Pushing Pause

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  Diamond looked her up and down but didn’t say anything. “Ask her,” I said as the bathroom got completely quiet and still ’cause everybody was waiting to see what was going to happen. Everybody turned to stare at Diamond.

  “Ain’t nothing up, Chili,” Diamond said finally, then walked out of the bathroom.

  “What was all that about?” Chili asked me.

  I just shook my head. The whole thing was pathetic. If Diamond thought that I was gonna fight her over LaVon, she needed to check herself. “What is her problem?” I said.

  “Jealously is a terrible thing,” Chili said, then turned to the mirror to reapply her lip balm.

  I went back out, and big surprise, a fight broke out between these two guys, but it was quickly squashed. The bathrooms emptied and I saw Chili across the room. Her hormones were on serious overdrive as usual. She was hooked up in a corner sucking face with some guy I know she knew nothing about. She’s got serious issues when it comes to hooking up.

  Jalisa and I are a bit more selective.

  Personally, I don’t give anything away, which is why LaVon was giving me drama. He was on my case 24/7 ’cause his boys found out that we weren’t kickin’ it and he’s not getting any. He was stressing, but he’ll get over it, he always does.

  So I’m sitting there checking out the place and it’s like Penn Hall High School let out. That’s cool and all, mostly because we don’t really deal with Penn Hall.

  So my Chris Brown ringtone sounds and I looked down at my cell to check out the caller ID. It’s my mom calling again. She was seriously trippin’ as usual. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom and my dad and I love my life. I love everything about it, well, mostly. My mom is cool and all, but sometimes she can be so closed-minded about my life. My cell vibrates again, it’s my mom, of course, and I ignore it.

  By the time we left, it was way after twelve o’clock. Tyrece never did show, like that was ever really gonna happen.

  CHAPTER 4

  Getting Home from the Other Side

  “Devoid of air, we die a little bit at a time. We gasp and choke and hold on to every precious morsel we can get. But in the end, the joke is we still die.”

  —myspace.com

  “Come on, Kenisha, run!” Jalisa yelled.

  “I’m coming,” I sputtered, laboring hard to control my breathing while feeling slightly light-headed.

  “We’re gonna miss it,” Chili said.

  “No, we’re not, hurry up,” Jalisa called out as she jogged to the top of the steps and looked back at Chili right behind her and me bringing up the rear.

  “Y’all go ahead, I’m coming,” I called out.

  Chili brushed past Jalisa and headed for the platform, then turned. “The train’s coming!” she yelled. “The lights are blinking on the platform, hurry up.”

  “Go ahead, I’m right behind you.”

  “No,” Jalisa said firmly, waiting for me. “You know the rule, we stay together no matter what.”

  She was right. It was a promise Jalisa, Diamond and I made a long time ago when we were kids. We took an oath and everything. We were always going to be friends and stick together, no matter what. So much for oaths.

  A prerecorded announcement sounded. This was the last train to Virginia. If we don’t catch this one, we’ll have to find another way home. That meant calling one of our parents, and neither one of us wanted that.

  “It’s the last train,” Jalisa said just as I met her at the top of the steps. We turned to seeing Chili waving frantically. The train was just speeding by, blowing her long, riotous, corkscrew curls across her face. “Come on,” she called but was drowned out by the train’s deafening arrival. She ran to the last car, then to the closest door. When it opened, she stood midway blocking the doors from closing again. “Come on.”

  Jalisa and I ran down the platform toward the train just as the inside lights blinked and the door-closing warning beeps sound. We ran faster seeing Chili’s alarmed expression.

  As we ran I saw the conductor poke his head out the front window of the first car, obviously hearing our yells and seeing that someone was blocking the door from closing. Chili stood firm as we reached the door. As soon as Jalisa and I were on board, she stepped away and the door immediately closed.

  Hanging on to the poles in the center, breathless and exhausted, we busted out laughing as the train slowly pulled out. “I can’t believe we did that,” Jalisa said in short gasps, coughing and sputtering. The three-block run from the pizza parlor to the Metro station had us all panting breathlessly.

  “We should join the track team after that sprint,” Chili said, also coughing and laughing.

  I nodded but didn’t respond. My head was spinning in circles, and an elephant was sitting on my chest. Breathing was getting more and more difficult. I bent over, coughing and holding my chest.

  I heard Jalisa stop laughing. She must have noticed my difficulty. “Kenisha, you okay?” she asked me, concerned.

  Chili stopped laughing, too, then knelt down and placed her hand on my back. “Come on, you need to sit down,” she said.

  “No…I’m…fine,” I said then looked up and nodded my head. “I…just…need…to…catch…my…breath,” I said haltingly, holding my hand up to my chest, coughing, as we stood around the center pole. I have asthma attacks sometimes when I overdo it. I’ve had it since I was a kid, and every once in a while I wound up in the hospital because of it.

  “You have your inhaler?” Jalisa asked. I nodded as she put her arm around me, closing in as we always did when one of us was in trouble. I started digging in my small shoulder bag and pulled out my inhaler and I opened my mouth and pressed the button, then inhaled deeply. A quick blast of medication streamed down into my lungs.

  The dizzying feeling returned, but I could feel my lungs starting to open immediately. I closed my eyes, waiting, knowing that Chili and Jalisa were also waiting for the reaction. Either I’d be okay or not. A few minutes passed and I began to breathe better. Slow and steadily, I took deep lung-filling gasps of air. Relieved, I was back. I looked up and saw the concern on Chili and Jalisa’s faces, I smiled and nodded and we started laughing all over again.

  “Girl, you better stop scaring us like that,” Chili said, playfully slapping my arm.

  “I’m serious,” Jalisa said, still looking concerned, “you almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, “I guess I just overdid it tonight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  The conversation instantly changed and we were back to talking about the video taping and the dancers, then we went on to talk about the pizza parlor afterwards. LaVon and Diamond came up, but we dissed the conversation quickly and went on to something else.

  “I’m glad we went even if Tyrece didn’t show up,” Chili said happily.

  “Me, too,” Jalisa said.

  By the time the train pulled into the last station I felt fine. We got off laughing, talking and joking around. We walked through the dark Metro station to Chili’s car, parked under the streetlight in the near empty lot.

  Still laughing and joking, we piled in, me up front and Jalisa in the back. Chili started it up, but nothing happened. She tried again and it started. We pulled out of the parking space, then drove halfway out of the lot when the car stalled. We drifted to the side into another parking space, closer to the exit. Jalisa and I watched as Chili started it again, then two seconds later it died again. She tried it again, but this time it wouldn’t start at all. She tried it again, and still nothing happened.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Jalisa asked from the backseat.

  “I don’t know, it’s always weird,” Chili answered.

  “Try it again,” I said hopefully, looking at the illuminated clock on the dash panel.

  She tried one more time then looked at the gas meter. “Oh, crap, I forgot to get gas today, I think it’s on empty again.”

  “Again?” I said
. You don’t know how many times I’d gotten stuck in the street with Chili because she forgot to put gas in the car, even when she was borrowing her mother’s car. It happened all the time. Getting a BMW for her sixteenth birthday was seriously on time, but Chili was the only person I knew who couldn’t seem to get that whole fuel-goes-into-car-to-make-it-run thing. If her father didn’t fill up her tank every other day, it would never get done.

  Now the three of us were sitting there, looking at the little red arrow, willing it to move, but of course it didn’t. So it was late and we were sitting in a deserted Metro parking lot in the middle of the night with no way to get home.

  “What are we gonna do now?” Jalisa asked, sitting back.

  “You have to call your mom,” Chili said to me.

  “Don’t even try it, I’m sneaking in, remember?” I said.

  “Come on, it’s not like she don’t know you’re out.”

  “That’s not the point, if she’s asleep, I’m not about to be calling and waking her up.”

  “What about your dad, is he still away on business?”

  “Yeah, he’s still away,” I lied.

  “All right, Jalisa, it’s you,” Chili said decisively, looking in the rearview mirror, “you gotta call your mom.”

  “No way, I’m not waking her up at one o’clock in the morning. She’ll kill me if she knows I was out this late past my curfew. I’ll be grounded for life. Can’t you call your mom or your dad?”

  “They’re not home,” Chili said.

  Big surprise there, I thought to myself but didn’t say anything. We sat for a while, thinking. “Jalisa, can you call Natalie?” I asked hopefully, turning around to her.

  “Yeah, call Natalie, she’s cool, she’ll cover for us,” Chili agreed quickly.

  Jalisa rolled her eyes. “Can’t we just call a cab?”

  “And wait forever, hell, no, come on, Jalisa, just call Natalie,” Chili said. “Seriously, we don’t have a choice.”

  Jalisa looked at me and I nodded. We both knew that we didn’t have a choice. “Natalie will probably get on our case a little and complain, but she’ll still be cool. She’s always cool.”

  “Yeah, right, she’s gonna kill me, too,” Jalisa said as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the phone number to the nurses’ station at the hospital.

  I always envied Jalisa and her sister. And even though Jalisa used to tell me how much they argued and complained that Natalie always got on her nerves, I knew that they were still seriously tight. Whenever Jalisa got in trouble with their mom, Natalie would cover for her and was always there no matter what.

  So one strained conversation and a few minutes later Jalisa hung up and nodded. It was set, now all we had to do was wait for Natalie to come pick us up. Silently we got out to wait by the car, standing in the single beam of light from overhead.

  “Tonight was too much fun,” Chili said, bringing a smile to our faces all over again.

  “Yeah, Gayle was incredible.”

  “She was hot and her dancers were perfect. I wish we could do some of her steps in our recital next time, that would be hot,” I said, and we nodded, all agreeing.

  “Yo, Kenisha, I didn’t know your cousin was in that dance group. She was tight and she even knows Gayle Harmon and Tyrece. Check, you gotta get me in there.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know she was in it, either, but me and my cousin aren’t exactly what you would call tight anymore. She lived with my grandmother in D.C. not too far from Freeman Dance Studio, but we didn’t keep in touch much. Years ago we were really tight, almost like sisters. I guess we just grew apart. “I’ll think about it,” I said, acting like I got it like that.

  “Okay, what’s up with you?” Jalisa asked me.

  “Me, nothing, why?” I said.

  “Don’t even try it,” Chili said, joining in with her two cents, “you been acting all tense for a week now. You didn’t even want to go to the mall yesterday. We had to drag your ass out the house.”

  “That’s right, plus you’ve been in a mood all night, so what’s going on?” Jalisa added.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I said, “I told you I’m fine.”

  “I bet it’s LaVon,” Chili said to Jalisa, who nodded, agreeing with her. “You know she was in the bathroom with your girl ’bout to light it up.”

  “My girl who?” Jalisa asked.

  “Diamond.”

  “Kenisha, I told you Diamond is all right. She’s not trying to hook up with LaVon. I asked her. She said that they was just talking when we came in, that’s all.”

  “Oh, please,” Chili said to Jalisa, “and you believe her, Diamond would say anything. She’s such a skank.”

  “Ow, that is harsh,” Jalisa said.

  “It’s true.”

  “So why would she lie to me?” Jalisa asked.

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Chili said.

  “This has nothing to do with LaVon or Diamond,” I finally said after being left out of the conversation whose subject just happened to be me. “I told you I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  They both looked at me, knowing better. But I just couldn’t tell them that my mom and dad were fighting again.

  “All right, fine, don’t talk.”

  We got quiet for a while and I started feeling bad. Jalisa and Chili were my friends and I know I can tell them anything, so I decided to just do it. “My mom and dad are fighting again. I think they might get a divorce.”

  They looked at me.

  As far as they know, my life is perfect.

  “Well, just because they argue, doesn’t mean that they’re gonna get a divorce. Lots of couples argue.”

  “Not all the time,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Jalisa said.

  “My moms and pops don’t even care enough to argue. They just stay out of the house and away from each other, away from me,” Chili said sadly.

  We got quiet again as we each started thinking.

  Then a few minutes later, Chili opened the driver’s door, switched on the satellite radio and blasted music through the empty parking lot. We started dancing and laughed and danced some more, having our own party right there in the Metro parking lot. A few cars drove by, but we were partying too hard to even notice or care.

  Then reality set in as we saw two headlights turn into the parking lot. Jalisa’s sister was coming and we knew we were going to hear it. She drove over, stopped her car and rolled down the window. “What are you girls doing out this late? Jalisa, I know you know better, Mom would have a fit if she knew you were hanging out this late,” Natalie said.

  Natalie was Jalisa’s older sister by fourteen years. At twenty-nine, Natalie had been married for three years and had two-year-old twin girls. Unfortunately, her husband was in the marines and was stationed overseas. She had moved back into the family home with her two kids, so now Jalisa, with her sister and mother, had two moms on her back. Their father was also a marine on active duty overseas. So as soon as we got into Natalie’s car, closed the doors and buckled our seat belts she started in with the lecture.

  “Girl, what is wrong with you, calling me, knowing that I’m at work tonight. I can’t just be taking off and coming out to get you. You lucky my supervisor’s out this week.”

  “We missed the train, then Chili’s car wouldn’t start,” Jalisa said in our defense.

  Natalie shook her head as she pulled out of the deserted parking lot. “Do you have any idea what time it is? It’s one-thirty in the morning,” she asked and answered before Jalisa could open her mouth. “You know Mom’s gonna kill you for being out this late and hanging out in D.C., too.”

  “We missed the train,” Jalisa repeated.

  “It’s too dangerous out here. Anything can happen. And look at the three of you dancing in the parking lot, not a care in the world. Well, at least you had enough sense to call for a ride and not try and get a cab or something.”

  Chili and I looked at each other, knowing that it was best to j
ust keep quiet.

  “The video taping went longer than we thought,” Jalisa said, not mentioning the after-party at the pizza place.

  “Don’t hand me that. There’s no dance studio that’s gonna to stay open this late for no recital.”

  “It wasn’t a recital. They were shooting a video, a Tyrece Grant video, and they kept doing it over and over again to get it right. We were watching, and maybe we were in the video.”

  “Did you get paid?” she asked.

  “No,” Jalisa said.

  “Well, then you weren’t in the video.”

  I looked at Jalisa. I could only see her profile since I was in the backseat and she was sitting up front beside her sister, but I could tell that she was upset.

  “You girls know you have no business coming home this late at night,” she added, looking into the rearview mirror for our benefit. The lecture lasted the entire way to Chili’s house. We pulled up in the driveway and Chili eagerly jumped out.

  “Bye, Natalie, bye, y’all,” Chili said, then hurried up the steps into the house.

  Seconds later, I felt the car jerk as Natalie shifted gears and pulled off, headed to my house. She looked into the rearview mirror again, seeing me. I looked away quickly. “Kenisha, you know your mom is gonna have a fit with you coming in this late at night.”

  “I know,” I said, speaking for the first time.

  “How is she, your mom?”

  “She okay.”

  “I haven’t seen her at the gym in weeks, and how’s your dad, is he still working in D.C.?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I gotta catch up with him, my computer is acting crazy again.”

  “Okay,” I said, half listening, trying to think of something to say just in case my mom was still awake when I got in and she wanted to give me the third degree.

  “Tell your mom I said hello and that I’m gonna call her, okay. It’s a shame, we all live in the same neighborhood but never see each other. Maybe I’ll throw one of those back-to-school parties Mom used to throw years ago, y’all remember them?” she said, looking over to Jalisa.

  Jalisa nodded, looking at her sister. “They were fun,” she said, turning around to me. “Remember them?”