Pulpit Confessions By: Péron F. Long

Pulpit Confessions
By:
Péron F. Long
Pulpit Confessions 1
Prologue
It was an early Sunday morning, when she did what she knew had to be done. Her
decision was clear to her as the smell of fresh linen just washed. She hadn’t had sleep all
night, and she was tired, but she knew that it was time to complete her latest project.
“No one will stand in my way,” she whispered to herself as she looked into her purse
to make sure her tools for the job were still there. “This has to be done.”
Her life, the life she had created was one that she no longer desired to live in. She
knew that eventually it would end, but it would under her own terms. No one would force
her to do anything.
She thought about the past year, how she constantly lived in fear that someone would
discover her secrets, discovered all that she had done. She knew that if she were
discovered she would be in jail, something that was not an option.
“This has to be done,” She repeated again to herself.
She sat in the small diner that faced the hotel waiting for her victim to enter. She
wanted to see them before they saw her. She wanted them to be surprised when they saw
how much she had changed. It had been many years and at the time of their last meeting,
she had nothing, now she felt as if she were somebody. She had class. She had dignity.
The last time her victim had laid eyes on her, she was young and naïve, now she was
older, more elegant, and could carry herself well under any circumstances. She was a
new person.
“Ma’am,” the waitress said interrupting her thoughts, “May I get you another cup of
coffee?”
“No thank-you,” she replied agitated.
More coffee was the last thing on her mind; her focus was on the task that waited
before her. She looked at her watch.
“Seven-Thirty,” she whispered.
She knew that her victim would be late, and she knew that they would be late
purposely.
As she continued to stare out of the window, she noticed a long limousine drive up to
the entrance of the hotel. After watching the victim exit the long black car, she then
placed a twenty-dollar bill on the table to pay for her coffee, then she walked out.
“Thank-you,” the waitress yelled with glee of receiving an eighteen-dollar tip.
As she carefully crossed the street to avoid oncoming traffic, she wanted to make sure
that she would not be seen until she was ready. When she entered the lobby of the hotel,
she noticed her victim standing at the desk and she noticed the clerk hand her a key, as
instructed by her.
She watched her victim as she entered the elevator alone. After waiting a few minutes
in the lobby, she then followed her victim upstairs.
As she slowly walked toward the room, her nerves were finally beginning to take affect
of her body. For years, she had feared this person, for years this person made her feel
less than human, but now things have changed. She realized that she too was someone to
fear.
As she stood at the door, trying to gain strength to face her victim, someone she had
viewed for most of her life as her enemy, someone she feared more than anyone. The one
person that she blamed for being responsible for allowing her not to have what was
rightfully hers.
“Hmph, You finally look like something,” her victim said to her with a smirk on their
face as she entered the room.
“You’re looking well yourself,” she replied sarcastically, no longer feeling fear.
“This is the last time I will ever meet or speak with you again. So please say whatever
it is you have to say so that I can be on my way. I have more pressing matters to attend
to than you.”
After several minutes of conversation and more insults from her victim, she began to
feel a surge of rage rip into her body, but she knew she had to continue to be cool for just
a little while longer. She had one final insult that she knew would take her opponent over
the edge.
After retrieving the black bag from the closet and exposing its contents, her
unsuspected victim began to scream in a tyrant, and before she knew it, she was attacked
by her victim with a series of blows. She quickly, retrieved the tool from her pocketbook
and used it to end the life of the person she once feared.
“You were absolutely right, this is the last time you will see me,” she said as she used
the tool to end her bondage.

Katherine Miller
“Ten-thirty,” I said aloud to myself as I arose from lying on the couch. The last thing I
remembered was getting a call from my husband Raymond around eight informing me
that he would be home late.
After hanging up with him I was so pissed that the dinner I had taken the time to
prepare went directly into the garbage disposal. I then walked back into our great room
and fell asleep as I waited for Desperate Housewives to come on.
Before church this morning I told him that I was going to cook something special
today to celebrate our anniversary, but as always his church business always took
precedence over our marriage.
You would think that after twenty-three years of marriage, I would be used to this now,
but I‟m not, and to be perfectly honest I don‟t think I will ever get used to it. When I
married Raymond, several of my friends told me what it would be like to be married to
him due to his popularity as a minister, but I just knew in my heart that things would be
different with us. I knew that the same way he treasured me while we dated would last
for an eternity.
I met Raymond when we were both freshmen at South Carolina State University. I
was in the library studying when out of nowhere a tall and handsome chocolate brother
approached me. When I realized it was Raymond Miller, I almost fainted. Before he
came to SCSU, he was already a very well known young minister. He began preaching at
the age of twelve. Together he and his father had created a huge ministry in Fort Mill,
South Carolina just a few short miles from PTL, the ministry that made Jim and Tammy
Faye Baker infamous as crooked preachers.
“Raymond Miller,” I remembered him saying as he extended his hand for me to shake.
“Katherine. Katherine Smith,” I said nervously as I looked into his hazel eyes.
“It‟s nice to meet you, Katherine. Mind if I sit here beside you?”
Before I could answer, he had already sat down. I remembered how my heart fluttered
as I soon smelled the Polo cologne he was wearing, and it made me feel weak inside.
“What‟s your major, Ms. Katherine Smith?” he asked as he pierced me with his eyes.
“Education”
“I‟m a Theology major, and do you know what my mama always told me?”
I shook my head “no”.
“She says that school teachers make perfect wives for preachers,” he said with a grin.
From that day, I was in love with that man and that man alone. Less than four months
after graduation he and I married and moved into his newly built home in the affluent
Lake Wylie community. Two years later God blessed us with Sabrina, and less than two
years after Sabrina came Raynita.
I considered our first eight years of marriage to be perfect. Raymond was the associate
pastor of God‟s Deliverance Ministries along with his father Raymond Sr. The two of
them along with his mother, younger brother Anthony, our kids, and I were the first
family of GDM, and with that came prestige and honor.

The year Raynita began kindergarten I began my career teaching highs English at
GDM‟s private school located on the same campus as the church. Raymond was always
supportive of my career and even encouraged me to return to college to obtain my
Masters. Two years after graduating with my Masters in Education Administration, I
became the director of the school and helped it to grow in enrollment as well as in
academia.
We both worked hard in our respective careers as well as in forming a strong family
bond with our girls; but ever since they entered high school, and Raymond Sr.‟s health
started declining leaving Raymond as the head of GDM, things with him and me began to
take a strange turn. Raymond began to stay away from home preaching at revivals and
organizing huge conferences across the nation. Anytime I mentioned to him that I
wanted to spend time with him, he would always inform me of the mission appointed to
him by God.
“Baby, God gave me a mission, and I must obey,” he would always remind me.
Now I am more than aware that God keeps his workers busy, but I am not a fool that is
going to believe that every night of the week my husband is actually doing the Lord‟s
work. He hasn‟t touched me in over two years, and when he is away, he barely answers
his cell phone when I call.
As I sat and attempted to watch Desperate Housewives, I couldn‟t focus on the show
because all of my thoughts were on my marriage. I quickly turned the TV off and walked
upstairs to prepare a warm bath. As I walked upstairs, the phone rang. I quickly ran to
the phone in our bedroom.

“Hello,” I answered almost out of breathe.
“Hello. Katherine?”
“Hello, Mother Ruth,” I responded disappointed that it was my mother-in-law and not
my husband.
“Has Raymond arrived home yet?”
“No, ma‟am; he hasn‟t,” I replied with frustration.
There was a long silence between us. Then without a word, she hung up.
“Now what is that about?” I whispered to myself as I placed the receiver back on its
cradle.
Her hanging up that way was nothing new. She usually had very few words for me
anyhow, but I could tell that something was eating at her.
I walked into the bathroom to run my bathwater. After removing my clothes, I began
to stare at my naked honey-toned body in the mirror. After twenty-four years and giving
birth to two children, not much had changed. I still had the figure and the appearance of
a twenty-something year old. When the girls and I go places together, people assume we
are sisters and not a mother with her two daughters.
“What is it about me, Raymond?” I asked myself wishing that he were here to answer
me. “Why don‟t you touch me anymore?”
I sat in the tub for over an hour wishing that he would come home and wash my back
the way he used to when we were younger. The thrill that man used to give me just by a
simple touch is something I now crave. Something I often dream about. Now he barely
even acknowledges my existence.

It was almost twelve o‟clock and my husband still wasn‟t home. The only time we had
spent together today, on our own wedding anniversary, was at church, and in that time I
had with him I had to share him with thousands of other people. Once church was over, I
had to wait in line like everyone else just to remind my husband that this was our
anniversary.
After climbing in the bed, I turned the TV on but couldn‟t concentrate on what was on
it. My heart began to feel a strong sense of hurt, and tears began to run down my face. I
constantly wondered to myself what had happened. What was it that I had done to make
my husband feel the need to go to another woman?
I wiped the tears from my face as I emerged from the bed and walked over to the
entertainment center that stood directly in front of our bed and grabbed the remote to the
CD player. The CD I wanted to hear was already in and set ready to repeat over and over
the one song I needed to hear right now. The very CD that after hearing it years ago had
the only song I listened to religiously. After pressing the play button, I then walked into
my huge walk in closet and found the shoebox I had hidden. Before retrieving the device
I had stored in the box, I stared long and hard at it. I began to think to myself whether it
was my husband or sex that I missed the most.
“Sex,” I whispered as I returned to my bed and began to allow it to do what I longed
for my husband to do. Pleasure me.
Before I knew it, thirty minutes had passed by, my Silver Bullet had made me feel like
a woman three times, and Aretha had told me more than five times how much love can
hurt like hell.

As I lay in the dark room still listening to Aretha, I began to wonder with whom
Raymond had spent our anniversary. I wondered if I knew her. I wondered if I wanted to
know her and if I did what would I do to her.
As Aretha continued to sing, I found myself singing word for word right along with
her.
“Sometimes it hurts to love so bad when you know you've given it your best.
Sometimes it hurts to even laugh. You feel a thousand miles from happiness.
Sometimes the pain is just too much, and it hurts like hell. That's the way it feels.”
After allowing the Silver Bullet to do what it had been doing for me over the past two
years a fourth time, I then placed it back where I had found it, turned the CD player off,
and lay in bed.
I tried to close my eyes, but they refused to obey my command. They took a life of
their own and continuously stared up at the dark ceiling. While they did that, my mind
began to tell me something that it had told me several times before, but I constantly
ignored it.
However, I knew with all my heart that those thoughts would soon be a reality.
Several men had tried before, several men I had turned away. Now my body has become
weak, and my mind has become weary. I thought about something I heard my
grandmother say years ago when I was a little girl.
“If you push someone too many times, eventually they will push back.”
Raymond had finally pushed me one too many times.

“Those Desperate Housewives ain‟t got shit on me,” I said aloud as I finally forced my
eyes to close and my mind to stop wondering about my husband Bishop Raymond
Mitchell Miller, Jr.

Reverend Anthony Miller
On the drive alone back to my house, I was pissed as hell. I couldn‟t believe
Raymond‟s proposal. I couldn‟t believe that he actually asked me to do this for him. The
lie I had been living with for the past two years was already mentally draining me, and
now he wanted me to help him out of a situation that would basically destroy any
happiness that could ever come my way.
“Look, Lil Bro,” he began as he opened the door of the passenger side of my
Navigator. “I know I‟ve asked a lot from you, and if you could just do this one last thing
for me, I would be in your debt for life.”
I just stared at him long and hard. I wanted to tell him to go straight to hell, but we
both knew my answer would eventually be “yes”. It always was. He was my older
brother, fifteen years my senior. He was my idol. He was my hero.
Raymond always had a way of getting people to do things for him no matter how
outrageous it would be.
“Haven‟t I always been there for you, Anthony?” He asked breaking me from my
thoughts.
“Yes, you have,” I whispered thinking of all of the jams he had gotten me out of when
I was younger.
“Just this one last time, okay?”

“There are other ways to handle this situation,” I said hoping that he would opt for the
alternate route.
He stepped out of the passenger side of my truck then shut the door.
“Look at it like this,” he began through the lowered window. “You would be doing it
not just for me, but for God‟s Deliverance as well.”
“I‟ll see you tomorrow,” I replied letting him know that I wouldn‟t give him an answer
that night.
As I drove home slowly, I began to think about my family. I remembered how I used
to pray to God that I would wake up one day only to find that I was having a nightmare.
Growing up the son and brother of two worldwide known ministers was bad enough, but
it was my mother made the entire situation pure hell.
One of my earliest memories was when I was about five or six years old. My mother
told me I had a demon inside of me and that they needed to pray it out of me. Every
Sunday after church services my mother, father, brother, and other so-called sanctified
members of God‟s Deliverance Ministries formed a circle around me and prayed for two
hours straight. I remembered how I would look at them all as if they were crazy trying to
figure out what exactly was wrong with me.
Every Sunday after they prayed and I showed no reaction, once my mother got me
home, she would make me get naked, then get one of my father‟s belts and whip the shit
out of me.
“That demon is going to come out of you even if I have to beat it out,” she would say
as the thick leather strap slapped up against my bare body.

After about four months of the beatings, I finally decided that the only way the two
hour prayers and the beatings would end were if I faked the Holy Ghost. Little did I
know then that I was being groomed to become a top sales man for God‟s Deliverance
Ministries.
Soon after I turned eleven, my mother came into my room to inform me that God had
called me into the ministry.
“This is an honor,” she began with her notorious smile that made her loved by all.
“Your brother was called at twelve, and you see how the Lord has blessed him.”
“Mama, I don‟t want to be a preacher. I want to play basketball,” I said looking at her
as if she had lost the last good sense she had left.
Before I knew it, she had picked up the huge Bible that she carried with her at all times
and hit me so hard upside my head that I fell to the floor.
“You will make the announcement at church on this Sunday,” she said as she walked
out the door leaving me on the floor in excruciating pain.
That was over eighteen years ago, but the day it happened continues to play in my
mind as if it happened only moments ago.
People often tell me how blessed I am to have been brought up in such a loving
Christian family, but they were only bystanders looking inside the window. They never
saw the real Miller family. They couldn‟t see the hate my mother had. They never saw
the indiscretions of my brother, and for the past six years, they never saw my father.
When dementia took over, my mother refused to have him come out in public. At first,
he would curse at her and yell at her informing her that he had to go and spread God‟s
Word and there wasn‟t a damn thing she could do to keep him from doing that. So, to
calm him down she had a small chapel built in their house.
It was very depressing for me to visit and see him decked out in his best suit preaching
inside a small chapel to four empty pews. Sometimes I would sit and listen to him and
amen in the appropriate places.
I would be the very first to admit that being born into the self-proclaimed first family
of God provided me with all the luxuries of life that could only be imagined, but I often
felt as if I were part of a big lie. All my life I had been raised to do what was best for
God‟s Deliverance. All my life I had been groomed to one day takeover what my father
and brother had started.
When I pulled into my driveway, I noticed that the BMW convertible was still parked
in the driveway. Usually it would be gone once I dropped Raymond off, but I knew why
she had stayed.
As I walked into the dark and silent house, I quickly felt an overwhelming sadness. I
thought how happy I was when my parents and brother bought it for me after I graduated
from college. It was a house someone at the age of twenty-one could only dream of. It
had four bedrooms and a huge family room with a formal dining room. My master suite
had a sitting area in it with a balcony overlooking my spacious backyard with a pond. It
was my very own space for an entire three months until Raymond decided to use it as his
rendezvous spot.
My throat was dry so I decided to get a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Once I
turned on the light in the kitchen, I was initially startled to see her sitting at the kitchen
table. I wasn‟t expecting her to be in there.
“Hey,” I said softly.
“Hey,” she replied in a whisper.
She had pulled out the bottle of Cognac that I kept in my pantry and was slowly
sipping what she had poured in her glass as she stared blankly out the window.
“Hope you don‟t mind,” she said as she lifted the glass to her mouth.
I walked over to the cabinet where I kept my glasses. I retrieved one then joined her at
the table.
“Are you sure you should be drinking?” I asked as I poured the brown poison into my
glass.
She said nothing as she looked up at me. I saw the bags under her eyes. I knew she
had been crying. I could tell she felt as if the entire world had crashed down on her. I
suddenly began to feel as if I carried that weight with her.
We sat at the table in silence, yet her eyes told me everything. I found it hard not to
stare, but I did. I didn‟t see the attractive woman I met over three years ago when she
first came to visit God‟s Deliverance. I didn‟t see the beautiful, petite, caramel woman
with the short haircut that came to my house for the first time two years ago. I saw a torn
woman, a woman who felt as if her life had just ended.
“There are other ways you could handle this, you know?” I said.
“I can‟t,” she whispered silently letting me know she had gone that route several times
in the past.
There was more silence. I didn‟t know what to say.
“I told him I would leave, but he told me to stay,” she said breaking the silence
between us. “The past two years have not been fair to you.”
“They haven‟t been fair to you either,” I replied.
Suddenly tears began to race down her face. I reached over to her and held her in my
arms. As she cried, I began to think about when Raymond first brought her over. I‟d
looked at her as just another one of his flings that would last three months before he
moved on, but she wasn‟t. This one remained. He wanted her around at all times.
I thought about the Sunday after church when the three of us were sitting in his office.
His wife Katherine walked in, and he introduced Janaé Young as my girlfriend.
Katherine was so happy that I had finally found someone that before I knew it everyone
saw Janaé and me as a couple.
I was never the ladies‟ man that Raymond was. Although I loved women, I always
chose to wait for the right woman to come along instead of sleeping around or casually
dating. God‟s Deliverance had close to twenty-thousand members with about sixty-five
percent of them being women, and about thirty percent were single women. I knew a
relationship with any of them would have been considered a high profile thing.
In the years that our fake relationship grew, I remained faithful to it. Unlike my older
brother, I believed in commitment, even if it was a lie.
“Why couldn‟t I have met you first?” she asked. “All my life I have always seemed to
fall for the wrong man.”

I remained silent. Not sure what to say. Not sure what to do. I felt for her. I hated the
fact that she was caught up in this.
“I‟m going to tell Raymond tomorrow that I will do it,” I said as she remained in my
arms crying.
Katherine
I sat in my office thinking about the conversation with Raymond at breakfast.
Although I knew what he told me was a lie, something inside me wanted to believe that
he was telling me the truth.
“Baby, I am so sorry about yesterday,” he began as he sat down at the table. “Anthony
and Janaé are expecting, and I was over at his house with them all day helping them to
make arrangements for marriage.”
I didn‟t say anything. I remained silent. I knew in my heart that it had to be more to
the situation than just that. I couldn‟t understand how a situation such as that warranted
him to spend every moment of our anniversary with them to plan a wedding.
“I will have to make sure I congratulate them,” I said softly.
“Give it a few days. He‟s not taking it very well.”
To me that was hard to believe. In my opinion, Anthony was the only one in the Miller
family that seemed to show any type of a loving spirit. Ever since he was a child, I could
tell that there was something different about him.

He was only four when Raymond first introduced me to his family, and I immediately
fell in love with the child. He was the most handsome little boy I had ever seen. I
remembered how I used to think that if Raymond and I had a son, he would look just like
Anthony.
As the years began to pass, the handsome boy became a tall and very attractive man.
He was the same dark complexion as Raymond and stood about six foot three, three
inches taller than my husband. He always wore his naturally curly hair cut short and
neatly trimmed goatee. With the exception of his light hazel eyes, he was a splitting
image of my husband.
His personality was totally different from the rest of his family. As a child, I always
thought he was extremely shy. It was years before he came out of his shell and talk to
people. Mother Ruth always seemed to be annoyed by his quiet demeanor. He never
seemed to show the zeal that the others had. He never had the strong drive to create a
dynasty as the others did. I thought about how shocked I was when he announced to the
church at a very young age, that he was entering the ministry.
As Raymond and I sat at the table in complete silence, I continued to think about what
he had said about Anthony‟s taking Janaé‟s pregnancy hard. I remembered the glow in
his eyes when I first met her. It reminded me of the look that Raymond had at our first
meeting. I thought about how at the family gatherings Anthony always seemed to make
sure she was comfortable around the family, and he would do little things for her like
bring her a glass of water without her having to ask. He would help her with her coat and
open doors for her. He did all the little things that men sometimes forget means so much
to women.
Secretly I was jealous of their relationship. Every time I was around them, it reminded
me of those years so long ago when Raymond would do those things for me.
As we finished breakfast, our maid Maria came in with the phone.
“Bishop Miller,” she began in her thick Spanish accent. “It is your mother.”
“Good morning, Mother,” he said cheerfully with a huge smile on his face.
As I sat at the table finishing what was left of my breakfast, occasionally glancing at
Raymond, I began to think about the closeness that he and Mother Ruth shared. From the
very first day I met him, I could tell that his relationship with her was one that no one
could break. He truly worshiped the very ground that she walked on and never did
anything without first consulting her. The last semester of our senior year in college, she
came to the school to visit me. I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with his
family over the years that we dated but this was the first time she‟d come to the school
specifically to visit me.
When I got the message that she was in the lobby, my heart immediately began to
pound. I couldn‟t imagine what she could have wanted with me. During the times that I
had met her prior to that afternoon, she barely had spoken more than two words to me,
giving me the idea that she didn‟t approve of my relationship with her son.
As I stepped off the elevator, I immediately noticed the tall and sophisticated lady.
Her dark blue designer dress made her look very intimidating to me. It told the world
that she was a woman of standard, and that we all must take notice.
“Katherine dear, how are you?” she asked as she reached out to hug me.
“I‟m fine, Mrs. Miller,” I responded nervously.
After breaking from our embrace she gave me a once over, and the look on her face
said she despised my attire.
“Dear heart, I know you are wondering what brings me here, but I would like to speak
with you concerning Raymond Jr.,” she said as she directed me to one of the couches in
the day area.
There was a short moment of silence once we both took a seat on the couch.
“Your graduation day is quickly approaching,” she began breaking our silence. “It is
now time for you to begin to look at what your future holds. Do you have any idea what
is in your future?”
I shook my head “no”. I was confused with her conversation, and my heart seemed to
have begun to beat even harder than it was earlier.
“Dear heart, as a lady, when someone asks you a question you should answer with
words not gestures.”
“No, ma‟am. I was going to go back home to Greenwood and spend time with my
family,” I said almost terrified.
She began to stare at me long and hard. I felt the palms of my hands begin to sweat.
We both stared each other in the eyes. From the few times I had been around her, I knew
that to look her directly in her eyes was a sign of respect to her, but to me I did it out of
pure fear.
Mother Ruth was a very attractive lady, the color of a Hershey bar. She always wore
her hair curly, and her makeup was always applied perfectly. For a woman I considered
her to be very tall, around five-ten, and her weight was proportionate to her height.
“God wants you to marry my Raymond,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I responded. My heart felt as if it had stopped.
“Katherine, after much prayer God revealed to me that you are to one day become the
first lady of God‟s Deliverance Ministries. After graduation you and Raymond will
marry, and you will become the Second Lady of the church.”
Then without waiting for a response, she arose from the couch and began to walk
toward the exit.
“We will see you at church with Raymond this Sunday to make the announcement.”
Before I knew it, what God told her had become a reality. My family in Greenwood,
S.C. were excited that I was going to marry into such a well-known prominent and
spiritual family, and I was excited feeling for the first time since meeting her that she had
approved of me.
As I patiently sat at the table waiting for Raymond to end his conversation with his
mother, I realized that it was not going to end anytime soon. I was really hoping that we
would have the opportunity to talk before breakfast was over. Over the years, this
seemed to be the only time of the day that he and I shared more than thirty minutes
together. I was doing my best to stay patient and wait for him to say '”bye” but instead,
he removed himself from the table and walked toward his office in our home.
Realizing that we would have no time to talk about us, I emerged from the dining table
and returned to my room to prepare for work.
When I left, Raymond was still on the phone with Mother Ruth. I went to his office to
inform him that I was leaving, but he had closed and locked the door.
“Damn,” I whispered aloud to myself.
The school was located on the same campus as the church and the building that housed
the offices of Raymond and the other top officials of God‟s Deliverance. Once I arrived
to my office, I sat at my desk and tried to remember what had happened that had turned
what I thought was a gift from God into a living hell. Thoughts of God not really being
real began to play in my head as if they were a full orchestra.
“If you are so wonderful and want the best for your children, then why do you place so
many obstacles in our way?” I asked aloud as if He were sitting in the chair in front of
my desk.
I had several things to do that morning but I neglected them all. Thoughts of the past
when I thought things were great danced in my mind. I thought about the times
Raymond would just send me flowers for no reason at all. I remembered how he would
call me to his office in the middle of the day and make love to me. Those times were like
distant memories, so far away that they had begun to feel more like dreams that never
came to past.
As I sat in deep thought, my secretary knocked on the door.
“Mrs. Miller, you're needed in the gym.”
“Thanks, Hannah,” I said emerging from my desk. As I walked toward the gym
slowly, I began to think of my time alone last night. I thought about the past with
Raymond. Did I really miss him or was it that I really missed the things we used to do
together and the way he‟d made me feel? I wanted to feel that way again. I needed to
feel that way again.

As I opened the door to the gym, the first person I saw standing across the gym was
our new football coach Kevin Taylor wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and some well-fitting
shorts. Kevin was a retired professional football player that had joined God‟s
Deliverance while he was a member of the Carolina Cougars football team in Charlotte. I
remember when I first interviewed him for the job, I‟d found myself staring at his
physique as well as his boyish good looks.
As I walked toward him talking to a few students, I found myself imagining him
without the t-shirt and shorts on. Suddenly I felt my southern area tingle. It was a
strange feeling. A feeling I could honestly say I had never experienced before. As I got
closer, he walked away from the students and met me in the middle of the gym.
“Good morning, Mrs. Miller. How are you?” he asked with a huge smile on his face.
“I‟m wonderful, Kevin,” I said lying still feeling the hurtful sting of my disassembling
marriage.
“Sorry to disturb you but some of the guys here had a few questions that they wanted
to ask, and I remembered on last week you informed me that you could come by this
morning,” he paused for a moment and licked his lips. “The class is almost over and
that‟s why I called your office.”
I had become so consumed with what I felt I was lacking personally that I had totally
lost focus of work. I suddenly knew I had to get myself back on track. My students were
very important to me, and I couldn‟t allow my marriage to destroy the remainder of my
life.
After speaking with the students as I headed back to my office, Kevin stopped me.
“Mrs. Miller, I really do appreciate your taking the time to come down here,” he said
as he pierced me with those solid black eyes. Suddenly I felt my heart patter. I smiled
back at him and without a word returned to my office.
As I sat back at my desk, I began to think of what Kevin would really look like without
clothes on. I thought about what it would feel like to have my naked body touching his.
My mind became flooded with what ifs to the point that before I even realized it, my
hand began to touch my southern region in my office. I had never attempted to please
myself in my office before, but I had never looked at another man like I had looked at
Kevin either.
As my precious being began to tell me that she was reaching a point of execution, I
bite my lips to refrain from yelping, and then my phone rang.
“Hello,” I said angrily.
“Honey, I‟m just calling to let you know that I have to fly to Montgomery this morning
to handle something that just came up. I should be back tomorrow evening,” Raymond
said then hung up without saying “goodbye” or allowing me to respond.
As I sat there with the receiver still in my left hand, my right remained on my Lady. I
found it very strange that he was going to Montgomery, a place forbidden to speak about,
but at that moment I couldn‟t focus on that, I was only determined that somehow I would
find a way to finish what I had just started before he‟d called.
Anthony
After crying on my shoulders for what seemed like hours, Janaé and I walked into the
family room and sat on the couch together.
“How did I get caught up in this?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders in response to her comment. I had no answer. Often times I
asked myself the same question knowing that the answer for me was that I was born into
it.
Janaé moved closer to me and laid her head on my shoulder. This wasn‟t anything
new. Over the years, our friendship had grown, and there had been plenty of nights
where we sat together with me holding her in my arms. Sometimes during these
moments, I found myself pretending that she and I were really in a relationship.
Pretending that I was the one she was in love with, but those thoughts only lasted for
short periods of time. She was in love with my brother and I was their decoy.
I reached for the remote for the TV and as soon as I pressed the on button, the first face
that appeared on the flat screen TV was Raymond preaching to us instructing us that we
had to get our lives in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
I glanced down at Janaé and noticed her eyes begin to fill with tears. I immediately
changed the channel.
“I‟m going to hell aren‟t I?” she asked softly.
“No, you're not going to hell,” I said as I thought about my own thoughts of Heaven
and Hell.
Since I was a kid, I had always believed that I was already in hell. For years, I was
confused by what I had been taught and what I had actually experienced. I was taught
that when you did bad things, God punished you, and when you did great things, God
rewarded you. That was never the case for me. It seemed as if my mother would punish
me for just waking up in the morning. For whatever reasons, I felt as if she hated me. I
always assumed that because I was born later in her life that was the reason for her
disdain of me.
I thought about the times I had to sneak to play basketball. If she found out, I was
restricted to my room for weeks at a time with only a Bible and other religious material. I
never got the chance to experience the things that most kids were able to enjoy.
I was always in church or at conferences with my family as we traveled across the
country perpetrating being the world‟s most perfect family.
I thought about the time when I was fifteen and we were featured on the cover of
Ebony. The journalist who conducted the interview began by asking me what it was like
to be the youngest member of a legacy, and my mother quickly interjected.
“Anthony is proud to be a member of our family, and we are blessed that God brought
him into our family to help continue to spread His word,” she said.
Later that evening she came into my room to inform me that I was never to speak to the
press unless she was around. I never quite understood the fact that no matter how hard I
tried to please her, she continued to view me as a disgrace to the family.
“You will never be like your father or brother. They are true men of God,” she often
reminded me.
I continued flipping through channels in deep thought of my current situation and
noticed that Janaé had fallen asleep. As I stared at the TV not really paying attention to
what was on it, I began to think about my mother and the two different feelings she
shared for Raymond and me. In her eyes, it seemed as if Raymond could do and would
do no harm. To her he was the epitome of what was righteousness. In her world, he was
the Savior born again. Nothing he could do would tarnish that. Their relationship was as
strong as any relationship I had ever known a mother and son to have. It was a
relationship I knew she and I would never have.
Around seven in the morning, I carried Janaé from the couch to the bedroom in my
home where she and Raymond spent most of their time together. After laying her on the
bed, I then decided to take a long shower. I was tired but I knew I had to prepare myself
for a long and drilling day. I knew that once I told mother that Janaé and I were
expecting a child, she would raise all kinds of holy hell and condemn me to hell for the
one-millionth time in my life.
As the water beat down my worn and tired body, I compared my life to Raymond‟s.
He came into this world fifteen years earlier than I did. He came into this world being
loved by two parents who nurtured what they believed to be the perfect child. He came
into a world where he would one day be known by millions for his great deeds, and I
would always be known as his little brother, his shadow. Everywhere I went I was the
son of Bishop R.M. Miller and the baby brother of Bishop Raymond Miller Jr. I was
never seen as my own man, not even to my family.

As I was growing up, my relationship with my father hadn‟t been all that bad, but
although I knew that dementia had begun to take over my father, I still found it painful at
times that he would refer to me as “that boy” and never by my name. I lived in a world
where I never felt completely comfortable, where I never felt loved, yet people on the
outside saw our family as perfect. It was a lie, a lie that had been my reality for twenty-
nine years and a lie that seemed to be one that would end no time soon.
After getting out of the shower, I walked into my spacious room and began to prepare
myself to go to the office. As I looked in my closet to find a suit that would fit my mood
for the day, I thought about how the lie I‟ve lived afforded me the things in life I‟d
learned to enjoy. My closet was full of tailored suits and shoes. My house was complete
with all the latest in technological desires. I could afford to drive any car I wanted, and I
had enough money to last a dozen lifetimes.
“Things aren‟t all bad,” I said softly to myself trying to make myself believe that I was
actually happy.
Before leaving, I walked back to the room where Janaé was sleeping. As I watched her
five-six slender body sleep, I thought about the child she was carrying. I thought about
the lie the baby would enter its life into. A lie that would cause him to call his father
“uncle” and his uncle “father”.
It was nine thirty when I arrived at the campus of God‟s Deliverance, and everything
seemed to flow as it did everyday. I walked into the building with a fake smile on my
face greeting everyone as if I were the happiest man alive.

Once I stepped off the elevator of the fifth floor where my office, my brother‟s office,
and my mother‟s office were all located, my mother‟s personal assistant quickly informed
me that she wanted to speak with me immediately. Something in my gut told me that
Raymond had already told her his version of what was going on so that I would have no
choice but to accept his proposal.
Once I placed my briefcase in my office, I walked to my mother‟s office. As soon as I
knocked on her door, I began to feel nervous. I began to truly feel as if I had done
something wrong, when I knew that I hadn‟t.
She used her remote to open the door. She was talking on the phone and when she
noticed me standing at the entrance, she summoned me to come in. As I walked toward
her desk, her voice began to soften a little to whomever she was talking.
“Make sure you call me once you handle the situation.” She then paused as if the
person on the other end were talking. “Yes, he just walked in. Bye, dear.”
As she hung up the phone, I quickly realized that she had been talking to Raymond.
She began to gather up papers around her desk and stacked them neatly into a folder. She
then placed the folder inside her desk and looked up at me with a cold stare.
“I am sure you realize why I called you in.” She said frankly without even a greeting.
“Yes, Ma‟am. I think I have an idea,” I said making sure I never took my eyes off hers.
I‟d learned at a very early age to always look Mother in the eyes as a sign of respect
“I find Janaé to be a wonderful woman, but I‟m highly disappointed in the both of you
that you would do anything to harm the reputation of this family.” She paused to take a
sip of her tea. “On Sunday you will make the announcement that you and Janaé will be
married within the next three weeks. We can‟t have her wobbling around here unmarried
with the entire world knowing that you two are in a relationship.”
“Yes, Ma‟am,” I said silently cursing Raymond for telling Mother without first
consulting me.
“That will be all. I will give Janaé a call today to begin instructing her on how to act
as a member of the family.”
After her comment, I remained in the chair, wanting to say something but not having
the words or nerves to say it. When she realized I hadn‟t moved, a small frown came
over her face.
“You are dismissed,” she said with authority.
I got up from the chair and walked toward the door. I was headed straight to
Raymond's office until I realized that if he were on the phone with her, then more than
likely he wasn‟t in his office.
“Has Raymond arrived yet?” I asked as I reached the door.
“No, he will be out of town for the remainder of the day. He has to fly to Montgomery
to take care of some things.”
Montgomery. The city I was born in. The city where my parents had raised Raymond
until he was sixteen years old. The city they‟d left when I was one year old. The city I‟d
learned not to mention at an early age. I was indeed puzzled. As I walked back to my
office, I began to wonder what had come up so quickly that would have Raymond flying
there. Every time a nationwide crusade was planned, Montgomery was never listed as a
visiting city.
“My damn brother! What is he up to now?” I whispered to myself as I walked back to
my office.
Sweet Home Alabama
After placing the cordless phone on the desk in his study, Raymond sat back in his
chair and stared toward the ceiling feeling frustrated.
“What in Hell is going on?” he whispered to himself recalling the events of the past
twenty-four hours. “First Janaé, and now this shit.”
He suddenly lost the feeling of indestructibility. He knew that his indiscretions were
quickly catching up with him. He was finally realizing that he was not invincible.
As he continued to sit in the study in complete silence, he began to take an inventory of
his life. He thought about his first memory at the age of six. After hearing his father
preach one Sunday morning, he ran to the pulpit, grabbed the microphone from his father,
and began to mimic word for word what he had heard him preach. After he finished, the
congregation of about fifty people were so overwhelmed that they began to treat him as if
he were a gift from God. Soon after that, his mother and father began preparing him for
the ministry.
“Son, God has given you something that will take you far in this world,” Raymond Sr.
said to him the evening before he preached his initial sermon at the age of twelve.
Once he entered the ministry, he gained sudden fame in Montgomery, Alabama as the
young prophet sent by God. TV stations began coming to the church, and soon after, he
was known all over the city. Several churches invited him to speak, and everywhere he
went there would be standing room only. People began to flock into his father‟s church
just to hear the young boy preach, and the congregation began to grow in huge sums
bringing in large amounts of money.
His parents were not wealthy or well-educated. Before Raymond‟s entrance into the
ministry, his father had worked as a custodian at a middle school along with being the
pastor of the small church, and Ruth worked as a maid. After less than a year of his
entering the ministry, both Raymond, Sr. and Ruth were able to leave their jobs and live
more than comfortably.
Life in Montgomery was wonderful. The Millers suddenly emerged from the bottom
to the top becoming pillars of their community. Everywhere he went, Raymond was
worshipped by all. All of the kids at school thought it was cool that they often saw their
classmate on TV, and the girls began to flock to him when he was at the tender age of
thirteen. That was the age when he‟d discovered that his penis could be used for
something other than urinating. The same age that he lost his virginity.
Girls felt special to be with one of God‟s chosen, and parents felt comfortable with his
being with their daughters.
“That‟s a good boy who comes from good stock,” were the words often used to
describe him.
For years, things in Montgomery were wonderful. For years, things seemed to be
perfect until that dreadful Sunday morning that would change their lives and force the
Miller family to leave the only place they knew to be home.
After the long moment of thinking of his past, Raymond emerged from the chair and
walked to the room that housed his clothes. He packed a small bag and then he made a
call to his secretary to inform her to contact his pilot to be ready for the flight to
Montgomery within the hour. He then instructed her to have a driver come to the house
to pick him up.
Once he was settled on his private jet, Raymond began thinking about everyone in his
life. His wife Katherine, whom he knew was not happy. It had been years since he
showed her any affection. He knew when he married her that he didn‟t love her. Over
the years he had grown to care deeply for her, but he could never feel a strong love for
her that he felt a husband should have for his wife. She was a business deal and the
mother of his daughters, but the most important thing was that she was the woman that
Ruth had chosen to be with him.
He remembered the first time he introduced Katherine to his mother. She immediately
approved of her.
“Her light complexion is perfect. She is a beautiful and intelligent woman, and she
will bare beautiful children. I will have to groom her some, but you will marry her,
Raymond,” his mother had told him.
The day she arranged for them to be married Raymond began to think of how boring
his life would be with her. While in college, although he was well known and in the
ministry, he was also known to be a ladies‟ man, and he had his share of wild and
experienced women, and Katherine was not one of them. She was not as experienced as
he was, and because of that, he continued to see women on a consistent basis that would
allow him to have his desires.
He thought about his latest mistress, Janaé. She was young, she was beautiful, and she
had a sexual appetite that pleased him. When he first began seeing her, he assumed it
would be just another fling; he never expected to fall in love. But he had, and now she
was having a child, his child.
As the flight began to come to an end, the one person who stood out in his mind was
his younger brother, Anthony. He loved him more than anything, and he knew that
Anthony loved him and would do anything he asked, regardless of how asinine it might
be. Raymond thought about how he often used him and never gave it a second thought
when he did, but he knew that Anthony loved and respected him and would do whatever
needed to protect him and their family name.
Raymond often felt guilty that he could never protect Anthony the same way. Anytime
any of his indiscretions became known, Ruth made sure it was Anthony that would take
the blame. He understood Ruth‟s disdain for Anthony, but often times he felt that she
carried her frustrations too far, especially now that she blamed the sudden trip to
Montgomery on him.
“You do realize this is all Anthony‟s doing, right?” his mother had asked when they
talked on the phone earlier that morning. He knew it wasn‟t Anthony‟s fault, and he
knew she realized that it wasn‟t, but he knew that Ruth had her own way of thinking and
there was no need to argue with her.
As the plane landed, he continued with his thoughts of Anthony. He had watched him
grow from a sad child into a sad man. He knew without Anthony ever saying a word that
although he was a member of the family, he realized that he was different from the rest of
them.
Raymond knew that the world they were living in was a world created by his parents
from a simple act of a child not knowing what he was doing. A world that generated
millions and millions of dollars each year. A world that Anthony was born into not one
that he had chosen.
As he stepped off the plane, he was greeted by a hired limousine driver.
“Greetings, Bishop Miller,” the old gentleman said as he rigorously shook Raymond's
hand.
“Praise God, my brother.”
“I normally won‟t drive someone myself, but when I got the word that it was you, I
had to come and meet you again,” the old man said with a huge smile.
A confused look came over his face when the man said “meet you again”. Suddenly
he began to get nervous. This was his first time ever being in Montgomery in almost
thirty years, yet the day they left continued to carry fear in his heart as if it had only
happened yesterday.
“Yes, Sir. I saw you at Great Joy when you must have been about thirteen or fourteen
years old,” the driver continued. “I was a young wild man back then - drinking all the
time, laying up with all kinds of women- but when I heard you preach, something inside
of me woke up. I stopped drinking, I settled down with a good woman, and I started my
transportation service part time.” Tears began to fall from the old man‟s eyes, and he
reached for Raymond's hand again. “God bless you, Bishop. You saved my life.”
Raymond stood speechless. He had often heard similar stories, but knowing the reason
that he was there this time instead of feeling pride, he felt disgusted. Disgusted with who
he was, disgusted with who he had become.

Katherine
It was later than normal when I left school that evening, but I had no reason to rush
home just to eat dinner alone. The parking lot was empty, with the exception of my car,
the evening janitor‟s car, and Kevin‟s car.
“Wonder why he‟s still here?” I whispered to myself.
All the students were gone, and football practice had ended hours ago. After putting
my briefcase and purse in my car, I headed toward the gym. Once I reached the door,
Kevin stepped out wearing one of those tight body shirts that showed his physique and
gym shorts that left little to the imagination. I was speechless as I stared at his chiseled
body. Suddenly I was beginning to have the same feelings that I‟d had earlier by just
thinking of him. It was a new feeling for me to suddenly feel pleasure without a touch.
“Are you ok, Mrs. Miller?” Kevin asked me as I snapped out of my trance.
“Yes. Yes, I am fine,” I said then paused as I attempted to regain my composure.
“Why are you here so late?”
“After practice I usually stay a little longer to work out. You guys went all out when
you built a gym with an awesome weight facility. It‟s as advanced as any I‟ve ever
worked out in,” he responded with a toothy smile that made me melt even more.
There was a long and awkward silence between us as we both stood still not moving a
muscle.
“Are you going back inside?” he asked me.
“No, I was just coming back in to make sure you were ok.”
He stared at me for a long while. His pupils were jet black and they told me his
thoughts without him saying a word.
We both moved at the same time as we headed toward our cars. Suddenly I felt
nervous. I began to feel my heart patter as it had done years ago when I‟d first met
Raymond. The only thing that was different was that when I met my husband for the first
time, my panties remained dry.
“Heading home to spend the evening with Bishop Miller?” he asked.
“No, he is out of town,” I replied as we parted.
As soon as I arrived at my car, I looked back and noticed Kevin walking back towards
me.
“Mrs. Miller.”
“Please call me Katherine,” I said shyly.
“Katherine, would you like to join me for dinner?”
The next thing I knew I was at his small apartment riding on top of his penis as if it
were the last penis on earth. It was amazing to me that in the entire hour I was on him, it
continued to stay erect.
“This dick is so damn good,” I screamed as I climaxed a third time. I‟d never used that
word a day in my life, but the only man I had ever been with up to that point had never
brought out whatever this was that was coming out of me.
I jumped off him quickly removing his manhood from inside of me. I was still amazed
that it continued to stand at attention. I began to rub it gently. I stared long and hard at it
as if it were prime rib.

“I‟ve wanted to be with you for so long,” he said as he looked down at me staring at
his stallion.
I stared back as seductively as I could as a part of me lived in shock at what I was
doing, the other part not giving a damn about nothing but pure pleasure. I licked up and
down his shaft. When I noticed small amounts of his children began to escape the tip
slowly, I placed his huge penis into my mouth and began to suck on it as if my very life
depended on it. It was so tasty. I had never enjoyed doing this with Raymond, but with
Kevin, I wanted him to scream. I wanted him to feel the way he had just made me feel.
As he began to cum, he grabbed my head. He wanted to play rough, and it turned me
on. I never removed him from my mouth, allowing his children to escape and take refuge
inside of me. After each and every one of them had nestled inside of me, he pulled me
toward him.
“Sit on my face,” he whispered.
As I mounted on top of him, his phone began to ring.
“Are you going to answer it?” I moaned but he said nothing, as he began to softly suck
on my clit.
As I was about to scream aloud, the phone began to ring again.
“Who ever it is they must really need to talk to you,” I said through my moans and
whimpers, but he still did not say a word.
After my final climax, I fell off him and onto the bed and lay beside him as he wrapped
his strong arms around me. Suddenly I heard my husband‟s voice speak into Kevin‟s
answering machine.
“Katherine, I am going to be in Montgomery for a couple of days. We have a
development that must be taken care of.”
As I lay in bed with Kevin, I was confused. I wondered how Raymond knew I was at
Kevin‟s and how did he have his number. My heart began to pound. Then I looked over
my shoulder, and I saw my husbands face. I quickly jumped off the bed, and suddenly I
realized I was at my house, in my room, on my bed, and alone.
“That was one hell of a dream,” I whispered to myself as I could still feel the throbbing
sensation as if it were an actual event.
As I lay in my bed completely soaked, I thought about my current state of being. I had
never been an overly sexual person before, but lately that seems to be the only thing on
my mind. That and just being treated the way a woman desires to be treated.
I want to be touched like a man should touch a woman. I want to be held like a man
should hold a woman. I want to be loved like a man should love a woman, and my
husband wasn‟t being that man to do those things for me.
As I walked to the bathroom feeling the need for a long and hot bath, I stopped at the
entertainment center to turn my song on so that I could be reminded of how much my life
was hurting like hell.
After getting out of the tub, I lay back on my bed thinking about how real my dream
felt. I thought about the passion that the man in my dream gave me, and I thought about
how my body felt when I awakened. I couldn‟t remember a time that Raymond had
made me feel as pleased as I had felt during my dream. When we were sexually active,
as we grew older he had begun to make me feel like Celie from The Color Purple when
she told Shug that Mister would get on her and do his business. And that‟s what I
seemed to be to Raymond, nothing but business.
After we were married, Ruth instructed me that I was to begin with our family soon.
It was our mission to create boys that would continue the GDM Dynasty. When our
oldest daughter Sabrina was born, Mother Ruth walked into the room, and as she held her
in her arms to examine her, she initially had a look of disgust on her face.
“I prayed for a boy, but she is the cutest thing,” she said. “Next time I am sure God
will deliver.”
For some reason that statement bothered me. At first, I thought that maybe I was
reading too much into what she was saying, until Raynita was born.
“Katherine, we need boys in order to continue with God‟s work,” she said raising her
voice as if it were my fault. “If you keep having these girls, then what are we going to do
about continuing with our family purpose?”
“Anthony will carry on the family purpose,” I said only to receive a cold and stern
stare from her before she stormed out the door angrily.
I never understood why she always treated Anthony as if he had the plague. To me it
seemed as if she had nothing but pure hate for him. I remembered noticing her treatment
toward him when Raymond and I were first married, but when I asked him about it, he
pretty much ignored my question. It was then that I made it a purpose to be a friend to
Anthony. It pained my heart to see him being mistreated by his own mother.
I always felt that if Ruth were an actress, she would have received at least a dozen
Oscars for her performances. To see her on TV and then in private family gatherings you
would actually think she was two different individuals.
On TV she was the perfect Christian, loving everyone and wanting nothing but the best
for them. In person she was the epitome of a one hundred percent pure bitch. The only
person outside of herself that I noticed her show any real love to was her son, and my
husband Raymond Jr.
When Raynita was about twelve, she asked me why she and Sabrina never had the
opportunity to visit Raymond Sr. and Ruth like they were able to do with my mother. I
didn‟t know how to answer the question truthfully, and I always wondered what kind of
affect the truth would have on my daughters. I was already aware that she was
disappointed that I had two girls, but I never imagined that she wouldn‟t love her
grandchildren regardless of their gender.
“Did Uncle Anthony have a demon in him?” I remembered Sabrina asking once when
she was about six years old.
“Where did you hear such a thing?” I asked concerned.
“Grandmother called me into her office this morning during Sunday school and told
me she wanted to pray over me to make sure that I didn‟t have a demon in me like Uncle
Anthony had in him when he was my age.”
I was stunned. I found it hard to believe that she would actually say a thing like that
to a six-year-old child. When I confronted Raymond, he passed it off just saying that he
would speak to her about it. I never heard anything else about it. I wanted to confront
her myself, but every time I gained the courage to say something, she would give me a
long stare before the words could enter my mouth as if she already knew what I was
about to say, and I would be so terrified that I would just leave it alone.
As I drifted back off to sleep, I hoped that I could revisit Kevin's small apartment
again. I hoped that the Kevin in my dream could give me the pleasure I longed to have. I
hoped that the Kevin in my dream could give me the loved I desired. I hoped that the
Kevin in my dream could one day be in my reality.
As I lay in bed listening to Aretha over and over, tears began to fall down my face. I
had never felt as alone and depressed as I have been in the last two days. Something was
going to have change in my life and I knew I was going to have to be the one to change
that something in my life.

Anthony
As I was my leaving my office for the day, I noticed Janaé stepping out of the elevator
walking towards me.
“Hey,” she said with a worn look on her face.
“How are you?”
“Nervous as hell,” she whispered in my ear as we hugged. “I‟m going to meet with
your mother.”
My mother always had a way of scaring the people closest to her. Even though I was
taller than her by almost a foot and was over a hundred pounds heavier than she was, the
stare she would always give me frightened me as much as an adult as it did when I was a
child.
Once I got to my SUV, I decided since Mother was still in her office, I would go and
visit my father. It had been about a week since I had seen him and I just wanted to check
on him and make sure he was doing ok.
When I walked into their house, my father‟s nurse Yvonne greeted me.
“Hey Reverend Anthony, how are you doing?” she asked as she extended her arms out
to give me a hug.
“I‟m good, Yvonne. Thanks for asking.”
“I hear that congratulations are in order,” she said dryly.

At first, I wasn‟t sure what she was talking about. I guess because I was aware of the
true situation behind our upcoming marriage, I didn‟t really see it as being something as
wonderful as I always felt marriage should be.
My entire life I never experienced happiness the same way as I had seen others
experience it. Sometimes I wondered if I ever understood what it really meant to be
happy.
As I walked through my parent‟s mansion, I thought about the day we moved in when
I was fourteen. Mother walked around the house for days as if she were a queen and
everyone else was her loyal and abiding subjects. Her first agenda was to hire a full staff
to make sure someone was always at her beckoned call.
As I entered the basement of the house where mother built the small chapel built for
my father, I could already hear him preaching the sins out of the pews. When I opened
the door, I stood there for a moment watching him with his eyes closed and in full attire
with a microphone in hand screaming out scriptures. As I took a seat on the last pew, he
opened his eyes. When he finally noticed me, he stopped preaching and stared at me long
and hard.
“You come to get saved?” he asked seemingly not knowing who I was.
“Yes, sir,” I replied going along with him.
“Well, what you sitting there for, boy? Come on up here so I can lay my hands on
you.”
I slowly walked toward him while he watched me the entire time. As I got closer, his
eyes began to light up letting me know that he had recognized me.

“Anthony, is that you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said smiling.
“Boy, you been saved all your life. What are you doing here?” he said as he extended
his arms out to hug me.
“I came to see you. It‟s been a few days, and I just wanted to come and check on you.”
As we both took a seat on the front pew, we remained in silence. I initially thought
that he had drifted back into one of his other worlds and had forgotten who I was again.
“Ruth tells me that your brother Raymond is in Montgomery taking care of your
situation,” he said breaking the silence.
“He‟s taking care of my situation?” I asked confused.
“I‟m sorry, son. You know how my mind play tricks on me,” he said as he stared long
and hard at me as if he knew he had said the wrong thing.
There was more silence. Realizing that he knew about Raymond's sudden trip to
Montgomery, I wanted to ask questions about it, but the last time I‟d asked anyone in my
family about Montgomery, mother slapped the shit out of me.
“I hear I‟m about to be a grandfather again,” he said attempting to start a new
conversation.
“Yes, sir. You are,” I said softly.
After sitting with my father for nearly an hour in mostly silence, I left. As I walked
away from the chapel, I could hear him continuing with his sermon. Before leaving the
house, I was tempted to return to him and pry more into why Raymond was in
Montgomery. Something about the comment about him being there to handle my
situation didn‟t sit well with me.
As soon as I got to my SUV, I quickly reached for my cell and dialed Raymond‟s
number.
“Anthony I‟m going to have to call you back,” Raymond said then quickly hung up.
On the drive to my house, things began to run rapid in my mind. My head began to
pound furiously trying to gain an understanding of it all. My life, as always was about to
take a turn that I didn‟t choose for it to take. My life was soon to be more depressing and
sadder than it had been since I could remember.
My eyes began to swell with tears. I thought about the counseling sessions I‟d had in
which I gave people advice on how to live a more positive and happy life, yet my life was
full of pain and illusions.
As I continued home, my phone rang. I immediately answered without looking at the
display to see who was calling.
“Raymond?” I asked assuming he had called me back.
“No, it‟s me Janaé.”
“Oh hey, how was the meeting with Mother?” I asked.
There was a long pause then I heard her give a long and hard sigh.
“Mind if I spend the night again?” she asked.
“No, I don‟t mind at all. Would you like me to pick you up something to eat?”
“Yeah, that would be nice. You know what I like,” she said before hanging up.
When I arrived home, I noticed Janaé‟s car parked in the same spot it was in when I
left that morning. Suddenly thoughts raced into my mind wondering how I would feel if
our relationship were real. I wondered if she would have loved me the way that she loved
Raymond. But I knew she wouldn‟t. I knew she couldn‟t.
Raymond has always had the gift of persuasion. Something I never had. Something I
really cared not to have. I saw how he used his gift to gain riches and create a powerful
and well-respected ministry. I saw how he used his gift to bed several women. I saw
how he used his gift to manipulate his wife, his kids, and even me.
As I walked into the house, I could hear the sounds of soft jazz coming from my great
room. When I walked into the room, Janaé was sitting on the couch with her legs folded
reading a magazine. When she looked up and saw me walk in, she smiled.
“Hey, you,” she said.
I smiled back at her then pulled the small container of Lobster Lo Mien out of the bag
and handed it to her along with a plastic fork.
“So how was your meeting with Mother?” I asked a second time hoping that this time
I would get an answer. The smile suddenly disappeared, and I noticed deep sadness in
her eyes. She placed her Lo Mien on the coffee table then looked up at me.
“Can we talk about this some other time?”
“Sure,” I said completely understanding the negative impact that my mother could
have on others.
After eating dinner, we both remained in the great room watching TV in silence. As I
held her in my arms, my mind began to dream again wishing that what she and I had
were something real. I smelled the sweet fragrance of her hair while I nestled my chin
softly on her head. I thought about the times when I lay in bed alone and how I would
hear her sweet moans as Raymond made love to her. Her passion was deep. Her moans
were so sensual that I often found myself touching my manhood as she came to a climax
while with Raymond.
“What kind of life do you think we‟re going to have?” Janaé asked breaking me out of
my trance.
“I wish I knew,” I answered her uncertain of the future myself.
After taking a shower, I decided to go to bed early. The past couple of days had taken
a serious toll on my body, and I needed as much rest as I could get to help me to sort out
this mess of my life.
As I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, I felt my manhood begin to rise. I thought
about Janaé being so close to me yet so far away. I finally admitted to myself that I did
have feelings for her. I realized that I had longed to be with her knowing that it was
something that would never be.
While I continued to lay in deep thought, I heard a soft knock on my door.
“Come in,” I said as I reached over to the nightstand and turned on the light.
“I don‟t feel like sleeping alone. May I join you?” she asked.
I wanted to say “no” due to my strong erection, but because of my erection, “yes”
came out of my mouth quickly.
As she nestled her back into my bare chest, I tried to position my torso where she
couldn‟t feel my erection but I failed.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” I whispered embarrassed.
She then wiggled her hips closer, making my erection feel as if it were going to break
through my skin. The more I tried to reposition myself, the more she moved closer to
me.
The temptation was so strong that I couldn‟t resist softly kissing her neck. She began
to whimper soft moans, just like the ones I had heard her give while with Raymond.
“Do you want me, Anthony?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I want you, too,” she said softly. “I‟ve wanted you for a long time.”
When I woke up the next morning, I noticed that I was in bed alone.
“That was some dream,” I whispered while thinking how real my dream of making
love to Janaé felt.
“That‟s the same thing I said when I woke up too,” she said, as she stood at the door to
my bathroom smiling and completely naked.

Katherine
When I finally awakened from my all night dreams of ultimate pleasure, I was
disappointed that I had to return to the real world. It was very disappointing to me that
the most pleasurable sexual moment in my life had come in a dream.
As I lay in my bed with my body refusing to move, I decided to do something I had
never done in the past sixteen years, take an impromptu day from work to do absolutely,
nothing but please and pamper myself.
After calling my secretary to inform her that I wouldn‟t be in, I decided to take a long,
hot bath and think about my wonderful night of dreaming. I was curious if I could ever
truly feel that type of ecstasy with Raymond. I wondered if Raymond even knew how to
deliver such passion.
After my bath, I decided to lay back down in my bed that now had clean sheets on it.
When I had awakened from my dream, my sheets were soaked so badly that when I
placed new ones on the mattress, it was still a little damp.
As I lay on the bed and thought about my dreams of Kevin, I felt a smile come across
my face and I began to giggle as if I were a little schoolgirl. This feeling was very new to
me, and I was honestly enjoying it. This was something I wish I could tell someone but
outside of the school and church, I had no true friends.

After graduating college and becoming a member of the Miller Family, my old life
suddenly had been erased and replaced with one that now appeared to be miserable and
never-ending. My own family had become distant memories to me.
After Raynita once yelled at Mother Ruth and informed her that her Grandma Hester,
my mother, was the best grandmother on earth, Ruth refused to have my parents around.
She even instructed me to limit my time and my daughters‟ time around them. When I
initially refused and told her that I would do no such thing, she had become so outraged
that she threatened to have my parents evicted from their home and there was not a thing
I would be able to do to help them. Knowing the power that Mother Ruth seemed to
have, I was too afraid not to believe her, and I refused to allow my parents‟ home, a home
they‟d worked for years to have, taken away from them.
Over the years I had become so frightened of Ruth that even after the girls had grown
up, I was still afraid to attempt to pick up the pieces from my old life in fear of what she
may have done.
As I continued to lie on my bed with thoughts of a dream that seemed real to me, my
phone rang. I initially thought about not answering, but once I saw the number come up
on the caller ID, I was too afraid not to.
“Katherine dear, is all well?” Mother Ruth asked in her strong voice of authority. “I
called your office and was told that you took the day off.”
I sat silently in fear. It was amazing to me the control this woman seemed to have
over me.
“When I woke up this morning,” I began stammering for words. “I was feeling a little
nauseated so I decided to stay in.”
There was a long pause and suddenly my lie about feeling nauseated had become real.
Mother Ruth had so much control that even in her silence over the phone, I could see the
horns rise on her head.
“Well,” she began breaking the silence. “I was hoping that you could join Janaé and
me for lunch. I‟m sure Raymond has informed you of their situation.”
“Their situation?” I asked myself wondering why she always seemed to make
everything a situation or problem.
“Yes, Ma‟am. I heard about the good news of their baby,” I responded gleefully
knowing that it would get a rise out of her but at the same time terrified that she would
counter with a remark ensuring me where my place was.
“Any how, I‟m sure by noontime you will be fine, so meet us at my office and we can
go from there,” she said then hung up without another word.
“Damn,” I began aloud as I placed the receiver back on its cradle. “She just ruined my
entire day of relaxation.”
When I arrived on GDM‟s campus, I noticed several media trucks in the parking lot.
Once I parked in my assigned space, security was already there to escort me in while
reporters and cameras darted toward me blurting out question after question.
“Mrs. Miller, can you tell us why Bishop is in Montgomery? Is it true that he is
planning to move the headquarters of God‟s Deliverance there?”

I quickly walked with security into the building. I knew not to make any comment.
Even to say “no comment” was a slap in the face to Mother Ruth. It was only when she
instructed us to speak that we were allowed to talk to the media.
As I walked through the spacious offices headed toward Ruth‟s office, I saw her,
Janaé, and Anthony coming out. For the first time I actually saw happiness in Anthony‟s
eyes, and it truly brought a sense of joy to my heart.
I was happy for him and Janaé. Ever since they had begun dating, they appeared to me
to be the best couple in the world. Their friendship was more than evident, and I
admitted to myself on several occasions that I was envious of what they had.
“Katherine, good to see that you made it,” Mother Ruth said as she faked a smile and
rubbed her chin to mine.
After I‟d greeted and congratulated Anthony and Janaé, Mother Ruth instructed us all
to follow her outside to the front of the building where all the reporters had gathered to
hear a special announcement from the Mother of God‟s Deliverance Ministries.
I stood by Mother Ruth‟s side with a fake smile on my face and felt my heart thicken
with pain. As I listened to Mother Ruth speak on the goodness of God and how He had
delivered unto her youngest son the perfect bride, I became nauseated once again to the
point at which I had to quickly remove myself and run back inside the building. I
immediately ran into the downstairs lobby bathroom and once I reached an empty stall, I
vomited.
“Is everything alright, Sister Miller?” I heard a familiar voice outside the stall.
“Everything‟s fine, Belinda,” I responded to the custodian.

I remained in the bathroom attempting to regain my composure for over twenty
minutes. As I was walking out of the bathroom, I noticed Ruth, Janaé, and Anthony
leaving the press conference and coming back into the building.
“How dare you attempt to disgrace this family?” Mother Ruth yelled as she walked by
me. “I want to see you in my office right now!”
I remained where I was initially numbed. I was too afraid to move but even more
afraid not to move.
“Janaé, you go with mother. Katherine and I will be there shortly,” Anthony said as
she continued to walk toward the elevator.
“Are you okay?” Anthony asked.
Suddenly tears began to fall from my eyes. I had no real idea why I was crying but I
could feel the hurt throughout my body. Anthony reached for me with open arms and
before I knew any thing, I was balling in the arms of my brother-in-law.
“Anthony, I am really happy for you and Janaé,” I began through my tears. “Please
understand that my current state has nothing to do with not being happy for the two of
you.”
As we walked toward the elevator, Anthony‟s phone rang.
“Katherine and I are headed upstairs at headquarters. Where are you?” he said as he
looked directly at me. I knew that it was Raymond on the phone, and suddenly the tears
began to fall again.
Their call did not last long at all, and after hitting the end button on his phone,
Anthony‟s face suddenly looked worn.
“Do you know why Raymond is in Montgomery?” I asked.

“I was actually about to ask you the same thing,” he replied solemnly.
The sudden trip back to a place they had left long ago and refused to even say its‟
name seemed to have been a mystery even to Anthony. It became even more baffling to
me.
After arriving back upstairs, Mother Ruth‟s secretary informed me that she was in her
office waiting for me. As I walked toward her office, my legs began to tremble and my
hand became sweaty. I was nervous and frightened.
When I walked in, she was sitting at her desk on the phone, and she directed me to sit
down. Once she ended her conversation, she took a sip of her tea and looked directly into
my eyes.
“Dear heart, it‟s obvious that you are not feeling well. I will be the first to admit that I
thought your day of hooky was a fluke. After Belinda informed me of the mess she had
to clean up after you, I think you should just head back home and get some rest. Enjoy
the remainder of your day. You may be dismissed now.” She then returned to her normal
daily activities without so much as giving me a second look.
When I got home, I was so happy that my scheduled day of pampering myself was
back on as planned, that I decided to treat myself to an afternoon session with the silver
bullet. Even if it were only a substitution for what I truly desired, at that moment it was
absolutely the best thing that my current life had to offer, and I was surely going to take
advantage of the entire moment.

Victoria’s Secret
When Raymond awakened, he could still smell the fresh sweet fragrance that had
lured him the night before as if she had just sprayed more of it on her in the middle of the
night. He looked over at the woman, and even while she slept, her beauty continued to
captivate him. She had an exotic look that reminded him of someone from an island. Her
caramel tone was luscious and her skin was flawless. He remembered that it was her
beauty that had lured him, and then her confidence had trapped him. He was amazed at
how she appeared to have continued to maintain even as she lay there as if she had not a
care in the world.
As she slept, he continued to stare at her studying her. He studied with hopes of
finding some flaw. He knew she had one. Everyone had flaws, but with her there were
none evident at that time. It was something about her that although he found himself
attracted to her immensely, something within told him she was dangerous and he should
run.
He forced his eyes off her and then emerged from the bed and walked to the bathroom
of his suite. Before closing the door, he looked back over at her one more time still
hoping to find something wrong, but again his efforts failed him. He then closed the
door.
“Why do I continue doing this?” he whispered to himself as he grabbed a fresh towel
and ran warm water across it. “This foolishness is what has me in the predicaments I‟m
in now.”
As he stared in the mirror, he looked at the bags under his eyes. He was tired, tired for
many reasons, but mostly Raymond was tired of the lie that he had lived for most of his
life. After years of not worrying about his actions or any repercussions he was finally
beginning to feel almost forty years of pain that he had inflicted on thousands dropped
solely on him. The weight was so heavy on him that he immediately took a sit on the
side of the bathtub and placed his face into his hands. Suddenly he heard a light tap on
the bathroom door.
“Bishop Miller, is everything alright?” the mystic woman asked from the other side of
the door.
“Yes, everything is fine. I will be out in just a few moments,” Raymond said as he
stood up and attempted to regain his composure.
Before walking out of the bathroom, he took another long look at himself in the
bathroom mirror. He took a deep breathe, exhaled, then went back to join the woman.
“I must have been horrible to you last night,” she said from the bed where she had
returned after knocking on the door.
Raymond walked back towards the bed and took a seat on the edge of it.
“You were wonderful last night,” he responded softly. She then crawled toward him,
wrapped her arms around his neck, and gave him a soft and sensuous kiss.
“I am even better in the mornings,” she replied as she moved to the floor, grabbed his
manhood, and gave him an early morning surprise.
As Raymond sat on the plane, he began to replay his past two days in Montgomery.
He thought about his meeting on his first day back in the city he was born after being
away for twenty-nine years. During this meeting if he did not agree with the proposal,
the life he had become accustomed to would soon come to an end.
“Raymond,” the burly old man said with authority as he came from behind Raymond
then sat down at the table.
“Reverend Robinson,” Raymond began as he stood reaching to shake his hand, but his
gesture was not accepted.
There was a long silence as both of them sat at the table staring each other directly in
the eyes. Raymond began to feel the same fear of a young fifteen year-old boy. The
same fear he had felt twenty-nine years earlier when Reverend Robinson burst into their
church while he was in the middle of his last sermon in Montgomery.
Although Raymond carried that fear from years past, as he stared into the older man‟s
eyes, he could not see the anger he had remembered, dreamed about, had nightmares
about. He saw something softer.
“Raymond, Claudette is dying,” he began breaking the silence. “The doctors say that
it would be a miracle if she lived for another year.” He paused and a single tear fell from
his eye.
Raymond continued to sit in silence, yet he felt a deep pain in his heart.
“If you ask me,” Reverend Robinson began again. “She‟s been dead now for almost
thirty years. In and out of mental institutions, mind never stable, several attempts to
commit suicide. To be honest, I would be relieved for her to go on and meet the Lord,”
he said then took a sip of water that the waiter had brought to the table.
“What do you need?” Raymond asked softly.
“I need for my daughter to leave this earth in peace. I need for my daughter to meet
her son before she meets her Maker.”
“I would have to speak to Mother first,” Raymond said nervously.
“Ruth is still a bitch, and you are still sucking on her nipples?” Reverend Robinson
said with a smirk. “Amazing how ya‟ll can live with yourselves. For years I blamed you
for my daughter‟s condition. Then one day God spoke to me and showed me of my evil
ways, too. I am the one that brought Anthony to the church that morning. I am the one
that forced you and your family to get out of town. I was the one that accepted your
money over the years to keep this secret.” He paused then rose from the chair he was
sitting in.
“Raymond, at the time I thought I was doing right by my daughter, but I am just as
much to blame for what she has become as you are. I promised her, and I promised God
that before she leaves this earth, I am going to do right by her, and I am going to do right
by Anthony. You tell your mother that I said, „What she chooses not to do is something I
will definitely see to happening‟,” he said then walked away from the table without
saying “bye” and without looking back.

Raymond remained at the table shaking. He was not only afraid of what Reverend
Robinson could do, but he was also afraid of how Ruth would react when she learned that
he had not handled the situation as instructed.
As he sat alone at the table, his phone rang. It was Anthony. He knew that he could
not talk to him at that time due to his nerves, so he quickly answered then told him he
would talk with him later. He then called the waiter over to order a drink.
He normally did not drink alcohol in public, but this was a moment in which he
needed a drink, and he did not care about how he appeared to the public eye. As he sat
alone, he noticed a beautiful woman walk in and sit at the bar of the restaurant. He tried
to force his eyes off her, but it was a difficult task.
“Stay focused, Raymond,” he mumbled to himself. “The last thing you need now is to
be with another woman.”
He thought about how over the years he had often told himself that but had never
listened. He quickly discovered that this, too, would be one of those times he would not
listen.
After receiving the drink from the waiter that Raymond had sent to her, she looked
over to where he was sitting. Immediately after he tipped his drink to her, she walked
overand sat down in front of him.
“Is it wise for you to buy a lady a drink, Bishop Miller?” she asked with a sly grin.
“So you know who I am?”
“Of course I do,” she said as she bit her bottom lip.
As the plane descended from the air, Raymond‟s mind had become a sea of worry. He
worried about how Ruth would react to the comments made by Reverend Robinson. He
worried about Janaé and her pregnancy. He worried about Anthony. He thought about
all of his many secrets over the years. He realized that he had collected secrets over the
years as if it were a hobby, and instead of ending his collection, he only added to it.
Once the plane landed, he thought about his new secret he‟d met while in Montgomery.
He thought about their initial conversation at the restaurant. He thought about his night
of sexual pleasure. He thought about the early morning treasure she offered him before
he‟d left to come back home.
“Victoria Thomas,” he whispered to himself as he smiled at the thought of his new
secret.
10
Anthony
After the press conference announcing my marriage to Janaé I went back to my office
while she and Mother went to lunch. As I sat at my desk, my heart began to feel heavy
again. Even though the night before with her had been wonderful and felt so real, I knew
it was still only a lie.
While sitting in my office hearing nothing but the faint sound coming from the flat
screen on the wall, I also thought about Katherine. When she told me she could see the
love in Janaé‟s eyes and mine, I felt more pressure placed on my heart. Over the years I
had truly admired and grown to love Katherine almost as if she were my mother. She
always seemed to know when I needed anything, almost like a natural mother‟s instinct.
After the press conference I could tell that Mother wanted to rip Katherine‟s head off
because she had abruptly excused herself from the podium. I never understood why
Mother found disrespect in so many things. I can vividly recall and instance when I was
about ten years old and Raymond and Katherine‟s oldest daughter Sabrina was about
three years old. Sabrina had to use the bathroom during service. Mother was sitting on
Katherine's right while I sat on her left and Sabrina was on her lap sleeping. When
Sabrina awakened, she whispered to her mother that she needed to use the bathroom.
When Katherine attempted to stand up and walk out of the church, mother quickly
grabbed her arm. Katherine lost her hold on Sabrina who then suddenly fell on top of me
and urinated all over me. Both Sabrina and I had to sit through the remainder of the
service drenched in her urine.
“You need to learn to hold your water, dear,” Mother said to Sabrina with her head
high.
As I continued to sit and think about what was ahead in my future, the look in
Katherine's eyes after the press conference continued to dance in my head. It told me that
she was hurting, and I knew that the hurt was because of my brother. Over the past two
years I had often wondered if she ever suspected anything between Raymond and Janaé,
but I knew she did not. I knew without a doubt that in her eyes she saw Janaé and me as
the perfect couple.
My thoughts were interrupted when René, my secretary, buzzed in to inform me that
my niece Sabrina was on the phone.

“Hey, Brina. How are you?” I asked with joy.
I loved both of my nieces to death. Sabrina and I were only seven years apart, and she
was pretty much like a little sister to me.
“Why did you not call me to tell me the news before today?” she began pretending to
be angry. “You remember Cassandra Reynolds, don‟t you? The teacher that I introduced
you to when you came to visit two months ago?”
After graduating from Spelman College a year ago, Sabrina had decided to stay in
Atlanta to teach. She actually was making a lot less money there than she would have if
she had come home and taught at God‟s Deliverance, but since Raynita attends Spelman,
Raymond and Katherine didn‟t have a problem with her decision. Mother also did not
have a problem with it, which really shocked me.
“Yes. Brina. I remember her.” I said responding to her question about her co-worker.
“Well, she practically ran into my classroom during her study period crying like a
damn child,” she said laughing.
“Why was she crying?”
“Since the day I introduced her to you,” she began to chuckle. “That nut has been
planning y‟all‟s marriage. Fool girl even showed me an account she had set up on
theknot.com.”
“What is the knot.com?” I asked not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
“It‟s the wedding website for couples getting married, but, honey, you will be
surprised at how many fools are running around here with accounts and make-believe
husbands.” We both started laughing.

After talking with her for about an hour, I made a few phone calls in preparation for
our next crusade. Then I grabbed my gym bag to head over to the gym to play a little ball
with the basketball team. I sometimes felt almost shameful that I was twenty-five before
I had a chance to play high school basketball, and then it was only for practice.
“Reverend Miller, there is a Reverend E. C. Robinson on the line for you. Would you
like me to take a message?” René asked as I started past her desk.
I shook my head “yes” then headed toward the elevator. As I stood waiting for it to
arrive, I looked back and saw René quickly walking towards me.
“Reverend Miller, the gentleman on the phone, Reverend Robinson, asked me to make
sure I give you his number. He said that it‟s urgent that he speaks with you,” she said as
she handed me a yellow sticky note. As soon as I received the note, the elevator arrived
and Mother and Janaé got off.
“Going to the gym?” Mother asked me with a look of disgust when she noticed my
gym bag hanging around my shoulder.
“Yes, Ma‟am. I am,” I said as I leaned over to kiss her then Janaé on the cheek.
“This weekend we will have your engagement party at the mansion. Make sure you
remember to be on time. Several dignitaries will be there,” she said as the elevator doors
closed.
I honestly hated attending her dinner parties. The way she walked around impressing
everyone, you would think that she was a royal queen. I really wished that I could get out
of it, but I knew that was not going to happen.

After playing for about an hour, I decided to take a rest. It had been a while since I
had played, and I was more out of shape than I thought I was. While I sat on the bench
watching the kids enjoying themselves as kids should do, I couldn‟t help but think about
my childhood. It was depressing to know that not much had really changed. My mother
dictated my life then, and she is still dictating my life now.
“What‟s going on, Reverend Miller?” Kevin Taylor, the football coach said as he
extended his hand out for me to shake.
“What‟s happening, Kevin,” I began, “and please, man, call me Anthony.”
After congratulating me on my upcoming marriage, he took a seat near me on the
bench, and we pretty much sat and watched the kids without many more words. When
my phone rang, I immediately looked at the caller ID hoping that it was Raymond, but
Janaé‟s name showed up. Before I had the chance to close my phone, she appeared at the
entrance of the gym.
“Anthony, I have to tell you, brother, you are truly one lucky man,” he said smiling as
he continued staring at Janaé.
I smiled at the comment wishing I were as lucky and as blessed as everyone seemed to
think I was.
“I thought I would cook tonight,” she said once she arrived at the bench where Kevin
and I were sitting.
“Sounds good to me. I should be here for another hour or so.”
“Okay, see you at home,” she said then cordially spoke to Kevin and walked out.
I wondered what made her come to the gym just to tell me something that she could
have said while on the phone. I immediately dismissed the thought then joined in for the
next game.
On my way home I was excited hoping that after dinner there could be a repeat in my
bedroom of that morning. After waking up and both of us realizing that we were not
dreaming, Janaé walked back over to me as I sat up on my bed then straddled herself on
top of me.
“I could really love having this everyday,” she said as she placed my manhood inside
of her sweetness.
It was warm and inviting as she moved up and down slowly on me. As I grabbed her
hips out of reflex, I felt my manhood want to explode.
“Damn,” I moaned. “You driving me wild, J.”
After I said that, she then removed herself from on top of me, initially disappointing
me. Quickly she slid down to the end of the bed barely reaching the edge. She grabbed
my manhood and began staring at the hardness of it. She saw bits of my life seeds
flowing out of the shaft. Then she gently licked each one with her tongue as if she were
savoring it.
“Do you want me, too?” she asked as she looked up at me with seductive eyes.
I was so entranced that I couldn‟t speak a word. I just shook my head furiously. She
then placed my manhood into her mouth moving it all around until it exploded. Once my
manhood had exploded, it remained in her mouth and she continued to use her tongue to
ensure she left no visitors.

Just that act alone led me to understand why Raymond did not want to lose her, and I
really hated the fact that for me she was just temporary.
As I walked in the house, my mind was still playing the events of earlier that morning.
When I heard the sweet sounds of George Howard playing his horn, I knew that it was
about to be on again, and I felt myself begin to rise. When I looked toward the kitchen, I
saw her standing over the stove. After placing my briefcase beside the wall of the
entrance of the kitchen, I walked behind her and kissed her on her neck. She quickly
turned around and when she saw my face, she became tense.
“Anthony,” she said startled. “I didn‟t hear you come in.”
Suddenly I heard the toilet in the downstairs bathroom flush and moments later
Raymond waltzed out.
“Hey, baby brother,” he said as he walked toward me and gave me a customary hug.
I reluctantly returned his hug and without a word walked out of the kitchen, grabbed
my briefcase from where I had sat it, and then walked upstairs to my room to lie down.
“I‟m going to need for you to give me a ride to GDM to pick my car up,” Raymond
yelled to me as I walked up the stairs.
After taking a long shower, I threw on an old t-shirt and some shorts, and then lay
across my bed and tried to watch TV. A few moments later, I heard Janaé in the other
room making the same noises she had made with me earlier that morning.
“This is bull shit,” I said as I emerged from my bed, walked back downstairs, got the
keys to my SUV, and left.

I knew that my relationship with Janaé was not real, and I even knew that the sex we
had had nothing to do with emotions. I honestly did not know what I was feeling, but my
heart felt like it had been shattered in a thousand pieces for the thousandth time in my
life.
I arrived back at my house an hour later. As I walked up my steps, Raymond
immediately walked out the door.
“Come on,” he said demandingly as he walked toward my truck and to the passenger
side.
During the entire ride he was very quiet, never saying a word. I attempted to strike up
some different conversations with him, but he remained silent. Before I came to a
complete stop, Raymond had already gotten out. He mumbled something that I couldn‟t
make out then got into his Mercedes.
I did not think too much of it. His behavior was not that much out of character, but at
the same time, I could tell that there was something different about him.
When I arrived back at the house, I noticed that there was no light on. When I walked
in, the house was silent. As I made my way upstairs, I noticed that the door to the room
Raymond and Janaé use was ajar. I don‟t know what made me look in, but when I turned
on her light, I noticed that she was stretched across the bed naked, and a medicine bottle
was lying beside her. I rushed over to her and noticed that she was barely breathing. My
heart began beating so fast that it felt as if it were going to burst out of my chest.
After calling 911, I followed their instructions on what to do until the ambulance
arrived. As I held her up in my arms, she began to mumble words out of order.
“Raymond, baby, left me, fuck him. Mother Ruth, told me, to hell with her, rather,
dead.”
11
Katherine
I was taking a bath when I heard movement in the bedroom.
“Raymond, is that you?”
“Yes,” he said. Then I heard him walk back out.
I hadn‟t seen him in two days and when I had, my time had been limited to sitting at
the breakfast table while he spent the majority of the time talking to Mother Ruth on the
phone. I immediately got out of the tub and after dried myself off. I put on my robe and
walked downstairs to his study. When he was at home, he spent most of his time in
there, even sleeping in there on many occasions.
“Mother, please listen,” I heard him say as I got closer to the door. “He said that he
didn‟t want any money. He just wanted Anthony to see her before she died.”
Things got quiet for a long time, so I assumed that Ruth was talking. After hearing
what Raymond had said, I was very curious as to what was going on. As I stood near the
door hoping to hear more, I could here Raymond moving around his office so I decided
to walk toward the kitchen just in case he came out and saw me standing nearby.
“Yes, Mother,” he said as he began to end the conversation with his mother and walk
toward the door. “First thing in the morning. Yes. Love you, too.”
I was standing in front of the opened refrigerator pretending as though I were looking
for something.
“Can I fix you anything to eat?” I asked.
“No, I‟m not hungry.”

“How was your trip?” I asked him hoping to strike up some type of conversation with
him.
“It was a trip. I‟m going to be up most of the night studying and preparing for the
crusade. No need to wait up” he said solemnly as he grabbed a bottle of water and
headed back to his study.
Without another word to him, nor one from him, as always we both went our separate
ways. When I arrived back in my room, I was so tempted to pull out my silver bullet and
allow myself to enjoy the remainder of my “pamper me” day, but I decided against it. I
had never used it while Raymond was at home and I really don‟t think that I would feel
comfortable.
As I lay in my bed miserable, Kevin‟s face continued to float in my mind.
“I wonder if you could give me what I need?” I asked softly as I lay alone with my
husband downstairs.
The next morning I woke up as usual at six a.m. After taking a shower I dressed then
walked downstairs for breakfast. When I passed Raymond's office, I noticed that the
door was open, and his light was on. When I looked inside, there were no signs of him
there nor any signs that he had even slept there.
“Maria, have you seen Bishop Miller?” I asked our maid.
“When I arrived, I noticed his office open and his light still on, I thought he was
upstairs with you. I was tempted to turn the light off, but you know how he gets when
someone goes in there without him being in there.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. Raymond hated for anyone, even me, to go
in there when he‟s not at home. I always wondered why he treated the office as if it were
a temple.
When I finished eating breakfast, it was seven o‟clock, so I decided to leave for work.
I wanted to try to get there early to complete some paperwork that I knew I would have
since I had taken a day off.
When I drove into the parking lot, I noticed Kevin's silver sports car come behind me.
As I got out of my car, he parked his car to my left. I have no idea what made me stop
and wait for him to get out, but the first thing I did as I waited was pinch myself to ensure
I wasn‟t dreaming.
“Good morning, Mrs. Miller,” he said with a toothy grin.
“Good morning to you, Kevin,” I said trying to contain the feelings that were
beginning to tingle inside of me.
We walked toward the buildings of the school in silence, but when it was time for us
to go into our respective buildings, out of nowhere my mouth spoke words.
“Kevin, let‟s have lunch today.”
“I would love that,” he said as he smiled and walked toward the gym.
When I arrived at my office, I noticed several teachers and other staff standing around
my secretary‟s desk all with looks of concern on their faces.
“What‟s going on?” I asked Hannah as I got closer to her desk.
“Mrs. Miller, what are you doing here? Why are you not at the hospital?”
“Why should I be at the hospital?”

“Janaé was rushed there early this morning,” she said as if she were surprised that I
didn‟t know.
“Why?”
“Mrs. Miller, no one is quite sure, but would you like me to drive you there?”
“No, you stay here. Cancel all of my meetings for the day. Thanks,” I said as I rushed
back out of the building and to my car.
When I got to my car, I realized that I didn‟t know what hospital she was in, so I used
my mobile to call Hannah back. Again, she acted very surprised that I knew nothing.
On my drive to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, I could feel the fumes floating
out of my head.
“Why am I the last to know what‟s going on in my family?” I asked myself aloud.
As soon as I arrived, I noticed that there were several reporters standing outside, and
as soon as one spotted me, everyone else began running toward me firing questions.
“Mrs. Miller, is there any truth that Reverend Anthony Miller‟s fiancé„ Janaé Young
attempted suicide?” a young black female reporter yelled at me as she stuck a
microphone in my face.
I was literally picked up and rushed inside the hospital. When I was safely inside, I
realized that it was a member of the security team that had rescued me
“Sorry about that, Mrs. Miller. Someone was supposed to come and pick you up from
the campus,” he said as we both began walking toward the elevator.
“What is going on?”
“Ma‟am, I‟m sure Bishop Miller and Mother Miller can fill you in upstairs,” he said.
When I arrived at the waiting room, I noticed that almost the entire God‟s Deliverance
administrative staff was there, and it was all set up as if it were their own offices. I
looked across the room and I saw Raymond, Anthony, and Mother Ruth all alone and in
deep conversation. I could tell from where I stood that Mother Ruth was angry.
“What happened?” I asked once I reached where they were standing.
No one said a word. Mother Ruth looked at me with disgust and then walked away.
“What happened?” I asked again this time directing the question solely to Raymond.
“Janaé had a miscarriage,” he said then walked away and joined Ruth and her
assistant.
Anthony then took a seat in a nearby chair and placed his head in his hands. I could
tell there was more to the situation, but I didn‟t want to press it. I reached over to him,
pulled him closer, and allowed him to lay his head on my shoulder. Although I was
clueless about the entire situation, I knew that he was hurting, and at that moment I knew
that what he needed the most was to know that someone was there for him.
After a few moments I looked over and noticed Raymond and Mother Ruth walking
back toward us.
“In a few moments we will have a press conference. Anthony have you looked over
your prepared statement?” Ruth asked as she left the waiting area with an entourage of
people, before he had the chance to answer.
Raymond then took a seat beside me, and I noticed a worn look on his face. That look
told me that what had happened was more than just a miscarriage.
“I have to go to the restroom,” Anthony said as he lifted his head from my shoulder
then exited the waiting room.

“Why didn‟t you wake me this morning?” I asked Raymond. “You didn‟t even call.
It was not until I arrived at work that I knew what had happened.”
“Things were just moving kind of fast, and I wasn‟t thinking,” he said as he stared at
nothing in particular.
“A reporter asked me if it were true that she attempted suicide,” I said softly. “Is it?”
Suddenly I saw a tear roll down Raymond's face, and for some reason I felt that he had
not only answered the question at hand, but also others I had yet to even think about
asking. As we sat in silence, my mind began to wander to places I never thought it would
wander. My mind began to tell me things that seemed too much of a lie to be the truth,
but the thoughts seemed so real.
“Are you having an affair with Janaé?” I blurted out not really wanting to know the
answer.
He didn‟t respond, just more tears. When Anthony arrived back to where we were,
my heart had dropped. I didn‟t know what to do. I looked at Anthony, and the same hate
I had begun to feel for Raymond I suddenly had for him. As soon as he sat down, I stood
up, slapped Raymond as hard as I could, then turned to Anthony and did the same.
As I approached the exit of the waiting room, Mother Ruth was heading back in.
Suddenly I stopped moving. Initially I had felt the fear of all the years of knowing her,
but it only lasted for three seconds.
“Where are you going, dear?” she asked in her controlling tone. “We are just about to
prepare for a press conference.”

Suddenly rage rampaged all through my body, and before I knew anything, my hand
had formed a fist. It connected with Mother Ruth‟s left eye and caused her to hit the
floor.
“Fuck you! Fuck your no-damn-good sons, and fuck your damn press conference,
Bitch!” I yelled then left.
I had one of the security men escort me through all the reporters and to my car. Once
I got back on I-77 South toward Fort Mill, I called Hannah and had my call directed to
the gym.
“This is Kevin Taylor,” he answered.
“Where do you stay?”
“Excuse me. Who is this?” he asked startled.
“Kevin, this is Katherine Miller. Now tell me where you live!”
“I…..I have a condo in the Baxter Development in Fort Mill,” he paused for a second.
“Mrs. Miller, may I ask why?”
“You have my permission to leave work now. Meet me there in twenty minutes,” I
said then hung up the phone.
“If you push someone too far, eventually they will push back,” I whispered to myself
as I took the exit to Kevin's Condo.
12
Anthony
After calling 9-1-1 I called Raymond to tell him what had happened. By the time the
ambulance arrived at my house, Raymond was already there.
“I will ride with Janaé in the ambulance. You go and pick up Mother,” he said to me
as he hopped in the back with her.
Once I arrived at my parents‟ home, as I reached the front of the house, Mother was
walking out of the door and headed toward her awaiting limousine. I walked with her to
her car, and before she got in, she looked at me with a scowling look on her face.
“You should have called me before anyone,” she then slammed the door and ordered
the driver to go.
On my way to the hospital, tears felt like they wanted to fall, but they wouldn‟t. For
whatever reasons I felt as if all this were my fault. Although I knew I had done nothing
wrong, there was a voice inside telling me that I could have prevented all of this from
happening.
It was amazing how quickly the news and TV crews had gotten the word. By the time
I arrived at the hospital, it was almost like a mad house. Because I was driving behind
mother and the entourage of security, I didn‟t have to worry about the reporters who had
attempted to block the entrance of the hospital.
“Now do you understand why I said you should have called me first?” she asked
immediately after exiting her car.
“But, Mother, Janaé could have died if I hadn‟t called.”
“Anthony, frankly I don‟t give a damn. What that little bitch has done is attempt to
bring shame upon our family, and that is something I will not stand for,” Mother said as
she walked away tightly guarded by the security team.

I remained standing in the parking deck still in shock from what she had just said.
One of the members of security remained with me. I went back to my SUV, grabbed my
cell phone, and then used my remote to lock the doors.
When I arrived upstairs at the waiting area, Mother had already begun bossing the
entire hospital staff. She demanded a separate waiting room to be used specifically as her
makeshift office. After having tables and extras chairs brought in, she then called her
personal assistant and demanded that she called the entire God‟s Deliverance staff and
have them report to the hospital immediately.
As I stood there watching everyone move at her command, Raymond walked in
looking beat and worn. He had a look that told me that Janaé was more to him than just
an affair.
“She‟s going to make it,” he said in a whisper. “The baby won‟t.”
The sadness that I had earlier felt like it had increased a thousand times. My legs
began to feel numb, so I took a seat in a nearby chair.
“Do you see what type of fiasco you‟ve caused?” Mother said to me angrily as she
walked over to where I was sitting. “I don‟t understand you, Anthony.”
“Not now, Mother. Not here,” Raymond said as he gently grabbed her arm and led
her away.
As I sat alone, I watched Mother and Raymond talking secretly on the other side of the
room. The sadness I had seen earlier on his face was still very evident, and I noticed
Mother reach over to him as if she were consoling him. That sight gave me the
knowledge that I had been wondering for a long time. That sight caused my eyes to
welledd up with tears, and before I knew it, I had begun to cry uncontrollably.
A few of the staff members that had arrived came over to comfort me, but at that
moment no one could comfort me in what was going on. No one could understand the
years of sadness that suddenly hit me all at once. No one could understand that my life
was as miserable as it was.
A few moments later Raymond walked back over to me and instructed the others to
give us some privacy.
“I called things off earlier tonight with Janaé,” he said softly after a long moment of
silence. “I guess the way I did it triggered something in her.”
“Mother has always known, hasn‟t she?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
I remained silent after his answer. I didn‟t know what to think. I didn‟t know how to
feel.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
“Please don‟t ask,” he said. Then he got up and walked out of the room.
As I sat alone again, I attempted to piece together the last words Janaé had said to me
before the ambulance had arrived.
“Raymond, baby, left me, fuck him. Leslie, told me, to hell with her,” I remembered her
saying.
Hours had passed and Mother had barely said two words to me during that entire time.
As I watched her work, preparing statements to the press and instructing all on what
could or could not be said, I couldn‟t help but wonder about her dislike of me. If she
knew Raymond was having an affair with Janaé, then she knew the baby that Janaé was
carrying was his, so why be mad at me?
I constantly thought about how all of my life she‟d always treated me so differently,
and all my life I‟d wondered what had I done so badly to cause her to hate me so much. I
wasn‟t trying to compare my life with Raymond's, but it looked to me like I was a better
son than he was. However, he was the one she loved, and I was the one she chose to
hate.
Janaé's last words to me rang repeatedly through my mind and I wondered about a
name she mentioned, Leslie. Who was that?
While I was still deep in thought, Mother called me over to join her and Raymond.
“Anthony, my secretary has written your statement for the press. You will read this.
Then we all will dismiss without questions,” she then looked at her watch. “Raymond,
where is that wife of yours?”
“I forgot to call her,” he said.
Mother began ordering someone to locate Katherine and have her brought to the
hospital immediately.
“Raymond, why does Mother hate me?” I asked him in our moment alone while she
barked orders.
“What are you talking about?”
“Mother hates me. I want to know why,” I said almost demandingly.
He stared at me long and hard, and as soon as I saw words attempt to come out of his
mouth, she walked back over to us. As she had me read the statement over and over to
her as if I were still a child, we noticed Katherine walking in.

When she came to us and asked what happened, Mother walked away never
acknowledging her. She then asked Raymond, and when she did, he walked away
leaving us alone. We both took a seat and before I knew it, I had begun to cry again. I
was sure that she thought I was crying because of Janaé, but it was beyond that.
A few moments later as I lay my head on her shoulder, for some strange reason I
began to feel a love from Katherine that I had never felt before. The way she consoled
me and allowed my head to rest on her shoulder was something I had never felt in my
life. It was something that the only way I could describe it would be to call it “a mother‟s
love”.
Although Katherine was my sister-in-law, ever since I was six, I had known her, and
ever since I was six, she had always seemed to show me a love my own mother never did.
When Raymond walked back over, I excused myself. I knew that I had to clear my
head and my thoughts for the press conference. If I appeared weary, tired, or even
emotional, I knew that Mother would find a way to show how that was a sign of bringing
shame to the family.
When I returned to Katherine and Raymond, they were silent. Suddenly, Katherine
stood up, and out of nowhere, she slapped Raymond. Before I knew it, she then turned to
me and did the same.
Without her or Raymond having to tell me anything, I knew why she had done it.
Suddenly I felt more sadness infiltrate my body. Katherine, I knew, felt as if I had
betrayed her, and to be honest, I had.
After she walked away, I sat and watched her leave. When she approached Mother, I
could not believe it when she hit her so hard that Mother fell to the floor. Everybody,
including Raymond, ran to her assistance. I remained in my chair watching Mother
attempting to get up, but constantly falling back to the floor.
I felt some sort of relief in seeing that, but I still felt hurt because of the betrayal
Katherine had received from my actions in this entire ordeal. I knew that she wouldn‟t
understand that although I was a part of this current situation, it was not by my own
choice to be a part of it.
As I remained in my seat, Raymond escorted Mother out of the waiting area. I didn‟t
focus clearly on all the chatter but I knew that the majority of it contained words of
expression from everyone who had just witnessed the event. I never moved from my seat
wondering if I would ever get the opportunity to explain to Katherine that it was never
my intent to cause her any pain. I wanted her to know that I was a victim.
My secretary René, who had just arrived as Katherine exited, came over and sat beside
me.
“How are you holding up Anthony?” she asked.
Over the past several years René and I had become good friends. Normally during our
personal conversations she would call me by my first name, but usually in the office, at
church, or around the other staff members she would call me “Reverend Miller”.
“About as good as can be expected,” I said.
I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her more than I had ever told her in the
past, but even though I considered her a good friend, I still felt too ashamed of my life to
share with anyone.
“Anytime you want to talk, I‟m here,” she said.

As we sat there basically talking about nothing in general, I heard a cell phone ringing
on the chair that sat on the other side of me.
“That‟s Raymond's phone,” I said looking down at it.
I initially thought to let it ring but decided to answer.
“Raymond,” a male voice quickly responded after I said hello.
“This is his brother Anthony. Can I help you?”
There was a long silence. All I could hear was breathing.
“Hello?” I said wondering if the person was still on the line.
“Hello. Anthony. How are you? This is Reverend E.C. Robinson. I attempted to call
you on yesterday,” he said then paused. “It‟s important that I speak with you
immediately.”
“Sir, as I told you, this is Anthony Miller, Raymond's brother. I will inform him that
you called,” I responded thinking that he hadn‟t heard me the first time when I told him I
wasn‟t Raymond.
“Son, I know who you are, and it‟s you that I need to speak with. I am in Charlotte for
a few days. Is there anyway we could meet while I‟m here?”
“Do you mind my asking why?” I asked a little suspicious.
“I would rather explain in person.”
For whatever reasons, I accepted his invitation, and informed him that I would give
him a call later that evening. I initially assumed that he was a pastor of a church hoping
to become a part of the God‟s Deliverance Fellowship. When I noticed the area code of
the number he had called from, my assumptions began to take on a different
understanding.
“René, where is area code 334?” I asked her simply because I knew that she was the
one person that knew the area codes of almost every city in the country.
“That would be Montgomery,” she said matter-of-factly.
13
A House Built in Hell
When Raymond left the hospital that evening, he rode in the limousine with his
mother.
“Raymond, your lust for women has got to end,” she said fuming. “I have been
covering up for you for over thirty years now. I‟m really getting sick and tired of this.”
Raymond sat quietly. He had no words for his mother.
“And that Katherine, how dare she embarrass me like that in front of our staff? That
bitch will pay,” she said as she raised her fist in the air.
As they continued to ride, Raymond tried ignoring his mothers‟ tyrants and began
searching through his phone to see if he had missed any calls. As he did that, Ruth
continued to fuss and yell.

“And Anthony, how dare he call 9-1-1 before he called me? Do you know that if it
hadn‟t been for him, we wouldn‟t have had to work as hard to clear up this entire mess?
Does he not realize that when you call the emergency line, all of Kingdom Come can
hear your voice?”
“Janaé could have died, Mother, if he hadn‟t,” Raymond said softly.
“Raymond, honestly, do you think I really give a good damn if one of your little
floosies died?”
Raymond looked up from his phone and stared at Ruth, in disbelief of her comment,
but remained silent. He knew that his mother would just ignore any words to her about
this current situation. As he returned his attention to his phone, he realized that he had
several missed calls. The majority of them were from Victoria, the woman he‟d met
while in Montgomery.
Before leaving the hospital, he had vowed to himself that he would never see another
woman again with the exception of his wife. However, after viewing her number in his
phone, his mind began to replay his time with her that had only been less than forty-eight
hours earlier.
Once they arrived at the mansion, he walked Ruth to the door and was about to return
to the car when she demanded that he come in to talk to his father.
“Mother, I really need to go home and get some rest,” he said hoping that she would
understand.
“You can get rest after you visit with your father,” she said as she began to walk into
the house, “You know where he is.”

When Raymond reached the elevator of the house, he pressed the down button and
waited. As he stood there, he suddenly began to feel a heavy feeling come over his heart.
“How much more, Lord?” he whispered.
Immediately after stepping off the elevator, he could hear his father‟s voice coming
from his small chapel.
“AND IF YOU DON‟T GET RIGHT WITH GOD CHILDREN, WHEN JESUS
COMES BACK, YOU WILL BE LEFT BEHIND!”
Raymond took a seat in the back of the chapel and listened to his father preaching. As
he watched him preach with his eyes closed, he began to wonder about if his fathers‟
dementia was a result of any past demons.
“CHILDREN,” Raymond Sr. continued to yell out. “DON‟T THINK THAT IF YOU
GET AWAY WITH SOMETHING, IT WON‟T EVENTUALLY COME BACK.” He
then hit his hand on the podium causing a loud noise to emphasize his point. “THE
WRATH OF THE LORD CAN STRIKE AT ANYTIME!.”
Raymond jumped nervously in the pew. The words of his father hit hard. Suddenly
Raymond Sr. opened his eyes and before him he saw his only son.
“Raymond, son is that you?”
“Yea, Pops. It‟s me,” Raymond said as he forced himself to stand up and walk toward
his father.
“Son, how are you doing? It‟s been a long time since I‟ve seen you.”
“I‟m doing okay Pops,” Raymond said with sorrow in his voice.
“I saw the news today,” Raymond Sr. said as they embraced each other.
Raymond didn‟t say a word. He just remained in the arms of his father hoping to find
some form of peace.
“Come on over here and have a seat with me,” Raymond Sr. instructed his son as they
both sat in one of the front pews.
They sat for several moments in silence. Raymond had so much he wanted to say yet
at the same time, he had nothing to say.
“E. C. Robinson came to see me today,” Raymond Sr. said as he broke their silence.
“He told me he wanted to see Anthony.”
“Yes, sir. He told me the same thing while I was in Montgomery.”
“Have you talked to Anthony yet?”
“No,” Raymond said softly.
“Better you son than E.C.”
“Yes, sir,” Raymond answered as if he were a child.
After sitting for a few more moments in silence, Raymond said his goodbyes to his
father and began to walk out of the door.
“Son,” Raymond Sr. began once Raymond reached the door. “When are you going to
come and preach for me?”
“Soon, Pops. Real soon,” he said as he walked out of the chapel.
When Raymond arrived home, the house seemed empty. As he walked toward his
office, he called out Katherine's name.
“She not come home today, Bishop Miller,” Maria said as she emerged from the
servants‟ quarters.
Without another word Maria then returned downstairs leaving Raymond alone in his
spacious seventy-five hundred square foot home. As he stood and stared around the
house, he began to wonder if his life would be much simpler if he were a poor man.
“Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse.
Proverbs nineteenth chapter, first verse,” he whispered as he walked into his office and
closed the door.
After sitting down in the chair behind his desk, he picked up the remote and turned on
the television and he immediately saw his face flash onto the screen. As he stared at
himself preaching the Word of God, he noticed Anthony sitting behind him and
appearing to be happy and content.
“I haven‟t been a good brother to you Anthony,” he whispered as he continued to
stare. “How can I be a father to you now after all these years?”
Tears began to roll from his eyes. It felt as if the past thirty years had all collapsed on
him in a matter of three days. His tears suddenly became an uncontrollable cry. He
remained in his seat and let it all out. He wanted to pray, but he knew that God would
refuse to hear his words. He knew God would continue to punish him with grief and
sorrow.
As he remained at his desk with his eyes focused on the television, he noticed his
mother appear on the screen. He noticed how pure her eyes were, and how she appeared
to be majestic and of deepest sincerity.
“Greetings, saints,” she began speaking. “I‟m Ruth Miller. Some of you know me as
“Mother Ruth”. I am asking you to continue to join me and my family here each week.
We guarantee that through my son Raymond God will deliver unto you a blessing from
above.”
Raymond's hands began to shake as he watched his mother on the screen. He loved
his mother dearly, but over the years he had also grown to despise her. He thought of
how since the first day he mimicked his father at the age of six, she had begun developing
him into a vessel for God.
“YOU…YOU DID THIS TO ME,” he yelled toward the television. “I AM WHO I
AM BECAUSE OF YOU!”
His left hand moved before he could think and it picked up a mug that sat on his desk.
He held the mug for a few moments then threw it at the television causing a loud and
explosive noise.
“Bishop Miller, is everything ok?” Maria asked as she rushed into his office after
hearing the explosion.
“GET THE HELL OUT!” Raymond yelled. “DO NOT DISTURB ME!”
He stood up from his desk and stared at the fire he caused. He had no feelings of what
just happened with the exception of a small amount of pleasure. He thought about his
wife Katherine and how earlier she had done what he wished he could do, knock his
mother to the floor.
He walked over to a small cabinet in his office and opened it. Inside was something
he knew would not calm him, yet it was something he knew would give him a moment of
soothing pleasure.
As he sat in silence, drinking and thinking, he became angry. He became more
frustrated. He found himself depressed. This wasn‟t a new feeling to him. It was
something that he had felt several times over the years. However, he knew no one else
could ever know. He knew that because of who he was and who he had become, this was
a secret that could destroy him if anyone knew it.
He thought of his mother‟s comment to him about his lust for women. He knew it had
nothing to do with sex, but it was strictly for the purpose of finding happiness.
“All I want to be is happy,” he said to himself aloud.
He thought about the previous Sunday when he had informed his mother about Janaé‟s
pregnancy.
“She needs to abort that child immediately, Raymond,” Ruth said to him in her stern
and controlling demeanor.
“She can‟t, Mother.”
“Then Anthony will marry her,” she said without expression. “I refuse to allow shame
to ruin the good name of my family, Raymond,” she said emphatically
He knew her decision would be the final one. He knew there was no talking her out of
it. As he sat in his office after church that morning, on the anniversary of the marriage to
his wife, his mother sat with him devising a plan to make sure that his mistress‟s secret
remained one.
While he sat in deep thought, his phone rang.
“Hello,” he said wearily.
“Bishop Miller,” the seducing voice began. “I‟ve been trying to contact you all day.”
“Is that right?”
“I‟m going to be in Greensboro, North Carolina for a few days on business. Is there a
chance I can see you while in the area?”

Raymond sat in silence. Despite all the reasons in the world why he should have said
“no”, he chose to say the complete opposite.
“I‟m more than sure that can be arranged,” he responded.
After hanging up from Victoria, he remained behind his desk staring at the television
that he had recently destroyed. Smoke was still rising from the destruction. His eyes
were heavy. His mind was full, and then suddenly he drifted away.
After waking up around three in the morning, he made his way upstairs to the room he
shared with his wife. He noticed that it was empty.
“She must be in another room,” he said softly as he lay on top of the bed still fully
clothed.
As he lay hoping to find some peace, thoughts continued to run through his mind.
“I always talk about building a house in Glory, but here I lay in a house built in hell,”
he whispered as he once again drifted away.

14
Katherine
It was six a.m. the next morning when I left Kevin's house. To say that what
happened was the most wonderful sexual experience I‟ve ever had in my life would be an
understatement. While driving home all I could think about was how he was a million
times better in person than he was in my dreams.
“Shouldn‟t you be at the hospital with your family?” he asked.
“I am where I should be, Kevin.”
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked me once he met me at his
houseand I had made my desires known.
“I‟ve never been surer about anything in my life, Kevin.”
“You don‟t want to talk about it first?” he asked.
“If we talk first, I may not act afterwards. Would you like for me to leave?” I asked
but received no answer from him.
I really didn‟t want to go into a debate about this and that or about what I wanted to do
at the time. To make it clearer, I wanted some dick and I wanted the dick then.
I could tell that he really didn‟t know how to take my advancement. It did come
unexpectedly and to be honest I didn‟t really know how to take it either. All day and
through the night I continued to wonder if I had not found out the truth about Janaé and
Raymond, would I still have even thought about this man beyond my dreams.
We stood on the outside of Kevin's condo discussing for thirty minutes if this was
something I was sure that I wanted to do. Before I knew it, I had grabbed the man‟s keys
out of his hand, and asked him which key opened his house. After he told me, I opened
the door, walked up the stairs, looked into each room until I discovered the one that
resembled where he might sleep, and stripped naked.
As I lay on top of his bed, he walked in and the look of surprise on his face came from
enjoying the view or just pure shock that I had acted so quickly.
“Mrs. Miller,” he began to speak, and I immediately hushed him.
“Kevin, I am currently laying on your bed completely naked. Must you continue to
call me Mrs. Miller? My name is Katherine.”
Without another word, Kevin softly and seductively stared at me then licked his lips.
He walked closer to the bed and slowly pulled off his shirt and gym shorts.
“Katherine, I had a workout this morning and ran a few times with the students during
my morning class,” he informed me then pulled off his boxer briefs exposing his love
maker. “Would you mind if I took a shower first?”
Being mesmerized at not just his chiseled body but also the tool that came with it
generated a rush through my body that seemed never-ending.
As I heard the water in the shower begin to race out, I remained on the bed softly
rubbing my Lady, causing myself to have a pleasing opening act yet still anticipating the
headliner to follow.
When I no longer heard the singing of the shower, I slowly moved my hand away and
stretched my legs across the bed. Suddenly the door to the bathroom opened, and I
looked over and saw Kevin standing at the doorway completely wet. My heart began to
patter. Anticipation had taken control, and I felt my body already experience something
without a single touch from him.
I continued to watch his every move and as he reached the edge of the bed, he grabbed
both of my legs and pulled me closer. He then knelt to the floor and allowed his tongue
to invade the space of my Lady. Within a matter of seconds, I exploded, yet he continued
to explore the area until he found every ounce of gold available.
He then moved up toward me and began kissing my body gently and lovingly. This
was a new feeling for my body, so new that I could feel the tears well up in my eyes.
When he reached my mouth, he began to kiss me seductively, allowing me to taste
myself, a taste that was so new to me, a taste that was so very sweet to me.
I then grabbed his tool and placed it inside of me causing my body to feel and tremble,
as it had never done before. When he exploded inside of me, it appeared that his tool
remained at attention causing me to continue to orgasm.
“I‟ve thought about you since the day I interviewed for the coaching position,” he said
as I lay on his bed wrapped in his arms.
“Kevin, the feeling is mutual.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something?”
I wanted to say “no”. I was almost as sure as I knew my name what his question was
going to be, but I nodded my head anyway.
“Why now?”
“To make a short story shorter, lets just say that today, after my forty-four years of
living, I finally understand the phrase „When chickens come home to roost‟,” I said then
slithered from his embrace. I then followed a scene from a recent dream and introduced
myself to his unborn children.
When I arrived home and slowly walked into the house, the first person I saw was
Maria.
“Mrs. Miller, where have you been? We have all been worried about you,” she started
as she ran toward me and wrapped her chubby arms around my waste.
“I‟m doing fine, Maria,” I said surely and feeling more revived about life in general.
When I walked into the bedroom, I saw Raymond standing in the mirror adjusting his
tie.
“Good morning,” he said dryly.
I returned his good morning greeting with one as dry as his. After leaving Kevin's
house earlier, I made up in my mind that from that point on, I would refuse to allow him
or his twisted family to destroy any more of the dignity I had.
“Where did you stay last night?” he asked softly.
“With a friend,” I replied then walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind
me.
“Mother Ruth is on the phone. She said that it‟s urgent that she speaks with you,”
Hannah said to me immediately upon my arriving at my office.
“You tell Mother Ruth that I said to go to hell,” I then walked into my office to begin
my day.
Less than thirty minutes later, as I sat behind my desk, without so much as a warning,
the door to my office slung open.
“HOW DARE YOU?” The evil witch standing in my doorway began. “No one
insults me that way.”
“Mother Ruth,” I sang. “I‟m sure that NO ONE speaks to you that way, but let me
inform you of something,” I paused and was surprisingly very calm. “I am SOME ONE,
and you have exactly twenty-five seconds to close my door and knock and wait to enter
like a normal individual.”
I could see both anger and shock race across her face, and initially she remained
standing in the doorway without moving a muscle.
“Ruth, you now have ten seconds. If you would like to avoid repeating the event at
the hospital on yesterday, I suggest you adhere to my earlier command.”
To my surprise she closed the door and a few moments later knocked. After inviting
her in, she then took a seat in front of my desk.
“Mother Ruth, how can I help you?” I asked.
She remained silent as she stared me in the eyes. I wasn‟t sure, but it seemed as if she
were staring me down in an attempt to regain the control I had once allowed her to have.
“Katherine, yesterday was a very emotional day. I‟m sure that whatever gave you the
audacity to hit me was the direct result of the events dealing with Anthony and Janaé.”
After she made her comment, she became silent as if she were waiting for me to
comment.
“Ruth, my actions on yesterday were a direct result of years of being manipulated by
you and your son,” I paused then arose from my desk and walked toward the door of my
office. “I will no longer accept foolishness from you, Raymond, or anyone else in your
family. From this point on, if you do anything that I find to be degrading to me or my
daughters, I will personally see to your lies being exposed.”
I then opened the door informing her that the conversation was over. She remained
seated for a few moments, then emerged from the chair and gracefully walked out.
After returning to my desk, suddenly, I began to feel nervous. I never thought in all of
my days since becoming a member of this family that I would ever get the nerve to talk to
Mother Ruth the way I had. Although I felt relieved, there was still something telling me
in my soul that Ruth would retaliate and retaliate with vengeance.
Around the latter part of the day I decided to walk down to the gym to see Kevin. All
day he had been on my mind, and I had even contemplated inviting myself back to his
condo later that evening, but I didn‟t want to become a nuisance.
As I entered the gym, I noticed him standing on the far end talking to several of the
boys on the football team. When he spotted me, he slowly moved away from them and
walked toward me. When we finally met in the middle of the gym, it took all restraint for
me not to attack him and give a repeat performance.
“Thanks for yesterday,” he said softly then smiled.
“No, thank you.”
“Any plans for this evening?” he asked.
“Make some for me,” I said returning the smile.
“I will be home after seven,” he said then walked back to his students.
Suddenly I felt my Lady tell me she was once again enjoying an opening act.
I practically danced all the way back to my office. I felt as if I were on cloud nine,
and I knew, or at least I thought I knew until I walked back into my office, that no one or
nothing could allow me to lose the high I was on.
As I closed the door of my office and walked toward my desk, I looked over at my
window and saw him standing there.
“What the hell do you want?” I asked.
“Katherine, we really need to talk,” he said with those same sad eyes that for years
had made me believe that he was a victim.
“Anthony,” I began calmly. “Of everyone in your family you are the one I felt I could
trust and believe in the most. We have nothing to talk about. Please leave.”
“I really need for you to know this,” he pleaded. “This is information I just received
and you are the only person I know to share this with.”
Again, I saw those same sad eyes. I looked in them long and hard attempting to find
some form of reassurance that he was sincere.
“You have five minutes, Anthony,” I said matter-of-factly.
He then handed me a yellow envelope and instructed me to remove its contents. After
reading his birth certificate, I nearly fainted. I couldn‟t believe what I was reading.
“Anthony, is this for real?”
His answer came in the form of tears.

15
Anthony
As I sat in the booth of the Soul Food/Asian restaurant Heart & Soul, my heart felt as
if had stopped beating. All my life I had thoughts that my life were a lie, and now as I sat
with proof in my hands, and it appeared not to be real.
“How do I know this is not some hoax?” I asked the burly old man. “For all I know
you are telling me this to receive money from my family.”
“This is not a hoax, son,” he replied softly. “And I don‟t need anymore money from
the Miller Family.”
“Anymore?” I asked suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
He took the focus of his eyes off me and began to glance around at the other patrons.
When he brought his attention back to me, he cleared his throat before speaking.
“When you were barely a year old,” he started softly. “I carried you to the church
where Raymond Sr. was the pastor. I had you in one hand and my shotgun in the other.
Raymond Jr. was in the middle of a sermon.”
He paused from his story, and we both sat there in silence. I wanted him to continue,
yet at the same time I didn‟t want to hear anymore.
“I demanded that they left town or their fifteen year old son, who everyone thought
was a true Child of the King, would be exposed for what he really was,” he paused again
as if the next part of the story was too hard for him to think about it. “I also gave you to
them for them to raise.”

There was a longer silence after that. I didn‟t know what to say. I had questions yet
no words. When I found words, I had no structure to form them. Many questions were
answered yet some how they continued to remain a mystery.
“So they paid you over the years not to contact me?” I asked.
He responded by slowly nodding his head “yes”.
“So why are you contacting me now?” I was still waiting to hear what the scam was.
He had given me away twenty-nine years ago and now unexpectedly he returns into my
life.
“Your mother is dying,” he responded softly.
I disconnected our eye contact this time and began to look around the restaurant
nervously. I noticed all of the happy faces enjoying their meals. I looked to my left and I
saw a young Asian couple enjoying a meal that consisted of collard greens and shrimp lo-
mien. I saw two white businessmen devour cornbread, and then they dug into egg rolls
that sat in a lone basket between them.
I returned my focus back to Reverend E.C. Robinson. I had no words for him. I
didn‟t even have any emotions for him. To be honest my feelings were numb.
“Here,” he said as he handed me an envelope.
When I opened it, I saw my name, Raymond's name, and the name Claudette
Robinson.
“When I gave you to the Millers, I thought that it was the best thing for Claudette,” he
began to speak again while I continued to read my birth certificate. “Since the day you
were born, Claudette has had nothing but a troubled mind. She‟s been in and out of
institutions since she was fifteen.”

He continued talking but I didn‟t hear his words. My thoughts were of Janaé
attempting to commit suicide. I thought about the words she mumbled when I discovered
her in the room. All other thoughts followed. The hate Mother always seemed to have
for me had become clear. I now understood how she would say that I had a demon seed.
“Anthony,” Reverend Robinson said breaking me from my thoughts. “My reason for
contacting you is for me to make a wrong right before Claudette leaves this earth. As I
stated earlier, I thought I had done the right thing, but I know that although I can‟t make
everything right, I would like to make this right.”
Before leaving the restaurant Reverend Robinson informed me that he would be
leaving to go back to Montgomery later in the evening, and he wanted me to get in
contact with him as soon as possible. He understood my reluctance, and he also said that
he understood if I were to say “no”.
As I watched him drive away in the Cadillac with the Alabama license plate, I
remained in my SUV wondering what my next move should be. I was nervous because
as always I felt that I had no one to turn to to help me through this. The only person I
could think of was already angry with me, and I really wasn‟t sure how she would handle
this news herself, but I had to talk with someone I knew I could trust.
As I waited for Katherine to return to her office, my heart constantly skipped beats. I
was nervous at how she would receive not just me, but the information I had. The past
several days of all of our lives seemed to be a horrific storm that just didn‟t want to end.
After showing Katherine my birth certificate and telling her of the illness of my birth
mother, she wanted to know what my plans were, a question I had no answer to.
“I don‟t know what to do,” I responded softly to her question. “That‟s why I came to
you.”
She stared long and hard at me then redirected her attention to the birth certificate.
“How well do you trust René‟?” She asked me.
“She can be trusted,” I said wondering how my secretary‟s trust was in question.
“Anthony,” she began before a long pause. “It‟s time for you and I to get our lives
back.”
When I left Katherine's office, I decided to stop by the hospital to visit Janaé. I
thought about what Reverend Robinson said about my birth mother not being of right
mind since I was born. I was determined to make sure that the same thing didn‟t happen
to her. I was going to make sure that she got any help she needed to recover from this.
Upon arriving at the hospital, I noticed that the fanfare from a day earlier had
completely died down. To be on the safe side, just in case there were some straggling
reporters lurching around to get a story, I parked in the lower deck and took an alternative
route to the sixth floor where her room was located.
When I walked into her room, I noticed an orderly straightening up the bed that she
had occupied the day before.
“Where is Ms. Young?” I asked concerned.
“She was moved out earlier this morning, about an hour ago.”
“What room was she moved to?”

“Man, all I do is clean the rooms they tell me to clean,” he stated as he continued
doing his job.
I immediately walked to the nurse‟s station to find out where Janaé was. Thoughts of
my conversation with Rev. Robinson and what he said about my mother ran through my
head.
“Janaé Young,” I said addressing the first nurse I saw. “What room has she been
moved to?”
She was initially slow in answering until she looked up and recognized me.
“Oh, Rev. Miller, your brother and Mother just left with her about an hour ago,” she
said as she reached down and pulled a bag out. “They told us to bag her belongings and
that someone would be by to pick them up.” She then handed me the bag.
I walked out of the hospital more worried and concerned about Janaé than I had been
earlier. I wanted to rush back to the campus of GDM and question both Raymond and
Mother, but I knew that asking them anything would only give them an opportunity to tell
more lies.
I immediately called Katherine to inform her of my visit to the hospital. She told me
to hold tight on saying anything to anyone about the information received from Reverend
Robinson as well as Raymond and Mother removing Janaé from the hospital before I
spoke with her again.
Upon leaving the hospital, I decided to go home and attempt to sleep for the remainder
of the day. The entire week had been nothing but pure stress for me, and my body was
beginning to feel the wear and tear. As I drove in silence, my phone began to chime
informing me that I had an incoming call. I looked at the caller ID and noticed my
secretary‟s cell number displayed.
“René, where are you? Did you leave the office?” I asked.
“Anthony, no I‟m still here. I stepped outside to call you.” She paused as though she
were nervous. “Your mother and Raymond just left out of your office, and they asked me
to retrieve your incoming and outgoing phone log.”
“Did you give it to them?”
“Yes, what choice did I have?” she said frantically.
“René, I need for you to meet me at my house when you leave there today okay?”
“Sure thing. By the way,” she paused for several minutes. “Who is Reverend E.C.
Robinson?”
“I will tell you everything when you come to the house,” I replied then closed my
phone.
“Wonder what they wanted with my call logs?” I said as I continued driving.
Again I called Katherine up and as she did earlier, she asked about the trust level I had
of René. Again I informed her that she was someone we were able to trust.
At exactly six that evening my doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I almost didn‟t
recognize René. I was always so used to seeing her dressed up that to see her in casual
clothing made her look like a completely different woman.
“Anthony, what the hell is going on?” she asked as she took a seat on the couch in my
den.
“I hope you have time to stay for a while because this is going to take some time.”
After I finished telling René everything that had transpired over the past several days,
she looked at me with total disbelief.
“Anthony, are you telling me that Raymond is your father?”
I nodded my head “yes”.
“And he wanted you to marry his mistress Janaé and become the father to your baby
brother?”
Again, I nodded “yes”.
“And your mother, oops, I mean your grandmother was also behind the scheme?”
This time I just stared at her. The story sounded too crazy to be believable.
“And I thought my family was crazy.”
“Well I know mine is,” I said solemnly.
I could tell that she was beginning to feel sorry for me and that was the last thing I
needed from anyone at that moment. I had done enough of feeling sorry for myself over
the years. Now as Katherine said, it was time for us to get our lives back.
As René was leaving my house, before walking out the door she leaned into me and
gave me a soft, caring hug.
“Keep your head up. You will rise from all of this.” She then pulled my arm for me
to lean down to her petite five-five frame, and she kissed me on my cheek. “Call me if
you need me.”
As I watched her drive away, I began to wonder about several things. I wondered if I
would still have my sanity after this was over. I wondered if I would truly rise from this
as René had put it or if I would become one of the insane products that Raymond and my
mother seemed to be infamous for creating.

16
A Lesson Never Learned
Raymond sat behind the desk in his massive office. The television was on but the
volume was on mute.
“Bishop Miller,” he heard his secretary‟s voice infiltrate his quiet office over the
intercom. “Your mother has requested that you come to her office.”
“Tell her I‟m in the middle of something,” he said not wanting to be disturbed.
As he returned to his thoughts, he began to wonder where Katherine had spent the
night.
“Who is this friend?” he asked aloud.
He knew that due to his own infidelity, he was in no position to question her, but it
still bothered him to think that a woman he had been married to for over twenty years
would ever do something like that.
As he continued to ponder in his thoughts, once again he heard his secretary‟s voice.
This time she was informing him that Mother Ruth was coming in.
“Katherine needs to be dealt with immediately,” were her first words upon entering
his office.
“Mother, we need to discuss this another time please,” he pleaded.
“Raymond, we need to discuss everything now. I am losing control of my family,”
Mother Ruth said frantically as she sat down on the couch that sat in the middle of
Raymond's office. “I CAN‟T LOSE CONTROL OF MY FAMILY!”

Raymond walked over to where she was and sat beside her. Instinctively he reached
over to hug her. He had never seen her act this way. It pained him to see her this way.
As he held his mother, he began to think about the thoughts he had the night before,
where he blamed her for his life.
“Mom, we are going to be fine,” he said unsure of his own words. “First, we need to
move Janaé out of Carolina‟s Medical Center. Her being there is only going to create
more publicity.” He paused for a few seconds. “It‟s a possibility that E.C. may have
already made contact with Anthony. As I was looking through my calls on my cell, I saw
one from him, and it had to have come at the time when Anthony had my phone at the
hospital. So I suggest that together you and I speak with E.C. and see what we can do for
him to get this idea of reconnecting with Anthony out his mind.” He then pulled her
closer to him and kissed her forehead.
“What about Katherine? Right now she can be our most dangerous threat,” Ruth said
for the first time ever truly having any fear of another person.
“You let me deal with Katherine,” Raymond responded to his mother assuringly.
At the end of what felt like a never-ending day Raymond sat outside the offices of
GDM in his car. He thought about his actions during the day.
“I did what was best for you, Janaé,” he said softly as if she were sitting next to him.
“You will be better off there.”
“Raymond, she would have been better off if she had died,” he remembered Ruth
saying as they left the hospital in the early afternoon. “Just like this mess with E.C., it‟s
going to come back and haunt you later, haunt us. You do realize we have the means to-
,” Raymond hushed her before she could finish her sentence.
He was beginning to believe that his mother had gone mad. He knew over the years
that she could be a bit eccentric, but lately her thoughts had become more than irrational.
As he continued to sit in his car, still wondering if sending Janaé away was the right
thing to do, he thought about Ruth‟s original plan. He had carried it out as instructed and
caused her to commit an act that could have killed her.
“Raymond, I will instruct her to have sex with Anthony,” Mother Ruth had told him
the previous Sunday after church services. “When you return home from dealing with
this E.C. Robinson foolishness, you will question her about it, and then let her know you
will no longer see her.”
As foolish as the plan appeared, Raymond still did what he had been accustomed to
doing since he was a young boy, obey his mother. He thought about Reverend
Robinson‟s comment about still being attached to his mother‟s nipples.
As Raymond began driving home, he thought about his wife Katherine. Although
their conversation had been very limited that morning, he saw a sudden and drastic
change in her behavior.
“She‟s going to be difficult to deal with,” he whispered. “But I still can‟t forget that
she is the mother of my daughters.”
He knew that eventually he was going to have to do something, but that night was not
the time that it was going to happen nor was it the time that he even wanted to think
about it. He then grabbed his phone that sat on the passenger seat and began going
through the recent numbers until he found the one he wanted.
“Have you made it to Greensboro yet?” he asked the person on the other end
immediately after she said “hello”. “Give me about an hour and a half, and I will see you
shortly.”
As he drove the hour and a half drive to Greensboro, thoughts continued to form in his
mind about his life. After everything that had happened not only in the past few days but
after everything that had happened in life, why did he choose to continue as he did? He
wondered if subconsciously this was his way of attempting to destroy himself.
Walking into the dimly lit room Raymond began to remove his tie.
“Evening, Bishop,” Victoria said as she walked toward him to give him a hug wearing
nothing but a silk robe. “Can I fix you anything to drink?”
Without words Raymond swiftly grabbed her and removed the robe exposing her
naked body. He then slowly guided her toward the bed and gently laid her down on the
freshly washed sheets.
“You came to play, hunh?” she asked seductively.
Still without words, he continued his pursuit of her body. He knew that this was his
only means of release. He knew that the touch of a beautiful woman, even if only for a
moment, was his way of escaping from the realities of his life.
As he lay with her in his arms, he began to feel the weight of his world return and
crash down on his body. He looked over beside the bed and noticed the bright and
illuminated numbers displayed on the clock, 12:09 a.m. He found it hard to realize that it
had been there for over four hours. It seemed as if he had just gotten there.
“How long will you be here in Greensboro for business?” he asked her.
“Not quite sure. I have a few more ends to tie up before going home,” she said.
He suddenly realized that he never knew where home was for her. While in
Montgomery days earlier, she also told him that she was there for business as well. As he
lay there in thoughts of this woman, he tried to remember the number that would display
on his phone, but his memory suddenly failed him.
“What's on your mind, preacher man?” she asked then softly kissed his chest.
“Just random thoughts,” he replied.
Raymond continued to lay with Victoria and sporadic thoughts of women from his
past came to mind. Many had become troubled after their dealings with him, and only a
few had become wealthy. He wondered which one Victoria would be. She seemed to
have control of her emotions, but so had Janaé, all the way until the end.
Raymond drifted off to sleep wondering if he was constantly being taught a lesson that
he wasn‟t capable of learning.

17
Katherine
After leaving the office later that evening, I wanted to go and do something to
celebrate my new and exciting life. It amazed me how quickly things appeared to change
in my life after standing up to Ruth. After she left my office that morning, Hannah ran in
and practically knocked me over as she hugged me for “handling the queen of all
bitches,” as she‟d said.
“Mrs. Miller, you don‟t know how long I have waited to see something like that,” she
said as she walked back to her desk.
I was excited about how I had handled the situation as much as the next person, but I
also knew that I had just won a small battle in what was about to be a sure enough war. I
had embarrassed her twice in two days, and knowing her as well as I did, I knew there
would be some type of hell that I would soon have to pay. The only thing I had in my
favor was the new information that Anthony had provided for me. I knew that if this
information were ever leaked to the press, GDM would be devastated.
Before going to Kevin‟s house, I decided to drive by and talk with Anthony. After
speaking with him earlier when he had shared the information with me, I began to feel
extremely bad about how I had treated him at the hospital. Although I was still a little
aggravated at the fact that he had deceived me for those years, I realized that he was
really more of a victim to the GDM lie than any one.
“How are you holding up?” I asked after he invited me in.

“I‟m doing as well as can be expected.”
“Did René have any information on where Raymond and Ruth hid Janaé?” I suddenly
found myself very concerned about my husband‟s mistress.
It was strange to think that the only female companion I had for two years, who I
believed to be my brother-in-law‟s girlfriend, was actually my husband‟s mistress. To be
honest, this entire fiasco seemed to come straight out of a soap opera.
“Guess we could be future guests on The Jerry Springer Show, hunh?” Anthony said
attempting to laugh at his own joke.
“Anthony,” I said hoping to find words that could encourage him. “I know everything
seems crazy now, but we will get through this,” I paused and began to think about
slapping him the day before. “About yesterday, I want to apologize for hitting you.”
“Katherine, you have nothing to apologize for,” he said as we hugged.
When I arrived at Kevin's, he had surprised me with dinner. I was so touched by this
small gesture that I felt a lone tear fall from my eye.
“Katherine, what‟s wrong? Why are you crying?” he asked.
“No one has ever done anything like this for me before,” I said as I walked toward
him and gave him a slight kiss on the cheek.
After dinner as we sat in his den watching television, I snuggled up under him, again,
something very new for me. In two days Kevin had given me more than Raymond had in
twenty-four years of marriage.

Although I was aroused, at the same time my body had already been satisfied. Again,
this was something new, this was something great, this, was something more than
wonderful.
“What‟s on your mind?” He asked me breaking me away from my thoughts.
I really didn‟t know how to answer him. It amazed me that although being with him
felt wonderful, truthfully I knew that this was only a temporary solution. Raymond,
regardless of his philandering ways, was still my husband.
“Kevin,” I began slowly, hoping to find the right words to express what was on my
mind. “I really need to leave. I am in the middle of a very serious family crisis and being
here, as wonderful as it is, is only a distraction for me to take the pressure off of my crazy
world.”
“Katherine, I understand completely,” he then arose from the couch and walked
upstairs.
While he was gone, I began to gather all of my things and I made my way to the door.
As I stood there, he returned from upstairs carrying a small gift bag.
“For you, open it when you get the opportunity,” he said as he handed me the back.
Once I got into my car, I retrieved my phone out of my purse to check for any missed
calls. While there I had silenced the ringer on my phone.
“Katherine,” the first message began. “Just letting you know I won‟t be home this
evening.”
I immediately erased it and almost considered going back into Kevin's house.
“Katherine, this is Anthony,” there was a long pause, and his voice told me that he
was extremely exhausted. “I‟ve decided to meet my mother. When I visit, can you
please come, too?”
For the first time since discovering that Anthony was Raymond's biological son, the
realness of it all hit me. For years I had suspected something different about Anthony,
but never in all of my suspicions would I have ever thought this. It was just too crazy to
think that for almost thirty years Ruth and Raymond Sr. would raise their grandchild as
their child and never revealed to him the truth, and it was just too insane to think that
Raymond would call his son his brother. Moreover, I couldn‟t even attempt to categorize
or even think about Raymond's failed attempt to pass off his unborn child from his
mistress on his oldest son. I couldn‟t believe that for over twenty years I had been a part
of a family of sick individuals. People always say we should be wary of those we don‟t
know. If that‟s true, then we should be frantic of those we do.
When I arrived home, I immediately entered my bedroom, gathered all of my clothes
out of my closet, and then called Maria to help me move them to the other wing of the
house. I decided that if I were going to remain in the house any longer, I sure as hell
wasn‟t going to sleep in the same bed.
After removing all of my things and placing them in another room, Maria returned to
her quarters downstairs. I was very surprised that during the entire move, she never once
questioned my actions.
I then made myself comfortable in my new bedroom on the other side of the massive
house that was truly never a home. As I lay on the huge bed, I began to think of ways I
could actually help Anthony through all of this. As I thought about Ruth and her wicked
ways toward Anthony, suddenly my heart began to beat furiously.
“SABRINA AND RAYNITA,” I yelled.
I couldn‟t believe that over the past few days I hadn‟t heard from them. I usually
received a call daily from one of them.
“Hello, Sabrina?” I asked.
“Mom, what‟s wrong?” she asked. I guess she could hear the urgency in my voice.
“Nothing is wrong I just wanted to make sure that things were alright with you and
Raynita.”
There was a long silence between the two of us and I could hear her shifting around.
“Yesterday morning, reporters came to my school and practically created a circus.
They also followed Raynita all over the campus of Spelman,” she said breaking our
silence. “How is Janaé doing? How is Anthony holding up?”
I didn‟t answer I didn‟t know how to answer. I began to think of everything I was
going to have to explain to my own daughters about their father as well as their
grandmother. It was going to be difficult to explain that the man they‟ve known all their
lives as their uncle in reality is their brother.
As I sat in my own thoughts, I heard a male voice in the background.
“Sabrina, I‟m sorry, I didn‟t realize you had company.”
“I don‟t,” she responded dryly. “I called Daddy last evening when I finally made it
home and informed him of all the reporters. This morning as I was leaving for work and
Raynita was leaving for class, four members of Daddy‟s security team were waiting
outside the house. Two have been following me all day, and the other two have been
with Raynita.”
After our conversation I remained on the bed deep in thought. I began to wonder
about Raymond's security team. Suddenly I felt a nervousness invade my body.
“I know he has someone following me,” I said softly to myself.
The next morning as I prepared for work, I wondered what type of day the last day of
the workweek would be. I wondered what new secret would be revealed and what old
secret would be enhanced.
While driving to work, I was nothing but a pure basket of nerves, constantly looking
in the rearview mirror checking to see if someone were following me. I wondered if
someone had followed me the night before to Anthony‟s house as well as over to Kevin's.
Knowing Raymond and Ruth, they probably had, and in knowing that I knew that
Anthony and I had to move fast.
“Anthony,” I began immediately upon his answering the phone. “I‟m sure you are
probably being followed. Be careful where you go,” I then quickly ended the call.
When I arrived at my office, the mood was very solemn. As I got closer to my office,
I noticed Hannah had a stoic look on her face.
“What happened now?” I asked knowing that there was another storm brewing.
“Janaé died earlier this morning,” she said with deep sorrow.
18
Anthony
Before arriving to my office, I had already received three phone calls. The first one
came from Katherine informing me to be careful where I go due to the possibility that
members of the security team could report to Raymond and Mother of my whereabouts.
It was interesting to me that I had never thought of that. Every since I could remember,
we had a security team always around us so it never crossed my mind that they could
double as spies.
The second call was from René, informing me that she had arranged for her,
Katherine, and me to travel to Montgomery the following morning. The next call was
Mother demanding that I come to the offices of GDM immediately.
After hearing the message from Mother I decided to drive slowly to gain my thoughts
of the events of the week, as well as how I would address Mother on the issues at hand.
As I came closer to the campus, my heart began to feel heavy. I could sense something
very evil in the air.
Immediately upon walking into the building, several people came to me to offer their
condolences. Before I could ask anyone what was going on, out of the nowhere Mother
came toward me crying. Then with open arms surprisingly she pulled me into her and
held me in her arms.
“Anthony dear, I am so sorry. I am so very sorry,” she said through her tears.
She then guided me to the elevator and instructed all who witnessed her escapade to
give us privacy. Once the doors closed and we were alone, she wiped her tears and
cleared her throat.
“Janaé died earlier this morning,” she said without any emotions.
During the remainder of the trip to the top floor we both stood in silence. I glanced
down at her and noticed that her face had totally cleared up and her demeanor had
completely changed. Once the doors of the elevator opened, she replayed her show of
sadness.
“Please everyone,” she began as she addressed the staff. “Please allow my son time
alone during his moment of bereavement.”
She never ceased to amaze me with her gift to lie and deceive. I honestly didn‟t know
who was better, her or Raymond, but they both needed to know that their days of
destroying people‟s lives were soon to end.
“Mother, thanks for the escort to my office. Now could you please leave?” I said as
we approached the doorway to my office.
“Anthony, I thought I would come in and talk with you a moment.”
“Not now, Mother,” I said as I opened my door then quickly closed it as she remained
standing there.
After settling at my desk, I called René into my office.
“Did you contact Reverend Robinson last night to inform him?” I asked.
Her response came in a gesture of nodding her head yes.
As she stood before me, again, as I had the night before, I began to notice her
differently than in all the years I‟d known her. Not only was she a beautiful woman, she
was a beautiful woman that possessed a wonderful attitude.
I thought about the night before when she had come over to my house. After telling
her about my family history as well as the fake relationship between Janaé and me, she
hadn‟t offered a negative comment. She had remained supportive and offered her ear to
listen and her hand to hold.
“I made reservations for three rooms. Is that fine?” she asked breaking me away from
my thoughts.
After I responded “yes”, she then returned to her desk.
Sitting alone in my office, I began to weep for Janaé. She was another innocent
victim, and I knew that her death was not by her own hands. Even if she had finished the
job she had started two days earlier, it was still due to the actions of Raymond.
After sitting in my office doing nothing for about an hour, I decided I needed to pay
my father a visit. I asked René to come with me. For some reason I didn‟t feel it was
safe for her to be there. The fears that I once had for Mother had begun to take on a new
meaning for me.
As always my father was in his chapel preaching. Upon walking in I guided René to a
seat in the back pew and then sat beside her. After we sat for about five minutes listening
to him preach with his eyes closed, they suddenly opened. When he noticed I was sitting
before him, he became very silent.
"John, third chapter, verse sixteen: „For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting
life‟," he said softly.
He became quiet again and gave me a long yet soft stare. I never took my eyes off
him, and he never took his eyes off me. I felt René‟s hand reach for mine, and I accepted
it. Suddenly my entire body became limp.

“What world is this that God loved?” he began again. “Who is it that belongs to that
world? Do all men or just some men belong to it? If only some men belong to that
world, who are they?” Again he paused still focusing on me.
“I want to be apart of God‟s world,” he said as he walked away from his podium and
stood in front of it. “I want to see the Kingdom for myself. I want everlasting life.”
I took my eyes off him and looked over at René. She began to cry, and suddenly I felt
the tears fall from my own eyes.
He stood there for several minutes. Then with open arms he slowly walked toward me
to the back of the small chapel. I emerged from the back pew, leaving René sitting, and I
embraced him.
“I‟m sorry, Anthony. I‟m very sorry for the pain we‟ve caused,” he said as he cried in
my arms.
We sat for what seemed like an eternity talking, and in our talk I discovered that his
mind was not as affected by dementia as Mother had made it appear.
“When you graduated college, I told Ruth that it was time for you to know. We
argued for months.” He paused and his head dropped down. “One morning after a night
of arguing I woke up unable to move or talk.”
As he spoke, that morning replayed in my head as if it had just happened yesterday. I
was still living in the house at the time, and Mother called me into their room and told me
that he had had a stroke.
“I remember that,” I said softly.

“I didn‟t have a stroke, son,” he paused. “Ruth did something to me, and ever since
that morning, I‟ve been on all types of medications that caused my mind to come and
go.”
I didn‟t know what to say. I could only think of my own horror stories over the years
dealing with Mother. For years I‟d thought I was the one she hated the most, but now
hearing my father speak and now knowing without a doubt that she more than likely had
something to do with the actual death of Janaé, I knew that Mother hated everyone.
On our way back to the office along with my Pops, I called Katherine to inform her of
my visit and my plan to take him back to the offices with us. As we returned to the GDM
campus, the three of us rode in complete silence. I was hoping that somehow God‟s
divine grace would shower upon me to be able to handle whatever Mother had in store
for when she saw Pops with me.
When we walked inside the building, suddenly the entire place began to erupt with
joy. It was completely different than it had been hours earlier when I‟d arrived and
therehad been only sadness. As we approached the elevator, I knew that by the time we
made it to the top floor, Mother would be waiting for us.
As the three of us exited the elevator, as expected, Mother was walking toward us with
the meanest look on her face that I had ever seen.
“Raymond, what are you doing here?” she said to him and then looked over at me.
“You should not be here.”
“Hush, Ruth,” Pops said as he waved her off and walked toward her office, the one
that he once occupied.

“What are you trying to do?” Mother asked me as she grabbed my arm.
I instructed René to go to my office and wait for me there. I then reclaimed my arm
from my mother and returned the gesture by grabbing hers and marching her to her office
to join Pops.
“Anthony, have you lost your mind?” she began once we walked inside. “How dare
you disrespect me this way?”
“Shut up, Ruth,” Pops said as he sat behind the desk. “Now sit down.”
Mother gave him a hard and evil stare. She slowly walked over to a chair in front of
the desk as I followed.
“Raymond, have you had your medicine this morning?” she asked softly. “You don‟t
look well, dear.”
“Mother,” I began interrupting her thoughts. “Who is E.C. Robinson?”
After my question her attention went straight to Pops. She then slowly turned her
head back towards me.
“You can‟t believe the words of a crazy old man,” she said as she pointed towards
Pop.
“Well who is Claudette Robinson, Mother?”
She emerged from her chair then walked toward the window of her office and began
to look out of it.
“Tell him, Ruth. Tell him,” Pops said. “Tell him about the lies.”
She turned around and stared at me. For the first time in my entire life, I saw
something in her that I had never seen before. I saw fear.
“What do you want, Anthony?”

“You can‟t give me what I want,” I began softly as I arose from the chair. “You
stripped me of my life, and you did it with no remorse. You made me an unknowing
participant of this façade.”
I looked at her with hopes of finding some form of regret, yet I found none. She
continued to stare at me coldly. She then looked at Pops who picked up a bible then
opened it.
“What are you doing?” she asked him appearing to be annoyed while he quickly
turned the pages of the Bible.
After finding what he was looking for, he began to smile. He adjusted his glasses and
then stood up with the Bible in his hand.
“Proverbs chapter six, verses sixteen thru nineteen,” he said then cleared his throat.
“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him. Haughty
eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies and one who sows
discord among brethren,” he then placed the Bible back on the desk and sat down.
I looked towards Mother as she stared long and hard at Pops.
“Anthony, please leave us now,” she said never taking her eyes off him but directing
her attention to me.
When I walked into my office, both Katherine and René were there waiting for me. I
took a seat on my long couch and threw my head back.
“Mother Ruth is the devil,” I sighed.
“News flash,” Katherine began. “Mother Ruth is worse than the devil. She is the son
of a bitch that gave birth to him.”

19
Standing Outside the Gates of Hell
As Raymond traveled down I-85 South heading back to Fort Mill, his thoughts were
mostly on Janaé. He wondered about his mother‟s plan for her. After leaving the
hospital with her the day before, they had driven her to the mansion where his parents
lived. Mother Ruth then instructed two of their employees to take her inside while she
talked with Raymond.
“This will be best for us all, Raymond,” he remembered Ruth telling him as she
instructed him to return to the offices of GDM.
As always, he did as Ruth told him. He knew no other way.
As he drove in silence, his phone rang. After viewing the incoming number, he
answered.
“Good morning, Mother,” he said wearily.
“Raymond, I need you here immediately. Anthony has brought your father to the
office,” she said frantically.
“I‟m on my way mother. I‟m about forty-five minutes away.”
There was a long pause. He initially assumed that she had hung up, but suddenly he
could hear her breathing heavily.
“Where are you, Raymond?” she asked breaking the silence.
“Mother, I‟m on my way,” he said as he closed the phone.

As he continued driving with only the thoughts in his mind to keep him company, he
knew that his lies and deceit over the years were swiftly ending. He knew that he could
no longer travel the same road he had been accustomed to traveling for so long.
He knew that one day he would pay for his sins, and he knew that the day was soon to
come. Thoughts of his daughters came to mind. He wondered what price they would
have to pay for his sins. He wondered about the price his wife would have to pay.
However, it was Anthony whom he worried about the most. Not only had he spent the
past twenty-nine years lying to Anthony, but he had also spent those years coercing him
to lie for him.
“Mother made me do it,” he whispered to himself attempting to pass the blame with
hopes of making things better.
As he pulled onto the GDM Campus, his mother called again.
“Raymond, Anthony and Katherine just left with your father. I have no idea where
they are going,” she began nervously.
Raymond didn‟t say a word. He closed his phone, parked his car, and then walked
inside the building.
Once he made it to the top floor, he immediately walked towards Ruth‟s office. As
soon as he was about to open the door, she rushed out.
“They know everything, Raymond,” she said nervously. “We are ruined!”
“Mother, please, calm down,” he said as he closed the door behind him and attempted
to console her.
“I‟ve lost control, Raymond. I‟ve lost all control.”

Raymond, with the ease of a duck on water, took a seat in a chair by the window of
the office. He then began to stare out of it, not looking at anything in particular.
“Raymond, how can you just sit there so calmly? Did you not hear anything I said?”
“Mother, thinking irrationally is not going to solve anything.” He paused and then
turned his focus toward her. “I don‟t know what you did or had done to Janaé yesterday
nor do I have a desire to know, but whatever you did, she is no longer alive. Your actions
were irrational.” He then stood up to leave.
“I need for you to go home and please stay there for the remainder of the day. Do not
leave until you hear from me.” He kissed her on the cheek then walked out of her office.
Immediately after entering his office, he called the lead member of his security team
that was watching over his daughters in Atlanta. After speaking with him, he then called
each member of his security team that he had following Anthony and Katherine. After
talking with each of his members of his security team, he then called Reverend E.C.
Robinson in Montgomery.
“I thought I told you I would handle the situation,” he calmly said to the old man.
“Raymond, I did exactly what I told you I was going to do. I did exactly what I felt
needed to be done.”
“Old man, do you really think that you can win a war with me? Do you not know who
I am?” Raymond asked more attempting to convince himself more than Reverend
Robinson.
“Raymond,” Reverend Robinson said with grace. “You are just a man. You have
more money than I do. You may even have a larger church than I have, even a bigger
house, but in my eyes and in the eyes of the Lord you are just a mere man.”
“Reverend Robinson, E.C., please don‟t do this,” Raymond pleaded realizing that
threatening the man was not the answer.
There was a long and dry silence, with the exception of both men breathing nothing
else was heard.
“Raymond, do you love your children?” Reverend Robinson asked breaking the
silence between the two.
“Of course I do,” Raymond said softly.
“Then tell me this, how could you allow your son to not know you as his father for
twenty-nine years?”
That question brought more silence.
“My daughter died twenty-nine years ago Raymond, and she died a worse death than
any one person should die, by still being able to breathe. She deserves to live at least one
more day before she stops breathing.”
Raymond sat at his desk and began to think how he would react to someone hurting
his daughters in anyway. He tried to put himself in the same shoes as Reverend
Robinson, but in all reality his only thoughts were his own well-being.
After speaking with Reverend Robinson, he decided that he needed to talk with
Anthony. After calling and receiving no answer, he left a message.
“Anthony, this is Raymond,” he paused. “I‟m sure you would agree that we need to
have a conversation. Please call me as soon as you get this message. I‟m at the office.”
Raymond remained at his office for the entire day. He received no calls from anyone
with the exception of his mother and his newest conquest, Victoria.
“Bishop,” she said seductively. “I will be here through the weekend. Care to see me
again?”
“I will have a car come and pick you up. It can be used at your disposal,” he told her
quickly forgetting that it was this activity, that lead him into his current situation.
After Raymond ended his call arranging to pick up Victoria in Greensboro to spend
time with her, his secretary buzzed him to inform him that Anthony was waiting to speak
with him. He immediately answered the phone.
“Anthony, where are you?” Raymond asked.
“What do you want, Raymond? Or should I call you dad?” he asked.
After that comment, they both remained silent. Raymond was at a lost of words. It
was so much he wanted to say, yet he remained silent. Anthony, without another word
then ended the call.
“Damn,” Raymond said to himself.
After sitting with the phone still in his hand for several minutes, Raymond then called
his security team that was following Anthony.
“You are where?”
“Sir we just entered the state of Tennessee,” the security man responded.
After ending that call, his concerns became of Anthony‟s destination.
“Tennessee?” Raymond asked aloud.
He then called the team that was following his wife.
“You are in Virginia?” Raymond asked confused.

He knew something was not right. His mother had told him earlier that Katherine and
Anthony had left together. Now they were each traveling in opposite directions.
“What the hell is going on?” he whispered to himself after ending that call.
After pondering what could have been going on, he made one more call to his team in
Atlanta that detailed his daughters.
“WHAT IN HELL ARE MY DAUGHTERS DOING IN FLORIDA?” he yelled at
the lead man.
20
Katherine
“Mama, I don‟t believe it,” Raynita said after I‟d explained the wretched events to her
and Sabrina. “Daddy would not do anything like this. Daddy couldn‟t live a lie like this
for so long.”
Raynita loved her father, and I knew that telling her was going to be difficult.
“Well to be honest,” Sabrina started. “I believe it.”
We all sat in silence after Sabrina‟s comment. Sabrina and Raynita were always
different in their views of their father. Raynita worshiped his every step whereas Sabrina
would always question him. I‟d initially wanted to keep them out of the entire situation,
but with all of the press already circling them after the death of Janaé, I felt they needed
to hear the news from me.

“So you really expect me to believe that Anthony is my brother?” Raynita asked
breaking our silence.
“Raynita baby, whether you choose to believe me or not, the truth is Anthony is your
brother.”
“And you have proof?” she asked with suspicion.
“We have Anthony‟s birth certificate and the word of your Grandpa Raymond.”
More silence. Suddenly I looked over at Raynita, and she began to cry. I began to
feel that I had done the wrong thing by telling her. It was not my intentions to hurt her,
and her hurt had nothing to do with my actions, but at that moment I felt as if I were the
one that had betrayed her. I walked over towards her and embraced her hoping that she
could find comfort in my arms.
After I‟d had a few moments alone with them in our suite in Montgomery, Anthony,
René, and Raymond Sr. came in carrying bags of Chinese take out.
“How are my baby girls doing?” Raymond Sr. asked after seeing the girls for the first
time in months.
Sabrina walked over to him with worn and teary eyes and gave him a hug and a kiss
on the cheek. Raynita followed behind her doing the same. After emerging from their
embrace with Raymond Sr., they both walked toward Anthony and the three of them
formed a group hug, a gesture that brought more tears to my eyes.
“Anthony, you know I am always here for you,” Sabrina said to him.
After their embrace Raynita came back to the couch where I was sitting, sat beside
me, and with her thumb in her mouth leaned into me as if she were six again. As we sat
around the suite engaged in idle chatter, René began preparing the food on the dining
room table. Raynita had remained with me on the couch and eventually fallen asleep in
my arms. I remained there with her thinking about the events that had begun early that
morning.
After I received the call from Anthony informing me that he had had a talk with
Raymond Sr., the entire day had become nothing but one huge whirlwind. I met them at
the offices of GDM, and from there our plan was developed.
“Ruth fired every member of my team when I became ill,” Raymond Sr. told us after
we left the campus of GDM. “But I know how to contact who we need.”
Within an hour, Raymond Sr. had decoys traveling all over God‟s creation, knocking
Raymond and Ruth‟s cronies off our tracks. By the time Raymond could figure anything
out, we would already be in Montgomery.
I called Kevin before we left and told him as much as I felt comfortable with telling. I
still wasn‟t sure if I had been followed to his house or not, but I had quickly learned in
those last several hours that Raymond and Ruth were two dangerous individuals.
“I will always remember that morning like it was this morning,” Raymond Sr. began
telling us the story of when Ruth drugged him eight years earlier. “I woke up feeling a
sharp pain in my right arm, and when I tried to move I couldn‟t. When I tried to yell,
nothing came out. My heart began to beat for dear life, and to be honest, as I was looking
up, I could have sworn that I saw the Devil himself in my wife.”
As I listened to his story, my heart went out to him. I could see the pain in his eyes
that told the story of a miserable man. I could see the fear of God in this man who felt
that he would have to pay for his sins even in death.

“I‟m not an innocent man, either,” he said softly. “Knowing all that I knew for all
those years and never saying a word. Never doing anything to make things right, made
me accountable, too.” He paused and stared out of the backseat window.
“Romans, chapter fourteen, verses ten through twelve: „You, then, why do you judge
your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before
God's judgment seat. It is written, as surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow
before me, every tongue will confess to God. So then, each of us will give an account of
himself to God‟,” he whispered.
With only small chatter and sporadic whispers of scriptures from Raymond Sr., we
spent most of that six-hour drive to Montgomery in silence. I sat in the front of the black
SUV beside the driver. Anthony and Raymond Sr. were in the back and René sat on the
third row.
“So what‟s the plan?” Sabrina asked softly as she walked back over to the sitting area
where Raynita and I had remained breaking me away from my thoughts of the early part
of the day.
“First Anthony is going to meet his mother,” I responded reluctantly.
He wanted me to go with him to meet her, and I wanted to be more than supportive of
him. Over the years I had always been more of a mother to him, and although we didn‟t
know until the day before, in reality I was his stepmother.
I began to remember how when he was just a child, I‟d cared for him and did things
for him that Ruth wouldn‟t do. I knew that I had to continue that support for him. I truly
wanted to be there for him during this time as well. However, I wasn‟t sure how I could
handle seeing a woman who had spent a lifetime in a distraught condition due to actions
of my husband.
“So now I understand why Grandma Ruth used to tell us he had a demon in him,”
Raynita said softly to me as she awakened from her nap.
“Now you know that isn‟t true, right?”
She nodded her head and again began to sob. I couldn‟t believe the pain that
Raymond and Ruth had created. The world saw this family as a pillar to the spiritual
community, yet the root of this family was one based on lies, deceit, and the theft of
lives.
“Mrs. Miller, can I fix you something to eat?” René asked me.
“Thanks, René, but I‟m fine,” I said to her.
She then walked back to the other side of the suite where Raymond Sr. and Anthony
were sitting, and I noticed that when she approached Anthony, she placed her hand on his
back in a comforting manner. I could see genuine concern in her gesture. I could see that
she was sincere, and it brought some peace to my heavy heart.
As I sat there thinking about meeting Anthony‟s birthmother, Raynita's cell phone
rang.
“It‟s Daddy,” she said trembling. “I don‟t want to answer.”
A few moments later it chimed informing her that she had a message.
“I don‟t want to talk to him Mama,” Raynita said as she began to cry again.
The heaviness on my heart returned swiftly, and I emerged from the couch and made
my way to the bathroom. As I stood in the mirror, I began to stare long and hard at the
view of myself that I saw.

“You have to pull yourself together, Katherine,” I said softly to myself. “You have to
be strong for everyone.”
After washing my face, I walked back into the sitting area of the suite and noticed
everyone standing in a circle holding hands. When they all noticed my return, all eyes
were on me.
“Katherine,” Raymond Sr. began. “Please come join us for a word of prayer.”
I joined the circle standing between Sabrina and Raynita. As I bowed my head and
closed my eyes, immediately I could feel the tears begin to escape. With just the mere
touch of our circle, the emotions of everyone were evident.
“Dear Father who sits High and looks low,” Raymond Sr. prayed. “We come to you
now, oh Father, asking for your Devine Grace to be bestowed up us who stand in this
circle. Father, we know that You are a kind and merciful God. We know that You are a
forgiving God, and right now we ask for Your mercy as well as for Your forgiveness.
Lord, we know that some situations we‟ve brought to ourselves, yet there are some that
You bring just to strengthen us. We ask now in Your name, oh Lord, to give us the
knowledge and understanding to make it through.” He paused and began to cry. “In your
name, Dear Jesus, I pray, we all pray. Amen.”
As we all remained in the circle, I looked around, and everyone had tears in their eyes.
It was evident that the tears were not of sadness but of comfort.
When I sat back on the couch again joined by Raynita with her thumb in her mouth,
Sabrina also came over to sit with us.
“I want to go with you and Anthony to meet his mother,” Sabrina said. “I think that
it‟s important that we all go.”

“I think so too,” Raynita said softly. “We are all affected by the lies of Daddy and
Grandma Ruth. We need to be there with Anthony, with our brother.”
My daughters gave me the courage that I really should have offered them. Their
maturity brought peace to me. It gave me understanding of what comfort really meant to
us.
While sitting with my daughters, we all drifted off to sleep. As I slept, I remembered
dreaming that I had awakened and everything that we had been through over the past
several days had been a dream, but that dream was short lived. Suddenly, in my dream I
saw myself running, and when I looked back, I saw Raymond, and it seemed as if I were
looking at the devil himself. Suddenly I awakened screaming.
“Katherine,” Anthony said as he ran towards me. “Are you okay?”
“I‟m fine,” I said still shaken. “Guess I was having a bad dream.”
“I understand if you don‟t want to visit my mother with me,” Anthony said to me
softly.
Sabrina, who had awakened after she heard my screams, grabbed his hand. She
looked him directly in the eyes and without a word she told him all that he needed to
know.
Watching the two of them at that moment reminded me of how close they had always
been to one another. Anthony was seven at the time Sabrina was born, and he always
protected her as if he were a brother to her. Now it was her turn to protect him
As we all remained in the sitting area, there was a sudden knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Raymond Sr. asked as he walked toward the door to the suite.
“Earl Charles Robinson,” the strong and distinctive voice said from the other side of
the door.
21
Anthony
As I sat in René's hotel room with my two grandfathers, I watched them talk as if they
were two old friends reminiscing.
“Raymond, I‟m sorry for what I did all those years ago,” Reverend Robinson said to
my father.
Although I knew that Raymond Sr. was not my real father, all of my life that‟s the
way I had known him and probably will always know him as that. Although the previous
eight years haven‟t been the greatest of times with him and me due to the actions of
Mother, he and I always shared a close relationship.
“E.C.,” he began softly. “You have nothing to apologize for. To be honest, I can‟t
say that I blame you, nor can I say that I would not have done the same thing.” He
paused then placed his hand on my knee. “All we can do now is hope that we can make
at least a few wrongs right.”
“Amen to that.”
As they continued talking about old times, I sat and listened to their stories of growing
up together. For whatever reasons, I‟d imagined that when he came to the hotel,
Reverend Robinson and my father would be two old men fighting, but instead they were
two best friends separated for what seemed like a lifetime.
“Anthony, I completely understand if you don‟t want to meet Claudette,” Reverend
Robinson said to me after breaking away from the conversation with Pops. “I just
strongly believe that this will make her heart happy in these last days of her life, and it
will give some closure to you as well.”
I had no verbal response. As I stared at him, I could easily see the sincerity in his
eyes. I could also see the hurt that he had endured for all those years, and suddenly I
began to think of Janaé and her last moments in this world.
I wondered what her last thought was. I wondered if she‟d cursed Raymond or
Mother. Forsome reason I felt that meeting my birthmother would in some way make
things right with Janaé, and, make things right with everyone that Raymond and Mother
had destroyed in one way or another.
I called the suite of the hotel where Katherine, René and the girls were to inform them
that we were leaving. As I walked with my two grandfathers out of the lobby of the
hotel, I saw all four women and the driver that had brought us to Montgomery waiting for
us at the door.
“Anthony, we‟re all in this with you,” Raynita said as she hugged me with tears in her
eyes.
Reverend Robinson lived about an hour out of the city limits of Montgomery. As we
traveled the old country roads, I noticed several small shotgun homes. I began to imagine
my birthmother living in the same type of house. I imagined her living in shambles all of
her life while I lived the life of luxury that was built on lies. I stared silently out the
backseat window of Reverend Robinson‟s Cadillac. While he and my father continued to
talk about old times, I began to feel a deep rage invade my body.
Thoughts of Raymond and Mother continued to ricochet through my mind never
wanting to stop. I wanted to yell at them. I wanted to hit them. I wanted to hit
something. Suddenly I began to feel a feeling that up until that point I had never felt
before.
“I hate them,” I began softly. “I hate them. I hate them!”
After my comments, the conversation between thetwo old friends ended abruptly.
They remained silent, and I continued in my rage.
“I HATE BOTH OF THOSE SONS OF BITCHES,” I yelled as I hit the side of the
door with my fist. “STOP THE CAR!”
Reverend Robinson obeyed my command and pulled to the side of the road. There
was nothing but an empty field, and I began walking in it while swinging my arms in the
air as if I were hitting someone. I never looked back to see if anyone had followed me,
and I really didn‟t care.
After ten minutes of walking, punching air, screaming, and crying, I found myself in
the middle of the field. I fell to the ground. I felt hopeless. At that very moment I felt
that God had condemned me from birth.
“WHY, GOD? WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS FOR ME?” I yelled.
“God didn‟t choose this for you,” Reverend Robinson said walking up behind me.
“Son, this happened because of the selfishness and foolishness of others.”
I looked back at him with anger. His words had no meaning to me. His intentions at
that moment may have been good, but he too was to blame for my current state.
“You could have prevented this day,” I said as I turned my head back to the field.
“You are to blame as well. This day never had to come into existence.”
“You are right. Thirty years ago I was selfish, and believe it or not, my actions have
been paid for.” He paused and walked closer to me.
“In nineteen eighty-two, five years after you were born, my wife, your grandmother,
Cora Lee, passed away. She passed away hating me for taking you away from our only
daughter and giving you to The Millers. She hated me because she blamed me for
driving Claudette insane.” He paused again and this time leaned down beside me.
“There is no way now that I can be forgiven by my wife, my daughter, or even you, but I
will do all I can just to get an inch closer to making a wrong from so long ago right.”
When I turned around, I saw his face close to mine. I saw some of me in him. I saw
some of my pain in him. I stared into his eyes looking for sincerity, and again I found it.
Something inside of me continued to want to be angry, yet his eyes brought me peace.
When I stood up from where I was sitting, I wasn‟t quite ready to walk yet. I looked
back toward the road and saw Pops leaning against Reverend Robinson‟s car, and I saw
Katherine and René standing outside of the SUV they had been riding in.
“What do I call you?” I asked him as I slowly turned back towards him.
“Whatever you deem appropriate, son,” he replied as we walked back toward the
vehicles together.
Walking into the huge home of Reverend Robinson, I noticed that it was just as big as
my parents‟ home. It was bigger than all the houses we‟d passed as we traveled on the
old roads.
“Nice home,” I said nervously as I walked in with Sabrina and Raynita on each side of
me.
“This is a house, no where near a home,” he replied as he excused himself and walked
upstairs.
Everyone except me took seats in the sitting area in the front of his house. I walked
around the room looking at many of the pictures that were surrounding the room. They
were mostly pictures of a young girl around the age of fifteen, and given the clothes she
wore I knew they were from many years ago. Her pure dark skin appeared flawless.
“She‟s pretty,” Sabrina said as she walked behind me admiring the photographs.
“Yes, she sure is,” I whispered.
Sabrina and I walked towards a baby grand piano that sat on the far end of the room
where more pictures sat. There were more pictures of the young girl and there was one of
her holding a baby wrapped in a blue blanket.
“That was the last time I remember her smiling,” Reverend Robinson said as he came
back to the room startling both Sabrina and me. “She‟s ready to see you, Anthony.
Please take your time.”
Suddenly my heart began to pound again and thoughts of what to expect began to
frighten me. An older woman in a nurse‟s outfit stood at the entrance of the sitting room
as if she were waiting for me to hurry and move. I remained frozen by the piano still
staring long and hard at the young girl holding the baby.
“I‟m with you, Anthony,” Katherine said taking my hand and leading me closer to the
nurse.
As the two of us walked up the stairs behind the nurse, I could faintly hear soft cries
coming from the direction in which we were walking. As we walked down the spacious
hallway, the faint cries became louder.

“She‟s been like this since this morning when Reverend Robinson told her you were
coming,” the nurse said.
“She knows who I am?”
The nurse didn‟t respond to my question, she just continued to walk ahead of us.
We finally arrived at the end of the hallway, and the cries became louder. Before
opening the door, the nurse asked us both to remain there until she returned.
As we stood outside the door, along with the cries, I heard my voice. It was from a
sermon I preached a year earlier at one of our crusades.
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the
Almighty,” I heard my voice floating through the door. “Do you ever find yourself in the
need of a refuge? I tell you my brothers and sisters, I find myself there almost everyday.
But I am so glad that I am able to call on the same shelter as David. For I realize like
David, his refuge is my Strength. My mighty rock, and my fortress. My stronghold, and
High Tower. Like David, I know that this refuge will never fail me and I will never
regret dropping my heavy load and run for cover.”
As I heard my voice, I also heard my words. They didn‟t comfort me. They couldn‟t
console me.
“You may come in now,” she said as she slowly reopened the door and breaking me
out of my thoughts.
Once we walked into the room, the nurse walked over to the CD player and turned it
off. As I stood at the door, I noticed all of the walls covered with pictures of me. They
were from magazines and materials, distributed by God‟s Deliverance Ministries. There
were several newspaper clippings as well as covers of video tapes and DVD‟s. As I
looked around the room, I noticed that in many of the pictures that had me along with
Raymond in them his face had been scratched out, or she had drawn a mustache on him
and horns above his head.
After a few seconds of looking around the room, I noticed a small-framed woman
sitting in a rocking chair on the far end of the bedroom with her back towards us.
“Claudette,” the nurse called in a loud voice. “You got company Hon.”
She continued to cry softly and slowly turned around and saw me. When our eyes
connected, I immediately felt the connection.
“Hello,” I whispered to her. “I‟m Anthony”
“I know who you are,” she began softly. “You‟re my son, the one taken away from
me, the only child I ever had, the only one I will ever have. You are my pretty baby,” she
said then began to weep.
My hands and legs began to tremble. I tried to move, but my legs refused. When I
looked towards Katherine, who was standing next to me, I saw nothing but the tears that
covered her face.

22
And The Walls Come a-Tumblin’ Down
Raymond began to feel frustration race through his body uncontrollably. He paced
back and forth in his office waiting to hear from members of his security team.
“Where is my family?” he asked aloud after being told that they had some how
eluded the security team that had been following them. “Where in Hell did they go?”
As he continued to pace frantically, his cell phone rang. He ran over to his desk where
it sat and immediately looked to see who was calling. All he saw was the Georgia area
code that displayed across the screen.
“Raynita, is that you?” he answered. He had tried calling her several times earlier,
but had never gotten through.
“No, Bishop. This is not your youngest daughter, but I can call you “Daddy” if you
like that,” the seductive voice said from the other end.
Raymond sat on the phone speechless, and began to become agitated. He didn‟t
recognize the voice due to being so concerned about the whereabouts of his family.
“Who is this?” he growled into his phone.
“My feelings are hurt. First, you send a car for me, and then you don‟t show up to the
hotel. Now you don‟t even recognize my voice. I guess I‟m not as good as I thought I
was.”
“Victoria? I‟m very sorry but now is not a good time,” he began as he sat down at his
desk. “We had some major developments here, and I lost track of time.”
There was a moment of silence, and then his phone informed him that he had another
call coming through. It was his mother.
“Victoria, please give me a few moments, and I will call you back. I promise I will
make things right for you,” he said then pressed the answer button without saying
“goodbye”.
“Mother, have you heard from anyone?”
“No, that‟s why I am calling you,” Ruth said softly. “I need for you to come to the
mansion immediately.”
“Why mother? What's wrong?”
Ruth's response was simply ending the call.
Within minutes, Raymond was at the massive estate owned by his parents. As he
entered the huge domicile, his mother met him at the door.
“Follow me,” she instructed him as she walked toward the elevator of her home.
After arriving on the bottom floor where Raymond Sr.‟s chapel was, Ruth swiftly
made her way inside the chapel and behind the podium that sat on the small pulpit.
“Look,” she said as she handed Raymond several plastic bags full of pills. “Your
father hasn‟t been taking his medicine. This has to be at least four months worth of pills,
Raymond.”
Raymond, feeling a heavy weight come over him, took a seat on the front pew of the
chapel. As he sat in a daze, Ruth continued to talk, but he did not hear her words.
“Raymond, your father could ruin me. He could ruin you if he ever discovers what we
did,” he heard her say.

“Mother, given the fact that he hasn‟t been taking these pills, it appears he already
knows what we did,” Raymond said.
Ruth began to look frightened. She began to pace up and down the small isle of the
chapel. She then walked out without saying another word to her son.
When Raymond left the mansion, he decided to go to the hotel where Victoria was
staying. He needed to escape the realities of his life.
“This is my last time doing this,” he said as he thought about all the times he had said
those exact words in the past.
When he knocked on the door of the hotel room, Victoria answered the door
completely naked.
“Since you liked this outfit better than the one I had on last night, I thought I would
wear this one for you tonight,” she said as she reached for him.
He remained at the hotel with her the entire night. He didn‟t want to go home. He
knew there was nothing there for him. It hadn‟t been anything there for him for as long
as he could remember, and now was not the time to continue a lie. As he continued to lay
with Victoria, his entire life passed before his eyes.
He saw the little six-year old boy who began to mimic his father and recite scriptures.
He saw the eleven-year old boy who preached and made the grown folks shout. He saw
the thirteen-year old boy who had started preaching on TV gaining popularity. However,
it was the fifteen-year old boy that stuck out in his mind the most. Then he saw Claudette
Robinson.
Claudette was his first real girlfriend. They had known each other since they were
both babies. Their fathers, who were both pastors of churches in Montgomery, were the
best of friends. Their mothers would bake cakes and pies together.
Each Sunday the families took turns between the two houses eating dinner, and he and
Claudette were always inseparable.
“When I grow up I‟m going to be a pastor, and you are going to be my first lady,” he
remembered telling her when they were eleven years old.
When Raymond turned fourteen his popularity as a young minister grew, and so did
Ruth‟s ego. The Sunday dinners with the Robinsons had come to a sudden end, and Ruth
had forbidden him to see Claudette again.
“What are you talking about you're going to marry Claudette?” Ruth said to him the
day he told her that when they were older she would be his wife. “That child is blacker
than you. If you ever have children with her they will be ugly, and I refuse to have ugly,
black grandchildren, Raymond.”
After several months of sneaking to see Claudette without his mother‟s knowledge,
she gave birth to Anthony at the age of fifteen.
Raymond left the hotel around five that morning. As he drove his car toward his
house, again, he realized he had nothing to go home for, so instead, he went to his office.
As he walked through the silent lobby of GDM, his phone rang. Without looking at the
caller ID, he answered.
“You got damned, no good son of a bitch,” he heard his youngest daughter say on the
other end. “How could you be so damn low?”

Raymond remained silent as Raynita continued to talk.
“And to think your ass has daughters. How would you feel if Sabrina or I turned out
like Claudette Robinson?”
Raymond continued to remain quiet.
“And the fucked up thing about it all is that I believed in you. I even tried to defend
you. Daddy, you ain‟t shit! You don‟t give a damn about how you treat people. You use
them up then throw them away, just as you did Janaé. I hate you, Daddy. I hate you!”
she said then hung up the phone.
His heart, the daughter he knew loved him the most, now hated him. He wanted to call
her back. He wanted to tell her something that would make her feel better, but he knew
that the only words he could speak would only be more lies.
Raymond sat on one of the soft chairs in the lobby and began to feel grief.
“My walls have fallen,” he said to himself.
23
Katherine
As I stared at Claudette, my only thoughts were of how easily I could have been her.
Although I felt that Raymond and Ruth had put me through a lot, watching her lifeless
yet living body, made me realize that considering what she‟d been through, I was blessed
beyond blessed. It pained me to look at her siting in the rocking chair as though she were
an old woman. She and I were the same age, yet she looked at least twenty years older.
She was a very petite person, her skin was very dark and wrinkled, and her hair was
completely gray.
While standing there watching her, I regretted that I‟d agreed to accompany Anthony,
but I knew that he needed my support. He needed someone to be there for him, but after
seeing her and thinking about what someone whom, despite of what I‟ve learned about
him, I loved dearly did to her, I was torn.
“You are my pretty baby,” Claudette said to Anthony as she extended her arms to him.
“Daddy said he was going to bring you to me, but I didn‟t think you would come.”
Anthony slowly walked toward her and when he finally made his way to where she
sat, he knelt down and they embraced.
As sad as that scene was, it was also a beautiful sight. I‟m sure it was only my
imagination, but suddenly it appeared as if her face had brightened, and the wrinkles had
disappeared.
“You are my pretty baby,” she repeated.
I looked toward the nurse, and I noticed that she had begun to cry as well.
After a few moments of watching the two of them communicate without words, the
nurse walked toward me and lightly tapped me on my shoulder.
“They will be fine. Let‟s give them some time alone,” she said, and I agreed.
When we walked back downstairs, Raymond Sr. and Reverend Robinson were sitting
at the dining room table talking, and René and my daughters were still in the sitting area.
“Mama, are you okay?” Raynita asked as she ran toward me.
“I‟m fine baby,” I said to her then asked the nurse to direct me to the nearest
bathroom.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I understood Raynita's concerns. I looked
horrible. I was also feeling horrible. Looking at my worn face, I thought about how over
the years, I‟d felt as if my life had been stolen from me. However, after meeting
Claudette and seeing her state of mind, I immediately knew what a stolen life really was.
After trying to do the best I could to regain my composure, I walked out of the
bathroom then out the house and stood on the front porch. Looking across Reverend
Robinson‟s enormous estate, I saw the extent of what Ruth and Raymond had done to
keep this secret. I saw that their desire to appear pure to the world was worth a lot more
than money.
“You have beautiful daughters,” a voice said from behind, startling me and breaking
me away from my thoughts.
When I looked back, I saw the nurse sitting in a chair on the porch smoking a
cigarette.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
I returned to my view of the yard as she remained in the chair and began humming a
song.
“For forty-five years I never smoked or drank,” she began once she‟d finished
humming the song.
“Really?” I responded initially not understanding her reasons for telling me that.
“Ten years ago I came to work here and within one week I started both, and I‟ve been
doing them ever since,” she paused to inhale then exhale smoke. “I can tell that
Claudette has a beautiful spirit, but it‟s lost. Now I won‟t say that one person is totally
responsible for the way she is, but with them lying to that boy for almost thirty years I
can‟t see that man or his mama as the saints they portray themselves to be on T.V.”
After she made that comment, I felt my stomach begin to knot. For years my major
frustrations had been Ruth‟s insults and displeasure of me, Raymond's constant absence
from home, and the lack of sex in our marriage. It was not until that very moment that I
came to the realization that the effect those two had on others directly, or in this case
indirectly, was more detrimental than what they‟d placed on me.
“Like I said,” she began again. “Not one person alone is responsible for Claudette‟s
condition. Believe me when I say that Reverend Robinson has been to hell and back over
the years, too,” she inhaled more smoke. “His last hope to save his daughter was to bring
Anthony here.”
“What is she dying of?” I asked.
“Depression and a broken heart,” she said matter-of-factly.
I remained outside on the porch with the nurse for about thirty minutes engaged in
sporadic conversation. As we continued to sit on the porch while she chained smoked, I
heard a loud cry come from inside the house. It was Raynita.
“How does it feel?” the nurse asked me calmly as I hurried back into the house to
check on my youngest daughter.
“How does what feel?” I asked coming to an abrupt halt.
“How does it feel to be married to the devil?” she continued as she inhaled more
smoke.
Immediately after walking back into the house, I saw Raymond Sr. and Reverend
Robinson trying to contain Raynita who appeared to have been in a deranged state.
“What happened?” I asked wearily feeling the emotions of my daughter.
“She went upstairs to visit Claudette with Sabrina and René. She couldn‟t take it,”
Raymond Sr. said with a look of distress of his own.
The three of us guided her back to a couch in the sitting area, and she laid her head on
my shoulders as I wrapped my arms around her.
“How could they, Mama? How could Daddy and Grandma Ruth do something like
this?”
I had no comforting words for my daughter. All I could do for her at that very
moment was hold her and attempt to make her feel that everything would eventually be
okay.
I remained on the couch holding Raynita in my arms constantly rocking her back and
forth until she fell asleep. As I looked over at her with her thumb in her mouth, thoughts
of the impact Raymond's actions had had on the lives of others continued to float through
my mind.
Raynita was twenty years old. It had taken us sixteen of those years to prevent her
from sucking her thumb, and now in a matter of hours, a habit that had been broken for
four years had suddenly returned.
“I know right now you‟re angry with Raymond,” Raymond Sr. said to me as he
walked back into the day room, breaking the silence in the room. “But I‟m also to blame
for this.”
“At least you‟re doing something about it now,” I said then paused. “But placing
blame on anybody, including Raymond and Ruth, will not help us now. We have to
move forward and press on.” As much as I wanted to believe my words, and to a degree
I did, it was still easier to say them than it was to live by them.
As we all continued to sit in silence, René and Sabrina returned. Both of their faces
were drenched in tears. Without speaking a word Sabrina walked over to where Raynita
and I were. She sat on the other side of me and placed her head on my other shoulder.
“I love you, Mama,” she said softly as she kissed me on my cheek.
It was around midnight when Anthony came back downstairs to join us. Although he
had a worn look on his face as we all did, I could also see a peace within him.
“Reverend Robinson,” he said then paused. “Grandfather, can we please talk
somewhere in privacy.”
As they walked away to another part of the house, René slowly walked over to where I
was sitting and surprisingly sat on the floor in front of me placing her head on my knee
the way she would probably do with her mother.
“She held my hand,” René began. “Then Anthony‟s. When she brought them
together, she simply said „love‟. I wonder why she did that?”
At that very moment I realized that I had to be strong for all of us in this situation,
even for Raymond Sr. and Claudette.
“René,” I began as both my daughters continued to lay on me. “You have proven to
be a true friend for Anthony, something he really needs now. That‟s something we all
need for him right now. Claudette obviously saw that in you.”
“How could those people do something like this?” she asked as she began to cry.
Anthony and Raymond Sr. stayed at the house for the remainder of the night while the
rest of us went back to the hotel.
It was two o‟clock in the morning when we began the hour-long drive back to
Montgomery. With the exception of the driver‟s occasional whistling, the ride was
totally silent.
Once returning to my suite, I decided to give Kevin a call. I hadn‟t talked to him since
earlier that day, and I had been very vague with him. I had to talk to someone about what
was going on, and he was the only person I knew outside of my family that I knew I
could talk to.
“Hello,” the sleepy voice said.
“Kevin, it‟s me Katherine,” I began softly. “I know it‟s extremely late, but do you
have a few moments for a friend?”
“Of course I do. You‟ve been on my mind all day.”

24
Anthony
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Reverend Robinson asked after I told him
that I wanted him and my mother to return to South Carolina with us the next day.
“More than positive,” I responded.
Once he and I returned to join the others, I‟d told them that I wanted to stay with my
mother and would meet them in the morning at the hotel. E.C. invited everyone else to
stay but all, with the exception of my father, wanted to go back to shower and change
clothes.
As they began to walk out the door, I grabbed René‟s hand and pulled her to the side
of the porch.
“I‟m sorry if my mother‟s gesture made you uncomfortable,” I said thinking about
how she had placed our hands together and said “love”.
“Anthony, it didn‟t make me uncomfortable at all. To be honest, I‟ve loved you since
the day I began working for you.”
She then hugged me, gave me a kiss on the cheek and walked toward the SUV with
the others. Her statement touched a part of my heart that needed to be touched at that
exact moment. To say I had never thought of her that way would be a complete lie, but it
was a thought, that until that moment, I didn‟t think would be more than just that.
“The Lord has a strange way of bringing people in our lives,” my father said as we
both stood on the porch along with E.C. and watched them leave.
The remainder of the night I sat in my mother‟s room talking and spending time with
her. The conversations were mostly short and jumbled. Looking into her light hazel eyes
I finally understood why my eyes were lighter than every one else‟s in my family.
Many things that I hadn‟t understand in the past suddenly became clear to me.
“Daddy say Raymond Jr. is the devil,” she said breaking me from my thoughts
sounding as if she were a child. “Daddy say he going to hell in gasoline draws. I believe
my daddy, too.”
There was silence for several minutes after those statements. I didn‟t know how to
respond. I wanted to tell her that I agreed, but at the same time I was too nervous to talk.
I continued to try and converse with her, but her sentences never completely made
sense to me. Once she drifted off to sleep, still sitting in her chair, I began to think about
her state of mind and how much like a child she appeared to be. I wondered how much
of her life development was altered due to the actions of Raymond, my mother Ruth, or
even her own father E.C. Robinson.
I began to look at my own life and its development. How much of my life had been
based on the actions of those same people? How did their actions help form me? For
years I‟d walked with Raymond. I saw him doing things that were not pleasing, yet I‟d
never said a word.
I spent the entire night in her room never sleeping. As I continued to sit in complete
silence staring at her for the majority of the night, I noticed that the room began to get
lighter. The sun was rising and parts of it had begun to creep into the room. I walked
over to the window and opened the curtains.

When I walked back over to her, there was a light tap on the door.
“It‟s me Yvette,” the nurse said as she slowly opened the door. “How are you two
doing this morning?”
“Doing fine, thanks for asking,” I said solemnly.
“Reverend Robinson and Bishop Miller are waiting for you downstairs for breakfast.
After I give Claudette her bat,h we will join you shortly,” she said.
While walking down the stairs of the house, I began to imagine how my life would
have been if I had been raised by the Robinsons. I wondered if I would have been a
happy child. I always felt my childhood was miserable, and I never understood why.
Now that I had a better understanding, I was beginning to wish this secret had never
come out.
When I walked into the dining room, I saw both men sitting at the dining room table.
“How are you feeling this morning?” my father asked me.
“Believe it or not I feel new,” I said smiling as I sat down.
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view,” my father began
softly at the table. “Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has
come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation: That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not
counting men's sins against them, and he has committed to us the message of
reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his
appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made
him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.”
It always amazed me at how he could always seem to associate the right scriptures
with the exact circumstances of the moment. It sometimes infuriated me that God‟s
word, created thousands of years ago, can seem to associate itself with our very own
lives.
“Raymond Jr. called me this morning,” E.C. said to me as I took a seat at the table.
“He asked me to have you call him.”
Suddenly I could feel the smile on my face disappear. I didn‟t respond. I had no
words to say to Raymond, and I had no intentions of talking with him. Sitting at the table
with the two older men, I began to think about how over the years I‟d looked up to
Raymond. Even during the times I knew he had done wrong, he was still in my eyes the
greatest brother anyone could have, but this new revelation was unforgivable.
“Anthony, did you hear me?” my father asked breaking me out of my thoughts.
“I‟m sorry, Pops. What did you say?”
“We need to get back to the hotel and get the ladies. If we are going to be back for
services in the morning, we need to leave soon so that we can get some rest tonight,” he
said.
As we drove up I-85 North, I began to think about how Raymond and Mother would
react to seeing Claudette and E.C. I was hoping that when they saw her, all of the pain
that they‟d caused in the lives of others would hit them tenfold.
“My first long trip,” my mother said as she looked out the window in the front seat.
I looked over at René who sat beside me in the backseat of E.C.‟s Cadillac, and I
noticed a look of sorrow on her face.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to her.
Her response was a slight nod. Then she extended her hand to mine. My mother
looked back immediately and began to giggle like a little girl.
“Love,” she said softly.
As we continued our drive back home, I wondered what kind of life I would have
from that point on. My life, up until that point was something created by others. Now I
had the task of becoming my own man and doing my own thing. I had the opportunity to
make my own choices, and that made me nervous.
“Daddy say Ruth a big bitch,” Claudette said aloud then covered her mouth in shame.
Suddenly all the fears that had entered my mind were gone and I began to laugh
hysterically.
“I agree with your daddy one hundred percent,” I said still laughing.
As we continued to ride, I finally felt the lack of two days worth of sleep invade my
body and take over. I attempted to stay awake, but my head constantly fell toward René's
shoulder.
“Here,” she began as she reached for my head and guided it toward her lap. “You
need your rest.”

It was around eight that evening when we made it to a hotel in uptown Charlotte. I
initially wanted to go home, but I knew that Raymond and Ruth would have someone
there waiting for me, so I‟d decided against it.
After getting my mother settled into one of the rooms in the suite, I walked out into
the sitting area where René sat alone.
“Thanks for all you‟ve done. You will never truly realize how much this means to
me.”
“You have nothing to thank me for,” she paused. “I‟m here because of love.”
She then touched me softly around my neck, guided me toward her, and kissed me.
25
Emotionless Emotions
Raynita's words began to play repeatedly in Raymond's head.
“You got damned no good son of a bitch! Daddy you ain’t shit!”
Those words from his youngest daughter hit him harder than anything had ever hit
him before, and he felt his life finally ending. He knew there was no one to blame for
this but himself.
As he sat in his office all day, he attempted to place the blame on everyone. He
wanted to blame Claudette for becoming pregnant when they were still both children, but
he knew that he would have to blame himself as well. He wanted to blame Anthony for
being born, but yet again, he knew that it was his actions that enabled Anthony to be in
this world. He wanted to blame E.C. Robinson for bringing Anthony to the church early
that Sunday morning many years ago, but then he thought about his own daughters, and
how he would do anything to protect them.
He wanted to blame his mother. She was the perfect one to blame for everything he‟s
become, the good as well as the bad. She was the one that had informed him of his
special gift from the Lord. She was the one that had always protected him from any
harm. She was the one that had told him all of his life how special he was and that God
would always have favor over him.
He began to think of the day they had moved from Alabama. He thought about how
he‟d held Anthony in his young arms and felt proud to be a father. He realized that this
was the result of his sin, but as he looked at the small product of himself, he felt a sense
of worth for the first time in his young life.
“See what I mean by black babies?” Ruth said to him as he held young Anthony in
his arms. “This child, unlike you, will grow up without worth. God made you special.”
He remembered her drilling those words into his ears.
“How will we explain Anthony?”
“I will tell people that he is your father‟s and my youngest son,” she said as if she had
become disgusted with the idea.
Raymond spent most of the entire day on Saturday in his office taking a long and
thorough visit down memory lane thinking about the past thirty years of his life. His
fame, his wealth, the birth of his children, his love of several women. All of this defined
who he was and who had become, and it all amounted to one thing, a small petty being in
the eyes of the Lord.
His mind began to replay all of the secrets and manipulations. He thought about the
plot eight years ago that he and his mother created to keep Raymond Sr. from telling
Anthony who he really was.
“I can‟t believe I turned my father into a junkie,” he whispered to himself.
His thoughts went to Ruth finding the pills behind the podium in the small chapel the
day before. He wondered how his father had discovered their secret. He wondered who
had helped him to discover their dirty little secret. He knew he had to have had help.
His thoughts turned to his wife. This was the week of their twenty-third year of
marriage.
“A strange way to celebrate a lifetime together,” he said softly.
He couldn‟t remember a time within those years that he hadn‟t been having an affair,
and for the past two years since he‟d stopped making love to her, he had had Katherine
followed thinking that she had affairs of her on, only to find out that she had continued to
be faithful until three days earlier. He thought about how his feelings were more of relief
than anger when he discovered she had been with the coach of the high school. He knew
that her affair was something that was long overdue.
As he continued to sit in his office, alone and in silence, his phone rang startling him.
“Hello,” he said worn.
“Bishop, I would love to see you one more time before I leave,” the seductive voice
said.
Raymond was too tired and mentally drained. It was this type of situation that had
created all of his life‟s pitfalls.
“Victoria, today is really not good for me.”
“Aww,” she said pretending to feel sad. “I was hoping for one more hallelujah before
I left.”
His mind began to tell him to go for it. He tried to convince himself that he needed
the break from reality. He needed to take himself away from the problems at hand. He
looked at his watch.
“I can be there in an hour,” he said before ending the call.

As he continued to sit at his desk, he knew that his time was over. He knew that there
was no turning back and definitely no more moving forward. His time had ended, and he
was ready.
Although he wasn‟t ready to face his demons, he knew that the time had come. He
knew that he would soon face his demons all at one time. It was inevitable. They had all
come together all at once.
Heading toward the elevator of the empty office, he began to wonder how everything
would eventually play out. He no longer expected positive results. He no longer
expected Ruth's or his schemes to manipulate others any more. He felt as helpless as a
fox caught in a trap yet he had no true feelings anymore. His feelings had become numb,
and his emotions, emotionless.

26
Katherine
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Kevin asked after I explained the entire story to
him over the phone. It was around twelve midnight after everyone else in my suite had
fallen asleep when I‟d decided to give him a call. I was tired as well but I needed to hear
a friendly voice that came from someone who was not apart of my immediate family.
“No, but thanks for the offer,” I began softly. “Just hearing your voice is enough for
me.”
When we returned to Charlotte, I had initially decided against calling him, but as I sat
in the quiet sitting area of the suite, without second thoughts, I picked up my phone and
immediately called his number. Since leaving Montgomery earlier that day, Kevin had
been the one thought that had given me a pleasant distraction from all the hell that had
invaded my life.
“Are you sure there isn‟t anything I can do?” Kevin asked again.
“Just listening to me is more than enough,” I said once again feeling some form of
relief from having someone outside of family to talk with.
To say that the past several days had been hectic would be an understatement. The
past several days had been a pure living hell. I had learned more about my husband and
mother-in-law than I‟d ever dreamed I could ever know about them.
Listening to Raymond Sr. talk about his eight-year stint of living in hell in the house
with Ruth was more frightening to me than anything I had ever heard in my life. It
wasn‟t until over a year ago, when she hired the eleventh nurse in eight years to take care
of him, that he had come to realize that he wasn‟t a senile old man. That was just what
Ruth and Raymond Jr. had made him to be through drugs.
As he talked about his living hell on our way back home, I happened to glance at
Yvette, Claudette‟s nurse, who had remained silent for most of the trip. The look on her
face said that she was in dire need of a cigarette or a drink or even both. She constantly
hummed a song that was very familiar to me, yet I couldn‟t place the tune nor could I
place where I had heard it.
“I could be at the hotel in the next thirty minutes,” Kevin said to me breaking me from
my thoughts.
“That would be nice,” I began as I felt a schoolgirl‟s smile form on my face. “But we
have a very long day tomorrow, and if I were to see you tonight, I know that my mind
would not be with you.”
“I understand, Katherine,” he said before a long silence.
“Are you still there, Kevin?”
“What do you have on?” he asked suddenly.
“What do you want me to have on?” I asked seductively.
“Nothing,”
Suddenly I felt my Lady tingle softly and before I knew it, I had moved my right hand
to her and began to softly rub my clitoris.
“Hmmmm,” I said louder than I thought.
“Is she calling my name?”

“Yes, yes she is,” I said softly, “She wants you, Kevin.”
“I want her, too. I want you,” he responded.
“How long did you say it would take you to get here?”
As I sat in the sitting area of the suite, I continued to play with my Lady as I began to
reminisce on my adventures with Kevin earlier in the week. I couldn‟t help but think of
how he had made me feel totally different than Raymond had in over twenty years of
marriage. Up until that week I had only been sexually active with one man, and not once
did I remember Raymond making me feel as open and free as Kevin had.
By the time I reached a third climax, my cell phone began to chime.
“Hello,” I said almost out of breath.
“Katherine, did you start without me?”
“Where are you?” I asked beginning to feel ashamed that he could tell by the sound of
my voice what I had been doing.
“I‟m in room three fifty-two.”
“I‟ll be down in five minutes,” I said as I slipped on my sandals that sat beside the
couch that I had been laying on.
Immediately after I stepped off the elevator and began walking down the hall of the
third floor toward the room Kevin was in, I heard loud noises coming from one of the
rooms.
“That sounds like me in a few minutes,” I whispered to myself with a smile.

Softly knocking on the door of room three fifty-two, I could still hear the noises
coming from the other room and I was becoming even more aroused as I began to think
about what was waiting on me on the other side of the door.
When Kevin opened the door, the room was dark yet I could still see his naked body
shine as if the sun had its own special spotlight on him.
“Are you going to come in or just stand there and stare at me?” he asked.
I walked inside and as soon as he closed the door behind me, he grabbed me and
passionately kissed me. Suddenly I felt a new type of feeling invade me. It was a feeling
of aggression. With all my strength I pushed him towards the bed of the room. As he fell
down on it, I fell on top of him and immediately moved down towards his erect manhood
and placed it into my mouth.
While I licked up and down his shaft, my first dream of him began to play in my mind
as I saw his children begin to escape.
“Damn, baby, I‟m about to cum now,” he said right before a loud moan.
I didn‟t say a word. I wanted them to escape. I wanted to taste them all. I wanted
him to receive the same pleasure that I had heard coming from the room down the hall. I
wanted to let whoever they were know that they were not the only ones having a party.
After every one of his offspring had escaped and taken refuge inside of me, he quickly
pulled me on top of him and began sucking my clitoris.
“YES!” I screamed aloud. “YES!”
Moments later I found myself turned around in a sixty-nine position. I put his
manhood back in my mouth hoping to bring it back to life. That task did not take long at
all.
It was almost four in the morning when our escapade ended, and I although I wanted
to continue more, I knew that I had to get back to my suite.
“Why did you choose me?” Kevin asked as he continued to lie on the bed as I began
to redress.
The question startled me and I really didn‟t have a definite answer. It was the same
question that had pondered in my mind over the past several days.
“I‟ve had a desire to be with you since the day we met,” I said hoping he wouldn‟t
require more detail.
“The feeling is definitely mutual.”
Kevin was still naked when he walked me to the door. Before opening it, I turned
back to get one more glance of his chiseled body. It was perfect in every aspect.
“When can I see you again?” he asked me.
“Sooner than you think,” I said then walked out.
While walking down the long hallway toward the elevator I noticed the couple whom
I had heard earlier standing at the doorway of their room engrossed in a passionate good-
bye kiss.
“Another secret rendezvous,” I whispered to myself realizing that it couldn‟t have
been anything else due to the time of the morning and the fact that one of them was
leaving. I felt awkward walking by them thinking that they could possibly look up and
recognize me. I decided to walk back to Kevin‟s room just to see him one more time and
to give the couple enough time to say their good-byes.

“You were right about me seeing you soon,” he said as he stood at the door still naked
with a huge smile on his face.
After explaining to him why I had returned, we sat on his bed and just talked. He told
me that his first love as a teenager was to become a teacher and that football was his
ticket to college. He had such a passion for life, and that was something that impressed
me more than his actions in the bedroom. He also explained to me how he had married a
young lady who he had gone to college with and they had remained married until an
injury caused him to no longer be able to play football.
“I loved her,” he said softly. “But she loved the football player more than she loved
the man.”
I could relate to what he was saying, and I felt a closer connection with him.
“Will you ever marry again?” I asked.
“Are you proposing?” he asked back with that huge smile.
After about twenty minutes of conversation, I decided that I had given the couple
enough time to say good-bye and once again began my journey toward the elevator. I
cautiously looked out the door to ensure the couple was no longer there.
“Coast is clear,” I said to Kevin as I kissed him on his cheek and then left.
Walking down the hallway, I began to think once more of how Kevin and I had
connected. I also allowed the thoughts of life after Raymond to dance around my mind,
and I enjoyed those thoughts. By the time I arrived at the elevator my mind was so far in
the clouds that I didn‟t even realize that there was someone standing there waiting.
“Katherine?” the masculine voice asked.
“Raymond? What the hell are you doing here?”

27
Anthony
“I‟m going to tell Daddy to buy me a beautiful white dress for the wedding,” my
mother said as she, René, and I sat in the sitting area of our suite.
“For whose wedding, Ms. Robinson?” René asked with a puzzled look on her face.
My mother then placed her right hand over her mouth, giggled, then used her left hand
to point at the two of us.
Her childish ways were cute, but they were beginning to become very painful for me.
It was hard for me to look at her for who she was, my mother, and every time she did
something youthful, I would lose even more respect for those who helped to form what
she had become.
When I looked over towards René to see her reaction, I saw a huge smile begin to
beam across her face.
“I work for your son, Ms. Robinson. We‟re just good friends,” René said as she
looked over towards me.
“Nah unh,” mother began. “Ya‟ll getting married. Ya‟ll in love.”
Again, I looked towards René. This time her eyes immediately met mine and we both
sat and stared at each other in silence. I wondered if my mother really had insight or was
her insight merely childish antics. I also wondered if what I had begun to feel for René
was more out of the lack of truly being loved before.

“It‟s time for bed, Claudette,” her nurse said as she entered the room breaking our
silence as well as my thoughts. “We have a big day tomorrow, and you need to get your
rest.”
“We going to see the devil in the morning,” my mother replied with a serious look on
her face as I helped her out of her seat. “We gone send him back to hell.”
As the nurse guided her into one of the rooms of the suite, I began to think of her
comments about René and me getting married. I wondered if God had truly given her
some type of insight to know what the future holds.
“What if she‟s right?” René asked breaking me out of my trance.
“If she is, then it could be a good thing, right?”
“That would kill Mother Ruth,” René said with a smile.
“Well that could be an even better thing,” I said as I began to laugh at my own joke.
As René and I remained in the sitting area for the majority of the early morning
talking and getting to know each other in more depth, I felt a new closeness to her. I felt
like she and I were more than just friends. We were more than employee and boss. It
was a feeling that gave me warmth and understanding.
“I want to kiss you again,” I said remembering the kiss we had shared hours earlier.
“Anthony,” she said softly. “I want you to kiss me again.”
Without hesitation, I leaned towards her, and our lips embraced one another as though
they had their own minds and knew that they belonged together. I could feel my heart
beat as if it were dancing, and suddenly I began to hear the thoughts in my head as if they
were being spoken from a loud speaker.

“I want you,” she said softly in my ear. “I want to feel you inside of me.”
I gently picked her up from the couch and carried her to the bedroom of the suite that I
was sleeping in. After placing her on the bed, I passionately removed her clothes from
her body.
As I stood at the side of the bed staring at her immaculate shape, I then removed my
clothes.
“You're beautiful,” I whispered. “Why did it take me this long to realize this?”
“Sometimes we are blinded by our circumstances,” she replied.
As soon as I‟d removed my pants, René quickly sat up on the bed. While I remained
in a standing position, she placed my erected penis inside of her mouth. She performed
in a way that made me feel as if this were the first time it had ever been done. In a matter
of moments, I felt my knees begin to buckle. I felt hopeless yet pleased tremendously.
“I need to lie down,” I moaned, but she continued as if she hadn‟t heard my plea.
Suddenly everything that was inside of me began to explode, and without hesitation
René remained in the same position never moving until all that was in me had been
released. After my explosion, she repositioned herself on the bed and seductively stared
directly into my eyes.
“You can drive a man wild,” I said smiling as I lay beside her.
“You would not believe how long I‟ve prayed for this day,” she said.
I leaned towards her and kissed her allowing her to share my seed with me. As we
embraced, I slowly began to kiss every part of her body with hopes of giving her the
same pleasure she offered me.

We remained in bed together in conversation for the remainder of that night.
Although my feelings for her had taken on a new direction, I still felt the friendship
created when she first came to work for GDM.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Where would you like to go from here?”
“Honestly,” I said suddenly allowing all of the anguish of the past several days to
invade my thoughts. “I would like to be as far away from Raymond, Mother Ruth, and
GDM as I could possibly be. I would like for you and me to be somewhere together
without a care in the world and without all of this that is going on now with my family.”
She brought her body closer to me, and I wrapped my arms around her creating a
feeling of love I had never known before.
“Thanks,” she said softly.
“No, René. Thank you.”
As René slept in my arms, I found myself staring at the ceiling unable to sleep as
thoughts continued to dance uncontrollably in my head. My stomach felt uneasy as if it
were expecting something else to happen, and my head began to feel as if a thousand feet
were stomping on it.
“Are you okay?” René asked after removed my arm from under her and began to
climb out the bed.
“Yes, I‟m fine. I‟m going to get a glass of water.”
When I walked into the main area of the suite, my father and Reverend Robinson were
sitting in the living room area talking.

“We didn‟t wake you, did we?” Reverend Robinson asked.
“No sir, I‟ve been up for a while now. I couldn‟t sleep.”
I walked into the kitchenette, retrieved a bottle of water out the refrigerator, walked
back to where they were and took a seat on the couch beside my father.
“I know things seem dim now, but ,son, this will soon pass,” my father said as he
placed his hand on my shoulder.
I sat in the living room with them for the remainder of the early morning. They talked
more about the good old days until they both drifted off to sleep on the couch. When I
looked at the clock, I noticed that it was almost five a.m.
I arose from the couch, walked over to the desk that sat behind it, and began to write
my thoughts on the hotel pad that sat there.
Thoughts continued to prance in my head uncontrollably, and I began to wonder what
type of God would allow people like Raymond and Mother Ruth to do things to cause
harm to others.
I look at this and I wonder why.

I look at this and I ask God “Why?”
Why do You bring so much hurt and pain?
How much do you really think I can sustain?
How can you love me unconditionally
Yet deliver harm so uncontrollably?
You say you will never leave my side
Yet here I stand with a lost stride.
After staring at the poem I began to read it repeatedly hoping to find an inkling of
comfort in the words. There was none. I still felt the hurt. Again, I thought of Janaé‟s
last moments on this earth and I wondered if her pain could compare to mine.
I thought about the teachings of Christ. Although for years I was aware that Raymond
lived a double life, I still believed in the words of the Lord that had been taught to me,
something that had recently began to create a serious depression in my life.
I thought about the thousands and thousands of people that flocked to God‟s
Deliverance Ministries on a weekly basis as well as the millions that sent their donations,
purchased the materials, or watched the broadcasts. I thought about the pastors all across
the world that would automatically lose any credibility in their ministries due to the
actions of Raymond as well as other pastors of mega churches that lived double lifestyles.
As I continued to write words on the paper, I heard the room door open. When I
looked towards it, I noticed René peeping out.
“I miss you,” she said in a whisper.
I smiled at her comment and felt good about how quickly her small gesture had
brightened my sullen moment. I quickly placed the pen down on the desk, got up from
the chair, and walked towards the room.
“You really need some rest,” she said as I walked into the room closing the door
behind me.
“You‟re right,” I said.
As we both lay back down on the bed, again, with her resting inside my arms,
suddenly I felt as if God had finally soothed the pain in my soul. I felt a peace that had
been missing my entire life. A peace that earlier in the week I thought I would never
have.
I felt myself drifting off as I inhaled the rich and fruity smell of René‟s hair. Then I
heard a soft knock on the bedroom door. Initially I didn‟t move, but then the knock
became louder. I hesitated as I walked toward the door finally feeling days of exhaustion
infiltrating my body.
“Who‟s there?” I asked.
“Anthony, it‟s me Katherine,” she said from the other side of the door.
I immediately opened the door and walked out into the living area. I noticed my
father and Reverend Robinson had both awakened and I noticed a third man sitting on the
couch. It was Raymond Jr.

28
Confessions of a Sinner
As Raymond lay in the bed beside Victoria, for the first time that he could remember
he finally felt guilty of his actions. She attempted to please him, but his feelings had
become numb, and her attempts meaningless.
“Bishop, what‟s wrong?” she asked noticing that he was not receiving pleasure from
her actions.
“Nothing is wrong, Victoria,” he began realizing himself that he was not being
truthful. “I just want to lay here and talk.”
Victoria emerged from her position, sat up on top of his chest, and began to pretend to
pout.
“So you‟re no longer pleased with me?”
“Of course, I‟m pleased with you,” he started. “Just have a lot going on right now.”
As they remained silent for several moments, Raymond began to realize that since
meeting her earlier that week, the only thing he knew about her was her name.
“Where are you from?” he asked breaking the silence.
She stared long and hard into his eyes as if the question he asked was a Daily Double
Question from the game show Jeopardy.
“From under a small rock in the middle of nowhere,” she replied softly.
Raymond noticed that after she answered, her demeanor changed tremendously.
“Sounds like we come from the same place,” he said softly.
“I seriously doubt that. You are the famous Bishop Raymond Mitchell Miller Jr.”
“I am only a name,” he began in a whisper. “There is not much more to me than the
name.”
Again, the conversation returned to silence.
“Why were you in Montgomery earlier in the week?” Victoria asked breaking their
silence.
“Business. Why were you there?”
“Business as well,” she replied.
“You never told me what it is that you do,” he stated.
“I find lost people,” she replied nonchalantly.
“Hmmm, so were you looking for me?”
“No, we will just say that I happened upon you.”
For the remainder of that early morning they remained in the same position on the bed
having idle conversation. He couldn‟t explain what he was feeling, but he knew it was
something that he had never felt before. It was truth.
“I have a lot of demons in my closet,” he whispered.
“We all have them,” Victoria responded softly. “Some just have more than others.”
“I‟ve caused harm to people I‟ve cared about. People I love.”
Victoria remained silent. She understood what Raymond was feeling.
“But you‟re Bishop Raymond Mitchell Miller,” she said repeating the comment from
earlier in their conversation.
“I am only a name,” he whispered again. “There is not much more to me than the
name.”
After Raymond dressed, Victoria remained on the bed with a look of sorrow on her
face.
“What‟s wrong?” he asked her.
“Nothing. I‟m fine,” she said as she emerged from the bed and retrieved her robe that
had been draped over the small couch in the room.
As he walked toward the door, she followed him while tying the belt of the robe
around her waist. When he opened the door, she rushed toward him and began to kiss
him passionately. Without hesitation, he kissed her back, and they remained at the door
kissing for several moments.
“Does this mean „good-bye‟?” he asked. Without a word she closed the door.
Raymond stood at the door for several moments thinking to himself that this was his
final rendezvous. He then began to walk slowly toward the elevator with thoughts of his
family on his mind.
As he stood staring at the floor waiting for the elevator to arrive, he heard the faint
movement of someone walking towards him. His initial thoughts were that Victoria had
come back to see him one last time, but when he looked up, he saw his wife.
“Katherine?” he asked shocked to see her.
“Raymond? What the hell are you doing here?” she shot back.
They both remained silent not knowing what to say.
“How did you know we were here?” Katherine asked breaking their silence.
He remained silent, letting her know that he had no idea they were staying at the hotel.
“Visiting another victim?” she asked him sarcastically.

Raymond stared deep into her eyes. There was so much that he wanted to say, but he
felt speechless. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but he knew those words would
mean nothing to her now. He wanted her to know that he would make things right for
everyone, but he knew his words carried no weight.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“There‟s nothing that we have to talk about, Raymond,” she said softly. “But there
are several people upstairs that I‟m sure you have much more to say to.”
As the elevator arrived, Katherine stepped onto it first. Raymond remained standing
in the hallway as if he were waiting for her to invite him in.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
He slowly stepped on, and their ride to the top floor, it was silent and long.
Thoughts of what was about to take place began to scare Raymond immensely, and he
began to wonder if this was a good idea.
Once they arrived at the door of the suite, he felt as if his entire body had become an
earthquake and he began to shake profusely.
“Are you coming in?” she asked noticing his hesitation.
He slowly walked inside the door behind her and remained there as she walked away
towards one of the rooms. He noticed both his father and Reverend Robinson sleeping in
the living room.
As he slowly walked over, Raymond Sr. slowly arose and noticed his son standing
there.
“Raymond?” he asked stunned to see him. “What are you doing here?”
“I ran into Katherine downstairs,” he said softly.

“Did you find us or were you here on other business?” Raymond Sr. asked already
knowing the answer to his question.
Raymond remained silent and continued to stand as if he were a six-year old boy
waiting to be chastised.
“Come on over here and have a sit down,” his father instructed as he began to tap E.C.
on the knee to awaken him.
When E.C. awakened and realized that Raymond Jr. was there, his initial reaction was
a slight state of shock.
“Hello, E.C.,” Raymond said as he took a seat on the couch with his father.
The three men all remained in silence. Raymond was still nervous but he felt an
easiness begin to enter.
“So what brings you here so early in the morning?” Reverend Robinson asked
attempting to break the silence between the three of them.
“I,” Raymond began but stopped suddenly when he noticed Anthony enter the living
room.
Suddenly the nervousness that he had felt just moments earlier reclaimed its stake on
his body, and he began to tremble as tears uncontrollably began to fall from his eyes.
Anthony kept his distance and watched Raymond cry, He felt no emotion for
Raymond‟s episode.
“You‟re a great actor, Raymond,” Anthony said as he walked closer to the three men.
“I don‟t expect you to believe me, Anthony. I don‟t expect for any of you to believe
me, but I am truly sorry for all that I‟ve done to everyone.”
Katherine without care then walked away and disappeared into another room of the
suite.
“What is it that you want, Raymond, or should I say „Daddy‟?” Anthony asked.
Raymond sat in silence not knowing what else to say. For years he‟d known that this
day would come and for years he had begun to practice the speech he would give, but
now that the time had come, he was without words, and he was lost, something that was
as new to him as it was strange.
“Raymond,” E.C. began hoping to ease the tension that had entered the room. “I need
to apologize to you as well.”
Raymond's focus suddenly left Anthony, and he looked at Reverend Robinson.
“Thirty years ago I allowed my anger to help create this lie, and although I never
asked you or Ruth for a dime, I accepted everything you gave and allowed the lie to
continue,” he paused, and tears began to fall from his face. “All these years I sat and
literally watched my daughter die a slow death. I even at one point began to feel parts of
me die as well. I should have been more of a man those years ago, and I wasn‟t.”
Again, there was more silence. The four men remained in the living room for what
seemed like an eternity before Raymond Jr. spoke again.
“Later this morning during service, I am resigning as the head of God‟s Deliverance,”
he began. “Father, I will announce that you will come back as the leader.”
“It is now time for Anthony to take reign,” Raymond Sr. replied. “That‟s only if he
wants to.”
Anthony, who had remained standing during the entire conversation, said nothing. He
just stood and stared at Raymond, looking to find more answers, more understanding.
“What about Mother?” he finally asked.
“You let me deal with her,” Raymond Sr. said as he stood up from the couch. “Yes,
sir, you just let me handle her.”
After Raymond Sr. and Reverend Robinson left the room leaving Anthony and
Raymond alone, Anthony bagan to walk back to the room of the suite that he was staying
in.
“Anthony,” Raymond began. “Son, can we develop a relationship as father and son?”
Without words, Anthony turned his back and left Raymond in the living room alone.
As Raymond sat numb, he realized that the road ahead of him would be one of more tight
twists and narrow turns.
Without hesitation, he left.
“Will this pass?” he whispered to himself as he entered the elevator.
As Raymond drove home, he began to think about his encounter with his family. He
wondered how things were going to end up. He thought about the announcement that he
would make to the congregation later that morning, then his mother came to mind.
“She‟s going to raise hell,” he whispered to himself.
He decided to give her a call hoping to prepare her for what was about to happen. The
phone rang several times, and she never answered.
“Mother, this is Raymond,” he began leaving a message. “It‟s imperative that I speak
with you immediately before church.”
When he parked his car inside his garage, he remained seated and began a soft prayer.
“Dear Father, it‟s me coming to you asking for forgiveness, asking that you accept this
small request from me, a big sinner. I come to you confessing, Oh Lord, that I am a
sinner in need of repentance. I pray, Oh Heavenly Father ,that you hear my humble plea.
Amen.”
29
Katherine
It was nine o‟clock by the time all of us were ready for church. It had taken me
several tries to get Raynita up and ready, and the effort alone had nearly worn me out.
“I don‟t want to go, Mama. I don‟t want to see Daddy or Grandmother,” she cried
lying across her bed in a fetal position with her thumb in her mouth.
I was almost in tears as I watched my young adult daughter act like a three year-old
child. I didn‟t want to force her to go, but I was afraid to leave her alone. Due to the
love she had for her father, as well as seeing what had become of Claudette, I was more
concerned for her wellbeing than I was for anyone else‟s.
“Raynita,” I began, hoping to find the right words to say to convince her to get ready.
“I know this is hard for you. This is hard for us all, but it‟s very important that we deal
with this together as a family.”
As she reluctantly emerged from the bed, Sabrina walked into the room completely
dressed and ready to go. Her demeanor was different from that of Raynita and because of
her lack of emotion, I began to worry about her as well.
“Sabrina, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn‟t I be, Mother?” she replied nonchalantly.
“You appear to be holding up well considering the circumstances.”
“What has happened has happened, getting bent out of shape and all emotional about
it will not change a thing,” she said as she retrieved the makeup from her personal bag
and walked toward the mirror to begin applying it.

It was more than amazing to me how they both chose to view the situation. It was
strange for me to see both of my emotions displayed in my two daughters. One was
strong and eager while the other cowered in fear.
“Where did you go last night?” Sabrina asked breaking me from my current thoughts.
“I took a walk around the hotel,” I lied.
I hated lying to her, but her question caught me off guard and I wasn‟t prepared to tell
her about my newly developed relationship with Kevin.
“I dreamed that I heard Daddy‟s voice last night,” Raynita said as she slipped on her
dress.
“He was here last night,” I responded softly.
“He was here?!” Sabrina questioned with surprise.
“How did he find us?” Raynita began. “Where is he now?”
I walked over to the couch that sat by the window in our room and began to stare out
at the warm spring morning. Even from the twenty-fifth floor I could see the happiness
on the faces of the people that were walking on the sidewalk below. I wondered if I
would ever know that kind of happiness again. I wondered if I‟d ever known that
happiness before.
“I found him,” I began softly. “He was visiting someone here in the hotel, and we ran
into each other as he was leaving.”
After telling as much of the story as I could, I looked over at Raynita and saw more
tears fall from her face. I then looked over at Sabrina, and she had the same nonchalant
look plastered over her face that she‟d had moments earlier.
When the three of us were dressed and ready, we walked into the main area of the
suite and waited for the others. Anthony, Raymond Sr., and René were already sitting on
the couch.
“We‟re waiting on EC and Claudette,” Raymond Sr. announced as we walked in to
join them. “How are my sweet girls doing this morning?”
Both Raynita and Sabrina walked over towards him and gave him a kiss on each side
of his cheek then walked over to Anthony and did the same. Raynita then walked over
toward the dining room table and began to pick fruit from the tray that held a variety of
breakfast foods.
“You better eat more than fruit, Babygirl,” Raymond Sr. said reminding me of years
earlier how he used to attempt to get her to eat more than she would.
“I‟m really not hungry, Grandpa,” she responded softly.
Again showing different emotions, Sabrina picked up a plate and began piling it with
almost everything offered.
As we all continued to wait, Anthony asked me to meet him on the other side of the
suite to talk.
“He asked me if I would consider having a father-son relationship with him,” he began
sadly. “How can that happen after all these years?”
I didn‟t know how to answer his question. I did my best to put myself in the same
position but I couldn‟t.
“What does your heart tell you to do?” I asked.
“Good question,” he whispered.

Before I could respond to his statement, Reverend Robinson, Claudette and her nurse
walked into the main area. Before Anthony or I saw her, there was a loud gasp of
surprise coming from the others.
“Daddy said I look pretty,” she yelled out as everyone walked toward her to give her a
hug. “Daddy said I‟m going to knockem dead.”
If I hadn‟t known any better, I would not have believed that the person introduced to
us as Claudette Robinson a little over a day ago was the same person that stood before us
now. The wrinkles that had defined her face when I‟d first seen her had completely
disappeared. Her dark skin was as smooth and flawless as that of a newborn baby‟s
bottom.
“You are beautiful,” Anthony said as we walked towards her with tears in his eyes.
“You are more than beautiful.”
As she held Anthony‟s hand, she walked toward René, took hold of her hand, and with
the most beautiful smile I had ever seen on anyone‟s face she brought them together.
“Love,” she began. “I‟m going to look pretty for the wedding, too.”
It marveled me how much a couple of days had changed the lives of so many. Many
of us would cease to live the lives we had once lived, but for Claudette Robinson, it had
appeared that she had finally begun to live hers. As happy as I was for her, I was equally
sad for my daughters as well as for myself.
Reflecting on my life's events and seeing all of the joyful faces surrounding the
change in Claudette, I could not help but wonder if our roles would change. I wondered
if by the end of the day the wrinkles that escaped her face would find a home on mine.
As I stared in the mirror, the door opened and I heard a soft voice speak to me. It was
Claudette‟s nurse.
“You are strong,” she said. “Claudette was young at the time her problems began to
surface. She was not ready to handle what came her way.”
I turned around and as if I knew her, we embraced.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
Before we left the hotel, Reverend Robinson led us all in a prayer. As we all prepared
to walk out the door, the phone rang.
“Grandpa, it‟s for you,” Sabrina said.
After greeting whoever was on the phone, I noticed Raymond Sr.‟s demeanor quickly
change.
“Yes, I remember. That was over thirty years ago,” he began. “You are who? No….I
wasn‟t aware. Yes, we are on our way to the church now. Will you be there? Well,
when can I meet with you?”
It was not my intent to be nosey, but something about the parts that I heard made me
feel nervous about his conversation.
“Is everything alright?” I asked.
He slowly nodded his head “yes” then gestured with one finger letting me know to
give him a few moments. Due to all that had taken place over the pass several days, I
was expecting the worse, so I immediately took a seat to wait for his conversation to end.
After placing the receiver back onto its cradle he walked toward us, and with an even
stronger look of sorrow he sat down beside me.

“I‟m going to have to ask y‟all to go ahead without me. I have a situation I need to
take care of,” he said solemnly.
As I stared at him, I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to know more about the
conversation he had just completed. I knew that whatever the conversation was about,
the reason why he would not join us, had something to do with my husband, his son.
“Would you like me to stay with you?” I asked.
“No, I will be fine Dear-Heart,” he began softly. “This is a matter of mine that I must
deal with immediately.”
As I reluctantly walked towards the door and joined the others, I looked back at
Raymond Sr. and noticed tears begin to fall from his face as if it were a waterfall.
“The Devil is going back to Hell today,” Claudette yelled as we walked towards the
elevator.
Once we arrived on the campus of God‟s Deliverance, Anthony quickly made his way
towards Raymond‟s office. On the drive to the church he‟d told me that after I left
Raymond with them the night before, that he stated that he would announce that Anthony
would soon take over the ministry.
I began to wonder if he was resigning from his ministry out of sincerity or if it was
part of a master scheme concocted by him and Ruth.
“Is this something that you want?” I asked him.
“Honestly,” he began. “I really don‟t think so. You know the ministry was pretty
much forced on me.”

I nodded my head in agreement remembering his childhood as if it were my own
personal memory.
“You know,” he began before pausing. “All week I‟ve been more focused on me and
my life, forgetting that we as a family have affected other people and their families over
the years,” he paused again. “What good would it be for others who believe in us, who
believe in him if Raymond were to step down as the head of GDM?”
I was amazed at how Anthony chose to handle this. It proved to me what I had always
known about him. He was different. He truly cared about others before taking the time
to care about himself.
As we, with the exception of Anthony, entered into the church through the side door,
the first person I saw was Kevin.
“Mrs. Miller,” he said as he extended his right hand. “Good to see you again. We‟ve
missed you at school.”
“I‟ve missed you all as well,” I said as I quickly shook his hand and proceeded to our
assigned seats in the front.
“Mama, who was that?” Sabrina asked excitedly as we took our seats.
“Kevin Taylor. He‟s the new football coach at the school.”
“You will have to introduce me to him immediately after service,” she said with the
glossy eyes of a young schoolgirl.
“We will see,” I said beginning to feel somewhat jealous. “We will see.”
30
Anthony
As I slowly walked into Raymond‟s office, I began to think of all the things I wanted
to say to him. I thought about the conversation I‟d had with Katherine about not wanting
to take over the ministry. I also thought about the conversation with Raymond from
earlier that morning when he‟d stated that he wanted to form a father-son relationship. At
that very moment, I didn‟t see that happening, and I couldn‟t understand why he even
wanted us to develop a relationship like that now or how he thought we could.
For the past twenty-nine years I‟ve known him only as my older brother, and to
suddenly view him as my father and develop that type of relationship did not seem to be a
feasible solution for anything.
“Anthony,” he began as he pushed the mute button on the flat screen TV that showed
the waiting congregation of God‟s Deliverance Ministries. “How are you?”
“Raymond,” I began not wasting time telling him what I had to say. “I have been
doing a lot of thinking,” I paused then walked closer to his desk and sat in one of the
chairs in front of it.
“I‟ve been thinking, and I strongly believe that you should remain as the head of
God‟s Deliverance.”
After I‟d explained my reasons for feeling the way I did, he continued to persuade me
that it was now my time.

“Anthony, you are truly a gifted man of God,” he began softly. “You have
compassion and a pure love for people.”
“And because of my compassion and love, I honestly believe that your leaving now,
especially under the circumstances at hand, would hurt those who currently believe in
God‟s Deliverance, those who believe in you,” I said softly.
After several moments of awkward silence he emerged from his desk and walked
closer to where I was sitting. I stood up and we embraced in a hug that actually felt more
like the embrace of a father to a son than that of brothers.
My emotions began to feel as if they wanted to take a different turn than what I‟d
initially thought could be possible. All week long I‟d found myself wanting to be mad at
him and wanting to hate him, but at that very moment I began to feel a new and strange
respect for the man whom I‟d once admired and once emulated.
“I will never be half the man that you‟ve become,” he whispered while still hugging
me. “And the one thing I can never say is that you‟ve become that man because of
anything I‟ve done.”
After our moment he returned to his seat behind his desk, and I reclaimed the chair I
had been sitting in. As we sat in silence, although I began to feel more peace enter into
my body. I could also see a new peace within him as well, but there was still that one
question that I had to ask.
“How could you have drugged your own father for over eight years?”
His long, hard stare informed me that he had no legitimate answer to explain his
actions, and again, we sat in silence.
“Where is Dad?” Raymond asked finally breaking our long silence.

“He didn‟t come with us. As we were leaving, he received a phone call and said he
would meet with us here later.”
The distressed look he had worn on his face earlier suddenly reappeared. He quickly
picked up the phone and began pressing numbers.
“Mother, this is me Raymond calling you again. I‟ve been trying to call you for the
past several hours now and I haven‟t heard from you. Please call me back immediately.”
“What‟s wrong?” I asked surprisingly finding myself concerned about her as well.
I knew something was wrong given the fact that all of my life I had never known
Mother not to be in constant communication with Raymond. She was always only a
phonecall away from him.
“Since leaving the hotel this morning around seven I‟ve been trying to call her, and
I‟ve yet to hear from her,” he said. “And now your telling me that Dad had a strange call
before leaving the hotel and stayed behind has me even more concerned.
I reached into my pocket to retrieve my cell phone to call my father. After two failed
attempts to contact him by cell, I then tried calling the room. That also ended as a failure.
“Anthony,” Raymond began as he nervously looked at the monitor that showed the
waiting congregation. “I feel something is wrong. I‟m sure you‟re prepared to lead
service today. I need to find Mother.”
He immediately got up and literally ran out of his office and towards the elevator. His
departure was so quick and unexpected that I never had the opportunity to say another
word to him before he left.
As I turned toward the monitor, I began to watch the auditorium fill with parishioners
seeking a word for the day. As I sat alone, I began to wonder what I could tell others that
I really needed to hear someone tell me. I found myself feeling as if I too were seeking a
word for the day. I felt as if I needed something to motivate me more to continue. The
peace I had begun to feel before Raymond had departed had appeared to have gone with
him leaving me again lost and distorted.
I thought about asking one of the many associates of the ministry whom I knew would
be eager at the opportunity to speak, when suddenly I heard a soft whisper as if someone
was actually speaking to me.
As I walked toward my office to prepare, the voice continued to speak to me. The
voice reminded me that just two days earlier I met Claudette Robinson, the woman I now
know to be my mother. I began to remember vividly the sermon she was listening to as I
walked towards her room. It was one of mine from many years ago.
Before leaving my office to face the waiting congregation, I began to feel as if this
were my first time speaking. My heart began to race, and my body felt as if it were
producing its on earthquake. I began to feel a numbness that would not allow me to
move. As I sat at my desk feeling afraid to move and wondering if I would be able to
stand in front of the church to speak God‟s word, my office door suddenly opened.
“Hey,” René said with a soft smile on her face.
“Hey.”
“How are you holding up?” she asked as she closed the door behind her and walked
in.
“I‟m here. How is my mother holding up?”

“She‟s the one that sent me back here to check on you,” she began. “As the choir
began to sing, tears began to fall from her eyes, and she leaned towards me and said,
“Check on my baby, he‟s having a hard time.”
Suddenly I felt the weight from moments earlier lift up from my beaten heart.
Suddenly I began to understand things that once seemed to escape my understanding.
“Thanks again, René,” I said as I emerged from my desk. “You have been so much to
me over the past several days that I really have no idea how to repay you.”
“Just love me,” she whispered softly as we embraced.
“That‟s easy to do, give me a more difficult task.”
“Hmmm,” she began with a sheepish grin. “We can discuss a few tasks after church.
I don‟t think God would be pleased with what's on my mind at the moment.”
Before leaving my office, I attempted to call my father again, and just as earlier, I was
unable to get in contact with him. I also attempted to call Raymond, and he too was
unobtainable.
I then quickly dropped to my knees and began to pray for the safety of my family.
Although my life had been a lie, and the family I thought I was apart of had ultimately
been based on that lie, I still knew them to be my family, and regardless of how betrayed
I felt, I still wished no harm on them.
As I walked out into the auditorium where thousands had gathered to receive a
message from God, the first person whom I made eye contact with was Raynita. She
wore a look on her face of pure distress. As we stared at each other for what appeared to
be an eternity, I found my body doing something out of protocol. Instead of walking

toward the pulpit, I walked toward the front aisle to where she sat with the other members
of my family, and I immediately embraced her. There were a few “amen‟s” from the
crowd as if they had been touched by what they had witnessed, yet I knew they had no
idea what had led me to her.
“I love you,” I whispered in her ear. “We will get through this together.”
As I released her from our embrace, she immediately fell back as if she had received
the spirit. While Katherine and Sabrina both assisted her, it seemed as if the entire
congregation had also received it. As I attempted to make my way towards the pulpit, I
looked at Reverend Robinson and my mother who sat between him and René. All three
of them also had rivers of tears falling from their faces, and before I knew it, I too felt the
spirit.
After several moments I finally made my way to the pulpit, and all the anguish that
had invaded my body had quickly disappeared. I no longer felt the burden that seemed to
have had control over me.
With a sudden calm I began to stare at the thousands of congregants, and with an
elegant ease I began to speak the word.
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the
Almighty. Do you ever find yourself in need of a refuge? I tell you, my brothers and
sisters, I find myself there almost everyday. But, I am so glad that I am able to call on
the same shelter as David. For, like David, I realize,that His refuge is my strength. My
mighty rock and my fortress. My stronghold and High Tower. Like David, I know that
this refuge will never fail me, and I will never regret dropping my heavy load and
running for cover.”

Following service I attempted to call Raymond and my father several times and was
still unable to contact them. Because my attempts were in vain, they had even given me
the need to contact Mother, a mission also in vain.
“Have you heard from Raymond Sr.?” Katherine asked as she walked into my office.
After answering her question with “no” then informing her why Raymond had to leave
abruptly, she walked toward the window in my office that overlooked the entire campus
of GDM.
“When I met Raymond in college, I was the envy of every woman on campus,” she
began. “Every where I would go, everyone knew me as the girlfriend of the Great Rev.
Raymond Mitchell Miller.” Her voice became soft, and although her back was facing
me, I knew that she had begun to cry.
“Raymond never officially proposed to me,” she said as she turned to face me. “That
should have been my ticket to run like hell.”
“What do you mean?” I asked somewhat baffled.
“It was a few months before I graduated college when Mother Ruth came to visit me
and instructed me that I would marry her son. After that day I may have seen him three
times in the three months before our wedding. Some days I wondered if we were still
dating, much less getting married.”
She then walked away from the window and took a seat on a nearby couch. As she sat
down, I began to stare aimlessly around the room. Although her story was brief, I felt as
if she had just read me the longest novel ever written.

“As easy as it is to blame Raymond for who he is, we have to look at the root of why
he is,” she began again. “Anthony, Ruth is demonic.”
“I agree,” I said softly.
After several moments of idle conversation, Katherine left my office leaving me to
ponder her comment about the woman who until days earlier I had known to be my
mother. I began to take a journey down memory lane revisiting my past. I remembered
all of the beatings I‟d received from her because of never fitting into her program. I
thought about my deprived childhood, how I was never able to enjoy the things that most
kids that I had been exposed to were able to do.
My fear of her, I‟m sure, had begun years before I even understood that I was afraid of
her. After hearing the story of how I‟d come into her life, I began to think of all the evil
she could have bestowed upon me as a small child. For years she led me to believe that I
was demonic, and the entire time it was she that had been filled with evil.
After sitting in my office alone for some time, I decided to join my family back at the
hotel where we had stayed the night before.
“My sweet baby did good,” my mother said walking toward me with open arms as I
entered the suite.
Earlier that morning when I first saw her, it had been hard to believe that only two
days earlier she‟d appeared to have been at the end of her journey, yet at this moment she
was clearly someone new.

“Wonderful message, son,” Reverend Robinson said as he too embraced me.
In all my years in the ministry this moment was the one that gratified me the most.
For the first time, I truly felt as if God had delivered the perfect message for me to give a
wounded people, a wounded me. I finally felt the peace I had searched for my entire life.
As I looked around the room admiring the smiling faces, faces that just hours earlier had
held looks of defeat, I knew that God had delivered us from the fiery furnace and had
given us refuge under His shelter.
After finally checking out of the hotel later that evening, I invited my mother and my
grandfather to stay at my place for as long as they desired. I wanted to spend time with
them both and get to know them. Giving the fact that we had been deprived of each other
over the years, I knew that it was time that we began to create a relationship.
“I‟m going to get the prettiest white dress for when y‟all get married,” my mother said
yet again, sure that René and I would one day be husband and wife.
As I drove home with my mother, grandfather, and René around eight that evening,
my heart was still feeling a new kind of joy. I knew that God had finally come and
answered my prayers. I was in a new era in my life, and I was more than determined to
stay there. It also marveled me that since earlier in the afternoon, Raymond, Mother
Ruth, or Raymond Sr. had not crossed my mind.
“I just realized that I haven‟t heard from Raymond or my father,” I said softly to René
who was riding on the passenger side of my car.
“Are you worried?”
“No,” I said matter-of-factly. “Surprisingly, I‟m not.”

As we drove into my neighborhood, I noticed that the traffic was much heavier than
normal, and I noticed several news trucks parked on the side of the street close to my
house. As we drove closer, I realized that all the media had their focus on my home.
Suddenly I knew something was wrong, but before I could turn my SUV around, a
reporter spotted me and began to run towards us as if his life depended on it.
“Reverend Miller! Reverend Miller! Can you give us any information about the health
of your mother Ruth?”
I didn‟t know what he was talking about, but growing up I had become used to the
hungry nature of the media. I did what I had always known to do, continue driving
towards my home, never stopping or making eye contact with any of the reporters. After
driving for what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it into my driveway and parked
inside of my garage. As we all exited my SUV, we could hear nothing but the loud
chatter of the reporters around the house.
“Something done happened to the Devil,” my mother began as she covered her mouth.
“The Devil done gone back to hell. Oh yes, sir, the Devil back in hell.”
Suddenly I felt my stomach turn. After hurrying into the house, I ran directly to my
phone and began dialing Raymond's cell number.
“Hello,” I yelled after hearing someone pick up the phone and not say anything.
“Raymond, this is Anthony. What‟s going on?”
Although he still said no words, I could hear soft cries.
“Raymond, I know you are there. You need to talk to me,” I said pleading for a
response.
“She‟s dead, Anthony. Mother‟s gone” were his only words before bursting into a
loud cry.
31
Hell Has No Fury
Raymond stared long and hard at his mother‟s lifeless body that lay covered in a white
sheet on the autopsy table in the cold morgue. As he softly caressed her face, he wished
that he had the power to wake her. He wished that he were as great a man as she had
made him think he was, but he knew that he wasn‟t. He quickly realized that he was just
a mere man, no greater than any other man that was born into the world.
“Why did you do this?” he whispered to her as if she would answer him back. “Why
would you take your own life?”
As he continued to stare at her through a river of tears, he began to wonder more about
her death. Never would he have imagined that she would take her own life.
“You were always so strong,” he whispered. “I can‟t believe you did this.”
Several times throughout the evening he had heard his phone ringing, but he couldn‟t
find it in himself to answer. The only thing on his mind was the fact that his mother had
committed suicide, something that was too hard for him to believe. Ruth was a woman
that both men and women feared. A woman that was always in control of every situation
and one who would never run from anything or anybody.

“I just can‟t believe that you would do something like this,” he whispered again.
It was too much for him to handle. He knew that his life meant nothing without her.
He depended on her because she was the one that allowed him to be the man that he had
become. She was the one that made sure he was always safe and free from all harm.
Now he was all alone to fiend for himself.
“Why did you leave me?” he cried as he laid his head on her covered chest.
After leaving the campus of GDM that Sunday morning, his first stop was to his
parents‟ home. Not hearing from her for that entire morning was more than unusual, and
although at the time he‟d tried not to think negatively about it, he knew deep within that
something had happened to her.
When he walked through the doors of the mansion, the place felt cold and empty. He
searched for his mother throughout the bottom floor of the house. As he headed toward
the stairs, he heard a soft voice.
“Bishop Miller, Mother Ruth left out early this morning, a little after six thirty,” one
of the housekeepers informed him.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No, sir. All she said was that she had some business to attend to before heading to
God‟s Deliverance,” the stocky white woman said before scurrying off into another room.
He remained in the same spot in the house for several minutes before he finally moved
toward the front door. As he reached his car, he saw his mother‟s limousine coming into
the driveway. Seeing her car should have given him relief, but it didn‟t; it made him
even more nervous.

As he walked towards the vehicle, not allowing it time to come to a complete stop, he
immediately ran towards the back door and opened it.
“Mother Ruth is not with me,” her driver announced as he stepped out of the car.
“What in hell do you mean she‟s not with you?” Raymond asked as he began to move
towards the driver with pure agitation. “She left with you so why didn‟t you bring her
back?”
“As soon as we arrived at the hotel, she instructed me to remain there until she
returned.” He paused as he suddenly began to get nervous. “About thirty minutes later a
bellman came with a note that gave me instructions to come back to the house to pick up
your father.”
Before the driver could say another word, Raymond hit him so hard that he knocked
the driver, who was at least three inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than he was, to
the ground . He began profusely kicking the driver before he could get up off the ground.
“My father is not here! How could you leave my mother without first ensuring that
she was okay? Where is my mother?”
As the older man tried to shield himself from Raymond‟s continuous blows, he began
to yell the name of the hotel where he had left Mother Ruth. After several more kicks to
the driver, Raymond then ran to his car and headed to the hotel where his mother had
been seen last.
As he drove to the hotel, again thoughts of his mother being in harm danced through
his mind. He had no idea of what to expect, which caused more frustrations.
Once arriving at the hotel in downtown Charlotte, he parked directly in front of the door
and without waiting for the valet left his car with the keys still in the ignition.
“Do you have Ruth Miller as a registered guest?” he asked the clerk as he approached
her while she assisted a customer.
“Sir, I‟m sorry but I can‟t give you that information.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” he yelled startling the guest who was standing
beside him.
“Sir, you could be President Bush himself, and I still would not be able to give you
that information,” she said with sarcasm.
Raymond's emotions had become so unbalanced that before he realized what he was
doing, he‟d grabbed the young woman by the collar of her blouse. By the time he had her
halfway over the counter, two members of the hotel security team grabbed him.
“BITCH,” he yelled. “YOU BETTER TELL ME WHERE MY MOTHER IS,” he
continued as both members of security struggled to hold him down.
The clerk attempted to regain her composure. Though she now feared that Raymond
would break through the hold that the security guards had on him if she didn‟t answer,
she remained solid on hotel procedure.
“Sir,” she began nervously. “Hotel policy prevents me from giving out that type of
information.”
Before Raymond could respond again, the hotel manager stepped off the elevator with
a look of urgency plastered over his face. When he noticed the confrontation in the
lobby, he came over to see if he could resolve the issue quickly in order to handle other
matters that needed his immediate attention.
“Sir, how can we help you?” he asked. Then he suddenly recognized the man whom
his security team had apprehended. “Bishop Miller?”

“Yes, that‟s me,” Raymond answered as he tried to release his arms from security.
“Let him go,” the manager said to his security guards. “Sir, I do apologize for that, but
we‟ve had a very unusual morning here, and we are all on edge.”
When the two hotel security guards released Raymond, he attempted to regain his
composure, but his worries about his mother had now grown immensely.
“I am looking for my mother,” he repeated, this time to the manager.
“Yes, sir. I am aware of that. Can you please walk with me to my office where this
can be discussed?”
As they walked toward the office that was located behind the front desk of the hotel, ,
Raymond noticed two white uniformed police officers standing nearby. The sight of the
two officers created an uneasy feeling in his stomach, and he began to feel his rage return
along with a greater sense of fear.
“Mr. Miller?” one of the officers asked as he extended his hand in an attempt to shake
Raymond‟s hand.
Without words, Raymond nodded his head, but did not return the gesture of the
handshake.
“Sir, can we please have a moment of your time?” the other officer asked as the
manager unlocked the door to his office.
As they walked into the office, the taller of the two closed the door behind them.
“Sir, you are Raymond Miller, correct?” the taller officer inquired.
“Yes, I am. How many times must I answer that?” Raymond responded beginning to
become more agitated than he already was.
“Your mother is one Ruth Miller?” he continued with his questions.

“Yes, and I am looking for her. Her driver told me that he brought her here. Where is
she?”
The two officers stared at each other as if silently asking which one would be the one
to tell him. Raymond, noticing their hesitation, began to look at both of them with deep
frustration.
“Is she here?” he questioned.
“Sir,” the shorter of the two began. “Your mother was here earlier. Her body has
been taken to the hospital.”
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN HER BODY?”
“Sir, please calm down,” the taller officer instructed attempting to assert some form of
authority.
“CALM DOWN MY ASS,” Raymond yelled. “What in hell is going on here?”
Before either of the two officers could answer his question, there was a knock on the
door. As it opened, a tall black man wearing a gray suit walked in.
“Bishop Miller?” he asked with his hand extended. “I‟m Detective Dennis Greene.”
“Can you please tell me what is going on here?” Raymond replied as he received the
black detective‟s hand.
After instructing the two officers to leave the office, Detective Greene then invited
Raymond to have a seat on the small couch that sat in the office. Raymond, although still
agitated with the waiting of the news, sat down on the couch.
“Bishop Miller, your mother was found dead by one of the hotel‟s cleaning staff at
approximately ten this morning,” he said with directness yet still with compassion.
“Are you sure it was my mother?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied softly. “We are very sure.”
Raymond's eyes remained focused on Detective Greene‟s face. He was waiting for
him to reveal that it was a different Ruth Miller that was dead, not his mother.
“Sir,” Detective Greene began again. “I know this is a difficult situation, but there are
some questions that I need to ask you. Was your mother a diabetic?”
“No, she‟s not a diabetic,” Raymond responded. “Why are you asking me that? Can
you please just tell me what is going on here?”
“Are you completely sure that she was not a diabetic?” he asked.
“I am positive. Again, I ask, „why are you asking me that?‟”
“Can you tell me if your mother has been depressed or distraught about anything?”
the detective asked as he began to jot notes on a small pad.
Raymond immediately jumped up from the couch and stood directly in front of
Detective Greene who stood at the same height as he. As Raymond stared directly into
his eyes with apparent thoughts of physical aggression, the detective politely backed
away and sat down in a nearby chair.
“Bishop Miller,” he began hoping to find the words that would at least soothe
Raymond for a few moments. “I am more than aware that this news is very devastating,
but these are some questions that I must ask to ensure we handle the investigation in the
proper manner.”
“Investigation?” Raymond asked. “What type of investigation?”
“As I stated earlier, a member of the hotel‟s cleaning staff discovered your mother in
one of the rooms here dead. While investigating the scene we noticed a bottle of insulin
and a syringe beside her body. There were no signs of foul play.” Detective Greene then
paused. “It has all of the appearances of suicide.”
“My mother would never do such a thing,” Raymond whispered as he sat back down
on the couch. “Are you positive it was her?”
Detective Greene retrieved a picture from the inside of his suit jacket and gave it to
Raymond.
“This is a picture taken of the scene,” he said.
Raymond examined the photograph, and tears began to come to his eyes as he realized
that it was indeed his mother. Suddenly Raymond began to cry aloud. The detective,
realizing Raymond needed some time alone, quietly walked out of the office.
As Raymond continued to stare at the picture, he still found it hard to believe that his
mother would take her own life. This was not in her character. His mother was too
strong to allow herself to fall so low. Ruth was a woman that had taken the lives of
others and did it with the ease of an early morning sunrise.
“I don‟t believe it,” he whispered as he continued to stare at the picture.
After sitting alone in the office for over twenty minutes, he then walked out noticing
Detective Greene standing nearby talking to the desk clerk.
“Take me to my mother,” he demanded.
Raymond stared out the passenger side window as they drove toward Carolina‟s
Medical Center mostly in silence.
“Do you know anyone by the name of Trinity Waters?” the detective asked breaking
their silence.
“No,” Raymond responded as he slowly turned his head to view Detective Greene.
“Does she have something to do with my mother‟s death?”
“She is a young lady that committed suicide here in Charlotte a little over a year ago,”
he said softly.
As Raymond was about to ask what her suicide had to do with his mother‟s, he
noticed that they had already arrived at the hospital, where the reporters had already
gathered. Detective Greene drove to a secluded parking lot to avoid the media.
“Just to let you know, I am aware of what happened with your brother‟s fiancé earlier
this week,” Detective Greene said as they both exited the car. “But please know this
information will remain unknown to others as well.”
As Raymond continued to sit on the cold steel stool in the morgue, he still found it
difficult to believe that his mother was gone. He began to feel as if parts of him had also
died. He knew that life as he once knew it would no longer be the same.
As he stood up from the stool, the doors of the morgue opened, and he heard soft
footsteps approach him. Without looking to see who had entered, Raymond already
knew who it was. As they both stared at Ruth, Raymond slowly turned toward his father.
“Genesis three-nineteen says, „By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until
you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you
will return,‟” Raymond Sr. said as he viewed his wife‟s body.
“I need to meet with you in the morning,” he said to his son with the utmost of
authority. “Be in my office at nine a.m.”

Without any emotion he then turned around and walked away, leaving his son with his
dead wife.
The next morning when Raymond was leaving his home, the reporters remained
camped out on the street to the entrance of his estate. As he rode in the back of the
limousine on his way to the campus of God‟s Deliverance, he began to think about his
own life. In a matter of seven days his life seemed to have been turned around a
thousand times.
“Maybe I should commit suicide as well,” he said softly to himself while looking out
the window of the car as his driver attempted to maneuver around the media that
bombarded the street.
As they drove onto the campus, there were yet more reporters there as well as those
who had followed them from his home. After the driver parked in an area restricted from
all media, he emerged out of the car wearing a dark black suit and dark shades. When he
walked into the office, it had the appearance of glee. He was shocked at how cheerful
everyone appeared to be. He wondered if it was just his imagination, but he knew of the
disdain everyone but himself had for his mother.
As he stepped off the elevator, several employees, who appeared to show sheer
concern, greeted him, but still something in his heart told him that everyone was thrilled
to know that Ruth was no longer there.
After looking at his watch and realizing he was early for the appointment with his
father, he decided to make a quick trip to his office. As he sat at his desk aimlessly
looking around the office, he began to replay all the events of the previous day. He
began to think about the young lady, Trinity Waters, that Detective Greene had informed
him had committed suicide a year earlier. He couldn‟t help but wonder why he had
mentioned her and how it could correlate with his mother‟s death.
Nervously he walked into his father‟s office not having any idea what to expect. His
nerves were still in shock from all the events of the past week, mainly the suicide of his
mother. All of his life he had possessed nerves of steel. Ruth had given them to him.
She had told him that he would always be protected and that harm would never come to
him. Now it had, and he was so afraid that even more harm was about to invade his once
seemingly perfect world.
“Good morning, son,” Raymond Sr. began as Raymond walked into his office.
“Please have a seat.”
Raymond sat in a chair in front of the desk, feeling worn and beaten, and stared at his
father waiting for him to speak. As he looked at his father, he studied his face long and
hard. He became curious to know how his father had found out that they had drugged
him all of those years. He also began to wonder if his father had anything to do with the
death of his mother.
“Son,” Raymond Sr. began as he returned eye contact with him. “I know that you are
taking the death of your mother hard, and for that I sympathize with you, but excuse me
if I don‟t share in the sentiments.”
Raymond's eyes immediately dropped down, and he could no longer look his father in
the eyes. He knew that his father was not pleased with him or his mother for their
actions. He became ashamed at what he had done, and now without his mother to help
him he felt lost.
“Son,” Raymond Sr. continued. “What‟s done is done, and there is no way any of us
can go back and change anything we did in the past.” He paused to take a sip of his tea.
“Ecclesiastes three and one says it well. „There is a time for everything, and a season for
every activity under heaven.‟”
Raymond stared at him not knowing how to respond.
“Son, you now have the opportunity to do right by your family. It is necessary that
you now get your house in order, the same thing that I have to do,” he said as he stood
up.
“What do you mean the same thing as you?” Raymond asked confused.
“Son,” Raymond Sr. walked closer to him and sat on top of the desk directly in front
of him. “Over thirty years ago I had an affair with a young lady not too long before we
left Alabama. I‟ve just come to the knowledge that my affair produced a child.”
Raymond stared at his father in disbelief. This new information was something he
never imagined he would hear from his father.
“You are not the only one who has to confess from the pulpit,” he said noticing the
shock on his son‟s face.
“How long have you known?”
“The young lady, Leslie Coleman, contacted me yesterday right as we were leaving
for church,” he said sounding more like a proud father than that of a scolded preacher.
“That‟s the reason I wanted to meet with you. She‟s been living in Jamaica for a while
and will be flying back later this evening. I wanted you to meet her before she left.”
Still in shock, Raymond remained in the chair. He had a million questions, and a
million more emotions had been created. As he remained silent and motionless in the
chair, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in,” Raymond Sr. began with pure excitement as he walked toward the new
arrival to his office.
Raymond remained seated with his back to them both. He wanted to feel angry, but
he didn‟t. He wanted to feel sad, but that emotion also evaded him. He had none.
“Son, son, please come over here and meet your little sister Leslie,” Raymond Sr.
pleaded.
Raymond slowly emerged from the chair and turned around to notice a familiar face.
“It‟s nice to finally meet my famous older brother,” the woman he knew as Victoria
Thomas said innocently with her hand extended.
32
Katherine
Sitting in the living room of my daughters‟ home in Atlanta, I was relieved that
Anthony had been able to contact us before we made it to my house in Fort Mill to meet a
circus of media on our front lawn.

Although I wished death on no soul, I could honestly admit that after hearing the news
of Mother Ruth‟s dying, I felt no emotion at all. The only thing that crossed my mind
was hearing something my grandmother used to say many years ago.
“Baby, sooner or later, all chickens must come home to roost.”
While driving down I-85 South I was surprised that the one person I truly felt sorry for
was Raymond. After all he had put me through, put us all through, I knew that at this
very moment he was hurting deeply.
“How did she die?” Raynita asked softly after removing her thumb from her mouth.
“I‟m not sure,” I said now lying to my other daughter. “Once we get to Atlanta I will
call Anthony back and ask.”
Anthony had already informed me that she had committed suicide, but somehow I
found that hard to believe. A person like Ruth would never leave this world with such a
disgrace as suicide.
“How is Grandpa taking it?” Raynita asked wanting to know much more than the
information I had provided.
“I really don‟t know. Anthony really didn‟t have time to tell me much.”
“Maybe we should have stayed just to be with him,” she replied with sheer concern in
her voice.
After her comment, I thought that maybe she could have been right. Despite how
Ruth had treated Raymond Sr. over the years, they had spent close to fifty years together.
In any kind of relationship, regardless of how tumultuous it was, death would still create
grief.
“Mama, can you tell me more about the new coach, Kevin Taylor?” Sabrina asked
changing the subject and breaking me away from my thoughts of Raymond Sr.
Again, the different reactions of my daughters to certain situations surprised me.
After hearing about the death of her grandmother, she showed no feelings about it at all.
“Sabrina, I really don‟t know that much about him except that he played professional
football and he‟s an excellent teacher.”
“Is he married?” she continued her inquiry.
My only response was the shrugging of my shoulders. I found myself becoming very
uncomfortable with her questions concerning him. I didn‟t really have a set definition of
what he and I shared, but I knew whatever it was, Sabrina in no way could become a part
of the equation.
“I think the next time I‟m home I will come by the school and visit,” she said in a
suggestive whisper. “Who knows, now that Mother Ruth is gone I may come back and
teach at the school.”
Hearing her say that told me how she truly felt about the death of her Grandmother.
“How do you feel about her death?” I decided to ask hoping to understand my oldest
daughter more.
“You reap what you sow,” she said nonchalantly.
As I sat in the living room with the TV on, I began to surf the channels. I was never
much of a TV person, and the one show I watched on a regular basis, Desperate
Housewives, had already gone off.

Sitting on the couch thinking about the past week of my life, the ups as well as the
many downs, I suddenly felt a sense of relief. For the first time in my life I felt as if all
the chains that were once holding me down were now removed. I was a new woman and
I now had the opportunity to live life to the fullest something I definitely had plans of
doing.
As I began to drift off into a slumber, thoughts of Kevin and our last time together
erupted in my mind. With just those thoughts, I felt my hand slide down to my Lady, and
without care or concern about my daughters‟ being in the other room, I allowed my hand
and my thoughts to take me away.
As I was beginning to reach my second climax, my cell phone that was sitting beside
me rang.
“Hello,” I said seductively thinking that I had conjured Kevin to call.
“Katherine?” .
“Yes, Raymond, how can I help you?” I asked with pure agitation.
I knew that he was having a hard time dealing with the death of his mother, and a part
of me really wanted to be there for him, but at that particular moment his timing was
horrible.
There was a long silence. I wasn‟t sure if he were waiting for me to talk or not, but it
was his dime so I allowed him to take his time. I quickly removed my hand from where
it lay and sat upright on the couch.
“I‟m aware that you are in Atlanta,” he began softly, breaking our silence. “When you
come back home, I really need for us to talk. I want to make things right with you. I
want to make things right with everyone.”

As much as I hated to admit to it, at that very moment his compassion really got the
best of me. I suddenly had thoughts of the Raymond Miller Jr. I‟d met over twenty years
ago. I began to feel my heart melt just that easily, but I couldn‟t let him know that those
small and simple words had moved me.
The Raymond I had come to know was an ingenious con artist. Raymond was a great
manipulator. But even in my hatred of him, I still had a strong love for the man.
“Raymond,” I said hoping to find the anger I‟d had earlier in the week of him. “When
I come back home, it will be all about me and my desires. There are going to be several
changes. One being that I don‟t want you in my house when I arrive. We can discuss
this later when I return.”
I immediately hung up the phone refusing to allow him to say anything else. I knew
him well enough to know that if I had allowed any more words to come out of his mouth,
I would have found myself driving up I-85 North back to my husband, back to the place
I‟d once called Hell.
Deciding to sleep in the den on the couch, I took my mind off Raymond as well as
Kevin and returned to channel surfing.
“Breaking News,” I heard a newscaster announce as she began her report. “Ruth
Miller, best known to spiritual believers across the world as Mother Ruth, we are told
died in her sleep early Sunday morning. Doctors have yet to determine the cause of
death.” She then paused as if to show deep sorrow. “Mother Ruth, rest in peace. We all
will miss you.”
“I hope your rest is not in peace, Ruth,” I said suddenly feeling no remorse for the
dead.
Sinful Ways
While sitting on the airplane in first class, for the first time Leslie finally began to feel
that she had arrived. First Class, over the past few years, had been customary, but this
time it was different. This time she knew without a single doubt that her life would no
longer be a struggle. The one person that had kept her down was no longer in the
picture. The one person that had denied her her rightful place at the head of the table
was now dead.
After taking a sip of her complimentary glass of champagne on her flight to Jamaica,
she recalled her latest plot to ensure that she got exactly what was due to her.
“Ruth, didn’t realize what type of bitch I had become,” she thought to herself.
She began to take a trip down memory lane to thirteen years ago when she was
eighteen. That was when she first discovered who her real father was. Her mother had
told her as she lay dying in the hospital.
“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” she remembered asking her.
“Because I was forbidden to say anything to anyone,” her mother responded in a faint
whisper.
Immediately following her mother’s funeral, she was on her way from Montgomery,
Alabama to Fort Mill, SC. She was determined to take her rightful seat and receive the
wealth that her father had accumulated over the years.
“You are who?” she remembered Ruth asking her the first time she’d called.
“I’m your husband’s illegitimate daughter,” Leslie replied with authority, thinking
that by giving Ruth that information, she would swiftly give her anything she asked for.
“You have already been taken care of,” Ruth said before slamming the phone back
onto its cradle.
For months that had been the basis of every conversation between the two women,
conversations that soon went from once a week to twice a week to everyday, causing Ruth
to eventually take matters into her own hands.
She thought about that one day that she would always remember, the day she thought
that she had hit a jackpot, May 21, 1989. It was the Sunday she decided to stand up
during a church service and reveal to everyone who she was. Her mistake then was
being young and naïve.
As she began to walk down the aisle, Ruth who had already noticed that she was there
quickly had her escorted out of the church. Upon meeting Leslie outside, Ruth had then
handed her a check in the sum of ten-thousand dollars, an amount that at the time seemed
like millions to her.

Years had gone by and the money was all gone when she made contact again. The
only difference was that this time Ruth threatened to have her killed, a threat that she
initially ignored until the day someone shot at her, and she received a call.
“This time was a warning. The next time you will be dead.”
As she continued to reminisce on her past, the elderly white woman sitting beside her
began to talk.
“Oh, I am so excited,” she began. “I’m sixty-five years old and this is my first trip to
an island. Is this your first time, too?”
Leslie gave her a long, hard stare. She was always so amazed at how white people
seemed to be so damned giddy about everything.
“No, not-tat-tall,” she replied in her perfected fake Jamaican accent.
“Oh my word, you're an islander,” the woman said with much enthusiasm. “I could
only imagine what your childhood was like.”
After a few moments of idle conversation with the lady, Leslie closed her eyes and
began to think more of her latest plot. She could still see the scowl on Ruth's face when
she’d walked into the hotel room.
“Hmph, you finally look like something,” Ruth said to her with a smirk on her face as
she entered the room.
Ruth showed no fear, and why should she? For years she had been able to keep
everyone at bay and in fear, and Leslie was just like any other peasant she’d had to deal
with over the years.

“What is it that you want now? This is the last time I will ever meet or speak with
you. Please say whatever it is you have to say so that I can be on my way. I have more
pressing matters to attend to than you.”
“What I want from you has no price tag on it.”
“Dear-heart,” Ruth said becoming annoyed. “Again, I have more pressing matters to
attend to this morning than you, so please know that I am being courteous beyond belief
to show up here today.”
There was a long silence between the two women then Leslie walked towards the
closet door and retrieved a small black bag. After placing the contents of the bag, a
portable DVD player on the bed, she then pressed the play button. After she noticed
Ruth's full attention to the screen of the DVD player, she then retrieved the syringe
already prepared with fifty units of insulin in it.
“WHAT KIND OF SICK INDIVIDUAL ARE YOU?” Ruth yelled after watching less
than a minute of the video depicting her son having sex with his half-sister. “How dare
you seduce my son? How dare you have sex with your own brother?”
She began to pace around the room hysterically.
“What kind of person are you?” Ruth asked.
“I am what you made me,” Leslie said nonchalantly as she stared at Ruth.
Full of pure rage, Ruth began to charge towards Leslie. After a small struggle youth
prevailed, and Ruth fell to the bed.
“What did you do--” were her last words after being injected with the syringe of
insulin.
“You were absolutely right. This is the last time you will see me,” Leslie said softly
as she watched her nemesis die a quick death.
Leaving Ruth alone dead in the room, she quickly rushed to another hotel a few blocks
away where she was staying and called her father.
As she continued to mull in her thoughts, she began to think about her affair with
Raymond.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she said softly, remembering the look on his face when it
was revealed to him that she was his sister. “I had sexual relations with my brother.”
Sex with the forbidden was not new to her; however, this forbidden one was different.
Unlike in her previous affair with a woman named Trinity Waters, this lover shared the
same father, the same blood, and although different in many ways, she realized that they
shared the same troubled life.
Once arriving in Jamaica, she quickly made her way to her small villa near a
secluded beach. After dumping a little over two-million dollars in cash onto her bed, she
marveled at how this time an executed plan on her part had ended the correct way. She
was now rich, something that had eluded her since childhood.
As she sat on her bed looking at all the money she had received from Raymond Sr.,
she began to think of two other people, her husband and the man she truly loved.
Her husband was a man whom she’d left without any warning. A man she’d only
married because of his wealth. A man who she had no intentions of ever seeing again.
Then there was the love of her life. The man she had chosen not to be with due to her
thinking he could never give her the finer things in life that she wanted. She loved him,
and she knew that he loved her, but besides the love he had for her, he couldn’t provide
her with the riches she desired. With the riches she’d been deprived of.
Her mind began to travel to a time less than a year ago when she had committed her
first murder. Her thoughts reminded her that in her plans to gain her love back she had
almost killed him as well.
She thought about the woman he now loved. All the information she had on her could
destroy her and bring him running back into her arms, and if that didn’t work, her plans
to kill would just have to do.
Leslie was not afraid to kill, she was no longer apprehensive about killing. She knew
that if anyone ever stepped in her way, they would have to be dismissed immediately.
“Devlin,” she whispered to herself as she walked towards the balcony of her villa. “I
will be back for you, and this time I will succeed at getting you back, even if it means that
I must continue using Sinful Ways.”

Pulpit Confessions By: Péron F. Long

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Pulpit Confessions

discovered she would be in jail, something that was not an option.

“This has to be done,” She repeated again to herself.

“No thank-you,” she replied agitated.

before her. She looked at her watch.

“Seven-Thirty,” she whispered.

“Thank-you,” the waitress yelled with glee of receiving an eighteen-dollar tip.

in the lobby, she then followed her victim upstairs.

face as she entered the room.

the tool to end her bondage.

that he would be home late.

and fell asleep as I waited for Desperate Housewives to come on.

precedence over our marriage.

married Raymond, several of my friends told me what it would be like to be married to

Faye Baker infamous as crooked preachers.

I shook my head “no”.

years after Sabrina came Raynita.

family of GDM, and with that came prestige and honor.

supportive of my career and even encouraged me to return to college to obtain my

Masters. Two years after graduating with my Masters in Education Administration, I

his cell phone when I call.

the phone in our bedroom.

“Hello,” I answered almost out of breathe.

“Has Raymond arrived home yet?”

“No, ma‟am; he hasn‟t,” I replied with frustration.

anyhow, but I could tell that something was eating at her.

are sisters and not a mother with her two daughters.

me. “Why don‟t you touch me anymore?”

even acknowledges my existence.

my husband feel the need to go to another woman?

was my husband or sex that I missed the most.

“Sex,” I whispered as I returned to my bed and began to allow it to do what I longed

for my husband to do. Pleasure me.

hurt like hell.

know her and if I did what would I do to her.

and lay in bed.

grandmother say years ago when I was a little girl.

Raymond had finally pushed me one too many times.

Mitchell Miller, Jr.

Reverend Anthony Miller

happiness that could ever come my way.

for me, I would be in your debt for life.”

brother, fifteen years my senior. He was my idol. He was my hero.

outrageous it would be.

“Just this one last time, okay?”

not just for me, but for God‟s Deliverance as well.”

it was my mother made the entire situation pure hell.

figure out what exactly was wrong with me.

as the thick leather strap slapped up against my bare body.

called me into the ministry.

and hit me so hard upside my head that I fell to the floor.

out the door leaving me on the floor in excruciating pain.

mind as if it happened only moments ago.

amen in the appropriate places.

and brother had started.

she had stayed.

table. I wasn‟t expecting her to be in there.

“Hey,” I said softly.

“Hey,” she replied in a whisper.

suddenly began to feel as if I carried that weight with her.

woman, a woman who felt as if her life had just ended.

There was more silence. I didn‟t know what to say.