Broken Idols - Season 1

Episode 36

Pastor Hammond leaned forward in his chair and cracked his knuckles one by one. “Debby, what is it that you want us to know. Tell us,” he demanded in a very calm voice.

Mrs. Hammond raised a pencilled eyebrow and blinked. “Deborah.”

Debby watched Peggy bowing her head and gripping the edges of her seat, and then tear drops fell into her laps. Debby smirked and shook her head, once again feeling gratified to see her big sister showing signs of emotional weakness before her. She slowly turned to face her parents and sighed, and then she finally answered, “She made friends with a Nigerian who wanted to marry her this year, and she was planning to hide it from you for fear that you’d disagree.”

Pastor Hammond and his wife exchanged looks, and then they both asked in unison, “Is he a Christian?”

Peggy shook her head without looking up at them. Her parents exchanged looks again.

“Then end it, OK?” Mrs. Hammond said slowly. “You cannot marry an unbeliever and add extra load to your own unbelief. It will not help mother Ghana. Please stop it at once. I don’t want to hear such things. Come back to church and you shall find good men who will marry you in the Lord.” Peggy muttered a sarcastic comment and Mrs. Hammond caught it. “What was that again? That there is no difference? It’s not your fault. You don’t go to church. Now look here – both of you! Let this be your first and last. If I ever hear that either of you has harmed the other, something will fall from the sky. It will be so loud that your neighbours will hear it. I promise you. Stop behaving like kids and get out of our church.” She turned to return to her seat, but she hesitated and looked back to realize they were still seated. “What are you waiting for? Get out of here!”

Peggy and Debby slowly picked their bags and walked out of the room quietly. Mrs. Hammond slumped into her chair and looked up into the ceiling. Pastor Hammond reached for her hand, but she moved it out of the way, to his utmost surprise.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s your fault,” she said with her eyes still on the ceiling. “You brought them up in a very improper way. Why would you ever teach your kids that they were born individually and have to survive apart from each other? What teaching is that?”

Pastor Hammond frowned. “Don’t take me back to my past life in darkness. That is not who I am anymore. I am a changed man.”

“Oh spare me that,” Mrs. Hammond waved it off. “The sinner Abeiku Hammond shares the same body with the saved Pastor Hammond. They have the same voice and the same children till date. Why did you not undo this thing in their minds? Haven’t you realized they’ve been at each other’s throats since childhood?” She turned to look at him. “It is not good. They are twins, for crying out loud. Next, they’ll be fighting over one man and that will be it! We will suffer public disgrace.”

“Look! I am not their only parent. You are their mother. You mostly spent time with them while I went to Bible school. You could have explained to them that those words were from an unsaved man and that all things were made new in Christ. Why did you also watch them cut each other till now? You must also take the blame.”

“I am not the one who asked them to step on each other’s heads to reach the top!”

“Humph! But look at it critically. I didn’t actually ask them to kill each other to reach the top. I just didn’t want them to be weak and lazy and overdependent on each other like most twins are. I wanted them to achieve great things in life independently. That is what I meant.”

“How were they supposed to understand that at that tender age? You shouldn’t have said that.”

“You shouldn’t have kept quiet for several years while they messed up.”

“My dear, they have not been in church for a while. Doesn’t that bother you? Our children need us.”

“They are old enough to take care of themselves.”

Mrs. Hammond shook her head. “That’s not adults I saw seated in those chairs. They need their parents. They need to be straightened.”

Pastor Hammond shook his head and got up, taking off his jacket and loosening his necktie. “I have a large flock to take care of. You can go and live with them and breastfeed them.” He walked briskly out of the parlour. Mrs. Hammond watched him angrily until he exited.

Peggy and Debby stopped a taxi. As it took off, Peggy looked away into the window and wiped tears off her eyes with her palm. Debby leaned back into the seat and sighed. They sat in silence for about twenty minutes on the road without even a glance at each other.

Finally, Peggy shut her eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to speak, but Debby shook her head and averted her eyes. “I don’t need your gratitude. I didn’t tell that lie to save you. I told that lie to save my parents from heartache. I don’t know what would have happened if they learned that your partner is in their congregation.”

Peggy folded her arms and pursed her lips. She received a notification on her phone and opened it to read a message from a contact named Pinky. The message read “I was happy to see you today. Looking sexy. I miss you. Please come back to me.” Peggy blinked and deleted the message.