How Stella Got Her Groove Back

by Terry McMillan

  “You know what it means.”

  “You really do think I’m too young, don’t you?”

  “You are!”

  “Too young for what?”

  “I don’t know. Me.”

  “Do I feel too young?”

  “No.”

  “Do I look too young?”

  I turn to look at him.

  “Never mind, don’t answer that,” he says and we both chuckle for a second and then get serious again.

  “Winston, look. I don’t really know what I’m doing. All I know is that I like you more than I should.”

  “That’s refreshing to hear. Look. What are you so afraid of?”

  “I’m not actually ‘afraid.’ ”

  “Yes you are. You’re afraid of what you feel because it’s not fitting into your scheme of things, isn’t that it?”

  “Well, since you put it that way, yes.”

  “You know that American saying, I’m sure.”

  “What saying?”

  “Shit happens.”

  Okay. That is true. Shit does happen. This has happened. I’ll give him that. “What about you, Winston? What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “You have to be afraid of something.”

  “Honestly?” he asks.

  “Honestly.”

  “Spiders and insects. All insects.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of scared.”

  “Then what kind do you mean?”

  “I mean, oh, never mind. Tell me, Winston,” I say, looking at the fan swirling slowly above us, “what do you want out of life?” I’m thinking that this question should give him a little jolt.

  “I want to be a good person, a worthy person, a strong man that people can depend on and know that my word is my bond, and I want to be charitable and loving and love a woman so deeply she won’t ever want to be rid of me because I hope to be the light in her life. And making a decent living is pretty high up on the list too. How about you?”

  “I feel the same exact way you do,” I say, and swallow.

  “Look, you asked me. And I’d like an answer as well.”

  “Well, I want to find my place in the world—at the table, so to speak. I want to give away warmth. I want to love a man so hard it feels soft and I want him to know that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. I want to see how far I can go alone and how far I can go with someone else. I want to be smarter. I want to be the best mother friend sister lover I can be. I want to respect other people’s feelings as much as I can and I want to figure out how to make a living without actually having a job.”

  “But you have a job.”

  “Had.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got canned.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “When?”

  “Right after I got back from Jamaica the first time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Stella? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And what are you doing back here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have a job, Stella.”

  “But I still have a life,” I say.

  “So why did they release you?”

  “Because they reorganized my department and I didn’t make the cut.”

  “Do you feel bad about that?”

  “Not really. What I really feel is relieved, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Have you ever been fired?” I ask.

  “No. This is my first job,” he says.

  “It figures,” I say.

  “Don’t tease,” he says. “Now let me ask you something, and be honest with me if you can. Do you have any particular plans for yourself?”

  “Nothing too specific right now.”

  “So are you sort of searching?”

  “It feels like I’ve got one foot on the path, yes.”

  “Would you let me help make your search easier?”

  And all I can say is, “I think you already have, Winston.”

  “MOM, WHERE’S WINSTON?” Quincy asks, leaning over the upstairs railing. I was beginning to wonder when they’d wake up. It’s almost noon. I could tell they were both zonked last night and I was amazed that they admitted it. Now the Wicked Witch of the West appears behind him, white crust all around her pretty brown lips. Her hair is sticking out like a black halo and with her little pink nightgown on she looks like she’s about to do that Peter Pan thing. “Good morning, Auntie Stella,” she says in her high-pitched voice which she should pray at night she grows out of by her teenage years.

  “Good morning, Chantel. Quincy, can’t you say good morning?”

  “Good morning, Mom. Where’s Winston? What time are we going to Rick’s Café?”

  “Slow down. First of all, Winston had to go to work and he apologizes for not being able to come.”

  “Aaah, man!” he moans.

  “He’ll be back.”

  “Do we still get to go?”

  “Of course. But I forgot we had talked about snorkeling this morning even though it’s lunchtime now.”

  Quincy looks at his watch. “What’s the time difference again, Mom?”

  “Three hours.”

  “You mean it’s already twelve noon here?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Mom, why’d you let us sleep so long!”

  “Because apparently you needed it.”

  He runs down the stairs and goes over to the front door, opens it and looks out. “Wow,” he says. “Chantel, come look. The beach is right there. Mom, can we go to the beach first?”

  Chantel walks down the steps like a girl and saunters over next to him. She is still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

  “Look, Quincy,” I say. “Slow down, okay? First things first. This is the deal. It’s our first day here, so let’s do this. You two take your showers and then we’ll get something to eat and how about we hang out on the beach and then go snorkeling at three since we missed the nine-thirty boat and we can go to Rick’s tomorrow.”

  He looks over at Chantel as if he’s waiting for her to concur but what neither of them realizes is that this is the plan and they will participate in it regardless. They give each other the nod and the spokesperson looks over at me and says, “That’s fine with us, Mom.”

  “So let’s get busy,” I say.

  “When’s Winston coming back?” Chantel asks.

  “Maybe tomorrow or Saturday. Depending on if he can get time off.”

  “He’s cute,” she says and has the nerve to blush.

  She is too grown, I think, and I am wondering just how good she might look in a nun’s habit.

  • • • •

  After we eat a hearty lunch I begin my afternoon the normal way with my virgin piña colada. Some things remain the same, I think, as we pull our chaise longues close to the edge of the water. We can see our villa from where we perch ourselves and after I rub the kids down with number 35 sunblock off they go into the water where they will stay for the next two hours until it is time to snorkel and then we will snorkel and then they will come back to the beach until dinnertime.

  I read, and I am somewhat bored in a way but not really. I love watching the kids romp and in fact as I watch them I realize how much I envy them. How clear of debris their world is right now. How long will it stay that way? I wonder. I hope to keep Quincy free of as much bullshit as I can. I want him to know it’s out there but I also want him to know that he has the option of joining in or standing on the sidelines and letting it pass him by. He is a smart child. Quick. Which he got from me of course and I am hopeful that he will continue to be a dorky kid who happens to be a cute dork which is just fine with me.

  “Are you Anita Baker?”

  I look up and see a security guard standing above me. He is jet black and looks sort of like Wesley Snipes, which kind of throws me off for a minute but
he is definitely Jamaican. “Me?”

  “Yeah, mon,” he says, lifting his policeman’s hat up and immediately dropping it back down.

  “No. Afraid not.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “What’s your name, mon?”

  “Stella.”

  “You got a last name, Stella?”

  “Stella’ll do. And you are?”

  “Frisco. That’s my name.”

  “Nice to meet you, Frisco.”

  I sit up because he is standing over me and I don’t like this feeling of him looking down at me especially since I’m wearing my chartreuse two-piece with the Wonderbra foam pads.

  “How long you ’ere for?”

  “A week. Just got here.”

  “Those your kids?”

  “Yes,” I say to keep it simple.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “Back at the Ponderosa.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In Nevada near Reno.”

  “Reno?” he asks and I can tell he’s trying to picture it on the map but can’t quite get it together.

  “I’m sorry. It’s closer to Las Vegas,” I say.

  “Oh,” he says, smiling confidently now. “He couldn’t get away from the job, is that it?”

  “Precisely. He owns a casino.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Well, he has partners of course.”

  “Wow, so you guys must do all right then, huh? But you have to if you’re staying at this hotel, hey?”

  “We fare pretty well, I guess. Well, look, Cisco—”

  “Frisco. As in San Francisco.”

  “Okay. Frisco. I don’t want to be rude, but I think I’m going to get in the water. It is a scorcher out here today.”

  “That it is,” he says. “That it is. Enjoy yourself, now,” and he tips his hat and walks over to a short palm tree where his bench apparently awaits him and he sits there and will sit there, watching the three of us in the water on a regular basis for the next several days. I will learn that Frisco works two jobs, that he is thirty-four years old and is looking for a wife, especially since he has been working hard and can now afford one. He will say he didn’t want to get married if he couldn’t pay for his children’s education. I will ask him why the children that he doesn’t even have yet will need to go to private school and he will explain to me that because the public school system is a farce the only way to guarantee that your children are well educated is to send them to private school which costs lots of money and Frisco feels that by the end of the summer he should have himself a wife even though he doesn’t have any immediate prospects but he has a feeling she’s headed his way and he’s sure that sometime in the next year he will be a father.

  • • • •

  Quincy is the first to jump off the cliff, of course, and it is befitting that my son, who is accustomed to begging, stands on the lower level of the lowest cliff, which is still some thirty feet above the water, and says, “Come on, Mom, don’t be such a wuss. Jump!”

  Chantel is standing next to me and in her Minnie Mouse voice she says, “It’s really easy, Auntie Stell. Just jump!”

  “I will in a minute, so don’t rush me!”

  I find it difficult to do anything when I have an audience, and behind and above us are about a hundred tourists with camcorders and cameras just waiting for fools like us to jump off this concrete platform that was built years ago on top of the rock that it’s covering. Over to the left is the ledge where the real diehard fools jump down sixty or seventy feet. As I move out of the way for miniature human beings who are all under the age of ten to jump off this ledge I think fuck it and pinch my nose shut and then I simply jump.

  Wow!

  It feels like I’m flying and I have this feeling of nothingness and as soon as it registers I feel my feet legs thighs everything cut through the thick blue water and I go down down down then shoot back up to the surface where the warm wetness runs down my face and I feel so clean so healthy and refreshed and athletic and I want to do this again! Which I do at least ten more times with the kids. Side by side, we dive in. They swirl around in midair and though it doesn’t work for me, what a rush I get when I slip through that water. Now I think I know how those Olympic divers feel. Well, sort of.

  “Mom,” Quincy says, standing next to me shivering. “Can I jump from up there?” He points to the sixty-footer, where a young girl has been standing off and on for the last half hour trying to conjure up the nerve to jump which she hasn’t been able to do and as a result she is constantly moving out of the way for others.

  “You must be crazy,” I say.

  “Mom,” he whines. “I’m a good swimmer and you know it! Please, Mom.”

  “Quincy,” I groan. “It looks dangerous.”

  “Mom,” he says, gesticulating with his arms as if he’s saying, Let’s get on with the show. “Look at all those people who’ve already jumped. Do they look dead? Did any of them die? No. Are any of them hurt? No. Come on, Mom, please? You’re always telling me to take chances. Now here’s my big chance to take one. Please?”

  “Oh, go ahead, Quincy, but just once. I mean it. You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

  He’s already on his way back up the thirty or forty cement steps we walked down to get to this level, and he’s yelling, “Thanks, Mom!”

  Chantel walks over and puts her arms around my waist. “Don’t worry, Auntie Stell. I don’t want to jump off that one.”

  “I wouldn’t let you anyway. No way. Because I could not go back to California and tell my sister that her daughter broke her neck jumping off a cliff in Jamaica. So no. You won’t be jumping. Quincy is a different species. He wants to jump, I’ve got to let him jump.”

  I stand there, my heart pounding away, and I’m thinking that this is the smart thing to do because I don’t want my fears to become my child’s fears and if he isn’t afraid why should I make him afraid. And he’s right, a lot of people have jumped and will jump off this cliff and it is pretty safe. It’s just that it’s so far down. There he is. He has a wide grin on his face and he doesn’t even get his footing right before he is in flight and he looks like a human bird as he screams out something like everybody else has been doing and I look down and yes he makes it into the water and swims over to the side where he grabs onto the rusty railing and runs up the stairs to me.

  “Mom, did you see me?”

  “I saw you.”

  “It is the coolest feeling. Can I go again?”

  “Quincy, please. I just had a stroke standing here and you want me to have another one.”

  “Don’t look. Mom, it was so cool. It was great. You should try it. Well, never mind, but Mom, please. I’m still alive. Touch me,” he says and grabs my hand and places it on his arm.

  I snatch it back. “Oh, go ahead, boy!”

  He jumps again and I can see he is having the time of his life and Chantel has made friends with some little blond girl from Switzerland and they are holding hands jumping off our little cliff together. After Quincy jumps about six or seven times, I think it’s time for him to stop, which is what I tell him.

  “But Mom, don’t you understand? I was born to do this. Just three more times and I promise I won’t ask anymore.”

  I’m pretty bored watching him at this point anyway because he keeps doing the same thing which is jumping since I told him not to even twist his mouth to ask me if he can dive.

  We all dry off and the kids are in their zone I can see and they are already a shade darker. We have lobster and crab legs for dinner at Rick’s and get eaten alive by those invisible bugs and when we get back to the hotel room I do not have a message that Winston called. But it is okay. It is only Friday.

  • • • •

  My message light does not blink all day on Saturday no matter how many trips I make into the room pretending to need a different tape for my Walkman a different book a different kind of sunblock a dif
ferent pair of sunglasses. I am offended for sure by dinnertime and think who the hell does he think he is anyway?

  The kids have befriended two black boys who are from New Orleans and as I sit and watch them play tag and a trillion other games in the pool I realize that I am feeling like a fool, like an abandoned fool. I am wondering why he hasn’t called. I mean at least to say hello. Something. I mean I realize that he works fourteen hours a day which is downright shameful but normal procedure at all these resorts and everybody pretty much works six days a week which is also standard but very substandard if you ask me.

  We get back to our villa around eight o’clock. My message light is blinking. I grab the phone and dial zero. “I’m calling for messages.”

  “One moment, please.”

  I am smiling already and when the operator comes back on she says, “Yes, Vanessa called and the message reads: ‘Is my daughter dead or alive? Please call.’ Do you need the number?”

  “No,” I say. “Thank you.”

  I am about to throw the phone across the room but I’m not going to go there. I am feeling like a child who cannot have her way. “Stop this, Stella,” I say out loud. “For real. Stop it. He’s a kid. He’s a fucking kid. You are tripping. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this,” I say and begin to dial Vanessa’s number but get her machine and I leave her a message apologizing for not calling after we arrived and I just tell her that the kids are having a ball and that we will check back with her in a day or so. And not to worry.

  • • • •

  On Sunday we snorkel at nine-thirty, Jet Ski at eleven, hang out on the beach all day, and the kids go snorkeling again at three. They like snorkeling and I like it when they are not within speaking range for at least a half hour to an hour at a time. I say hello to Frisco who is in his spot and I have read approximately eighty pages of Laughing in the Dark by this Washington Post writer named Patrice Gaines who used to use drugs and even went to jail and did all kinds of rough stuff and I realize that if she was able to pull herself up and get her act together then I should not be complaining one iota about the status of my life. But I resolve to try and give my life a little more scrutiny over the next few days while I sit out in this hot-ass sun and bake.

  For starters, fuck Winston and fuck me for flipping over this handsome lanky Jamaican boy who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if he really had one. Let one of those teenyboppers try to turn you out, Winston. See if they rock your world to dust. See if they can make you soar. See how curious they are about how you feel what you think why you do what you do and how you do what you do. See if they can get under your skin inside the lining of your heart and grease it rub it warm it massage it and make it melt. See if they can do that for you, Winston, and next time some other woman comes from America who has an American Express card know that it does not mean she is an American Express and do not for a minute assume that because she is alone she is lonely and desperate because that is not was not the case. Nobody told you to bring your narrow ass over to my table. Nobody told you to flirt with me like a grown mature responsible adult man would do. Nobody told you to be so much man for your age and nobody for sure told you to kiss me and cause me all this anguish and stuff and I don’t even know your fucking middle name which is probably something like Plato or Socrates but it should be more like Caligula.