by Curtis Bunn
Specifically, he mentioned a Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits near the Morehouse College campus. And right then, I got up, got dressed and drove over to the West End.
It was not a nervous ride for me, though. It was an anxious ride. I used to feel that way when I was in high school before a volleyball game or on the first day of a new job.
When I got there, it was close to 11:30 p.m., and only the drive-thru was open. I saw a man sitting in front of the building, facing Lee Street. My heart raced at the thought of it being Rodney. But when I turned into the parking lot, I could see it was not him; the man was older and a few complexions lighter.
I drove around the drive-thru line and circled the building. No Rodney. I saw two men hanging near the entrance of the Church’s Chicken across the street—arguing about what sounded like bus fare. Neither was Rodney.
I was disappointed. Before I got back on Interstate 20 East to head home, I noticed I needed gas. Conveniently, there was a gas station on a side street across from Popeyes. I was not comfortable going to it at that hour; it was not the best neighborhood.
In fact, I had read in the Cascade Patch about a rash of carjackings in that area. But that needle made me fear running out of gas on the highway, and so I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer and drove to the gas station.
Many identify theft sites and experts encouraged consumers to not swipe their credit or debit cards at local gas stations. But I was too scared to leave my car and go to the cashier. So I took a chance and swiped my card.
As fate would have it, as soon as I began to pump the gas, two men appeared that I might not have considered “suspicious” if it were not going on midnight in an area of town recently in the news for crimes against motorists. But under the circumstances, I viewed them as a potential threat.
“Can you help me get a two-piece?” one of the men said as he approached.
My heart pumped faster than the gas.
“Not tonight. I have no money,” I said. I was firm, not scared. Well, at least my voice didn’t crack.
“You got something,” he said. “Gimme something.”
The way he said it scared me. It was like, if I didn’t give him something, he was going to take anything. Troy’s words—“Fight crazy with crazy”—came to me.
“I can’t give you what I don’t have. Now leave me alone.”
I spoke with no ambiguity or fear.
“We bothering you?”
“You need to go on.”
“Now you telling me what to do? You getting way out of hand. You must don’t know who I am.”
In my fear, I looked at the man hard. He was light-skinned with light eyes, but they were set back in his head. He had bushy eyebrows and curly hair protruding under his hoodie. He would have been cute if he weren’t so grungy.
“I’m gonna scream if you don’t get away from me.” I raised my voice.
“So, what? Who can hear you? Ain’t no heroes around.”
I became petrified then. I had no gun—was scared of guns. Had no pepper spray. Nothing.
He came closer, to within a few feet of me. I stopped pumping the gas and pulled the pump out of the tank. All I had as a sort of weapon was to douse the guy with gasoline if it came to that.
The other man came closer and then took a couple steps back.
“This gas will burn you,” I told the first man, holding the pump up as I would a knife.
“I ain’t afraid to burn. But you will die.”
“Hold on, man,” the second guy said. “Leave her alone.”
“Why?”
“Leave her alone.”
I was scared to look away from the threatening man, but my desire to see the other one took over. And so, I glanced to see Rodney staring at me as if we were old friends.
“Rodney?” I said. There was too much excitement in my voice, and not because he was saving me from trouble. I was so happy to see him that I forgot about what had gone on seconds before.
“You know this one?” the first guy asked.
Rodney’s eyes locked with mine. After a few seconds, he finally answered.
“Yeah. That’s my friend, Brenda.”
The guy backed off. And they turned to walk away.
“Rodney?” I said. “Wait a second.”
He stopped and told the other guy, “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Why are you hanging with that . . . that criminal?”
“We’re all criminals in one way or another.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“What are you doing here? And you should thank me, too.”
“Thank you. What was that guy going to do to me?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“He gets off on scaring women. That makes him a coward.”
“So why are you with him?”
“Why are you here?”
“Getting gas.”
It was true. I did not feel compelled to tell the entire truth. I first wanted to see if he was happy to see me.
“Over here? What you doing over here?”
“So now you’re my daddy?”
Rodney slowly nodded his head and turned to walk away.
“I came to find you,” I blurted out.
And like in the movies, he stopped in his tracks. A few seconds passed before he turned back toward me.
“You miss me, huh?” he said.
I smiled broadly.
“I did . . . but just a little.”
I smiled.
“Why?”
I was not sure why, but he forced me to think of a reason.
“Because . . . you’re my friend.”
It was like the sun came out. Rodney tilted his head and a smile almost creased his face.
“Everyone you meet is not your friend.”
“Yeah, but you are. And you know it. Don’t fight it when someone really likes or cares about you. I consider it a blessing that we met.”
Rodney looked away for several seconds.
“I had a dream about you. I only dream bad dreams about that horrible night. If I dream about anything else, I don’t remember. But I remember a dream about you.”
“What was it about?”
The other guy yelled at Rodney. “Yo, come on. Let’s go.”
“You go ahead. I ain’t going.”
“What? You ain’t going? Why?”
“Man, go on now.”
He turned back to me.
“What happened in the dream?”
“We were sitting at Centennial Olympic Park talking and eating ice cream. Ice cream. I haven’t had ice cream in two years. You dared me to run under the water fountain. I had you hold my cone and then I ran under the water with all the kids. We laughed so hard because I was soaking wet.”
He literally smiled at the telling of the dream. I didn’t think he realized it.
I didn’t know what to say. But I was flattered.
“I laughed in the dream. I hardly laughed—real or otherwise—since that night. I . . . I felt so good. I felt normal—whatever that means. And then I woke up.”
“What do you think that means?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But it has to mean something that you were in my dream. Right?”
“I would think so, but I don’t know if dreams have meanings or what? I’m glad I was, though.”
Rodney didn’t speak.
“Let me look on my phone and Google what dreams mean.”
“There are no meanings to dreams,” he said.
“Wait. Let me look it up . . . OK, here. This is what one website says: ‘The question (of whether dreams mean anything) is so broad. The answer is no: Dreams don’t mean something; dreams mean everything. Dreams are a mesh of memories, desires and/or visions. Sometimes they mean something (to you) and sometimes they are pointless.’
“So maybe the dream meant something.”
“I know it meant something—it had to. I don’t know what, but for two years,
I dreamed of nothing but one thing—and then I have a dream with you in it. I don’t understand why.”
“Maybe it’s because you felt what I felt.”
“Which was what?”
“That we made a connection. That we’re friends.”
“I don’t have friends.”
“I’m sure you had friends before, you know, the accident.”
“I did. Well . . . yeah, I did.”
“What happened to them? I’m sure they were there for you. Don’t you miss them?”
“Missing them would mean I would have to care, and I don’t. Not that they weren’t good people. It’s just that they couldn’t help me. And I had nothing to offer them. So what would be the point?”
“Maybe they could have helped. You could have tried. Why didn’t you try?”
“Because. . .”
“That’s a child’s answer.”
“Because I didn’t want any help. I thought I told you that.”
“I think you do. Well, maybe you didn’t then, but you do now.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re here talking to me. You dreamed about me because we made a connection and that connection was made because I want to help you—and you want to help me.”
Rodney, who had been looking down, raised his head. There was an expression on his face I had not seen. I read it to be confusion. “You think I can help you?”
“You already have.”
“Explain that.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, but I knew what I felt, so I just started talking.
“Meeting you awakened the woman in me, Rodney. By that, I mean parts of me that I had either lost or lost touch with began to come back to me. I didn’t want to be around a man after my husband left me. I had no confidence to even hold a conversation. I hated how rude you were to me, but it forced me to fight back, to show some pride, which I had lost.
“My heart had been broken, and part of that brutality was that I lost my compassion for people. Meeting you helped me to find that caring heart that always had been a big part of me—and every woman. I don’t know how you did it, but you made me care for you when you weren’t even trying. And it felt good to care about you, to care about your well-being.
“So, all this time after seeing you in the hospital, I’ve been hoping to see you again. I looked for you at McDonald’s every day for a while. Finally, I called myself giving up. But here I am tonight. I remembered that you said you liked being around young people getting their education.
“And here you are.”
“Here we are,” Rodney said. It was encouraging. He had not made any hint in the past of being open to me.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“It’s the same answer every time you ask me that: Anywhere. And no place.”
“That’s not a good state of mind, Rodney. We have to do something about that.”
He looked at me with a curious expression, the same one I saw when he had told me he did not want my help.
“When I say, ‘do something about that,’ I don’t mean to get you off the streets. I mean, I wish you would, but you seem to think you’re supposed to be here.”
“So what do you mean by help then?” he asked.
“I mean to help you remember all that life has to offer and what you can offer to the world and people. When we understand we can help others, we realize we have a purpose. And that’s all many people need to keep moving forward.”
“Sounds like you were reading some self-help book.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
I was becoming good at firing back at Rodney. Our banter made my mind sharper. And it built my confidence.
He always had a comeback, and so I waited. It only took a few seconds.
“Sometimes what’s true isn’t always right.”
“We can go on and on, Rodney. The bottom line is we don’t have to call it ‘helping you.’ We don’t have to call it anything. I just want to be your friend and spend some time with you. And don’t ask me why. I just do.”
Rodney nodded his head. He wiggled out of the backpack that he carried and placed it on the ground.
“If I wasn’t dirty, I would hug you,” he said.
I knew him feeling that way was one thing, and saying it to me was a bigger thing.
“Thank you for saying that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: BOSOM BUDDIES
RODNEY
For the next month, I spent time with Brenda almost every day. I felt good about it and I felt bad about it.
I felt good because being with her, talking while walking the streets of Atlanta kept my mind off my pain. I also felt good because I could see that having someone to spend time with and talk to meant a lot to her. On top of that, I noticed that she stopped eating McDonald’s and other fast-food. That, combined with all the walking we did, she had dropped about ten pounds.
“You getting skinny,” I’d told her one day as we walked down Piedmont Avenue, past Georgia State University toward Auburn Avenue.
“Yeah, right. I’m a long way from skinny. But I definitely have lost some weight. My clothes fit differently. Actually, they don’t fit. I haven’t been on a scale, but the looseness in my dresses and pants tells me everything. I guess I should thank you, huh?”
“Don’t thank me. You’re the one walking and not eating garbage anymore.”
“It’s funny, but I feel better about myself. Not because I’m losing weight—well, not totally. Mostly because I feel better. I feel inspired. I love our conversations. I’ve learned a lot about you and myself. My outlook on life is more positive.”
I was glad to hear Brenda speak so positively about her life. She had inspired me to be mindful of how I looked and especially smelled around her. In the beginning, she got the full me—if I was filthy and smelly, so it was. I did not care.
But the more I got to know her and to really see the person she was, I wanted to respect her. One way to do that was to shower at the shelter and change into donated clean clothes, to look and smell respectable. For someone who had no respect for himself, that was huge.
But I still had concerns about Brenda. Not about her sincerity—I had read her correctly. She was true blue. She did not have any friends, though. I began to believe I was the only person in her life. Her cell phone never rang or chimed while we were together . . . and we spent a lot of time together.
Whether it was from seven o’clock at night to midnight during the week or noon to six in the afternoon on the weekends, no one called her. No one sent text messages to her—unless she kept her cell phone ringer on silent.
I could not hold back asking her about it.
“Why don’t you get any calls? Where are your friends?”
“I have friends and family,” she said. “I just have chosen to not deal with them much.”
Before I could ask, she answered.
“My family pissed me off when my sister got sick and none of them came around to check on her or to see if they could help in any way. I had a big problem with that. After the funeral, I decided I would give them a break for a few years to—”
“A few years?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to deal with disingenuous people. I’d rather be alone. And my so-called friends, well, they were not much better. You really don’t ever have that many friends anyway. You have associates. People you know. My father used to call them ‘potential friends.’ He said, ‘And you watch: Most of them will never advance past P.F.—potential friend. If you understand that going in, you won’t be disappointed.’
“He told me that when I was fourteen, I was upset that this girl I thought was my friend liked the same guy I did and told him lies about me. And he believed her. I was so hurt. Not about him believing her. About her telling the lies on me.
“Ever since then, I sort of kept most people as a potential friend just to avoid being disappointed.”
I was fascinated by her life b
ecause it was somewhat similar to mine in that she distanced herself from people once close to her. And her thinking was similar, too. She had lost her parents and sister. Her husband left her and her best friend moved out of the country. Deep down, through talking to her, I realized she was as troubled as me.
That’s why I felt bad about the friendship we formed. It felt like I was using her to build up my life.
We walked down historic Auburn Avenue, past the original Ebenezer Baptist Church on our right and the newer version of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church on our left, toward the home the Civil Rights icon lived as a child.
“Do you see how we are similar?” I asked. I talked to a lot of people in the two years I was on the streets. But Brenda was the only person I encountered who related to me . . . and I related to her.
“Hmmm. Well, maybe in some instances. Like, we lost our families and the loss has damaged us.”
“How do we get over it? I think about my wife all the time. She was a good-looking woman. Not glamorous, but attractive. Sweet. Kind. Supportive. There’s a hole in my heart for her. Don’t you feel that for your husband?”
“I do. Sometimes. Troy was a good man. I just wish I knew what happened to him. One of my old book club members told me of her sister’s husband one day deciding that he wanted to leave. No explanation. Just gone. I thought that was horrible. And then—what?—four years later, it happened to me.”
“Are you mad at him? I’d be pissed.”
“I was furious for a long time. And I was sad. And I felt sorry for myself. Now, I feel sorry for him.”
“What?”
“I know this man. Knew this man. For him to leave like that made no sense. I’m a good woman. I questioned that for a long time. But I know I am. And he walked away from me.”
“Does he have mental illness in his family?”
“What? I don’t know. Why?”
“Because mental illness in the black community is more widespread than we want to acknowledge. We don’t get the help we need, so it goes undiagnosed. What I learned is that it passes down from generations. My father was bipolar. My grandfather was, too. And paranoid schizophrenic. But no one told me anything.
“It wasn’t until my second episode that my Aunt Claire told me about her brother, who was my father. I would check your husband’s family history if I were you.”