Standing there with her mouth and eyes shut, Shelia shook her head again. And, for the second consecutive time, out came the truth. “I cannot tell a lie. Linda smoked a fat spliff with Rasta-man and I ... I did too.”
“How are y’all gonna be getting high and showing up over here with a fresh buzz?” Grace’s parental stance had Shelia caught in a quandary after having been reprimanded.
Linda returned, wearing a fake frown. “And how is Shelia standing there, ratting us out, when we pinky-swore to keep it secret?”
“For the same reason you’re both too old to pinky-swear,” Grace fussed. “Linda. Shelia. How irresponsible. I don’t know what to say.” Grace folded her arms and patted her foot like she was waiting for answers, and for both of them to repent of their wayward transgressions.
“Well, Linda hit the weed first,” Shelia pouted. “Then Delmar held that fat thing in my face, and you know I can’t resist a man waving anything long and hot anywhere near my mouth.”
Linda held her hand over her mouth, when Shelia’s best attempt at coming clean made her look considerably more scandalous. “That’s why I can’t take her anywhere. She hogged the blunt, started flirting with every man in the joint who had most of his teeth, and then couldn’t wait to get here so she could tell you all about it.”
Shelia tried to defend herself. “Look who’s talking. Shoot, if I told Grace everything, you wouldn’t have the nerve to show your face at that bar again. What about the restroom, Linda? Bet you won’t tell Grace about that.”
Linda’s face cracked. She was terrified that Shelia just might spill the beans about her most embarrassing calamity. “Shelia, if you say another word, I’ll cancel our friendship card right here, right now.” Grace looked on, pondering what Shelia was going to do, and what Linda had done that was so repugnant she wanted it kept quiet.
Both of the ladies, admittedly blazed, were at a standoff, and staring each other down like convicts in a prison yard. “You’d better be glad my high is wearing off, or I’d tell,” Shelia huffed eventually. She didn’t have it in her to tattle that Linda had accidentally ripped the condom machine off the wall when she was about to get busy with a bothersome barfly named Hedley in the filthy men’s room. Shelia had walked in on her jiggling the release knob like her life dependedon it.
“Maybe both of you need to settle down and have some coffee,” Grace recommended sternly. “I’ll break out the wine another time.” Linda smacked her lips defiantly and then mumbled something about having a moment of weaknessand being held in judgment by somebody who wasn’t in any position to chastise her. Shelia heard her but let it go becausethey not only knew, in full detail, about the other’s skeletons, they also knew where the bones were buried.
Grace set up the coffeemaker, then poured in three cups of water to get it going. “Now that we’ve seen why drugs are a bad idea at any age, let’s talk about what y’all bought at the mall.”
“Macy’s had a sale, so I copped two pairs of boots,” Linda said, shaking off the short melee between old friends. Shelia wasn’t quite over it, so she continued to stew silently. “What about you, Grace? We haven’t heard from you in a while. Anything juicy happen since the last time we talked? Have any new prospects trying to knock the cobwebs off?”
“How did the discussion go from shopping to who might be trying to get me to go astray?” Grace argued.
Suddenly, Shelia cut her eyes at Grace. “You know that’s the real reason we stopped by. Usually, when you’re hard to catch up with, it’s because you’ve been up to something we can’t wait to hear about.”
“She’s right, Grace,” Linda agreed. “You get all reclusive when you’ve been getting down and dirty, so spill it.”
So many things had transpired since their last hen party, but not the kind of sneaky-freaky they lived to talk about. Grace leaned against the cooking island and exhaled deeply. She had mixed emotions about seeing Tyson again, almost jumping back into a retarded relationship with Greg and meeting Wallace on semifriendly terms, but she wasn’t ready to talk about any of that yet. Her mind was a jumbled jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, so she put together the pieces she didn’t mind revealing. “I’m in a good place mentally. My faith has been renewed. I’m proud to say that I am still celibate,”she shared in a somewhat subdued tone.
When Shelia suspected there was more to the story, she urged Grace on. “And, come out with it, get to the good part.”
“And I am fortified with the Holy Spirit, thank you very much,” Grace added, casting a shadow on her girlfriend’s expectationsof sordid sexual confessions.
Now, it was Linda’s turn to prime the pump. “Then why are you biting a hole in your bottom lip?” she asked, her interestpiquing.
“Because ... I am so horny it hurts!” Grace blurted out loud. “It’s got me all jacked up, testy, and on edge. Just the other day, my boss called me into his office for a closed-door chat. He said that I needed to work on playing well with others.”
“Ooh, Grace got herself thrown in detention.” Linda laughed because Grace had been the poster girl for appropriateoffice etiquette.
“That’s not all I got,” Grace admitted. “I also got sent home to work on my attitude. And if that weren’t bad enough, I stomped onto a crowded elevator going down. Awkward Bob was pressed up against my back, and out of the blue I got so hot.”
Shelia’s eyes popped out of her head. “Awkward Bob—I thought you said he was gonna have a sex change.”
“Well, obviously he hasn’t had his man region done yet, because it was rubbing up against my behind. I’m not sure who was more confused, him for aiming that thing in my direction, or me for getting so turned on by it. Humph, AwkwardBob has a lot to think about if he’s willing to have all of that cut off. He might want to reconsider that gender-reorientationthing. Believe me, he was meant to be a man.”
Out of sorts, Shelia shook her head. “Uh-uh-uh. What a mess. How the mighty have fallen. You done tripped and fell over your high-minded morals, Grace. Look at you, huffing and twitching like a crackhead the very first time you came too close to an active pleasure zone. It hurts me to see you like this,” she added, as if repulsed all the way down to her core. “Linda, didn’t we tell her this would happen?”
“We told her,” Linda chimed in on cue. “But did she listen?Nahhh.”
“Okay, so you told me,” Grace fired back at them. “Now tell me what to do about it.”
“Who’re you asking? Neither of us have made it this far.” Linda added a helping of French vanilla creamer to the cup Grace handed her. “When you figure it out, be sure to let us in on it. Until then, we’ll be hanging around your office, ridingelevators, and waiting for our chance to back that thang up on Awkward Bob.”
Grace laughed so hard she spilled coffee on her jeans. “See, look what you made me do. I knew I should have had tea.”
“Uh-huh, that’s not the only thing you should have had.” Shelia cut her eyes at Grace again. “You need to check yourself.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Grace confessed. I’ve been so flustered that I went online and subscribed to one of those dating services.” Linda choked on her coffee when she heard the shocking news.
“Grace, you didn’t?”
“Psshst, the worst mistake I’m willing to cop to was putting my hopes in SingleButLooking.com.” Grace talked about her run-in with Tommy, the lying two-ton human garbage disposal; Sly Greenberg, the Jewish pimp, with an identity crisis; her reluctant meeting with an ancient player who showed up at the date dragging an oxygen tank behind him; the hair stylist named Leroy who indicated he had been delivered from his homosexual past; and the last guy she agreed to see before throwing in the towel. “This one brotha wasn’t half bad at first. He arrived on time, he was all right in the looks department, the conversation was stimulating, and he managed a successful engineering firm.”
Sitting across the wet bar from her was Shelia, deep in thought as if the last guy’s credentials st
ruck a familiar chord, but Linda was about to fall off her stool. “Come on, now, so why aren’t you willing to see him again?” inquired Linda.
Grace rolled her eyes. “That was the problem, I saw too much of him on the date. It was going fine, and then it happened.I knocked a fork on the floor and went to pick it up. That’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” the girls asked in unison.
“It!” Grace replied emphatically. “He had it out, under the table, and he was playing with it.”
Linda’s mouth flew open as Shelia pointed her finger at Grace, still trying to recall something from a distant memory.“That reminds me of an old boyfriend I had in high school. Hollis Williams. That fool couldn’t keep his hand out of his pants long enough to put them on me.”
Grace stammered while trying to get out what her surprisehad stymied. “That’s the same guy! Hollis Williams, the mad handler!”
“Uhh-uh!” Linda shrieked, in disbelief.
“How do you like them apples,” said Shelia, contemplatingthe chances of Grace having a date with one of her old flames. “So you say that Hollis is an engineer now?” She skillfully dodged the dishrag Grace tossed at her head. “I’m just saying, you wouldn’t trade in a Porsche because it had a dent in the fender.”
“But you would if every time you hit the street, the hood kept flying up.” That was Linda making it as plain as plain could be.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” agreed Grace wholeheartedly.“I never would have imagined it, it but the most normal interaction I’ve had with a man in the past month was a quaint little war of wits with André’s schoolteacher.”
“A schoolteacher?” Shelia sneered, as if she could talk after pining for an exhibitionist engineer.
Linda was also astounded. She leaned back and cocked her head to the side. “Grace, don’t tell me you’re pushing up on schoolteachers now?”
“No one said I was pushing up on anybody. I ducked out on a conference because the line of hot mamas waiting to see him was too long. We made arrangements to get together at the Java Hut. It was nothing special, believe me.”
“Then why were there so many single moms in the long serving line?” Linda asked suggestively.
“Who said they were all single?” Grace replied before smacking her lips the way Linda had earlier. “That particular teacher is easy on the eyes and a slick dresser, but he’s also a teacher. Let’s not overlook the obvious.”
Shelia was thumbing through her little black address book when she looked up. “You got a point, Grace. A single, nice-dressing grown man who spends his days with a bunch of bratty kids is probably a pedophile.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Grace countered. Was that Grace defending him? “I could be wrong, but I doubt it. He didn’t strike me as the type of man who’s interested in children that way.”
“Your vote doesn’t count,” Linda decided. “You’ve proven, several times tonight might I add, how flawed your decision-makingskills are. You’re talking about what strikes you. That’s part of what’s wrong, you haven’t been struck in so long, all of your senses are out of whack.”
“That is something she could use, a good whacking,” Shelia added, while continually studying the “W” section of her black book. “Grace, you didn’t happen to get Hollis Williams’s home number while you were eye to eye with his Pocket Pal, did you?”
Linda waved off Shelia’s ridiculous question. “She’s hopeless, but what are you going to do about this teacher dude?”
“Nothing. I set him straight but good.” Grace didn’t really believe that was the last time she’d be pitted against the quick-witted Wallace Peters.
“Good, then it’s settled. We’ll go to the Kappa’s Annual Casino Night on Saturday and have ourselves a ball.”
After having been reminded of the best man feast in town, Grace grimaced. She’d promised to spend more time with André, and had gone out of her way to get courtside tickets to watch Allen Foray and the Mavericks take on the Los Angeles Lakers. “Ooh, I’m going to pass on Saturday. I have a date with Dré, and I’d hate to break it.”
“That’s on you, girl. Me and Linda will be knee deep in Crimson and Cream. Those Kappas know how to roll out the red carpet. It’ll be packed.”
“Yeah, I remember last year’s event,” Grace said quietly. “Let me talk to André about it, and then I’ll get back to you.”
Shelia went back to slurping on coffee when she’d finally given up on finding her old boyfriend’s contact information. “So Grace, you say that Hollis is doing well for himself?” Hopeless!
18
All Bets Are Off
By the time André made it home from Skyler’s varsity basketball game, Grace had worn a path in the den. She was serious about spending more quality time with him, but she also craved harmless interaction with normal adult males, if she could get it. The local Dallas graduate chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi threw in with their upper-crust brothers from two bordering suburban bedroom communities, combiningtheir efforts to stage an exciting casino-styled extravaganza.The proceeds were given to charity, but hundreds of single women traipsed through the star-studded affair to try their luck in the dating game, which started the minute they walked in the door. Grace loved the people-watching aspect it presented, because that was the only time she could see high-class African-American men and women drink too much and reduce themselves to heat-seeking enthusiasts. She did not want to miss that.
While wringing her hands over the decision to ask André if he wouldn’t mind going with Skyler to watch Allen Foray take on Los Angeles from the first row, her son hit the door with a ravenous appetite. “Hey Ma,” he said, dropping his backpack at the door. The look in his eyes, she’d seen before. The poor boy was starving. Within moments, he had his head stuck in the refrigerator and palms resting on his skinny knees. “Mama, do you still have some of that lasagna left over from Tuesday?”
“Yes, honey, it’s in the Tupperware container on the bottomshelf,” she informed him. “Tell you what, why don’t I heat it up for you while you stop by the restroom to wash up? Go on now. I have something important to talk to you about.”
“Thanks, Ma, stack it high. I’ll be right back.” No sooner than André dashed off, Grace felt like a deadbeat parent for even thinking about putting him off on someone else just so she could have a grown-up evening at the Grande Hotel ballroomwith three hundred of the most handsome successful men in the area. Shame on her.
A steaming plate of lasagna was waiting on the counter when André returned. Grace noted his carefree attitude when he straddled the bar stool to dig in. He closed his eyes and placed both hands in front of his face like Grace had taught him when he was three years old. She took a deep breath and blushed with pride, thinking back on how far both of them had come, on their own.
André shoveled food into his mouth, one forkful right after another. He smiled at Grace, who was continually lookingon and still bursting with pride. It had been a number of years since she’d thought about André’s father, who had once loved her like a hammock loves to sway in the wind until he decided that finding himself and making it big as an attorney didn’t include her bearing his child. Grace was in college then, pregnant and on the Dean’s list. When she graduated with honors, André was the newborn in the first row screaminghis head off because it was his feeding time and Grace’s mother had forgotten to pack an extra bottle. Grace smiled when she remembered how he could really open his mouth back then, too.
“So, Ma, what did you want to talk about? I mean, if it’s about giving Skyler’s grandmother my sock-drawer money, I know I should have cleared it with you first.”
“Actually, Dré, sharing your personal savings to help out Miss Pearl and Skyler was the right thing to do. I’m not upset about that. But since you asked, I made a commitment to do more things with you, and that’s why I got those courtsidetickets from Allen Foray.”
“Oh, yeah, Mama, that’s tight. I wufff tuffing to Sky’nem ’bout
...” he mumbled with his mouth full before Grace objectedto his table manners.
“Uh-uh, Dré, I know that you know better than to talk with half of Italy hanging out of your mouth.”
The boy poured a heaping swig of grape juice down his throat, then swallowed hard. “Sorry, but I was telling Sky and them about it. They think I’m the luckiest because you’re always doing stuff like this, like the NBA gear you got for me and Skyler, like coming to my games even in the rain.” Suddenly, André’s expression changed. He’d been grinninggleefully, then it shifted.
“Dré, what’s wrong?” Grace asked as she took two steps closer, fearing that he might have been choking.
“Ma, is there any chance we can get another ticket for Skyler? He’s never been to a professional game before, and I have several times. Can you call Mr. Foray for one more ticket?”
“Sorry, but the game was sold out weeks ago. Maybe we can take your friend another time. There will be other games.” Instantly, an idea popped into Grace’s head. “Speakingof that, I have something that just might work. I was just talking to Linda and Shelia. They told me about a stuffy old charity event I wanted to attend but it happens to be on the same night as the game. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving my ticket to Skyler, and then I could do the charity thing with the girls. What do you say?”
“Are you kidding me? Mama, you know I love you like a new pair of Air Jordans but I’d really like it if we could start doing more of the mom-son thing after me and Skyler come back from the Lakers game ... and after you’ve done the girls-gone-wild thing at the Kappa Casino Fund-raiser.” When he looked up and saw Grace’s surprised expression, he nodded his head slowly like an old mobster making her a deal she couldn’t refuse. “Yeah, all the kids talk about it at school. Rich black people getting all Gee’d up so they can check out other rich black people all Gee’d up. I have to go through the same thing on the first day of school, so I know what a trip that is to watch.”
Down On My Knees Page 17