Loving Donovan

by Bernice L. McFadden

  Entries from her journal, printed in black letters on a small white rectangular piece of paper, sat at its middle, the clipped images, some with jagged edges, others with perfect corners or rounded borders, were assembled around it, covering the entire thirty-by-twenty-four-inch piece of board.

  Something inside her whispered thank you, and for the first time in months Campbell smiled instead of wept.

  * * *

  On the night Pat stepped off the platform, Donovan was in a bar, eavesdropping. He did that sometimes.

  The bar was empty for a Friday night. He supposed it was due to the cold. Better for him—he could eat his French fries and burger in peace. The game was on the mounted thirty-six-inch above his head.

  But his mind wasn’t focused on his food or the game. The two guys who had come in behind him, the two guys who had started out with Heinekens and were now on their second whiskey and water, were talking about a letter one had received in the mail.

  “Man, she started out with I love you and I want you and all of that why-can’t-we-be-together shit and the baby needs you—”

  Some women just don’t know how to let go, Donovan thought.

  “She got a child with you?” the friend asked.

  “She pregnant now.”

  “Damn.”

  Should have kept your dick covered up, Donovan laughed to himself.

  “You know what I’m saying? She wanna trap a brother. I told her, I got three kids already—”

  “Thought you just had the two.”

  “Well, Lamont ain’t mine, but I helps out, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So like I was saying, I told her, I said look here, I ain’t trying to be a bastard or something, but I can’t support no more babies. I just can’t, you know. My check look like shit as it is—”

  “They garnishing your check?”

  “Nah, man. But I gives to my kids. I’m a man—I do the right thing.”

  That’s what you supposed to do. Donovan picked up the napkin and wiped his mouth.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So she was all like, I’m gonna have this baby whether you gonna be around or not. I said fine, but that’s your decision and I can’t make you do nothing you don’t want to do. So see ya, have a nice life.”

  “Word?”

  “Yeah, man, she wanna be unreasonable, let her.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “’Bout a month now.”

  “She get it done?”

  “What?”

  “The abortion?”

  “Well, see, that’s where the letter comes in, ’cause I ain’t calling her or nothing. I see her number on my caller ID, I don’t pick up. I done changed my cell phone number and all that. Dig it—I don’t even answer my bell when it rings. If I ain’t expecting you, then you ain’t getting in, ya know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I gets this letter a few days ago talking ’bout how much she love me and why I’m treating her like this and all this kind of bullshit. But the clincher is this . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said if I don’t respond to the letter, she gonna kill herself.”

  “Word?”

  Shit, Donovan thinks.

  “Yeah, man. Now tell me, do it even sound like I wanna have a crazy bitch like that having my baby?”

  “Nah, man. Did you respond?”

  “Hell no!”

  “You think she gonna do it?”

  “Hell no.”

  You never know.

  Donovan pushed the plate away from him and propped his elbows up on the bar.

  The men talked some more before finally draining their glasses and disappearing out through the door. They’d nodded at Donovan, and the one with the crazy woman had even wished him well. “Have a good night, my brother,” he’d said.

  Donovan drained the last bit of beer from his bottle and snatched up the napkin to wipe his mouth.

  “You want another, Don?”

  Nadine, the bartender, leaned over the bar and batted her eyes at him. She had on a black T-shirt that was cut in a long V at the front, giving him full view of her cleavage. She smiled and licked her champagne-colored lips.

  Donovan smiled back and shook his head.

  “Anything else I can get for you, then?” Nadine purred.

  Donovan shook his head again and tried to keep his smile at a minimum. She was cute and sexy, and if Donovan wanted her, he supposed he could have her, but he had seen her play this same game with him and a dozen other men who came into the bar. He hadn’t pursued her, but he was sure the others had, and looking at Nadine, he knew she had turned very few of them down.

  That’s not the type of woman he wanted.

  “How much?” Donovan asked, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

  “Free, if you give me your number,” Nadine said as she cleared the plate and glass away.

  “Okay, then. So this twenty should cover everything, and . . .” Donovan ripped another five from the wallet and set it down on top of the twenty. “And this is for you.”

  She slid the five-dollar bill across the bar, rolled it between her fingers until it was cigarette thin, and then slipped it down between her breasts. “Thank you.” The words oozed from her mouth, and Donovan remembered just how long it had been since he’d had sex.

  “Night, Nadine,” he said as he walked out the door.

  “Bye, Don,” she replied, and blew him a kiss.

  By the time he warmed up his Daytona and tuned the radio to WBLS, the “quiet storm” was in full swing, and he knew he would have love songs all the way home. He pulled out and onto Fulton Street. There were green lights all ahead of him, and so he moved into fourth and pressed his foot down on the gas until the speedometer danced on fifty.

  He’d be home in less than ten minutes if he made all the lights. He had worked overtime that day, and fatigue was slowly creeping through him.

  He put a little more weight on the gas pedal.

  Tomorrow was another day, and he had put his name down on the overtime list. His boss would call him in the morning if they needed him. They always needed him.

  He glanced down at the dashboard. Sixty miles per hour now.

  The lights were jumping to yellow with each intersection he took.

  He felt he could make at least two more.

  Sixty-five.

  The snow whipped around his car as the wind picked up. He turned on the wipers. The light turned red as he approached Utica Avenue, but he couldn’t stop, he was going too fast, and so he held his breath, glanced in the rearview mirror, and shot across the intersection.

  The light ahead was red, and he geared down from fourth to second; the tires spun and then gripped just as a woman bolted out in front of him. She never even looked at him, but he imagined her eyes must have been as wide as silver dollars—that’s usually how they were when you were screaming bloody murder.

  * * *

  They had all taken turns getting their palms read, and now it was Campbell’s turn. It seemed like a good idea at the time, a fun thing to do—well, most things seemed entertaining when your blood was swimming with alcohol.

  She would kick herself in the morning when she woke with a pounding headache and an empty wallet.

  “You worry about your parents, no?” the psychic said.

  Campbell just shrugged her shoulders, fingered the penguin pendant that hung from a delicate gold chain around her neck, and looked off toward her group of girlfriends huddled at a nearby table, pointing and laughing.

  Campbell crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at them.

  The woman cleared her throat.

  “I guess,” Campbell said, straightening her back.

  The woman cocked her head to the side. “You don’t believe, huh?”

  Campbell just shrugged her shoulders.

  “Your parents, they will be fine.” The woman pulled Campbell’s hand close to her face. “Hmmmmm,” she sounde
d, and Campbell pinched her lips together to keep from smiling.

  “You have a question. Ask it,” the woman said without looking up.

  Campbell hadn’t sat down with a question in mind. Was a question like a wish? Did she get three? Would they come true? She had to pick carefully, then. A giggle escaped her, and she moved her free hand to cover her mouth.

  The woman raised her eyes, and a slow smile took over her lips. “You are lonely, yes? You want to know when you will meet your soul mate.”

  Campbell twisted in her chair. “Well—” she started, but the woman cut her off.

  “You have been alone for a while. Someone—” The woman’s eyes went narrow, and she shook her head. “Andre?” she said, and waited for Campbell to react, but Campbell kept a straight face, even though the liquor seemed to be draining from her body, even though her heart was thumping loudly in her chest. “Andre, he hurt you even though you act as if he didn’t.”

  Campbell was sober now. She looked over at her friends again. Had they set this up? How did this woman know about Andre? She started to feel angry.

  “You have a question. Ask it,” the woman said again, and waited.

  Campbell wanted her hand back, wanted to get up and slap each and every one of those smiling faces she had thought were her friends. What kind of cheap trick were they trying to run on her?

  It wasn’t funny, not at all.

  She looked at the woman and scowled.

  “There is someone coming. He will be loving and looking for love, not like your last lover.”

  Campbell smirked.

  “I see the name Mark,” she said, and her dark eyes bore into Campbell’s. “Do you know a Mark?”

  Campbell did, but not any that fit that description, not any that she would be interested in. “No,” she lied.

  “Hmmmm, this man has very tired feet—he has been walking through your life for many years.”

  Campbell said nothing.

  “The two of you have been together in a former life.”

  Campbell rolled her eyes.

  “You will meet again at a gathering.” The woman stopped, bit her lip, and looked a bit more intensely into Campbell’s palm. “Not a wedding, but . . .” she trailed off. “I see a full moon. Music.”

  Campbell really wanted her hand back.

  The woman, sensing her uneasiness and skepticism, released her hand. “Twenty dollars,” she announced, and presented Campbell with her own open palm.

  Campbell hated to admit it, but she had spent most of the spring and the better part of the summer waiting for that man to turn up.

  But by the time August rolled in with its stifling heat, the geraniums in the flower boxes were wilted and the young girls and boys who had spent the summer on the streets and odd days at the city pool were toasted golden brown, and Levina Jackson, her next-door neighbor, was ringing the bell and knocking on the door and even leaning over the railing and tapping the tip of her house key on the front window.

  Campbell thought that maybe there was a fire somewhere close or that one of Levina’s four children was sick.

  It had to be one or all of those things because the tapping, knocking, and ringing all screamed, Urgent!

  Campbell swung the door open, and the tiny bit of cool the house had managed to hold on to escaped, and Levina smiled at her and said good afternoon and asked about Macon and mentioned the heat and the lack of rain and a number of other things that Campbell could not care less about.

  Campbell just stared at her.

  Levina, with her tattered black head rag and yellow tube top that did nothing for those double-D-cup breasts she had. It took a good ten minutes for Levina to deliver some neighborhood gossip, say hello to Old Man Sumner, who was more than happy to stop and tell her how fine she looked in yellow. “Yes, indeed—yes, indeed,” he said, never once looking at her face.

  “Mailman put this in my mailbox,” she said when Campbell felt she couldn’t look interested in what Levina was saying a moment longer. Levina pulled an envelope from the back pocket of those cutoff overwashed denim shorts she’d donned every Saturday since June.

  “Thanks,” Campbell responded, and closed the door on Levina and the heat.

  The envelope was folded in two and wilted, like Levina had had it tucked away against her behind for a week.

  She didn’t notice the return address, just her name, and she ripped the flap open and pulled out the fine vanilla-colored stationery.

  She read the letter four times and still didn’t quite understand what was happening.

  A woman, Dottie McPherson of McPherson Artist Representatives, had loved the Polaroids of her five collages and had a special fondness for the one titled Sweet Thang, and wondered how many more she had and would she mind showing all of them to her.

  She’d shared the Polaroids with a gallery owner in the Village, and he’d been just as excited about her work, and now they both thought she was an undiscovered talent.

  Dottie wrote that she would love to represent her and was sure that she would have a gallery showing arranged before the ink had dried on the dotted line of their contract.

  She thought the pieces were phenomenal (a word she used relentlessly throughout the letter) and would Campbell please call her as soon as possible at any of the three numbers listed below?

  Campbell looked at the front of the envelope. It was her name and address typed neatly across it, but why did what was happening feel like it belonged to someone else?

  She hadn’t sent out any Polaroids, not one.

  Had considered it, but had never done it. She had collages all over the place, framed on the walls, stacked away in the basement. Making collages had been her salvation, the distraction Dr. Bing had suggested she find, her therapy.

  Campbell looked at the envelope again.

  Could Macon have sent them off? Why would she do something like that without discussing it with her first?

  Because you would have said no; you always say no. Always too afraid to take a chance on yourself.

  Her subconscious was right. She was afraid to take a chance on herself, her happiness.

  Are you happy now?

  Sure, I’m happy for Macon, proud too—

  (But are you happy for yourself?)

  Was she?

  Not really.

  She was thirty-four years old and still biting her tongue at the American Airlines ticket counters. Sure, she’d been an employee long enough to have weekends and holidays off.

  Yes, she’d been practically around the world. But when she and Pat took the kids to the park and spent the day walking, laughing, and talking about where their lives would be in ten or more years, she never thought she’d still be greeting polite, irate, and indifferent airline passengers with, “Good morning. How can I help you today?”

  She supposed she wasn’t really happy. No one in that house had been for a long time. Not the tenant, Clarence, who referred to himself as an old queen now. He’d had numerous lovers since Awed left. But now he was alone and spent the warm summer weekends seated in the front yard in his green-and-white folding chair, sipping Sprite and watching the world go by.

  Millie hadn’t been happy either, but Campbell suspected her unhappiness had started long before they moved to Bainbridge Street, although after Campbell had had the baby, there seemed to be some sort of reprieve to her misery.

  Macon had brought some joy into that house; she’d been happy from birth.

  When they laid Macon on her chest, pink, wiggling, and wet, the first thought that came to Campbell’s fifteen-year-old mind was that John Carpenter movie, The Thing.

  Well, her mind was still twisted from the contractions, still pounding from the doctors, nurses, and Millie telling her to breathe and not to push and then to push. They wouldn’t let Luscious in, so she spent the whole time outside the delivery room pacing and cussing at the front-desk nurses.

  “Okay, push,” the doctor said somewhere down at her feet. Her knees were up
and her legs apart, and the doctor was crouched down on a stool at the foot of the bed, white mask stretched across his face, white knit cap pulled down over his blond curls. Campbell thought he looked like an umpire. “Push, Campbell, push.”

  Where was the baseball mitt?

  She was delirious.

  “Baby, please push,” Millie said, her eyes all puffed and red from lack of sleep and the sobbing she fell into whenever Campbell cried out in pain.

  Campbell couldn’t push, as much as she wanted it out and the pain over; the only strength she had left in her she used for screaming.

  “Push!” the doctor demanded firmly.

  Campbell just screamed.

  “Goddamnit,” the doctor muttered, and in one frustrated move he jumped up and snatched his mask off his face. “The baby is right there, right there. One push, please,” he pleaded.

  Campbell screamed again.

  “Oh, Lord God have mercy!” Luscious howled from the hallway.

  Millie’s bottom lip trembled, and she felt a set of fresh tears coming on. “Please, Campbell, please,” she coaxed, and grabbed the girl’s hand. “Just try.”

  It hurt in every place on her body. Her stomach, back, down between her legs, the tips of her toes, and who knew that the hair on her head had sensation, because that hurt too.

  But she finally let loose, squeezed her eyes shut, and pushed with all her might, and six pounds three ounces of baby girl came shooting out of her, taking the doctor completely off guard. He would have missed, and she would have landed on the floor, but at the very last second he caught her by her ankles.

  Luscious couldn’t take it anymore, she’d been pacing that hall for what seemed like hours, and she’d counted on her fingers the number of times Campbell had cried out, and when she ran out of fingers she started counting her toes—and now she was counting the tiny lines that represented the seconds on the large black clock on the wall and was down to the last line when Campbell’s scream tore through her.

  She stormed past the nurses’ station and knocked the heavyset male orderly aside with one blow and burst through the doors cussing and accusing the doctors of allowing Campbell to remain in pain for so long just because she was black.

  “White folks get shots and pills, all kinds of things to dull the pain. Ain’t we suffered enough? Guess not, four hundred years of slavery wasn’t enough, was it?”