Halfway there, amusement gives way to self doubt. What if he forgot I was coming and someone else is there when I arrive?
If they ask me to join them … will I? They will have to show me what to do though.
What if he sees that I have a few strands of gray hair down there?
I push the stop button on the elevator panel and listen as the beating of my heart takes over. Oh God, please don’t let me go back to being Eunella. Please let me have a brain tumor, please, please, I need one even if it’s just for tonight. Please.
I breathe deeply, push the button again and the elevator glides upward. I watch as it displays each floor without incident. I step off, follow the right arrow and knock. He opens the door and I step inside and quickly look around to see what new possibilities are in store for me.
Am I disappointed?
I turn to him and he’s biting his lip. I grin at him.
“You look as if you didn’t expect me to show up.”
He glances at his watch then looks at me and smiles broadly.
“Exactly how late am I?” I inquire.
He laughs again. “All of two minutes. I imagined that you got on the elevator, came to your senses and decided against me.”
“It would not have been against you. It would have been against it.”
I feel an immediate tension between us. He closes the gap, raises my chin with his fingers and kisses me. His breath is minty. I close my eyes, letting my brain register his actions. I reach out my hands and touch the band of his sweatpants. He stops and I open my eyes and gaze into his.
“You didn’t kiss me back,” he says as if in awe.
He examines my face. I lick my lips and he lowers his head again and with my eyes locked into his, I return his kiss. I feel its warmth slowly drizzle over my body parts. I like it. I close my eyes and move into him. Feeling his hardness against me gives me courage. I slowly run one hand over his hard butt cheek. He deepens the kiss and picks me up. I wrap my short legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. For the first time in my life, I want to give as much as I get.
We kiss for a lot longer than I expected. He lays me on the bed and stays on top of me. I kiss him as if I’m hungry. He gives me his tongue and usually I’m reluctant to give mine but not now, not here. I move under him wanting his hardness deep inside me. He suddenly stops the kiss. He pulls off his sweatshirt and I watch his every move. I smile when I see him. What they say about white men is a lie. I lick my lips in anticipation as he bends over me and pulls down the zipper of my jacket. I grin. It never occurred to me to get undressed. He does it all as I lie still and gaze into his eyes. I like his eyes. They are kind and loving, and it occurs to me that if he’s a hooker, I don’t have any money to pay him.
He runs his hand over my leg and lifts the other one as his hands travel over my belly and up to my breasts. I sit up quickly and lock my lips on his, while he climbs on top of me and between my legs. I wait for him to enter me, but he stops and rolls over to the night table. With his back to me, he opens the drawer. I cover my eyes and squeeze them tight. I didn’t even think of using a condom.
When I feel him beside me, I remove my hand from over my eyes and look up at him.
“Can I smell you?” he whispers.
I nod although I’m not sure what he means.
He kisses my cheek and then my neck and slowly moves lower as he runs his hands over my body. I shut off my brain when he sucks on my nipple and a sound escapes me. He kisses my slightly pouched belly and lays his face against it. The heat from his skin causes my hips to lift up and before I realize it his face is in my pubic area and he inhales me. I lift my head and his eyes trap mine. He opens my legs wide and when I feel his tongue on me my eyes close and I lift my hips. He sucks on me and I pulsate with such force that I cry out unexpectedly. His fingers enter me and move back and forth as I enjoy the journey until it comes to an end.
I cover my face again and feel him lying beside me.
“Tell me your name,” he says in a deep voice.
I uncover my eyes and gaze at him. “Ella,” I say softly.
There’s tenderness in his eyes.
“Can you do that again, Ella?” he asks in my ear as he kisses the side of my face.
I don’t answer because I don’t know. I have never climaxed more than once in a night and sometimes not at all. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want him to stop touching me either. I run my hands over his back, put one leg across his hips and he looks in my face. I don’t know what he sees, but he kisses my mouth. I kiss him back and he stops.
“Ella, keep looking into my eyes until you can’t stand it anymore.”
I nod.
Our lips meet and ever so slowly my body turns into liquid fire. I don’t remember closing my eyes. What I remember is my body surrendering it all to him and when we climax I feel a physical closeness to him I never knew was possible.
When he leaves the bed to use the bathroom, I’m not sure what to do. It’s a good time to leave. I don’t want to, so I pull the sheet tighter around me and turn on my side toward the outside of the bed. Minutes later, he comes back and curves his body against mine, cuddling me. I smile. It feels good. We lie there without speaking and it feels so right I dose off.
I’m conscious again and the digital clock radio says eleven-ten. I slowly move out of his embrace and step out of the bed. I look back at him. His eyes are open and he’s looking back at me. I suddenly feel an urgent need to pee. I tiptoe quickly to the bathroom and lift the seat since I don’t have time to paper it. I crouch without touching and pee with force.
What do I do now? I use one of the three wash cloths and clean up including washing my face. I inhale deeply forgetting about the stretch marks on my butt, the strands of gray hair, my flabby breasts, and return to the room to get dressed and leave. He’s sitting up with the sheet around his lower body and his chest is covered with a blanket of black hair that runs down to the edge of the sheet. His muscles say he works out too. I look up at his face and smile and he smiles back. I want to do it again, but I bend and find my clothes. I turn to retrace my steps.
I hear the bed move and he grabs me.
“Don’t go yet,” he says as his body comes up against mine. I feel my muscle contract. I hold it tight wanting to satisfy the urge.
I drop my stuff and turn to face his chest. I lay my head against him and use both hands to squeeze his butt cheeks. They’re hard and … I can’t resist.
At one o’clock, I return to my room and drop across the bed. My cell makes a noise and I reach for it. Three missed calls from Zoi.
I text her: having the time of my life. Will call you after my nine o’clock presentation.
The following morning, my boss and I meet for breakfast.
“You seem very relaxed,” he says.
I nod and continue eating. I am very relaxed knowing that the rest of my life is not dependent on anything I may say or do in the next hour and a half. After breakfast, we enter the conference room together and sit in the chairs nearest the podium. When it’s time, I get up and tell them that Mr. McCarthy is feeling under the weather and, as his vice president, I will present. It’s a forty-minute presentation. At the end, my boss folds his arms and nods his head in approval. I should have said ‘thank you for your time’ and leave; instead, I ask if there are any questions. Half an hour later, they kick out my boss and get personal with me.
“Why didn’t you make the pitch for the job as president of the New York office?”
“It says you’re in a doctorate program on your resume, what are you studying?”
“Are you loyal to this company?”
“Why is your graduate degree in business and your doctorate’s in education, don’t you know what you want to do?”
“Why should we choose you over anyone else?”
There’s not one spec of color among the six of them and the one woman who is possibly a transvestite and someone’s secretary sits away from eve
ryone. I’m being mean and spiteful but so what.
I look up from the podium.
“Gentlemen,” I say eyeing her then moving my eyes back to them, “I have made a pitch on Mr. McCarthy’s behalf to be the next president of the New York office. He’s the person most qualified to take you into the next century. I find your questions quarrelsome and inappropriate. My position is not what’s under review and, if it is, I hope you will remember you have already tortured me. Thanks for your time.”
I close my laptop, unplug it and stuff everything in its place without a sideways glance at them. I’m not upset, just ready to get back to New York. I’m convinced I am too old to still be the only black person and only woman in the room full of white men. I will choose my next job carefully and hopefully it will be reflective of some of the things I strongly believe in.
I sit under a tree across from the building where I live, in a park in Brownstone, Brooklyn, wondering how in the hell I got to this mentally screwed up place where I can enjoy making love to a man and not even know his name. I’m a smart woman with a doctorate; although most of the people I work with have no idea of my Ph.D., status. I should know how to fix myself but the question is, do I even want to? I’m almost forty, looking down the mountain at the other side and wondering what the hell is this thing called my life all about. Can I change? Would it be worth it and do I even want to?
Fifteen years ago, I created a secret when I burned my husband’s immigration papers, got his brother to forge his signature and fled St. Matthews, a tiny island in the Caribbean, for the Bronx. I have been running ever since.
I get up, hug the tree tightly and sob. I lay my head against its rough bark and feel the goose bumps form all over my body as I give into the sadness that’s deep in my soul. I know myself and I have worked hard to change what I can for the sake of my two sons and my nephew. They’re basically grown now and I’m free to be whoever; that thought scares me.
Can I revert to what I was?
Is it impossible to unlearn what I know?
I let go of the tree very slowly and pat her as a way of saying thanks. She has been my mother for the past three years and she knows I’ll be back. I bend over, touch my toes, put my head between my legs at my ankles, stretch and then stand upright. I slowly take off running on my journey to mental toughness around the park and then along the streets for a few blocks.
I have a weakness that lets me hold on to painful emotional memories and remember them as if they happened yesterday. I can remember as far back as when I was four. My mom died giving birth to my brother who died along with her. We lived in England at the time and I remember being happy. I used to remember my mother’s face, but as the years went by, probably around the time I became a mother, those memories got wiped out. I remember my grandmother showing up one day and taking us back with her to St. Matthews. That was probably the worst day of my life, and I cannot seem to let it go no matter how I try to alter what I saw and heard. I was four, so my brain probably turned things around, and looking at it from a grownup’s point of view should have changed my thinking; but it didn’t and it’s ruining my life.
When we arrived in St. Matthews, everything was different. The kids played differently and laughed at the way Zoi and I spoke. They talked about us as if we weren’t there. I remember the way they tried to divide us. Zoi looked like my father and I, like my mother.
“She black like pot and the other one white like cream,” they said. I cried to my grandmother and she told me those are just words of ignorant people, and sent me to Zoi to look into her eyes.
“Your mother’s eyes those are. You are blessed. You have your mother’s color and your father’s face and your sister has your mother’s face and your father’s color. You are two lucky children. Don’t let the fools around here tell you different.”
Zoi and I learned how to play with only each other and to protect each other.
My Granny Nanny, as Zoi and I called our grandmother, moved to England when she was in her thirties with her husband who was an engineer. They had my mother, Sheron, in England and Sheron met and married Benjamin Blakely. When they were married for three years and Granny Nanny was satisfied that Benjamin could take care of her only daughter, she moved back to St. Matthews since she was all alone because her husband had died. She worried about Sheron. Sheron was so in love with Ben that Granny Nanny had nagging feelings Ben would break her heart. Ben was a white boy. Sheron’s skin was very dark and her mother wasn’t convinced that a white boy could love her child and be there for her when society decided to test them. She was prepared at anytime for Sheron’s phone call, but what she got was Ben’s.
Granny Nanny heard him say Sheron died in child birth that morning. It was the middle of the night in St. Matthews. She never anticipated that news, but she was calm. Come and get me Mama or he left me, but not that; her daughter, her only child, dead. She did everything she needed to do to get on a flight the next day. When she landed in London, she had no time to grieve, not even to shed a tear. Ben was in bad shape and his two little children, her grandchildren, needed her.
After three weeks, she told Ben she needed to go home and suggested he accompany her for a change of scenery and bring the children. Ben said he couldn’t do that. Granny Nanny speculated that Ben believed he needed to be near Sheron and she hoped that would somehow keep him alive. A week later, she approached him again and suggested she take the children home with her because he was in no shape to take care of them. She thought he would object, but offering was the least she could do. He surprised her and himself and told her yes, to take the children with her.
Granny would always stop the story here. She wasn’t sure if I remembered what was said and she wanted me to forget. I tried to forget, but it would never leave my brain.
Zoi was in her crib sleeping and I was supposed to take a nap, but I wanted Daddy. He was sad. Hugging me made him feel better. I climbed out of my bed and walked toward their voices. Granny Nanny was sitting across from Daddy and tears lined Daddy’s face.
“Ben, Sheron would want you to take care of her children. She loved you and you and those children were all she ever wanted. Come home with me. The fresh air will help heal your soul and in six months to a year you’ll be ready to face life again.”
“Mom, I can’t.” He spoke in a clip English accent as if Granny Nanny just didn’t understand.
“Those children are all you have and you are all they have. If I take them with me it will be like losing both of their parents.”
Daddy saw me then and smiled through his tears.
“I … I can’t take care of them. Look at me. I’m a white man. I was prepared to fight for them, but Sheron was supposed to be here to tell me how. I can’t leave her here. I will come and get them as soon as I can.”
“Ben, all children need is love and later as they grow older you will figure it out.”
Granny Nanny finally saw me too because Daddy was staring at me. She stood and yelled at Daddy, “Take a good look at her face,” she said, pointing at me, but her face was in Daddy’s. “She will never forgive you.”
Days later, Daddy hugged us goodbye and ordered me to take care of Zoi. He never came for us. When I thought he was dead, Granny Nanny sent letters to the government and after a while she received one back saying that Daddy was alive; but his location could not be disclosed. Granny Nanny said he must be alive because checks arrived for Zoi and me every month even after we were both twenty-one. We figured he joined the Royal Navy or the secret service.
After I left, I wrote and asked lawyer Henry back in St. Matthews to write to the British government and ask them to terminate payments to us. The checks stopped maybe a year after that.
I walk back through the park and at the building I head up the stairs to Zoi’s. I knock and the idiot, Darnell, opens the door.
“How come you knocked?” he asks, trying to sound West Indian. I hate when he does that and although I’m tempted to tell him where white
boys like him belong I resist.
“Where’s Zo?” I ask heading to the bedroom.
“I’m here, what’s wrong?” Zoi asks from the high-armed sofa. She lowers the volume on the TV and turns to me.
I sit on the floor by her head. Darnell is now in his La-Z-Boy chair reading the paper.
“When I went to Canada I had a one night stand,” I say, stretching out on my back still on the rug covered portion of the hardwood floor.
She eases up and glares at me with surprise.
“You didn’t! How the hell did that happen?”
“I met him in the wine shop at the hotel and he kinda came on to me and … I said yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I went to his room and he made love to me.”
“You mean you had sex, right?”
“No, he made love to me and,” I stop and mouth, “I had oral sex for the first time.”
“What do you mean for the first time? You never had …” and she stops and mouths, “oral sex?”
“Nope. My very … first … time.”
She holds her head and then turns back to me.
“Just so we’re clear. You did it to him or he did it to you?”
“He did it to me and it was the best sex I have ever had.”
“Was he a call boy … man or whatever they call them?”
I laugh.
“Some time after we got started it crossed my mind that if he was a hooker I didn’t have any money. I’m wishing he was so I know for sure no two guys can take me there.”
“What did he look like?”
I mouth, “Is he listening?”
She raises her eyeballs in her husband’s direction and then nods her head and looks back at me.
“He was white,” I mouth to Zoi.
“White?” she says out loud and then covers her mouth.
“Hell no!” Darnell yells and his feet echo on the hardwood floor as he stomps them coming toward me. He stands over me. “You had a one night stand and let a white guy give you oral sex and have the nerve to broadcast it in my house?”
TAKE ME as I am Page 2