Glory Unbound by Deborah L. King

Author:Deborah L. King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: african-american, women's fiction, family drama, dysfunctional family, domestic abuse
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2021-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

INTERLUDE

JUNE 1980

In the Robinson Room, three eighth-grade girls leaned against a second-floor windowsill, watching the boys playing basketball down in the parking lot. There was one adult out there, the new youth minister. He wasn’t that good, but what he lacked in skill, he made up for in height. He towered over the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys who ran circles around him.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. We all know the Bible.” Trina applied a thick coat of roll-on lip gloss, filling the air with the scent of bubblegum.

Andrea took her lip gloss from Trina. “No, he like really knows the Bible. Like every word of it. By heart.” She rolled on lip gloss, smacked her lips, and offered the bottle to Glory.

“That’s impossible.” Glory rolled the sweet greasy ball over her top lip and then rubbed her lips together. She made a mental note to wipe it off before her mother finished choir rehearsal. “Nobody can know the Bible by heart. And which one? There’s a lot of different ones.”

“Yeah, and my daddy said he, like, knows them all.” Andrea accepted the bottle back from Glory and put it down in her bra.

“Well, I don’t care how much Bible he knows.” Trina blew a small bubble with pink bubblegum. “He is fine! I bet I get him before y’all.”

“You can have ’im.” Andrea blew a bigger bubble than Trina’s.

“Trina, why would a twenty-something-year-old man want a fourteen-year-old?” Glory asked, trying and failing to blow a bubble of any size. “That’s just gross.”

“Because I know how to rock his world,” Trina boasted. “And I’m fifteen, so I know some things y’all too young to learn.” Trina stood up straight with her chest out and her hands on her hips. “Y’all just little girls, but I’m woman enough for Mr. Malcolm, the miracle man.”

Glory and Andrea looked at Trina then looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Laugh all you want. Y’all just watch me.” Trina flounced out of the room.

Glory shook her head. “Why does she walk like that? She’s gonna hurt her back.”

“Her back’ll be fine.” Andrea snickered. “She, like, lays on it enough!”

Both girls laughed hysterically but quickly quieted down when they heard heels clicking in a nearby hallway. A few seconds later, they watched Trina switching across the parking lot to the basketball court, a bottle of pop in her hand. She walked straight up to Malcolm, held out the bottle, and shrugged. Malcolm smiled a little, took the bottle from Trina, and opened it and then held it out to her. Trina didn’t take the bottle back. She placed her hands over his, threw her head back, and slowly turned the bottle up.

“Oh my God, would you, like, look at her?” Andrea moved to open the window. “She’s, like, such a tramp!”

Glory pushed down on the window handle. “No! Let her make a fool of herself. She deserves it.”

The two girls watched Trina slowly turn to walk away as a grubby orange basketball came flying and landed against her backside, causing her to stumble and dirtying her tight yellow dress.

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