Man Enough For Me

by Rhonda Bowen

  Thankfully she had been too busy to think about him. But now that Tanya had brought him up …

  Jules gritted her teeth, and began to gather her things to leave. She didn’t have the energy to go through this again.

  “Whatever, Tanya,” Jules said, standing. “I gotta go.”

  Without looking back Jules took up her purse and her supply bag and headed to her car. She dropped the larger bag into the trunk and was about to leave when she remembered she had left a box of CDs and promotional materials under the stage.

  Sighing heavily, she closed the trunk and headed back toward the stage area. She noticed that everyone had left, so she walked straight up the center aisle between the rows of chairs, circled around the side of the stage, past the lighting equipment, and into the large “backstage” area the staging crew had created with curtains and ropes.

  Getting on her hands and knees, she crawled under the stage and pulled out the crate of promotional materials from the area where she had stashed them a couple hours before. When she stood up again, she found Tanya, and a rather sulky Maxine standing behind her.

  She sighed to herself.

  Here we go again.

  “I don’t like this, guys,” Tanya said worriedly. “We’ve been friends for too long for us to be holding grudges over silliness like this.”

  “Tanya, I’m not holding a grudge with anyone….”

  “Except Germaine,” Maxine mumbled under her breath.

  Jules’s eyes flashed. “What’s that gotta do with you?”

  “A whole lot, seeing that he should be here now, celebrating with Truuth, but instead he’s avoiding us. All because you’ve been treating him like some kinda criminal.”

  “Maybe he is a criminal,” Jules shot back, glaring at Maxine. Both Tanya and Maxine looked at her in disbelief.

  “Do you even hear yourself?” Maxine asked, her eyes narrowing. “That’s my family you’re talking about.”

  “Whatever, Maxine, he ain’t your family yet.”

  “Jules, that’s a pretty serious accusation,” Tanya said.

  Jules pursed her lips, and when she eventually spoke, the words came out firmly but quietly.

  “I saw him messing with some drug dealers,” she said. “They were in his office more than once, and then Easy saw him get into a car with them.”

  Maxine looked at her long and hard. “How do you even know they were drug dealers?” There was less hostility in her voice, but she didn’t sound totally convinced.

  “I didn’t,” Jules said. “I just saw them with him. And then I saw them again at Regent Park on the day of Truuth’s shoot, and Easy told me who they were.

  “That’s why Easy never liked him,” Jules said, turning to Tanya. “It was because he suspected it before I did. Of course, when I asked Germaine about it, he denied everything.”

  “Wow,” Tanya murmured in shock. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Yeah,” Jules said, leaning back against the edge of the stage. “Neither could I. That’s why I wanted to move the event. I didn’t want Truuth or Triad mixed up in anything like that. Especially not because of me.”

  “Geez, Jules, why didn’t you just tell us all this from the get-go?” Tanya asked. “We would have understood.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jules said dryly. “Truuth would never believe me. Furthermore he would be upset that I could even suggest something like that. And then he would have insisted on having the launch there just to prove that he was right.”

  She looked over at Maxine who, though silent, still looked more than a little annoyed at Jules.

  “See, even now I’m telling you everything, and Maxine still isn’t buying it.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say, Jules? Geez thanks for making my boyfriend and his family sound like hoodlums?” Maxine snapped.

  “Maxine, I never said …”

  “No, but you implied it,” she said, cutting Jules off. “And so what if it’s true? Okay, so maybe Germaine got mixed up in some bad stuff. Is that how you deal with it? He’s only human.”

  Now it was Tanya and Jules’s turn to look at Maxine as if she was crazy.

  “Everybody makes mistakes, Jules,” she continued.

  “That was one hell of a mistake, Maxine,” Jules said. But Maxine didn’t seem to agree. In fact she seemed much more upset about the whole thing than Jules thought she had a right to be.

  “So what? I didn’t know you were perfect,” she said. “Did you even ask him what happened or did you just throw accusations at him?”

  Jules was silent. She knew she hadn’t asked him what happened. She had been too angry to think that way. But why should she feel guilty about that? Anyone in her situation would have done exactly what she had—even self-righteous Maxine.

  “Nobody grows up and decides to be a dealer, Jules,” Maxine continued. “Nobody wants to be a disappointment to everyone around them. It’s just that things happen sometimes. And you don’t mean for them to happen, but they do. And you can’t take them back. So you end up in this place you never wanted to be, and you don’t know what to do about it….”

  Somewhere in the middle of the tirade, Maxine began to cry, and Jules and Tanya realized they were no longer talking about Germaine.

  “Maxine, what’s going on?” Jules asked with concern as she watched her friend try in vain to dry the tears that were pouring down her cheeks.

  “Maxine, talk to us,” Tanya said in her motherly tone, her arms already around the tiny girl.

  Between sniffles, Maxine managed to warble out an answer. “I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  Jules’s mouth fell open, and Tanya’s arms fell from around Maxine in shock. Maxine wrapped her arms around herself and nodded tearfully, her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.

  “When did you find out?” Jules asked, after she got over the initial shock.

  “A … couple … days … ago,” Maxine said, sniffling after almost every word.

  “Have you told Truuth yet? … I mean, it is Truuth’s … right?” Jules asked.

  Despite her tears, Maxine still managed to shoot Jules a nasty look.

  “I was just making sure!” Jules said. “It has been a weird couple of weeks.”

  “Of course it’s Truuth’s,” she said shakily. “But I haven’t told him yet. With everything that’s happened with the launch and the whole Germaine thing … I was scared.”

  “Oh, Max,” Jules said, walking over to her friend and wrapping her in a hug. “I’m sorry.”

  Maxine sniffled and buried her head in Jules’s shoulder. Jules looked over at Tanya, who was standing frozen a couple inches away. She hadn’t moved since Maxine had said the p word.

  Maxine looked across at Tanya. When she noticed her stiffness, she suddenly pulled away from Jules. “See, that’s why I never wanted to tell any of you,” she said angrily. “I knew you would be like this.”

  “Be like how?” Jules asked, annoyed that she was being blamed for Tanya’s standoffish attitude.

  Judgmental,” Maxine snapped. “Acting like you better than me.”

  “Nobody thinks that, Maxine.”

  “I’m not judging you, Max,” Tanya began. “It’s just that I never knew you and Truuth were …”

  Even though she didn’t say the words, Jules could hear the disappointment in Tanya’s voice.

  “It was just one time,” Maxine said guiltily, looking down at the ground. “We never planned it or anything, it just happened.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything—” Jules began.

  “I know,” Maxine said, cutting her off. “But I want to. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of hypocrite-Christian. I knew it was wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it. We both did. And we promised it would never happen again until we were married,” Maxine said. “But I guess it only takes one time.”

  Jules pursed her lips in agreement. She knew a lot of girls who had ended up in Maxine’s situation because
of just one time.

  Maxine swallowed hard, and sniffled. “When I missed my period last week, I took one of those two-minute tests, and it came back positive.”

  Even though she had stopped crying, Maxine still looked a bit shaky, and Jules put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

  Tanya shook her head. “I warned you this would happen, Maxine. All that time you and Truuth spend locked up together at his place. Truuth may be a Christian, but he’s a man just like any other man. You turn him on, it’s gonna be real hard to turn him off. The way you all act, like you already married, it was bound to happen sooner or later….”

  “Tanya.”

  Tanya looked up and caught Jules’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that …” She sighed. “This never had to happen, that’s all.”

  “We all know that, including Maxine.”

  Jules turned toward Maxine, who was shaking quietly, her eyes never leaving the floor.

  “You have to tell Truuth,” Jules said gently but firmly. Maxine nodded and Jules wrapped her arms around her once more. Moments later Tanya was hugging her too.

  When they finally let go of each other, Maxine turned to look at Jules.

  “I still meant what I said, Jules,” she said, looking at her friend sternly. “I’m not saying I even believe you, but if Germaine really is involved in some kind of mess, there might be more to it than you think.”

  “How can you be thinking about that fool at a time like this?” Jules asked, slightly annoyed that they were back to this topic.

  “Because we’re family,” she said. “All of us. Whether you like it or not. And it’s what a family does.”

  Jules frowned but said nothing.

  “You know I’m right, Jules,” she said. “And family don’t turn their backs on each other. What would you do if it was Davis?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules said sulkily.

  “Yes, you do,” Maxine said. “You would pray for him, and then you would get all up in his business and find a way to help, like you do with everyone else.”

  “She’s right,” Tanya said. “Maybe we should do that now.”

  Even though Jules didn’t feel much like it, she didn’t resist as Maxine and Tanya grabbed her hands.

  “Dear Lord,” Tanya began. “We want to thank You that we can come to You with anything we need. There is no situation that You can’t fix. Nothing is too hard for You. At this time we want to raise up our sister and brother to you.

  “Please be with Maxine in this time, and show her what to do. She has fallen Lord, but You know she still loves You and wants to walk in Your will. Help her, we pray.

  “We also raise up before you Germaine. Lord, You know what’s going on with him even if we don’t. I pray You take control of his situation. Keep him safe, and if he is involved in something shady Lord, provide a way out for him, as you have promised to do with all your children. Dear Lord, also show us how to love him as you desire us to love each other. Thank You for hearing and answering our prayers, in Jesus’s name. Amen.”

  Jules mumbled her amen at the end of the prayer.

  Okay, Lord, I gave it to you. You can’t say I didn’t try.

  Chapter 14

  All week Maxine’s words seemed to spin around in Jules’s mind. She knew that Maxine had a point, but a part of her revolted at the thought of showing any kind of compassion toward Germaine.

  Jules hated drug dealers. It wasn’t because she thought they were dangerous. She had known a couple of them growing up. They would hang around the school perimeter or behind the public library in the evenings after school, trying to get kids interested in whatever they were pushing. The small-time ones were pretty harmless if you stayed away from them. They were only there to make a sale, and if you weren’t buying, they weren’t really interested. Those she could ignore. But the big-time ones—the ones who only showed up outside bars or in nightclubs, and who were always dressed to perfection—those were the ones she couldn’t tolerate.

  They weren’t easy to spot, but once you’d seen one of them, you’d seen them all. It was always their excessive jewelry that gave them away, or the way their eyes followed you for a long time before they approached. Those were the dealers to the dealers. Those were the ones you kept your distance from.

  Usually Jules wouldn’t care, as long as nobody she knew got involved with them. But every time she saw a brother who looked like a dealer, she would remember Vanessa O’Connor.

  Vanessa O’Connor was a girl from her high school who got mixed up with Jomo Bishop, a big-time crack dealer in the Scarborough area. She knew Jomo was a drug dealer. Everyone knew Jomo was a drug dealer, even the police. But they could never catch him with an ounce of crack, or find one of his small-time distributors stupid enough to sell him out. And so he had free reign to drive around the community in his black Jaguar, attracting young teens to his trade.

  Vanessa was one of those that got attracted. It was understandable. She was poor. She lived with her unemployed mother and four other brothers and sisters—all of whom had different fathers—in a squalid two-bedroom apartment. The school system wasn’t doing much for her, so when Jomo noticed her, she jumped at the chance for something better.

  But everyone knows being a drug dealer’s chick is just an orientation program to being a drug dealer’s employee. It wasn’t long before Jules heard from friends that Vanessa was selling crack on the other side of Scarborough. And as was often the case, it seemed that she had sampled the merchandise and gotten hooked herself. Now she was her own supplier and buyer.

  Last time Jules saw Vanessa, she was lying on a gurney in the emergency room at Toronto Grace. Jules almost didn’t recognize her. Her skin was pale and worn, and littered with scars, probably from where Jomo beat her when she didn’t have his money. It had been hard for Jules to look at. She had wanted to talk to the broken girl, but she had been unconscious. When she came back the next day, Vanessa had already checked out. That was over a year ago.

  As Jules stood contemplating the Sound Lounge from across the street, she wondered which category Germaine fell into. Was he a Jomo, or was he a Vanessa?

  The other part of her—the part that didn’t revolt against him—desperately wanted Maxine to be right. She wanted it all to be just a misunderstanding. Or even a bad situation. Maybe he got caught up with some bad friends when he first came back to Toronto. Or maybe someone was threatening him, or the store. That she could understand. If that was the case, she could deal with it. But what if it wasn’t?

  Jules shook her head and brushed that train of thought out of her mind. She wouldn’t think about that now.

  Checking the traffic carefully, she crossed the street and made her way to the store. She had left work and taken the subway downtown, so she had made it a little before closing time. She waved to Tina, who barely nodded at her from where she had her face buried in a novel, and slipped around to the back.

  She heard the voices as soon as she stepped into the passageway. They weren’t loud, but were audible enough for Jules to figure out that there were at least two other persons in the office with Germaine. She got to the slightly ajar door and glanced in. As she had begun to suspect, Germaine’s visitors were the same ones she had encountered in the office some months before. Unwilling to risk a repeat of that encounter, she turned and began to leave, but something she heard made her stop in her tracks.

  “We like how you work, keeping our business quiet around these parts. Plus, you ain’t greedy like Victor was,” a voice said from the office.

  Jules couldn’t see from where she stood, but she was sure Germaine must have nodded because the voice kept talking.

  “So we wanna bump this up a bit,” he continued. “Our clients have been getting a bit antsy, you know?”

  “More than usual?” Germaine asked, his voice thinly veiling his sarcasm.

  “Heh heh, yeah,” the voice said, laughing. “And you know it pays to keep them satisfied. So anyway, we’re g
onna be bringing in a little more of our favorite music, you feel me?”

  The second person had begun speaking. He sounded impatient, and didn’t seem to be having as much fun as his partner.

  “Is that gonna be a problem?” Number Two asked. “If this is gonna bring more eyes around these parts, then it’s a no-go.”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” Jules heard Germaine say.

  “Good.”

  “So you liking our little arrangement now, eh?” Number One asked.

  “Ain’t nobody complainin’.”

  Jules cringed at the way the words seemed to roll easily off Germaine’s lips.

  “Good,” said Number One. “You keeping bringing in this powder, and we’ll keep you rolling in the paper.”

  So that’s what he was doing. Shipping drugs for them.

  Jules shook her head. She couldn’t believe the kind of guy she had gotten mixed up with. What was she thinking coming over here like this? She couldn’t help Germaine. This was way over her head. If those guys found out she knew what was going on, there was no telling what they might do to her.

  With those thoughts pounding in her mind, Jules turned and prepared to slip out of the hallway, out of the store, and out of Germaine’s life, for good.

  But as she did, she tripped on a loose floorboard. She caught her footing, but no doubt everyone in Germaine’s office had heard her. Before she could take two steps, the office door swung open, and a hand roughly grabbed her and pulled her in.

  “Who’s this?”

  That was Number One. He wasn’t laughing anymore, and Jules could feel his fingers gripping her arm so tightly she thought her veins would pop through. He was so close she could feel his hot angry breath on her neck.

  Her heart began to pound in her chest as all the blood seemed to rush to her head.

  As the three of them stared at Germaine, Jules watched a look of panic flash through his eyes. But it was gone before she knew it, and replaced with a look of supreme calm.