Hello World,

When I was in high school, I wanted to take part in a debutante cotillion and wear an antebellum-like white dress, but I didn’t know how to get involved in a community that hosted these types of functions back then. But that’s not Zora and Sophia’s problem as you will find out if you keep reading my “Greenleaf Recap Season 2 Episode 11.”

Blame It…

Although the Greenleaf girls have always been accepted as debutantes in the St. Josephine Society, this year the Greenleaf girls have been omitted from the invitation list even as Grace’s self-defense killing of her uncle Mac, Man of the Year in Memphis, is front page news. Although Grace gave the goods to journalist boyfriend Darius, she is now worried that the story killed her daughter’s and niece’s chance to be debutantes. “It’s all because of me” she says once Sophia announces the bad news at breakfast. Lady Mae, however, wants to put the blame on Jacinta Butler, president of the St. Josephine Society. “There must be a mistake,” she says before promising to fix the blunder. Curiously, she asks Marisol the maid to retrieve a wooden box with a gun in it. Lady Mae is such a character!

Lady Mae takes the gun directly to Jacinta, who apparently is an art and artifact collector. Once Jacinta appraises the gun, which Lady Mae found at the Greenleaf home after they moved into the estate, Lady Mae asks her about why her granddaughters were not invited to the cotillion this year. So the implicit message in this exchange is, “You better let my granddaughters in this shindig or somebody’s ’bout to get shot.” Jacinta is surprised about Lady Mae’s question as she never received nominations for the girls from Lady Mae and furthermore, First Lady Tasha Skanks, board secretary, was responsible for forwarding the nominations to her. That’s all Lady Mae needs to hear! Now, she can lay the blame at the feet of Tasha, her husband’s arch nemesis!

Speaking of Skanks, the Metro Memphis Council of Churches is meeting at Triumph. Bishop, Jacob and Grace attend despite their drama with Skanks. While there, Jacob announces that his church is named “The Real Church of Memphis,” a church without walls through which he will be ministering to the homeless and helpless. Also, at the meeting, a Father Alvarado tells the ministers about a local 16-year-old who attempted to kill himself by asphyxiation as he sat in a running car in a garage. “He thought God couldn’t love him because he was gay.” After Father Alvarado’s speech, Basie says, “We’ve got to do something about this” and encourages the ministers to address homosexuality and homophobia in the church.

Bishop and Jacob seem to be kind of “meh” about Basie’s pronouncement with Bishop stating that you can’t “sound off too loudly about anything other than the cross.” Grace, however, is pleased that Basie wants the ministers to address this issue and feels she may have wrongly discounted the man. She likely thinks ministers are to blame for what the 16-year-old thought.

Eat the Cake, Anna Mae…

Although Carlton is at another church, Gethsemane Baptist Church (where Rochelle Cross used to be a member…hmmm…), Charity still considers the banished gay choir director a friend. She reaches out to him so that he can help her compose a song that she needs to turn into Jabari, and she hopes he can comfort her since Kevin is still MIA. Carlton is glad to to hear from his friend, but first he asks her why he is just now hearing from her after all of this time. “You really hurt my feelings. You’re too busy for me until need something from me,” he tells her. Folks do tend to get all sweet when they want something, particularly when they have ignored you. She explains to him that since they’ve last communicated, she and Kevin have gotten a divorce. “There’s so much I couldn’t talk about, especially with you.”

Charity has found a real empathetic confidante in Carlton. For the first time since before her miscarriage, she mentions Nathan’s twin sister Eden Brook. “We never had a chance to grieve our little girl.” Charity says she feels like her daughter, who she still thinks about every day, is a “out there like a kite, floating.”

In another part of Calvary, the mysterious Miss Cross is cloistered in Bishop’s office and serves the man of God a slice of pineapple upside down cake. He raves about the taste and she tells him the tantalizing taste is because she used young pineapples. “The old ones get all watery and sour.” Say what? As if on cue, Lady Mae, who seems to be an older version of Miss Cross walks in, to see her holy hubby hovering over the cake with the Miss Cross hovering over him as she sits on his desk! He introduces his wife to Miss Cross and tells her she made the cake. She is not happy about that at all. Y’all know homemade cake is a tool in Lady Mae’s arsenal! Remember when she served grapefruit pound cake to Aaron?!Although Miss Cross is a huge donor, Lady Mae loses a bit of her trademark decorum and storms out. “Enjoy your cake, Bishop.”

Rochelle Cross is not the only one on Lady Mae’s list. She confronts Tasha about why her granddaughters weren’t included on the invitation list for the cotillion. Tasha checks into the dilemma but not before checking Lady Mae about approaching her like she is less than a First Lady. “I may not be on the pages of ‘Southern Decor’ magazine, but I will be, and you will never be again.” She says this after Lady Mae notices artwork by an artist that she appreciates hanging on Tasha’s wall. Tasha tells her she got a painting by the artist after seeing his artwork in Lady Mae’s home as it was featured in the magazine before. Lady Mae discovers that she sent in the nominations for her granddaughters to the wrong e-mail address. Lady Mae is rightfully embarrassed by her blunder.

Meanwhile, Grace meets with Basie. “You’re more than I thought,” she tells him. She wants more insight into the man as he surprised her with his call to address homosexuality and homophobia in the black church. Like Zacchaeus, the tax collector in the Bible or George Jefferson on “The Jeffersons” in the ’80s or Deacon Ernest Frye on “Amen” in the ’90s (Both George and Deacon Frye were portrayed by Sherman Hemsley), he explains that he is bold and brash because of his short stature. “I’m a little fellow” with a “big, troublesome mouth,” and the only entity big enough to handle Basie was and is Jesus, he says.

Isaiah and Zora meet up in her bedroom. With Childish Gambino crooning “Redbone” in the background (I know the song is a hit, but me no likey), the gospel version of Chris Brown and Zora canoodle on her bed. He tells her,”Let’s do it.” (A tip from Ms. Jackie: If you describe sex as “doing it,” you’re too young or immature to do it.) I guess Isaiah hasn’t come across the verse that says, “Flee fornication.” And since Zora is feeling down after not being invited to the cotillion, her defenses aren’t the only things that go down. If that chile comes up preggers…

Nicety…

Maybe as a result of being humbled by the fact that she is to blame for the cotillion blunder or the fact that she remembered that Miss Cross comes with a lot of cash, she asks Bishop to invite Miss Cross over for dinner with the family. “I feel terrible about the way I behaved at church,” she says to Miss Cross in that nicety (nice and nasty) way that we love. She invites Miss Cross to tell the Greenleafs about herself. Rochelle explains that she was once a member at Greater Redeemer. (I guess that was after she was a member at Gethsemane Baptist Church which she mentioned last week.)  “I had breast cancer. It’s in remission, but I didn’t think I was going to pull through.” Apparently, the pastor of the church didn’t support her through her sickness and she left that church. I agree. That is one of the main duties of a shepherd – to see about the sick. My father has always been excellent about seeing members of our church when they are sick. I wonder how large churches handle it when members are sick. Does the main pastor visit them or are other leaders responsible for that duty?

While the adults are around the dinner table, Sophia and Zora catch up in Sophia’s quarters. Sophia had no idea that Zora and Isaiah have gotten back together and not only that. “We did it,” Zora tells her cousin. “You had sex?” Sophia exclaims. Zora describes the deed as “weird” and “different.” Okaaay.

Speaking of adjectives, Rochelle describes Basie Skanks as “off” when the diminutive dynamo and or deceiver comes up in conversation back at dinner. Grace says she appreciates his “firm stand” against homophobia. Lady Mae asks why does anyone “need to have a conversation about these things.”

But it also comes up in conversation that Jacinta Butler is a client of Miss Cross, and she volunteers to fix the situation so that the girls will be included in this year’s cotillion. Once Lady Mae receives notification that the girls have been invited after all, she tells Grace! (Random fact: Did you know that Lynn Whitfield, who portrays Lady Mae, also has a daughter named Grace, and Grace, starred as Faith Evans in the Tupac biopic that came out earlier this summer?) Anywho, Grace is glad the debutante debacle  is behind them but does tell her mother that Rochelle seems a little shady to her. Lady Mae agrees but shuts it down for now. “We’ll fight that fight when it comes.” And in another nicety move, Lady Mae sends all of the artwork by the artist (I think the name was Mikalene) that Tasha admired to a gallery. “It’s time for a change.” In other words, if Tasha can afford artwork by the artist, then it’s time for Lady Mae to upgrade.

Speaking of upgrade, Charity seems she wants to upgrade her relationship with Jabari from friends to lovers as she kisses him in the final scene! Everything is nice between the two right now, but will they be doing “the nasty?”

Check out a snippet from “Changing Season” below…

Thank you sooo much for reading my Greenleaf Recap, Season 2 Episode 11 and my other recaps so far.
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