Keeper of My Soul. Keshia Dawn

up as fast as he could.

      “Oh my God,” his voice rang out, the second time in less than ten minutes. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” he cried out as he made his way back into his car and reversed. “somebody help me!” Before he could gain energy to start his search for help, the pressure built up from a seizure in waiting caused him to black out while his body jumped against the steering wheel.

      CHAPTER 1

      Stoney

      “Stoney, g’on out yonder and get me a switch from that tree. I’m fed up wit’cha, girl.” Grandma Susie was ready to make a promise of her threats. “G’on now.”

      Walking as slowly as her bony legs would tote her through the screen door, Stoney hesitated as she teetered under the threshold. “But I didn’t even do nothing,” the seven-year-old mumbled under her breath. “I just don’t want no medicine, that’s all.”

      “Wha’cha say, gal?” Grandma Susie positioned her big hands on either side of the rocking chair’s arm-rests, hoping to show Stoney that there was no playing. “Don’t make me come out there and get it myself.”

      Once her bare feet landed on the porch, Stoney looked back at her grandmother and snatched her head back around as fast as she could. Knowing her grandmother couldn’t see her facial expression, Stoney stuck out her tongue and wrapped it in the corner of her mouth, which was her only comeback.

      This would be the third whooping she’d gotten in one week, all because she didn’t want to take medication that Grandma Susie said she didn’t have a choice but to take. Grandma Susie said, “If I gotta take some medicine, so do you.” Every time Stoney drank the bottled purple stuff, she didn’t like the way it made her eyes look at things. She’d heard Grandma Susie tell her old lady friends that giving Stoney medicine was the best way to get her to sleep, hushed up, or to sit down somewhere. As far as Stoney was concerned, she didn’t want to do any of the above.

      Finally moving forward in Grandma Susie’s mission for her to get self-destruction ammo, Stoney stood in front of the only thing besides medicine that she hated: the switch tree.

      With the house she lived in with Grandma Susie behind her, Stoney looked to her left and watched her friends scatter off on the hidden trail. To her right was the alley that would take her toward town. Peeping over her shoulder, Stoney took off toward the alley, hoping her plan to run away led her right into the arms of her mother: someone she had never laid eyes on.

      “So are you down? hello? earth to Stoney.” Vicky snapped repeatedly in her coworker’s face.

      “Uh, huh? Oh, girl.” Stoney sat up straight at her desk. Lost in the recap of her youth, Stoney broke loose from thoughts of one of her runaway attempts.

      “No can do, Vicky the Vixen,” Stoney joked around with her coworker and friend who had been pressuring her all afternoon to have cocktails after work. Remembering that she held a tablet of medication in her left hand, Stoney reached for her bottled water to wash down the pale capsule. “When are you going to give up? If I don’t boogie, you know I don’t guzzle.” Stoney stared at her friend before her frequent eye flutter took over. When Vicky’s own eyes began to water while looking at Stoney’s repeated eye jerking, Stoney paid no mind, and continued her reasoning on why happy hour was out. “Drinking is for the birds. Plus, hanging around you already has me acting thrown off. What you trying to do, get me locked up?”

      “Uh-uh. Chunked is more like it. I feel ya, though.” Vicky shared a laugh with her younger counterpart. “You’re doing the right thing.” easing seriousness into the conversation, a short and vibrant Victoria really did admire Stoney for being young and making God the head of her life. Totally.

      Knowing Stoney had been raised by her grandmother, Vicky could argue with some of the old-fogy ideas that her young friend had about individuals and the world itself, but she respected the twenty-one-year-old for at least giving her life to God and sticking with it. She just wished Stoney would take her advice and lose the coffee-colored stockings and sandals.

      “Girl, keep doing what you doing,” Vicky halfway chanted. “By the time I was your age, I had twenty-one painted on my forehead and all I wanted was for the bartender to keep mixing and pouring. No small talk please.” She hunched her broad shoulders and turned her face, giving an academy award example of her story. When she saw Stoney give her a questioning start, Vicky announced, “Oh, that was months before I knew I was pregnant. By the time I was twenty-five, I had sobered up and was pregnant with my third child.” Vicky let out a weakened sigh, thinking that in her thirty years she had experienced a lifetime.

      Getting up from her desk, Stoney shook her head about Vicky’s comment. “You are a mess,” Stoney said in her nasally tone. “Anyway. I have choir rehearsal and I’m teaching a new song tonight,” she shared as she filed away patient charts for the doctor she worked for.

      “Brother Mike is letting us borrow space in his home since new bleachers are being put in the choir’s stand. You know he got that bad house everybody been talking about. I sho’ can’t miss tonight. You sure you don’t want to come?” Stoney sang to her girlfriend. “I keep telling you he got the sweets for you.”

      “Hmm. That’s nice,” Vicky responded, and then silenced herself. Vicky had had a major crush on Brother Mike since she started going to Bethel sanctuary five years earlier. Recently she had made her move, jumped the gun, and acted on her feelings before knowing all she needed to know about Brother Mike. There was no way she would let on to Stoney, who was still considered fairly new to the church, that she had been all up and through Brother Mike’s new home. And she surely wasn’t going to let on that the fling they had had flung. He may have been sweet, but on her, she figured, he wasn’t.

      “Girl, well, let me run and meet up with the girls. You know li’l Risha Coleman from church charging me by the hour now for keeping my kids.” with the “no she ain’t” expression on Stoney’s face, Vicky knew she couldn’t believe it either. “Yeah, girl. I know. Okay. Well, I’m out of here. I’ll see you at church on Sunday if I don’t see you tomorrow.”

      “Cool. See ya.” Stoney gave her friend a quick hug and waved her out of the office. Glad that she was finally close to someone who was more like a big sister than just a friend, Stoney allowed her smile to linger longer than usual.

      Not used to having any female friends back home, Stoney thought about what Grandma Susie would say if she’d known that Stoney had let someone in her personal life. That was just something people shouldn’t do, as Grandma Susie always said. “People just nosey and want to be in your business.”

      “Aw, Grandma Susie.” Stoney snickered to herself upon reminiscing on her grandmother’s words. “Vicky is different. I finally got a friend.”

      When she first moved to Dallas, Stoney became one of the smartest female students at the most expensive private university in town. That’s where she met Vicky, who had given her the heads-up about an open position at the optometrist’s office. Their initial meeting at a scholarship banquet ignited a quick friendship.

      A student herself, Vicky had defied odds like no other, getting a two-year degree and fighting tooth and nail to get accepted into the prestigious school. She had set out to prove that having three kids out of wedlock didn’t automatically label her doomed. “Just don’t try it,” was always her retort, once she tooted her horn about breaking the odds of statistics. Finishing up her interning at the doctor’s office, it wouldn’t be long before Vicky had her own white jacket with her name embroidered on it.

      Along with providing a job, Vicky befriended Stoney even more when she invited her to church. Since then, a year earlier, Stoney had been attending Bethel and had even joined the choir. No sooner than that, she had been voted the choir’s assistant director, right under Brother Mike.

      Now at the age of twenty-one and two years after her grandmother passed away, Grandma Susie’s death had left Stoney alone in a town where their family came in the form of her grandmother’s friends. Being alone until she moved to Dallas, Stoney