by RM Johnson
Asha thought about their situation as she dug in her purse for her keys, before climbing the last step, and told herself she should say to hell with whatever reservations she had been having about speaking to him. She should just go up to his apartment, bang on the door, and tell him a thing or two. Exactly what those things would be, she wasn’t sure. But why should she be tiptoeing around, just because he had a problem with who she was now; hell, who she had been all her life?
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do, Asha thought to herself, feeling confident. But when Asha pulled the outside door open, all of her confidence disappeared, because to her surprise, Jayson was standing just on the other side of the door.
Jayson seemed surprised too, for he jumped, almost dropping the paper bag he was carrying.
Asha wanted to say something, say anything. She was supposed to tell him how she was feeling. She was supposed to tell him that she was sorry for hiding who she really was from him for so long, and lying to him about it, but the fact that she had didn’t mean they couldn’t still be friends. She wanted to say that and so much more, but she just looked blankly into his face, unable to form a single word.
Jayson wasn’t much better. Like her, it looked as though he wanted to speak but didn’t. They stood there right in front of each other, staring into each other’s eyes for a few seconds that felt like a few life-times. Then all of a sudden, they both seemed to snap out of whatever trances they were in.
“Excuse me,” Jayson said, under his breath, lowering his eyes, as if he was trying to make his way past a stranger on a crowded subway train.
“Pardon me,” Asha said, just as reserved, stepping out of his way toward her door, inserting the key, and getting in there as fast as she could. She closed the door, dropped her bag at her feet, then leaned her back against the door, shaking her head. What the hell was that? she asked herself. They’d acted like they didn’t even know each other, like they hated each other. She once loved that man, still did, yet she couldn’t even speak to him.
Asha turned around, opened the door, telling herself enough was enough. She opened the outer door and stepped outside, thinking that she would see Jayson there in the front yard, or driveway, but she didn’t. When she looked down the block, she saw the back of his car, disappearing around the corner.
Asha dropped her head, disappointed, wishing that she could’ve resolved their differences then. She told herself, next time she saw him, she would end all of this nonsense that very moment.
Two hours later, Asha was standing in her bedroom mirror checking herself out. Her hair was done differently, cornrowed, in shiny, thick, black braids, lining her scalp from front to back. She had on the huge, beautiful diamond stud earrings her mother had bought her for her twenty-fifth birthday. She wore a long-sleeve, button-down shirt, that hung just above her belly button, accenting her ample breasts, and her flat stomach. With that, she wore a pair of snug, denim capri pants, and a snazzy pair of Italian sandals. Asha’s makeup was light, but brought out her cheekbones and eyes just the way she wanted it to.
She leaned into the mirror to get a closer look at herself, applying the last bit of makeup—her lipstick. It was a burnt orange that went with her copper complexion. She took a napkin, stuck it in between her lips, and pressed them together, blotting the excess off. She looked at herself and smiled.
“Girl, you look good,” she said to herself, actually excited about going out.
Right after she’d returned home two hours ago, she’d thought about packing. But it was a Friday night, the weather was warm, and she told herself this would be the night she would start her new life. Asha tried to think of who she could call to do something with, but the friends she would’ve wanted to hang out with were no longer friends. That depressed her for a moment, but she told herself she wasn’t going to let anything get her down.
She remembered a night spot that that girl Jackie used to talk about. Asha figured it was a lesbian club, considering that later Asha found out Jackie was a lesbian herself when she tried to give Asha a pelvic exam in her sleep.
Asha called information to get the phone number, then stood over the phone, the receiver to her ear, preparing to dial that number. As she stood there, she tried to imagine herself in one of those clubs, nothing but masculine-looking women and their very feminine-looking counterparts surrounding her. She imagined women dancing with women, women coming on to women at the bar, kissing in the corner, and doing whatever in the bathroom stalls.
Was that a place she could see herself in? After a moment, she thought, what the hell, and started dialing the number from the napkin she had jotted it down on. She wouldn’t know if she could see herself in that type of place till she actually saw herself in that type of place.
Now she was ready to head out, and take the first step into her new world. She’d picked up her purse and a tiny, high-waist jacket, and was heading for the door, when the phone rang. Her hand was around the doorknob, and she looked back at the phone, trying to decide if she would answer it. At first she thought not to, telling herself that no one she cared about was trying to call her anyway. She had no more friends, no fiancé, so it was probably a wrong number, but Asha pulled herself away from the door and went to pick up the phone anyway.
“Hello,” Asha said.
No answer right away.
“Hello,” Asha said again, more forcefully.
Still no answer.
“Whatever,” Asha said, about to hang up when she heard, “Asha, don’t. It’s Angie.”
In a numb, dull kind of way, Asha was both excited and disappointed to hear Angie’s voice again. Excited because she still loved this woman, but disappointed because Asha knew that she might abandon the big step she was about to take in her life just to sit on the phone for hours and talk to Angie.
“Asha, are you there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” Asha said, clearing her voice, straightening her shirt, as if Angie could see that it wasn’t clinging to Asha’s body just right. “I’m just surprised to hear from you is all.”
“I know. I mean, I knew you would be, but I had to call anyway. I miss you, Asha. I’ve been thinking a lot about you.”
Asha smiled, feeling like a second-grade schoolgirl who’d just found out that the little boy who sat four rows over really did like her. “You have,” Asha said.
“Yeah, and I wanted to say that I was crazy for breaking up with you like that. And I hope that maybe you might want to give me another chance?”
Boy, do I! Asha thought, smiling even wider, but only saying, very calmly, “Yeah, that might be nice.”
“You sure about that, Asha? Because I thought you might’ve never wanted to hear from me again.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, that’s what I was thinking when I walked away from your car that day, but I’ve been thinking a lot about you too, and I told myself that if you were ever able to get past how your son felt about the two of us, be able to accept me in your life, I would take you back.”
Angie didn’t respond to that, didn’t say a thing for a long moment.
“What?” Asha said, sensing something wrong.
“Asha,” Angie said, very cautiously. “I think there may be a misunderstanding.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want us to take a second chance at what we had, exactly what we had. I guess I should’ve told you this first, but Deric, the man I’m with, wants me to commit to him, or he’s leaving. I’m thinking about doing it because Kyle really needs him in his life.”
Asha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Then why are you calling me? Where do I fit into all this?”
“Because I love you, Asha. I don’t love Deric like that.”
“Okay, okay, okay, hold it,” Asha said, shaking her head, waving a free hand. “Let me try to understand this. You’re telling me you’re going to marry this Deric only because your son needs a father, and no other reason. And you want to get back together with me so yo
u can secretly visit me two days a week, so you can get your lesbian thang on? Is that what you’re saying, Angie?” Asha was getting very angry.
“Asha, that’s not exactly what I’m saying.”
“Is it close? Is it anywhere in the ball park?”
“I guess,” Angie said, shamefully.
“Fuck you,” Asha said, coolly slamming the phone down into its cradle.
Not a second later, the phone was ringing again. Asha snapped it up.
“Asha, listen—”
“No, you listen. I’m good enough to have on the side, but not good enough to be with exclusively. Look, I love you, Angie. I’ve accepted that. And I’ve also accepted the fact that I’m a lesbian. I’ve accepted it so much that I’m all dressed up, about to go out to a lesbian club, get silly drunk, and see what happens,” Asha said. “Angie, I’m better than just a warm body on the side, and until you can accept that, and get straight with your own issues about who you are, I don’t ever want to speak to you again.” Asha hung up the phone, and this time when it started ringing, Asha turned a deaf ear to it, and kept walking toward the door.
The club wasn’t quite what Asha thought it was going to be. It was called the Liquid Cherry, not leaving much to the imagination, Asha thought, as she walked into the dimly lit spot. It was a huge, open room, with what Asha had to imagine were like thirty-foot ceilings. There were windows at the front and back wall of the place, extending up to ten or fifteen feet below the ceiling. There was a long, U-shaped bar to the left, and tables scattered around a clearing in the center of the room, where only a few couples were dancing to the blaring techno house music pounding out of the columns of tower speakers standing on the four corners of the dance floor.
All the tables were full with mostly women, chatting over pint glasses of beer, martini glasses, and short glasses of mixed drinks. There was smoke everywhere, coming from cigarettes, cigars, and Asha even detected the scent of marijuana. She could’ve used a quick hit of that, she thought, to make her relax some. As she made her way to the bar, she felt eyes on her. She didn’t turn to acknowledge them, but strode confidently through the crowd of people, as if this wasn’t her first time there.
She sat down at the bar next to an empty stool and waited for the bartender. When a lovely, thin woman with gorgeous eyes, the hair on her head no longer than the fuzz on a peach, asked, “What are you having?” Asha thought for a moment, then said, “Give me a Bombay Sapphire and cranberry, and two lemon drop shots.” It was going to be an interesting night, she could feel it, and she wanted to start it off right.
45
Angie sat in her sitting room, a private place where she would go and think whenever something was bothering her, a place she could relax when she felt particularly stressed. This was one of those times.
Why did she even think Asha would’ve gone for what she had proposed? She should’ve known better than that. But she didn’t think that Asha would blow up in her face either. Angie pulled the throw blanket up over her legs, smiling to herself, but only slightly. She told me to fuck myself, Angie thought. She told me to never call her again, until I get my thoughts about myself straight. I’ll show her, Angie thought. I could actually never call her back again. I could stop thinking about her this very moment, and not let her image back into my mind, and that would be the end of that. She never really meant more than two cents to me.
But that wasn’t true and Angie knew it. That had to be the reason this situation had her stressing, had her holed up in her little room, trying to think of the best way to handle this matter.
Every now and then, she’d holler up at the ceiling. “Cowboy, don’t you tear the house down up there.” Kyle was upstairs playing army men, or space heroes, or whatever he did to entertain himself when neither her nor Deric was around. Deric was acting an ass again. Angie guessed he was out somewhere making an effort to stay away. He was out somewhere, hoping Angie would think he was having the time of his life, trying to prove that he had a life outside of Angie, when he was probably really sitting in his car, staring out the window, checking his watch every five minutes, waiting till it was late enough so he could walk his ass back into the house.
Her son would understand was what Asha had told Angie a while ago. If Kyle loved her, he would understand the decision she made in letting go of Deric. But would he? Would he understand, and even if he did understand, would he ever forget that his mother booted out his father when he was six, to take in some woman?
Angie thought, okay, what if he did have no problem with it, and everything seemed fine. What if Kyle loved the hell out of Asha, and the three of them lived happily with one another for ten years? What would Angie think if Kyle walked in the house one day with an earring in his right ear, or wearing a pair of particularly tight, pink pants, or maybe had on his button-down shirt, not buttoned up all the way, but only halfway, and the lower half tied in a knot to expose his belly button. What if he came in the house one day hand in hand with Casey, the feminine-male looking Hispanic teenager from across the street? What would Angie do then? She’d blame it on herself, that’s what. But who was to say that would happen? And who was to say that if she married Deric, it wouldn’t?
Angie gave it some more thought, and understood that it really all came down to happiness. If she married Deric, that would make him and Kyle happy, but she would be miserable for the rest of her life. If she got rid of Deric, she’d be happy, but Kyle would probably resent her for some years. Regarding Deric? Well, she would hate to have to hurt Deric, but he would just have to understand.
Angie dropped her head back, letting it rest against the wall behind the couch. She wished her mother was still alive so she could speak to her about this, but she had died fifteen years ago. Angie had never told her mother about her being a lesbian, because she knew what her mother had sacrificed for her. Like so many parents, her mother had stayed in her awful marriage “for the sake of the child.”
After Angie was old enough to realize what love between a married couple should look like, she could tell that her mother and father no longer cared for each other. They barely communicated with each other, and when they did it was through argument. Her mother had continued to deal with that marriage because she wanted Angie to have a whole family: mother, father, dog, and a stable future. If she only knew what Angie thought now.
She sacrificed all those years of her life for me, and after I finally finished college, left home for my own place, and allowed Mother to stop playing the role and divorce Daddy, what did she do? She up and died.
She never had the chance to be happy while she was with my father, Angie thought, and if she did, it had to have been during some quiet, stolen moment, when Angie wasn’t around to see it, when her mother was locked away in some little room that she designated her private place. And then it hit Angie. She was doing the same thing, living the same life her mother had, and she hadn’t even married Deric yet. That moment, she knew she couldn’t go through with it. She would not sacrifice her happiness for her child, and she wouldn’t deprive herself of love when it was right there in front of her, begging to be accepted.
Angie rose from the sofa, walked out of the room, and headed up the stairs. She came upon her son in his room, stretched out on his stomach in the middle of a sea of action figures, cars, and trucks.
“Kyle,” Angie said, standing just outside the door of his room.
Kyle rolled over on his side, turning to look at her from over his shoulder. “Yeah, Mommy.”
“Do you mind if I interrupt action figure time. I have something very important I need to talk to you about.”
On the way back home from dropping Kyle off at Sherrie’s house, her oldest friend from college, Angie thought about some of the questions she’d asked Kyle.
“Would you mind if Daddy no longer lived with you and Mommy? He would still see you almost every day, come to play with you and everything.” Angie just assumed this would be the case, because she knew Deric would
always love her son and never want to be completely out of his life. “But he just wouldn’t live here.”
Kyle dealt with the questions better than she thought he would, starting to cry after five minutes of their conversation instead of just a couple. She held him, rocking him, telling him, “It has to happen, baby. It just has to.” His tears burned her like acid, his every sob cut through her like a knife, but just like Asha said, he would sense her misery in being with Deric eventually, and that would ultimately make him miserable, just like her mother’s unhappiness made Angie.
When Angie walked into her house, Deric was sitting there in the living room, still wearing his work shirt and pants, the top button of his shirt undone, his tie loosened. He held a mixed drink in the palm of his hand, his legs crossed.
“Where you been?”
Angie closed the front door, ignoring him.
“I said, where you been?”
Angie hung her jacket and purse in the closet, then turned around, looking at Deric. “Same place you’ve been. Out.”
“And where’s Kyle?”
“He’s not here, Deric.”
“I can see that. That’s why I’m asking where he is,” Deric said, sitting up on the sofa, setting his drink down on the table.
“He’s out too. I guess that place is pretty popular tonight,” Angie said, turning and walking toward the kitchen.
“Well, don’t you think I have a right to know? Out where?” Deric stood.
Angie turned to face him. “No, Deric, I don’t think you have a right to know, and why would you think that anyway?”
“Because I treat him like a son. I—”
“But, Deric, Kyle is not your son,” Angie said, walking toward Deric, raising a finger to make her point. “He’s not yours, and he’s never been your son.”