Take Her Man

by Grace Octavia

  The 3T Intervention

  “Open up, trick,” I heard someone who sounded just like Tasha holler like a mad woman. And it was so weird because I was in a park, sitting on a picnic blanket making wedding plans with Julian.

  “Open up the damn door or we’re coming through it,” I heard the voice call again. I looked to the trees and still couldn’t see where it was coming from. Then I heard a banging, a loud banging that woke me up from my lovely picnic dream and put me back in my apartment.

  “Come on, Troy. These bags are getting heavy,” called a voice that sounded like Tamia.

  “Hold on. Hold on,” I answered.

  I opened the door to find Tasha and Tamia, both of whom I can now call crazy, standing in front of my apartment dressed in matching pink Puma sweat suits.

  “What are y’all doing here?” I asked, noticing that both of them were carrying paper bags. They pushed their way past me into the apartment. “Why do y’all have bags and why in the hell are y’all dressed alike?”

  “Well, we have Chinese food and wine in the bags,” Tamia answered. “And we just came from the gym.”

  “We dress alike at the gym,” Tasha said, unloading an arsenal of food on my countertop. “It draws attention, you know, from the guys.”

  “They always stop and ask if we’re twins and drool over our breasts.” Tamia giggled. “They can’t help it. It’s so funny.”

  “You know, the whole male fantasy thing, twins,” Tasha said, handing me two bottles of wine. “Open these.”

  “But you two look nothing alike.” I unscrewed one of the corks. “And you’re married.”

  “I’m married, not blind. Plus, I get a good workout, because they always want to help us, and I get to help Tamia meet men,” Tasha said.

  “She does,” Tamia chimed in. “It really works.”

  “Oh, my God,” Tasha said, dropping a carton of what I could see was shrimp lo mein in one of my big serving bowls. She looked at me with apparent shock.

  “What?” Tamia and I said at the same time.

  “The transformation has already begun.” Tasha sucked her teeth.

  “What transformation?” I asked, looking down at my outfit. “Look at you,” she said. “You look awful, baby. Where the hell did you find that old-ass T-shirt?” Tasha pointed at my shirt with disgust and looked at Tamia.

  “But it’s my favorite T-shirt,” I said, defending my fashion choice. It was retro. It had a few small holes in it, but other than the bleach spots, you still could make out my school’s emblem. But looking down at it, even though I loved the old shirt, I knew Tasha was right. It had to go.

  “She’s connecting with the past…bad symptom,” Tamia jumped in, sounding like some fake-ass heartbreak nurse.

  “Tamia, go and get this girl something that’ll make her look and feel beautiful, stat,” Tasha said to Tamia.

  “Make that a T-shirt,” I called to Tamia as she walked toward my bedroom. “What the hell am I going to be doing walking around you guys looking all cute?”

  “Feeling like silk, that’s what, Troy,” Tasha said, zeroing in on me. “Did you forget rule number two?”

  “Change, Change, Change,” I said. “I need to remain completely fabulous and look even better the next time Julian sees me. Right?”

  “Exactly,” Tasha confirmed. “So how are you going to do that looking like a crazy prep-school stalker? I mean, look at you. Your hair looks a mess, your clothes are all jacked up, and you have some kind of chocolate stuff on your upper lip.” I wiped my lip to find traces of Rocky Road. “Now, how are you going to be stunning when you see Julian if you look a mess?”

  Tamia came rushing back into the kitchen carrying a slinky black nightgown from Victoria’s Secret. It was my favorite and she knew it. We’d picked it up at the mall during one of our monthly shopping trips to Long Island.

  “I don’t know, guys. I was just having a bad day. I was feeling down,” I said, more embarrassed about the evidence of my Rocky Road binge than about my outfit.

  “Well, that’s why we’re here.” Tamia slipped the T-shirt off over my head. “We figured you were lying in bed, sad and crying—thinking about that Negro. And hadn’t eaten anything. So we picked up some Chinese food for nourishment, and wine to wash away your sorrows. We’re here to cheer you up.”

  “Cheer me up? I just want to be alone, you guys,” I said, putting the nightgown on. I sighed as it fell over my body. Julian loved how it looked on me. “I really just want to be alone.”

  “See, that’s the problem with women during breakups.” Tasha put the last of the Chinese food on my kitchen table. “Men, they stay busy after a breakup. They get out with the fellas, buy a car, invest, date…They stay out and about, refusing to admit that they feel any pain,” she said, opening the other bottle of wine I’d left sitting on the counter. “But the female species, we like to wallow in our pain, lie in bed sleeping and eating, gaining weight and feeling bad. It’s just all really sad and it just puts us at a breakup disadvantage.”

  I sat down at the table and took a sip of my wine.

  “Do you guys think he misses me?” I asked.

  “Of course he does,” Tamia said. “He probably misses you just as much as you miss him. But he just won’t let himself feel it and you know it.”

  “Exactly, girl,” Tasha said, giving Tamia five. “We on the same page.” They laughed. “But, really, it’s just like I said, he’s handling it differently.”

  “Well, what’s up with you guys? I’m tired of thinking about my drama.” I shoveled a big spoonful of lo mein and hot mustard into my mouth.

  “Well,” Tamia started, “following in your footsteps, I’m going to do a spring cleaning.” She sat back in her seat. “I just need to clean off my entire roster and start anew.”

  She was referring to our male clean up. We made up the term when Tasha, out of complete disgust with all the losers she was dating, decided to cut them all off. Afterward, she told Tamia and me how free she felt that she didn’t have to talk to any of those losers again. No more wondering where the relationships would go, if they were going to start acting right, none of that. It was Splitsville…three times over. Out with the old, in with the new. A true spring cleaning.

  “But I thought you liked that guy…what’s his name, the marketing guy from the record label,” Tasha said.

  “Jeremy?” I asked. “Yeah, I thought you liked him, too, Tamia.”

  “Well, ladies, we finally had sex,” Tamia said, skewering a tiny shrimp with her fork.

  “And? Was it good?” Tasha asked.

  “I don’t know, ask his penis, Mr. Shrimp.” She waved the shrimp in front of us and we all started laughing hysterically. “I think he had a disease or something—infantile penis. I don’t know.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that bad if brother man knew how to work it, but he was just lame,” Tamia said.

  “I know that’s right,” Tasha said. “For some reason men still think that size is the only thing that matters.”

  “Please, I’ll take a little man who’s going to smack it up, flip it, and rub it down over some ten-inch brother who’s just going to sit there thinking he’s God’s gift to the bedroom, any day!” Tamia said, placing the salt shaker next to a bottle of wine.

  “So Jeremy didn’t even try?” I asked.

  “Please, I was lying there just mad that I had to add his ass to the list of men I’ve had sex with. What a damn waste of a space.”

  “Oh, his ass doesn’t even count,” Tasha said with a wicked laugh. “If it was that small, it was just like making out anyway. Like using a tampon.” She held up her chopstick.

  “Oh, you’re wrong for that.” I snatched the chopstick.

  “No, he was wrong for getting me all excited about Santa and then sending one of his little elves.” Tamia snatched the chopstick and handed it back to Tasha.

  “Damn, girl. Well, what about Alex from class?” I asked, referring to Tamia’s recent walk on t
he wild side, dating a white guy.

  “You know, I like Alex, but I really can’t do the whole white/ black thing. I just can’t trust it.” Tamia took a sip of her wine. “I always worry about him having slave-cabin fantasies or something. You know? I just don’t think I could—”

  “I’m trying to get pregnant,” Tasha interrupted Tamia mid-sentence.

  “Huh?” I said, nearly choking on my lo mein.

  “Oh, now I know the girl is drunk.” Tamia dropped her fork. We were all silent. Did Tasha, the ultimate party girl who’d abandoned her own mother, just say she wanted to be a mother?

  “No, I am not drunk, Tamia. I’ve just decided that I want a baby,” Tasha said without looking at us. “I’m ready.”

  “Ready? When did you get ready to have a baby? How? We were just at the gym,” Tamia said, looking just as surprised as I felt.

  “Wait a minute, Tasha. I think what Tamia means is what made you want a baby?” I asked Tasha delicately.

  Tamia and I were sitting there staring at each other with our mouths hanging wide open. It wasn’t that Tasha was a bad person or anything. It wasn’t even that she was a bad friend, but somebody’s mother? I just wasn’t sure if I’d bet on the success of that story. There are certain things you just don’t expect in life: seeing an alien, being eaten alive by wolves, and hearing that Tasha wanted to be a mother.

  “Come on, guys. Y’all are acting as if this is some big shock,” Tasha said, holding her wineglass as if we were just sitting in the park discussing our finds at Saks. “I’m married, for Christ’s sake. This is just the natural course of life.”

  “Well, tell us what happened,” I said. “When did you come up with this natural course of life?”

  “Well, it was about a month ago. Lionel and I were bored, so we decided to go for a drive in the city. We ended up walking around, looking at things on St. Mark’s Street,” Tasha began to explain between sips of wine. “You know, where they have all that punk rock stuff in the Village? Well, we walked into this piercing shop to see if they had studs, and Lionel suggested I get a navel piercing. Y’all know how I feel about piercings.”

  “You hate them,” Tamia said. Tasha always said body piercings were the ultimate symbol of a “cheap trick.” While I was impartial to the idea, I had to admit that most of the tricks I knew had piercings.

  “Yeah. So Lionel got down on his knees in the store and kissed my navel. It was so cute. Then he said, ‘I guess we better not go messing with stuff down here anyway,’ and kissed my navel again. When we left the store, I was on cloud nine. I felt sparks all over my stomach when Lionel was down there. It just felt so right. You know?”

  Tamia and I nodded our heads intently. Tasha and Lionel were a match made in heaven. They were good together. But were they ready for a baby?

  “Anyway, just before we got back to the car, in the middle of Lionel talking about how the team was going to build up their defense for next season, I asked him if he loved me. Without even stopping to breathe or ask me why I was asking him, he said ‘Yes, I love you.’”

  “Oh,” Tamia and I cooed.

  “And it wasn’t just any ‘I love you,’ y’all. It was like the same kind of ‘I love you’ I heard the first time he said it. It was so real.”

  “That’s beautiful, Tasha,” Tamia said, bending across the table to kiss Tasha on her cheek.

  “Yeah, but where does the baby come in?” I asked.

  “Just there, just right there on the spot, I decided that I wanted to have his children,” Tasha answered. Tamia and I looked at each other. That was a big statement. You could date a man, you could love a man, you could even marry a man…but saying out loud to the world that you wanted to have his children was pretty big. It was so final. What Tasha had just done—in her own little way—was announce to us that Lionel was the only man she wanted to be with for the rest of her life. It was like the last call for alcohol was coming at the bar and Tasha was heading out the door. I guess Lionel wasn’t just going to be her first husband like people had said at the wedding. “I decided I wanted a baby and I stopped taking the pill about a week ago,” Tasha said.

  “Great, did you tell Lionel?” I asked, realizing how silly the question was when it came out.

  “Did you tell him?” I heard Tamia say after a moment of silence passed from Tasha’s end of the table.

  “No, not yet.”

  “What?”

  “What does she mean she didn’t tell Lionel?” Tamia’s eyes went back and forth between me and Tasha.

  “I just haven’t. I figured I’d let him know once I got pregnant. Leave all the worrying to me.”

  “No,” Tamia said. “I think you have to tell him, Tasha. It’s really selfish if you don’t.”

  “I agree,” I said, backing up Tamia.

  “Please, Lionel’s busy with finals right now. He really doesn’t even have time for this.”

  “What if he’s not ready? What if he needs you to wait until the season is over or something? I don’t know, but this is wrong, Tasha,” Tamia said. “You have to tell him.”

  “What are you afraid of?” I asked.

  “I’m not afraid of anything. I just want to do this my way. That’s all.” I could tell we were aggravating Tasha. Her eyes were tearing up. “And it’s not open for discussion. That’s it,” she said, wiping a tear. “I was just telling you guys so you would know. I was thinking about making you two the godparents. But if you don’t want the job, just let me know. But I’m having my baby.” Tasha jumped up from the table and ran toward the bathroom.

  I looked at Tamia from across the table.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked just as the bathroom door slammed. “Must be the hormones kicking in already.”

  “Well, she won’t be needing this anymore,” Tamia said, picking up Tasha’s abandoned wineglass. She tipped it up and took the last sip.

  The Spring Cleaning: Out with the Old Men, In with the New

  “Because a man is like a tissue in a box…if you pull it out, there’s another one waiting right behind it.”

  When your love life is in desperate need of a jump start, it may be time to do some old-fashioned spring cleaning. Get rid of those old duds and start anew with a fresh batch of contenders. Think of it as if you’re the coach of an NBA team, a losing NBA team, and the only thing standing between you and the championship ring is five lame starting players. The smartest thing you could do is clean off the bench and draft some new blood.

  Now, simultaneously dumping each and every one of the men you date is harder than it sounds. Men don’t like being dissed (especially the ones you’ve slept with) and they may get a little defiant. Therefore, you must be quick with the split. Break out your broom and sweep them all up in one fell swoop.

  Instructions:

  1. Make a list of all of your soon to be exes and why they have to go (e.g., Michael=cheater, Kevin=cheap bastard, Frank=bad breath).

  2. E-mail each of them the same note saying that it’s over and you don’t want to talk about it. Tell them your feelings are not negotiable and not to call, because you’ve changed your number.

  3. Change your number immediately. This step may sound drastic but, remember, you can’t get a new future if you’re holding on to the old past. Call your closest friends and family to let them know your new digits. Anyone else probably doesn’t need to have your number anyway. It also stops you from having to deal with those awful defiant phone calls from men who can’t take no for an answer.

  4. Overnight any connections (e.g., boxers, casserole dishes, CDs, DVDs) to the men you dumped. Meeting to return items will only make things harder. If you’re a true bad girl, there’s no way you left anything at his place.

  5. Get a few of your friends to go out with you to start recruiting, wear that one thing you know always turns heads (that dress that hugs all the right places, the stilettos that make your legs look amazing and inspire you to walk like a supermodel, those jeans that make your behin
d look like Beyonce’s), and let the tryouts begin.

  Top Four Reasons to Do a Spring Cleaning

  1. You don’t see yourself marrying any of the men you’re dating.

  2. None of the men you’re dating is really good for you.

  3. None of them has any one stellar quality that you absolutely cannot find in another man: amazing sex, engaging wit, or the ability to make you laugh until you cry.

  4. It’s been two years and none of them…not one of them…is talking about settling down. Stop wasting your precious time.

  Step One: Light as a Feather (Not Stiff as a Board)

  Before I let Tasha and Tamia out, we discussed step one of the plan. Hearing Miata’s voice on Julian’s cell phone had my blood boiling, and I was ready to put the “Take Her Man Plan” into action. After polishing off the last bottle of wine, the three of us agreed that it would be best to begin with a phone call. I was to call Julian, sound extremely light—yet friendly—and invite him to the reception for my Nana Rue’s new play. While Tasha said she didn’t exactly like the idea of me inviting Julian out to an event that included my family (we’d all seen that go completely wrong a few times), I talked her into it, explaining that Julian was a huge black theater buff and he’d always wanted to see my father’s mother, none other than the one and only Ms. Rue Betsch Smith, perform.

  During the ’30s and ’40s, my Nana Rue was known throughout the world as a stage actress and classically trained opera singer. Like most African-American performers back then, Nana Rue despised the American theater and critics for how they treated African-American entertainers. Even established performers like Nana Rue, who’d been trained at Fisk University and traveled all over the world as a Fisk Jubilee Singer, simply couldn’t find good roles in the States. While Nana Rue was a child of Harlem, growing up at Sugar Hill’s 409 Edgecomb Avenue alongside the likes of Roy Wilkins and W. E. B. DuBois, she didn’t want to settle for the “Negro actress” roles that were offered to her after she returned home from school in 1935. She said she wanted no parts of the new “en vogue” Harlem that she felt put the people she loved so dearly under a self-sacrificing microscope that allowed in any ear with a dollar for a cheap thrill. The daughter of a Harlem insurance man, Nana Rue was very proud of the Harlem she’d grown up in and she never wanted to share it with the voyeuristic white faces she saw tucked here and there when she returned. She was no racist, but it was hard not to hate the segregated crowds, the black roles written by black writers who were being fully supported by white patrons. She once told me that she thought she’d left the Jubilee Singers behind at Fisk and she wanted to be seen as an entertainer, separate from her color. It was nearly impossible to do that at that time.