The Makeover

by Vacirca Vaughn

  Now she was trapped again.

  “I thought we went over that already?” Cedric snapped as he grabbed the vodka to pour a third drink. After mixing in some cranberry juice, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Can you put that out?” Phoenix asked.

  “Why? You never minded me smoking before. You used to be a real chimney yourself. Yo, why don’t you just relax and have that drink you’re wasting? You’re so tense.” Cedric took a long drag on his cigarette before holding out the pack to Phoenix. “Have one.”

  Phoenix snatched the pack from his hand and slammed it on the coffee table. Why did she get the sense that he was trying to distract her. She decided to confront him as if he were one of her mental health clients. Maybe the reflection technique would work. If she could reflect back his actions, and behaviors, and the attitude behind it, he would tell her the truth. “Cedric, again, I am asking you to tell me the truth. You show up here, all of a sudden, late at night, saying that for the first time in six months, you can’t get me out of my mind. That doesn’t make sense. If you had seen the new me somewhere, and then wanted me back, I would trust that more. Thing is, as far as you were concerned, I was still the same fat, ugly chick you couldn’t get away from fast enough. And then, on top of that, you have a pregnant fiancé at home. Why are you here? I have been asking you to be frank with me and you keep trying to distract me. What are you hiding?”

  Cedric merely looked at her as he continued to smoke and sip. After several moments, he shrugged and sighed. “I am not hiding anything, Fe. It’s like I said, I missed you and—”

  So much for almost eleven years of psychology education, Phoenix seethed. God…

  “Don’t hand me those lies, Cedric. I rebuke your devilish lies. Tell me the truth! ” The words again tumbled from Phoenix’s mouth. She didn’t know where they came or what had caused her to speak them with such anger, but the force of that emotion running through her was a powerful freight train. “I want to know why you are here and I expect you to tell me the truth, so help you God!”

  Cedric blinked in surprise before he curled up his lip. “Why are you yelling at me? Calm down. I already told you the truth. I said I’ve been missing you—”

  “Look, just tell me!” Phoenix shouted, tears springing to her eyes. “I can’t stand the lies anymore. I need the truth.” God, please let him just tell me the truth!

  Although Phoenix was simply thinking the thought, it was all the Lord needed to completely move on her behalf.

  Because once she called on His Name, He had to keep His promise to His children: Ask and you shall receive.

  “I don’t know why you’re acting like that, Phoenix!” Cedric jumped off the couch, inflamed by her words and the alcohol coursing through his veins. He tossed the lit cigarette into the his glass and stormed over to her. He grabbed her and pulled her out of her chair.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to wrench herself away.

  “You’re sitting there, on your high horse, yelling at me when I came to see you! You should be happy I was even thinking about you. What? You lose some weight and I am supposed to bow down to you all of a sudden? Never that, alright? Never that!”

  “I never asked you to bow down to me, Cedric! I just wanted you to be real with me!” Phoenix pulled her arms out of his grip with renewed strength. “You need to leave!”

  “I ain’t going anywhere,” he sneered. “You’re the one starting with me. You keep harping on telling you the truth and I did. What I told you was true.”

  “I still don’t believe that is all to this story, Cedric. You show up here after so long, with a pregnant fiancée and—”

  “Stop saying that! Why do you keep bringing her up?” Cedric growled. “Stop talking about her!”

  “Why, that’s the situation, right? You cheated on me with her, got with her when I kicked you out, got her pregnant, and proposed marriage. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “Yes, I mean no—”

  “So if it’s ‘no,’ then tell me what happened? Why did you suddenly want to come over and be with me when you obviously love her and—”

  “I don’t love her, I mean I do, but she—”

  “Then why did you propose to her? Why is she having your baby?”

  “I did propose, but we’re not getting married. And she is not having the baby!” Cedric screamed, breathing heavily.

  “What?” Phoenix let the words linger in the air as she tried to understand. “I thought—”

  “Yeah, I know what you thought,” Cedric grumbled. He went to the kitchen, returned with another glass, and poured another drink before sitting back down on the couch. “I know what you thought,” he repeated.

  “What are you talking about, Cedric? Just spit it out.”

  “She left me, okay?” Cedric’s face crumbled. “She’s gone.”

  “What?” Phoenix’s face turned to stone as she stared at her drunk ex-fiancé, who was sitting on her couch, crying over another woman. “What are you talking about?”

  “She left me about two weeks ago. She told her parents about her pregnancy and they flew in from China. They made her pack her things and go back to China with them. When they came, she didn’t even put up a fight. Just packed her stuff and left. Last week, they made her call me. She told me she can never see me again or they will cut her off. They even made her have an abortion. She said she was wrong for disobeying her parents and never meant to do more than have some fun with me while she was in New York for a few months. She said she couldn’t risk her parents disowning her, or she wouldn’t be able to support herself while going to college, then medical school, as she was planning. She is supposed to be marrying a man from a family that is close to hers in a couple of weeks, someone she was supposed to be marrying all along. She said that she had never expected us to get serious, or for her to get pregnant, because she had been planning to go back to China soon to get married anyway. Now that she had the abortion, she is going forward with her plans. She’ll move to San Francisco with her husband in a few months and finish school out there. I guess I was her way of sticking it to her parents. Nothing more. I guess I, or our baby, didn’t mean anything to her.”

  Phoenix was staggered as she stared at Cedric, whose eyes were leaking tears of pain. His face was flushed as he continued to gulp the drink. “You really cared for her, huh?”

  Cedric glanced at Phoenix’s drawn face and nodded. “I don’t want to make you more mad, but yeah. I fell in love with her.”

  Phoenix bit her lip. “I can tell, if she got you to get a job, think about enrolling in college classes, and propose after getting her pregnant. She got you to do more for her in a few months than I could get you to do for me in two years.”

  Cedric scratched the back of his head as he said, “Yeah, I could say the same about that Brazilian dude. He got you to do more for yourself in a few months than I ever did in two years.”

  Phoenix blinked. Huh.

  Phoenix and Cedric continued to stare at each other, as he sat there drinking.

  “She really broke your heart, huh?” Phoenix started to feel the tiny crumbs of something she was desperate to brush away—compassion.

  “Yeah,” Cedric shivered. “She left me. And I can’t stay in the apartment anymore either. I didn’t know her parents were paying the rent on a month-to-month basis since she was supposed to go back home next month. I was just giving her money towards the bills when I got paid, like five hundred a month. She took it, but I guess she spent it on herself ‘cause her rent was being paid by her father. I didn’t know there wasn’t a lease. I tried to ask the landlord when she left how much it was and if I could stay. He said he’d give me a lease if I give him a security deposit for the apartment, along with the next month’s rent. Ain’t no way I can pay twelve hundred a month to live near Columbia in a one bedroom by myself. I can’t even hurry and get a roommate. ”

  “You do know that’s almost how much I pay here, right? I paid eleven
hundred a month, plus another three hundred in utilities and expenses, by myself, the whole time you lived here,” Phoenix said. “And I didn’t have a dollar of yours to contribute the whole time and gave you money. If I could do that, you can pay your rent for your own apartment.”

  “Yeah, but you forget I have child support,” Cedric whined. “As it is, they’re now taking out three hundred a check, which leaves me with seven hundred every two weeks. And you know his mom ain’t ever work, so I put him on my health insurance cause he needs speech therapy from this place that doesn’t take Medicaid and…” He sighed. “And so, technically, I bring home like six-something every two weeks. I can’t pay twelve hundred, plus utilities, and living expenses with that.”

  Usually, at that point, the psychologist in her would be using self-actualization techniques to counsel Cedric on finding concrete solutions to solve his problems. She would tell him to find an apartment that he could share with someone, and to find a speech therapist that accepted Medicaid, so that he would not have to pay for health insurance for his son. She would recommend he get a second job or suggest he move into a rooming house instead, where he would pay roughly one hundred fifty dollars a week, similar to the one he had been living in when he met her. She would even suggest that since he had plans to attend classes full time at Columbia, he look into on or off-campus housing through their network.

  But she refused.

  “So what are you going to do?” Phoenix crossed her arms.

  “I gotta move,” he slurred, looking up to give her a half smile. “I gotta move to someplace.”

  “Hmmm.” Phoenix shook her head as the truth dawned on her. “And you figured you’d come here and tell me you loved and missed me and that maybe I’d let you move back here?”

  Cedric didn’t answer.

  “I guess the weight loss was just a bonus, huh?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “And you need to say it because I just got off the short yellow bus, is that it? I am mentally retarded, and can’t think, or put two and two together?”

  Cedric balled up a fist. “You are jumping to conclusions.”

  Phoenix looked at his balled fist. “What? You want to hit me? You come to my house telling me you missed me and still love me, when all along you had plans of using me to be your security blanket? Again! Are you kidding me?”

  Cedric poured himself yet another drink.

  “And to make matters worse, you were under the impression that I was still involved with Paulo. You planned to come here and what? Steal me away from him so you could use me again?”

  “I was hoping you wanted to make things work because…” Cedric gulped his drink, and stared down at his glass.

  “Because what? Because you’re used to that in our relationship, right? You are used to me loving you so much, and so hard, that I am willing to accept anything, do anything, forgive anything, and maintain everything in order to have you in my life. You were banking on that!” Phoenix raged. “You sure are feeling yourself.”

  “So why did you let me in?” Cedric eyed Phoenix with new interest. “If you figured I had something up my sleeve, why did you bother?”

  “I don’t know,” Phoenix answered sadly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I guess I wanted to rub my transformation in your face and make you see what you’ve lost.”

  Cedric snickered.

  “What’s so funny?” Phoenix demanded.

  “You. Me. Both of us,” Cedric continued to laugh as the alcohol took effect. “I know you. You can be real big on payback. You were gonna try some revenge mess on me, right? Even though you got Brave Boy in your life, you’ve been thinking about getting back at me all this time, ain’t you?”

  Phoenix flushed as she looked away.

  “Oh whose being quiet now?” Cedric sneered. “So you always tell me I’m a user. Maybe I am. And I am not going to lie. You do have a real big heart. But you was always about teaching somebody a lesson. What lesson you learn, Phoenix?”

  “Don’t try to turn this around on me!” Phoenix shouted, jumping out of her chair to get close to Cedric’s face. “You are such a phony! You act all educated and polite one minute, then back into your slang-slinging, street-boy mentality the next. Make up your mind about who you are and what you want! Besides, I am not the one who came looking for you, trying to worm my way back into your house to use someone, just because I thought I could! I wouldn’t even be feeling like that if you hadn’t—”

  Cedric also jumped off his perch on the couch. “What?” Taken what you offered me? Why wouldn’t I?” Cedric said, before polishing off the last of his drink. “You was so willing to give it to me, why wouldn’t I take it?” He started to sway on his feet. He flopped back down on the couch and reached for the last of the vodka.

  “I don’t think you should have another—” Phoenix began, concerned with the red flush in Cedric’s face.

  “Don’t tell me what to do. It’s, what, my sixth? Big deal. I could kill this whole fifth of Grey Goose by myself! I’m a grown man! You know that!” He laughed as he dumped the rest of the liquor and cranberry into his glass. He took another huge gulp, belched, and sighed in satisfaction. Suddenly he turned to Phoenix and asked, “You sitting there judging me, but you ever been hungry?”

  “Depends on what you mean by hungry.”

  “I mean hungry…” Cedric burst into laughter before slapping a palm against his forehead. “You ain’t been hungry! Yo, what am I talking about? We both know you ain’t never skipped a meal in your life….until now!”

  Phoenix’s rage pulsed at her throat as she watched Cedric fall back on the couch, screaming in laughter at his own cruel joke.

  “Well, I’ve been hungry Phoenix. There were times my moms wasn’t working after my pops left, and we were eating crackers and ketchup for dinner. Did you ever know that?”

  “No,” Phoenix snapped. “All this time and you never wanted to share your past with me. Don’t bother giving me a sob story now, Cedric. I lived in the projects too, and we struggled after my father left us as well.”

  “Yeah, but your mom always had a job. Your grandma used to sew and make cakes for money too. You told me that you and your brother worked since y’all were teenagers. You said since you saw your mom and grandmother working, you always knew you had to work to get ahead.” Cedric reached out for the bottle of vodka and tilted it to his mouth to get the last few drops.

  Phoenix was over the vodka already. She got up, snatched the bottle out of his hands, and flung it across the room. “It’s empty, for crying out loud!” she shouted.

  Cedric merely reached for her drink.

  When he finished it, he tried to place her glass on the coffee table, but missed, and it shattered on the parquet floor.

  Phoenix fumed. “I am not picking that mess up.”

  “My bad,” Cedric answered. “So you don’t know what it is to be hungry, right? My moms, she was never somebody who worked. She was always about getting on the government assistance. She had a secretary certificate and hardly worked a day in her life. My pops used to work at some warehouse, but he made most of his money running numbers. When he left, that money he brought in left too. I tried to do what I could. At like, eight, I was helping Mom by stealing food. I was pickpocketing by ten. I was out at twelve selling weed and running errands for the pickup boys, trying to feed us. My two aunts moved in, one after the other, and they ain’t work either. By then, I had to look out for my mom, grandmother, two aunts, and their kids, since I was the oldest in the house. My older brother got locked up at sixteen when I was nine. He’s still in prison—”

  “Serving life, right? He robbed that jewelry store and shot that lady?” Phoenix sighed through her question, not understanding how she ended up in a counseling session with the man who had broken her heart.

  “Yeah. Shot that Korean lady right in the head. He ain’t eligible for parole for another two years.”

  “I know.”

  “I g
ot in trouble too. I stole cars and clothes, electronics. And I’d get popped. In between times of juvie and jail, whenever I was out, I was the one trying to take care of everybody. Nobody ever, in my life, took care of me. Nobody. I would get into trouble trying to help Mom’s family and you’d think she’d try to get me a lawyer? Get a job to help me out? You think she’d visit me and bring me something? Nope.” Cedric sneered. “Don’t get me started on my chicken-head aunts and grandmother.”

  Phoenix shut her eyes against the pity that was flooding her soul. “I didn’t know about your upbringing cause you’d get mad at me whenever I asked. All you ever spoke about was your son’s mother’s issues with—”

  But Cedric continued as if in a trance. “When I was like twenty, I met my kid’s mom. She was sweet and sexy and I fell in love with her. She talked about her life, and it was just like mine. We would talk about getting our GED and going to college and getting off the streets. She inspired me to get my first actual job. We ain’t have much, but I didn’t want to end up in prison for the rest of my young life, so I started working at Jimmy Jazz clothing store. I didn’t make a lot but remember feeling good that I was actually working. I got up every day and didn’t have to worry about it being the day I would get caught. I just went to work and made my money.”

  “How did it go?” Phoenix asked, resigned to the fact that his litany was leading somewhere.

  “It was cool. Even when my boys tried to get me to do some back door deals with them, I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to do nothing to get into trouble. I figured, if I hang in there, and work with my son’s mother as a team, maybe we’d get ahead. I got my GED and kept the job. I kept waiting for her to do the same. One year, two years, three years and she was still sitting at home, with other chicken heads on the block, smoking weed. I started losing feelings and respect for her, but when she got pregnant, I figured, okay, she will have the baby and be motivated to do something with herself. She didn’t do it for herself, or for me, like I did for her, but maybe she’ll do it for our boy. Nope!” Cedric let out a strange cackle.