Right Before My Eyes

by Michelle Robinson

  When they got back into town, Kalena had messages on their answering machine from all of us. Jordyn, Chelsea, and Najah called me confused ’cause they knew that Al and Kalena went on vacation. But they couldn’t understand why Kalena’s car was all over the town and Ashley—Kalena’s little sister—wasn’t the one driving it.

  Kalena’s car was spotted at Red Robin at Bayfair Mall on Fruitvale Avenue in front of Kim’s Nails. It was also spotted at Durant Square, and at Ahn’s Burger on Grand Avenue. This young girl was all over the place. When they got back, they got into a huge argument right in front of me. She jumped all in his face with the living room lamp in her hand. She starting screaming about the messages on the answering machine. He didn’t say much as she screamed louder. He just said, “don’t you hit me with that lamp.”

  I was there in her moment of rage. My friend was out of control and it was okay. She was hurt and he had disappointed her. He lied to her, cheated on her, and thought nothing of it. Somehow, this nicca thought he was gonna be able to live like this for as long as he wanted. When she had the lamp up to his head like she was about to crack it over his big ole head, I was on my toes, ready to hit him if he hit her.

  I remember him telling me, “Nee, don’t worry, I’m not gonna hit her.”

  I thought that was very wise of him, and from that point on, I thought he was alright. I know he was dogging my girl out and all, but hitting women wasn’t gonna be one of his thangs. I respected that. Plus, Al was 6’4 and 300 pounds so he was tall and thick. How was we gonna beat him up? But Kalena had so much rage in her and I’m no punk either, so we could have whipped his butt together. But we’re too cute for that. After they broke up, he moved out and got a spot with Nikki. That young heffa gave him a daughter. Her name was Brandyn, just like my godson’s name. His cycle started over again.

  “Do I have Brandon walk me down the aisle or my stepdad?”

  “I think your stepdad would be honored and expected to walk you down the aisle. That’s his privilege as your father figure. Don’t take that away from him.”

  “Ok, you’re right.”

  We arrived back at her house.

  “You gotta come in so we can start the planning of this wedding you’re making me have,” she laughed.

  “I better start praying ’cause you’re going to need it,” I said, as she turned the key in her front door and let us in.

  Chapter 12

  I NEED A GIRLFRIEND

  I went into the kitchen and made myself comfortable at the kitchen table. I took my shoes off and sat in front of the computer. I went on my Facebook page to see what was new with my Facebook friends. This social network was so funny to me. Some people praised the Lord and shared their testimonies. Some complained about going to work, and some left subliminal messages.

  What killed me about those people is that no one really cared.

  Actually, there was always the nosey bunch who asked for an explanation. Of course, they would never get an answer. It was always those “none of your business” type of answers. Those answers always made you feel dumb or wish you never would have asked them in the first place. Then, you got the ones that give you updates on the reality TV shows and ball games.

  There were folks who let you know they are going on vacation or headed for an exciting evening out.

  The funny ones were the people who had to let you know what they were eating and upload a picture as proof.

  There was always a Happy Birthday shout out to someone who was dead.

  The ones that drove me crazy were the ones who lived on Facebook all day. They would update their status constantly with a minute-by-minute play of their lives. They changed their profile picture every two days.

  “You are not that interesting!” I shouted at Kalena’s computer, chuckling.

  The thought occurred to me that I could just delete this one girl as a friend. She’s a friend of a friend anyways, a housewife and mama of five kids. She was a stay-at-home and she updated with a “good morning” and then it was on from there, every step of her boring ole life.

  She played all the Facebook games too. She was literally on Facebook 24 hours a day.

  I could get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and just check my crackberry and she was playing Mafia Wars, Family Feud, Farmville, Petville and Sorority Life.

  Here were her posts from this morning:

  “I think I’ll take a bubble bath instead of a shower this morning.”

  “Playing with the cat Sergio. He’s so cute,” followed by an uploaded picture of Sergio.

  “Putting my son down for a nap. Chat a little later.”

  “Happy happy joy joy!”

  I mean, they were just random stuff like, “I hear the ice cream truck coming. Maybe I’ll go get some treats for us. BRB.”

  I wished the truck would run your tail over one good time and then you wouldn’t be able to type for awhile. “Stop it Journee Bell,” I said to myself as I chuckled again out loud.

  “What is BRB?” I thought.

  Hmmm, there were so many acronyms, I couldn’t figure that one out. But I would not post a comment to ask Lauren.

  “Kalena?”

  “Huh?”

  Her voice sounded as if she was headed my way to join me in her kitchen.

  “What does BRB mean?”

  “Girl, I don’t know.”

  She was probably sitting right at her computer like Facebook is paying her to. So I commented, “Hey Lauren, how you doing girl? What’s BRB?” I hit send.

  I scrolled down and my sister’s status was next:

  Jordyn Bell: “Boot camp kicked my butt.”

  I smiled and decided to reply: “Girl, it will kick your butt and your hair!” I ended it with a smiley face. I got a reply from Lauren saying BRB means be right back.

  I just sat there with my fingers on the keyboard ready to reply. I couldn’t believe she actually replied so quickly. But then again, I could believe it.

  I just replied “Ok thx”, because Kalena had just sat down and we had some planning to do. But before I could get off of Facebook, I had another message.

  It was from a name I didn’t know. I figured it was one of my sister’s friends.

  C. Fuller responded to me suggesting I should cut my hair off. This person’s profile picture was a spray-painted wall that read “I NEED A GIRLFRIEND”. It reminded me of Bobby Brown’s song from back in the day. I wanted to investigate who just butted themselves into my convo I was having with my sister.

  “Ok, Ms. Lady,” Kalena said. “Where should we begin?”

  I looked up, eyebrows raised. “Huh?”

  “My wedding? Hello? See, this is how Bridezillas are created.”

  “Girl, please. I will beat you silly before that happens. You ain’t gotta be getting all bent out of shape to get your points across.”

  “Okay, I promise,” Kalena agreed “but I just want to be heard.”

  I heard Kalena but had pulled up C. Fuller’s photo albums. There were two men standing outside of a house with their baseball caps on low. I didn’t recognize either one of them, so I was trying to scroll to the next picture until Bridezilla demanded my attention.

  “Ok, ok, ok,” I said. “You know Facebook is addicting.”

  As I logged off, I couldn’t help but wonder why a man would suggest a woman to cut her hair off. Usually men like long hair. What a weirdo, I thought as I clicked out of dude’s profile. I was about to log off when I noticed Najah had uploaded the pictures from Kalena’s graduation and the party.

  “Look, Bridezilla. Najah uploaded the pictures from Saturday. Do you wanna see them?”

  “She did?” Kalena asked, excited. She got up from the seat across from mine and moved her seat closer to me.

  “She t
agged all of us already, too.” I added.

  “Yeah, you know she don’t waste no time,” she said. “Her camera takes good pictures too.” We spent the next hour laughing and commenting on all 133 photos.

  Chapter 13

  MOMENTS IN LOVE

  I looked up at the clock, and it read 11:17pm.

  I couldn’t believe it, but time flies when you’re having fun. My back was beginning to hurt. I sat on Kalena’s wooden chair for too long, but we got a lot accomplished.

  I yawned.

  “You better go home girl,” Kalena said. “We’ve had a full day today.”

  “No, girl. We’ve had a full weekend. But it was a good weekend. I’m very excited for you, boo thang. Todd put the cherry on it to top this weekend off!” I said.

  “Can we just say he liked it so much that he put a ring on it?”

  We both laughed.

  “Ok, girl. I’ll check on you in a few days.” I stood up and gathered my crackberry and my purse.

  “Thank you so much for spending the whole day with me and helping get this wedding planning started. I think I will figure out what color we will go with after I talk it over with my soon-to-be husband.”

  I turned quickly and looked back to see her, ’cause her voice had some uncertainty. I wanted to be able to tell if it was excitement mixed with butterflies. After I examined her emotions, my read was uncertain. I decided to just pray for her, Todd, and all of us who will be a part of this wedding party.

  “Ok, wifey. Hire yourself a good wedding coordinator and get some rest. Holla back!”

  She walked me to the front door and we hugged and gave each other kisses on the cheek. She waited on the porch for me to get in my SUV and drive away.

  “She’s such a mama,” I thought as I rode by waving at her to go back in. She smiled as she walked back inside and turned the porch light off.

  While I headed home, I turned off my stereo to talk to God about this wedding. I took a deep breath and exhaled. I almost closed my eyes but remembered I had a steering wheel in my hands so I took another deep breath.

  “Lord Jesus, I come to You with a special request to put your arms around your daughter Kalena. Keep her in high spirits and in lots of love with Todd through this wedding planning. Cast all the hate and jealous away Lord. Keep good thoughts in their household. Keep them one accord and bless every vendor and all the people who they seek out for help. I pray away all confusion and back-biting and any ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend interferences. I pray for financial blessings and affordable payments and no disagreements whatsoever about anything. Keep the happy couple happy and get rid of any doubts or worries. Let the advice-givers have no ill will for them, and let all of us have fun. In your name, Lord. Amen.”

  I noticed I didn’t stop at one red light.

  Small favors. Good lookin’ out Lord.

  I smiled all the way home as I cruised down MacArthur Blvd. It was a little quiet for the strip. There were no loud cars rolling with four dudes deep, no one hanging outside of all the little hole-in-the-wall bars. There wasn’t a whole lot of people driving on the streets either. I decided to roll my window down and catch the night’s breeze. Clear my head of all the stuff cluttering my mind.

  I was juiced about the wedding though. Jordyn, Najah, Chelsea, and I are bridesmaids. Kalena’s sister, Ashley, would be her maid of honor and there would be no matron of honor. We would either wear the same color and a different dress or same dress but in different colors. I thought pastels would be cute. The wedding was going to be in November, so maybe not pastels after all.

  Either way was fine with me. I liked knee-length dresses to show off my nice cocoa legs. It would be a church wedding, with the reception held somewhere else. I hoped it would be somewhere nice. Fortunately, there were so many options in the Bay Area to pick from, with all the great landscaping, city skylines, seascapes, wineries, and sunshine. I guessed that the cost would determine which dance floor we would electric slide and cha-cha slide on.

  Yeah, I knew we was gonna have a good time. I didn’t care if we were in a barn, as long as the DJ was bumping like Mind Motion from 106.1 KMEL or maybe Jordyn’s client, DJ Hurricane. I had one of his mixed CDs in my changer. As the wind was invading my personal space, I noticed I wasn’t even bumping the Bose system in my ride. I pushed the power button, pressed number 3 and DJ Hurricane’s CD got started. But I decided to save it for tomorrow.

  Sorry, Lil Wayne.

  I started to connect to the wind. Its caress had taken over all the clutter in my mind. I wasn’t thinking about nothing and nobody. I just fell in love with my new discovery of the gift of air. Not only do we need it to live and breathe, but it’s a healer too. Like Mama would say, “it’s just another gift from God, baby.”

  I pulled up to the house abruptly, because a sista had to use the bathroom bad. I didn’t know why I didn’t go before I left Kalena’s. I hated this feeling, because it seems as soon as I got closer to getting out of the car, your squeezer acted like it forgot how to hold its deposit.

  I concentrated on getting out the truck so I wouldn’t disturb my squeezer. I wondered if there was an exercise that could improve my squeezer. I thought maybe you should exercise going your butt to the bathroom when there was one around.

  I was walking up the stairs of the porch and I heard some noise coming from the living room. I stopped and turned around. There was a car parked behind Derrick’s Acura, which meant he had company.

  But I didn’t care; I had to pee hella bad.

  I walked faster up the stairs and then the noises were clear. He had that Moments in Love knocking hard out of his state-of-the-art speakers, plus these niccas were screwing!

  On the couch? I whispered to myself.

  I waited at the door with my key in the lock ready to unlock the door. I was just gonna run past them real quick, but I just could’t seem to break their groove.

  Instead, I stood there and listened to the pounding sounds of two bodies. His breaths were deep. He sounded like he was working hard and giving it to her with no holding back, and the owner of the silver Honda Civic was taking her beating like a wimp, if you asked me.

  Maybe she was enjoying it more than it sounded like, but her love language sounded like he was girthy. She was sounding like a wounded sea lion! I bet her nails were digging into his back and her legs were wrapped around his. I envisioned Derrick’s blood squirting all over the place: all over the walls, the couch and the floor.

  I started laughing and remembered I really had to use the bathroom, so I had to do Plan B ’cause his breaths started getting faster and her squeals were nerve-racking. I wanted to shout, “Honda Civic, shut up and take it like a woman you punk bi—!”

  Sorry Lord,change me.

  I had to get off the porch and work my Plan B before it was too late.

  I rapidly tip-toed down the stairs and headed to the backyard. I thought I would just come in through the back door. I walked around the house and under the window of the living room.

  I didn’t stop, but I still heard the two fornicators coming towards the end for their sexcapade. I couldn’t stop to hear the finish line victory ’cause I had no time left to waste.

  I was finally at the back door when I realized that I left my keys in the keyhole at the front door. I was in disbelief.

  I had my hands raised up like I was waiting for my teammate to throw me the basketball. I hated that feeling, and that was when I gave myself permission to relieve my squeezer. It was getting harder to keep it under control anyway.

  There was no way I was gonna make it back to the front of the house and back before that warm eternal liquid started racing down my thighs and possibly my legs. My pantyliner was gonna be heavy and wet.

  I closed my eyes and just gave in to the moment. It wasn’t a quicky either.

&nbs
p; I think it even went down to my tennis shoes too.

  I took a deep breath and stood there trying to remember the last time I had done that. I couldn’t remember. But here I was, 36 and peeing on myself.

  Thanks, Derrick!

  Now that I am standing in my wetness, it was time to make a move. Plan B failed badly. I had to get my keys out of the front door and still come back around here to let myself into the house.

  I turned around to walk down the stairs but my wet butt made me uncomfortable. My sweatpants felt like they weighed a ton.