Yvonne had not been able to stomach that jewelry touching her skin for the past two years. As pretty as those two pairs of earrings were, Yvonne practically threw up the last time she tried to put them in her ears. But that was then, and this was now—this jewelry looked good and she was wearing it.
But the necklace was an entirely different story. She had picked this chain out when Darrell, who was deep in his affair with Bettina, was trying not to spend extra money on Yvonne. She had figured correctly that Bettina’s birthday had to be somewhere in the vicinity of her own, and that Dr. Darrell could not afford two expensive pieces of jewelry at one time. So he had opted to get rid of the Yvonne expense factor by offhandedly telling her to buy her own gift, thinking she’d get mad and refuse to do so—and therefore save him a lot of money.
Darrell was horrified when he discovered that his scheme had backfired, and his coveted Bettina cash had been spent on Yvonne, and by his own hand. The day the necklace was delivered to the house, Yvonne was forced to watch, horrified, as Darrell confiscated her necklace from the jewelry store’s courier.
When she mustered up enough courage to protest, that boy actually formed his mouth to say, “See, that’s what I keep telling you about yourself, Yvonne.”
“Telling me what?” she asked gingerly, wondering what her necklace had to do with something this joker was always telling her about herself.
“You lack confidence. And this piece of jewelry has to be worn by someone with true confidence. It wouldn’t even look right on you. So I’m going to keep it as an incentive to inspire you to display the kind of confidence that I endorse. You see, it’s this kind of thing that makes me not like you, Yvonne.”
As Yvonne allowed those harsh words to pierce through her heart, she did what she always did when Darrell was mean to her—she fought back the tears. She was in the process of holding her head back to stop the tears from falling when she heard a soft voice whisper, “Pull yourself together and pay attention.”
Yvonne opened her eyes just in time to see Darrell going upstairs with the courier package in his hand. She was about to run up the stairs behind him when she felt a firm but gentle pressure on her chest, keeping her from moving forward for a good twenty seconds. As soon as she felt the release, Yvonne found herself yielding to the pull of the Holy Spirit on her heart—something she had not been in tune to in several years.
She walked up the stairs quietly and went to their bedroom door, pausing when she felt that pressure on her chest one more time. The door was open just enough to afford her the privilege of watching Darrell without being seen. Yvonne heard him whisper into his cell phone, “Bettina, baby, I have something for you,” and hang up.
Darrell glanced over his shoulder and then surveyed the room for the perfect hiding place. As soon as he found that spot, he smiled, dropped the package into a drawer, and went into the bathroom.
Yvonne eased back down the stairs and went into her office near the kitchen and closed the door before she fell on the floor laughing so hard, tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“What an idiot,” she whispered after another bout of laughter. “And to think that I once thought this man was smarter than me.”
“Are you praying out loud again, begging and pleading with God to …” Darrell frowned and snapped his fingers, searching for the words he always overheard Yvonne use when he made her so distraught her only recourse was to run like a snitch and tell on him. Only thing, this silly girl didn’t run to a person, she ran to something as intangible as God.
His long, lanky frame cast a shadow over Yvonne, who had stretched out on her back on the floor to ease the laugh cramps in her side.
“Oh, I know what it is you’re always bugging God to do,” Darrell said. “Deal with me. Is that why you’re on the floor in tears? You’re running and tattling to God to deal with me.”
Yvonne sat up and wiped the tears of laughter off her cheeks in the same manner as when she was crying. She hoped that she was affecting despair well enough to make Darrell so disgusted with her that he left before she lost her cool and started laughing all over again. She was simply amazed at how fast and how well the good Lord worked.
In Darrell’s haste to hide the necklace, he’d made the mistake of dropping the packet into a drawer on Yvonne’s side of their dresser. God led Yvonne to get that necklace as soon as Darrell left the house to go see Bettina. She then ran to the post office and mailed it to her parents in North Carolina.
Until this evening Yvonne, who had long since retrieved the necklace from her parents, had not known what to do with it. She had always assumed that God had led her to keep her necklace because she might have to sell it when she needed some extra money. But for some reason, the Lord meant for her to wear this fabulous jewelry. For some reason, He wanted her to wear it this evening—and that is exactly what she was going to do. Yvonne had learned (and many times the hard way) not to question God, but to obey Him without thought or question when He led her to do something that did not make sense to her finite, “her thoughts were not His thoughts” mind.
Yvonne’s walk with the Lord had been weak back when she was married to Darrell. Even though she was born again and believed the Word to be the absolute truth, Yvonne read the Bible when it suited her purposes and rarely prayed for the sheer joy of communing with the Lord. Rather, it was her preference to throw herself prostrate on the floor at the first sign of trouble with Darrell, in an effort to make the Lord “do something with him.”
That had been Yvonne’s walk with God back then. But she had been growing by leaps and bounds in the Lord ever since she moved back home to North Carolina. The blessings of her relationship with God were so great until Yvonne wondered how she had ever allowed herself to become so sluggish spiritually that she ran from the Lord and the joy of knowing His presence in her life. This new walk had brought her so much closer to God that more and more she was able to hear and discern that “still small voice” at a moment’s notice.
TWENTY
The alarm beeped, and the front door opened and closed. Yvonne closed her bedroom door and strutted into the family room, where the girls and her dad were gathered on the floor getting ready to play their Wii game. Her mother was in the kitchen rearranging the countertops, the table, and even parts of Yvonne’s refrigerator.
“Mama, stop. There is nothing wrong with my counters,” Yvonne admonished. “I don’t understand why you always feel a need to come over here and fix what ain’t broken. Right, Daddy?”
“Goongad’s name is Wes and he ain’t in that mess,” Danesha said from across the room. She got up off the floor and turned around to finally see her mother.
“Your hair, Mommy,” Danesha said.
“What about my hair?”
Yvonne’s mother stopped rearranging her daughter’s kitchen and gave the girl a second once-over. That was what was so different about her—the hair.
D’Relle stopped fussing with her grandfather over the Wii control and came into the kitchen to get a better look at her mother.
“Oh … snap,” D’Relle said, dipping down her shoulder with her fist held to her mouth like the rappers did on the videos. “Mommy, you almost look cool.”
“Uh … thank you, D’Relle … I think,” Yvonne stated, not sure what to make of that comment.
“I mean, you don’t look so mommyish,” D’Relle told her.
Danesha sighed loudly. “Mommy, what D is trying to tell you is that you look real good and not like the regular Mommy. I mean, not that the regular Mommy isn’t pretty. But this Mommy looks like somebody who has a boyfriend.”
At that point Yvonne’s dad stopped playing with the Wii and decided he needed to take a good look at his oldest baby girl himself. Yvonne was so breathtaking that Marvin felt tears well up in him. He had not seen the baby looking this beautiful in years. There was a glow and beauty about her that made him think of the scripture in chapter three of First Peter, where wives were encouraged to be known for the
beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which Marvin knew from watching his wife, Jeanette, all of these years, is so precious to God.
“Aww … sookie sookie now,” he said with a big grin and grabbed Yvonne in his arms for a big hug and kiss.
“Daddy, you are going to mess up my makeup.”
“Okay,” Marvin said and let her go.
“What time do you and Mama want me back?”
“Whenever you get back” was all Jeanette said as she started setting the table for dinner, and then stopped to answer the doorbell.
“Y’all expecting anybody?”
“It might be Tiffany, MaMa,” D’Relle said. “Remember you and Goongad said that she could come over and eat and hang out with us.”
Danesha got excited. Tiffany Birkshaw was one of her favorites of D’Relle’s friends. She got up and ran to answer the door but stopped and hollered out, “It’s a great big black man standing at the door. He’s dressed up. And … oh, it’s Coach Parker from church—I mean when he comes to church.”
“Coach Parker is at the door,” Jeanette said, raising an eyebrow when she noticed that her child was suddenly all fidgety and rearranging her purse. She didn’t know why Yvonne liked to pack her purses up with so much stuff.
“Coach Parker, Coach Parker?” Yvonne’s dad asked and got up to answer the door. He knew that if a man was coming to the house to see Yvonne, he was getting in this Kool-Aid, and he didn’t care if he didn’t know the flavah.
“You know about this boy coming over here, Yvonne?” he asked his daughter in the tone of voice he used when she was a teenager and about to go to a dance at Hillside.
“Yes, Daddy. He’s my date for the evening. We’re going to the reception together.”
“Oh … well, it’s good I’m here—so that negro will know that we Fountains don’t play no mess with nobody.”
“I think he already knows that, Daddy. He is one of Maurice’s best friends.”
“Oh, well, okay” was all that Marvin said as he went and opened the door for Curtis, who had heard everything that played out in the house while standing outside on the porch. He thought he’d holler with laughter over what the youngest had said about the big black man.
“How are you doing, sir?” Curtis said and extended his hand to Mr. Fountain, whom he liked and respected. Marvin Fountain was a good man just like his nephew Maurice. The Fountains were just good people, period. Made him wonder why he had never tried to get to know Yvonne in the past. But then, he knew why—he wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment that was required to be with a woman like Yvonne. You didn’t roll up on a sister like that unless you were serious and bent on acting right.
“Doing fine, son,” Marvin said, putting emphasis on the word “son” to make sure that Curtis knew his place. He grabbed his hand and gave it a firm shake, squeezing it harder than necessary to let this boy know that he wasn’t playing with him. His baby had been through enough, and he would hurt a negro bad who came in here trying to mess over her and his grandbabies.
Curtis read that handshake and the hard glint in Marvin Fountain’s eyes. He knew that this man did not play, and would shoot him and drag him in this house as if he were a would-be burglar before he let him mess with his babies—especially that big one standing next to her mama looking all fine and delectable in that baby-blue velvet suit.
Umph, umph, umph, he thought, I don’t know how I’m gone keep my hands off of all of that. Lawd, ha’ mercy.
“You taking our mama out,” D’Relle said, hands on her hips.
“Yeah, you the big black man who gone take our mama out,” Danesha said, now standing by her big sister trying to look tough.
“Well,” Curtis said, “would it be okay with you two ladies if I took her to the basketball reception this evening?”
“As long as you act right,” D’Relle said with a whole lot of attitude. And she wasn’t trying to look tough, she did look tough. “Our little mommy is our mommy and we don’t like it when somebody tries to be mean to her. You know she has a gun and likes to go to target practice to shoot with my granddaddy.”
“And she’ll shoot you if you don’t act right, Mr. Coach Parker,” Danesha said.
Curtis glanced over at Yvonne, who was staring at her children as if to say, Have y’all little heifers lost y’all’s minds.
“Girl, you didn’t tell me about you and this gun thing. I knew about the wire pliers but not the gun. What kind of gun do you own?”
“One like this,” Marvin said as he ran off and came right back with the gun in his hand. Curtis hoped that the safety was on and secured.
“It’s a beauty, ain’t it? I got it for baby girl as a divorce present.”
What is it with this family and guns? Curtis thought, remembering Trina and her gun.
Curtis took the gun out of Marvin’s hand and examined it. Marvin wasn’t lying—this was a beautiful gun. Gray metal with a pink mother-of-pearl handle. It was heavy and Curtis couldn’t help but wonder how Yvonne managed that thing with those dainty hands of hers.
He bounced the gun up and down in his hand a few times.
“It’s heavy, ain’t it,” D’Relle said. “But our mommy is good at handling it. She can walk around our house with the gun in her hands like she’s a detective on CSI: Miami—which is one of her favorite TV shows. Can’t you, Mommy?”
“Yes, baby. Mommy can do just what you said,” Yvonne replied. It always tickled her to know how proud the girls were that their mother could handle firearms.
“I bet you could shoot a negro right between the eyes fifty feet away from him,” Curtis said, and gave Marvin the gun.
“Well.” Yvonne shrugged, grinning, hunching up her shoulders, and rubbing her chin like J. J. Walker in the 1970s sitcom Good Times. “What can I say?”
“Girl, take your silly self on out of this house so Curtis can get to his own reception on time,” Jeanette said.
“Yeah, we better get going,” he said and started for the door, then stopped and said, “Good to see all of you.”
“Does that include me and Danesha?”
“Most definitely, Miss D’Relle.”
The doorbell rang again and Danesha ran to answer it. She came back with Tiffany, who ran over to D’Relle and said in her customary high-pitched and fast-paced Tiffany voice, “D, ain’t that Coach Parker? And what he doing with yo’ mama, walking out the house with her like that?” Before D’Relle could shush and then try to answer Tiffany’s questions, she said, “Oooh, D. Yo’ mama look good. That suit is crunked.”
“Bye, Mommy,” the girls said and waved, and then ran to the window and tried to be inconspicuous, staring out to see what kind of car Coach Parker was driving.
“That’s hot,” D’Relle said, admiring the Cadillac truck. “He just needs some better rims, though.”
“I like the rims, D,” Tiffany told her.
“You would, T. They are the same kind of rims your daddy just put on his Explorer.”
“Like I said, D, I like the rims.”
Yvonne stared back at the house, hoping they read her face and got their nosy little butts out of the window.
“Whewwww. Girl, you got your hands full with those two.”
“I know. They are something else. But they are some very sweet girls.”
“I know they are sweet. They can’t help but to be sweet, as sweet as their good-looking mama is.”
Yvonne smiled and blushed and then said, “Boy, you are so crazy. And you ain’t shortchanging nobody your own self. That’s a nice suit. Where’d you buy it? From Mr. Booth?”
“How did you know I bought this suit from Mr. Booth?”
“Mr. Booth is the only person I know who has suits of this quality at affordable prices,” Yvonne told him, and rubbed the fabric on the sleeve of the suit between her fingers.
“Cashmere and silk. Nice. I love this red chalk stripe on the black. And the black silk vest with red stripes running
through it and matching tie and handkerchief is tight … oh, crunked.”
“Why thank you, Miss Fountain.” Curtis smiled, face really lighting up next to that fancy white diamond-print jacquard dress shirt.
Whew, Yvonne thought. I didn’t know a Mounds Bar was as appetizing as it is right now. Glad I ate a snack before I left the house.
Curtis liked that she was checking him out on the low and liking what she saw. He slipped in a CD. The Ohio Players’ “Honey” was playing. Curtis snapped his fingers and said, “That takes you waaaayyyy back, don’t it, girl?”
Yvonne, who had thought that she was going to be so nervous she wouldn’t know what to say to Curtis when they were all alone in the car, started cracking up.
“You are a fool, Curtis Lee Parker.”
“A fool for you, baby,” he answered, surprised at those words that popped out of his mouth seemingly of their own accord.
“Curtis,” Yvonne said and tapped his arm playfully, as she would have done back in the day when they were at Hillside High School.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
TWENTY-ONE
Curtis turned his car in to the Sheraton Imperial and drove around searching for a parking space that wasn’t what amounted to several blocks away from the hotel’s entrance. Yvonne liked this Escalade truck. She’d always seen them on the street and thought they looked good but she didn’t realize how good a ride the car was. But then again, truck or not, it was a Cadillac. She’d never been in a Cadillac that wasn’t a smooth ride.
“I like this car, Curtis.”
“I love it. And when I get a chance, I’m going to take that D’Relle for a spin because I know that this is right up her alley.”
Yvonne gave Curtis the sweetest smile and said, “How did you know?”
Up at the College Page 23