“Yes Sir, I’m nine years old and Jared is seven,” answered Bernard, the older one.
“I’m almost eight,” whined Jared.
“Well you’re seven now,” his brother called back.
Jared pushed his foot against Bernard’s knee, and instinctively Bernard popped him hard over the head like a mother would a disruptive child.
“Ow, why’d you do that?” Jared pouted while the tears gathered.
“Boys,” said Shar, pushing past Warren and snatching them both by the collar. “Cut out this foolishness and show the Lord some respect.” She narrowed her eyes and the two sat still with their hands in their lap.
“How’re you, Warren?” she turned, bending her cheek towards him for a kiss.
“Fine, thanks,” replied Warren as Pastor Davis clapped his large hands, beckoning everyone to begin.
Once the rehearsal had concluded, Pastor Davis sent Warren down to the fellowship hall to make sure that it was empty before he closed for the night. As Warren cranked closed an old kitchen window, he heard voices traveling from the ladies’ lounge just across the narrow hall. He didn’t intend to eavesdrop but the rhythm of their talk lured him in.
“Now, he know he wrong paradin’ them children round, talking about ‘here are my stepsons.’ Everybody this side of South Dakota know them boys his,” said the first voice.
“It’s a crying shame,” said the second. “After all Sister Alma done gave for this church.”
Warren stiffened at his mother’s name.
“Chile, please, dat woman knew what was gon’ on. She just looked the other way. God rest her soul.”
“The older one is the spitting image of Warren when he was that age.”
“And to bring them to this church. Umph, it’s an abomination ’gainst God, praise his holy…” The lounge door swung open and just like that Warren was nose to nose with big-boned, monkey-face Sister Clara. Her counterpart, Miz Bertha, was so close that the two hippy women collided and Warren could smell rosy talcum powder.
“Warren, baby,” cried Sister Clara, holding onto his wrist to steady herself. She looked at Miz Bertha for help, but before either of them could muster up something to say, Warren ran.
It was a crazy reaction he knew, but once he put one foot in front of the other he couldn’t stop. He tore out of the side door through the church grounds picking up speed on 13th Street. Faster and faster his knees bucked the wind, but he couldn’t outrun the memories that flooded him.
His father always had women.
Warren flew down Pennsylvania Avenue, headed over to 14th Street running in the direction of Southeast Washington. Ten, twelve, twenty blocks he ran without pausing to take a breath as the wind whipped at his flesh, making his skin chapped and raw. The pain felt good until his lungs heaved under the pressure and he was forced to a jog. When he finally stopped, his palms pressed into his knees as he tried to catch his breath, and a forgotten newspaper wrestled with a soda can at his feet. For five minutes he stood under the streetlights in front of James’ five-story brick apartment building before he had enough wind to yell for him. He had left his cell phone in his car back at the church.
A figure moved behind the second-floor curtain, and then the front window rattled open.
“Dawg, what up?” James hung out the window, and when Warren didn’t respond, he threw down the key.
His studio was warm and Warren quickly stripped off his suit jacket, removed his tie and parked his shoes in the corner. He could already feel his feet swelling under the pressure of running so many miles in narrow dress shoes. James was a good friend and knew Warren well enough to know that his story would unfold over time, so instead of asking the obvious, he offered him a smoke.
“Pick your poison,” James opened a shoebox for Warren containing rolling papers, Dutch cigars and a smoking pipe.
“Dutchie,” Warren leaned into the folds of the sofa, allowing the piano playing of Thelonious Monk to soothe him.
“Where’d you cop this album?”
James split open the cigar and removed the tobacco, replacing it with marijuana. He was known to have the best vinyl collection in the band and the Monk album he was playing was a rare find. After licking the cigar leaves back together, James sealed the blunt with his lighter and lit.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he took several hits from the blunt.
“Puff, puff, give,” barked Warren, reminding his friend of the rules. As James passed the blunt, he knew the time was right to ask Warren what happened. Blowing a cloud into the air, Warren sighed heavily, not knowing where to begin. So he started with Erica.
“What’s the problem?” James dusted a few stray ashes from his “Stop Segregation Now” T-shirt and sat back in his seat.
“She doesn’t want to quit her job to be with me. I can’t quit my job to be with her and all of a sudden the distance isn’t working,” said Warren, catching him up on the foiled trip, her missing the rehearsal and the space that kept growing.
“Erica’s one of the good ones. Just hang in there.”
The blunt traveled back and forth between them and once Warren was good and high, he was able to divulge what he overheard at the church.
James coughed. “How do you know that’s not just gossip? Church women can be catty.”
Warren shook his head, “It’s eerie dude, but I felt that shit, soon as I laid eyes on those cats. You know how hard it is to get into Point Academy? I went there and only because of my father’s connection. Shar’s a fucking secretary. Who’s she connected to?”
“Your daddy,” James tilted his head.
They had smoked the cigar down to a roach and James offered him the last hit. Warren pulled on it from each angle, giving up when his fingertip burned. He readjusted the pillow at his side, feeling good and high. The memories came.
“Yo, when I’m completely honest with myself, and really allow my brain to breathe, I knew this shit was coming.”
James settled back in the armchair opposite Warren. “What you mean?”
“I must have been about ten or eleven. It was an accident really, right after we moved to Chesapeake. By then we had lived in six states in ten years. This was before he was appointed chief of staff, and bought the house on Colorado Avenue. I was always the new kid in school who talked funny, ’cause I picked up accents every time we moved and they were all meshed together. Carrying my horn everywhere didn’t help either.”
“I didn’t have that problem. Anyone who could play the drums at my school was automatically cool.”
“Well, I did. The schoolwork was a breeze, so I skipped class a lot. We never lived on base because my old man was too proud for the subsidized housing. I had only been at the school for about a month when I cut class to check out a new Kung Fu flick that everyone was talking about.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t remember the name but it was a Bruce Lee flick. I didn’t have any money so I was planning to sneak in through the back door. Then I spotted a brown Oldsmobile Delta 88, with the same sandy vinyl top as my father’s. The motor was dead, and it was the only car parked.
“Yo, I remember creeping through the lot pretending to be Spiderman. The dumpster smelled like a week’s worth of sour relish or some shit. It didn’t even dawn on me that it could be my father in the car because he was supposed to be in Florida at a special training. Really, I was just goofing off.”
James reached for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and put one to his lip. “Go on.”
“Man, I crept up on the car and when I looked into the window, that fool was sitting in the front seat snaking his tongue inside the mouth of some dark-skinned woman with his hands yanking back her flimsy blouse.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“I saw her tits and everything. I was too stunned to move, and he was grunting and telling her shit that men say when they’re trying to fuck. Then all of a sudden the woman opened her eyes and stared at me with t
his look that said, beat it kid. So I did. I made it across the parking lot in time to catch an elderly couple exiting the movies and slipped into the theater between them.”
“Have you ever told that story before?”
“Naw, ’cause I spent the next decade of my life convincing myself that it didn’t happen. How the hell could my father poke a woman in the same car my mom used to pick up the groceries?”
“Shit happens, man,” offered James.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rich Ma, Poor Ma
Erica knocked her hand mirror off her desk, and without looking, she knew the glass had split in two. If her Grandma Queeny were alive she would have said, “Honey, prepare yourself for seven days of mishap, ’cause they sure to follow.”
But it was only Monday and Erica couldn’t afford a week of bad luck. Since she had missed the wedding rehearsal on Saturday, Warren’s demeanor was distant and she felt like an ass for not being there for him. But she had to let Claire see that she was capable of filling Edie’s shoes. No matter how much she hated having to choose between her career and her man, her career had to take center stage right now.
But this fact didn’t keep her from longing for Warren in the shower, and daydreaming about him over her morning coffee. Most times, she only pretended to listen to her colleagues in staff meetings and working lunches. She felt unsatisfied and unsettled and wished there was a simple way to have it all. How do other women do it?
Her intercom beeped. It was Claire’s assistant. Claire wanted to see her right away, so she put her personal thoughts aside and walked down the hall.
“’Morning,” Erica lingered in the doorway waiting to be invited in. She wore a magenta wrap dress, hair loose, and make-up just right.
“I got a call from Goldie Gardner this morning. Harriet Lake wants you to accompany her to Los Angeles for the NAACP Image Awards at the end of the week.” Claire looked up but her fingers were busy.
“This weekend?”
Claire nodded. “She has two tickets and doesn’t want to go alone.”
“Couldn’t we send an escort? I have to go to a wedding on Saturday,” Erica’s stomach tightened.
“Are you kidding? Harriet would have a fit. She asked for you.”
Harriet Lake was a high profile historian who always got her way. She was the daughter of a prominent Civil Rights leader and went around the country telling their family story. Her memoir spent twenty weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and there was serious talk of Harpo Productions buying the movie rights. Goldie Gardner was Harriet’s editor, and Erica needed to avoid confrontation with her at all cost. Goldie was in Erica’s office when her mother called from jail and she couldn’t afford for that story to surface.
“You’ll be back before Saturday. The awards are on Thursday and Friday. Where’s the wedding?”
“D.C.”
“Fine, take a red-eye to D.C. Just do whatever to keep her happy. The last thing we need is for her to call Genève on this and you know she would.”
Genève Meyers-Sheppard was the Publisher of the company, and if Harriet complained to her than Erica was scorched toast. Translation, this trip was not up for discussion.
Walking back to her office Erica was at least grateful for the red-eye getting her to D.C. before the wedding. Shar had decided to forgo the rehearsal dinner since they had rehearsed a week earlier and was planning to spend the night before with her family in private. So perhaps Warren wouldn’t be as cross with her for coming in the morning on the day of the wedding. It was another band-aid and one she would have to live with, but after two weeks without Warren she needed to see him first. How, she wondered, rounding the bend to her office. D.C. was so far. And then, like the flip of a switch, the plan to meet that evening in Philadelphia hatched in her head. It was a crazy idea, but it was all she had. There was a drought between them, and she was thirsting for the smallest details of Warren. Within seconds she was closing her office door and dialing his number.
Warren answered, “Hey, babe.”
“What’s happening?” After a bit of sweet talk Erica told him her plan.
“What’re you, horny?”
“I just miss you,” she said. “Come on, let’s be spontaneous.”
“Okay.”
“Serious?” She hadn’t expected it to be that easy.
“I have a lot to tell you too,” he said. “Shit is really hitting the fan.”
“What happened?”
“Just wedding stuff, but I’ll tell you in person. Can you be there by eight?”
Erica told him she could.
“Great. I’ll send you an email with the hotel details.”
She loved how her man always took charge.
For the rest of the morning Erica plowed through her work, conscious of getting out of the office on time. Around lunchtime, the front desk called her.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Your mother is here,” replied Iris, the front desk attendant.
Erica’s mouth dried.
“Should I send her back to your office?”
“No, I’ll be right out,” she said, biting down on the inside of her jaw. The broken hand mirror was turned face up on her desk and Erica picked it up and slammed it into her wastepaper basket.
While walking from her office to the lobby, Erica prayed that her mother was sober. On the other side of the double glass doors, her mother sat in the far left chair. She wore a wool coat two sizes too large, a yellow knit hat and black oval sunglasses.
“Hey, Slim,” she staggered to stand. “Surprised to see me?” Erica dipped her body toward her mother’s for an obligatory hug, backing away before she was smothered.
The receptionist pretended to work, but Erica knew she had an ear cocked toward the exchange.
“I need a favor.”
“Can you take off those sunglasses?” Erica whispered, and when her mother did, she didn’t know which was worse: the dark glasses that made her look like she had something to hide, or seeing her bloodshot eyes, red-rimmed with her breakfast beers.
“Wait here,” Erica instructed and by the time she returned with her coat, her mother had slipped the glasses back on. An unlit cigarette dangled from her knotty fingertips as she shifted from one foot to the next.
“Put that away,” Erica hissed in front of the elevator. Her mother was fiddling with her knock-off purse when the doors chimed open and Claire Downing cruised through. She was the last person Erica wanted her mother to meet and when they all stood face to face Erica prayed that the floor would swallow her whole.
Struggling to stick on her publicist smile, Erica cleared her throat and made the introduction.
Her mother dropped the cigarette in her purse, wiped her hand on the front of her coat, and then extended it to Claire. “Nice meeting you. Erica talks ’bout you all the time.”
“Well, you’ve raised a lovely young lady,” Claire said, shaking her mother’s hand. “She’s the star of our department.”
“That’s my daughter,” her mother sang, breaking into a wide grin. The way she took credit for an accomplishment that she had nothing to do with burned Erica. Claire moved on. Once they were alone inside the elevator her mother mumbled, “I embarrass you.”
“No, Ma.” Erica fumbled with her leather gloves. “What’s the emergency?”
“Doctor says I’ve an inflamed stomach. My Medicaid ain’t working for some reason and I need the prescription today.”
Silence.
“You know I wouldn’t have come to your job if it wasn’t serious.”
Yes she would have. “Next time, call.”
They exited the elevator and crossed the large marble lobby.
When they reached the sidewalk, yellow cabs zipped down the three-lane street. Erica asked her mother if she was hungry.
“Naw, just ate.”
Since she was outside Erica decided to grab her lunch and ushered her mother down the bl
ock toward the delicatessen. But she spotted Bonnie’s white Trans Am parked just a few feet away and the sight of the woman in the car took her someplace she’d rather not go.
Erica didn’t quite remember when Bonnie entered their lives. But once she came on the scene, everything changed. Bonnie was unmarried, unemployed and childless, and her presence caused her parents to argue.
“You so far up Bonnie’s ass, you can’t do shit else,” her father would yell before storming out of their home. When he left for the final time, the two women became inseparable. Her mother’s attention to the household felt like an afterthought.
There was one particular harsh winter Erica would never forget. The gas had been turned off and her mother hadn’t been home for two days. She and her sister were hungry and cold with only a kerosene heater and blankets to keep them warm. Erica knew her mother was at Bonnie’s, but their telephone had been disconnected months before. Tired of waiting, she and her sister scrounged drawers and sofa cushions for loose change. By the time they had gathered enough money, it was dark out. But Erica bundled up her younger sister and they walked the five Newark blocks to the nearest public phone. Bonnie answered, passing the phone over, and just the sound of her mother’s voice caused Erica’s hard shell to crack. What kind of mother would leave her children?
“The gas is off, we’re cold and there’s nothing to eat. Come home now.” Her strong voice had parted into a childish whine, and as the tears stung her cheeks, she hated herself for being so needy.
“You wanna say hello to Bonnie?” Her mother tucked the crisp bills into the pocket of her pea coat and Erica already regretted giving in to her.
“I know you ’on’t like her, but she’s my only ride.”
“I gotta go,” Erica shifted away from the memory.
“I’ll pay you first of the month.” Her mother extended her arms for another hug, but Erica stepped out of reach. All her mother ever had to offer her was hugs and the pretense of some deep love that Erica never felt.
Since Erica was a girl, all she wanted was for her mother to take her shopping at the mall. It wasn’t a tall request. Every girl she knew went with their moms on Saturday afternoon and Erica would have loved giggling over a malted shake with her mother in the food court. But it never happened. What Erica received instead was promises of money that was supposed to come from faceless men. There were the long lies and endless embarrassment: the Easter Sunday, when she had to tighten the blinds and be still, so that when her friends came to take her to church, they’d think she wasn’t home. The man never came with the Easter clothes money. Or on Christmas, when she would have to invent a list of new things she’d received, when in reality, her mother had sat them down the night before explaining that the tree would be bare. Erica guessed that the Christmas money man never showed up, or if he did, her mother had squandered the cash on her habits. It was frustrating that her mother didn’t have a job like the rest of the women on their block. Even Ms. Precious worked and she was blind in the left eye.
Love in a Carry-On Bag Page 12