My momma’s friend girl doesn’t know who her little boy’s daddy is. It’s okay ’cause your daddy must be too stupid to know. His feelings won’t be hurt ’cause he’ll probably leave your momma to raise you by herself just like our daddy.”
Tangela shook her head. “My daddy loves me. And, I don’t have to look like anyone. I look like my own self.”
Lexus yoked her neck as she scolded Mercedes. “Momma told you about being in grown folks’ business. You’re gonna get a whuppin’ if you don’t shut your mouth.”
Mercedes sighed, sucked her teeth, and said, “Come on, girl. Let’s put some make-up and high heel shoes on.”
Tangela was so excited because she had never played dress up. Her mom didn’t have stuff she wanted to play with anyway. All her mom ever wore was long sleeved black dresses and skirts the nearly touched the floor. She didn’t wear make up and only wore white on first Sundays.
“Tangela,” her mom’s friend, Judy, called, “Let’s go.” The little girl rushed to put on her shoes and headed up the hallway. The girls waved good-bye to each other.
“Where do you think you’re going looking like a Jezebel?” Judy grabbed her and wiped her face with a Kleenex, and said, “You just like your momma looking like some street walker,” then hit Tangela hard on the back.
“You can take a child from its momma but can’t take the momma out the child,” Leroy, said.
Mercedes and Lexus’s mom looked embarrassed and asked Judy and her husband to leave. She screamed something about them being hypocrites and that God would get them for mistreating a child like that.
“We didn’t mean you.” Judy tried to clean up her statement.
“You just meant people who wear make-up like me.”
Tangela went home that day, not mentioning any of the things that was said or done while out witnessing. Mercedes’ words did cause Tangela to wonder because she really didn’t look like her mother or father.
“MAYBE MY DAD REALLY ISN’T MY DAD and it makes mom upset,” she said to, Lily, her pillow baby. Tangela used a small pillow as a baby doll because her mother did not allow her to play with dolls.
“Dolls are not allowed in my home,” her mother told her grandmother, who had purchased Tangela a Cabbage Patch Kid with real hair. “It encourages girls to become unwed mothers.”
“Tangela,” her mother called from the hallway. “Get out of that bed.”
Tangela jumped out of bed, with one foot landing on the light green, shag rug and the other sliding into her slippers just before her mother turned on the light. She stood in place waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light beaming from the 100-watt bulb overhead.
“Stop looking crazy! You know that since your daddy has been elected regional superintendent of our church we have to get there on time!” Her mother walked over to the closet, pulled out a long sleeved, ankle length, navy blue sailor girl dress, hung it on the back of the door and said, “Make your bed! Only nasty people leave their beds unmade.”
After straightening out the fitted sheet, Tangela crafted perfect hospital corners with the flat one over the mattress at the foot of the bed then made sure that the sheet laid smoothly over the first. She placed her perfectly fluffed pillows in front of the headboard before going into her bathroom to wash up.
She took off her pajama top revealing her white spaghetti strapped tank top, turned on her bath water, and drug her step stool over to the sink. Tangela grabbed her toothbrush from the holder and laid it on the counter. Knowing that it would be difficult to get anything out of the flat tube of Crest, she rolled the tube from the bottom and tried to force at least a dab of the green gel onto her toothbrush. Nothing. Tangela turned off the bathtub’s running faucet and headed up the hall to the main linen closet to retrieve a new tube of toothpaste.
“Get back in your room, walking around half naked,” her mother yelled.
“Momma, I don’t have any tooth…”
Her mother slapped her in the mouth causing her to fall to the floor. Tangela wailed as her mother hit her repeatedly. “Shut up when I am speaking to you. And do what I tell you.”
“Ruthie!” Tangela’s father grabbed the woman’s arm, “stop hitting my child.”
“Do you see what she’s walking around the house in, Kevin?” Ruthie said.
“She’s a seven year old wearing pajamas.” He took Tangela’s hand and started walking towards her bathroom.
Tangela was still crying. “I need toothpaste.”
Her father got a new tube of toothpaste for Tangela’s bathroom and told her to close her eyes. She obeyed and listened to her father’s footsteps fade into the distance and then return.
“Open your eyes,” her father said.
When Tangela opened her eyes she saw a three ruffled, yellow taffeta dress with a matching purse. She ran over to the garment and caressed the fabric, “Daddy! “It’s so pretty and my favorite color.”
“I know baby. You look like a ray of sunshine in it. Did I ever tell you that your very first dress was yellow?”
“Yeah, Daddy.” Tangela looked at the floor.
“What’s wrong?” her dad asked and picked her up.
“I know why Mommy doesn’t like me.”
“Who said your mother doesn’t like you?”
“No one, but she is always mean to me. I think she knows that you are not my real daddy because I am light skinned and you guys both are dark. She’s mad about it because you’re going to leave her to take care of me all alone, with no help.”
He stroked Tangela’s long, curly hair, reassuring her in a loving, fatherly tone, “That’s not true. We are different skin tones because God, our father, made us that way. Your mom has had a lot on her mind lately but I will have a talk with her.” He kissed Tangela on the forehead and left.
SHE COULD HEAR HER PARENTS SCREAMING at each other through the adjoining bedroom’s wall.
“Kevin, you have got to stop spoiling that girl.”
“How is being a good, caring father going to spoil Tangela?” he asked his wife.
“You keep buying her all them colorful dresses,” she said. “You’re turning her into a Jezebel just like her…”
Tangela’s father interrupted so she did not hear the last part of her mother’s statement.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” Kevin warned her. “I treat you so kind. Why can’t you treat Tangela that way? If you didn’t want her we should have never-”
Tangela ran into the room, completely dressed in the new outfit her father laid out for her, and screamed, “Stop it. Just, stop it. I hate having a momma and a daddy. I saw two girls last week and they were happy with only a momma. I wish I only had a daddy!”
