No Faith

1

"B ishop Michael D. Williams was a good man, now… now… now, I don’t mean a good man as in the kind of man who does good things for himself. No, you see this man was a man of God; he was the kind of man that would set aside his troubles to help the next man straighten out his own. Mike was a God fearing man, a devil hating man, and a family man. He was ‘The Man’, and we gone miss him… we gone miss him."

But wipe away your tears congregation, because this man went on home to do his work for the Lord. Can I get an amen up in here, saints? Deacon Towers wiped the sweat that was dripping his brow with a snow-white silk handkerchief. His eyes seemed to be misting, but for the most part he managed to keep his cool demeanor as he gave the eulogy for his very best friend. He began to pace back and forth in front of the dais, every so often glancing at the coffin that seemed to stare at him from the pulpit down below. Every step he took became more dramatic than the last. His movements were almost animated; he pranced and danced in front of his audience. Although he appeared to be in charge and holding up pretty well on the outside, I could tell that he was a ball of confusion.

He was nervous, he was sad and he was angry that his friend was gone, but he didn’t let those emotions stop him from shouting out praises about a man that he loved like a brother, his best friend, and my husband, Bishop Michael D. Williams.

This eulogy was something that only he could deliver. He and Mike had been good friends for years, and Calvin Towers felt that he was the only one who could give his friend the home going that he deserved, and in my opinion, he was the only one who truly knew the Real Michael.

I sat in the front row of our sixteen thousand square foot church, wondering how I got there in the first place. There I sat, only forty years old, and already a widow. I halfway listened to deacon Calvin Towers, as I noticed for the one-hundredth time, how good-looking he was. He was all of five feet and nine inches tall, and had golden brown skin the color of freshly ground cinnamon. His thick wavy low faded hair glistened from the pulpit as he strutted from one end to the other, hyping up the crowd with his unwritten eulogy.

I wanted to listen but I couldn’t. There were too many thoughts running through my mind as I clutched the obituary of my forty three year old dead husband in my right hand, and held the hand of my nineteen year old daughter Keneatra, with my left. I stared at the colorful obituary and asked myself what happened? How did we end up like this? Where did we go wrong? Or was it wrong from the beginning?

I stopped focusing on the obituary and looked at my dead husband lying in the handmade platinum casket. He didn’t look dead. He just looked as if he were sleeping.

I studied him, and wondered if God really did let fools into Heaven. I wondered if my husband, the bishop reverend Michael D. Williams, had really given his life to God before he died. I wondered if he had repented for all of the lying, sneaking and late night creeping, that he had done in the last twenty years. I wondered if he had gotten God to accept him for who he truly was, and for the biggest of Sins that he had committed.

I stopped focusing on Michael, and his lifeless body, and started to pay attention to all of the sobbing church members that filled the room.

Most of the crying and screaming came from the women. Some were young and some were old, some were married but most were single. There were light skinned ones and dark skinned ones, some tall thin ones and some short heavy set ones. They all seemed different, but most of them all had the same things in common. They were all members of the church family that we had built together, and they had all been in love with my husband.

I looked around at them as they acted a fool, and carried on as if ‘JESUS’ himself had been persecuted. I looked at each and every one of them, and tried to tell which ones had also been marked for death. I wanted to know if I could tell by looking at them, which one would be next in line for the ultimate punishment.

Most of them looked healthy as they cried and sobbed, but a few of them had already started to shows signs of weakness as their thinning bodies proved what they had always denied.

I was starting to be able to tell which ones had bedded my husband, and which ones would be punished next.

I looked around at the huge church that sat at least four thousand people. With Michael gone the church and its members were all my responsibility and I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. I didn’t know if I wanted to sell it, or if I wanted to continue on as the first lady and appoint someone to act as the Pastor. One thing that I was sure of though was that everything that had happened in the last twenty years was GODS Will.

I looked back down at the obituary, and at the picture of my husband on the cover. He was as fine on the picture as he had been in real life. His dark chocolate skin looked flawless against the chocolate colored, Armani suit that he wore. He smiled that dazzling white smile as he focused on the camera; his jet-black low cut fade glistened and shined against the sunlight.

I remembered the day that the picture had been taken a couple of years before at the church picnic.

Looking at the picture brought back several unwanted memories, and for once I realized that life was truly short, and that neither today nor tomorrow was promised to any of us. The fact that Michael was gone just hadn’t sank in as of yet. It seemed like in one year we had lived one thousand life times and now it was all over. What a difference a single day could make.

I smiled down remembering that I actually took the photo of him and I could remember thinking to myself that even though I hated him, I just couldn’t stop loving him.

I sat staring at the obituary, and wondered if I would ever cry for the actual death of my husband. I had cried so much in the last twenty years for the death and rebirth of my marriage, I just didn’t have any tears left.

I heard the choir get up and sing, Going up Yonder. I started to giggle to myself as I hummed along to the words. What if Michael didn’t go up yonder? The thought was silly, but I needed to laugh just a little. I was all cried out, and when you are all cried out, just maybe a laugh is in order.

My sixteen-year-old daughter Shayla, who was sitting on the other side of me, hugged me tight. She must have thought that I was weeping instead of giggling tears of joy. I stopped the giggling and tried to pull myself together. In a way I felt good because I was finally free. I was finally going to have the chance to live my life on my terms, and I was happy about that. I had never been on my own before, and I didn’t know what it would be like to be in charge, but I welcomed the idea. Of course I was sad that Mike was gone, and I was afraid of being alone, but there was some sort of sick satisfaction I got from knowing that people did pay for their sins and betrayals.

Mike was my husband, he was a provider, and sometimes a good father, but all in all what he had done to me was wrong, and it wasn’t for me to judge him, but he had been punished, and all I could do was rejoice in the fact that GOD’S Will had been done.

As the choir got louder and more joyful in their song, my three daughters along with everyone else in the church stood up and started rocking back and forth to the music. I stayed in my seat and kept on looking at the obituary. Michael seemed to be looking directly at me. In my mind, he was still alive. See Mike, I told you that he who laughs last laughs the loudest. I told you that everything that you do in the dark will come to the light. I told you that every man reaps what he sows, but you didn’t listen, and now look at what happened. I can’t believe that you didn’t have Faith. I mumbled to him as if he could hear me. For some reason, I believed that he could. I don’t know, I think I am losing my mind.

As I continued to talk to him, wherever he was, tears started running down my cheeks. I was crying and sobbing and I could not stop. Nobody came to my rescue because they were all caught up in the joy that the choir was bringing.

As I cried, my mind started to drift back to a time when things were much simpler in my life. I thought about a time when life was almost good to me. I could still remember it well. It was twenty-two years ago, that I had my first real encounter with Michael. It was a day that I would always remember, because it was the day that my destiny would be laid out for me.

2

T he Day was December the 8 th 1988, and I was a shy and insecure nineteen year old, church going, virgin.

I remember the day so well because it was the weekend that my devout Christian mother had went away to a weekend retreat with her church. She had left my sister Carla and I home alone for the entire weekend. I was three years older than Carla and by far the more responsible of the two. Before my mother left, she laid down a list of rules that Carla was supposed to abide by. She didn’t give me any rules, she just told me to watch Carla and to make sure that she did her chores.

She didn’t bother to give me the same lecture and speech that she had just given to Carla about not being with boys, or engaging in sex or drugs over the weekend, because she just knew that those rules did not apply to me because nobody wanted to have sex with me in the first place.

You see; Carla was the cute one. She was high yellow, with flawless skin the color of a peeled banana, she had sparkling gray eyes, and teeth so white you could see her smiling from across a busy city street. She was short, and curvy, and had long thin golden brown hair that hung loosely past her shoulders. She had red freckles sprinkled on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose and she just knew that she was all of that and then some.

She looked a lot like our mama who also had that bright flawless skin. Their skin was so light that they could almost pass for being White, and most certainly pretend to be a Latino if they wanted to.

As for me, I took after my dads’ side of the family.

My skin was the color of a roasted coffee beans and prone to break outs, I had one dimple in my left cheek, and long thick hair, except mines wasn’t that pretty golden brown color. It was jet black. Even though I had long hair, it was far from the ‘good hair’ that my sister possessed. My hair was so thick and unmanageable, that I could never wear it down or loose. I would go to the beauty shop, and they would spend hours washing, detangling, blow drying, and then running a pressing comb through it. I can remember sitting through hours of excruciating pain and agony, and when it was all said and done, my hair would be pretty for about three hours, but by the end of the day it would be a big thick afro.

It just wasn’t worth all the time and effort I had spent trying to manage it, so I just wore it pinned up in a pony tail or I would have my mother put a thousand bobby pins in it and wear it in a bun.

To top it all off, I wore huge bottle capped type glasses, because I had terrible eyesight. As far as my body went, I was just plain old fat, well not fat but so thick, that I always felt as if my size sixteen body was just one candy bar away from being huge. To make matters even worse, my small breasts made my shape look un-proportionate. I guess you could say that I was not the bomb, and I didn’t need any body to confirm that fact. Every day I was reminded of how cute I was not, by the way every body treated me.

It wasn’t that people intentionally treated me bad during my teenage years; it was the fact that they just didn’t acknowledge me. My own mother used to seem too embarrassed to take me out. All through high school, I worked at the Lucky Drug store down the street from my house, and it seemed like every time I was scheduled to work, my mother would invite Carla to go somewhere. They would go to church functions or just shopping and have lunch together.

One time my grand mother, who was half White, asked my mother how come she never took me anywhere and mother just laughed and told her, The reason that I don’t ask Faith to go anywhere is because she is always working. Plus she is not the type who likes to do things, she likes to be alone. I guess my grandmother believed the bogus answer that my mother gave, and for some strange reason I almost believed it too. It was easy to believe that her not spending time with me was my own fault, but in my heart I knew that my mother really didn’t want to be seen with me because I was not her ideal picture of beauty.

She always told me that I looked too much like my daddy’s people, and she hated his people more than she hated him. They had divorced when I was only three years old, and even though my mother would always say that they divorced because he wasn’t a Christian man, and that he was a sinning, good for nothing drunk, the rumors that circulated in the family told a different story.

According to the gossip that had been spread through the family grapevine, my mother and father stopped getting along after my mother joined the Miracle and Praise Church Of God In Christ, and became holier than every body else.

She and my father had gotten together very young, and he had worked as an engineer at a car factory. She didn’t work. Instead she filled her time being a homemaker. One day she met a lady who invited her to a church function and she, being bored with being a housewife, accepted the modest invitation, and pretty soon the church was her life.

Every time the doors to the church opened my mother was there. She joined every committee that the church had to offer. She stopped taking care of home and stopped paying attention to my father’s needs and wants and eventually he started filling his time by hanging out and getting drunk. He had no reason to come home after work because he knew that his wife went to church on Tuesday nights for bible study, Wednesday afternoon for afternoon prayer, and then back again that night for Wednesday worship, Thursday afternoon for the Pastors aide committee meeting, again that same night for choir rehearsal, Friday night was youth night, Saturday was street witnessing day, and on Sunday’s we had three full services that held up the day, and I do mean the whole day.

Mom was so involved that she had the nerve to reserve Monday’s as the day that she did the churches books. Church was her life, and she had found God, and when she found God she realized that the love she once had for her hard working young husband, just wasn’t the love that she was looking for any more.

Even though my mother and father argued a lot during that time, her faith in God and her religious beliefs would not allow her to get a divorce. Getting a divorce was against the rules for Christians, so she tried to stick it out with him.

According to the family rumors, he had begged and pleaded for her to spend time with him; to spend time with us. He wanted to be a family again but my mother told him that she could not change and that if he wanted to be a family, then he should learn to be a man, a God fearing man, like her pastor.

My father’s heart was crushed, and it wasn’t long before he stopped coming home after work and he started having affairs with several women.

When my mother noticed that he wasn’t coming home because he was laid up in other women’s beds she just kept quiet and prayed on the situation. She even sought advice and guidance from her pastor. Eventually my father got tired of the cheating and reasoned with his wife. Everything seemed like it was going to work out between them, when my mother became pregnant with their second child.

My father was happy and vowed to my mother that he would stop his cheating and his drinking. He even promised to give his life to the Lord. He started going to church and he even got saved. We were a family.

I was just two years old, but I still remember how happy my young parents were at that time. We would go to church on Sunday mornings, and after the afternoon service, we would go home and my mother would serve us the dinner that she had stayed up preparing the night before. A lot of the time the pastor would bring his wife and their four young children to have dinner with us.

My mother and father would laugh and joke with them and they would talk about every body that acted a fool in church that day. The pastor and his wife were both a lot older than my parents. My parents were only twenty-five years old and the pastor and first lady were both in their early forties, but they seemed to enjoy being around my youthful parents and they developed a strong bond with them.

Pretty soon everything that we did, we did with their family. We went on vacation with them and we stayed at their house a lot.

When my mother went into labor, my father called my grandmother first, and then he called Eileen, the pastor’s wife. He dropped me off at my grandmother’s house and then he stopped to pick Eileen up on the way to the hospital. I have been told that my father prayed outside of my mother’s hospital room, while Mrs. Eileen stayed in the room to help my mother deliver her new baby.

It took ten hours, but eventually my sister popped out and joined the world. It has been said, that you could hear screams all the way down the corridors of the hospital.

I have heard stories about how on that day; Ms. Eileen lost her religion and her mind, as she tried to strangle my mother, while she lay in her hospital bed clutching her new baby. She cursed my mother out severely as the nurses carried her out of the room. My father immediately ran into the room to see what all of the commotion was about and realized what had gotten Eileen so upset.

My mother lay in bed holding a high yellow little girl with the same colored sandy brown hair, and gray eyes as Pastor Robert Coleman; Eileen’s husband.

My father came into the room expecting to find his newborn baby deformed or maybe even stillborn; but what he saw pissed him off severely. He took one look at the baby and turned and walked out of the room crying as he left the hospital. The first thing he did when he got home was to pack his bags and load them into his pick up truck.

Then he stopped by the church and walked in during the middle of the pastor’s Friday night sermon. Supposedly my father walked up to the pulpit and snatched the microphone from Pastor Coleman’s hands. He then congratulated him on his new baby girl.

He told the whole church how the pastor had been sleeping with his no good, whore wife and then he turned around and knocked the pastor out cold, in front of the congregation. He walked out of the church and out of our lives. I didn’t see him again until I was a married adult, and even then he refused to tell me the real details of the story.

Needless to say that when my mother came home from the hospital, she was too embarrassed to show her face around the church, she had heard what my father had done, and the people in the church despised her. She was the talk of the Black church community. She was known as the home wrecker that ruined the pastor’s name and good reputation. People assumed that she had taken advantage of their wonderful pastor, and on a few occasions the women in the church called our home to let her know exactly what they thought of her and where she could go. My mother could no longer walk in her neighborhood with her head held high.

Everybody she ran into had heard what she had done to her family and to the church family. In the eyes of the church community she was nothing more than a common street whore.

We eventually moved from the city of San Francisco and across the bridge to Oakland because rumors were all over town that my mother was the reason that Ms. Eileen had gone crazy.

From what I heard, after my mother delivered the baby, Ms. Eileen went home, and sat on her bed staring into space, and her mind drifted off and never came back. She was eventually put into a mental institution after the ladies in the church realized that her mind was gone for good.

When we moved to Oakland I was only three years old, but already I could feel the isolation that my mother bestowed on me. She doted on her precious new baby, whom she named Carla and she just despised me.

We eventually settled in at a new church and the years started to fly by. My mother never ever looked at a married man again. In fact after having Carla I don’t think she looked at a man period.

So the day finally came when she trusted us to stay alone for the whole weekend, and unlike Carla, I had promised myself that I would be responsible for the weekend, because I wanted more weekends alone. I wanted my mother to start going out and having a life.

Plus I was just glad that I wouldn’t have to hear her nagging voice in my ear every day, telling me things like, girls shouldn’t wear pants, because that’s pertaining to a man. Or things like, girl please, you need to wear bleaching cream. I know it will help you lighten up just a little bit. I was tired of hearing her say, Faith this, and Faith that. She really got on my nerves and I couldn’t wait for the day to come when I could escape from the grasp of her sharp claws.

As soon as my mother pulled out of the driveway with her friend Lily from the church, Carla turned to me and told me to get dressed because we were going out. I looked at her like she was crazy. Our mother had just laid down the law to her, not even five minutes ago, and already she was ready to break the rules. I told her to go and sit down somewhere, because I was not about to get in trouble for her. She smiled that devilish smile of hers and tossed back her hair, before she made her valid points. She pointed out the fact that my mother’s retreat was way out in the city of Modesto, which was almost one hundred miles away.

She was quite sure that it would take Ms. Lily, at least three hours to get there because she drove like a little old lady. then she mentioned that when mama got with her church friends that she would get all caught up in catching up with them.

She assured me that our mother would not be calling us that evening. She was sure of it. When I asked her what she wanted to do, she told me that she had wanted to go skating at the local skating rink. I looked at her again like she was crazy, she knew that our mother had told us to never ever go into that place because they played devilish music, and smoked cigarettes. Carla just smiled and asked me if I was curious to see what really went on in there. Teka was on her way to pick us up.

I ran to my room to get dressed and then I realized that I was about as dressed as my wardrobe would let me get. I had on a beige colored knee length pencil skirt with a matching blouse, and a white sweater. I wore white flat leather shoes and my mother’s pearls around my neck. I didn’t wear make up, so I just fixed up the bun that was pinned to the back of my head.

When I came back into the living room, Carla and her friend Teka both looked at me like I was crazy. Carla tried to remind me that we were going skating and not to church. I quickly put her and her friend in their place by telling them that I didn’t care where we were going, because I was always going to be dressed like a respectable woman that lived her life for the Lord.

I let them both know that there was no way in the world that I was going to go out looking like a street walker.

They both realized that I was talking about the way that they were dressed and they both quickly shut their mouths and started to head outside to the car.

I followed them outside and quietly hopped into the backseat of Teka’s, 1984 Buick Regal. At that time in 1988, that car was considered a nice, somewhat expensive car. Teka had gotten it for her sixteenth birthday. She was one of the only girls at our school that had her own car, and the fact that it was only a few years old made every one envious of her, because in our eyes, she had it going on. She had a new car.

We arrived at the skating rink and Teka and Carla instantly got together with some of their friends from school and left me to fend for myself. I thought about trying to catch up with them, and trying to tag along, but I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb.

Because the skating rink was located on a main street; ‘E14th’, the busiest street in Oakland, it always stayed packed. The place was small, and I can’t even remember the name of it. But what I do remember was that it was small and dark with neon strobe lights blinking on and off inside of the room and I can still remember how good the New Edition, Run DMC and MC. Hammer songs sounded as they blasted from the speakers that were plastered on the walls throughout the place.

As soon as I got there I noticed that all of the girls; my sister included, were dressed to impress.

I decided that I would go and sit in a corner on a wooden bench and watch the skaters as they did their thing.

I wasn’t dressed like the other girls, and I was clearly out of place; they all wore teeny tiny, poom poom shorts, or tight fitting leather pants with leather jackets, or skintight jeans that had zippers on the back near their ankles. They wore Adidas sneakers, fake gold bamboo earrings and had asymmetrical hairstyles like Salt N Pepa. I didn’t want to get out there and skate for the first time and look stupid. I knew that I would probably fall on my butt at least five times before I got the hang of things, and to me it just wasn’t worth it, so I observed as everyone else did their thing. All of the guys were looking good, wearing tight fitting jeans, Adidas Sneakers with the wide laces, and fake donkey roped gold chains, they were all sporting their shags, and Jheri curls and they all tried to be smooth as they picked up on the girls.

The girls weren’t even playing hard to get. They were actually breaking their necks to get noticed. I watched my sister from across the room, wearing her little short white shorts, and small turquoise halter-top. She had on some gold bamboo earrings, that weren’t even hers and a fake gold chain that a boy named Ronald had given to her on her last birthday. She was looking good and she knew it. I watched in awe, as the boys and men surrounded her, hoping to get her number.

She would spend a little time with each one of them before she would dismiss them to concentrate on her girlfriends and her skating. I admired her and I wished that it were me who had all of the guys flocking to me. I wished that I had the eyes and the hair. I wished that I was pretty.

After watching my sister flirt, laugh and have a good time for about four hours, I was starting to get bored. I had been sitting in the same spot the whole night and not one boy had asked me if I wanted to skate. Nobody had even come to sit by me. I was alone and ready to go home. In my state of boredom, I had lost track of my sister and her loud group of curvy, high yellow friends. I scanned the dark room, and tried to make out her silhouette.

I got up and started walking around the room to see if I could spot her in the dark, spinning room. After awhile I realized that she wasn’t on the skating rink floor at all, so I decided to go and look for her at the snack bar, and low and behold there she was walking to a table smiling, and holding on to the arm of one of the most finest men I had ever laid eyes on; Michael Williams Jr.

Even though I didn’t really know Michael, I had seen him around and had heard many rumors about his player ways. He was the son of the good Reverend Doctor, Michael Williams Senior, at New Hope Baptist Church. I had seen Michael around at a few church conventions and had witnessed him get his ‘Mack’ on with all of the girls in sight.

He was truly a player and I was not going to let him play my sister. He was the kind of guy that drove women and young girls crazy when he smiled that big pearly white smile. He was tall dark and most definitely handsome. He was Johnnie Gill from New Edition fine. He kept his hair cut low, and his eyes were dark and deep set. In addition to having the gift of the gab, as most preachers and their sons do, he also had access to his father’s brand new Cadillac. He was a young girls dream come true, and he was an old woman’s fantasy.

I started walking in the direction that he and my sister were heading in. I reached the table that they were walking to just as he set a tray of food on top of it.

Carla it’s time to go. I was forced to yell over the loud music, she kept on talking as if she didn’t hear me, so as I grabbed a hold of her arm, hindering her from sitting down.

I must have caught her off guard because when she spun towards me, she elbowed me in the face and knocked my glasses to the floor. I was instantly blinded, and started scrambling to pick them up. I could hear laughter coming from the small group of friends who were all sitting at the long wooden table. Carla tried to come to my rescue as I blindly searched for the glasses that had landed underneath the table.

I searched around on my hands and knees not realizing that people were looking right up underneath my beige skirt. There was more laughter as Carla said,

What is wrong with you, with your goofy self? She started to help me up from the floor. As I stood up, I was facing Michael; by this time he had my glasses in his left hand. He reached out and handed the glasses to me, I was so embarrassed that I barely looked at him as I took them.

Look it’s time to go, okay? I yelled at Carla as I put my glasses back on. I didn’t bother to thank Michael at all.

Whatever… Carla dramatically rolled her eyes and then directed her attention back towards Michael and her friends at the table.

I guessed that she was trying to ignore me. I waited about another minute for her to realize that I was serious and that it really was time to call it a night, but she acted as if I wasn’t standing right next to her. She just continued to laugh and talk with her friends. She even had the audacity to sit down at the table, and Michael sat down right next to her, and the two of them began to carry on a conversation, like I didn’t exist.

By now I was pissed off. Look it’s time to go home Carla, and I am not in the mood to play with you. I said in a quiet non-threatening voice. She looked at me like I had dirt or doo-doo smeared on my face.

Stop acting like an old lady, and take your black butt home. I couldn’t believe she was acting like that with me. I guess that she was trying to impress her new boyfriend Michael, but I wasn’t having it. I reached across the table and grabbed her by the loose ponytail in her hair and threw her to the floor.

Before she could respond, Michael jumped up from where he was sitting, and grabbed a hold of both of my arms.

Hold on sister, you don’t have to do her like that. He said. I looked at him and acted like I didn’t hear him. Carla had made me mad in front of too many people and I was tired of playing the nice guy. I called her several names that I later repented for and told her that she had better take her fast tail home.

She got up from the hard concrete with the help of Teka and Michael’s good friend and co-player, Calvin, and told me that I was not her mother and that she was not coming home until she got good and ready. I just laughed at her and told her that if she didn’t come right then and there, that she could stay out until our mother came home at the end of the weekend. With that said, I turned around and headed for the door. I was going to walk home.

I hadn’t made it but one block, before a car pulled up along side me and honked the horn. I wasn’t worried