Never Knew Love Like This Before

  “This is it, Ronald,” she announced with finality after she came out the shower, a towel draped under her armpits. “Party’s over.”

  “What d’you mean?” Ronald, who was buttoning his shirt, lifted his eyebrow in disbelief.

  “I said it’s over.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t what you said when you were hollering just a few minutes ago.”

  “True. But this is going nowhere.”

  “I told you I’d be leaving my wife.”

  Deni smiled. To his benefit, Ronald put on a good act. “Save it. I don’t want you to leave your wife.” Deni’s voice was firm. Her mind was made up. Finally she was strong enough to face the truth. This had just been a rebound relationship to help her get through her shame and humiliation at being stood up at her wedding. She’d broken one of her cardinal rules—never to have an affair with a married man. However, in that twilight zone–state of being after her farce of a wedding, she found herself doing a lot of things she never dreamed she would do. Such as drinking alone. She’d even tried Ecstasy once, but never again.... Deep inside, she knew she had to take back control of her life. She had to.

  Suddenly Deni watched anger transmogrify Ronald’s features. She’d never seen such a nasty leer on his face when he spoke. “The white man had all the punanny he wanted and we were told we could only have sex when they said it. Well, I’m telling you, there is no such thing as adultery. This is a black thing—for men to have more than one woman.”

  Deni gasped, feeling like he’d slapped her. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “Don’t get all high and mighty, counselor. You weren’t saying that over the past few months. You knew the deal.”

  Deni couldn’t argue the fact. She knew he was right. She had compromised her morals and now he was looking at her like dirt. She wanted out of this place—out of this hotel room. She gathered up her clothes and purse and rushed back into the bathroom.

  “You can let yourself out,” she called over her shoulder. “And another thing—you were never in any danger of leaving your wife.”

  She knew there was no future with Ronald, who considered himself quite the Lothario. She thought of Trent again. He’d been single, a couple of years younger, and a top real estate businessman in Beverly Hills. She’d thought he’d been a great catch.

  Would she ever find love? She’d just read in Ebony where 90 percent of the Black beauty queens from the 1990 campuses were still single. Here she was, nice enough looking yet, and even she was thinking about signing up for an Internet dating service, but she didn’t like the randomness of it all.

  As if something inside of her had metamorphosed, she had a moment of clarity. Sure, for the time being, Ronald had kept her “dick-ti-fied,” but now she knew one thing for sure. She could never sleep with him again without remembering the malicious hate in Ronald’s eyes. This would be the last time she’d sleep with her lover. It had been a Pyrrhic victory. She’d won in terms of getting over Trent, but she’d lost her self-respect in the process.

  She knew Ronald didn’t believe it, but she knew it deep in her bone marrow, it was over.

  In fact, she was swearing off men. She decided she would give celibacy a try.

  Chapter 10

  Deni

  October 2005

  Social Responsibility

  “Ladies, what can we do to help the poor victims of Katrina?”

  Dorothy Burns, the founder of the Avid Readers Book Club, Los Angeles chapter, which met in her home in Silver Lake, pounded her gavel. “May I have your attention?”

  Deni was sitting next to Jean, who raised her hand and spoke up. “Well, some groups on the Internet are sending books to the Katrina victims—”

  Dorothy cut Jean off. “We’ve already participated in that initiative. That’s good, but we need to do more. I feel like we’re doing what the hypocrites did in the Bible where the rich man told the poor hungry person, ‘Go, be fed,’ but didn’t offer him a crumb.”

  The most radical woman in the group, Sankofa, who wore dreadlocks that kissed her waistline, spoke up. “Katrina is living proof that racism is alive and well here in the new millennium. It’s pitiful what they are doing to my people. They don’t think of us as human beings. They don’t care that people have lost their treasures, their pictures, or their missing children. Whole families have been displaced.

  “We all know the government’s slow response was based on race and class. Here we are, the richest country in the earth and we have people who live like a third-world country. I couldn’t believe what I saw on TV.”

  The room grew silent.

  Finally a Chinese yoga instructor named Suri raised her hand. “We can connect with one of the social service agencies and open our homes to take a family in until they get back on their feet.”

  “Who will second the motion?” Dorothy asked.

  Deni didn’t answer because she didn’t give the suggestion a second thought. Her life was too filled now. She wanted her home to be her sanctuary, her private place.

  That night when she made it home, Deni popped a TV dinner into the microwave, then settled down to watch her favorite movie, an adaptation of John Grisham’s Time to Kill, with one of her favorite African-American actors, Samuel Jackson. She loved the protagonist, Jake Brigance, who was also an attorney. It made her realize why attorneys get such a bad rap as she saw the unpleasant stands they often had to take. Just like the one she had to take about dropping the police brutality charges against LAPD. Just like the children she took from parents, who if they knew their rights, would be able to keep their children. Or just like the rich parents who knew their rights and were able to stay in the home with Munchausen syndrome or molestation going on.

  Watching the movie, she liked how Jake did take a stand before it was over. She wondered what she would have done in that case, if she had been white....

  Deni’s head nodded, but she decided to fend off the blanket of sleep.

  The next thing she knew she is standing at the altar, but somehow she gets whisked away from it all. When she looks up, she is on a train.

  “Where am I going?” she asks the ticket conductor.

  “Next stop, New Orleans.”

  “I guess I’ll visit the French Quarter,” she says, but she winds up in the Superdome.

  A big, Gestapo-looking white man in a uniform with a swastika stands before the door.

  “No, I can’t go through that door. I’m an attorney.”

  “You’re still black,” he tells her. He directs her in.

  While in this level of purgatory, she sees people who were wet, hungry, and cold. She takes a video camera and tries to capture this moment of history.

  Someone stops her. “This is only for the white media to show what they want to show.” The white media shows the blacks as looters; the whites as foragers.

  Something else stops her. “I’m hungry,” she says, feeling her stomach growl. “I’m cold. I’m wet.”

  Next, she falls into a deeper level and sees a black man swinging from trees, being lynched. She even witnesses a black woman hanging from a tree with a white crowd of men cheering as they surround the swinging body.

  Next, she hears a white man named Willie Lynch standing on Virginia colony shore of the James River preaching. “We will keep them pitted against each other for the next three hundred years. Light-skinned against dark-skinned.” The year is 1712.

  Like Dante descending into the Inferno, she feels herself plunging farther down into an abyss. In the next level, she stands on an auction block in New Orleans, naked to her waist. The auctioneer says in a stentorian voice, “This fine wench goes for one thousand dollars. She’ll be a breeder, bringing you plenty of pickaninnies to help take care of your plantation.”

  In the last level, she is on a ship. She is lying face to feet, sardine-fashion, crowded next to a man. The man speaks in a strange tongue. The word Wolof pops in her head. This man is handsome and in a crazy way, she feels attracted
to him. She is in the Middle Passage.

  Suddenly a deep booming voice says, “We convict you for not being willing to help the bottom of the economic pyramid. To whom much is given, much is required. You are to give back, Deni.”

  Deni woke up with a start. A white snow screen shimmered from her TV into her bedroom. She looked at the clock. It was four-thirty in the morning.

  She couldn’t go back to sleep because she had to process this strange dream. What was the meaning? It was as if the whole history in this country before now had flashed before her.

  The word peripeteia flashed in her mind. The moment in Greek tragedy where everything the she-ro thought she knew about her life was wrong. Then something occurred to her. How had she ever thought she wasn’t linked to her people?

  How had she thought that if she obtained an education that would make her fit in to white America? Was Slammer right? Was she a sellout?

  The next morning, she picked up the phone and called Catholic Social Services.

  Chapter 11

  Coleman

  Santa Monica, California,

  November 2005

  Colliding Worlds

  “Daddy, is this where we’re going live?” Blossom asked as Coleman and his family pulled up in front of a two-story English Tudor with its rounded arches, turrets, and shallow moldings. Although it was in a condominium complex, each house looked different and was painted a different color. The house belonging to Deni Richards was painted in a muted harvest green trimmed in a crème de menthe.

  “Boy, this family must be rich!” Britton blurted out.

  “I hope they are Christian,” Miss Johntrice said, kissing her rosary.

  Coleman stared at the two-story condominium and wondered what had he gotten himself into, but then he thought back to the shelter and said, whatever it took until he could get his own apartment.

  His first impression of Deni Richards was that she was uptight. Her white, high-collar blouse was buttoned up to the top. Once he stepped inside, her house looked like a museum, like no one even lived in it. Her carpet was white; all her furniture was white. Would his children be comfortable here?

  “Hello, I’m Coleman Blue.” Coleman reached out his hand. Deni looked at him strangely. “Hello, pleased to meet you. I’m Deni Richards.”

  He noticed she didn’t shake his hand. He turned to his mother, “This is my mother, Mrs. Johntrice Blue, my son, Britton, and my daughter, Blossom.”

  Deni shook his mother’s and the children’s hand. “Come in,” she said. “You really have beautiful children. I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  “Does anyone else live here?” Miss Johntrice asked.

  “No, I live alone.”

  A look of surprise crossed Miss Johntrice as if to say, what does a single woman need with all this space?

  Deni showed the family around her house, which included four bedrooms, one of which she used for her home office. She’d decided to give the Blue family two of them. Her bedroom was on the first floor. Coleman and his mother and the children were to reside in the two bedrooms that were on the second floor. She had two full bathrooms on one floor and a half a bath on the other.

  “We also have access to a community swimming pool and gym that belongs to the entire condominium complex.”

  Coleman looked at her bookshelf that was in her family room off the entrance hallway. The Isis Papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing.

  “I don’t see no Bible,” his mother commented.

  “It may be in her bedroom,” Coleman said under his breath. “Mama, beggars can’t be choosy. She must be good people. She’s taking us in.”

  Miss Johntrice just grunted under her breath.

  Chapter 12

  Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

  “Daddy, do you think Mommy left because of us?” Britton asked.

  The first night when Deni heard Coleman saying prayers with his children, something struck a chord inside of her. She was on her way to her upstairs office to pick up the briefs for a case she had in court the next morning. She tried to remember when she last prayed herself. Suddenly she felt embarrassed.

  Deni paused and listened for Coleman’s answer. “No. It had nothing to do with you. It was a problem between your mom and me, but never you. It was not your fault. Now bless Mommy and bless the whole wide world.”

  Deni didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she found this family interesting. She had wondered what happened to his wife, or to the mother of the two children. Were they ever married or was it a baby mama drama sort of thing?

  The strangest thing was that now she looked forward to coming home at night. The first time she saw Coleman he seemed familiar. Like she had known him from somewhere before. Déjà vu. She had such a strange feeling. She hadn’t meant to not shake his hand, but he had shocked her in his familiarity.

  Coleman donned a clean-shaven head, was of medium height, the color of a paper bag, and handsome in a rugged sort of way. When he’d reached out his hand to shake hers, Deni hadn’t responded, because a chill was caterpillaring through her. Coleman looked familiar—like she had met him somewhere before.

  His hands were muscular, yet soft-looking. She’d read in his profile that he was a musician, a soprano saxophonist.

  His children were both very attractive. Blossom’s two thick natural braids swung down her back and she reminded her of Keshia Knight Pulliam who used to play the youngest child Rudy on the old Cosby Show. Although she was only five, Blossom’s slate-gray eyes, which stood in stark contrast to her sable complexion, gave her an exotic look. Britton wore dreadlocks that looked nice, clean, and neatly trimmed. Both children were very well behaved and loveable children.

  Blossom hugged Deni as soon as she saw her, which made something soften in her heart.

  That night Deni lay in bed and tried to pray. She’d almost forgotten the words. In her mind, she reviewed the events that had led up to her opening her home. The discrimination at the restaurant. The humiliation of being frisked by the police. Seeing her cousin being the victim of police brutality. Seeing what happened to the victims of Katrina. Hearing about Trent getting married to someone else—a white woman at that. Waking up to her dead-end affair with Ronald. And now sticking out her neck to help this family of strangers. Was she doing the right thing? After all, was she her brother’s keeper?

  The words finally came to her. “Lord, help me do the right thing by this family.”

  The first Sunday morning after the Blue family moved into Deni’s home, they attended a local Catholic church. Deni declined their offer to go worship with them, pulled her covers back over her head, and slept in, as she usually did on Sundays. When the family returned, though, she offered to take them to the Santa Monica Pier and the Venice Beach. Most people who were from other states couldn’t wait to see these sights made famous through the Hollywood movies.

  The beach was so close and the weather was still in the seventies, so it was typically warm for December and Deni decided they should walk so they could take in the sights and sounds of Santa Monica. As they strolled down the street, the expanse of the sky rolled before them like a clear azure crown. The ocean looked like a quiet glass whisper; the waves were so low.

  Before they left the house, Britton grabbed his skateboard to take to the boardwalk with him. As he pushed with one foot on the skateboard, he used the other one to build his momentum. Sheer bliss spread over his face as he jumped on the board with both feet and pop ollied up in the air and turned around in a circle.

  “You’re really good,” Deni said.

  Britton grinned smugly, and said, “Yes, ma’am.” He turned, skeeted spit out the corner of his teeth, then stood posed like the king of the mountain.

  “Stop that,” Miss Johntrice said. “That’s not gentlemanly.”

  “All right, grandmere.”

  Legs moving up and down like a locomotive, Britton sped up ahead of the group. He crossed the corner at the streetlight at breakneck speed, let his skateboard hit
the curb, then jumped up onto the sidewalk and then he leaped back onto the skateboard, never missing a beat. It was as if he was riding on the wind. When he realized he was too far ahead of them, he brought the skateboard to a screeching halt by putting both feet at the back.

  “Amazing,” Deni said. She couldn’t believe the physical agility this child possessed. Perhaps he could join one of the local skateboard competitions.

  As he walked beside Deni, Coleman held his head to the side and began to hum a be-bop-de-bop tune with his mouth.

  “This is the sounds of the ocean. I can see the colors. Hear the cadence of the season in it. This is what built up to Katrina.”

  “Is this how your songs come to you?” Deni asked.

  “Yes, I can hear the start of this one in my head. I can’t wait to get back and play it. It’s just the beginning of a song. I don’t know exactly what it will wind up being though.”

  “Did you ever take lessons?”

  “No, my father and I both were just born with the ear. We play what’s in our head.”

  Later, the group wolfed down hot dogs, watched the snake charmers, the fortune tellers, the man playing instruments on his body.

  When Deni had a stranger take a picture of her and the Blue family as a group and individually, she noticed people staring at them. She could tell they thought they were a family. And, for the first time since her mother’s death, she felt like she did have a family.