Sittin' in the Front Pew

1 The Call "Why is the phone still ringing while I'm saying hello?" Saying it aloud must have startled me awake. Only then did I realize I had been answering the phone in my dream. "Hello?" I groggily answered. "Sissy, is that you?" There was only one person who still consistently called me Sissy as an adult, but this did not sound at all like my oldest sister. "Renee, what is wrong with you? And why are you calling me at two-thirty in the morning? You know I get up to go running at four-thirty." I held the clock radio in my left hand and the phone in my right. It never dawned on me that Renee would not call me in the middle of the night unless something was wrong, terribly wrong. "Are you alone, Sissy?" "Yeah, Anthony is on his two-week reserve assignment. What's wrong, Renee?" I bolted awake and pulled myself up in bed. Renee had never cared if I was alone before. Her voice cracked as she spoke. "Oh Sissy!" Renee was crying. "You are scaring me, Renee. What the hell is going on? Is there something wrong with Derrick or one of the kids?" "Sissy, it's Daddy! Sissy, Daddy is dead!" she screamed into the phone. The room started spinning as I laid my head back on the solid oak headboard. She hadn't said my daddy was dead. She was screaming, so I knew I'd misunderstood. "What did you say, Renee?" "Daddy is dead! We're at University Hospital Emergency Room. You gotta come home, Sissy. You gotta get on a plane now!" She was no longer screaming, but sobbing so hard it was still very difficult to understand exactly what she was saying. "Give me the phone, Renee!" I heard Collette snap at her. "Why you just gonna blurt some shit like that out at her in the middle of the night. I told you to let me call, but nooooooo!" "Hey, Sis, you okay? Did you understand what Renee was saying?" Collette's demeanor had drastically changed as she took the phone. "Collette, it sounded like she said that Daddy is dead!" He can't be dead. I talked to him last night. "It's true, Sis." Now Collette's voice was cracking. "What are you saying, Collette?" This time I was screaming. There was no way my daddy was dead. I'd spoken to him just before he went to bed. He'd told me he loved me and how proud he was of me for passing the bar! My daddy was not dead. "Where's Anthony? You need to calm down!" Collette immediately regretted the statement. "Calm down, you calm down. He ain't here. What happened to my daddy?" As usual, Collette was trying my patience. "He was my daddy, too!" "What do you mean was?" "Daddy is gone, Sissy!" Collette, using my pet name, started sobbing into the phone. "What happened, Lette? Please tell me what happened to my daddy!" "He called Dawn to tell her he loved her and while he was on the phone he stopped talking. She was screaming for him, but he wouldn't answer. She hung up and called 911 and then went over there. She called us from her car, and Renee and I met her there. When we arrived, Dawn was waiting on the porch to tell us he was dead when the paramedics arrived. But they were trying to bring him back. They tried everything, Sissy. They did, they really did." Her voice trailed off. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! NoBrown, Parry is the author of 'Sittin' in the Front Pew ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780345494900 and ISBN 0345494903.