Playing Hard To Get (29 page)

And then it came.

After a series of readings and testimonies that almost made Lucy forget she’d had three mimosas before going to church and consider giving her life over to the Lord (for, like, three minutes), a tearful Sister Myrtle Glover, who was also wearing lavender, bowed before Kyle on the altar and took position at the speakers’ lectern. Lucy, who’d taken to carrying a pocketknife in her purse long before she became a respectable woman of high society, moved her purse from her side to her lap.

“I asked our dear pastor if I could speak to you today, church,” Myrtle started, and as she continued into an emotional address that praised the church leadership for guiding the members of First Baptist away from the snare of the devil and into the arms of the Lord, Troy actually felt bad about admonishing Kyle for giving her airtime. Myrtle’s words made Kyle seem like the next Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and First Baptist a holy ground of renewal. Members were shouting hallelujah and a few walked down the aisle to lay early offerings on the altar.

“…but, church,” Myrtle went on just as Saptosa stood up to read her portion, “where there is praise, there must also be penalty. And while I’m proud of everything we’ve done in the church, in the name of the Lord, having crawled the aisles of this sanctuary before I could walk them, I can’t sit idly by when I know that the same evils that sent our savior to the cross now seek solace within our midst.”

Had Troy been looking at Kyle, she might’ve seen his Adam’s apple quiver a bit at this transition, but she was too busy managing her own discomfort. And while some of the other listeners seemed to share this position, a few, namely Elizabeth, pushed Myrtle on, cheering, “Say it!” and “Shame the devil!”

“Now, I’m no saint, but I know a sinner and when I see one, I say I must say it!” Myrtle shouted in a way that made Saptosa step up behind her and lay a hand on her back to signal that her time was up. “Evil is here. Right among us. And, First Baptist, I can no longer sit back and watch.”

And with that little performance, Troy’s big day ended with big problems. After ten minutes, Saptosa had to pull Myrtle to her seat. Anyone who was in the inner circle at the church was there and knew exactly what Myrtle’s bitter, verbal rant was about. Any members who were still upset about the pastor’s decision to marry someone from outside the church were excited that Myrtle’s less than subtle appeal was given airtime. Others who really didn’t care suspected that perhaps the naysayers now had a point. And the few who were beginning to like Troy and accept her as one of their own were suspicious as to what Myrtle was talking about. Troy and her grandmother fell into the latter group and as Troy sat through the rest of the special sermon, she thought of what would come next.

Myrtle had said she was coming for her, and she’d selected the perfect place and time to do it. But that couldn’t be it.



“You need me to make a call?” Lucy whispered in Troy’s ear after the service had ended and she’d pulled Troy into the backseat of the Rolls.

“No, Lucy.” Troy sighed, watching through the tinted car windows the little girls walk out of the front of the church in their new Easter dresses.

“The nerve of her!” Lucy went on. “She’s hard. Much harder than I thought. You sure you don’t want me to make a call? I can. Even if you say no, I can know you mean yes, but you don’t want to be tied to it. I can arrange that.”

Troy looked at her grandmother.

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “I can’t do that. I won’t even consider it. I—”

“I know,” Lucy said, broken. “And I wouldn’t let you. But you know you need to do something about her. I told you, you needed to do something about her before and now you have to do something about her now.”

Troy wanted to lament with Lucy, but her ears were filled with Myrtle’s harsh words: evil, sinner, evil, sinner. The more she replayed the tape in her mind, the more she began to believe it.

“And that husband of yours—I didn’t want to say anything, but he should’ve done something. He should’ve stopped her. There’s no way your grandfather would’ve heard of anyone speaking about me in such a way. No. No. Not in his presence.”

Troy gave Lucy a look. The cat had long emerged from the bag, saying Lucy’s husband was not Troy’s grandfather.

“Don’t get on Kyle,” Troy said, watching Kyle walk out of the church with one of the deacons. His eyes were red and he looked around sadly. Troy knew he was looking for her. “He’s just trying not to play sides.” While Troy meant what she was saying to her grandmother, she couldn’t help but feel alienated from and by her husband. She had been open with him about her issues with Myrtle and asked him not to put her on the program. He’d failed to protect her. But she couldn’t say that to Lucy. Once her grandmother hated someone, that was it. And she knew sharing her hurt feelings with Lucy could only lead to the old woman making a phone call.

“Not trying to play sides?” Lucy asked. “You make it sound like he’s trying to appease both of you.”

“It’s about me and her,” Troy said, watching her husband and knowing what must be worrying him. “It’s about him and the church. He knows what Sister Glover can do. He was trying to stop it.”

“Well,” Lucy said, grabbing her granddaughter’s hand and squeezing it, “if he can’t stop it, then you have to. You have to stop her. You have to confront her. Now, I know you’re not a fighter. You’ve always chosen a smile over a fist. But you’re Mary Elizabeth’s child and my grandchild, and that means, dear, there’s fight in you. You’re going to have to find it—if you want to save your marriage, and yourself.”



Nothing in Tamia’s world carried weight. Everything was light. Everything had the ability to change or be changed. A pen. A pillow. A piece of Brillo pad. She would sit for hours thinking about how each thing was a part of the universe, created by the Creator and thus a part of the cycle of change.

Now she was sitting in her office, contemplating how her door was changing. It opened. It closed. It let people in and out.

“You okay?” Naudia asked, standing in the doorway.

Tamia blinked. She hadn’t noticed she was there. Her focus had become so direct, her mind so encased that she could meditate anywhere for any amount of time.

“Yes,” Tamia said softly.

Naudia walked into the office and sat down. She knew for a fact that it had been more than fifteen days since Tamia had eaten anything other than lemons and maple syrup. While she had to commend her driven boss for holding on for so long, she had to admit that Tamia was beginning to look a little loopy. She’d lost more than twenty pounds and had stopped shaving her legs. This certainly wasn’t helping her office image. The lack of hair and abundance of colorful fabric in Tamia’s life made her the official topic of the cappuccino-machine crowd. They speculated and spectated and a few even separated themselves from her. And although the chatter was plentiful, not one of them had gone to speak to Tamia about what they claimed was so worthy of their cappuccino-laced concerns. In fact, it would be two more weeks until one of the partners, noticing that Tamia was wearing moccasins, would put in a formal complaint. But by then, she’d be preparing herself for a new life.

None of this mattered now, though. It wasn’t like Tamia cared or noticed anyway.

She was too busy contemplating the change of her laptop.

“I’m happy for you,” Naudia said, “that you’re going through with this.”

“Thank you,” Tamia said, grinning, but because her face had become so slender with the fast, it looked like she had the biggest smile ever.

“I mean, it’s a little crazy…and I hope they’re not serving punch at those meetings…but I can see how it’s making you happy.”

“Was I sad before?” Tamia asked.

“I don’t think you were sad…I think you were just like the rest of us,” Naudia said. “Okay.”

“I was.” Tamia nodded. “So, Naudia, what would make you happy? If someone said to you that you should chase bliss relentlessly, that it was the only way you’d be free, what would you do with yourself?”

“Go to law school,” Naudia said quickly. It was what she thought of every day. What she researched during her lunch break. What she dreamed of. What she knew she could do in the world. “I know I have what it takes. I just need a shot.”

“What’s holding you back?”

“Money,” Naudia revealed. “And it’s so messed up that money is what’s stopping me because I know I’d be a great attorney. I know the law. I know I have what it takes to take down these—”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Tamia stopped Naudia.

“What?”

“I know what you’re capable of,” Tamia said. “Everything I can do, you can do. And probably better.”

“You really think that?” This was a gargantuan statement coming from someone Naudia respected so much.

“I know so. I’ve seen so.”



As Tamia mothered her assistant, Tasha fixed her mind on pretending her mother didn’t exist. However, as every New Yorker knows, the last thing you want to do is try to hide something in the big city with the bright lights. As the old saying goes, “Whatever is done in the dark shall always come to light.” Tasha, unfortunately, was doomed to learn this the hard way.

It was Porsche’s birthday. Her fiftieth. The BIG 5-0. And while Tasha kept telling herself it didn’t matter and she didn’t care and joking that she’d wished her mother was dead anyway, doing all three of these things at one time as she ran her last mile on the treadmill at the gym was proving impossible. Especially since she’d passed a Times Square billboard bearing Porsche’s image with the rest of the cast of
Sinfully Yours
on the way to the gym and a feature on Page Six of the
New York Post
announced Porsche’s fortieth birthday to the world. Turning her nose up at the Hollywood literary lie (and the fact that if that was even true Porsche would’ve given birth to her at ten), she chucked the newspaper into the nearest trash can and found an escape in a television that was propped just two feet from her position on the treadmill.

S
OAP
O
PERA
K
ITTEN
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40
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!

It was an
Access Hollywood
story. Porsche’s secretive smile, dipped in a luscious red lipstick came flashing across the screen and Tasha sucked her teeth. The woman on the treadmill beside her watched as Tasha slowed down and struggled to press the little faded remote button to turn the channel.

“If I had a body like hers, I’d never come to the gym,” the blonde said when Tasha had successfully turned to the
Good Times
rerun when Willona adopts Penny. “I mean, these celebrities have such perfect bodies, no one can live up to it. I believe most of them have liposuction anyway.”

“I guess so,” Tasha said, readjusting her earphones to give the woman a signal that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Her lipo swelling was catching up to her and in order to stay in the dozen plus pairs of couture jeans she’d purchased to run around the city as she built her management empire, she needed to lose ten pounds in a month. After two kids, it was a straitjacket-worthy idea, but she was up for the challenge. She needed to focus her mind on something other than everything that was going on. Lionel. The girls. And she hadn’t told anyone about what happened at the Roosevelt Hotel with Lynn. She was determined to forget about it herself. Nothing happened, she kept thinking, so there was nothing to talk about. It was a crazy experience and now it was time to move on with plan B. She would use the contacts she’d made at the party and go out on her own. “But Porsche St. Simon doesn’t have much work to do anyway,” the woman went on even though she’d noticed each of Tasha’s cues. “You black women have such lovely skin. She could gain fifty pounds and still look good. If I gain three, everything will start sagging and bagging. Thank God for Botox.”

After finishing her workout, Tasha was in the locker room, looking at Porsche’s phone number on her cell phone. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since Tiara was born. Lionel was right, it had hurt her like a fresh, thin cut on her hand when Porsche, sounding rushed and tired, came up with a reason not to see her new grandchild. She’d just let Porsche back into her life when she had Toni and she’d done the same thing. Pretended to care, promised to be the perfect grandmother, and then walked away like all of Hollywood would dissipate if she took just a little bit of time to be with her daughter, with her family.

“I don’t need you,” Tasha said to the phone, but that was the opposite of what her heart was feeling. It didn’t matter how much she said and told herself she didn’t need Porsche, the emptiness she felt without her mother there, the emptiness she’d felt all of her life was unbearable. And just then, alone in the city, without any of the things she’d put in her life to fill the unbearable emptiness, it became too much for Tasha to hold inside.

“Porsche!” she hollered into the phone when she heard her mother’s voice. She was ready to curse her out, dig into her and say all of the hurtful things she was thinking. But then Porsche said something her daughter had only heard from her three, maybe four times in her life.

“I miss you, baby! How are the girls?”

Tasha dropped her towel and sat down on the bench in front of her locker.

“Fine,” she answered.

“Yeah, I was gonna come out there for my birthday, but—you know.” It was a lie. Tasha knew it, but hearing it, hearing just the promise of it from Porsche, was like a hug she needed. And she did. What Tasha was going through, the things she couldn’t control, was what she needed her mother and her words and her ears and her hugs for. She was supposed to be there. “I was thinking, why don’t we all go to Jamaica this summer—me, you, the girls, even Lionel?” Porsche asked excitedly. “Won’t that be great?”