I looked at the alarm clock. It said 3:37 a.m. I thought about the drama of work. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. Canun had set me up, but I decided right then that I wouldn’t be the fall girl for anyone anymore. I was sick of Mina, I was sick of Eric, and I was especially sick of Canun Ramsey! I must have dozed off for a few minutes, because when I looked at the clock again it read 4:10 a.m.
I adjusted my goosedown pillow under my head and pulled my arms out from under my new mint green sheets. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. All my life I’d been Miss Courageous. All my life I would say or do what I thought was right despite what anybody thought. Last year, I was the top sales rep in that office, and what did I get for it? Set up! That’s what.
I reached for the phone and dialed the number to my office. Canun Ramsey’s voice mail picked up and I wondered if I should actually do this. The beep said it was my turn to talk.
“Hello, Canun.” My voice sounded Macy Grayish raspy. It mattered not—I had some things to get off my chest. “Uhh, it’s Chantell. Look, I am not coming in today.” I was getting bolder by the moment. “No, I’m not coming in for a while. You knew that you didn’t have that Skyway deal, and when it fell through, you let me take the fall for it. You need to grow up!”
I wondered if I had gone a bit too far. “Don’t look for me tomorrow. Bye!”
There. I hung up the phone. I’d done some crazy stuff in my time, I admit, but I’d never quit my job without having another one. I was too mature for that. I had a townhouse payment and a new car! I should have been worried. In fact, I probably should have had an anxiety attack, right then and right there!
But I didn’t. I just closed my eyes and went back to sleep.
13
Getting Nowhere
When I woke up at 7:30, I first thought that I had overslept, then I remembered that I probably didn’t have a job. I stepped out of the shower and put on my new camel-colored slacks. Lately I’d been eating even when I wasn’t hungry, and today I noticed that they were a little tight in the stomach area. I slid on a long-sleeved, cream-colored shirt. After I finished getting dressed, I grabbed my keys and left the house with absolutely nowhere to go.
It was 8:43 a.m. and the sky looked dreary. I climbed into my black Jeep Wrangler, and tried not to think about its getting repossessed. My cellular phone started ringing as soon as the engine was warm. I grabbed the phone and looked at who was calling. It was Cameron, a cool white sister-girl who sat near me at work. Curious about what the folks in the office were saying, I answered.
“Yes?” I answered.
“Umm, Miss Thing, where the heck are you?” she asked.
“Chillin’ at home. What’s up, Cameron?”
“Chantell, Canun is mad as all get out! What are you trying to do? People in the office are saying that you are AWOL, and that you probably won’t be coming back. Canun is passing out your accounts and everything. Girl, you’d better get in here!”
I didn’t even want to hear this. I’d proven myself ten times over. I’d brought the paper a ton of money over the last two years, and I still hadn’t taken a vacation. I needed a break. I was tired.
“You know what, Cameron? I don’t really give a rat’s butt. I’m not going back in there until I’m ready. If I’m ever ready. And I don’t have to explain anything to Canun. He needs to be explaining himself to me. I’m sorry, I gotta go. Bye!” I hung up on her. Let them fire me, if that’s what they wanted to do. I was an achiever. The phone rang again. I turned it off. Now I was crying.
“I am sick and tired of this crap!”
I grabbed my wallet out of my purse and found a card for the EAP, the Employee Assistance Program. I dialed the number and a call screener picked up right away.
“Hello, employee assistance crisis line. May I help you?”
Did he say crisis as in C-R-I-S-I-S?
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
I was not in a crisis. I didn’t use drugs. I was not a teen runaway, and I had never been married. What kind of crisis could I possibly have had?
I hung up the phone, started up the Jeep, and drove around until I ended up at Daddy and Charlotte’s house. I figured they were upstairs, so I used my key and entered through the kitchen. I hoped she wasn’t on a rampage today. I’d already been through enough. Charlotte stood near the stove in an oversize, yellow-flowered house dress. She was stirring up eggs in a white rubber bowl. Preparing Daddy an omelet, no doubt.
“Hi, Charlie,” I said to her.
“Hey, Chawnee,” she said, as her brown fingers poured the eggs from the white bowl into a shiny silver skillet. “How come you’re not at work?”
She was accusing me right off. Jeez, lady, I had a lot going on, and I was trying to be in a good mood. I’d only been in the door for thirty seconds. Can you let me get in the house before you start digging?
“I’m going in this afternoon,” I told her, biting the side of my lip. I knew what I was doing, and it was my business.
“Oh,” she said doubtfully, like she knew me so well. She was always suspicious of me like that. I am full-grown, in case she hadn’t noticed. I put her on the list of people that I was sick of.
“Is my dad up?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s up there watching the ball game channel.”
My parents had just had marble floors and new white carpet put in. I stepped out of my new pointy-toed brown leather boots, set them by the front door, and headed up the stairs. Their bedroom door was cracked, so I pushed it open.
Daddy was sitting up in bed looking healthy, watching television. He was clean-shaven, as usual, except for his thick salt-and-pepper mustache. He had a big shiny bald head on top, and salt-and-pepper hair on the sides that he brushed downward from ear to ear.
“Hey, Baseball Ballerina!” Daddy was recovering well.
“Hey, Papa Doe’s Pizza!” I said.
My dad and I got along great. We’d been calling each other silly names ever since I could talk.
“You’re up and about bright and early. Why aren’t you at work, babygirl?”
“Oh, I took the morning off. I’ll probably go in this afternoon.”
“I see. Where is your coat? It looks like it’s going to rain. Did you go out this morning without one on? Chawnee, don’t you leave here without a coat. You hear me? Shoot. Girl, it’s colder out there than a polar bear’s behind.”
I laughed. “Okay, Daddio.”
He was funny. He constantly compared stuff to everything’s butt. No matter what the topic was, he found a way to make it into a lesson with a butt in it. If I told him to taste a spicy food, he’d say, “Girl, that food is hotter than a flea’s butt running across a campfire.”
“Here, Daddy,” I said. “I brought you something.”
I reached into my Prada backpack purse and took out a Monterey Jazz Festival baseball cap, to add to his collection. I went over and put it on his head. “Next February, when you’re up to it, you and I are going to the jazz festival.”
Daddy smiled. “Yep . . . By then, I’ll be as good as new.”
No prostate cancer or heart attack was going to get the best of my dad.
I thought about the coconut-shell anklet that I had on. It would make a nice bracelet for him. I took it off and grabbed his wrist to fasten it on.
“Aww naw!” he teasingly grumbled. “Here you come decorating me wit a whole bunch of barrettes and clamps and fasteners!”
“Aww, Daddy, this ain’t no barrette, it’s a bracelet for you. Hold still.”
Daddy huffed and puffed, but I knew he secretly liked the gift. I giggled and closed the fastener. My daddy wouldn’t leave me. He couldn’t leave me; nobody cracked me up like he did.
Charlotte walked in the door with Dad’s omelet and she started in on me. She waited until I got in front of Daddy to comment on my new braids. She was always trying to make him see the “real me,” and she’d been doing it since I was little.
She pointe
d at my long black extensions that I’d gotten cornrowed down to my butt. “You’ve been going to work looking like that?” she asked.
I sucked my teeth and didn’t say a word. My braids were something that I’d wanted to do for a long time. Ever since I’d seen Eve sporting some long blond ones in a video.
“Well, you won’t make VP of advertising looking like that. That’s not professional,” she said.
“Charlotte, I don’t really give a flying freak right now. Okay?” My chest started to feel tight again.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Chantell, you calm down and watch your mouth!” said my father.
“Yeah, girl your mouth is somethin’ else,” Charlotte said. “You’re so pretty, but that attitude just makes you ugly. You need to stop all that!”
“Now hold up on, you guys!” my daddy said sternly. “We’re not doing that this morning. Okay?”
I rolled my eyes. Charlotte was always provoking me. I really didn’t care what corporate America thought right then. Corporate America didn’t care about me. I didn’t care about corporate America. And what did she know about corporate America anyway? She hadn’t worked in ten years.
I sat there and hung out with her and my dad for as long as I could. The three of us watched television together in silence. When I left it was still cold but the sun was out. I took my keys out of my purse and zipped up Charlotte’s red sweat jacket. Daddy was right, it was too cold to be out without a coat.
In the car, I checked my voice mail; Eric had called. “Yes, Chantell. I just left a message at your office too. I guess you’re in a meeting. Look, baby, I’m not sure why you’re trippin’. Those girls weren’t anybody to me. We were just talking, that’s all,” he said. “You know I want to be with you. So you need to stop acting like that, and come over here tonight . . .”
I took the phone from my ear. That was exactly what I didn’t need to do! What I needed was for Charlotte to get off my back. What I needed was for my daddy to fully recover. I looked at my long fingers and the glossy coat of peach nail polish on the tips. What I needed was for Eric to marry me. That was what I needed! I hit the delete button.
14
Take a Stand
I’d driven around thinking for a few hours before I heard my stomach grumble. A hot pastrami sandwich had been on my mind for a couple of days. I spotted a yellow Subway sign just off the freeway and pulled into their parking lot.
A buzzer sounded when I walked in the door and up to the counter. Metal edges outlined the glass, through which I could see green-and-white lettuce shreds, tomato rings, black olives, green peppers, and little pieces of paper that covered the meats and cheeses.
“. . . Hey, sweetheart? I’ve got a customer. Hang on a minute,” said the tall, thin guy from behind the counter. He set down the phone and put on a pair of plastic gloves.
“Hi. How are you today?” His skin was the color of peanut butter, and his face was still spotted with acne.
“Just great.” I smiled my normal smile.
“White or wheat?”
“Um, wheat.”
“Six-inch or foot-long?”
“Six-inch.”
I ordered my hot pastrami sandwich, a bottled water, and a bag of Lay’s and sat down at a table. Why did they put the sandwich in a plastic bag even after you’d told them that you were dining in?
The employee retrieved the phone and proceeded to talk. “Okay, we’ll leave as soon as I get off work, and we’ll get there about eight.”
I unwrapped the paper from my sandwich.
“Don’t worry, I’ll just tell your father. It’s between us men. Kristen, leave it up to me. I’ll do the talking . . . Baby, we’re not going to sleep in separate— We’re not— I’ll just explain. Honey, I am your husband. Alright? It’s me and you forever.”
I took a bite of my warm sandwich. It wasn’t as flavorful as I thought it would be. I chewed slowly and glanced toward the guy, who looked to be about nineteen or twenty years old. Her and him forever.
I smiled as I remembered being a teen and struggling for my independence. I remembered how difficult it had been for my dad to deal with the fact that I had a boyfriend. He’d had a fit. He’d tried to scare the guy whom I thought I was in love with by saying that he’d grown up on the mean streets of Chicago and had mob connections. Then he’d changed our phone number and put me on restriction. I smiled remembering that awful day.
The guy behind the counter went on. “Well, we’re adults, you know. We’ll just say to them— Baby. I’ll say it! Don’t worry. We are going to finish school and everything will be okay. I’ll be ready to leave here at four-thirty. I love you too. Okay, bye.”
The kid behind the counter was willing to stand up with, and for, his girl. I needed to get Eric to see that he was supposed to stand up with and for me. I needed a lot of things. I needed Canun to know that he couldn’t dump his issues off on me, and I needed Charlotte to stop attacking me at every corner. But right then, I needed Eric to want our relationship like the kid behind the counter wanted his.
I picked up my cell and dialed Eric back. It rang.
“Yeah.”
“Eric, it’s me. Eric, did you do anything with that girl on the boat?”
“What? No, Chantell. You know me better than that!”
“Then how come you left with her?”
He let out a long breath of air. “Chantell, I’m at work. And I can’t talk about this now, okay?”
I looked over at the young man who was taking fresh hot bread from the oven. Then I said what I thought.
“Eric, I think we should get married.”
“Chantell, I’ll talk to you later, babe. Bye.”
I hung up, and wanted to scream. Two long years I’d wasted on him. I’d given him over seven hundred days of my life! Why wouldn’t he stand up for me? I took my sunglasses off the top of my head and put them over my eyes. What was wrong with me?
I needed to talk to someone. I looked in my purse and found the EAP card again.
The call screener answered. “Thank you for calling the Employee Assistance Program. My name is Mitch.”
“Yes. Hi, Mitch, I need to talk to someone. Like a therapist or something,” I added.
“Sure. What kind of concerns are you having, ma’am?”
“I don’t know, I have a lot of bills and pressures, I think I just quit my job, my relationship is a joke. My stepmother picks on me . . . and I’m just tired.”
“Slow down, slow down, it’ll be okay. I’m here to help,” he said.
He took my name and address and found two therapists in my area.
“Do they have a specialty area that they work in? I mean, I want to talk to someone who specializes in stress.”
As opposed to someone who specialized in Tourette’s syndrome, or someone who was afraid to walk under ladders.
“Ma’am, I’m no therapist, but it sounds like your issues are pretty common. All of our therapists and counselors are fully trained and accredited and can assist you with stress. I’m sure that we’ve got help for you, but I’ll tell you something. Whatever your problems are, pray about them, it always works for me.”
“Okay,” I said and wiped away the tears that had been burning in my eyes and refusing to fall.
He gave me the two therapists’ names and numbers and told me to call them. “If one doesn’t work, try the other one. If neither clicks with you, call us back and get more referrals. Sometimes it takes a little work to find a good person for you to talk to. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I was lucky. I phoned the first one, and she happened to have a cancellation. She said that I could stop by that afternoon.
15
San Francisco’s Got a Lot of Birds
I arrived at the therapist’s office that afternoon. I was the only one in the waiting room. It was a small, plain-looking office in a large building in San Francisco. There was an old beige couch in the waiting area, and two card table chairs across from it, with
a wooden end table in between—on which lay a birdwatching magazine and a Reader’s Digest. The pictures on the walls were dusty.
The therapist’s door opened and she asked me to come in. She had long black hair with thin strips of gray throughout. I sat down on a hard chair next to her desk.
“So why are you here today?” she asked.
I said, “Well, I’m tired.” I didn’t know what to say.
“Please go on,” she said.
“Well, I’m not sleeping good at night, and I think I don’t have a job anymore.”
“Why would you think that? What happened?” she asked.
Not knowing where to begin, I said, “Well, my boss keeps doing underhanded things to me.” I then described a painful incident: “Last week he told me that he needed to turn in a report on the number of new business contacts that I had made within the last two weeks. I counted up all of mine and they totaled forty-eight. So I submitted forty-eight new names. When he got my numbers, he pulled me to the side and said with a chuckle that he didn’t think that forty-eight was a realistic number to submit. He said that was an awful lot of new contacts even for me. He said that upper management wouldn’t believe I had truly made that many contacts. So I said fine. He said he would tone down my number to something believable, like twenty-six or thirty. I didn’t necessarily like it, but I said fine—whatever! He was my boss and knew what he was doing, right? Well, when all the offices around the country had turned in their numbers, headquarters put them all into a spreadsheet and sent them out to us. Everyone’s numbers were displayed, and mine was near the bottom. The report showed that nearly everyone reported that they had made more calls than I had. Canun himself said that he’d made forty-one new contacts!”
“And how did that make you feel?” she asked.
Whoever said there was no such thing as a stupid question had never met this therapist. It had made me feel terrible, of course! I had been pissed! Really pissed. But to her I just said, “It made me upset.” I must have looked like I was holding back because she looked into my eyes like she was trying to read me.
Sweet Bye-Bye Page 7