Read God Ain't Through Yet Online
Authors: Mary Monroe
God Ain't Through Yet
Other books by Mary Monroe
God Ain't Blind
The Company We Keep
She Had It Coming
Deliver Me From Evil
God Don't Play
In Sheep's Clothing
Red Light Wives
God Still Don't Like Ugly
Gonna Lay Down My Burdens
God Don't Like Ugly
The Upper Room
“Nightmare in Paradise” in
Borrow Trouble
This book is dedicated to four of the most special people on the planet:
Meredith Riley, Mitzi Dunn, Sandra “Diane” Ridgeway, and Tara Worthy.
One of my biggest fans was a fellow author who was loved by so many folks: E. Lynn Harris. I didn't get to meet him in person and it is one of my biggest regrets. It was during one of my first public events that I realized how special he was. The host at the bookstore where I was signing handed me a stack of books to sign for people who had not been able to attend the event. One of those people was E. Lynn Harris. Later, he e-mailed me out of the blue to congratulate me and wish me luck with
God Don't Like Ugly
. I will miss him.
I am sincerely grateful for the massive support I receive from my other fans, the booksellers, book clubs, radio and TV stations, libraries, my media escorts who take such good care of me on my book tours, the staff at the Ivy restaurant in Beverly Hills, and my hosts at the Venetian, the Wynn, and Bellagio in Las Vegas. I especially appreciate the support of my fans who live outside of the United States and who go out of their way to get copies of my books in a timely manner.
I can't thank my Kensington family enough for treating me so special! My editor, Selena James, is always available when I need her. Adeola Saul and Karen Auerbach, my current publicists, and Maureen Cuddy and Joan Schulhafer, the publicists who took such good care of me in the beginningâI love you all. To the “honchos” Walter Zacharius, Steven Zacharius, and Laurie ParkinâI love you all, too! I sincerely appreciate and thank the folks in the sales department for doing so many wonderful things for me. And to everyone else at Kensington, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Andrew Stuart, my agent, continues to guide me in the right direction. Thank you, Andrew.
Lauretta Pierce, thank you for keeping my Web site maintained.
To everyone else, as long as you keep reading, I will keep writing.
Please continue to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and opinions (even the mean onesâ¦ha ha) by e-mailing me at
[email protected]
or by visiting my Web site
www.Marymonroe.org
as often as possible.
Â
All the best,
Â
Mary Monroe
June 2010
Richland, Ohio, 1997
M
y husband was the
last
man in town that the people in our close-knit circle of friends expected to have an affair. Why he didn't cheat was as much of a mystery to me as it was to them. When I mentioned to one of my female friends that I was married to a man who didn't cheat, her only question was, “What's wrong with him?”
It saddened me to hear that some people thought that there was something wrong with a man who didn't cheat on his wife.
“There is nothing wrong with my husband. He's as normal as any other man,” I told that friend.
“Ha! If that's the case, he's
not
normal,” that friend told me.
Maybe she was right. If it was normal for a man to cheat, then Pee Wee was not normal.
Despite the fact that I had cheated on my husband just a few months ago (yes,
I'd
cheated, but I'll get to that later) and had accused him of being unfaithful on numerous occasions, I knew in my heart that he had not slept with another woman since he married me. However, one of my concerns was the other women who were dying to get their hands on him.
“If you ever break up with Pee Wee, send him to me,” another female friend had jokingly suggested. “He's perfect.”
When I told my mother what my friend had said, she told me, “Girl, as brazen and desperate as women are these days, I'd be worried if I were you.”
Even after my mother's comment, I didn't worry or complain because I felt secure and comfortable. Looking back on it now, I realize I was too comfortable. That was my first mistake. I had a ringside seat in the eye of a major hurricane, but I was so comfortable I didn't realize that until it was too late.
The day that Pee Wee, my “perfect” husband, abruptly and cruelly left me for another woman had started out like any other day. It was the middle of March, and still a little too cold for my tastes. I'd been a resident of Ohio for over forty years by this time, and I still hadn't adjusted to the weather. When I was a child growing up in Florida, I used to run around naked in our front yard in March. Kids doing such a thing in Ohio, in March, was unheard of.
I had crawled out of bed during the night and turned up the thermostat. When the weather was nice enough, Pee Wee slept in the nude, and I usually slept in something very skimpy. Right after dinner the night before, he had slid into a pair of flannel pajamas. I'd wiggled into a pair of purple thong panties, a matching Wonder-bra, and a snug cotton nightgown. I'd slid my freshly pedicured feet into a pair of nylon socks. Large pink sponge rollers covered every inch of my head, individually wrapped around my thick, recently dyed black hair. A rose-scented, wrinkle-busting, white gel, one of the many weapons that I used to fight Father Time, covered my face. We looked like we were made up for a Halloween party, but it had been a night of raw passion. I had peeled off my socks and that snug gown like a stripper. He'd helped me remove everything else. Within minutes I had his handprints on parts of my body that hadn't been touched since my last physical exam. And I had assumed positions that I hadn't been in since I gave birth to my daughter. Afterward, I fell asleep in his arms. But when I opened my eyes the next morning, I was in bed alone.
Pee Wee had already left the house by the time I got up and made it downstairs to the kitchen. That was odd, but it wasn't that big of a deal because he didn't do it that often. He usually waited for me to fix his favorite breakfast: grits, biscuits, scrambled eggs with green bell peppers mixed in, and beef bacon. And when I didn't get up in time to cook, he strapped on an apron and did it. The last time he had prepared breakfast, he had served it to me in bed.
For some reason, Pee Wee had not made breakfast this particular morning. He'd left the small clock radio on the kitchen counter on to some rap station (how many people listened to rap music this early in the morning?) and a mess on the kitchen table, which included the morning newspaper folded with the pages out of order, his empty coffee cup, a Krispy Kreme donut box, and an ashtray with the remnants of a thick marijuana cigarette piled up in it. I made a mental note to scold him about leaving a roach in plain view. It was hard enough trying to hide certain things and activities from our inquisitive eleven-year-old daughter, Charlotte, not to mention nosy relatives and friends who dropped in at the most inconvenient times. One day my mother went snooping through my bedroom closet and stumbled across an XXX-rated VHS tape that I often watched with Pee Wee when our sex life needed a shot in the arm. She took me aside and quoted Scripture nonstop for twenty minutes. By the time she got through with me, I felt like I knew every harlot in the Bible personally. She'd “excused” Pee Wee and “reminded” me that men were too weak, stupid, and horny to know better.
Pee Wee and I had shared a good laugh over that. Our life together was so idyllic at times that my meddlesome mother's antics and crude comments didn't bother us. I had the best of both worlds. He was not just my husband; he was also my best friend.
In spite of all my shortcomings and flaws, I looked at matters of the heart from a realistic point of view. I knew that no man, or woman, was perfect, and that anybody could make a mistake. Me jumping into bed with that low-down, funky, black devil that I got involved with last year was one of the biggest mistakes I'd ever made in my entire life. It had been such an intense and passionate affair that it had me acting like a fool. I had done things for him that I had never done to please a man. I'd told lies to be with him. And I'd given him money. It had begun gradually, but when I realized I was “paying” for some dick, I got real concerned because that went against everything I believed in. When I refused to continue paying for my pleasure, the relationship ended in a violent confrontation. Luckily, I had escaped uninjuredâat least physically. But I had “paid” a very high price for my mistake. I was so disgusted with myself that for a long time it was hard for me to look in a mirror without flinching.
My husband had reluctantly forgiven me, and we had moved on. “Annette, you ain't the first woman to cheat, and you won't be the last. I'll get over what you doneâ¦I guess,” he told me, cracking a weak smile to hide some of the pain that I'd caused.
I could not have been more repentant and humble if they'd revised the Bible and included a psalm in my honor. “Honey, I swear to God, something like this will never happen again,” I assured him, with reconstructive ideas about how I was going to repair my marriage swimming around in my head.
Once that was behind us, I began to focus on the only intimate relationship that mattered to me now. But I was no fool. I knew that if
I
could fall into the deep black hole of infidelity, anybody could. However, since it was usually the man who acted a fool and got involved in an affair, it was more important for me to focus on what my husband might or might not do. I believed that if he ever did cheat on me, I had to look at the situation from an overall point of view: Would I be better off without this man? Does he no longer love me? Is he worth fighting for? Is this marriage dead? Has he become such a slimy devil that he is no longer good enough for me anyway?
Had any of that been the case, the bombshell that my husband dropped in my lap this morning wouldn't have caused so much damage. Because when he informed me that he was having an affair, I could not have been more stunned if somebody had told me that the Easter Bunny was a pimp.
He had committed the granddaddy of indiscretions: a torrid, ongoing, “I'd rather be with her than you,” sexual relationship with a woman whom I had called my friend. To me, that was the worst kind of affair. If I couldn't trust my husband and a woman I called my friend, who could I trust?
To make matters even worse, I was probably the last person in our circle to hear about his affair!