He laughed. “You can do it.”
“No thank you.”
Keith slowed a bit more. I didn’t.
It was much busier on this side of the lake. There were cars lined up along the lake and lots of runners going in both directions. People were coming and going. Cars were zooming by. There were women in braids, or ponytails, and many in sports bras. There were babies in wagons and strollers. And there were men in shorts and shirtless, in spandex and sweatpants. Some people walked, some jogged, some lounged with friends. There was a gold Lexus ahead parked at the curb. Its door was open, and strong bass lines bounced through the air in time. Three guys sat on the grass near the car laughing. I kept running. Keith and I were bonding more and more each time our sneakers hit the pavement. Maybe we could be that family that he spoke of having one day. I felt good, like I was in tip-top shape. I was in college again, in my own world. I encouraged myself like I was a track coach: “Go girl, work that body!” I recited a mantra: “I am as graceful as a cheetah.” This was what it was all about. I was doing my thing. I could feel my stomach muscles firming up now. I kept going.
I got closer to the Lexus, and that was when I heard one of the guys laugh and say, “Oh, snap! Look at that shiznit!”
I was thinking of Keith’s lips, and focusing on my breathing. “How are you doing, Keith?” I yelled back to him.
He didn’t answer.
Then a football player’s frame stepped out in front of me on the sidewalk. I bumped into him and stumbled back.
It was Eric “I wish I were Shemar Moore” Summit. He stood there boldly in front of me with his chest out, like he was the king of the lake.
“Hey, Eric,” I said in a tone to let him know he wasn’t intimidating anybody.
“Where you been, baby?”
“Handling my business, and I’m not your baby.”
His friend Rob, who was not doing a great job of trying to hold a straight face, howled, “Aw man, it’s over! Chantell is straight clownin’ you, son!”
“Yeah, come away from the light, Eric! Come away from the light!” That was his friend Maynard, who was over at the car.
Eric laughed and spoke in a tone he used when he was caught in an uncomfortable predicament. “Man y’all tripping! Don’t get it twisted. That’s going to forever be my booty!”
Keith Rashaad approached us and said, “Hey, what’s up?”
Eric looked at him and said, “Nothin’, niggah, dang, you see I’m talkin’. Step!” And he motioned with his big football-playing hand like he was shooing a fly away.
I stood next to Keith and said to Eric, “You need to step!”
Then Eric looked over at his buddy Rob and said, “Oh. I see how it is.” He turned to his friend at the car, and said, “Hey, I ain’t even trippin’. I’ma let y’all do y’all thang, but before you go, I’ma sing you your theme song. I made it up just for you.” Then he bobbed his head to an imaginary beat and pointed at me and sang,
“You ain’t nothin but a fake a—— b——, please get to steppin’ little fake a—— t——.”
He laughed. “Damn that was tight! Yo, I need to lay that on wax! I can go platinum with rhymes like that!”
I knew that he was not dogging me like that!
“Hey, Eric. Chill out man. Be cool,” said Rob.
Eric was trying to embarrass me, and I didn’t appreciate it one iota.
Keith shook his head and sighed like this was too ridiculous for words. “Yeah, alright man, whatever.” He touched my shoulder. “Let’s keep running.”
But I was angry. “Oh no no no!” Who did he think he was clownin’?
If Eric thought that he could front me off like that, in front of everybody, he was sadly mistaken. He must have had me confused with someone else. I stretched my arm back and swung it to slap the taste out of his disrespectful mouth. I aimed for his jaw. My hand hit his neck. His eyes bugged open bigger than I’d ever seen, and he rushed me like I was a quarterback with the ball in my hand. I hit the ground and lay on my side. The impact made me dizzy, and dazed.
Keith Rashaad punched Eric. Eric punched Keith. It was all happening so fast.
“Hey! Hey! Y’all chill all that out!” said Rob. Both Rob and Eric’s other friend Maynard jumped up. One grabbed Keith and the other grabbed Eric.
“This is crazy! Y’all some grown a—— men out here acting like children!” shouted Maynard. “All of y’all out here acting like some d**n fools!”
I slowly stood up and dusted myself off. People were standing around watching. A couple of people were on their cell phones calling the police.
Keith looked at me and said, “Come on!” in a tone I hadn’t heard in a long long time. I walked alongside of him and was quiet.
“Who was that? Your other man?” he said.
“What? No! I used to . . .”
Keith looked so mad. “What’s wrong with you? Chantell, you can’t go around charging at people! Especially men! We could all have ended up in jail! We are not kids!”
“I know, but did you hear him trying to disrespect me?”
“Chantell, you should have let me handle it.”
“I know, but he was—”
“I don’t care what he was doing. You don’t rush no grown man! Have you lost your mind?” Keith was furious with me.
I was quiet. Nobody got hurt. I didn’t know what the big deal was. Keith Rashaad continued mumbling under his breath as we walked back toward our cars. Maybe he was jealous?
“Look,” I said, “Eric is the one who got out of line with me.”
I didn’t know if Keith’s jaw was twitching because he was angry or if he needed some ice. “You know what, Chantell? I don’t know if this is some kind of game that you and your little boyfriend go around playing, but it’s stupid and immature.”
It was strange. Eric had called me all kinds of dirty names just twenty minutes ago, and I was all but ready to forget about that. Yet when Keith Rashaad said I was being “stupid and immature,” I wanted to burst into tears and howl. But I contained myself. Then I figured out what the real problem was. Keith had been at Harvard too long, and he’d obviously forgotten what we in the neighborhood do when somebody has crossed the line. Eric had called me a b—— and worse. Yep, I thought, that’s what this was. Apparently Keith had forgotten what was tolerable and what was not.
I tried again to explain it to him, so that he could understand things from my perspective. I said, “Keith, it’s not about him being my little boyfriend, and he got out of line with
me.
So what was I supposed—”
“You were supposed to stop trying to control everything and let me handle it!”
I looked at the sidewalk, with my hands held together. Keith Rashaad wasn’t getting it, so I tried a different approach. “Keith, you called me immature. But I don’t see how you can say that. I pay my own mortgage, and my own car note, I buy my own clothes. I don’t ask anybody for anything. So from what I can see, that makes me full-grown!”
He got this look of frustration and anger on his face. His eyes squinted and he got these two creases between his eyebrows, like he couldn’t take it anymore. “No, that makes you immature. Just like I said. Chantell, you know what? You need to get your priorities in order.” He said, “The things that you think are important need to be reexamined!”
Keith had yelled more in the last five minutes than he had in the entire time I’d known him.
“Clothes. Money, beauty, cars!” He flipped his arms like they were nothing. “What good is all that if you’ve never felt the beauty of a sunrise? Huh?”
Everything that Keith loved about me he’d told me over the last few months. Everything that he hated he laid on me right then right there.
“What good is ambition if all you know are anger and fear?” he continued. “Huh? What good is making sure everyone sees you with your hair done if you can’t express your emotions? And owning a home means nothing if you don’t own up to what is in your heart and soul. Do you get what I am trying to say?
“Happiness is not out there,” Keith said, waving around his hand. “It’s in here!” And he hit his chest.
Then he sighed and said, “I am in love with you, Chantell. I always have been. I probably always will be.”
There it was. Cards on the table, only nobody had ever said anything that real to me before, and I didn’t know what to say, or how to act, so I just stood there dumbfounded.
“See, that’s exactly what I mean. You leave me hanging, Chantell. You pretty much no-showed at dinner the other day! Do you have any idea how silly I felt, bragging to everyone about how wonderful and how smart and how beautiful and perfect you are? How together you are, then for you to not even show up until the dinner was over! No, of course you don’t understand that because you’d never put yourself on the line for anybody. But I did, and I do, and I felt like a d**n fool.”
“Keith, I’m sorry. Everyone leaves. And I was afraid that because your project was ending—”
“Stop. Just save it! I’m done.”
How had we gotten here? In the past he’d always read my eyes, but now he wasn’t even looking at me. I stood there like an idiot.
“Please listen to me, Keith!”
He said, “No, you please listen to me. I cannot make you be something or someone who you don’t want to be.”
If he had looked in them, he would have seen that my eyes said, “I love you too.” He would have seen that they said, “I love the air that you breathe. I loved you when I first kissed you in the balcony at church. And I loved you that day you had the asthma attack and I ran to get your inhaler. And I loved you at TGIF’s in Jack London Square, when you told me why you never called me.” My eyes said it all. But he wouldn’t look at me.
His face was swollen now from where Eric had hit him. I reached to touch his jaw. He yanked his head away. I fought the urge to cry. If I had let myself cry then, I would have broken down into a thousand-million pieces, and I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t have been able to think. So I just bit my lip and stood there being the coward I was. Afraid of emotion and feelings. He walked across the street and got in his car, and I held it all in. Until finally, the dam broke, and I cried big coward tears. The way big cowards do. Keith didn’t even look at me. He just drove by.
Piece of Cake
K
eith Talbit had said he was done with me, but he had also said he was in love with me. I chose to hold on to the latter remark. Six days had passed and I hadn’t spoken to him. He’d always been such a forgiving, loving person, I would never have imagined that he could go this long without calling me.
I thought of all that had transpired, and I was in anguish—the kind that takes your stomach and churns it like an old-time washing machine. The kind that makes some people not eat for days, and others eat without hunger. It was just a little tussle that he and Eric had at the lake; it wasn’t serious, right? And the recognition dinner that I missed shouldn’t have been held against me. I’d had a lot of work to do, I fell asleep, and my nylons ripped.
I’d tried to call him several times but never got to the seventh digit. I remembered our dinner in Santa Cruz, at the Thai restaurant, and wondered if Keith had been trying to tell me something when I’d left him at the table to go to the ladies’ room.
I got out of bed and into the shower. By the time I was done, I decided it had been a week too long. We needed to stop this game of who could hold out the longest. I couldn’t take it anymore. I loved this man with everything in me, and I’d never been more serious about anything in my life. I got to the seventh digit and pressed it without hesitation. The answering machine picked up right away.
“Hi, Keith, it’s me, Chantell. It’s early, and I know you’re probably sleeping, but I had to call you, because you’re on my mind. I’ve been really worried about you, about us. I’ve been thinking about everything that transpired, and I really have to talk to you.”
I was bordering on desperation, and I hoped it wasn’t coming through in my voice, but I was determined not to blow it with him again. “If it’s okay, I want to swing by and try to catch up with you tonight after work. I really miss you, Keith Rashaad. I really do. Okay, bye.”
It was a good day at the office, and I was feeling good about all of the changes and discoveries I was finding in me. Like admiration for people, and respect, and love. I remembered the therapist who said that change takes time, and he was right. The dashboard clock said it was 7:53 p.m., and I was on the 880 freeway, headed to Keith’s house. I stopped off at Starbucks to grab us an evening snack.
I walked through the doors of the dimly lit coffeehouse. Eight at night and it was packed. Bob Marley played, helping to set up atmosphere.
For the first time, I was going to put my true feelings out there into the universe; God did want good things for me. I just had to know what I wanted for myself and be open to it and believe that I could have it. I loved Keith, that was all there was to it, and I had no fear or second thoughts at all. I even sang a little with Bob as he talked about being in love and sharing what you have with that special person. Sing it, Bob Marley!
I was in love. I was popping the fingers of one hand and rubbing my fingers over the not-so-fresh coffee beans on display with the other. I played with the oatmeal-colored beans and bopped around.
Bob Marley always sang from his heart. That is what I was about to do, if I ever got through the coffee lovers’ line and to my beau’s house.
I knew everything that I wanted to say to him. I had it all rehearsed in my head. Actually, I had repeated it so much that I had it memorized, like I did when I gave a big presentation to a client. So I wasn’t nervous. There were three people left in front of me. I was going to speak like I’d drunk from some truth serum. I’d say: “Keith, you said that you loved me and that you’ve always loved me, and the truth is, I’ve always loved you too. I simply didn’t know how to show it. You are everything that I want and desire in a man.”
After I’d told him everything, he’d hug me and we’d probably kiss and maybe even cry together. Because he was in touch with his sensitive side like that.
There were two people left in line ahead of me. A lady in a purple jogging suit and a man in all black with a San Francisco 49ers hat on.