From the time I was a child, I’d always heard adults say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” And I’ve taken that to heart, for the mostpart. So when I attended my aunt’s boyfriend’s birthday party over the weekend, I saw the pastor (who had the church demolished and who hung up on me when I tried to have a civil conversation with him about saving the church) and his wife stop by to wish my aunt’s boyfriend a Happy Birthday, I was shocked.

He walked over to me and said, “Hi, Sister Nikki,” and I kept it moving. Didn’t say one word to him. I mean, the last time I talked to him he hung up on me and felt no remorse. This coming from a man of the cloth. So when he called himself trying to pass the peace, so to speak, by talking to me, I had nothing to say to him.

He knows my phone number and could have apologized to me at any time, but he thinks he’s going to speak to me over a month later since the demolition of the church? He had nothing to say to me then, so why speak now? And I damn sure didn’t have anything to say to him, because he’d talked about my family in the pulpit for going against him and trying to save a 100 year old church.

So when he sauntered over to me, I didn’t say squat. I sipped on my punch, then walked off. My mother had the nerve to say to me, “Nikki, why didn’t you speak back?” I said, “Had I said what I wanted to say, I would have cursed him out. And I wouldn’t feel right cursing out a minister. So I held my peace.”

Now maybe I was wrong, being just as stubborn as he was when he didn’t listen to the community who wanted to save the church, but at that time, I felt it was best for me not to say anything. And Lord, if I was wrong, forgive me, but I don’t think you wanted me to spout obsenities at that party. It would have been another kind of party had I done so.