It's Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan

Author:Terry McMillan [McMillan, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

I was listening to Kwame’s voicemail thanking me for sending him the money and saying what a lifesaver I was, when B.B. started barking at the front door. Kwame had just said that his mother’s recovery was going to be slow, but she was improving a little bit every day, when I heard the knocking. I hit End.

I was surprised to see Sadie standing there when I opened the door. Her short platinum hair on her tiny head looked like a French poodle, and she was wearing a lavender dress with puffy sleeves, which was so out of character it was almost funny.

“What’s wrong, Sadie?”

“I have to cancel dinner tonight,” she said, and stormed right past me and sat in Carl’s chair, which I didn’t really like. No one sits in that chair but me.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s him. Again.”

“Not the preacher?”

“He’s back. He left his wife.”

“What’s that got to do with dinner tonight?”

“Do you remember how you felt when you fell in love with Carl, Loretha?”

“Of course I do. But Carl didn’t have a wife and I also wasn’t a sanctimonious hypocrite.”

“He left his wife for me.”

“You know what? I wish you had been a lesbian.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We always thought you were. Well, I did. And Korynthia did.”

“What would make you think that?”

“Because we never once heard you talk about any guy you were with and we never saw you with one.”

“I was saving myself.”

“For who?”

“For the Lord.”

“Well, you sure found him, didn’t you? But why do you have to cancel dinner?”

“Because he has no place to stay.”

“Are you standing here telling me you let that son-of-a-bitch move in with you? Please don’t tell me that, Sadie.”

“I did.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell him to go find a church that’s open late and stay there while we have dinner at your apartment. And while he’s there, he can beg his Lord and Savior to forgive him for his sins and for being unworthy of your love and his wife’s love.”

“I don’t know if he’ll understand.”

“You are making me want to slap some sense into your ass, you know that? Have you told anybody else your good news?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m afraid of what they might say.”

“Oh, so you came to see me thinking I was going to get all Oprah on you or something? Tell you to live your best life with this man?”

“Can you just tell them I’m sick?”

“No. Hell to the no! We are coming over to your apartment for dinner because you promised us you wouldn’t back out this time, so it better be ready when we show up at seven o’clock. And he better not be there when we get there or we will sprinkle his ass with the kind of water that burns.”

“Lo, please?”

“No. In fact, hell no!”

“Okay! I’ll tell him to just stay in the bedroom.”

“No. That’s too close. He needs to be gone.”

She just stood there, looking stupid in all that lavender.

“And we’ve got a lot of other things we need to talk about.

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