A middle-aged lady came into the bathroom. She had short brown hair, tawny slacks with a matching belt, and a peach angora sweater. She was maybe sixty years old, with a string of freshwater pearls around her neck and pearl earrings. She stood next to me, took out a toothbrush, and rinsed it off in the sink.
“Handsome guy you got out there,” she said.
“Thank you, but he’s just my friend,” I said.
She applied toothpaste to her brush and said, “Hmm. Well, it looks like he has more than just friendship on his mind to me.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
She laughed and set her toothbrush down. “Well, honey, for one, his eyes followed you all the way to the bathroom. He’s got that look that my Jim gave me for over forty years.” She blushed.
I did the same.
I went back to the table and sat down.
“There you are,” said Keith. “I was wondering if you were coming back. I thought you made a mad dash out the window and skirted out on your bike.”
“Nope, I’m still here.” I smiled.
I sipped on the orange slushy Thai iced tea and ate my dinner. My soup and curry prawns were delicious.
We enjoyed each other’s company throughout dinner, keeping the heavy talk to a minimum. Then we rode back to the grass hut, returned our rentals, and walked back to the car. Keith’s cell phone rang. He looked at it. I wondered if he was going to have to get back to the hospital quickly. But Keith never said we had to hurry home. In fact, he didn’t even answer the phone call. He simply closed the phone and put it back in his pocket without saying a word. I knew that it must have been a female acquaintance. I’d been treating Eric, who had been calling me constantly since he returned from the cruise, in much the same fashion. I knew that Keith was too good to be true. When we got back to Oakland, the sun was starting to set.
When It’s Over, It’s Over
I
walked into my house with a bagful of groceries and my cell phone at my ear. Tia was venting to me about her mother in-law, who’d sent Ron the secret recipe for her red velvet cake and told Ron to make sure that he “kept it in the family.” Tia was hot, so I tried not to giggle. My head was tilted to one side and my arms were full of groceries. Eric had called me a couple of times and left messages, but we hadn’t spoken yet. While walking over to the counter, I heard a knock at the door. It startled me, and a jar of salsa fell from the bag and almost hit my toe.
“Ohhh my goodness!” I said.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just almost dropped something on my foot. I’m going to have to call you back. I just got in the house and someone’s knocking at the door.”
“Alright, bye.”
I set the bag down, went to the front door, and opened it. Eric stormed in.
“What’s your problem!”
“Hi, Eric.”
“Where’ve you been?” His left eye was twitching.
“Nice to see you too.”
“You can stop with the sarcasm. Where have you been?”
“Learning, Eric. And growing,” I said, turning toward the groceries.
“Chantell, you’re playing some kind of silly little girl game, and it’s not funny.”
I said nothing. His attitude didn’t warrant a response.
“At first I thought maybe you’d missed the boat by accident,” he said.
I turned back around to face him.
“But I’ve been calling you and calling you, and you haven’t returned one call.” He tried to sound tough, but he looked sad. “What’s going on?”
I tried to explain. “I’m sorry. Look, Eric, I just think that we’re together for the wrong reasons. Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
He just stood there and looked at me.
Okeydokey.
“Okay, let’s think about this for a moment,” I said. “What were we doing anyway? Did we offer any emotional support for each other when we were together? No, because—”
His voice lowered seductively. “Chantell, you don’t have to talk to me using the in-vogue psychoanalytic jargon from all them women’s magazines. Of course we supported each other emotionally. Come here, babe.”
He slid his arms around me, pressed his stomach to mine. I pushed back from him.
“See, Eric, this is what I mean. Let’s tell the truth. Either you’re not ready for a commitment, or I am not right for you, or something. Or I am not ready for a commitment. We’ve been caught up in a one- dimensional relationship. But now I’m really learning, and I think I am really, really growing.”
“Me too,” he said with his smirk.
I pushed his arms from around me. “Eric, listen, I can’t do this anymore. I know that there is more to me than this.”
“Than what? You’re too good for me now?”
“No, Eric. More to me than designer clothes and being together for appearance’s sake. I can’t be with anybody right now. I just want to work on me and my issues for a while.”
Eric looked so frustrated. He stepped back, threw up his arms, and said, “I don’t know what the heck your problem is, but you’re sounding really silly right about now.”
He was trying to make me think I was being ridiculous, but the more I talked the more I was sure that I was doing the right thing.
“I’m trying to say that as a couple you and I
look
like we’ve got it all together. But a friend of mine’s grandmother used to say that you should never judge books by their covers. How we looked together, what people thought of us, how much status we had, that stuff doesn’t mean anything. There comes a time when you just have to say bye-bye to superficial stuff, and it’s okay.”
Eric looked at me like I’d shaved my head bald and was walking around in the rain naked with Birkenstocks on. Then angry creases appeared in his forehead, and he said, “You know what? You’re trippin’. You ain’t nothin’ but a migraine-hoochie, but you will not drive me to Vicodin. So if you want to break up, fine.” He even laughed. “I ain’t worried about that. I got women fighting to be with me. Aright? I’m out.”
And that was it. He turned and walked right back out my door. Determined to do better for me, I didn’t go after him.
Focusing on Me
I
lay there nestled comfortably in my own little safe haven. The covers warm up to my neck, I chatted on the phone with Tia. I was trying to do the right things; spending less money on clothes and saving a little more in the bank. At church I was learning that faith came by hearing the word, and so I kept my grandmother’s Bible sitting right next to my bed.
“So you didn’t have to get on a cruise ship to find your buried treasure?”
“You thought that was cute, huh?” I said, laughing at her corny little joke. “Yeah, I have a lot of my mom’s belongings. Girl, you have to see everything with your own eyes to believe it. And the paintings are just wonderful. Picasso had nothin’ on my momma.”
“Chawnee, I can’t wait to see them,” she said.
I sipped my orange, strawberry, and peach juice concoction and warmed my feet at the end of my bed with my mother’s quilt. It looked great in my room and was perfect on those cold stormy nights.
“And you actually broke it off with Eric?”
“Yep. That’s over.”
“Al-righty.” My girl didn’t sound 100 percent sold. She’d soon see, though. I was certain that I wasn’t a part of his future.
We talked about my dad, about her and Ron’s upcoming trip to Aruba, and the latest beauty school stories. Then she brought up Keith Rashaad, and I started getting fidgety.
“Well, what’s up with him?” she asked.
“Well, we went on a date a few days ago, but because of the hours he is keeping at the hospital, I haven’t spoken to him in a couple of days.”
“A what? I know that you didn’t say ‘date’?” She giggled.
“Yeah. Tia, we went to the beach, and we had the best time,” I whispered. “It was great. We rented bikes. He kept looking in my eyes when he spoke, and his breath was warm and sweet . . . Have you ever stood in front of someone, and when he spoke you just wanted to inhale him?”
I could hear Tia tapping on the phone. “Hello? Is this my friend Chantell on the phone? Hello?” she said, laughing. “Listen to yourself! This is great.”
I laughed. “I know. I am trippin’. It’s all very innocent, though. He’s going back to Massachusetts soon. But we’ll keep in contact.”
“Well, I’m not one to gossip, but I think I could spot this relationship coming a mile away.” She giggled.
“No, Tia, I’ve had enough of relationships. The only one that I am focusing on is between me and God, so don’t get your hopes up on us.”
“You know, you really know how to rain on my parade.”
I looked up above my bed at the painting of the big yellow sunflower in the Mason jar that my mother created. The smell of lavender drifted from my pillowcases and into my nose.
“So are you going to church with me this Sunday?” I asked.
“Nah, not this Sunday. I’ve got too much to do. I’m going to go with you soon, though.”
Tia was raised Catholic, and believed in God and prayer, but she preferred to do hers at home. Before we hung up, I was able to tell her a little about my and Charlotte’s candid, serious conversation.
“So I think that we’ve resolved our differences.”
“That’s good, because you guys need each other, Chantell.”
“I know.”
As I reached over to grab my glass, my hand bumped a photo that I’d framed, and it fell to the floor. I picked it up and made sure it wasn’t broken. It was the photo of me, my mother Zarina, and my grandmother outside of church. I really liked this one of the three of us. My mom had written on the back of it, “Three generations of Brumwick women.” I set it back on the table.
I’d put snapshots of my family all around my house. It was nice to come home and see my family’s smiling faces. There were pictures of Dad and Charlotte, and me. There was a picture of my mom and dad out dancing somewhere. There were pictures of her pregnant with me. There was a picture of my mom in her teens all dressed up in a ball gown with my grandfather on her arm. It all made me smile.
I took another sip of my orange juice concoction and set the glass back down. I picked up the picture of the three of us and examined it again. Dad had taken the picture, while my grandma, my mom, and I all smiled. I smiled like I was at the dentist with cardboard in my mouth, getting my teeth x-rayed. I remembered that day. It was one of the very few times that my parents attended church. And they were only there then because they wanted to see their four-year-old stand in front of the church and recite her Easter speech.
I picked up the remote, hit CD #4, and Yolanda Adams sang from out of the speakers. I sank back in my bed and took it easy.
Trying to Stay Fed
B
ible study started at seven, and I was still at the office. I finished cleaning my Tupperware dish, grabbed my briefcase, and headed back over the bridge to my neck of the bay. By the time I made it into the Sunday school classroom where it was being held, Pastor Fields was doing what my grandmother used to call a “cool cat walk” from the seventies. She said, “Like the young folks say, ‘Don’t be sleepin’ on your spirit!’”
I laughed with the congregation. You could always count on her to put things in layman’s terms.
Then she said, “We can laugh and joke, folks, but seriously, don’t take care of everything else and neglect your spirit. Instead, be led by it. It will fuel you—if you let it. Turn with me now to Psalm 51:10. When you have it, say Amen.” I got settled in and turned my attention to Pastor Fields’ teachings. The congregation read:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
“What is that passage talking about?” She went on, “David is talking about your spirit . . . It’s not wise to feed your body, pay your light bill, pay your car note, get your hair cut, and not be able to reach in here,” and she pointed to her heart. “Let’s look at another passage. Turn with me if you will, to Ephesians 5:14, and let’s look at what it says.”
I found Ephesians in time and read with the group,
“Wherefore he saith, Awake that though sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light.”
“Any ideas on what that scripture is saying?” she asked.
Someone in the second row said, “It’s saying that we can’t walk around asleep, we have to let our spirit come to life.”
“Thank you. That’s right, you need to be able to connect with God and have a relationship with God. And you do that through your spirit. Let’s look at Ephesians 3:16 . . .”
I nodded my head and listened, though my stomach was growling.
Slowly Opening
T
he next day I walked up to the hospital’s complex where the new resident doctors stayed. Keith lived in number 59 of the dark brown, woodsy-looking apartments with a lighter brown trim. I located his apartment and knocked. The curtains moved at the door by the window, then the door opened.
“Hello, Chantell,” he said with a smile.
“Hi,” I said, raising one hand.
“Come on in,” he said and opened the door wider.
The apartment was dim, and the furniture was minimal. But it was very clean. There was a heavy-looking tweed couch in the center of the floor. It faced a twelve-inch color TV with rabbit ears sticking out, and a fireplace. There was no carpet; instead there were beige tiles on the floor all over the apartment, and a big rug that started under the couch and ended under the television stand. The curtains by the door were made of a thick off-white material, with a rubbery backing.
Keith looked wonderful. He sported a newly bald head and cleanly shaven face except for his crisp, fresh goatee. He wore khakis and a dark blue T-shirt.
“Please make yourself at home.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m just about ready, give me a moment.”
“No problem,” I said, smiling back.
While he got ready, I looked around and spotted a huge corkboard that he had hung on the wall in the living room. There were pictures of him and his fraternity brothers. There were pictures of him with a white coat on, a stethoscope around his neck, with three other doctors. There was a very old picture of his Grandmother Edna. There was a picture of him and me at about seven or eight years old, at a Halloween party. He was a blue Rock ’em Sock ’em Robot, and I was Superwoman. We held plastic masks in one hand and our pillowcases with candy in the other.