I Left My Back Door Open (15 page)

I nodded.
At this point I would settle for a mushroom
, I thought.

“It's like you've caught it all your life,” Freddy continued, narrowing his eyes and biting his bottom lip back. “And the darker you are, the more you've caught it. I mean from both black folks and white folks.”

I nodded. Freddy reached for a small brown paper bag and took a swallow of beer. “And therefore, the more people want to hear what you gotta say, before you croak.” He belched.

“Yeah, because like Langston said, ‘A Negro has known rivers. And a Negro's soul has grown deep like the rivers,'” I recited.

“You ain't got a talking cat, do you?” Freddy asked, taking another swallow of beer. “'Cause if you do, then you could really make you some money.”

“My cat's named after Langston Hughes, the poet and writer. That's who I was referring to.”

“Oh, yeah,” Freddy mumbled, trying to play it off. “Anyway, seems like you oughta be able to retire from being black.” He yawned. “Oughta get a gold watch or something.”

I was driving home the next night from my marketing job. I especially liked my neighborhood on summer nights. It had rained again earlier, but it had stopped as abruptly as it had started. The streets were still wet. The air was warm and clean and breezy like a tropical night. The pleasant weather had brought folks out. It was nice to see children playing under the watchful eyes of parents on their front stoops. Our neighborhood had an eclectic mix of people, different ethnicities, young, old, gay, straight, artists, families and singles, blue collar and professional folks. It was a good balance of trendy and real. For me, Edgewater had become home.

I could smell the breeze off the Lake as I walked toward my building. I planned to light vanilla-scented candles and take a long soak in my bathtub before curling up with my mystery. It was times like these that I appreciated my empty nest. The only responsibility I had was feeding my fur child. A lover would be nice, but tonight I cherished the rare feeling that I was enough all by myself.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised to see Tyeesha in a rain poncho sitting outside my building. I wondered if something had happened.

“Fairy godmother, I need to talk to you,” Tyeesha said in a barely audible voice, her head drooping, covered with wet braids.

I felt relieved. Nothing traumatic could have happened, because if it had, Tyeesha would've been too broken up to call me fairy godmother.

“Here, you're young and strong,” I said, handing Tyeesha the sack of cat food. “What happened?” I asked as she followed me into the building.

“I'll tell you when we get upstairs,” Tyeesha answered mysteriously. Maybe T was still trippin' on Sharon's coming out, I thought. I knew that her mother had begun dating that woman she'd met at the conference at Malcolm X College. Maybe T was having trouble coping with it. Or maybe Tyeesha had gone and done something foolish and it had nothing to do with her mother.

“I did it,” Tyeesha announced, after I made her take off her wet poncho and began towel-drying her braids.

“It” had to mean sex. I frowned instinctively. I was feeling so motherly, rubbing her head. “I thought we agreed that you were going to wait,” I reminded her.

“Wait for what?” Tyeesha asked, sounding clueless.

“Wait until you were ready,” I answered firmly.

“I
was
ready.”

I sighed and gave Tyeesha's head one last good rub. “I just hate to see you growing up so fast. I want you to enjoy your teenage years.”

“Can't sex be part of enjoying them?” Tyeesha asked, throwing the towel into the hamper.

“I wanted you to be able to enjoy your innocence for as long as possible.”

“What's there to enjoy about innocence?”

“Sometimes there's nothing more precious than innocence,” I said, flashing on my childhood abuse. My eyes watered. I didn't want to go back to jumpstreet. I paused and took a deep breath. “I just don't want you to be burdened by adult worries like …” My voice trailed off.

“Like what?” Tyeesha asked.

I swallowed. I remembered the shame and worry, the cold instruments, the twinging pain, the sound of the vacuum suction, the nurse telling the doctor that the contents were overflowing, and those contents were what would have become my baby. The memory of my despair would echo forever, all because of one mistake. I felt a wave of protectiveness wash over me. “I just don't want you to have to go through what I went through.”

“We practiced safe sex.” Tyeesha rattled the words off so automatically that it reminded me that we were living in matter-of-fact times.

“I'm glad you took precautions but nothing is one hundred percent except abstinence,” I recited.

“You want me to become a born-again virgin?” Tyeesha asked.

“Yeah, but I'm not naive,” I answered. “I know that it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle, once he's gotten out. But remember, when you open the door to sex, you open the door to a whole host of stuff, and it's not all physical,” I cautioned.

“Like what?”

“You can go to stupid city. And you can get your heart broken. Because, when you open yourself sexually, you're also making yourself vulnerable emotionally. A man's sexuality is hanging all out there.” I motioned with my hands.

Tyeesha covered her mouth and giggled.

“I'm serious,” I continued. “Your sexuality is like a buried treasure. And it does make a difference, no matter what anybody says,” I added firmly. “Most women can't separate sex from love that easily or that completely. Sex and love are both powerful. That's why it's so important for a woman to love herself. And that often comes with maturity. End of speech.”

“I really care about Malik. He's been nice to me,” Tyeesha said, goo-goo-eyed.

“That's good—he should be nice to you.”

“Everybody tells us how to stay away from boys.” Tyeesha shrugged. “But nobody tells us how to
be
with boys.”

“Well, my advice to you in dealing with anybody is to ask yourself, ‘Is this person good for my self-esteem? Does he make me feel good about Tyeesha?' If he makes you feel bad about yourself, then he's bad for you.”

“Malik is sweet to me. He is so sweet,” Tyeesha gushed.

“Well, I'm glad to hear that,” I said, feeling a little envious of her puppy love. “I won't stand for anybody dogging you. And I
am
thankful that you all used protection.”

“Yeah, we did,” Tyeesha said, bending down to pet Langston. “At least the first time.”

“The first time!” I shouted. “What do you mean the first time?”

“We did it three times,” Tyeesha confided, raising her shoulders to her ears like she was afraid of me.

“Three times! Three damn times! In one sitting?” I asked.

“We weren't sitting,” Tyeesha protested, confused.

“I mean … you know what I mean.” I sighed. “Anyway, you only used a rubber once?”

“Yeah, it sort of came off the second time,” Tyeesha explained sheepishly as she followed me, carrying Langston. “And we didn't have another one.”

“Then why did you do it a third time?” I asked loudly.

Tyeesha stared down at my Santa Fe tiles. “Malik said, since it came off in the middle of the second time, it was already too late. We may as well do it a third time.”

“Jeepers creepers!” I exclaimed. “Nobody in my day ever did it three times.”

“Nobody in my day says, ‘jeepers creepers,'” Tyeesha commented.

I rolled my eyes. “We had a first time and that was it,” I insisted, setting Langston's food dish on the floor. “That's why they call it the first time,” I added, filling Langston's water bowl. “We did it once and we didn't particularly enjoy it, because it was only the first time. It was supposed to get better. Maybe it took three times or ten times to get good. But it didn't get better the same night.”

“Maybe the rules have changed,” Tyeesha suggested, raising her eyebrows. “Maybe everybody does it more than once now in the same night.” She batted the long eyelashes people had been exclaiming over since she was a baby.

“I know I'm not that out of step with the times,” I snapped. “My ear isn't that far from the ground.”

Tyeesha folded her arms and set her jaw. “I'm glad that we did it three times.”

I leaned against the kitchen sink. “How can you say that, when you risked pregnancy and disease, twice?” I asked quietly.

“Because the first time it hurt. And the second time it still hurt. And I was gonna keep trying till it got better. And the third time was like the charm.” Tyeesha smiled.

“There's nothing charming about unprotected sex,” I warned. I sounded like an old biddy, instead of someone who couldn't remember the seventies because she was there. But in the seventies, we didn't have to worry about AIDS, I reminded myself.

“Can't you be happy for me because I had a good time?” Tyeesha's big brown eyes pleaded with me. “Can't you just be my friend, right now?”

What a concept. I never expected my mother to be happy that I had a good time. My generation, despite all the press, still pretty much had to sneak and creep.

“Baby girl, I
am
your friend,” I said. “And I
am
glad you had a good time.” Tyeesha gave me a hug. “But I'd rather you hold off having another good time until you're around twenty-one,” I said, ruining our Hallmark moment.

“Twenty-one, that's whack!” Tyeesha cried, pulling away from me and rolling her eyes.

“Okay, eighteen, and I just wish you'd taken more precautions. When is your period due?” I asked with concern.

“In a couple of weeks,” Tyeesha answered casually.

“A couple of weeks!” I screamed. “You're smack-dab in the middle of your cycle! You really like living on the edge, don't you!”

“We used a rubber.”

“Yeah, once.”

“We didn't plan to do it more than once. It just happened.”

“It just happened!” I mimicked her. “Well, AIDS just happens and herpes just happens and pregnancy just happens, too!” I shouted.

“If I'd known you were going to go off like this, I would've never told you!” Tyeesha sucked her teeth and moved away from me. “You've forgotten what it feels like to be in love and to want to have a good time!” she blurted out at what she probably thought was a safe distance.

Tyeesha had a way of making me feel as old as a fossil. Of course I hadn't forgotten what it felt like to be in love and to want to have a good time. I
still
wanted to have a good time. I was only forty-one, not dead. I was in my sexual prime, after all.

I remembered a substitute teacher who said in frustration once, to our unruly third-grade class, “One day you're going to want to try to teach someone something, and then you'll know how it feels to not be listened to.” And I thought,
I'll never be that old
. At eight years old, I couldn't imagine wanting to teach someone something, any more than I could fathom paying a mortgage or saving for retirement.

“Truth be told,” I finally answered, “I want you to have more than
a
good time. I want you to have many good times. And to have good times, you have to make the right choices.” I patted myself on the back for sounding like such a good role model.

“You sound like my mom.”

“I take that as a compliment. 'Cause your mother is dead in your corner. Where is she, anyway?”

Tyeesha rolled her eyes. “Out with what's-her-name.”

“Michelle, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you met her?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she nice?”

Tyeesha shrugged. “She seems okay. But she's a woman. And Mom's a woman.”

“I know that. That's etched in stone. So?”

“So”—Tyeesha shrugged her shoulders—“I still have to get used to it, you know.”

“Just give yourself time.”

“I don't want Mom to know about me having sex, okay?” Tyeesha narrowed her eyes. “Don't rat me out.”

“Why not? It would be the perfect way to get back at her,” I said with fake enthusiasm. “And if it turns out that you're pregnant or have a disease, that would really stick it to her, wouldn't it?”

“That's whack,” Tyeesha said, scowling.

“You do want to hurt her, don't you?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Wasn't that the plan?”

“I don't want to hurt her,” Tyeesha said, groaning. “And there
was
no plan.”

“That's right.” I slapped my forehead. “If you'd been planning, you'd have brought along three condoms.”

Tyeesha cut her eyes at me. “I thought you said you were my friend.”

“I am your friend, but I'm not one of your peers. That's the difference.”

“Anyway, it's not about her,” Tyeesha insisted. “You think everything is about her.”

“Well, at least if you get pregnant, nobody will think you're like her,” I said, twisting my mouth and head to one side.

“I'm not like her, whether I get pregnant or not,” Tyeesha said coldly. “I'll never be like her!” She put her hands on her hips. “I'll never be a dyke
or
a dried-up spinster, either!”

She covered her mouth like she hadn't meant to blurt that out, but it was too late.

I swallowed. “Who's the dried-up spinster that you're talking about?”

Tyeesha remained silent. I pointed my finger in her face. “I'll have you know that I'm not dried up.” I sniffed as Tyeesha backed away. “And, in case you've forgotten, I'm not a spinster. I've been married.”

“I didn't call any names.” Tyeesha pouted.

“And, by the way,” I continued, “there are worst fates than being gay or being a dried-up spinster. And if you're not careful, you're going to find that out.”