Just Too Good to Be True

by E. Lynn Harris

  “Yeah, I know, but that’s not the question. The workouts are MANDATORY and you need to man up and be there. Do I make myself clear?” I barked in my best captain voice.

  Koi looked me up and down real slow in one of those Is he smoking crack? looks and then said, “Yeah, I hear you, dawg.”

  “Good, I’ll expect to see you first thing Monday,” I said, and headed for my hotel room.

  Delmar walked through the door wearing an oversized, team-issued warm-up suit and a black do-rag. He was talking on his phone, but I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t happy.

  “Trifina, why you got to always be a bitch? I sent you five hundred dollars last week, which means I’m only a hundred dollars behind in my child support. Why in the hell is that not enough money for you to bring your punk ass down here for the game? I want my son to see me play,” he shouted.

  I hoped Delmar fighting with Trifina, his baby’s mom, wasn’t going to affect his game tomorrow. Not that their arguing was something out of the ordinary. I thought about Naomi, whom I had found an e-mail address for but hadn’t heard from. I wondered what my life would be like if I had the responsibility of a child and a wife.

  I picked up my cell phone and debated whether or not to call Barrett again. I had called her twice but figured she was busy with the pep rally. I listened to my messages, including one from my mother telling me she had arrived safely at Lowell’s.

  When I clicked off my phone, Delmar was ready to talk.

  “Son, can you believe that trick Trifina? Talking ’bout she ain’t got enough money to drive down here for the game because gas is so high. I pay her over five hundred a month, and that’s more than enough for gas. She’s just being a bitch. I bet when I make it to the league she’ll find a way to get to my games,” Delmar said.

  “Where are you getting that much money from?” I asked.

  “Mind your own business, son. I know how to handle my shit,” Delmar said.

  “Don’t do anything that will make you ineligible, D.”

  “Stop trippin’, Brady.”

  “I wish you would have said something earlier, because D Jr. could have ridden down with my mom,” I said.

  “This shit just pisses me off. My dad could have brought him,” Delmar said as he lay back in frustration on the double bed on the left side of the hotel room. I didn’t think now was the time for me to tell him that I’d gotten a ticket for Maybelline. He hadn’t mentioned her since she showed up at our apartment.

  “There will be other games,” I said.

  “I wanted him at this fuckin’ game. It’s going to be a sellout, and I got about three agents who will be there. I wanted them to see D Jr. so they know I got mouths to feed. They need to know I’m hungry.”

  “D, I hope you’re being careful and not taking money from agents. They’ll feel like they own you.”

  “That’s bullshit, dude. Do I look like Kunta Kinte to you, dude?”

  Just then my cell phone rang, and when I looked, I saw Barrett’s beautiful face and name flash up. My heart quickened. I looked at Delmar and told him to hold up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Brady. How’re you doing?”

  “I’m straight, Barrett. How are you? How was the pep rally?”

  “I’m good and the rally was awesome. So much better than the freshman pep rally. I would say there were over four thousand people there. The campus is so geeked about the game tomorrow. Are you ready to play?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready. But I want it to be over so I can see you. I can’t wait for you to meet my mother,” I said.

  “Do you think she’ll like me?” Barrett asked.

  “How can she not like you?”

  “So what are you doing? I bet ya’ll got some boppers waiting for you at the hotel,” Barrett teased.

  “Come on, girl, you know that ain’t my style. Besides, the coaches look out for that kind of stuff,” I said.

  “So have you been thinking about me?” Barrett asked. Her voice sounded so sweet and irresistible.

  “Would you believe me if I said every minute of the day?” My statement was pretty close to the truth.

  “Should I?”

  “Barrett, I told you my mom raised me right, so every word that comes out of my mouth is true. Especially when it comes to you,” I said.

  Delmar got up and went into the bathroom and closed the door, making the room dark.

  “Do you have any pregame rituals?” Barrett asked.

  “Nothing but prayer with my mom,” I said.

  “What do you sleep in?”

  “What?”

  “I asked, what do you sleep in?” Barrett repeated.

  “My drawers,” I said.

  “What kind?”

  “Boxer briefs.”

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Sure, Barrett, whatever you want.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah, what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to take those boxers off when you get through praying and sleep totally naked tonight. Make sure you continue to spend every minute thinking of me. Will you do that for me?”

  I waited a few moments and then said, “Sure, I can do that.” We said good night, and I was thankful that Delmar couldn’t see my hard-on in the dark as I got under the covers full commando—naked as the day I was born.

  I had been in bed for about an hour, Delmar snoring like a grizzly bear, when my phone rang. I saw that the call was from my mom, so I answered it.

  “Mom, is everything all right?”

  “Sure, Brady, everything is fine. Lowell wants to take me to breakfast first thing in the morning, so I thought we could do our prayer tonight,” she said.

  “Sure, Mom. Let’s do this,” I said.

  “Lord, we come before You as your humble servants. We ask that You look after Brady tomorrow. Please keep him and his teammates safe from harm. Allow him to do his best as he glorifies Your name. We thank You for all that You give us: the many blessings; the love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen,” Mom said.

  “Amen,” I said. Then I started my prayer. “Dear Lord, we come to You on bended knee. I ask that You look after my mother tonight and tomorrow. Make sure that she arrives home safely. I also ask that You look after both teams tomorrow. Allow us to play our best and keep every player, coach, fan, and cheerleader from harm’s way. Make sure that we all understand that this is only a game and nothing is important unless we put You first. Thank You for the blessings and the talent You have given me. And thank You for the best mother in the world. Amen.”

  “That was lovely, Brady. It all starts again tomorrow. Good luck, baby.”

  “Thank you, Mom. I love you.”

  “I love you and I’m so proud of you.”

  “You think my dad would be proud of me?” I asked.

  My mother didn’t answer. There was silence sandwiched between Delmar’s snoring.

  “Mom? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, your father would be very proud of you,” she said in a hushed voice.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Barrett’s Backfield in Motion

  Dear Diary,

  Nico came by last night real late and put it down on me. My call to Brady had me all amped up and I sure did need some loving, so seeing Nico was perfect timing. When that man gives it to me, it feels like he’s sending shocks of pleasure through my body. He had me straddle him, and in his booming voice he whispered, “Make that pussy talk, baby. Make it talk.” I don’t care how fine these college boys are, none of them can compare to my Nico and his experience.

  In honor of the first football game of the season, we played a little game ourselves—the football player and cheerleader. I put on my uniform, and I arranged my hair in two long ponytails with gold and green ribbons tied around them.

  The girls on the squad wear these little green A-line skirts that are really short, with gold tights under them. I wore my skirt but sa
id fuck the tights. Nico went crazy. The top is a midriff halter, gold and green with Jags across it. Most of these girls are so flat-chested they can get away with a little nude bra, but me and the twins need a full-fledged sports bra.

  Nico told me I looked like a teenage girl, and I told him he looked like the older brother of my high school friend who I was secretly having an affair with. We drank champagne and just laughed together until the wee hours of the morning.

  The sun woke me up and I rolled over and realized that Nico was gone, leaving behind his T-shirt for me to caress and inhale his masculine scent.

  It’s game day, and at age twenty-nine I’m making my debut as a college cheerleader, and for some strange reason it excites me. I remember wanting to be a cheerleader when I was in junior high and my mother telling me she wasn’t wasting her hard-earned money for some pleated polyester skirt for me to shake my ass in.

  It’s funny how things sometimes turn out.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Carmyn vs. May-Jean

  Today was the day I’d been waiting for since the end of last season: game day at Central Georgia University. I got to the stadium about three hours before the game so I could greet Brady and his teammates as they unloaded from the buses and walked to the stadium in the pregame ritual known as Jaguar Walk. My heart was bathed in such a feeling of pride when I got a glimpse of my son leading his team through the crowd. Brady was dressed in a dazzling white shirt, gold tie, and blue pin-striped suit, and as team captain he was the first player to follow the coaches and state troopers as they strolled into the dressing room. Along the way, they gave handshakes and hugs to the fans who lined up on both sides of the route to welcome their football heroes. Since I was at the beginning of the line, I got to give hugs to both Brady and Delmar. A lot of fans had posters of Brady shirtless, which I wasn’t sure I liked, and they were grabbing at him to sign them. Didn’t they know he had a game to play?

  At the start of the game, I stood up with over 80,000 cheering fans as the band played the national anthem and then the school song.

  When the band started playing the CGU fight song, I screamed even louder as I looked for Brady, and the cheerleaders led the team through the band and on to the field.

  “CGU…CGU…CGU,” the crowd cheered. “Go Jags Go! Go Jags Go!”

  My heart burst as Brady and two of his teammates met the opposing team at the center of the field. Just as the coin was tossed, a woman wearing a faux mink jacket, carrying a tub of popcorn and a liter of Coke, moved in front of me, blocking my view. I figured the Jaguars had won the toss when I heard the roar of the crowd.

  “You must be Brady’s mom. I’m Maybelline, Delmar’s mom. May-Jean for short. He told me I would be sitting next to you,” Maybelline said. “It sho was nice of yo boy to give me a ticket, since that son of mine gave all his tickets away.”

  “Hello,” I said with a smile and a glance at her tight-fitting getup, thinking, The 1980s want that outfit back. But I quickly told myself to stop being judgmental, folks are entitled to wear whatever they want.

  “So sorry to hear about how Katrina forced you to move,” I said.

  “Girl, that bitch did me a favor. I needed to git my ass up and out of humid New Orleans anyway, and I’m making a little money off it,” Maybelline said.

  I fought hard not to raise my eyebrows and turned my attention back to the game. On the first play, the quarterback took the snap, faked a pass, and then handed the ball to Brady. At first he did a stutter step and it looked like he was going to be tackled in the backfield, but he sidestepped a defender, then ran behind Delmar, who plowed through several more defenders, giving Brady a clear line to the end zone.

  The first play of the game—and Brady had scored with an eighty-yard run. This was going to be my baby’s year for sure. The entire stadium was on their feet, cheering, waving flags as the band played. I was jumping up and down, clapping my hands while I watched Brady race to the sideline into the huge arms of his teammates.

  “Yeah, Brady. You go, baby,” I yelled.

  “Eat ’em up. Tear ’em up. Give ’em hell, Jags,” the crowd cheered after the band played the fight song.

  “Yo boy is good, but I don’t think he would have done that if my son wasn’t blocking for him,” Maybelline said.

  I didn’t respond, but something inside of me just wanted to haul off and give Maybelline a good slap, or at the very least tell her what I thought of any woman who would leave her son because she wasn’t ready to be a mother. Who was ever really ready to be a mother? You just did it.

  “Do you think she’s mixed?” Maybelline asked.

  I was trying to watch the game and ignore her, but I heard her voice again.

  “I think she is mixed. Honey, after a while everybody gonna be mixed with something. Just a bunch of mutts. I bet she is mixed with sumthin’—don’t you think so, Carmyn?”

  “Who?” I finally said, hoping she would stop her yacking.

  “That girl down there on the field. I guess they call them pep girls.”

  I glanced down on the field in front of the bench and saw a pretty, light-skinned black girl. I wondered if this was the Barrett Brady had mentioned.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she is. She remind me of one my girlfriend’s daughters from New Orleans. But that bitch was too evil to go to college. Just like her mama,” Maybelline said to herself, because I wasn’t listening. I was watching my baby play.

  For most of the first half, I watched Brady as he raced for over 143 yards; still, I couldn’t really enjoy the game because of Maybelline’s constant jabbering. Whenever Delmar ran the ball, blocked for Brady, or made any kind of play, Maybelline would say, “You go ’head, Delmar. Run that ball. Do it, baby! My baby gonna be making plenty money real soon….”

  All of a sudden, Maybelline grabbed my hand. “Girl, is that ring real or is it cubic zucchini? Look like you’re doing all right for yourself.”

  I quickly pulled my hand back and said, “Of course it’s real.”

  When halftime arrived, I quickly grabbed my purse and started to move away from my seat.

  “Where you going?” Maybelline asked.

  “Uh, I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I said, wondering why I had even told her that.

  “Good. I gotta go, too. That cold drank is running right through me like beer normally do,” Maybelline said.

  “What?” I asked a bit more abruptly than I had intended.

  “You got wax in your ears, darling? I got to pee.”

  During the trip to the restroom, Maybelline wobbled beside me on leopard-skin pumps that were way too high for her. I noticed that we had become the center of attention. I didn’t know exactly what it was that was getting so much notice, because there were so many possibilities.

  It could have been her fur, or maybe the green, skintight Capri pants clinging to a shape that was long past its prime. Or maybe it was the striped tan shell that was struggling to contain the heavy, sagging breasts that bounced as Maybelline moved through the stadium thoroughfare as though the fans had come to see her.

  I was thankful when we came to the entrance of the restroom. I quickly ducked into one of the stalls. When I saw the spotted shoes beneath the wall of the stall next to me, I just shook my head, wondering how I could get rid of Maybelline.

  Suddenly, I heard a knock on the metal stall and heard Maybelline say, “You handling yo’ bizness over there, Carmie?”

  I didn’t respond, silently praying that the second half of the game would move faster than the first.

  When the game was over, Maybelline hung around outside the players’ dressing room, clinging to me like a bad skin infection. I would have preferred to savor the Jaguars’ 35–14 victory over Texas Tech and Brady’s 234 yards rushing and two touchdown passes alone, rather than listen to Maybelline ramble on about nothing.

  “That was a good game, wasn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes, it was.”
>
  “Our boys make the perfect team. If they keep playing like this, they’ll win all the games, don’t cha think?”

  “Yup,” I said, trying my best not to encourage this woman into any additional conversation as we waited for our sons.

  “We should get together before the next game. Maybe you can come by my place,” Maybelline said.

  “You live up here?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yep, but let’s keep that to ourselves. Delmar don’t know I took a little six-month lease on an apartment.”

  “Why are you hiding that from him?”

  “Because, honey, you know what they say. You got to spend money to make money,” Maybelline said, laughing.

  I didn’t have a clue as to what this crazy woman was talking about, and I really didn’t want to know.

  “Are you and your son real close?”

  “Very.”

  “Where’s his daddy?”

  “Dead.”

  “I know that ignorant-ass Jesse wishes I was dead. Look at him standing over there acting like he don’t see me. Can you believe he told my son I was dead just because I was trying to follow my dreams and make something of myself,” Maybelline said, smiling sorrowfully at me. “I was going to be a model slash dancer.”

  “How did that work out for you?” I asked, thinking I knew why Jesse wanted to protect his son from embarrassment. Fathers, like mothers, sometimes have to make decisions that will protect their children. I certainly understood that.

  “It didn’t. I wasted so much of my life, bouncing around here and there, letting men lie to me, tell me that I was going to be this and that, when all they wanted was one thing. A little taste of what’s between my legs. I ain’t got shit to show for all the joy I brought them men. But God has a plan. One day I was reading some magazines at the supermarket and I was thumbing through a sports magazine because there was a fine-ass man on the cover, and I see my baby’s name, and how he’s gonna be drafted and make a lot of money.”

  “So that’s why you got in touch with him?”