Brickhouse

by Rita Ewing

  “You can watch it in here.” Nona punched the Crestron remote, turning on the plasma television. “What do you want to see?”

  Kelly sighed as she slumped onto the bed. “I don’t know.”

  She handed Kelly the remote and watched as she flipped through the channels. “How’s school?”

  “Okay.”

  “Anything special going on?”

  “No.”

  Nona took a deep breath. “Kelly, I spoke to Mr. Howell today.”

  Kelly sat up and stared at her mother. “Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Nona clicked off the TV. “I know, honey. He just wanted me to know what’s been going on with you.” She paused. “He showed me that picture the teacher found in the locker room.”

  Kelly jumped from the bed. “Mom, it’s no big deal.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “Because it’s no big deal.” She folded her arms and fought to hold back the tears that sprang to her eyes.

  Nona reached for her daughter, but Kelly stepped back. “Sweetheart, I don’t mean to upset you, but we have to talk about this.”

  Kelly wiped a single tear that rolled down her cheek. This time when Nona reached for her, she didn’t back away. Nona took her hand and pulled her onto the bed. She put her arm around Kelly and lowered Kelly’s head onto her shoulder. It was then that Kelly freed the hurt she’d been holding.

  Nona hugged her daughter in silence. She treasured the moments, although she could feel Kelly’s pain through every tremble of her body. Nona wished she could take the sting of the hurt from her and exchange it for the strength that she’d gained through the wisdom of her years. But Nona knew that some of what Kelly was going through was a rite of passage–strength was an asset that she’d have to earn herself.

  After a few minutes, Kelly said, “Mom, it was awful when I saw that picture. Everyone was laughing at me.”

  Nona closed her eyes, forcing back tears of her own, and squeezed her daughter tighter. “I know, sweetie.”

  “They always bother me and I wish they would just leave me alone. I don’t know why they don’t like me.”

  Nona wished she could find the words to explain it to her child. In an instant, the times she’d been teased and bullied as a child sparked through her mind. Her heart ached as if the torment had happened only yesterday. But even today, with time behind her and wisdom beside her, she still couldn’t explain why. There never seemed to be a logical explanation for why people act upon their own jealousies and insecurities. Like Kelly, she had no idea why she’d been shunned by her classmates.

  “Kelly, I think there is something we can do about everything you’ve been going through.”

  Kelly lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and looked at her with hopeful eyes. “Really?”

  Nona nodded and took Kelly’s hands into hers. “Mr. Howell asked me to speak to a Dr. Gibbs. I called him today.”

  Kelly frowned.

  “Dr. Gibbs is a therapist …”

  Kelly’s eyes widened as she snatched her hand away. “I’m not seeing any shrink,” she yelled as she drew back.

  “Kelly, wait–”

  “Mom, if people are teasing me now, just wait until they hear that I’m seeing a doctor because of them.”

  “Sweetheart, I just want you to have someone to talk to, and no one at your school will know.”

  “Mom, everybody knows everybody’s business at school. They’ll call me a freak. It’ll be worse for me if those girls found out that I had to get checked out because of them.”

  “Kelly, I can make sure that no one knows. I can protect you–”

  “You haven’t protected me yet. Why should I believe you now?” Kelly screamed.

  Time froze. The seconds stretched in silence.

  Finally Kelly said, “I’m sorry, Mom.” She wiped the tears from her face. “But I’m not going to any freak doctor.” She ran from the room, leaving Nona with no words to say and no idea what to do.

  That had happened almost two months ago, at the beginning of the school year, and since then, Kelly refused to talk to Nona about school, answering all Nona’s inquiries with only single-syllable words.

  “Mom?”

  Kelly’s voice brought Nona back to the present, and Gail stood next to her with the vegetable burrito and green chai.

  After Gail walked away, Kelly sat down and asked, “Mom, you looked like you were daydreaming. What were you thinking about?”

  Nona smiled. “I was just thinking about how we’re going to have a great weekend. Maybe after you get back from the movies, you and I can do some shopping.”

  Kelly’s smile matched Nona’s. “That sounds good, Mom. Where do you want to go?”

  “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  Kelly lowered her eyes, then raised them slowly. “Can we go to Saks? I saw in the paper that they were having a sale.”

  “Sounds good to me. We’ll tell Allen to take you to a short movie.”

  Kelly laughed.

  Nona took a bite of her burrito and looked at her daughter with her hands wrapped around the mug. “Why don’t you have something to eat before you go to the movies, since we’re going shopping afterward?”

  “No, Mom.” She took a small sip of tea as if she were savoring each calorie in every swallow.

  Nona nodded but remained silent. How could she force Kelly to eat? She was trying to be careful. Nona had read numerous articles that advised parents not to push their daughters in situations such as this. Many advised that parents often made too big a deal out of what was just a phase, and Nona wanted to make sure she wasn’t doing that.

  If she played this right, Nona believed that one day Kelly would move on. One day her daughter would look in the mirror and see only her reflection–absent her mother, the girls at school, or the images that magazines delivered as truth. And when that day came, Nona knew that Kelly would recognize and accept her beauty–both inside and out. In the meantime, Nona would continue to watch her daughter and pray.

  five

  Allen stopped at the large oval reception desk. The circular lobby buzzed with the sounds of the Saturday afternoon workout crowd as clients and staff greeted one another. Brickhouse boasted more than three thousand members, many of whom had been coming to the gym since before Nona had moved into this building. More than half of the staff had been with Nona for more than four years, which was considered an eternity in the industry.

  Allen leaned against the Lucite top and checked the sign-in sheets as the two employees assigned to the front desk swiped clients’ membership cards as they entered.

  “Hey, Allen,” a woman who had been coming to the club for more than five years greeted him. “When are you going to have time for me on your schedule? And I’m not talking about working out.”

  He smiled, waved, and returned to the sheets in front of him. No time for conversation. He wanted to finish. He loved the time he spent with Kelly, but the break today was as much for him as it was for her. He hoped the fresh air would make him feel better.

  “Are you teaching tonight’s class, Allen?” This time it was a male client addressing him.

  “No, but I’ll be back in front of the room on Monday.”

  The greetings and questions bombarded him, and within minutes he realized standing in the reception area wasn’t a good idea. He picked up the prospective members’ folders, then moved toward his office. As he walked, he scanned the thick pile of applications. He wanted to begin working on these right away. Some people had waited for more than two years to become members of Brickhouse because of the long waiting list; he wanted to bring in as many as he could as soon as possible.

  He paused outside his office, glanced up the long hall, and listened to the Saturday afternoon hum of the gym. This was the sound of success; he couldn’t have imagined any of this when he first joined Nona.

  When he began working for her, he was impressed with her idea to bring a complete gy
m to Harlem. He was pleased to help her get started, although he expected he wouldn’t be staying very long. Working with Nona would be good experience before he moved on to a more visible and lucrative position.

  But somehow the years had passed, and before he knew it, Nona was talking to him about plans to open up a forty-thousand-square-foot facility.

  “And I want you to be part of it,” Nona had said to him then. “I want you to have a financial interest.”

  Allen had tried in every way he could to tell her that her plans would never work. It was too much of an undertaking. Sure, they were bursting out of the building they were in, but Nona’s plans rivaled the health club facilities that were thriving south of Ninety-sixth Street. There was no way a gym like what Nona had in mind could survive in Harlem.

  It wasn’t that Allen had accepted the stereotypes like many of the trainers in the city. The running joke among his peers was that blacks and Latinos ate all the fried chicken and burritos 125th Street had to offer, but wouldn’t dream of going to any gym to work off the greasy, fattening food. Allen realized that these poor eating habits existed, but he believed it was because people were creatures of habit and convenience. People didn’t work out because they had never had the convenience of a gym in their area. Still, this was too much of a risk for Nona to take–he just wasn’t sure how a full-fledged gym would do in Harlem.

  But Nona moved forward as if she didn’t hear what he said or as if he didn’t know what he was talking about–Allen was never sure which. So he did the only thing he could do–he followed.

  It was a good thing that Nona’s capacity to dream was large enough for both of them. She shared her meteoric rise with him, often telling others that she would be nowhere without him. Allen accepted her compliments, but he knew the truth. Nothing would have stopped her. This miracle that surrounded him was Nona’s baby–a seed in her mind that blossomed into a vision, that metamorphosed into reality.

  But the dream had not come without its nightmares. There were weeks when they weren’t sure they’d make payroll. There were days when they’d prayed the lights would stay on until the last class ended. Yet they had scrounged through.

  Allen knew that, in his small way, he provided Nona with stability. That’s why he’d ignored offers to bring a replica of the Brickhouse Technique to other gyms or requests to work with America’s famous and infamous.

  He shook his head. He didn’t have time to linger with these memories. He stepped into his office and draggedhimself to the desk. All he wanted to do was run home and fall into bed. But he had promised Kelly a movie.

  He slumped into his chair. When was he going to get his energy back? He had to figure out a way. Nona didn’t realize it yet, but he was falling behind in work, canceling classes. He even felt as if the rezoning issue was his fault. If he had been on top of his game, he would have known about it sooner, giving them more time to prepare.

  And now his challenges were overflowing to his clients. He didn’t want people running to Nona as Leila apparently had. Although he couldn’t blame Leila–not the way he had treated her yesterday.

  Allen and Leila had been working on the chest-press machine, and Leila was whining as she always did.

  “Damn, Allen,” Leila had exclaimed. “I’ve never lifted this heavy before. How much weight do you have on this dang machine?”

  He had taken a deep breath as he spotted her, giving her more assistance as she pulled the bar to her chest.

  But his silence did not silence her.

  “I don’t know why I torture myself with this every day. When is someone going to come out with a pill? Just pop one a day into my mouth and bam. You’ve got the perfect J-Lo body. Whoever comes up with that product will make a fortune. I’d pay a million of Shawn’s dollars for that.”

  Her voice went up an octave with each sentence, and he pressed his lips together, trying to hold back his annoyance that was twisting into anger.

  “I don’t know why we do this,” Leila continued her complaint rampage. “And it’s mostly women, trying to stay in shape for men who don’t appreciate anything we do–”

  “Come on, Leila. You’re not concentrating. Stop wasting energy talking and push.” He held his hands under the bar,giving her more support than usual and hoping that would get her to shut up.

  As Leila raised the bar above her head, Allen squinted against the glare of Leila’s five-carat pear-shaped diamond ring, and that annoyed him more. He took a quick glance around the massive room. Women were spinning on stationary bikes, trotting on treadmills, and scaling stair climbers. Yet there were more platinum and diamonds in that room than graced the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

  He shook his head. What made women wear their finest jewels and blanket their faces with layers of makeup, just to work up a sweat at the gym?

  “I can’t believe I’m paying you one hundred and fifty dollars an hour for this torture.”

  Her voice pricked his skin like a sharp pin.

  She continued, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  Just what I was thinking, he thought.

  Leila exhaled and dropped the weighted bar onto the rack with a loud clang.

  Allen flinched but said nothing. He grabbed his clipboard and motioned for Leila to follow him to the next machine.

  “Just ten more pounds and I’ll be happy.” Leila sighed. She paused, looking Allen up and down. “You know, it’s people like you who kill me.”

  Allen looked at Leila. Her long bronze curls were pulled high atop her head in a ponytail. In her black workout bra and Capri-length leggings, she looked almost perfect. There wasn’t much more he could do to help her, even if he took a surgical knife and sculpted her body himself. Her desire was unattainable. There was no way she could look like a sixteen-year-old.

  “Looking at you makes me almost hate you,” Leila whined.

  “What are you talking about?” He didn’t really want an answer; he just wanted to finish the workout. He looked down at the chart and checked off the machine and repetitions Leila had just completed.

  “Come on, don’t think it’s not noticeable. You’ve lost how much now?” Her practiced eye rose up and down her trainer’s body. “At least five pounds, probably closer to ten and that’s just in the last month. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Allen squeezed the edge of the clipboard.

  “And what makes it worse,” Leila continued, “is that you don’t even need to lose weight. You already have the perfect body, the perfect face. You’re a hunk.” Leila laughed and winked. “So tell me, what’s your secret?”

  He slammed the clipboard onto the floor. “Mind your own business, Leila,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m here to train you, this is not about me.”

  “Allen–”

  He held up his hand. “I want to work, not talk.”

  Silently Leila lowered her body onto the leg-press machine. She opened her mouth, but when she glanced at him, she pressed her lips together.

  “Okay,” Allen whispered. “Let’s go. I have another client in ten minutes. One … two … three.”

  He didn’t have to hear her murmurs to know that Leila was cursing under her breath. He felt bad then and even worse now as he remembered their session.

  Leila was one of his favorites–ever since he’d inherited her as a client from Nona’s ?-list, when Nona had to end her one-on-one client sessions because of her schedule. Allen worked hard with every client, but he befriended few. Leila was one that he called a friend.

  That’s why he was surprised by his own outburst. Hisfriend had made a simple comment about his body–something he was certainly used to. Since he began lifting weights as a teenager and had shaped his body into this top form, he had been confronted with open stares and forward comments all the time. Most men even stopped to suck in their stomachs before approaching him. He knew he was a good-looking man; he wasn’t modest in that sense, although he kept a tight rein on his ego. But he never wanted to
be just another fine-ass gym rat.

  With all he’d helped Nona accomplish, Allen knew that he was much more than that, although he didn’t feel like it today. He was moving from the asset to the liability side of Nona’s friendship sheet. But if he worked hard, he could be back in top shape before Nona noticed that he’d been gone.

  He ticked off a plan in his mind: He’d force himself to eat. And he’d get more rest. But would that be enough to take away the pain?

  His eyes moved to the telephone. He stared at the black instrument for several minutes before he lifted the handset and dialed the number that was embedded in his memory. He pressed the numbers before he could change his mind.

  As the phone on the other end rang, Allen closed his eyes. This wasn’t the solution, but he had no other answers.

  “Hello,” the baritone voice came through the phone.

  Allen rubbed his still-closed eyes, trying to soothe the sudden ache in his head. “Hey, man, it’s me. Allen Wade.”

  He heard the man chuckle. “It’s been a long time.”

  His pulsing temple throbbed more. “Yeah …” Allen paused and took a deep breath. It took just a few moments to make the arrangements. When he hung up, he didn’t feel any better, but he knew soon he would. He’d have the medicine he needed, even though it wasn’t at all what the doctor ordered.

  six

  “Mom, what is this?”

  Nona turned from the chrome double sink, letting the water continue to run over the head of lettuce. She squinted at the envelope Kelly held in her hand. “You’re holding it. You tell me.”

  Kelly flopped into one of the four chairs at the round glass dinette table. “It looks like an invitation to a premiere–Toni Lee’s premiere.”

  Nona rolled her eyes, but smiled when her face was out of Kelly’s view. She loved these times–when it was just the two of them. It was a rarity, but today she’d come home early, taking advantage of her light Tuesday schedule, and Odessa had gone for an overnight visit to her nephew in Queens. So it was just mother and daughter–precious moments to deposit into her memory.