ECCLESIASTES 3: 1-8

After he prayed the benediction, half the church readied themselves for the procession. I stayed for one last look at Chanel. I followed the giggling behind me and saw that Pastor Leroy stepped out from behind the pulpit. One of the women from the front pew rubbed his arm while another offered to cook him dinner. Once he saw the eyes on him, he shooed them away and walked towards me.

“Sister Simone, I’m surprised to see you here,” he said.

“I don’t see why not. I grew up with Chanel. With you.”

He didn’t budge. “Well you’re always welcome back here. It’s never too late to get right with God.”

I stared at him. My jaw clenched. “It’s not my soul you need to worry about, Pastor.”

“Well,” he backed up, “I guess I’ll be seeing you at the burial.”

“I guess so,” I sucked my teeth and caressed Chanel’s cold, puffy face.

It had been a month since I last saw her alive. She rushed into my house on a Tuesday afternoon. The love spell I gave her to be the recipient of all of her husband’s affection was wearing off; she needed something stronger.

“He has a child on the way,” she cried while pacing in front of my couch. “I…I don’t know what else to do.”

“Can you sit down?” I tried to calm her. “Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?” The stress ate the meat off her bones. Her clavicle protruded from the blouse that enveloped her. The skirt she wore threatened to fall off at any second. The tangled wig sat sideways on her head.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, still pacing and biting her nails. “Can you sit, please? All your pacing is making me dizzy.” She sat beside me, but now her leg bounced. It’d do for now.

“Simone,” she held my hands,

Here is the space to add description of the image place above lorem ipsum space te si nosam, siti.

“Is there anything you can do to make this baby go away?”

“I can’t,” I told her. I couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. “Did you ask your husband about it?”

She looked betrayed that I even asked her. “He lies about everything. Everytime I confront him, he say it’s the devil driving us apart.’” Her lip quivered in frustration. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“You can leave,” I offered.

“And go where?” She was up again, pacing. “I can’t just leave my husband, the church. I have an image to uphold. You wouldn’t understand.”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

She shook her head and sat next to me, “You’ve always been brave, Simone. I haven’t. I wish I could do half the things you do.”

“I’m not brave,” I confessed. “I have fears and insecurities too.”

“But not like me.”

I sighed and shifted my body towards her, clasping her hands. “I didn’t leave Darrell because I didn’t love him. You know how they raise boys here. I left because I was afraid of losing my freedom if I married him. I was afraid that I wouldn’t survive that kind of life.” I was afraid that I’d end up like you is what I didn’t tell her.

She sighed, tucking her head in her hands, “You know, Mother Denuit told me that this is just how men are. That real women stick by their men, and if I was a real woman, I wouldn’t make a scene.” Tears fell from her eyes as her hands trembled.

I rubbed her back. Mother Denuit would know. Deacon Denuit was the father to my cousin Letitia and a host of other kids that were not Mother Denuit’s. “You can choose differently.”

She clasped her hands and shook her head. Through tears she confessed, “I can’t.”

Looking at her cry, she was a shell of her former self. In high school, Chanel was the It Girl. Everyone wanted to be like her, dress like her, act like her. Boys groveled at her feet. It was I who was envious of her, the way she walked through the world with the power to make life happen, but the power she had was given, not innate. She had all the choices in the world, but like most girls in our small town she wanted to be a wife and a mother. By thirteen, she had planned her ring, dress, and season. At twenty, after Brian dumped her, she only entertained potential husbands. And at twenty-two, when half the girls from high school were married, she was single and desperate. Within the year, she married Pierre Leroy. Five years later, she sat on my couch crying over him.

“You know,” she sniffed; the tears sobered her up a bit. “When we were younger, I could imagine a future with every boy I ever dated. But Pierre? Pierre was different. When I’d see our future, I just saw black. I thought it meant that it was still forming, that the possibilities were endless, but now,” she sighed again. “I don’t know what to think.”

She was right. When we dreamed of our future, we dreamt of possibility. But the blackness itself was a possibility, albeit an absolute one.

“Can you help me?” Her eyes were sunken and red.

My chest tightened knowing that the strongest spells had the highest cost: blood. “I can.”

“Will he love me?” image you siti.

I wanted to tell her that a man that didn’t respect her would never love her, but she had dedicated her life to him so instead I offered her hope. “He will,” I said. And she took comfort in the lie.