by Cydney Rax
I even helped her get ready.
We were in the main bathroom. I rubbed perfumed lotion on her arms while she tended to her makeup.
“So, are you and your friend going out tonight?” I asked, and squirted some lotion in the palm of my hand.
“Yeah,” Lauren told me. She raised her left elbow. “He’s been kind of out of it lately, but it looks like he’s returning to his old self, finally,” she smiled.
“Oh yeah?” My mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. “How? What has he been doing—exactly?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I can’t catch him,” she said, and swiped her lips with strawberry gloss. “And he leaves his cell phone either at home or with the power off. He never used to do that before. Anyway, tonight I may talk to him and get inside his head. Maybe something’s bothering him. I know his dad has been sick, so maybe his moods have something to do with that.”
“You know, you’re probably right. Kids are very concerned about their parents’ health. Sometimes they’re in denial, though; so maybe Aaron exhibits his hurt through other means.”
“Huh? Mom, what are you talking about?” She was done with her makeup and peered at me while scratching her scalp with her house key.
You don’t want to know, I thought.
“Oh, never mind. Here, Lauren, let me straighten your hair a little bit. God, you need a touch-up.”
“Mom, you were just sounding like Aaron’s psychologist. I know y’all talk on the phone sometimes. Has he been confiding in you?”
Define confiding.
“Me? Why would he confide in me?” I said, and ran a brush through her hair several times. It felt good to be standing behind Lauren instead of in front of her.
“I don’t know. I’m just playing. Dang, can’t you take a joke? You’re not as silly as you used to be. I want my old mom back.”
I’ll bet you do, I thought.
“Well, you’re looking good tonight, Lauren,” I said and followed her to the living room. “Don’t stay out late, though.”
“Hey, I’ll be glad when Christmas break comes,” she said glancing at her watch. “Come next Thursday, we’re out of school for almost three whole weeks.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be nice,” I said.
Real nice.
“Now remember, you said I can go visit my daddy’s folks in Georgia. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
Are you kidding? I can’t wait till that plane leaves the ground.
Lauren watched me as my eyes glazed. A few months before, she’d asked me if it would be okay for her to visit Derrick’s parents in College Park, Georgia, for the Christmas holidays. Back then I was like “Hell, naw.” Just being difficult. But now, hey, things were different.
“Oh no, baby. I gave you my word; you’re going for sure. Didn’t Derrick already get your plane ticket?”
“Yeah, he got it, but we’re just checking. Making sure you’re okay with this and all.”
“They’re still your grandparents, Lauren. Just because your father and I aren’t together doesn’t mean you can’t know his side of the family. You look just like ’em.”
“Thanks, Mom.” She beamed at me and actually came and hugged me, something she hadn’t done in a while. My throat tightened like someone had placed their hands around my neck and squeezed, but I managed to grab her too.
Aaron honked for Lauren from the parking lot. She waved good-bye and hightailed it through the door. I turned off the lamp switch before I eased my way to the living room window and looked out. She got in the Legend, slid next to him, and they kissed. I saw it. But wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK THE NEXT day, I dropped Lauren off at Foley’s for her hair appointment. Because Lauren was getting a relaxer, a wrap, and a cut, I knew that the hair salon would kidnap her for a good three to four hours.
The moment after I waved to Lauren, I dialed Aaron’s cell number.
“Hello, this is the Legend,” he answered.
“Hi, and this is the Malibu.”
“What’s going on, sexy?”
“Well, I’m free right now. Can we meet?”
“When? Where? What time?”
I laughed. “Meet me at Best Western in Stafford.”
“Hey, that’s close to both you and me.”
“Yep. I feel like a thirty-something freakazoid tonight.”
“A what? Mmmm, I gotcha,” he said, with sexiness oozing from his voice.
“So, you gonna meet me?”
“Tracey, are you positive you want to meet so close to your home?”
“Hey, by the time we fight traffic trying to drive to the other side of town, an hour will have passed. That’s an extra hour of moaning that’s lost.”
“Be there in ten minutes,” he said.
“I’ll be there in five.”
WE HAD JUST ENTERED THE ROOM. I felt tingly, naughty, and hot all at the same time.
“Why so rushed?” Aaron asked when I came up behind him and squeezed him on his behind.
“Hey, it’s been a while.”
“Only a week, Tracey,” he replied.
“Hey, it feels like two years, Aaron.”
“You’re just spoiled. You gots to have it, huh?” he said in a voice that massaged my ears as well as my heart.
“Yep, Aaron,” I said, squeezing him around his waist and kissing him on his neck. “I do.”
Even though I wanted to get right to it, Aaron insisted that we wait until it got dark outside. Guess he felt like the dark would cover our sins.
Wasn’t enough darkness in the world.
As soon as nighttime crossed the border, we broke rules for four hours straight.
I attacked him the second he dimmed the lights. I clasped my hands around his head and pressed my lips against his. Then I cocked my head and said in a kittenish voice, “I may be an adult, but sometimes I forget how to undress myself.”
“No problem. I’ll help you get undressed, baby.”
I was wearing a leopard-print camise shirt and some black stirrup pants. I looked up at Aaron and slowly raised my hands like a child waiting to get assistance from an adult. He pulled my shirt over my head, and I could feel him biting my nipples through the fabric.
“Oooh, will you hurry the hell up?” I fussed through clenched teeth.
Then he stood and observed me in my red panties; stared at me so long I wanted to cover my belly with my hands, and I did. But he snatched back my hands and took his fingers and hooked the sides of my panties, pulling them down slow, slower, and more slowly as he peeked at every inch of my nakedness until his eyes were full and glazing.
“You like what you see, or you see what you like?” I said, and placed my hands on my bare hips.
He only had enough strength to nod his reply.
Once we were both nude, I pulled him on top of me, stroking his back and his smooth yet firm behind. I rubbed my hands along the back of his legs and I wanted him inside me so bad I finagled his butt around until he found me.
The impact was immediate. I was so hot for him. My inner passage pulsated around his thick, hard, and wet manhood, and I swear if anybody would’ve called me Whoopi Goldberg, I would’ve answered. We rolled around on that bed, sweating like we were wearing fur coats in a steam bath. My breasts were smashed against his chest, and he kept thrusting himself inside me so hard I cussed him out at least seven times.
“Damn, Aaron, what in the hell you doing to me? You know you doing something freaky to me. You know you making me hate your butt, don’t you? Why you so damn rough and I can’t stand for someone to do me like you’re doing and you better not stop doing it either or I’ll kick your ass.”
Aaron was grinning, sweat streaming down his face like his skin was crying.
“Da-hamn you’re crazy, baby. This is great, though. Just slap me one time, one time. Ooohhh, mine’s is coming. Woo, Tracey, I’m there, I’m there, dayummmmmm.”
We rattled ag
ainst each other, sounding like woodpeckers for a full ten minutes. Aaron wore me out so bad I felt like I’d just given birth to quintuplets and got pregnant again two minutes later.
But finally, when words found themselves inside my mouth, I nudged Aaron, who was slumped on top of me like a dead body.
“Hey, Aaron. That was great! The ultimate. I can’t ever let you go. No, no, never.”
He didn’t answer.
I shook him again.
“Aaron, hey, Aaron.”
And I smiled when I saw that Aaron’s silence was because he’d fallen asleep.
And that’s when I knew that, even though he didn’t say it, he did get his.
I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF TAKING a nice, long, hot shower when I heard the sound of Lauren’s knuckle-rap on my bathroom door. I wanted to ignore her so bad; the heated water felt like massaging hands, the shower gel smelled like fresh strawberries, and I just wasn’t ready to be set free from this erotic moment, but she pounded harder and I turned off the shower and yelled, “What is it, Lauren?”
“Mommmm, telephone,” she sang, but it was an angry kind of singing.
“I’m taking a shower. Who is it?”
“Mr. Steve.”
Her words barely hit the air as I snatched the first towel my hands could reach. My drippy, soapy fingers fumbled to unlock the bathroom door. Lauren looked at me like I was stark naked and riding a camel down Westheimer Road. I ignored her and seized the portable from her tight grip. She just stood there staring at me, so I raced into my bedroom and locked the door and even retreated further into my big walk-in closet and shut that door behind me, too.
I waited until I could catch my breath. I didn’t even care that water was dripping off my body onto my suede Bandolinos.
“Hello!”
“Hey, baby,” answered Steve. He was speaking so low I thought he was sitting somewhere in the freaking library.
“Baby?”
“You know you love me, Tracey.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Steve, wh-what the heck is your problem?”
“Ahhh, Tracey. I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked—”
“Right, and the last time we talked, you said we were through.”
“Uh, yeah, I remember,” he said, sounding like he’d rather forget.
“So why are you calling me, then?”
“You know what? If it weren’t for Lelani, none of this would be happening. She trips out so much I can barely stay in my right mind.”
So Lelani was the only reason he would try to creep back? Had nothing to do with how he possibly felt about me?
“Lani is nothing but a cock-blocker,” he said in this really casual and nonchalant way that quite frankly irritated the hell out of me. It was just like Steve to blame that drama all on Lani—like he had no part in it whatsoever—and I know no woman has that much control over a man. Please!
“Looks like she succeeded,” I murmured.
“Ah, she ain’t done nothing,” he continued in that low voice.
“Are you at home?”
“Yep,” he whispered.
“Alone?”
He started coughing hard, like he had bronchitis or something, and I thought how very convenient it was for him to start hacking at that moment.
“So what’s up, Steve? What’s the real reason you’re calling me?”
“I’m calling you because I was thinking about you . . . and wanted to see you, if possible.”
“You want to see me?”
“Yes, Tracey,” he replied, sounding insulted because I needed confirmation.
“But why?”
He paused. “Because I—I miss you.”
I stood there in shock, and wondered if an already big-ass nose could grow any bigger.
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to. I know what I feel in my heart.”
“What heart?”
“Very funny, Tracey.”
I sighed. Rubbed my temples hard and long. Him calling me definitely made things more confusing. Weeks ago, if he’d called, I would’ve jumped up and rushed to his side even if it was three o’clock in the morning and the Malibu’s gas needle was on E. But now?
“Hello?” he asked, after my long silence.
“I’m here,” I said, amused. I wondered if my silence made him feel insecure. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
“Well,” he hesitated, then asked, “when you gonna come see me?”
“I have no . . . I don’t know what to say, Steve. I just—woo, this is so shocking.”
“You don’t know what to say?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What, you got somebody else already?” he laughed, like he knew my hooking up with another man was unlikely. Maybe that’s because while he and I were dating, his confidence tripled once he recognized how dedicated I was to him.
“And what if I did have someone else?”
“That would be cool,” he claimed in an unnatural-sounding, high-pitched tone. “No rain on my convertible.”
“Don’t worry, Steve. You’ll never see any love residue on my lips.”
“What did you say?”
“Never mind.”
“Hmmm. Well, anyway, I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice, Tracey. I didn’t want you to be over there still pissed off and crying over me.”
“Don’t worry,” I murmured. “I’m not.”
“What are you not? Pissed off or crying over me?”
“Yeah, right.”
The return of silence made things awkward. What else was I supposed to say? Do? Stroke his gigantic ego because he was praise deficient? Given a choice, I’d rather hold my tongue until the Klan sliced it off. Besides, I knew silence was an effective weapon, that the one who remains silent the longest is the one who wins.
“Well, Tracey”—he cleared his throat—“when you do want to hook up, I’m here. I’ll let you go now. Bye.”
He didn’t wait to hear my good-bye.
That’s because he probably didn’t think I had the heart to say good-bye. But Steve Monroe had better think again. For the first time in a long time when it came to Steve and me, I had the motivation to think. And in my mind and heart, I sensed and accepted that he wasn’t the one. That no matter how hard I tried, if something wasn’t meant to be and left me in continuous despair, feeling like a mental case, and questioning my own self-worth, then it was time to name things exactly what they were, instead of how I hoped they could be.
Tracey 16
Early the next Sunday morning, Indira invited my daughter and me to her home for an after-church dinner. I twisted the phone cord around my waist and told Indira, “Well, I don’t have anything to bring.”
“Bring yourself.”
“Hmmm. You know I really am tired.”
“From what? You don’t go to church anymore. What you tired from?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Indira.”
“Girl, the only thing tired is all your excuses. I don’t care what’s going on, ain’t no reason why you and Lauren can’t come visit. Free home-cooked meal? Don’t have to wait in line? Don’t have to search for a parking space? Bring your tail over here, girl. Dinner will be ready by one-thirty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
THE WEATHER THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON was cool and breezy, clouds resembling an ocean dotted by clusters of orchids. I wore my favorite tan jogging suit and a brand-new pair of running shoes. Lauren, who’d ducked out of going to church with her dad, was pensive, refusing to initiate conversation all morning. We were on our way to the Colliers’ when I cast Lauren a piercing look.
“Girl, I don’t know what your problem is, but you better hope you’re not speaking because you don’t feel well. I will not have you disrespecting me.”
She gave me a look that made her resemble the devil’s niece, and turned around in her seat so that her back was facing me. I was so upset I wanted to shove her out of the car and onto the freeway. Lucky for La
uren I wasn’t adept at reaching across her seat, opening the door, and keeping myself from crashing all at the same time.
“What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” I asked her.
Silence.
“Oh, forget it. So moody.”
More silence.
I started singing along with the radio and purposely screwed up the words to a Mariah Carey song, but Lauren still wouldn’t act like she had a pulse. Had a feeling I should have turned around and went back home, but it seemed like it was too late to change my mind.
“Okay, Lauren, we’re here. Tuck in your lip and act civilized before we go inside that house.”
“Whatever,” she muttered.
“Hold up, what did you say, girl? Don’t you know I’ll slap the—”
“What, Mom, what will you slap?” she asked with a piercing, wide-eyed look.
“M-mind, mind your manners and you won’t have to find out what I’ll slap.”
I let Lauren get out of the car first, and I waited a few minutes before I felt I could handle getting out.
Even though I was frowning when I knocked on the door, I smiled like I was Miss America accepting her crown as soon as Indira answered. She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. I took one look, turned around, and headed straight for my car.
“Woman, get your paranoid behind back here. It’s not like I’ve put the back of my hand in the food.”
My hands found my hips. “Prove it.”
“Tracey, get on up in here and give me a hug.”
I returned. Smiled. We hugged. Held each other.
Once we entered the dining room, I took a look at the spread arranged by Indira: a platter of southern fried chicken, a bowl of steaming hot mashed potatoes with a tub of real butter on the side, collard greens with some of those yummy ham hocks, a pan of hot-water corn bread, candied yams, pistachio salad, peach cobbler, and a cooler filled with diet sodas.