Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva Read Online Free PDF Page B

dramatic turn one ordinary Saturday afternoon at the tender age of seventeen. It began the way it always did, dreadfully, cleaning an inheritance I knew I’d never claim. Somethin’ was gonna happen, oh yes, I predicted things all the time and was usually right. Scared some folks half to death too.
    Running late and pedaling double-time, I’d forgotten to tie up my braids, unraveling the way an old lie was about to. Couldn’t risk the chunky church ladies tattlin’ on me. They all thought a girl runnin’ around with loose hair meant flirt’n and conceit and that was a sin. So I turned my rusty bike around and headed home quick in a hurry.
    Rolling up on the lawn flushed, with the taste of salty perspiration in my mouth, I ran toward the back screen door. But before I opened it I stopped dead inmy tracks, hearing familiar voices coming from the woodshed. I sank down in the clover and crabgrass and crawled closer.
    Peering through dusty windowpanes, amid bunches of drying homegrown herbs I saw the obstructed profiles of Grandma Jones and Pastor Chester Winslow, the white town preacher.
    I was able to make out every other word over the drumbeat of my heart, but what I saw filled in the blanks.
    “How’s . . . television work . . . and how’s my . . . ?”
    Never looking up, she replied with a nod.
    He kept talking, I strained to hear. Then something happened that shook me to the core, something that was clearly routine. He handed over an envelope crammed full of cash.
    “. . . takin’ real . . . care of my little . . .”
    Feeling sick, I collapsed to the ground, under the stinging truth that Winslow plundered the plate every Sunday. He took up two collections and now I knew why.
    “The second collection is for a very special cause.”
    Everyone in the congregation wondered what that “special cause” might be.
    “Shake it down ’n’ roll it ovah. If you’ve got five give ten, if you got ten give twenty, but good God Almighty whatever you do, don’t let me hear loose change hit my dish.”
    The holy looter walked out our shed, his monstrous two-tone Cadillac kickin’ up dust as Grandma shuffled back into the house with the weight of guilty knowledge on her shoulders.
    Back on my bike, riding it like the dickens, I took a shortcut, a narrow path sliced through the woods, fragrant with wild blueberries, beating Winslow by a nick.
    Oblivious, I charged out of a service room, looping an apron around my neck, a bobby pin between my teeth.
    “Whoa, slow down, Beulah, where’s the fire?” he asked as he hung his straw hat in the vestibule. “My goodness, I don’t think I’ve evah seen you in such dis-a-rray or in a rush to work.”
    Caught off guard, a mountain of tousled hair piled on top of my sweaty head, I stood there, stuck in quicksand until he asked, “How’d you get those grass stains?”
    Glancing down to see the evidence of spying earlier, I removed the bobby pin from my mouth and answered, “I w-was . . .” I stuttered, feeling perspiration trickle down my back.
    “Never mind, Beulah. Why don’t you take that rat’s nest down so pastor can see just how long all that thick hair is. Reminds me of your mother. Promise I won’t say a word to your grandma.” He chuckled, staring at me as if reliving his pitchy past.
    “No! I mean I have a lot of work to do today.”
    Startled, he snapped himself back and responded, “Yes, well get my tea ready and make it snappy.”
    I scurried into the kitchen, sharpening my teeth on a bold plan.
    Along with unmistakable traits from my father, I inherited my mother’s face, soul, and the task of cleaning Winslow’s house.
    If the truth be told, I wasn’t the only child sired by him. Under the pretense of offering spiritual guidance and bereavement counseling, he preyed on innocence and took advantage of trust. The jackleg preacher had a long history of enlightening with more than just words, lifting the downtrodden with one hand while helping himself to