Selling My Soul

by Sherri L. Lewis

  Her room looked like an earthquake and a tsunami had hit it. There were piles of dirty clothes everywhere, including in the bed with Tiffany. There were dirty dishes lined up on the dresser, and the carpet looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in the last two years. And the smell . . . I couldn’t even think of anything to describe it. And I had lived in Africa for the past two years.

  “Tiffany!”

  Even with me standing over her, yelling at the top of my lungs, she didn’t stir. I was used to her sleeping like a coma patient, but this was a bit much. I reached over and jostled her, and she still didn’t crack an eyelid. I went from being mad to scared. “Tiffy! Wake up.”

  I knelt down beside her to make sure she was breathing. Just as I put my face close to hers, she let out a deep breath that almost sent me reeling across the room. Her breath reeked of alcohol and something else I couldn’t allow myself to believe. I bent and smelled her shirt, confirming my fears.

  Weed. Tiffany was drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana.

  I grabbed her firmly and sat her up in the bed, shaking her the whole while. “Wake up, Tiffany!” I shook her so hard, the thought of being arrested for shaken baby sister syndrome crossed my mind.

  She finally scrunched her face and held up her arms, trying to push me away. “What? Leave me alone,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Wake up. Look at me.” I squeezed her shoulders so tight, I was sure she’d have bruises later.

  “Owww, Sissy. You’re hurting me.” She finally opened her eyes, but kept them downward, refusing to look at me. “Let me go.” She sounded like a little girl when she said it. My little baby girl I had tried so hard to raise and protect from the elements of the world.

  “What is your problem? Do you really think you’re gonna live in my house and carry on like this?” I let her go.

  She rubbed her shoulders where my hands had been, studying them for marks I may have left on her.

  I stood up. “Wash your face, brush your teeth and meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”

  She flopped back over on the bed and whined, “I’m tired, Sissy. I don’t feel like getting up right now.”

  I grabbed her by the arm and snatched her back up into a sitting position. “You got two choices. You either get yourself downstairs to talk to me, or you pack your stuff and get out now. You hear me?” I let her arm go and pointed a long finger in her face. “I don’t care nothing ’bout Moms being sick. I will put your nasty, trifling tail on the street in a heartbeat if you don’t straighten up. Believe it.”

  Her eyes widened as if she finally realized I was serious. She hung her head, blinked a few times and scooted to the edge of the bed.

  I stomped out of the room. I went down to the living room to wait for her, pacing and praying the whole time.

  I had always known Tiffany to be between jobs. She never got fired, because she was usually a reliable, conscientious worker. She either ended up quitting a perfectly good job because someone offended her, she couldn’t get along with her supervisor or because she “just didn’t like it.” Therefore, she was always in financial trouble, borrowing from me and Moms when she got into dire straits.

  She had moved so many times in the last ten years, the post office probably refused to honor her changes of address anymore. She always picked the wrong men who were usually just as trifling and transient as she was. I even knew, although she and Moms had tried to keep it from me, that she’d had abortions on two different occasions. Maybe more.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, now drugs and alcohol? That had never been a part of her routine. As I walked and prayed, I asked God for the best way to deal with her. Screaming and physically abusing her wouldn’t do any good. I had to get to the bottom of what was going on. I knew she was depressed about what was going on with Moms. But still, to go that far? There had to be some man involved.

  I finally heard her feet shuffling down the steps. I knew she was taking her time getting down to me and probably thinking of what lie she would tell to dig herself out of this. She finally emerged from the staircase and shuffled her feet over to the armchair. I almost expected her to stick her thumb in her mouth like she used to when she got in trouble as a little girl.

  I sat down on the couch and clasped my hands together. We both sat in silence for a few minutes, me staring at her and her playing with the tie strings on her sweatpants. I knew it was too much to expect her to act like a grownup and explain herself, so I decided to speak first. “What’s going on, Tiffany?”

  She shrugged, continuing to tie and untie knots in the strings.

  I gently grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. “Tiffany?”

  Her eyes went down and to the right. “I’m just a little tired. I took some medicine last night because I felt like I was coming down with a cold.” She pulled back from my hand and looked downward again. “Oh. Sorry about the room. I’ll clean it today.”

  I could feel my blood turning hot. I took a few deep breaths, but couldn’t seem to get control of the anger rising in me. “Do I look like a fool?” I ran two fingers across my forehead and got right up in her face. “Do I have stupid written on my forehead?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and bit her lip.

  I stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of her. “Do I? You have the smell of alcohol seeping out of your pores and your clothes and hair smelled like you slept at a rap concert last night. If you tell me one more lie, Tiffany, I swear, I’ll . . . I . . .” My eyes searched around the room. I felt like my mother. When we made her mad when we were little she would search the room and grab the nearest thing she could find to beat us with. Well, usually Tiffany with. Wooden spoons, hairbrushes, shoes—anything she could get her hands on quickly.

  Tiffany sunk back into the couch.

  “Do you really think you’re gonna live in my house and carry on like that? You know I don’t roll like that, nor will I allow that in my home. You’re supposed to be finding a job so you can help me and Moms out with the bills. Instead, you’re out partying and getting high all night? I just had to accept a job I have no desire to take. You think you’re gonna lay up in this house, in that nasty room, while I go to work everyday? Huh?”

  Tiffany blinked her eyes and shook her head.

  “You are thirty years old, Tiffany—a grown woman. You are too old for me and Moms to be taking care of you anymore. And she can’t right now. Do you want to be a burden to her while she’s fighting this illness? How do you think she would feel if she knew you were out smoking and drinking? Are you trying to kill her yourself? How do you sleep at night?”

  “I can’t.” Tiffany bowed her head and her shoulders started shaking. She burst into loud sobs. “I can’t sleep, Sissy. What if Moms dies? She’s gonna die. Soon. You saw her.”

  I let out a disgusted breath, but went over to the couch to sit next to Tiffany. I took her in my arms and held her. She still smelled—bad, but I had held people who smelled far worse in Africa. Shoot, I smelled far worse the whole time I was in Africa.

  When her sobs finally subsided, I said, “Baby girl, I understand you being upset about Moms. It was very difficult for me to see her like that. I have to rest on my faith that God is going to heal her. That’s the only thing getting me through this. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this by yourself. And even though Moms threatened you, I wish you had called me.”

  I gently turned her face to look at me. “But you have to understand that drinking and smoking isn’t going to make it any better. It can only make it worse. How long have you been smoking weed?”

  She shrugged and cast her eyes downward. I nudged her chin to make her look at me. “About a month,” she finally answered.

  “And the drinking?”

  She let out a long, stinky breath, forcing me to let her face go. “A couple of weeks after Moms got diagnosed.”

  I made a face and fanned the air. “Anything stronger than that? Cocaine?”

  “No! Of cour
se not.” She looked shocked and hurt that I would ask her that. “I’m sorry, Sissy.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to do better.”

  “I will. I promise.” She gave me that little girl look.

  I stood up. “You’re going to spend the rest of the day cleaning that room and the messes around the house you’ve made since I’ve been back, including the garage. Tomorrow, you’re going to have to start searching for a job. I’m gonna be just like the unemployment office. Everyday, you have to report to me where you’ve looked for a job and what the outcome is. You need to have a job by the end of the week.”

  Her eyes flew open. “There’s no way I can get a job that quick, Sissy. You know what the economy is like?”

  “I don’t care nothing about the economy. Get a job at Macy’s, shoot, McDonald’s if you have to. After you get your job, we’ll decide on what your monthly payments will be.” I planned to collect her money every two weeks until she had enough to get a good apartment on a METRO line. I would let her stay here until she had at least three months rent saved up.

  “And no more alcohol or marijuana. If you need to go see somebody to talk about all this, we’ll set something up.”

  “I ain’t going to see no shrink.” She folded her arms. “I’m not crazy, Trina.”

  “I didn’t say you were crazy. I know Moms’s condition is difficult to deal with. Especially if you don’t have faith to know that God will make everything okay.”

  Tiffany narrowed her eyes, and I almost expected flames to shoot out of them. “You sound just like them crazy church people. Always talking about what God’s going to do. When it’s all said and done, you’re gonna be standing right there at Moms’s grave site next to me, crying and wondering why God didn’t show up. What you gonna say about God then?” She spat the words, sounding just like my mother.

  “Tiffy . . .” I reached out to rub her back, but she snatched away and stood up. “I’ll do everything you said, Trina. But don’t try to drag me into some magical fantasyland and believe that God is gonna do some miracle and poof!—Moms will be fine. She’s gonna die, and you need to get ready to deal with it. At least I’m trying. It might be the wrong way, but at least I’m facing the truth. Moms is gonna leave us. And all we’ll have is each other, and crazy Aunt Penny. I don’t want to hear none of that Jesus mess no more, Trina.” She marched up the stairs to her room and shut the door.

  I thought of the scripture where Jesus could work no miracles in His hometown because of the people’s unbelief. A little fear rose in my heart.

  What if Tiffany and Moms talked us out of the miracle we so desperately needed?

  Ten

  I wished I could keep on the jeans and T-shirt I had been wearing since I got back, but instead, I stood in the mirror with a stupid pantsuit on. Who invented such an outfit? It hung off me, in spite of the safety pins I had carefully placed in the back to try to draw the waist in some.

  After yelling at Tiffany the day before, I didn’t think it would be cool to ask her to drive me to the grocery store. So I got in the car to fend for myself. Luckily, driving wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, probably because I only drove on the local streets. I was in no way prepared for what would happen to me when I walked into the Giant Food store up the street from my house.

  I did okay in the produce section, stocking up on plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. I bought some fresh fish. I wasn’t sure I could go back to eating meat after having watched chicken and pigs killed right in front of me and watching the villagers eating every imaginable part of the animals.

  It was when I got to the aisles of food that it started to get to me. Looking at an entire aisle filled with a million different brands of cereal alarmed me. There were twenty-four different kinds of salad dressing. Eight different kinds of peanut butter. Ten different brands of syrup. Nine different types of mustard. Mustard? An entire aisle of different kinds of potato chips and sodas. My eyes trailed across rows and rows and aisles and aisles of food.

  All I could think of was my babies. My little children, who barely had enough to eat on any given day of the week. Their swollen bellies, skin full of sores from poor nutrition, susceptible to every illness that came along because they were so malnourished.

  I held it together until I got to the bottled water. I couldn’t count the different kinds of water. Not only were there several types of spring water, there were flavored waters, vitamin waters, flavored sparkling waters, distilled water, it was endless. I thought of three-mile treks just to get to fresh enough water for us not to catch a fatal case of diarrhea. I remembered spacing my bucket baths farther and farther apart so as not to waste the precious resource because of my American obsession with daily showers.

  And here was an unending supply of something so abundant, we took it for granted. In Mozambique, it was the difference between life, good health and death.

  I quickly pushed my cart to check out, and then hurried to my car before the dam broke. Once inside, I cried until I had no more tears. I cried for all the babies we had buried while I was in Africa. I cried for the mothers who lost their children because they couldn’t afford to feed them. I cried for orphans whose parents had died of diarrhea—something an American would whine and complain about, but would never imagine dying from.

  So here I stood in my mirror, wearing a pantsuit that was way too big because I knew after my grocery store experience, there was no way I could survive a trip to the mall for new clothes.

  I would need to put some clause in my new contract that I could wear whatever I wanted to on days I didn’t have to meet with clients. Depending on how huge this client was and how desperate Blanche was for the money, I might even be able to negotiate working from home.

  When I walked into the office, the first person I saw was Sonya. She gave me a big hug. “Dang, girl. Maybe I need to go to Africa so I can lose some of this weight.” She patted her huge behind and rubbed her protruding belly. Sonya was one of those people that tried every crazy fad diet that came out. Maple syrup diet, lemonade diet, peanut butter diet, even a pig skin diet. I don’t think she ever lost a pound.

  “The Africa diet? Yeah, that might work for you, Sonya.” We laughed.

  She pointed me towards my old work area. I walked over to my old desk, now empty and clean, still not believing I was back in this place. I took a deep breath and thanked God that there was a job open quickly that I was familiar with. And that I’d be making more money than before. I’d have me and Moms out of debt in no time, and I’d be able to start saving to go back to Africa.

  From the news, I had gathered that there was a housing crisis so it might not be the best time to put my house on the market. If I could find some reliable folks to lease it to, that would be another burden I could be free of, and I’d be one step closer to Mozambique.

  “Trina. You’re late.” My nerves were instantly plucked by Blanche Silver’s grating voice. When I’d left, I thought I was through hearing her bark my name. She walked up to my desk with her hands on her hips, her eyebrows knitted and lips pursed.

  I looked down at my watch. “It’s ten ’til ten.” I refused to be moved by her. I made myself remember that she needed me as much as I needed her. And that she had no idea how desperately I needed her.

  She gave me a plastic smile. “Good to see you, Trina. You look different. What’d you do?”

  “Changed my hair and lost some weight.”

  “Um hmm.” She nodded. “You look very different.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to thank her or be insulted. Not that it mattered.

  “I trust that your trip was a success?”

  I nodded, knowing that she didn’t really want to hear anything about it. She just knew it was the right thing to say.

  She clasped her hands together. “Come into my office. Let’s talk business.” Obviously that was all the energy she had for small talk. Not that I minded. Exchanging pleasantries with Blanche S
ilver was never really pleasant.

  “Have a seat.” She gestured for me to sit in the office chair in front of her desk. Her walls were covered with her degrees and awards, pictures with some of our high profile clients, and newspaper articles on clients and the firm. She probably surrounded herself with constant reminders of her accomplishments to quiet the unfulfilled, unsatisfied gnawing that obviously haunted her.

  “So I may have spoken too soon when I offered you a twenty percent raise yesterday. It looks more like it will be ten percent.”

  I rose from my seat. “I wish you had called me and saved me the trouble of coming in then.” I started walking toward her office door. The problem with playing games with people for years was that after awhile, the game became familiar. I knew she just wanted to see if she could get me for cheaper.

  She rose quickly, cursing under her breath. “Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

  “I’m not giving you a hard time. It was not my intention to come back to work here. You have a new client that you want me to represent. In order to persuade me to do so, you made me an offer that piqued my interest. Now that I’m here, you want to rescind that offer. I don’t have the time or patience for that. I’m still exhausted and don’t need to play games with you.”

  She held up a hand to calm me down, surprise and what even appeared to be respect in her eyes. “All right, Trina. You’ll get your twenty percent.” She opened a folder and took out an offer letter. It contained my job description and the promised salary increase. She probably had the exact same letter in that folder with a ten percent raise on it, had I been dumb enough to take it. Made me mad enough that I wanted to walk out of her office. I thought about all the bills I had to deal with, took the paper and sat back down in the chair.

  After a few minutes of hesitation, I signed the letter. I felt like I was signing my life away. The letter required me to stay at least a year at that pay increase, otherwise I would have to pay the difference back. I reasoned to myself that it would give me plenty of time to get Moms set, and I could save tons for Africa. I would be able to stay a good long while and also make the kind of donations I wished I could have made on my last trip.