The devil smiled at me because I was doing his work for him...but nevermore!
It was nearly fall when news of Tupac Shakur’s death fell into my corner of Illinois suburbia eerily on Friday, September 13, 1996.
It felt like the sudden eternal shift of one of the biggest rap stars to walk the planet somehow paralleled the changes soon to come in my life.
Years of mountainous magazine pitches “Looking for Mr. Byline” had, at that point, failed to put my name in the 42-point boldface serifs of national print mags like Writer’s Digest — published clips I’d eventually enjoy.
Yet in the late ’90s, my hopeful “Another request for script by agent…” and “Sent 12 queries!” entries in the gratitude journal that both Oprah and the author of Simple Abundance said I should keep only served as a marker of my dashed dreams of becoming the black female version of Joe Eszterhas.
Not the incestual Jeff & Tammy Story I’d kicked around in my red-ink ruminations dated 5/5/96, but “more than likely a story about the rise of a new spiritual consciousness as we approach the millennium,” which is how I worded my flake-like, Shirley MacLaine-sounding desires in the same passage.
But before planting my National Book Award seeds, I was focused on leaving the Chicagoland of “my kindred” and going forth to an area my cosmopolitan city-fied self initially assumed contained mass expanses of cows lolling atop acres of lime-rind colored pasture.
How Green Was My Ohio Valley?
By Veteran’s Day — Monday, November 11, 1996 — my boyfriend “Paul” and I had made the transition from our one-bedroom apartment in Matteson, Illinois — only a Metra-train or Celica ride away from our jobs at Chicago Title & Trust Company down in the bustling Loop area — to “beautiful Fairlawn, Ohio.”
That’s how our new boss described the less bustling, less cosmo, Cracker Barrel-and-Chi Chi’s lined clean town that housed our new positions within the small financial firm just bought by a retirement-planning giant.
But screw the bean counting, excitement over tapping out my latest tome grew to a crescendo when I discovered I could display a work document in my Microsoft Word pane whilst typing the raunchy scenarios I’d devised for my novel in invisible text on the same page without coworkers knowing.
“Do you want to go to a gospel concert?” my new colleague “Jamie” asked after sidling up behind my top-floor cubicle in the corner.
“Yes,” I answered quickly, surprising myself.
Something about Jamie’s deep-set bug eyes was so familiar and familial — like staring straight into my sister’s eyes.
I felt an instant and comfortable connection to the needed character placed at that plot point in my journey by a master author, finisher and perfecter.
Alone again, it was back to perfecting my literary lede, replete with expletives and Bible verses juxtaposed next to one another.
But a constant, unseen scraping of what sounded like a wire hanger screeching against a metal pipe outside my window — above and to the right — kept distracting me from my mission.
"The false gods will fail you."
“The false gods will fail you.”
The first half of 1997 found me sporting a new 1-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring on my dominant south paw, and a wind chime hanging inside the sliding glass door of the 3-bedroom place Paul and I shared.
It was an effort to ward off the bad “sha” — one of the lessons learned in the many Feng Shui books I’d been studying.
The mirror I’d placed behind the back of my stove burners to “double them,” and therefore, my bounty of blessings, drew a curious eye from my future sister-in-law.
But the tip I’d shared with another coworker had drawn consternation.
“I’m going to get a statue of Buddha and put gold leaves on the head and feet for more money.”
“That’s a false god,” said Sean, a ginger-bearded, quick-witted Irish fellow, a born and bred Buckeye-state Catholic.
“No it’s not,” I shot back, not knowing what else to say.
I never bought the statue.
Later, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, enthralled by a news segment featuring a hefty brunette — a so-called modern-day prophet who drew attention because of the signs and wonders accompanying her presence, like multitudinous butterflies and reported sweet-smelling rose-scented air that wafted in over the crowd listening to her speak.
I paused in place.
She relayed a message from the Lord: “The false gods will fail you.”
I looked down at the black and red covered Feng Shui book in my hands, and dropped it to the floor.
Attempting to "write" some wrong past writings...
The Blue Lines…Working Blue, Seeing Red
Despite warnings and questions from friends and relations about anti-Christian messages in the Feng Shui, non-biblical numerology and “all roads lead to God” false teachings I kept soaking up in works like the Conversations with God trilogy, I still looked for ways to meld my New Age philosophy with the emerging Scripture knowledge I’d obtained.
“If you don’t have God in your life, hanging a crystal isn’t gonna to matter,” Jamie said as she drove, perhaps during one of our jaunts to her church that I’d been visiting.
“Maybe God gave us Feng Shui!” I retorted.
On 7/11/1997, my journal thanks the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell for “the printing of my best-seller!” — a soft-cover, perfect-bound book with gold-gilded edges, replicating the look of the real Good Book.
I’d found a printer after a Christian publisher turned me down upon hearing the title, Seducing God.
An awkward 4-second pause preceded the fellow mentioning the “provocative” title; our conversation ended kindly and soon thereafter.
But the accepting printer sent the blue lines — stapled sections of a book for proofreading prior to final press — around September 8, 1998, to the same new Ohio house I’d flown through in a dream prior to me and Paul moving in.
That was the idyllic date that Paul and I stood on the western shores of Maui and exchanged leis and promises in the midst of angelic, effusive sunshine with a minister reading the oft-repeated “Love is patient, love is kind…” wedding passage.
But the honeymoon was over back under our cathedral-ceilinged living room when Paul read a few pages into the first section of blue lines and promptly set it down on the coffee table.
“I don’t want to read about your ex-boyfriends!” he hurled after I pressed him for feedback.
“I don’t want to be censored.”
“You should censor yourself,” he said.
We argued, I cried.
He went to work, I didn’t.
And yet, by the time the boxes of books arrived, he’d softened some.
However, we still agreed to move them from my office into a more discreet storage closet when his grandmother came to visit.
Pitching Oprah, Ditching Christians
Busy with the job of promoting, I passed along free copies to some coworkers — usually face down or in a discreet wrapper — making sure to avoid the “real Christians” I knew wouldn’t like the work.
Like our neighbors, a couple who had given me a copy of One Minute After You Die
My cousin accepted one I placed in his hand, and without commenting, set the book aside.
The post-office worker I normally chatted with looked at me strangely during the visit following the one where I’d given her a free book to read.
“Why won’t your father read it?” my mom had asked before she died, vacillating between her roles as my proud, lifelong English-language editor and guilt-ridden mother, surmising once after she’d completed her red-lined copy interspersed with sticky notes, “I raised you all wrong.”
“No you didn’t,” I’d said then, looking back now with happy hindsight at our phone chat and my attempts to lift her burden — since little did I know then she’d be dead within mere months.
But as for my dad’s aversion to the publication, I played dumb. “I don’t know,” I answered.
I could hear Daddy’s characteristic on-edge whine in his voice as he said, “She’s got a cross on the cover…”
After Mommy’s repast, I sat on the porch stairs outside my parent’s overcrowded home as day leaked into late afternoon, horrified as my younger cousin relayed how people mistook him for a pastor when he toted my book around, telling me the ski slope fellatio scene was his favorite.
What was I doing?
And still, I kept pitching.
3 Deaths, One Rebirth
"One Minute After You Die," the book my neighbors gave me after Mommy died and I was full of questions about where she went
Three deaths in 1999 – my mother’s and my two miscarriages — sent me seeking, in earnest and alone, back every Sunday to that same church I’d only visited before.
As Y2K passed and no one exploded, I finally stopped rationalizing with the preacher in my head during each altar call, wondering if I still needed to go up front if I already believed in Jesus.
Eventually enough “confess with your mouth” and “confess Me before men” sermons — coupled with the Holy Spirit’s “This means you!” gut urgings — pulled me to the front of the worship center on the same Sunday service in March of 2000 that I’d already made up my mind I’d go forward during that “doors of the church are open” kind of denouement finale.
At the purple carpeted front ledge that served as an altar, I repeated the prayer of salvation out loud with a woman who knelt and prayed with me:
Lord, come into my heart
Change me, make me who you want me to be
Thank You for dying on the cross for me
And giving me eternal life
Lord, come into my heart
Change me, make me who you want me to be
Thank You for dying on the cross for me
And giving me eternal life
Back in the worldly world, despite my best marketing efforts, only around 100 copies of my “magnum opus” had sold on Amazon.com.
I had plenty of the 1,000-copy print run left in an altar of brown boxes hidden in the closet.
One day I wrote down nearly every name scrolling by on The Oprah Winfrey Show credits — then paid top dollar to mail review copies to her Harpo employees.
I used Publisher’s Weekly, Literary Marketplace and other industry directories to track down the names and addresses of movie producers and lit agents, mailing out more review copies.
For a split moment, my marketing efforts seemed to pay off.
When Wesley Snipes’ people call…
“This is ‘Sheila’ calling from Wesley Snipes’ office…” said the message on our answering machine circa early 2000.
I called back the woman at Amen Ra Films, the production company of Mr. Jungle Fever, Blade-trilogy himself.
My dreams of Hollywood stardom grew closer as Sheila told me how they’d received a review copy of my book — and liked it so much that her colleagues went searching neighboring California Borders or Barnes & Noble book stores to find more.
“I can send you more copies,” I quickly offered — perhaps disclosing the fact that my self-published baby hadn’t yet found distribution to bricks and mortar retailers.
“Have you sold the rights yet?”
“No,” I said.
After hanging up, I relayed my elation to Paul, as we leaned stupefied with disbelief on the bed, staring at each other still in our work clothes.
Toldja! I all but said, Nikke Finke style, right to his face.
My hard work would soon be paying off with a movie option deal that I hoped would soar into the $150,000 or more six-figure range. After all, Snipes had Blade money — not tax woes and possible jail time — back then.
Never mind the fact that the actor’s persona always put me off — what with those Halle Berry rumors floating around — nor did I like it when I found out Amen Ra was named after some ancient Egyptian sun god.
I pushed those nagging thoughts to the back of my mind and pressed onward.
Amen, Who?
Whose talisman do you have around your neck, Paula?
Something in me reeled at the stacks of snow drifts piled high in the driveway of our home in Copley, Ohio.
I refused to spend another winter in the quiet township.
I’d recently been baptized at that church I’d joined, standing in line with a bunch of little girls dressed in white, waiting for my turn to be dunked backwards in the pool.
I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…the minister had said, after instructing me to hold my nose and cross my arms against myself.
Paul sat in the pews and watched, later agreeing that a change of venues would be in order.
My urgency was probably due to another failed attempt to sell my book rights.
Sheila from Wesley Snipes’ office had by then received the box full of books I’d sent out to the movie star’s production office — but unfortunately no longer worked for the man.
“I’m still interested in buying the rights…” she said, sinking my expectations with her offer: “Maybe for like $5,000?”
I told her I’d keep her offer in mind.
With no other nibbles, I figured that accepting the job offers that a Bay Area company extended to us would at least get me inside the Golden State.
But first we had to get an offer on our home.
Smash cut to the early morning hours of my 31st birthday — Saturday, April 22, 2000.
Satan Smiled, God Spoke Through Sleep
What do you do when the devil smiles at you?
My dream was a jumble of the death-versus-life scenario I’d been living lately, the push and pull that came with letting Christ take the reins in one area, while still trying to salvage my salacious book dreams in another.
“1…2…1…2″ I chanted in my dream world, significant numerology that for me meant it was time to leave something behind.
I’d gathered the kind of candles with the paper circles at the bottom that people burn during vigils, and I was leading a procession of women to another room to fight an enemy.
The doorway of the troubled room was like school’s gym entrance, with multiple steel frames to accommodate several missing doors.
I peeked through one frame and saw a dead woman laying stock still in an opened coffin.
Through the other frame, she wrestled with someone, alive and fighting, but still in the coffin.
The female, whom I automatically knew represented the devil, paused her struggle for one moment to look directly at me.
I steeled myself for the most horrific, God-forsaken scowl anyone had ever received.
Instead, she did something more horrifying: Satan smiled at me.
My heart pounded me awake.
The actual day, hours after my nightmare. Maybe God is trying to tell you something, my dad said to me.
It was as if the Lord God was saying, You’re not entering your 4th decade saved with this mess.
“Can I turn on the TV?” I asked my sleeping husband, who mumbled his consent. “I had a nightmare.”
The pulsing of the television light helped to slowly bring my heart rate back to normal, but later in the day as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I knew exactly what my Lord was telling me to do.
Easter Monday, April 24, 2000, I went home for lunch and loaded all the remaining boxes in the back of our black Ford Explorer and drove them to a nearby Dumpster, unloading the accursed items into the empty cavern.
They landed with heavy thuds.
Nothing could describe the agreement and pleasure I felt from the approving heavenly sky the day I was rid of the things disproving to Him.
A Barney Fife-type security guard who witnessed me dumping the boxes in the Windsor Park Estates apartment complex’s Dumpster followed me around the corner home, and sat menacingly in front for a few seconds before reprimanding my actions.
I made nice — thankfully, he drove away.
When his threatening letter arrived in our mail box days later, we’d already received a good $160,000+ serious offer to buy our home, and were California perfect-bound…
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