If These Walls Could Talk

by Bettye Griffin

  Dawn often felt that she had precious little to look forward to, but at least she and Zach had a decent place to live, thanks to Camille and Reuben.

  She’d been so happy for them when they won such a substantial Mega Millions jackpot. She couldn’t help thinking that it might have been her and Milo. She knew the Curry marriage was on shaky ground, even more so than hers and Milo’s was, but nevertheless they weathered the devastating loss of their house, plus months of living apart. If anything, their ordeal had strengthened their bond. Dawn felt Reuben’s selecting five of six winning lottery numbers was a reward from above for sticking out the hard times.

  She felt a wave of depression coming at her like a sudden downpour. Maybe when she finished making her deposit she’d stop at McDonald’s and get an ice-cream cone.

  That made her smile. If anyone had told her five years ago that she’d buy a $1.25 ice-cream cone to cheer herself up instead of buying a new outfit or getting a facial, she’d have laughed in their face. But she couldn’t afford to indulge herself any more than that, not with thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Milo was right—they had to pay those off before they could do anything else . . . like file for divorce.

  She wished she could get something for her date Saturday night. The senior auditor on assignment at her employer had little to do with payroll, which was traditionally worked on by guys and gals just out of college. He had noticed her and struck up a casual conversation one day while they were both waiting for an elevator. After that they exchanged a few words here and there, but when they found themselves alone a second time he told her they would soon be wrapping up their assignment and asked if she would have dinner with him.

  At least she had a babysitter, she thought happily as she filled out the deposit slip. Camille told her that she could always send Zach upstairs so he wouldn’t have to see her date pick her up. Camille seemed more excited about her date than she was. Dawn didn’t anticipate anything coming out of this date, but Erwin was a nice enough guy, if maybe a little on the dull side. And she had few opportunities to date eligible—Erwin was divorced—and successful men in their forties. Milo had moved on. It was time for her to do the same. How nice to know that a full-figured sister could still catch the eye of the opposite sex.

  Maybe her future wasn’t so bleak after all.

  “Hi, Teresa,” she said to the teller, a black woman in her late twenties who often handled her financial transactions. “What’s new?”

  “I’m glad you asked. I’m so excited, Ms. Young. My husband and I are buying a house in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.”

  Dawn carefully concealed her surprise. “Really. Isn’t that a little far?”

  “About a hundred miles from Manhattan. My husband will commute to work. They say that the train service will probably begin next year. Our plan is for me to get a job at a bank over there so I won’t have to commute because it’s so expensive. Hopefully, I won’t be working for long. We’re hoping to start a family soon.”

  “Well, congratulations to both of you, Teresa. I’m sure you’ll be very happy.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Young. I can’t wait. We just found out this morning that our loan’s been approved.”

  “Is it a new house?”

  “Not brand-new, but it’s only five years old. It was built in 2002. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, full basement, deck, and a great backyard. And it’s on a lake. Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll be able to watch the sun come up over the lake in the mornings, at least the mornings that we don’t have to go to work. We got a good deal on the house; it was a foreclosure.”

  Dawn’s ears started to ring, like an alarm only she could hear. Through the ringing sound she could dimly hear Eric Nylund’s voice giving her and Milo his sales pitch. “And it was in good condition?”

  “Perfect. The people who got foreclosed on didn’t do much in the way of decorating, but they planted beautiful grass in the backyard. I can’t wait to get in there and plant a garden.” Teresa’s voice grew quiet, almost like she was filling Dawn in on a secret. “But the former owners painted the bedrooms weird colors, like blue with a green ceiling and cranberry with an orange ceiling.”

  Dawn’s eyebrows shot up. My God; this teller bought my old house. “Um . . . That sounds unique.”

  Teresa made a face. “I think it looks awful. We’ll paint over it eventually, probably make it a nice neutral color like tan. But there’s really no rush. We’ll be there the rest of our lives.”

  “I’m happy for you.” Dawn saw a little of herself five years ago in Teresa’s excited face. She wisely kept quiet about what she knew about the house, certain that the teller wouldn’t appreciate the irony. Maybe one day she would write her and tell her the truth.

  After all, she already knew the address of Teresa’s new house.

  “Thanks, Ms. Young.” The teller had held Dawn’s receipt in her hand as she shared her news. “Here you go. Have a great weekend.”

  “You do the same, dear.” Dawn smiled as she tucked the receipt into her wallet.

  She continued to smile as she walked down the street into McDonald’s. Life in Tobyhanna seemed like a million years ago. So much had changed in a few short years. She and Milo had gone to a Luther Vandross concert before driving out to Arlington Acres for the first time. Luther was gone now. In the midst of their troubles they had flown to New Orleans to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary. Hurricane Katrina had since devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

  Other things had remained the same. Terrorism was still a concern. Hardly a week went by without news of people being detained after being found to have false passports, or trying to smuggle some suspicious item aboard a plane. The world was changing around her. She couldn’t stay the same.

  And she wouldn’t.

  She emerged from the restaurant, ice-cream cone in hand. Soon she blended into the anonymous cityscape of the thousands of people who came to midtown Manhattan every day to make a living, and perhaps even to make their dreams come true.

  If you enjoyed If These Walls Could Talk, don’t miss

  Someone to Watch Over Me

  by Michelle Stimpson

  Coming in June 2011 from Dafina Books

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  Someone to Watch Over Me . . .

  I crossed my fingers in hopes of being named Top Quarterly Producer for my department. I mean, every single one of my clients had experienced Web site traffic and sales above the projected estimates, and I had even received two letters from pleased customers. “Tori’s expertise made all the difference in our product launch,” one had even commented. “We’ll be using Net Marketing Results for a long time to come!” Planning and implementing online advertising and marketing campaigns came with its own sense of fulfillment. After all, depending on who you ask, the Web pushes America’s economy even more than a good old-fashioned mall.

  But even as we stood around the conference room waiting for the announcement, I felt queasy. What if they didn’t name me? One look around the room filled me with even more apprehension. Tracy Fielder was new, yet she’d already managed to land a pretty impressive list of new customers for the company. Brian Wallace was one of the older marketing representatives, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Every once in a while, he pulled off a last-minute record-breaking month for one of his clients and caught management’s eyes.

  There were only four eyes I wanted to catch, and all of them belonged to Preston Haverty. Okay, he really only had two eyes, but he did wear a set of thick glasses that took on life of their own at the center of his slight facial features. Why won’t somebody tell Preston that those glasses are ridiculous and we do have technology to free us from such spectacles? Probably the same reason no one talks to Donald Trump about that combover.

  Anyway, Preston was good people, glasses and all. I appreciated his management style—he didn’t really care where or how we worked, so long as we got the job done. I only hoped that I’d done a go
od enough job to add to my collection of blue and green plaques given to outstanding employees. Tracy and Brian aside, I appreciated being appreciated. And God knows I’d put in enough woman-hours to earn this recognition.

  “And the producer of the quarter is . . .” Preston announced as everyone in the room beat a drum roll on either the sixteen-foot table or some spot on the surrounding walls, “Tori Henderson!”

  My cheekbones rose so high I could barely see in front of me. Is that what it’s like to be Miss America? Everybody applauding, confetti flying, and runners-up on the sideline clapping wildly to distract themselves from their jealousy and impending mental meltdowns after the show.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that serious, but it sure felt like it. My fellow coworkers, probably twenty-five people or so, cheered me on as I walked toward the front end of the table to receive my plaque.

  “Good job, Tori!”

  “You go, girl!”

  I shook Mr. Haverty’s hand and posed for the obligatory picture. In that moment, I wished I’d worn a lighter-colored suit. Black always made me look like a beanpole. Gave no testament of all my hours at the gym and the donuts I’d passed on to keep the red line on my scale below 125.

  I wasn’t going to pass on the sweets today, though. Jacquelyn, the lead secretary, had retrieved a towering pink-and-white buttercream frosting cake from somewhere and brought it forward to celebrate this occasion.

  Preston offered, “Tori, you get the first piece.”

  “Get some meat on those bones, girl,” from Clara, the webmaster.

  But the mention of meat and the sight of the cake suddenly made me nauseous. To appease the group, I took the first piece. Then Jacquelyn got busy cutting and distributing pieces as everyone stood around milking the moment before having to return to work.

  I sat in one of the comfy leather chairs and took and ate a bite of my celebratory sweetness. Almost instantly, my stomach disagreed with my actions. My hand flew to my abdomen, lightly stroking the panel of my suit. People were so busy devouring the cake they didn’t notice me catching my breath. Whew!

  I pushed the plate away from me, as though it had the power to jump onto my fork and into my mouth. This was not the cake for me, clearly. I thought for a moment about how long it had been since I ate something so sweet. Maybe this was like red meat—once you stop eating it, it tears you up inside when you backslide.

  No. I ate a candy bar just last week before my monthly visitor arrived. Renegade cramps? I rubbed my palm against the aggravated area again. No. The pain was too high in my torso to be associated with female problems. This had to be some kind of bug. Whatever it was, it didn’t like chocolate cake, so I quietly tossed my piece in the trash on the way back to my desk.

  An hour later, I felt like I would throw up, so I sat perfectly still at my desk because . . . well . . . any movement of my torso sparked a pain in my side that might trigger this upchuck. I would never tell anyone this, but I find vomiting an altogether traumatic experience. Such a nasty feeling in one’s throat. And the aftertaste and the gagging sounds. Not to mention getting a close-up look at the toilet seat. It’s just not human-like and should be avoided at all costs, in my opinion.

  Thank God I made it all the way to my apartment before I finally had to look at the inside of a porcelain throne, only this time I hadn’t even eaten anything. Bile spewed out of me, but the pain in my side was probably up to seven on a scale of one to ten.

  Now that I’d done the unthinkable and temporarily lost all self-respect, perhaps my body would relent. I could only hope the worst of whatever this was had passed (albeit out of the wrong end).

  I managed to thoroughly brush my teeth and gargle a sufficient number of times, assuring myself it was safe to swallow my own spit again. The image staring back at me in the mirror was normally me after a good workout; kinky twists dampened slightly at the base by my sweat, light brown face glowing in the accomplishment of burning hundreds of calories. Today, however, my sagging eyelids told the story of a woman who’d . . . vomited. I tried smiling, elevating my cheekbones even higher. No use. Maybe my mother was right when she’d told me, “You’re not that pretty, Tori, but you can keep yourself skinny and, when you turn fifteen, I’ll let you wear makeup. Fourteen if you’re really ugly by then.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed fingers onto my temples, reminding myself that people told me I was cute all the time. One time, I went to this women’s empowerment event my client was hosting, I won a T-shirt that read “I’m Beautiful” with some Bible verse on it about being beautifully and wonderfully made. I wore that shirt to Walmart and a total stranger walked up to me and said, “I agree.” So why did the only voice ringing now belong to my ever-beautiful, timeless Margie Carolyn James, who bragged of still being asked for I.D. at age forty?

  My side still ached enough for me to call off the evening’s kickboxing class. Good thing my boyfriend, Kevin, was out of town working. He probably would have called me a wimp and dared me to do at least two miles. And I probably would have at least attempted to make him eat his words, despite the pain now radiating through my stomach.

  After downing a dose of Advil, I trudged to my bedroom, changed into a night shirt, and gently laid across the bed. I didn’t have the energy to answer my landline when it rang. I could only listen for the message.

  “Hey, I’ve basically got a layover tonight. My flight comes in at seven, I leave out again tomorrow morning at eight. See ya.”

  I was hoping that by the time he got home, I would have awakened from a refreshing nap, totally healed and ready to finish up some of the work I’d had to bring home with me in light of the unproductive afternoon I endured. Yet when Kevin returned, he found me hunched over the toilet seat again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? Uuuuck!” The wretching produced another plop of bile into the commode.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I ate some cake today at work and got sick.”

  He backed out into the hallway. “Let me know if you need me.”

  I rested an elbow on the toilet seat and looked up at Kevin. Six foot one looks even taller while sitting on the bathroom floor. His deep sandy skin contrasted perfectly with his ivory teeth and hazel eyes which, according to him, had won over many women back in the day. I wasn’t one of those eye-color-crazy girls, but I was definitely a sucker for track-star legs, and Kevin had those for miles and miles. Watching him unveil those legs when he undressed was definitely the greatest benefit of moving into his condo eighteen months earlier. Well, the legs and the free rent.

  Kevin was the modern, metrosexual type when it came to clothes, but he had some pretty old-fashioned ideas about finances. Who was I to argue with him? He paid the major bills. I handled groceries, the housekeeper, dry cleaning, and all things communication-related since I needed high-speed everything for my job. I often wondered if he was just being chivalrous or if he never obligated me to a substantial bill because he still thought of the condo as his place. Either way, I’m no fool. Thanks to our financial arrangement, I had a growing stash of rainy-day money I’d earmarked to start my own business after an early retirement.

  My stash was chump change compared to Kevin’s anyway. I’d seen a few of his pay stubs lying around the condo from his work in telecommunications sales. Made my college degree seem like a huge scam to keep the masses from getting rich.

  Done upchucking for now, I hoisted myself from the floor to a semi-standing position and shuffled back to bed. Sick or well, I needed to get some work done.

  Kevin did check on me, but only by default as he changed into his running clothes.

  There went those strong, chocolate legs again.

  “I’m going for a jog at the track. Might head over to Cameron’s after to watch the game.”

  I gave my best big-brown-doe-eyes routine. “But you’re leaving first thing in the morning.
Can’t we spend time together?”

  He held up a cross with his fingers. “I don’t want to catch whatever this is you’ve got. You looked pretty distraught in that bathroom there a minute ago.”

  “Thanks so much, Kevin.”

  “Any time, any time,” he smirked. “I do feel bad for you, if that helps.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “You need me to get you anything while I’m out?”

  “A new stomach.”

  “No can do, babe. How about Pepto Bismol or Sprite? That’s what my mom used to give me when I was sick,” he recommended.

  I scrunched my face. “Didn’t your mom also make you swallow Vicks Vapor Rub?”

  “Yeah,” he supported the madness, “makes you cough the cold up. Worked every time. If you’re getting a virus, you might want to give it a shot.”

  My stomach lurched at the thought. “No. I don’t want anything else coming up out of me tonight. Just . . . call and check on me.”

  He detoured to my side before walking out of the room. A gentle kiss to my forehead was his first affectionate gesture since he’d walked into the place, despite more than a week since seeing each other last. I suppose it is hard to kiss someone who’s engulfed in a commode. Still, I wanted him to rub my back or something. What I really wanted was for him to stay home and . . . I don’t know, watch me suffer. Do what they did when women are giving birth in those old movies—put a damp towel on my forehead and encourage me, “You can do it! You can do it, Tori!”

  Who was I kidding? Kevin would hire a birthing coach before he’d subject himself to my labor.

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  Copyright © 2007 by Bettye Griffin