“No, it wouldn’t matter,” Harmony responded with hesitance in her voice.
“Good, I’m glad to hear that. But it’s not, it’s at the Essence of Self Center.
“What’s that?”
“Elise started a nonprofit organization. She’s going to be helping women and girls get ahead by offering workshops and having a place to meet.”
“Shit, it sounds like the place I need to be. I’m past ready to better myself and stop depending on a man.”
“Good for you, Harmony. But you know Shareef is a good man and you really shouldn’t knock or belittle what he does.”
“Oh, hell no! I’m not knocking it at all. I’m just ready to achieve something on my own, I’m ready to upgrade. I’m even thinking about going back to school.”
“For real?” Harmony could hear the approval in Jewell’s voice.
“Yep,” Harmony continued. “I think it’s time for me to get my GED and maybe even register for college.”
As Harmony said the words out loud, she found herself feeling both excited and anxious. To say the words out loud was one thing, to put action behind them was another, but she wasn’t going to let fear stop her.
What if she failed the GED test? What if she found that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was? What if she turned out to be a dumb ass?
Harmony was fed up with being a statistic, with being just another black girl who had babies way too young by different men. She was tired of being a young black girl who didn’t finish school and started fucking way too early. She didn’t want to be another black girl that wasn’t going anywhere in life.
“What’s the position?”
“Administrative assistant.”
“Does that mean I need to know how to type?”
“Do you?”
Harmony, embarrassed, answered honestly, “Not real fast, I have to look at the keys a lot.”
“Well, here’s what you do,” Jewell advised. “Go to the library, get one of those learn-how-to-type programs—better yet, download one from the Internet and start practicing right now. You need to know how to type and not just for this job, but most jobs require that skill. You’re also going to need it if you plan on going back to school.”
Harmony knew her cousin was offering good advice and she was going to take it.
“So,” Harmony asked, “should I call and set up an interview?”
“Yes, she’s expecting you.”
“Thanks, cuz, this means a lot to me.”
“Now, Harmony, this doesn’t mean you got the job, it just means you got the shot at an interview.”
“I understand.”
“And dress professionally, be on time, and don’t speak that hood shit.”
Another person would have been insulted but Jewell had traveled the road Harmony was taking now. Therefore, whatever Jewell told her to do or not to do, it was in her best interest to listen.
“I’ll call this afternoon.”
“Good.”
Harmony felt a sense of relief, because maybe this was a sign that she was on her way to bigger and better things.
Changing the subject, Harmony asked Jewell about King. “How are things going between you two?”
“Girl,” Jewell said, “things are what they are.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we’ve fallen into a rut, the relationship rut.”
Harmony knew just what she meant because she and Shareef were in that rut as well. For them it was the sexual rut. Hell, they were lucky if they made love once a week.
Harmony could tell that Shareef was getting pissed off about not having sex. What was she to do? She couldn’t help it when her mind was preoccupied with other things like life, school, her kids, and moving out the hood. When her mind raced this way the last thing on her mind was sex.
“I can’t stop thinking about Evan,” Jewell admitted, interrupting Harmony’s thoughts.
“See, I knew that shit would happen especially after you ran into him those few times. Your ass better be careful, because like you told me, you have a good man.”
“You ain’t telling me anything I don’t already know. But girl, that white boy knew he could eat some pussy.”
Harmony laughed. “Are you saying King can’t?”
“I’m not saying that at all, but with Evan, it was different, he devoured my shit.”
“Good pussy eating does not make a good man, look at Ny’em. He tore my shit up when he did it and he ended up being an asshole. You and I both know you made the right decision by staying with King. If I had it to do it again, I would have chosen to have my kids by a man as good as King.”
“You have a man as good as King right now and he acts likes a father to all those knuckleheads,” Jewell reminded her.
“That I do and that he does.”
Shortly after they hung up, Harmony thought about the job Jewell was trying to hook her up with. She was definitely going to call. If she got the job, maybe she could get some sort of counseling while she was there. She needed someone to help her figure out her life.
Jewell didn’t call her job, she knew her ass was fired, so she figured why bother, it was time to move on anyway.
CHAPTER FOUR
FAITH
Dear Journal,
How do I go on pretending? Why should I go on pretending? I’m tired of people looking at me thinking I’ve got it together, I don’t have shit together.
My marriage is practically nonexistent. Raheem and I are basically roommates. Yes, he pays the majority of the bills, yes, I’ve been a kept woman for the past twelve years and yes, he was there when I needed him most and for this I’m grateful.
But now I want something more in a marriage, I want time and I want monogamy. I’m getting neither and it’s no secret. He continues to hurt me and he doesn’t even acknowledge it. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.
I know I can’t continue to do this shit! I can’t continue living this way. I feel as though I’m compromising my dignity. This man doesn’t even love me anymore. Why does he even want me here? For appearance sake? Definitely not for the sex because it’s been a long time since that has happened. I need to get up the courage to leave his ass, but then what would I do?
Am I really ready to start over?
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place and I’m determined to get out of it.
Forever yours, Faith
Faith sat on her patio, threw on her Gerald Levert CD, laid back on the lounger, closed her eyes, and listened to it from beginning to end.
What a waste, she thought. All that talent, all that fineness, gone.
She let the music take her away, away to a place other than where she was and away to another reality. Faith felt like a fake and a phony. Here she was counseling, mentoring, and guiding people’s lives, when hers was a complete mess.
She’d been married for years. She and Raheem had been through it, in it, under it, and around it. Her advice to people getting married was to think it through. Ask yourself, do you want another job, because that’s what marriage is: work, overtime, extra hours, and then some. If anyone says differently or feels differently, she wanted to know their secret.
Faith met her husband, Raheem, when she was deep into her addiction. She was actually high the day they met.
She remembered it, like it was yesterday. It was late at night and Faith was high as hell. It just happened to be the night she was contemplating ending her life. Faith had gone out and purchased a gram of cocaine, sniffed it up in under two hours then went and purchased another gram.
She was all alone getting high and pissed off at herself, because even though she wanted to stop snorting, it was out of her control. She didn’t know why she continued to get high. It’s not like she enjoyed the high anymore. She would just become more depressed but even depression didn’t stop her. Faith had started to wonder if she was an addict. If she was, she wasn’t ready to admit it.
A
ll she knew was earlier her man, John, broke up with her. He was the one that got her hooked and here she was all alone. She’d lost her job with the hospital as a counselor because she was late and absent more than she should have been.
It had gotten so out of hand that earlier that day her boss pulled her to the side and told her she best not return to work until she got her shit together. She told her that she needed to discontinue whatever she was doing and whomever she was doing it with because it was ruining her life and her career.
Faith tried to pretend like she didn’t know what her boss was talking about, but she knew. She also suspected that her boss knew she was getting high and this suspicion was confirmed when she pulled open her drawer and pulled out a pamphlet.
“Here, I think you should take this.”
Faith glanced at it and noticed the words Narcotics Anonymous.
“I don’t need that,” Faith told her, looking indignant.
Her boss looked at her and placed it on the desk. She stood up and said, “I’m going to leave it here in case you change your mind.”
As she started to walk toward the door, she told Faith, “Don’t come in tomorrow, I think you need to take a leave of absence.”
“A leave of absence? For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
So there she was without a job. When she left the hospital that day all she could think about doing was getting home, calling John, and asking him to come over to keep her company. Maybe they would even take a hit of cocaine together. Now mind you, she wasn’t an addict but a hit would help her think clearer and decide what her next step would be, so she believed.
When Faith arrived home, she picked up the phone and dialed his number, only to find that it was disconnected.
“What the hell?” Faith then tried his cell number.
“Speak.” John was always blunt.
“What’s up with your phone being disconnected?”
“Obviously I didn’t pay the bill.”
“Must you be so nasty?” Faith asked. This was definitely not the mood she wanted him to be in when she called. All she wanted was his company and to have a good time in his presence.
“Why don’t you come over tonight? I’d like to see you.”
There was no response.
“John, didn’t you hear me?”
He cleared his throat and told her, “Listen, I don’t think this is working out.”
Faith moved the phone from her ear, looked at the phone, and put it back. “Excuse me?” She knew she must have misheard him.
“I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“What do you mean, you don’t want to see me anymore? What did I do wrong? I don’t understand. How are you going to spring this on me with no warning or anything?” Faith felt like she was begging and she didn’t like the sound of it. “You know what?” she told him, “let’s have this conversation tomorrow.”
“Won’t be any need to. I won’t be seeing you tomorrow.”
“Huh?” Faith just knew that he was tripping.
“I’m ready to move on.”
As much as she wanted to black out, scream, and yell, she didn’t. “It’s just that easy for you, huh?”
“I don’t think of it as being easy, I think of it as being what’s best.”
Unable to stop herself, Faith asked, “Please just tell me why.”
“I’ve found someone else.”
Faith wasn’t stupid. What he meant was, that he found another bitch that would carry his ass. When she really thought about it and when she got honest with herself, it was the same thing in every relationship. She just couldn’t seem to get it right. She was always choosing the same sorry-ass man in different skin. It was like they were drawn to her, and she was reeling them in, men who wanted to be carried, men who wanted their woman to foot the bill, men who were just plain ol’ sorry. What the hell was wrong with her? Maybe it was the counselor in her. That was the only excuse she could come up with. She refused to believe she was like some of the patients she saw that felt unworthy.
The next time she met a man, Faith decided, she’d look him in the face and ask, “Are you him with a bigger penis? Are you him with a bald head? Are you him with an agenda?”
At some point, she knew she was going to have to step back and take a look at her choices. It’s just that she’d always been a caretaker. She’d always been there for the underdog.
Maybe that’s what made her fall apart and turn to drugs, being there for everyone and having no one to really be there for her. She tried to please everyone. Yep, that’s what she was, a people pleaser.
The day John broke up with her, Faith decided enough was enough; she was tired of feeling used, of allowing her emotions and her neediness to get the best of her.
So off she went to get a fat-ass package of cocaine. She didn’t want to feel anything; the only thing in her mind was being numb.
She picked up her package and pulled up alongside the beachfront. This was her sacred place, her place to think, her place to unwind, her place where if she chose to end her life, this is where it would happen.
Faith sat in her car, stared at the ocean, ran through her list of men, and saw how alike they all really were. It wasn’t a short list either, it was a fucked-up list. Had she ever chosen a good man, a man that would take care of her, support her, and not dog her out? It appeared not. Now what kind of shit was that? Damn, the realization hit her, I do think I’m not worthy, that shit must have come from my father.
“You’re never going to amount to shit,” he would tell her over and over.
“You’re going to be just like your mother, worthless.”
“When the hell are you going to grow up and move out?”
“Your mother should have taken you with her.”
On and on he would go, tearing her apart with his words, breaking her down, belittling her, and acting as if it was her fault her mother left.
She wanted to yell back at him, Mommy left because of your sorry ass!
It wasn’t a big deal to see her mother get smacked in the face for something real simple like a spot on the dishes. He wouldn’t let her mother have any friends or company. One time, when she was on the phone speaking to the one friend she did have, he hid in the attic listening and just as the conversation started getting good, just when her mother was laughing, he came out of the attic, took the phone from her, and threw it across the room.
He kept her mother cooped up in the house. Simply put, she was his slave.
“A woman’s place is in the house. A woman’s place is in the kitchen. A woman’s place is beneath her man,” he would rant and rave.
Faith grew up hearing about a woman’s place so much, she started to wonder, where the hell was her place. The older she got the more afraid she became of her father. He started to look at her in a way that made her uncomfortable and he’d taken to drinking more than usual. He’d come home from work drunk and talking a lot of shit.
“Look at you, growing titties and shit, you think you’re a woman? Is that what you think?”
“I know you’re sleeping around,” he’d tell her. “Well, ain’t no daughter of mine going to be sleeping around with these little knuckleheads.”
One night when she was in the bed asleep, she woke up feeling as though someone was watching her. She turned over to see him standing at her bedroom door.
Oh, hell no, this cannot be happening. Faith had just turned sixteen. She’d had enough. She was not going to sit around this house another minute and wait for him to molest her. That shit happened to other people, not her. Faith was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.
My father is wrong about me, and I’m going to prove it.
Faith ran away. She ran away to find her mother. She recalled hearing her mom talk about a sister that lived in New Jersey.
Faith stole the two thousand dollars her father thought he had hidden in his room and caught a bus to New Jersey. It was then that she found t
he town called Asbury Park.
Faith wasn’t a dumb girl, she was more intelligent than most girls her age. She knew how to get around on her own. She knew enough to stay at one of those pay-by-the-week motels and most importantly, after taking a cab through the town and seeing how small it was, she figured everyone had to know one another, which meant someone had to know her mother.
All she had to do was go around and ask if anyone knew Norma Stallworth. Surely, someone would. She tried not to think too hard about this chance she was taking, a sixteen-year-old, living in a motel, going around asking if anyone knew her mother was not the safe thing to do.
What would happen if she came up on the wrong person? What would happen if someone purposely lied to her and tried to get her alone and harm her in some way?
What would happen if someone actually said yes, they knew her mother and took her to where her mother was? What would happen if her mother told her she didn’t want her around?
Wasn’t it obvious that she didn’t? After all, she just left her with her father, knowing the type of man he was. There was never a phone call and never a letter. She just straight abandoned her. Her mother left without a look back.
The more she asked herself these what-would-happen and what-if questions, the more she doubted herself and her abilities to see it through.
Maybe she was a jackass, maybe she wasn’t going to be shit like her father said. Maybe the best thing would be to realize that she’d made a big-ass mistake coming to this town.
Even as she thought these things, she knew there was no turning back. She was in this town to find her mother and she would. She was just going to have to deal with whatever the consequences were going to be.
On the beach Faith sat, after losing her job and her man, reminiscing about the past. She finished sniffing her coke as she thought about the day she’d finally met someone that knew her mother.
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