“I said, I don’t know what you mean.” Maybe this was a worse idea than she’d thought. There was no point in sitting here being insulted. She didn’t have to use her lunch hour for that.
“What I mean is, you act like you’re the only one who knows anything about the Bible. And like you’re the only person who knows how to pray.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, why would you buy me all those little books and that Bible and leave them on my desk like the Easter Bunny?”
Shadrach raised an eyebrow. “Michelle?”
“Okay. Tonya knows what I mean.” She looked at Tonya. “So why would you do that then?”
“I was trying to be nice. I was just trying to show you that I cared about you. I knew you had been going through a tough time lately—”
“And that’s the other thing, Tonya! You are always nosing in my business!”
Shadrach grunted and threw down an imaginary flag. “One thing at a time, ladies. Finish what you started, Michelle.”
Michelle huffed. “Okay, then. So, why all the books and stuff if you’re not trying to tell me I need to be more holy? More like you?”
“I just thought . . . I just . . . the books helped me. I thought they might help you. I felt like I was supposed . . . Oh, what difference does it make?”
Shadrach blew the whistle. “You can’t just stop talking because you feel uncomfortable. You have to stay in the game.”
“What’s the point? Michelle hates me. She’s already made up her mind. It doesn’t matter what I say.”
“You’re just feeling defensive. You just want to play defense, or the safe martyr, but you got to talk back. Okay, Tonya, so tell Michelle what you were doing.”
The waitress came with their plates. “Be careful, please. They are very hot.” They waited until she left to begin talking again. It gave Tonya time to think.
“I don’t know, Michelle. When I was in trouble—not that I’m not still having trouble—those books helped me. One of the hardest things about going through was going through alone. I just wanted you to know that I cared. That I wasn’t just someone you worked with, that I was here for you.” She looked down at her plate. “I didn’t know how to say it to you, I guess. I gave you what helped me.” She looked Michelle in the eye. “I really wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“Mm-hmm.” Michelle was still giving much attitude. “Well, I do know the Bible. Okay? I used to go to church. If I do or don’t go now, that’s my business, okay? I didn’t come here for friends. I came here to work. That’s all.”
Tonya bit her tongue. It wasn’t her turn.
Michelle looked at Shadrach. “Can we go on to another point, now?”
“Okay. It just sounds like a small misunderstanding that happens all the time. Maybe Tonya tried to give you a gift, but what she gave you was something that she liked. But you weren’t feeling her. Every time she gave you another gift of the same kind, you got madder and madder, right?”
“You got that right.” Michelle jabbed her fork into her tamale.
“So is there something you two ladies could do different next time? Like maybe, Michelle, you could tell Tonya how you feel about the gifts—just tell her you don’t like them.”
Michelle waved the fork—sauce, shredded pork, and corn cake on the end—back and forth to emphasize each word. “I don’t like them!”
Shad looked exasperated. “I mean, next time tell her before things get this bad. And next time, Tonya, talk to Michelle, right? Didn’t you notice that she didn’t like what you were doing?”
“I just thought she didn’t like me. I didn’t think.” Maybe she hadn’t thought about anything. Like maybe she hadn’t considered that this—this meeting, this roasting—was really a bad idea.
Michelle looked like she was biting her tongue. The blood rushed to her face. She took a deep breath, collected herself, and looked back at Shadrach. “Can we move on now?”
“Yes.” He took a forkful of food from his plate.
Michelle’s narrowed gaze settled on Tonya. “The other thing I don’t like is how you watch me. When I come in, you’re looking at the clock. When I’m on the phone, you’re going back and forth in front of my desk. What is up with that? I hate that. I came in here to work, not for you to be my slave master.” Shadrach’s face said, “Oh no she didn’t?”
Tonya looked down at her plate. Why had she agreed to this? What about this had made it seem like it was going to be a good idea? “Look, Michelle, I know you don’t believe this, but on my own, I could care less when you go or come. Really. Talking about people, if you really knew me, you would know that’s the last thing I worry about. But Mrs. Judson—”
“We’re not talking about Mrs. Judson. I’m talking about you.”
Tonya put her hand in her purse and moved it about until she found Malik’s note. “But that’s just the point. It
is
about Mrs. Judson. This is her office. It’s her rules and her judgments that get us promoted or fired. Because I listen to her, because I’m in meetings with her, I know what she likes and what she doesn’t like. What she doesn’t like is employees who don’t come to work on time. It doesn’t matter that it’s okay with me. Mrs. Judson doesn’t like it and it’s my responsibility—” Michelle rolled her eyes in disgust at that. “No, honestly. In all honesty, I’m trying to look out for you. I guess I’m trying to protect you from yourself. Mrs. Judson is not going to promote anybody who can’t get to work on time and who takes personal phone calls habitually. What I call myself doing is trying to cover for you without saying anything. I’m trying to give you big hints that you need to get to work on time and get off the phone.” Tonya frowned. “I guess I just need to be like Shadrach says. I just need to be straight up with you.”
Shadrach nodded.
Tonya rubbed Malik’s note back and forth between her fingers. She needed courage. “Okay, here’s straight up. If you think I’m trying to mind your business or be in your personal life, you are wrong. I got enough issues and business of my own to keep me busy for a lifetime. Personally, I don’t care what you do. Business-wise, Mrs. Judson hates it, and she pays me to take care of it so that she doesn’t have to deal with it.” She looked squarely at Michelle.
“Get to work on time and get off the phone, Michelle, or Mrs. Judson isn’t going to promote you; she’ll fire you. Those behaviors, she feels, let her know how much respect you have for the people around you and how committed you are to working here. Do it, or I’m going to have to start writing you up, because my job, as long as I’m here, is to make sure that you do what Mrs. Judson wants done. That’s as straight up as I can get.”
Michelle looked away from the table.
“I don’t want to make you feel bad. I really am trying to help you get promoted, Michelle. I want to be your friend. Maybe that’s impossible at this point—but that’s what I want. Everybody in authority is not trying to hurt you. I’m not against you. There are some rules you just have to follow. If I insulted you giving you the books and sending you flowers, I won’t do it anymore. But the other—the phone and getting to work on time—is not negotiable. That’s the deal.”
Shadrach looked at his watch. “Well, ladies, it looks like Round One is over.” He chuckled, as though he was attempting to lighten the mood. “I thought this was football, but I see both you ladies are wearing gloves. Move over, Muhammad Ali.” He pointed at their plates. “I say we box up this food. Handle up on this conversation and think it over. See you tomorrow, same time, different restaurant.”
He mimicked ringing a boxing-match bell.
Ding! Ding!
T
onya dragged into the chicken wing restaurant where they had agreed to meet. Why was she even doing this? She rubbed Malik’s note, which was tucked into her jacket pocket. None of this was feeling like a new day to her. It was feeling like hard work. Wasn’t walking into your season supposed to be easy?
Shadrach waved her over to a table in the far corner. Michelle was already sitting. “How are you two ladies today?”
Tonya forced herself to smile—just barely. Michelle looked at her and then looked away.
“Making progress and changing ain’t easy.” Shadrach looked down at the menu. “That’s why most people never do it. That’s why most people just talk about it. Building relationships is just like building a body—no pain, no gain. Being successful takes a lot of hard work.”
He flipped the laminated menu over. “I don’t even know why I’m looking at this thing. It’s a chicken-wing place. What else is there to order?”
A waiter took their order—wings and several different sauces. After the waiter brought drinks and left, Shadrach wove his fingers together and laid his hands on his chest. “Round Two.”
Tonya kept rubbing on Malik’s note. She looked around the room.
“Tonya?”
“I really don’t have anything to say, Shadrach. I mean, I said all I needed to say yesterday.” She shrugged.
“You’re in the game, Tonya. You got to play.”
“I don’t see how this—”
“Tonya, baby, you got the ball. It’s your round. Whatever.”
She kept fingering Malik’s note and playing with her napkin with her free hand. “Well, what I don’t understand is what all this attitude is about. All this anger. Where does all this anger come from?”
Michelle waited before she spoke. “I’m not angry, okay? I’m just taking care of myself. I’m letting you know what’s on my mind.”
“Can’t you let me know what’s on your mind without yelling at me, without disrespecting me?”
Michelle looked like she was ready to leap over the table. Her expression said that what was on her mind was a beat-down.
“Yeah, I suppose I can talk to you without yelling.” She looked around the restaurant, then back at Tonya. “Anything else?” Her eyes spat anger.
“Well . . .”
“Look, the sooner we do this, the sooner it will be over. Just spit it out, okay?”
Shadrach stepped in again. “Give her a chance, Michelle. She gets to run her offense like she chooses. You let her bring the game to you.”
Michelle moved her fork to the other side of her place setting. “Yeah. Whatever.”
“Go ahead, Tonya.”
Tonya cleared her throat. She might as well plunge in. “I really feel like part of the reason you don’t like me is because I’m trying to be nice to you. It’s not just the books; you resent the idea of anybody being nice to you. Or maybe you just don’t trust people that are trying to be nice to you.”
Michelle looked at Shadrach. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“It’s Tonya’s offense. Let her bring it.”
Tonya cleared her throat. “You said yesterday that you didn’t come to work looking for friends. It might be that you really can’t
accept
anyone who wants to be your friend. That you have a problem with anyone who wants to be good to you—you have to find a way to make what they’re trying to do bad. You have to make it be about the person trying to hurt you in some way.”
Michelle glared at Tonya, then looked at Shadrach. “I thought we couldn’t say things to hurt each other.”
“Tonya’s just saying what she thinks. She’s not being mean. I’ll check her when I feel it’s needed. You let me be the referee, okay?”
Michelle frowned at Tonya. “Anything else?”
She was too far out in the water to turn back now. “Michelle, it just seems that . . . okay, the other day you said I was jealous of you. It just seems like you have all these feelings about me that don’t have anything to do with how
I’m
feeling. What do you mean, I’m jealous of you?”
Michelle looked at Shad. “Can I answer that?” He nodded. “Let me be real. I think you’re jealous of the way I look.”
“Michelle, you’re kidding yourself. You look very nice all the time. I might think some of it is just a cover, but I give you that. You look nice, but why would you think I’m jealous?”
“Okay, you want to know? You act like everything you’re doing is because of Mrs. Judson. But truth be told, I think some of it is you. I think you
are
jealous. I think you’re jealous because I’m still young and your life is fading away. You’re jealous of how I look, that I get attention from men, and that I have a life.”
Hot spots exploded on Tonya’s cheeks. “I have a life!”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t have to talk to you about this.” Tonya looked at Shadrach, but he was silent.
The waiter returned with the order. When he left, Michelle took a wing from the plate and resumed talking. “You can bring me books and a Bible because you’re worried about my private life—my spiritual life—but I can’t tell you about your issues. Don’t you think something is wrong with that?”
“Look, Michelle, I’m not trying to run your life.”
Michelle trailed her wing through the barbecue sauce. “We’re not talking about you running my life, we’re talking about you not having one. What are you saying? You can look at me and see my faults, but you’re too good, or I’m not good enough to see yours?”
She leaned forward. “You know one of the things that makes me most not want to go to church? It’s women like you. Why would I want to go to church if it’s going to make me shrivel up and die? Isn’t God supposed to give you life?”
Tonya looked away. She felt invaded, violated, under attack.
“Why would I want to read the books you read if I’m going to end up all washed out, lonely, and tired? I mean, does being saved mean you have to look so sad? I don’t care what you’re wearing, if it’s a long dress, or whatever—do you have to look bad all the time? Does it mean you have to stop having fun? Because if that’s what it means, I don’t want it. If that’s what it means, stop trying to put it off on me.”
Michelle jabbed at the table with the index finger of her free hand. “Tonya, you keep telling me what Mrs. Judson likes. Well, I also know that she likes for the people in her office to look professional. You come in here with your hair barely combed and wearing stockings with runs in them. How do you think Mrs. Judson feels about that?”
Tonya folded and unfolded her napkin. She was not going to let Michelle make her cry.
“You said you could see that I was going through a hard time? Well, I can see that you’re going through a hard time, too. I might cover mine up, but you wear yours all over you. Or maybe you use your hard times to cover up having to have any real feelings.”