Squeak

Pillow Talk

Hold onto y'all wigs and bonnets...

Pastor Holmes

"Pastor Holmes, you have a visitor!" the social worker annoyingly announced once she entered my room.

"Ms. Sandra, I'm not in the mood for visitors," I said as politely as I could muster. I had one more month in the facility, and time couldn't pass fast enough. I counted the days as if waiting for my release from prison. That girl of mine had let her Jezebel spirit take hold of her, and I needed to get it out of her. I knew in my soul that the Devil would win her over, and like a fool, I thought I trained her well. I thought I would let her go to college to give her a taste of the real world and see how evil it was. I knew it'd be too much for her, and she'd come running back home, seeking protection. I'd accept her back with open arms, and she'd take her rightful place beside me where she was meant to be.

"I think you'll like this visitor," she sang, stepping aside. I didn't need a mirror to know that my face displayed the pure disgust I had for my murderous whore daughter. "I'll leave the two of you to catch up," the social worker said, leaving us to our tension-filled reunion.

My eyes narrowed as Jezebel surveyed the little hovel of a room I had called home for the last few months. She approached a bouquet of roses the church had sent me and smelled them. She wrinkled her nose and backed away from it as if someone threw holy water on her. She reached out, plucked a bulb from its stem, and crushed it in her hand, leaving behind a trail of white petals in her wake.

I don't like this at all. She's too confident—too full of herself.

"I didn't think you could get any fatter," I spat. She grinned and picked up a get well soon card from my nightstand.

"Dear Pastor Holmes. You are greatly missed, and the congregation prays for your recovery daily. Satan tried to take you out, but he will never prevail against God's people. We are eager for your return to the pulpit. Aww. That's so nice of them. They even signed it, New Light Baptist Church," she purred, flipping the card over for me to see. "I don't know about Satan trying to take you out, but it is what it is," she said before ripping the card into several pieces. My pressure rose when she threw them in my face.

If I was able-bodied, I'd...

"I heard about you, girl."

"I'm sure you have," she replied, grabbing a tin of cookies from a gift basket. "Does the church send you these baskets often?" she asked, plopping into a chair.

"Weekly."

"Gotta love that outreach and ministry," she sighed, ripping off the translucent film around the border of the cookie tin. They were those Danish butter cookies in the blue can that you could find at any retailer. She bit into one, and her eyes rolled in the back of her head. She moaned as she devoured it and reached for another. "I'm curious, though. How did you expect me to pay the bills while you were gone?"

"Maybe if you hadn't run off Sister Webster and Sister Riley, then they would've provided you with the money the church had gotten together for you. But instead, you had that...that...felon up in my house!"

"Shockingly, Erik doesn't have a record. We'll see how long that lasts," she mumbled around the cookie in her mouth. "But don't worry, that felon takes excellent care of me," she said suggestively.

"Oh, don't worry. I know," I spat, my jealousy and rage rising as I remembered when Erik visited. He told me my woman fucked like a stallion. He ruined her. She was mine. I made her exactly how I wanted her to be—chaste, obedient, and subservient—the perfect wife. Eighteen years of my foot on her neck went down the drain as soon as Erik King arrived. I did a good deed by taking in her mother when she showed up at the church pregnant, hungry, and homeless. God spoke to me and told me to marry her and try to make an honest woman out of the former prostitute, but it was clear her prostituting ways transferred to Jezebel and was embedded in her DNA. I couldn't make Angela Holmes the perfect wife—no, she was too far gone. She'd been run through, abused, and had her heart broken too many times. Angela was a fighter. She never cowered and whimpered when I laid hands on her—no, she'd jump on me and try her best to wear my ass out. Then the cancer got hold of her, and she couldn't fight any longer. It came and took her quickly like a thief in the night. One day she was giving me hell; the next, she could barely get out of bed. I watched her slowly fade away in agony with a satisfied smile on my face. Angela was prescribed morphine for the pain, but I never administered it. She didn't deserve a peaceful death because she wouldn't have a peaceful afterlife.