“Hello, anybody home?” I said.
“Come in. We’re in here!” said Tia from a distance. I walked in through the kitchen and set the bowl on the table.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” they greeted me.
Ron and Tia were on the couch together. She was sitting between his legs with her head back on his chest, reading a magazine. Those two could sit underneath each other all day.
“What are you guys up to?” I said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Oh, not much, just enjoying my husband’s day off. He’d work eight days a week if he could.”
“Hush, woman. If I stayed here every day, you’d be so sick of me,” said Ron jokingly.
Tia put her magazine on the table in front of her and walked barefoot over to the bowl that I had brought. “Yumm, Chawnee, did you put lots of pineapples in the salad?” she said and looked at me. Then she saw the phony smile I wore.
“Uh-oh, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, I’m okay. I did. I put in a lot of pineapples because I knew that you’d be looking for them.” I tried to giggle.
Over on the couch, Ron yelled, “Hey, Chawnee, where is this new guy Tia say you’re seeing? I was hoping you’d bring him and we could play some tonk.”
I was about to cry. Tia waved at Ron and said, “Hold on a minute, baby.” She walked over to the couch and leaned down to him. “Baby, Chantell and I are going to talk in the back room. We’ll be back.”
By the time we got down the hall, I felt terrible because I was crying wholeheartedly and spoiling the dinner party. I sat down on her bed and began to recount the story. I told her everything, not just the good parts about eating fresh strawberry cake while he washed my car. I told her about the dinner that I missed, and how I kept feeling he was going to leave me and go back to Boston. I told her about how he’d said things like “I love you,” and “I trust you,” but I didn’t know how to reciprocate. I told her about shoplifting Lemonheads, and the board he had at his apartment with a picture of us on Halloween. I even told her about the trip to Santa Cruz and the rented bikes and the kiss and little girl singing about the babies coming in the carriage, and how it scared me.
When I told her about the lake, and how Eric had sung his rap song where he called me a fake bi——, her eyes got big. And then I told her how I hit him, and he knocked me down, and how Keith Rashaad fought to protect me.
She stopped me. “Wait a minute, missy. I want to make sure I understand you right. Are you telling me that you hit the man? In front of the man’s friends? And in front of your new man?” Even I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. She was dumbfounded. “Girl, you’d lost your mind!”
I kept talking, and it felt good to tell the whole truth. I thought about the therapist who told me to “feel your feelings.” I told Tia the stories, but really I was speaking for me. The more I spoke, the clearer I felt. Renewed, washed in realness and truth.
“When all was said and done, he told me I didn’t have my priorities in order. He asked me what good was money and clothes if I’d never even felt the beauty of a sun rising. He told me ambition was nothing if you really didn’t know what happiness was.”
Tia sat there quietly with her hands folded in her lap. “Keith Rashaad’s a good guy.”
“I know,” I cried. “And I lost him. Tia, I mixed him up with mine and Eric’s foolishness and I lost him! He just walked away from me, and I haven’t heard from him since. What am I going to do, Tia?”
“Well, right now, you are going to calm down and you’re going to get a hold of yourself, and we’re going to go have some dinner.” My friend put her arm around my shoulder, and we walked back down the hall. “Then you’re going to listen, and trust. Isn’t that what you’re learning in church?”
I nodded. We went back into the kitchen. Ron stood at the stove stirring a big pot of jambalaya.
“I was getting worried. Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes, we just needed to do some girl talking,” said Tia.
“Yeah, Tia was lending me her ear, and listening to my problems. But I’m okay now.”
“Well, I’m sure glad. Now let’s eat,” he said.
We sat down and ate dinner at their little farm table near the kitchen. There were fresh yellow flowers on the table, and I could smell their fragrance.
“So what are you going to do with the paintings?” Tia asked.
“I have been thinking about it. I don’t know yet. I’ve put in calls to some of the art societies, and I am going to get their advice.”
“Good idea.”
Ron’s food was delicious, as usual. He was a wonderful cook. I looked at him. There was something that I really wanted to know. “Ron,” I said, “how did you know that Tia was the one for you?”
“Well, I knew something was up when I realized that I thought of her both as my friend, and yet romantically. I’d looked at her flaws and they didn’t matter. When she and I were together nobody else existed. When she wasn’t around, I could smell her. Then it dawned on me that there was nobody on earth more important to me than she was.”
“You’re so good to me,” said Tia.
I looked at them. Seeing their love and trust made me smile. Then I looked up at the new painting that I had given her. She’d put it on the wall in the dining area. It was my mother’s painting of a farmhouse.
“What do you think? Does it go good in here?” asked Tia.
“Yes, it looks perfect right there,” I said.
51
Metamorphosis
It was the middle of the night, and I’d tossed and turned, back and forth, till finally I got out of bed. I needed to get out of there. I needed to go see the sunrise.
In the dark, I walked over to the closet. I turned on the light and put on some gray sweats and a gray sweatshirt. My heart and my soul needed some attention.
The clock on the wall read 3:57 a.m. when I walked out my front door. I drove around with the window down so that the breeze hit my face. I approached the toll for the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Out of my ashtray, I scraped together two dollars in change and rolled down the window a bit more. The toll collector was a very slow-moving woman. My arm was extended to hand her the money for what seemed like forever. She finally took the money and I drove through.
I drove around San Francisco. It was dark, and the water surrounding the city made the air really cold. I rolled up the window and turned on the heat. It blasted me like puffs of air shot in your eye during an eye examination. I drove around the city past the people. The wanderers of the night.
My clock read 4:22 when I came to a big paved hill. I drove up it as I had so many times in high school. It was a steep drive, and the lighted cathedral at the top illuminated the dark sky.
Tonight, there were other cars parked on the street at the top of the hill. There were people relaxing and enjoying the view, mostly couples and teenagers. Some folks sat in their cars and talked, others sat along the steep hillside. I got out, pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt, and drew the strings tight. I wasn’t sure what I was doing out there. I had no plans. I walked up to the top of the hill, stood next to the cathedral, and looked out at the bay.
The view was incredible. I could see the bridges and expanses of water. I could see San Mateo, all the way down to Palo Alto, and beyond. I saw huge skyscrapers and cars and boats and trees. The trees at the top swayed uniformly, like maybe they were dancing. Dancing the dance of the earth, or bowing and praying to God.
Trees were just trees; nothing phony; they lived to serve their purpose. I recalled Keith’s calling me on what I thought was important: “Cars, shoes, clothes, and money.” Is that who I was? A material thing, is that what I’d been? I knew the answer.
Material things were indeed my cover. I’d showed the world that I was about possessions. But I needed to peel them off so I could find me. I sat down on a rock and thought. I’d been afraid to be vulnerable. I couldn’t even tell Keith that I
loved him too. He’d said he couldn’t make me be someone or something that I didn’t want to be.
If I had a pen and paper handy maybe I would have written down all of the things that I wanted to work on about me. Maybe I would have written down the pros and the cons of my behavior and analyzed them or something, but I couldn’t. So I moved down to the grass and sat with my knees up to my chest. I picked up a little rock for each time I realized something about me that I needed to change. I took a breath and looked out into the dark sky. It was starting. The sky was starting to turn to a lighter blue.
I wanted to put the materialistic thinking behind me. I picked up a rock. I’d been afraid to be vulnerable. But you had to trust someone, at some point, or your life would be hollow. I picked up another little rock. I was obsessed with looks, mine and everyone else’s, so I picked up two little rocks and put them in the growing pile. I’d been angry because I never got to know my mom. I picked up another rock. As a child, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me when Mom, Grandma, and Keith left. I was really afraid of being abandoned. I picked up a rock for each of them.
I looked out to the sky, and rays of orange and yellow poked out above a blue horizon. I had all of my little rocks in a pile. I put them in a circle like a gemstone necklace, or a tiara. Yes, a tiara for a princess. I looked up and the sun’s round head peered above the earth. The sky was white and light blue. The trees stood still, as if to show respect for the rising ball of light. I’d felt the beauty of a sunrise, and it was breathtaking.
A tear rolled down my face and onto my sweatshirt. I looked at my hands, at the dirt under my fingernails, at my clear fingernail polish that had started to peel. I pushed my tiara of rocks into the moist ground so that they would stay there. It was time for the spoiled princess to become a queen. I was going to have to find a way to talk with Keith Talbit.
When I got back in the Jeep, the door light came on. I looked at my Bible still in the backseat from church. I started the engine, reached in the back, and grabbed it. It fell open to the bookmark at Jeremiah 29. I scanned the page and found the verse that Pastor Fields had told us to read, Jeremiah 29:11, and read aloud: “For I know the thoughts that I think of toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
I repeated it several times, and it was comforting. “Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
As I reflected deep within myself, I saw that this was exactly the way it had worked out for me. I’d expected to have a lot of material possessions. I had expected to meet my goals at work. I had expected to be in relationships that had no realness to them. I had expected to argue with Charlotte all my life. I had expected Keith Talbit to leave me sooner or later. Just like the scripture promised, God had given me what I believed. My expected end.
When I got home that morning, I filled up the tub and took a long bubble bath. I didn’t know if it was God or not, but the idea of seeing Keith sounded better and better to me. Only I had no address, no telephone number, not even an e-mail address. Then I remembered David, the manager of the apartment complex where Keith used to live.
52
Seek and You Shall Find
As soon as I got off from work the next day, I drove over to the complex where Keith used to live. David the manager opened the door.
“Hi, David,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness.
“Hi.” He looked like he was trying to remember. “. . . Chantell, right?”
“Yes. I am sorry to bother you, but I had to ask you something.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, it’s a long story, but, see, Keith and I have been friends since we were little kids, and well, he said that he loved me, and well, I was acting really dumb, and see . . .” I swallowed. David studied me with one eye peering down and the other wide open. “And he left upset. And I love him, and see, he doesn’t know it. And I have to tell him.” This wasn’t coming out quite right, so I just looked at him and hoped that he understood.
David stared at me like he was waiting for me to get to the reason I was knocking on his door. Finally, with my eyes full of water, I said, “Can I have his address, please? I let him go because I was afraid. But I want to make it right.”
He was quiet. I had no idea if I’d gotten through to him.
For all he knew, I could be a stalker. Then, with his lips pursed together, he said, “Wait right here.”
I stood there for a moment. He came back with a contract in his hand and read aloud, “. . . All of the information provided in this said agreement is strictly confidential, and to be used as such herewith—”
“Okay. I get it!” I said. David could be rude. I turned to walk away.
Then he said, “Hold on for a moment. I didn’t thank you for the coffeecake. My parents were here last weekend, and my mom makes the best raspberry tart you could ever eat. I grew up on the stuff. You have to try some.”
David was probably a really cool dude and all, and I knew he wasn’t trying to push up on me. But didn’t he hear a word of what I’d just said? I was grieving! What was wrong with people? Plus, I didn’t even eat no raspberries! I was going to say no thank you and excuse myself, but he grabbed me by my wrist and said, “Come in, I don’t bite. I’ll get you some.”
I didn’t know what his deal was. That is, until he did something that was so cool. He set Keith’s contract down on the counter in front of me and flipped to the side where Keith’s previous address was listed. Then he patted my arm and smiled broadly. “I’ll just set this here and go get you some of that tart.”
I was overjoyed. I knew it! Somehow, someway, I knew I was going to Boston. I took a pen out of my purse and wrote down the address in my phone book.
David returned after I had finished and handed me a Baggie with the dessert in it.
“Thank you,” I said, “so much.”
“Oh, it’s no big deal really. Mom brings it all the time.”
I hugged him and left.
53
To Boston
The address said that he was in Cambridge, which was not far from Boston. I wasn’t going to tell anybody that I was going, but Tia knew something was up when I accidentally told her that I was dusting off my little suitcase. And so I had to confess.
I switched ears on the phone, and said, “Yes, I got a good price on a plane ticket on priceline.com and I gave them my credit card number already, so I can’t back out. I leave tomorrow.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Just the night. I arrive in Cambridge tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll turn around and fly right back on Sunday.”
“How do you feel?”
“Well, I’m a little nervous, but I have to tell him, Tia. I have to.” I told her how I got the address.
“Well, I’m shocked, but I’m proud of you. Go get your man then, girlfriend. Do what you gotta do. You know I am rooting for you.”
“Thanks, Tia.”
I finished packing my overnight case and went to bed.
The next morning I was excited. I arrived at the airport half an hour early. I parked my car and checked in. The plane was only half full. And everyone seemed to still be half asleep. I had a window seat; the chair next to me was empty, and a man sat in the seat closest to the aisle. He was in his twenties and had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a pen in his shirt pocket. He read from the morning paper, stopping often to make notes in the margins. Across from us was a lady with stirrup pants that went down into short boots. She had on a red floral shirt that was shaped like a teepee. I hadn’t had much sleep and asked the man, “I am going to close this windowshade, do you mind?”
“No, not at all,” he said and turned on the little reading light above his head. I pulled closed the windowshade, wrapped myself in the little yellow blanket that the plane provided, and waited for takeoff.
I closed my eyes, but opened them again at the revving sound of a little motor coming from acro
ss our aisle. It made me wonder if the man two seats over had started shaving. I looked in his direction, across the aisle, and saw that it was the woman with the red floral shirt pumping her milk. She sat there quietly with her hands under her teepee shirt working like a bumblebee. I was tired, but who could get mad at that? Maybe one day Keith and I would have children and I’d do that too.
I lifted the cover to the window and looked out onto the runway. Two young attendants were putting luggage on the plane.
I was deep in thought when the plane took off. When I found Keith Rashaad, I would seal our love. I would tell him everything that I’d been holding in. I tried to remember the lines that I’d prepared for him on the evening that I brought coffee and cake over: “Keith, I really love you. I think we should be together. Because you’re very special to me. As I hope I am to you. My eyes are open, and I know that you’re the one, so let’s give it another chance.” Then I thought again, maybe I shouldn’t rehearse anything. Maybe I should just speak from the heart. The plane’s big engines revved, and with the force of ten elephants we took off.
It was cold in Boston, so cold that each time I took a breath it froze, or so it seemed. I took a taxi to what I hoped was the correct address. I stood before a beautiful old gray-and-white stucco building trimmed in black. I could hear a central heat and air unit humming. Maybe twenty years ago it had been one monstrous home. But now it was divided into four apartments.
I took my address book out of my purse and double-checked it one last time. This was it. I walked between the two white stone pillars and stepped onto the square red carpet just outside the double doors. I walked up the stairs holding on to the black fancy railing that wrapped around the house, and stood on the welcome mat that I hoped was Keith’s.
I knocked on the door and heard footsteps approaching. There was a peephole, and my heart beat double time as I stood there wondering if he was looking through it.
“Who is it?” said my Keith Rashaad’s wonderful voice from within. My heart was beating through my blouse. I’d come too far to turn back.
Sweet Bye-Bye Page 22