Sweet Bye-Bye

by Denise Michelle Harris

  “I’m doing well, working an unbelievable amount of hours, but it’s all good,” he said. “I’m just confirming our date for tomorrow. Please tell me we’re still on.”

  “You know that we are. What time?” I asked.

  “Great. Five o’clock?”

  “Sounds good. I’m looking forward to hanging out.” I hung up the phone and put the apples in boiling water. I smiled and nodded. Keith Rashaad. I had to remember that sometimes patience was everything.

  The next afternoon I flipped through my CD collection and stumbled across Erykah Badu. She did her thing in my CD player while I took a shower and got ready for my “buddy date” with Keith Rashaad. I was glossing my lips when the doorbell rang.

  I opened the door, and Keith said, “Hello, Chantell.” His subtle fragrance drifted through my doorway.

  “Hello, Keith Talbit.”

  Keith stepped in my front door and kissed my cheek. I took his coat in my one hand and waved my other hand around the room to present my little living space to him. “Tah-dah!”

  “This is great.” He looked around at the custom-fitted wooden shutters on each of my windows, and my super-soft Italian leather sofas that I’d just paid off in August. “This is very nice, Chantell. It fits you.”

  “How do you know what fits me?” I asked.

  “I just know.” And he smiled like the allergic little boy that he used to be.

  I almost giggled.

  “It smells great in here.”

  “Thanks, it’s lemongrass,” I said.

  “I like it.”

  I smiled. “Please have a seat.”

  Erykah Badu sang from the speakers softly.

  “I love her music,” I said.

  Keith grabbed my hand. “Me too. You can finish getting ready in a moment. Hang out with me.” He held my hand as we walked over and sat on the couch, below my mother’s painting of a little girl and boy, and listened to the song.

  My eyes closed. We sat there, feeling the song. Not saying a word, we gently rocked from side to side, while Erykah belted like only she could. And without sex, or groping, or grinding, Keith Rashaad Talbit quenched my thirst.

  “So where are we going?” I asked finally.

  “You’ll see,” he said. I grabbed my purse and followed him out the door. We cut across the lawn and out to the carport. He’d parked in my extra car space—a dark blue Lincoln Town Car.

  “Your car?” I asked.

  “Nah, this is the chief of staff’s extra car.”

  “Oh,” I said and headed toward it.

  Keith turned toward me and asked, “Chantell, do you trust me?”

  “Yes, of course, Keith Rashaad.”

  “Good. Then give me your keys.”

  “Huh?”

  He held out his hands. “Give me your keys.”

  I reached into my purse and handed him the keys. He walked over to the passenger side of my Jeep, opened the door, and motioned for me to get in. I sat down, and he went around and got into the driver’s side.

  “Where are we going?”

  He smiled and said, “You’ll see.”

  We went to a little family restaurant and grabbed a bite to eat, then stopped by Merritt Bakery. “Wait here,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, in what I’m sure sounded like a confused tone. I sat there and looked around. The sun was starting to set. The temperature was nice, like lukewarm water. People in spandex were walking toward Lake Merritt. It was a fine evening to be outside.

  I’d just changed the radio station when Keith came back with a little pink box just big enough for a piece of pie. “Here,” he said. “Hold that.”

  I held on to the box and we were on our way once again. It was about 7:30 and the sun was going down when Keith drove us to a do-it-yourself car wash.

  I laughed. “Dude, what are you trying to say?”

  He put his finger to his lips. “Shh!” He was so cute.

  The sky was orange and blue, and the car wash’s night lights were already on. He pulled into the end stall, then turned on KBLX, the Quiet Storm, and Anita Baker’s voice filled the air. He stepped out of the car and went over to the quarter machine. I turned up Anita so that we could hear her.

  When he returned he had a handful of quarters, which he started to put in the machine. I walked around to the back to check to see if my gym shoes were in there. I opened up the back of the Jeep and looked.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I’m going to help,” I said.

  He closed up the back of the truck and turned to me and said, “I got this.”

  “Okay.” Yes indeed, he was very cute.

  He went to the front, opened the door, reached in and took out the pink bakery box and a black plastic fork. “Here. Make yourself useful by working on this.” I opened the box and looked at the huge piece of cake topped with a ton of fresh strawberries and whipped cream. The strawberries were deep red and pressed into the mountain of cream.

  “Ohhh, this looks wonderful! Eat some with me.”

  “Negative, mate,” he said. “I’ve got a Wrangler to wash.”

  He went back over to the machine and continued to put quarters in. I stood back and the machines revved up. Keith rinsed off the Jeep. I stood just feet away and watched him go to work. I’d never been on a date like this before. Ever.

  I yelled over the machine’s noise, “Sure I can’t do something?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “you can eat your cake.”

  I sliced into the cake with my fork and delighted in the sweetness of the berries and the fresh whipped cream. Oh my goodness. I didn’t realize that I’d closed my eyes. When I opened them, Keith was looking right at me.

  The cinnamon in my skin hid it, but I’m sure my cheeks were red.

  “Good stuff, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  29

  Change Goin’ Come

  I admit, I didn’t know how to feel. I’d started to wonder if God had really spoken to me at church about this appointment, as I gave the cab driver the address.

  We drove to a neighborhood of beautiful San Francisco homes. They were huge old houses that sold for a million dollars or more. The driver stopped at the address, and I scoped the place out. I walked up the set of steps shared by the renovated Victorian that had been split in half. The porch was huge and each door had its own mailbox. The house was a light brown, trimmed in black. The door seals around each entranceway and the edgings around the windows were black. Neatly shaped and trimmed green shrubbery made a perfect rectangle outside the window on one side. On the other side there was a rose garden.

  I was about to knock on the door of the side that matched the address I’d written on the card, but a sign on the door said: “Please open the door and come up the stairs.” As I entered, the first thing I noticed was a black wrought-iron flower stand in the corner and a huge set of narrow and steep stairs that led upward. As I walked up the stairs I could hear music playing. Music with no words. Violins played with the sound of waves crashing though them; incense burned, and I continued up the stairs and found a sparsely decorated waiting room. A couple of pictures hung on the walls. One was a black chalk drawing, the other an abstract painting of many colors. There were a couple of bulletin boards that held flyers, and a poster was pinned to one of them. There was a little waiting area with four chairs.

  Someone else was sitting in the waiting area. He looked nineteen or twenty. He had a square face and wore round glasses. His hair was a bright red and his fair skin bore tiny freckles. He was holding an instrument, perhaps a trombone. He didn’t look like he had any issues. I figured he was a teenage rebel, whose parents had forced him to come here by threatening to throw him out of the house if he didn’t get his act together. I wondered if he had a drug problem and abused crank or ecstasy.

  I was plenty nervous about being here. I shook my head as I thought about the last time I’d “spoken” to someone and she’d asked
me if I was suicidal. What the heck was I doing here? This wasn’t for black folks. We didn’t talk to shrinks, we worked out our own problems. We’d had enough labels and stereotypes about us. I wanted to leave. But I sat there with the teen, determined to see where all of this led.

  I didn’t see a place to sign in, so I grabbed an issue of Good Housekeeping magazine out of the rack and pretended to read, but really I watched water float through a little fountain in the corner.

  A lady came out one of the doors.

  “Thank you, Tammy. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

  “You’re welcome. See you then. Bye-bye.”

  The doors closed again, and I asked the young redhead, “Am I supposed to sign in somewhere?”

  “Nah, your person will come out and get you.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” I told him.

  I got up and went over to the message boards on the far wall. A small plaque on the outside of one of the doors read: “Mary Higgins, Licensed Massage Therapist.” The bulletin board next to it had postings for different types of services. People had put their flyers and business cards up advertising everything from tutors for your child to massage therapy training to obedience classes for your dog.

  A moment later, a black man with brown hair and green eyes opened a door on which the sign read, “Fredrick Brown, Ph.D.” He said, “Chantell Meyers?” I walked over to him, and he opened his door wider for me to come in. He was maybe five-seven or five-eight, and about fifty years old. He had a short Afro and black plastic-framed glasses. He wore a blue plaid lumberjack shirt and jeans. He wasn’t dressed the way that I thought a nut-counselor should be. There was a beige tweed couch against the wall near the door. I went and sat down. He sat at his desk and turned toward me. His desk faced the wall, and above it was a bookshelf with probably five hundred books. I looked at the titles. Cognitive Behavior. Communication 101. Depression Therapy. Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults. Heal Your Marriage. Yoga. The Benefits of Running and Exercise. He smiled at me. I felt a little more comfortable.

  “Ms. Meyers, I’m Dr. Fredrick Brown. What brings you in to see me today?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I kind of smiled. “I guess I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “Start anywhere you’d like.”

  I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose. Then I looked across the room, over to his degrees and certifications on the wall with the big window. I wondered what I’d say. I had nothing to lose, so I tried the truth.

  “Okay, the other night, I had a weird dream. And in real life, I am always playing the person who is unaffected. And I know that this is probably not good for me, but I don’t know how to stop.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “Let’s just break it down.”

  Did he just say break it down?

  He looked at my expression and chuckled. “Ms. Meyers, I have a question for you.”

  I looked at him.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Good. Then why don’t we spend a moment and ask God to be present with us before we go on?”

  “Sure,” I said. That sounded like a good idea to me.

  Then he closed his eyes and held his hands open before him. I did the same. “Dear Heavenly Father,” he said, “we ask for You to guide this session, and to give us wisdom. You know this young woman’s heart, Father, but we ask for You to give her courage to open up and see herself and what direction You’ll have her take. Please, Father, allow her to walk out of these doors with a new perspective. All of this, we ask Lord Jesus in Your precious name. Amen.”

  I opened my eyes. Fredrick Brown seemed like a good man, but I’d never heard of a psychiatry session going like this before! Then he said, “Tell me about your family. I’d like to know where you come from.”

  I told him my story and he listened. You’d think that I would have been hesitant, blabbing all of my business to this complete stranger, but somehow, once I started talking, things just tumbled out of my mouth. I told him about my ever-joking father. About the cancer. I told him about my grandmother, who said I was just like her.

  I looked over at him, and he was just nodding his head. Shouldn’t he have been taking notes or something? He kept listening, so I told him about my successes at work. And about that Mina Everett woman, and how we kept our distance from each other at work so that we could keep our jobs. I told him how I never cried in front of people. I told him about my mother, whom we never discussed in my family as though she’d never existed. And that my father and I were going to get around to discussing her soon.

  “Stop right there,” he said with a finger pointed at nothing in particular. “If you will, I’d like to ask you to just stay there for just a moment. Tell me about your mom.”

  “Sorry, there’s not much I can tell you about my mother. I don’t know much about her.” I needed to tell him about my incompetent boss.

  “Well, try,” he said. “Tell me what you do know about your mother.”

  “But that’s just it!” I looked him in the eye. “She died when I was five, so I don’t know anything!”

  The little black man just stared back at me. Like he didn’t believe me. What was his problem? I guess I’d decided that I liked him a little too soon. I looked at him sternly, silent. The first one to speak lost. I folded my arms, because like I’d already said, I didn’t know my mother. He didn’t budge. He must have been stupid or something. If a person didn’t know something, then she just didn’t know!

  His green eyes were on me. Trying to pierce me open. After what felt like thirty minutes of silence, they did. I was there for my benefit, and nobody else’s.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.” I took a long breath before I began. “Umm, I know that my mother was a painter. She made beautiful artwork. She never thought she could have kids because—” Oh God, what was I doing? “Because she had sickle-cell and she had fibroid cysts in her cervix. She had them so bad that before I was born, the doctors removed one of her fallopian tubes. She often said that I was her miracle baby, and she always said that I was supposed to be someone great.” My voice cracked as I said, “She should have never had me, though.”

  “Why do you say that, Chantell?”

  Emotion swept over me and caused my face to contort into what was probably an awful expression. I tried to contain it. I tried to regroup, but there was no turning back.

  The therapist took a tissue out of the box on his desk and gave it to me.

  “She shouldn’t have had kids,” I said. “She was too sick to have children. She’d probably still be here.”

  “Chantell, have you ever told anyone that you felt this way?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How did she pass away?” he asked.

  “The sickle-cell. She neglected her body. She was a real go-getter, and it put her in the hospital pretty often. Once she started feeling even a tiny bit better, she’d demand to go home. She didn’t like sitting in hospital beds, but she didn’t like laying up in the house either.”

  “You sound a lot like your mother. Being driven and all.”

  I liked hearing that. It made me smile. “She was patient, and a wonderful mom. We’d often go to street fairs together, and explore the world on the weekends.”

  “Chantell, do you think that you’re the reason that your mother isn’t here?”

  I looked at the floor and nibbled at the side of my lip. He was going too far. Why was he asking so many questions?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Chantell, you’re an intelligent woman. Surely you know that if your mother was sick, and if she didn’t find the time to take good care of herself, then her getting sicker is not your fault. How could you have made her sick?”

  I just looked at the floor and jiggled my knee.

  He fired away again, “When was the last time you talked about your mother?”

  I shrugged. “I never talk about my mother.”

  “Do you
remember how you felt when she died?”

  I looked at him with a blank expression, then I said, “Like someone had pulled the rug out from under me. That’s a stupid question!”

  He didn’t seem affected by my lashing. He just kept going. “Listen to me. You know that life is not always fair. When it’s not, there is nothing wrong with crying. God did not promise us fairness, Chantell. And we don’t know why things happen, but the Bible does teach us, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the third chapter, that ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,’ and Chantell, you’re not responsible for your mother’s not being with us.”

  Well, I sure felt responsible, and I felt alone. Trying to get ahold of myself, I wiped my eyes and folded my arms.

  “Listen, you don’t have anything to prove to any of us. It’s okay to say, ‘This hurts me’ or ‘I feel bad when that happens,’ or to just cry.”

  We were both quiet.

  “Let me ask you this: Let’s say you’ve had a bad day at work, or better yet, let’s say you’ve had a disagreement with a friend. How do you handle situations like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t worry about things like that. I don’t depend on anyone. I make my own money. I make my own mortgage payments. I take myself on vacations. I don’t have to worry about that type of thing.”

  It sounded stupid after I said it. But I’d said it so many times before that it just came out. In the past, I’d been proud to say, “I lean on me.” But I wasn’t so certain that it was the answer to my life’s problems anymore.

  I was quiet.

  It shocked me when Dr. Brown said, “Chantell, you know what? I think you were right to spend some time away from work. You took off work in a rather colorful way, but it sounds like you were burned out and I think it was a good thing. You were trying to spend more time with yourself. You should do more of that. Feel your feelings. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  With a balled-up tissue in my hand, I nodded. I think I understood what he was saying, but I had another question. “Doctor, do people really change? I mean, if you’ve been doing something for a really, really long time, then aren’t you just that way?”