The Choir Director (7 page)

The rest of his group found chairs and circled around my desk. When they were all seated, the room went silent. I’d been through this type of thing before, so the first thing I did was eye Trustee Whitmore and Deacon Brown, whom I considered the weak links. Neither one of them would make eye contact, which confirmed my suspicions that they were followers in this little witch hunt.

Surprisingly, I was the one who broke our silence. “So, Smitty, how’s Maria? You know, I still can’t get over how good that pot roast she made last weekend was. She is quite a cook.”

My approach worked; it took him off guard. He sucked in his breath as if I’d punched him in the solar plexus. “Ah, yes, thank you. That was a good pot roast, wasn’t it?” He shifted in his chair and adjusted his pant legs. “Bishop, we need—”

“Best I’ve ever had.” I cut him off, turning to Maxwell. “Deacon Frye, have you ever had Maria’s pot roast?”

“No, can’t say I have. Is it that good?” Maxwell saw what I was trying to do right away.

I rolled my eyes heavenward, smiling like I was in true bliss. “To die for.”

“Um, Bishop, I thank you for the kind words about my wife’s cooking, but we’re not here for that,” Smitty stated, regaining some strength in his voice.

“I see. Why exactly are you here, Smitty? Is there a problem I don’t know about?” I folded my arms and sat back in my chair.

“Well, some of the trustees and deacons wanted to know—”

“Some of the trustees and deacons, or you, Smitty?” I cut him off again, swiveling my head back and forth between Trustee Whitmore, Trustee Duncan, and Deacon Brown. “Is there a problem, Deacon Brown?” Brown didn’t say a word, so I turned to Whitmore, who still couldn’t make eye contact with me. “Trustee Whitmore, is there a problem?” I glanced at Trustee Duncan. “Trustee Duncan, you got anything to say?”

He sounded nervous, but at least Trustee Duncan spoke. “Bishop, Deacon Smith has brought some things to our attention, and we have some concerns. Maybe he’d be better explaining it.”

I turned back to Deacon Smith. “Okay, Smitty, I take it you’re the spokesman for this little gathering, so you tell me, what exactly are your concerns?”

“You hired a choir director without my—I mean
our
—consent.”

No, he meant
his,
but what I didn’t understand was exactly what he was up to. His attitude was a complete reversal of the way he’d acted when we spoke before my trip, and I had no clue what caused this about-face.

I paused, measuring my words. “I’ve been hiring choir directors around here for more than twenty years. Why would you or your board take issue with that?”

“It’s my job to take issue with anything that might place this church in jeopardy.” He raised his voice to talk over me.

I sat up in my chair and spoke very seriously and directly when he was finished. “Smitty, how long have we known each other? Fifteen, twenty years?” Deacon Smith nodded. “And in that time, have I ever put this church in jeopardy?”

“Bishop, it seems there’s a first time for everything.”

“On that we can agree.” I looked purposefully at each one of them and then sat back in my chair. “We’re a church without a choir. How could hiring a choir director be putting the church in jeopardy?”

“How do we know that this person is any good?”

“You don’t, except for the fact that I told you he is. Is my word no longer good around here? Do you think I’m having a lapse in judgment?”

Smitty folded his arms, shifting around in his chair. “No, but I’d like to know how much you offered this man.”

“The man’s name is Aaron Mackie. He’s one of the most talented choir directors in the country, and I offered him seventy-five thousand a year. In my judgment, he’s worth every penny.”

“Seventy-five thousand! Have you lost your mind? Our church is in financial trouble and you want us to pay a choir director
seventy-five thousand dollars a year? I don’t make that much, and I run an entire department for the city.”

I said in a calm, even voice, “First off, Deacon, this is not about you; it’s about the church. Secondly, the amount of money that Aaron Mackie is going to make us is going to be ten times what we pay him. He’s that good. So y’all need to stop with this nonsense and let me do my job.”

Smitty gave me a puzzled look, which made me think that he really believed I’d lost my mind. “You know what, Bishop? Maybe you are having a lapse in judgment, because I don’t think you know how bad things are around here. We can barely pay our mortgages!” he shouted.

I turned my attention to the two trustees in the room. “You’re supposed to be the money people in the room. What do you think?”

Trustee Whitmore spoke up for the first time. “Bishop, that’s just too much money to pay a man to direct a choir.”

“You’ve got to spend money to make money, Trustee. Y’all want the glory without the pain.”

“Maybe if you can get him to take half of that, we can make this happen,” Trustee Duncan added.

“I promised that man seventy-five thousand. I can’t go back on my word. That will kill our credibility with him. Besides, I’ve never seen a man who could perform like he did this past Sunday. He puts Jackie Moss to shame. He was a hair shy of being magnificent. If I ask him to take less money, I might as well tell him to stay home.”

Smitty glanced over at the other men in the room. “Maybe that’s for the best. None of us feels this is a good idea, Bishop.”

“Speak for yourself.” Maxwell finally interjected himself into the conversation. “I stand with the bishop on this. The only way we’re going to increase revenue is to bring people back into the church. A good choir can do that.”

“We don’t see it that way, Deacon Frye. What we see is the bishop recklessly spending money we don’t have. Now, as I tried to explain to you earlier in the conference room, we’ve already got the votes needed to reject hiring this Aaron Mackie.”
Smitty’s eyes never left mine. “You fight us on this, Bishop, and you might be the one looking for a job.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, Bishop, I’m not threatening you. I’m making you a promise.” He sat back in his chair with a smug expression.

“Well, then, I guess we don’t have anything else to talk about, do we?” I stood up and gestured toward the door, letting them know I was ending our impromptu meeting.

“Please, listen to me very carefully. I need you to get out of the house. It’s not safe. Get out now.” Although the words I was saying were very serious, I tried my best to say them calmly. After all, I needed to make sure that I kept the woman on the other end of the phone calm.

Every time the phone rang to the church’s rape hotline, my stomach always did flips. I never knew what to expect. Every call was different, but every woman on the line was the same. I knew that no matter what the circumstance or the situation, ultimately, that woman was me. That woman was who I was and where I had once been in my life: a victim.

Not only had I been a victim, but I walked around with a degree of guilt as well. A part of me always felt that what happened to me, my own rape, had somehow been my fault. After all, how many times had my brother warned me about my lifestyle?

No, I wasn’t some country girl who went off to college and lost her mind, engaging in drinking, drugs, and sex with any-and everybody. As a matter of fact, I had had a steady boyfriend. Unfortunately, he was the one who did all the drinking and drugging.

Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t all out there like that. He drank at the frat parties and smoked a little weed every now and then, but only when he had a major test coming up or something. He said it relaxed him, and he did his best work when he had a buzz. Now, I’m not advocating the use of marijuana on college campuses—or anywhere else, for that matter—but I kid
you not, that fool got an A every time. Any other time, he was an average C+ student at best. So there had to be something to it.

My college boyfriend was a sweetheart. I loved him so much. I would have done anything for him. And I did. I lost my virginity to him. And as far as I know, the drinking and the drugging he did with other people, but the sexing, now, that he only did with me.

It didn’t matter to my brother, though, that I thought the world of my boyfriend. My brother couldn’t stand him. He would always warn me that he wasn’t my type, that he wasn’t the kind of man I needed. He hated that my boyfriend indulged in college nightlife the way he did. My brother—who never even finished college and worked at Pep Boys—felt that my boyfriend wasn’t good enough for his little sister.

“Tia, that ain’t even you, going to parties and hanging out and stuff,” my brother would complain. “Girl, you didn’t even go to homecoming or prom, but now I hear you at parties, backing that thang up. That fool is trying to turn you out. With that clown, you gon’ end up someplace you don’t want to be.”

My brother’s words always went in one ear and out the other. I just thought he was being the typical big brother, overprotec-tive and sickened by the thought of his little sister screwing and having a good time.

It wouldn’t be long before I wished I had listened to my brother. Maybe then I wouldn’t have suffered the heartbreak that I did once the so-called love of my life turned on me. Once I became a victim of rape.

No, I wasn’t raped by my boyfriend—not my body anyway. Some other jerk managed to do that. It happened at one of the college parties I went to in order to meet up with my boyfriend. He got so wasted that he threw up all over himself and passed out. When I went upstairs to find something to clean him up with, I was pulled into a room and raped—not by one but by five different men.

After the rape, everything changed between my boyfriend and me. It was like I had the plague, and he didn’t want to be seen with me. He didn’t want to be near me. I felt as if I had been
raped all over again, only this time instead of my body being raped, he raped my heart. The person I always thought would be there for me wasn’t.

Dealing with the rape was rough for me for years. There were times when I wanted to take a pill or two to see if it would relax me. But instead of turning to drugs, I turned to God. And I thanked God every day for Bishop Wilson—and my brother, of course, who was now more protective than ever. I could tell that my brother was still walking around with some degree of guilt. I tried convincing him to come to church, take it to the altar and give it to God like I did. To date, that hadn’t happened, but I was still working on him. I knew one day he was going to walk through the doors of First Jamaica Ministries and surprise me.

Until then, I had to focus on making sure the women who called into the rape hotline were taken care of. I had to make sure they become the woman who I am now—a survivor—and not the woman I used to be—a victim.

My mission included the woman who was on the other end of the phone.

“Is your husband in the home now?” I asked her.

“No, he stepped out. Probably to get flowers or some lame thank-you card. That’s what he always does.” The woman began to cry. “I can’t take this anymore. One day he’s going to kill me. I can’t let that happen. I have children to raise. So, it’s going to be either him or me.”

“Where are the children now?” I asked her.

“At my mother’s.”

“Good.” I pulled out the piece of paper from my desk that outlined an action plan for an escape from an abuser. I proceeded to tell the woman exactly what she needed to do. She kept interrupting me with question after question of what-ifs. I wasn’t surprised that by the time I ended the call, she’d decided to give her husband another chance.

“I really believe you should get out now while you can,” I reiterated to her, to no avail.

“I don’t have anywhere to go. I mean, I have a sister, but then I’d have to tell her my business. Nobody knows what I’ve been dealing with. Besides that, I don’t have any money. And my children
love their father. They’ll hate me for taking them away from him. I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. Not this way. Not now. Thank you so much for your help, though. Thank you.” And the phone went dead in my ear.

I hung up the phone feeling like a failure, but not even Jesus Himself could get everybody saved. I reminded myself, “You can’t save ’em all, Tia. You can’t save ’em all.”

I stepped out of Penn Station and onto the corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Eighth Avenue carrying two huge suitcases, a knapsack, and my portable keyboard. I’d given the rest of my stuff away before I left Virginia that morning. Everything I needed to take New York by storm was packed in the bags I had with me.

I looked up at the skyscrapers surrounding me and smiled. God, I loved this city, with its big lights and fast-moving people. You know what they say: If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I gave myself one year, and I was going to rule this city.

“Hey, taxi!” I yelled thirty minutes later, flailing my arms up and down like one of the sisters doing the holy dance. It was to no avail. The son of a gun drove right past me like I wasn’t even there.

Thirty minutes. I’d been standing out there for half an hour trying to flag down a cab. Frustration and anger consumed me. How the hell was I going to take over the city if I couldn’t even catch a taxi? Anyhow, I guess it was true what they said about trying to hail a cab in New York City when you’re a black man: It’s impossible. Whether it was driven by a white man or a black man, a Latino or an Arab, each cab I saw whizzed right by me as if I were waving a 9 mm handgun instead of just my arm, which was beyond tired at this point.

Luckily, about five minutes later, a cab pulled up to the curb right in front of me and let out two passengers. I grabbed the car
door so fast when it opened that the people getting out probably thought I was a doorman. I left the door open so the cab wouldn’t pull away and then turned to grab my belongings. When I turned back to the cab, this dark-skinned sister around my age with a scarf around her head slid into the backseat.

“Hey, wait a minute! That’s my taxi.” I was holding a suitcase in each arm, and my keyboard was flung over my shoulder.