Don't Go Chasing The Wind...

"Cast your cares on HIM prayer line. Ilse speaking, how may I help you?" A beautiful middle-aged plus-sized queen with a single left dimple the size of the Grand Canyon and a heavy German accent said confidently into her headset.

"Please help me, ma'am! I keep hearing a loud alarm that only I can hear, and I keep feeling an invisible Floyd Mayweather-level punch to my gut every hour upon the hour like clockwork. I also keep seeing and smelling rotten apples everywhere I go, and I keep pulling nothing but the Joker card each time that I play spades with my cousin Chi. Can you please help me gain some clarity, ma'am?" Hazel-Leah Tatum raspily begged into the phone in desperation. 

"Young lady, I can barely make out a word that you are saying, but Heavenly Father is telling me to tell you whatever you do, don't chase the wind!"

Hazel-Leah suddenly woke up drenched in a monsoon of damp sweat. Her silk gown looked as if she had been running through her neighbor's sprinklers.

She felt unsettled; she had been having the same terrifying dream for the last five nights, but for the life of her she could not make out what it meant.

Hazel-Leah headed toward the kitchen to get a glass of apple juice when she heard something startling blaring from the smart TV in her mother's nearby bedroom.

Hazel-Leah had to investigate at once. Once she reached her mom's room, she found her mom fast asleep with her red reading glasses still on, her Cheeto-sized bronze goddess locs splayed across her favorite paisley pillow like the end of an unruly old-school kitchen mop, and their cuddly Cheshire cat Mahogany-Rose napping sweetly by her side.

Hazel-Leah tiptoed to the TV, picked up the remote lying on top of it, and turned down the volume several decibels. She definitely didn't want her mom to wake up and hear any of what she had just heard. In fact, just hearing the news reporter say, "The suspect's name is Jamont Hill; more information after the break," caused Hazel-Leah's anxiety to rise. She unconsciously plucked a few strands of her kinky auburn hair from the nape of her neck and swallowed them, something she hadn't done since her mom was diagnosed with Cancer when she was 10.

Hazel-Leah said a quick prayer and hoped that the reporter had not been speaking of the same "figgety-fine" Jamont Hill that she had recently been drooling over and had been contemplating sleeping with for cool points. 

After the news resumed, Hazel-Leah froze in place, like she was in the middle of a solo game of freeze tag, when she saw "figgety-fine" Jamont's passport photo flash across the TV screen, followed by local reporter Ripley Chan's following statement:"Please contact the Parris County Vigilant Crime Watchers unit if you know the whereabouts of 34-year-old Jamont Hill. He is 6'4", 195 lbs, and multiracial: of African-American, Cherokee, and Irish descent."

"Unfortunately, HIV has been making a resurgence in the local community. Jamont is accused of knowingly giving 12 female college students HIV in Parris County. Another one of his alleged victims is also his 40-year-old wife, Shavonni Roberts-Hill, from Edinburough, OH. Part two of this report will air exclusively at five this evening, when I will be interviewing Jamont's wife, Shavonni, about her ordeal."

Hazel-Leah suddenly felt faint. "Did that reporter just say HIV? Wow, I remember Jamont mentioning that he hates condoms because they ruin the experience. And did this dude lie about his age as well? He said he was 22, but he is practically eligible for AARP. No offense to the older aunties and uncles that I know and to Momma, who is within earshot, but daaaaaang when he was 20, I was 7," Hazel-Leah exclaimed aloud somewhat crossly. 

Hazel-Leah had recently met Jamont through her cousin Chi at a frat party. She wanted to be liked, so she had been thinking of giving in to his advances since girls her age, 21 to be exact, were supposed to be having 'hot girl summers' in their twenties, not waiting for their husbands... right?

In fact, Jamont really put on the full-court press the first day that they met. He kept stroking her cheek with his hand and kept asking her for her lingerie and ring sizes and he appeared to be a little rough around the edges since he had the word SAVAGE along with a shamrock, boisterously tattooed under his right eye. The word SAVAGE had initially made her uncomfortable because of the word's connotation and subsequent meaning, but Bad B's always go with the flow, right?

Suddenly, something her favorite Aunt Wennayah once said to her before she passed came to the forefront of her mind verbatim:"Hayes, make sure you get you a godly man—that is, honest, not a deceiver; a giver, not a taker; and a kind-hearted gent that will love you purely and unconditionally like God loves his creation, not just one in love with hisself. And please, please, please get you a man who cares about God's laws and not the devil's. Don't go 'chasing the wind,' babygurl you'll never catch it."

"The world and its values are fleeting like the wind. Society will tell you young girls to focus on looks, status, and a man's bank account. Those things have a way of fleeing and fluctuating as men age, and they never fully fill the spirit. In other words, remember that worldly accolades and attainments are temporary and that they will eventually blow away like the wind. Ecclesiastes 2:11."

"And please don't ever be worrying about being no bad B. I don't care what anyone says; it seems as if you youngsters are being programmed to 'wile out,' as the kids say, and to lean on your own understanding. It's like they are influencing youngins to divorce God and to attempt to become their own. Always remember rolling with God is not corny, baby. It is life-giving."

When Hazel-Leah was younger, she remembered her mom telling her that her big sister Wennayah had always had a sixth sense when it came to her family. Therefore, maybe there was something to what Aunt Wennayah had been attempting to tell her that past summer.

Looking back, Hazel-Leah noticed that Jamont never opened the door for her or anyone else for that matter. He was always in the mirror and in the camera taking selfies, and he never asked her about her life or her opinions or made any real effort to get to know her. He would just hit her with the wyd (what you doing) or wyw (what you wearing) texts at midnight like clockwork.

She couldn't believe that she had nearly entered into an intimate relationship with someone else's husband, someone who was SAVAGE enough to hand out HIV like breath mints to unsuspecting women. 

Hazel-Leah quickly returned to her bedroom, turned on her favorite gospel station, praised God for avoiding calamity, and gently rocked in her childhood white & pink striped rocking chair as she cried tears of joy. 

Suddenly, she felt a sense of peace sweep over her as she thought back to the bothersome, recurrent dream that she had had earlier that morning and realized that God had been warning her about Jamont's character through her dreams.

She now realized, through the spirit of truth, that the rotten apples in the dream represented Jamont's selfishness/rotten spiritual fruit, while the alarm was a warning signal about his deceptive nature, the Joker card represented his fraudulent intentions, while the Floyd Mayweather-like gut punches were meant to wake her up to Jamont's SAVAGE aura.

A few minutes later, Hazel-Leah received a long text from her favorite cousin Chi that read:

Gurl... Leave Jamont Hill alone! I just found out that he lied about his age and relationship status. He is 34 and married. He has a habit of solely dating sexually inexperienced college girls. I heard from his best friend Devon that he doesn't really want to be in a relationship with these women; he just wants to be their first. After he scores, he quickly discards them like the butt ends of that delicious cream cheese pumpkin bread that your momma used to make, that we used to refuse to eat the butt ends of when we were little... Lol And apparently his first girlfriend gave him an incurable STD, and he never got over it and vowed to never open his heart up to any woman ever again.

Hazel-Leah politely turned her phone off. She needed to begin getting ready for her 8 am Humanities class. Besides, she was tired of Jamont and his antics. She would have to catch up with Chi at lunch to let her know about the news report. For now, she would not be letting Jamont ruin her morning or day, for that matter. 

Suddenly, she heard a light tap on her bedroom door.

"Come in, "Hazel-Leah said softly as she turned down her music.

"Hey, baby, I just wanted to let you know that breakfast will be ready in about 45 minutes," Hazel-Leah's mother, Harper Tatum, said with a sunny smile.

"What are we having?" Hazel-Leah asked with excitement.

"Sausage & egg omelets and grits along with my famous pumpkin bread with the sugary, sweet, cream cheese frosting that you like so much," Momma Harper said with a wink.

"Really mom!? We haven't had that since Methuselah was a baby!" Hazel-Leah replied with a chuckle.

"Yeah, it is kind of strange how it came up. I just found the recipe this morning stuck to an old bag of dog food that was in the back of the pantry. And you know that that bag of dog food was ancient because it's been nearly seven years since Max-A-Million left for Doggie Heaven," Momma Harper concluded with a wink, then a sad face.

After her mom left the room, Hazel-Leah continued to think about the events of the morning: her dream, her recent chat with her Aunt Wennayah, Chi's butt-end pumpkin bread warning text, and even her mom's "coincidental" dessert choice; each item unmistakably and symbolically pointed to Jamont & his negativity. She suddenly felt grateful for her 'inexperienced' status and her destiny detour. 

Deep down she knew that God had protected her from a potential disaster. She whispered an earnest "Thank you, Father" toward the ceiling, then headed to the kitchen to help her mother with breakfast.