by Cydney Rax
“Oh, Dru, I’m so sorry.” Alita hugged her sister tightly, more tightly than she’d ever done. She knew that Dru suffered with her infertility. She and Tyrique had had two miscarriages. And Alita wished that she could empower her sister to do something that so many other women took for granted. Giving birth was an honorable thing, but just because a woman could not hold a pregnancy should not mean that her life was worthless.
“I’m sorry about your physical situation, Dru, but let me tell you, you are more woman than a lot of chicks that can have five and ten babies but still haven’t made anything of themselves. Hell, to me you’re Oprah. Look at all the good things she has given to the world. She’s smart, generous, she helps others, and she is not stuck on herself like some rich folk.” Alita thought of Burgundy and wanted to roll her eyes but fell short of doing so. “Some rich folk need a reality check. Like Jay-Z. He spends so much time trying to make money on top of money. For what? Does he really think when he takes his last breath that he’s taking that money with him? Think he gone roll up in the afterlife with his eight-million-dollar car? Because he won’t. So why waste time buying a car that costs more than a small town’s budget?”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, but I think it’s great that we have wealthy black folks. And what they do with their money is their business,” Dru said. “Because many of them buy what they want, but they also are committed to giving lots of money to charity. They build all kinds of schools or academies and provide water or solar power to African villages. Some rich black people will do what poor black people can’t, such as build medical facilities. You can’t ask for more than that.”
“Hell, I can. I can ask P. Diddy, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days, to do something unique. Instead of paying a million dollars to throw himself a sixtieth birthday party, why not give those dollars to me? I can make better use of it than he can. Because once you have millions to blow on stupid shit, like paying thirty-four thousand dollars for a luxury computer mouse, you know you’ve officially lost touch with reality. I hate those stupid-ass rappers that waste money like it’s nothing but a game. Funny looking Jay-Z with his big-ass chicken-wing-eating lips. Lips so big he can whisper in his own ear. Hell, I’m glad Solange whipped that ass.”
“Really, Lita? How do you know that really happened? Were you in that elevator?”
“Hello? The video put us in that elevator! Plus if he hadn’t done anything wrong Solange wouldn’t have swung at him. I’m glad he didn’t hit her back, though. We wouldn’t be calling him Jay-Z anymore. He’d be called Cray-Z.”
Dru laughed, then asked, “How’d we get on this topic?”
“Because I’m crazy!”
Dru shook her head at Alita. “Don’t change, Alita. I mean that. Never change.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. I don’t even know how to do that anyway.”
* * *
Elyse was at the house in The Woodlands. She was on the phone happy to squeeze in a few minutes of conversation with Gamba.
“I miss you,” she told him.
“And I miss you. I think we’ll be released from this place in less than a week.”
“Good. I can’t wait to see you again.”
Gamba felt his heart stirring. Absence made his heart grow fonder. Elyse was all he could think about while he was away serving the military.
“We’ll do something special when I get back to town.”
“Oh, yeah. Something special like what?”
“We’ll spend the entire night together.”
Her heart began racing. This is what she’d been dying to hear from him.
“Really? You serious, Gamba?”
“Yeah. I am. I care about you . . . I might even . . .”
“You might what?”
“I am so very crazy about you, Elyse, and I am sorry for not telling you. I just didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Oh, Gamba. That’s all I ever wanted to know.”
“But how could you not know? How do I treat you?”
“You treat me like I matter,” she gushed. “Like I’m important. Like I’m a queen.”
“And the way I treat you tells you how I feel about you, sweetie.”
As she pressed the phone closer to her ear, Elyse felt warm and gooey on the inside.
“I know, but sometimes I want to hear it,” she said in a stubborn voice. “I don’t want to guess. I don’t want to make a fool of myself and think you love me when really you don’t.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s understandable. But I was afraid to rush you. I would never want to hurt you, my dear. You’ve been through enough as it is.” He paused. “And it sounds as if you’re still going through it.”
She had kept Gamba updated on everything that had been happening with Nate and Burgundy. It only made him want to rush back to Houston to coach her and be present while she went through all her troubles.
“I don’t have much more time to be talking on the phone,” he told her. “And before I hang up . . . I just want you to know that . . . I think about you every second of the day and I can’t wait to kiss your sweet lips again, Elyse. Did you hear me?”
She beamed from ear to ear. She nodded her head. But he could not see her. She wanted to answer him, but she couldn’t. She was too busy crying. Tears of joy wet her cheeks. She had waited so long for happiness that when she finally received it, she did not know how to react.
“I have to go now,” Gamba said. “It sounds like we’re losing the connection because the reception here is bad. But I hope that you heard what I said. And I can’t wait for us to be together again.”
He paused. “Ndinokuda.”
“What?”
“Oh, good, you’re still there. It means ‘I love you’ in the Shona language. So long, my—” The call dropped. But it did not matter.
Elyse continued to hold the phone, trembling at Gamba’s last words. She replayed his voice over and over, eager to savor the beauty of his lovely sentiments for as long as she could.
“Ndinokuda,” she said to herself, and laughed.
Elyse knew nothing about his language. But she knew love when she felt it.
Being loved felt wonderful. Felt right. And it was starting to seem as if all Elyse’s troubles were about to go away, hopefully for good.
Chapter 18
Coco is Loco
For the past few days, Coco had been lamenting about her dreadful love life. Alita knew all about it and thought she’d pay her a visit to check on her mental state. When Alita arrived at her house, she was happy to see the woman doing what made her happy: cooking for her kids.
“How you doing, Sis? I just wanted to see what’s popping.”
“Same old, same ole.” Coco had one hand placed against her hip. The other hand held a spoon. She was stirring a fresh pot of collard greens. Alita sniffed and smelled pinto beans. A batch of cornbread batter sat in a mixing bowl.
“Hey, you got it smelling real good up in here.”
“Okay, besides sniffing my food go and make yourself useful, Lita.” Coco pointed to the dining room table. There was a bowl filled with freshly boiled potatoes. Right next to it were some onions, bell peppers, hard-boiled eggs, and stalks of celery.
“If you can stir up the potato salad that’ll help me a lot. But wash your hands first. You know I don’t play that nasty hands shit.”
“My hands ain’t nasty,” Alita protested.
“Oh, but you and that man you got are nasty so—”
“Girl, please.”
“Like I said, go and clean those hands, and wash ’em good.”
Alita did as she was told, and soon she was seated at the table, dicing the last bit of vegetables and peeling the shells from the eggs. She stuck a big spoon in the jar of mayo and began to stir the ingredients together and seasoned everything until it tasted just right.
Alita looked at all the food. “What’s the special occasion?”
“Nothing spec
ial. This is how we do up in here. My kids will always eat well. Just because there’s no man in the house don’t mean I gotta stop cooking and stop being a good mom, a good woman.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Alita told her. “I was worried about you for a minute the way you’ve been crying the blues.”
“I was just having a moment, that’s all. I-I was on my period.”
“Yeah, right.” Alita loaded a piece of celery into her mouth and thoughtfully chewed on it. “I honestly was worried that you were going to lose your mind after you got dumped at the altar.”
“Lita, please.”
“No, Sis, I’m serious. I was wondering if you was Waiting to Exhale like that movie. Like, were you waiting to go and burn up Calhoun’s clothes and then set him on fire?”
“Ha-ha, funny. I’m waiting all right, but it’s on something else better than tearing up his shit,” Coco said cryptically.
“Really? Like what? Do you really think Calhoun will do a three-sixty, change his mind, and then love is going to make him find his way back home?”
Coco laughed. “I wish. But I plan to have something even better than that. Something I’ve been needing and wanting for the longest.”
* * *
Later that day Coco went over to Samira’s to drop off the kids. This time Calhoun wasn’t home, but Coco made nice with his wife and chitchatted.
“Do you two plan on having any babies?”
“Excuse me?” Samira asked. “You’re talking to me?”
Coco laughed. “I know you usually see the back of my head as I’m coming and going, but I got a little time today. I am running errands for my big sis Burgundy, but I can wait a minute.”
“Oh, I see. My husband and I haven’t discussed children just yet.”
“Word?” Coco said. “Me and him talked about all kinds of things . . . back when we were together. But now, we really speak a lot now. We keep things on a totally professional level. If it ain’t about the kids, we ain’t talking about it.”
Samira smiled and nodded. “He is trying to stay focused on what’s most important. Settling in concerning our marriage and being the best father to his adorable daughters. He’s doing well, I must admit.”
“Right. You really brought a change over this man, something I failed to do after five years.”
Coco engaged Samira in more idle conversation, said goodbye and left. She drove over to the post office where Burgundy rented a huge box. She inserted the tiny key into the hole and was disgusted. There was lots of junk mail, some bills, and quite a few packages and boxes that had to be carried out to her car.
But it was cool, because finally she was getting paid to work for the Taylors.
“Another day. Another way to earn a dollar,” she said to herself.
* * *
Things were looking up, but Coco still wasn’t satisfied. In an effort to pull herself out of a foggy mood, Coco decided to pump up her radio. She tuned it to the twenty-four-hour hip-hop station and found herself caught up. Closing her eyes, she softly sang the lyrics to an SZA song.
This new artist was on fire. And Coco thought that SZA was the only female artist who perfectly described the way some women felt when it came to relationships. Coco sang the words like she lived that life and knew it perfectly.
As soon as the song was over, she went online and searched for the video. She watched the video for “The Weekend” thirty times in a row. And when she was done, she listened to another good song, “Broken Clocks,” over and over. Every nuance seeped into Coco’s soul.
Her conscience absorbed the words until they became life. They floated inside her until she allowed the concepts to shape her thinking and adjust her attitude.
* * *
Another few days had passed. And by that Friday, Coco was ready to try something different. With the exception of Chance, in the early evening she dropped her kids off at Henrietta Humphries’s house and explained there’d been a family emergency that she must attend to.
Henrietta looked skeptical. “Why can’t any of your sisters take care of the kids?”
“Because they can’t, all right? They’re all tied up with something. I really appreciate their only living grandmamma helping me out, please, ma’am.”
Henrietta’s dark eyes bored a hole through Coco that made her feel like a thief, but she quickly thanked the woman and ran off anyway.
“I’ll be back in a few hours, Ms. Henrietta.”
“You do that.”
Coco returned to her car and slammed the door shut. “What the hell? She thinks I’m supposed to be bogged down with the kids for the rest of my damned life like I can’t ever catch a break? Hell to the fucking naw.”
Chance, who was strapped up behind her in the back seat, mimicked her. “Hell to the fucking naw.”
“Boy, be quiet. Don’t say that. Those are bad words, and only mommies can say them.”
Chance just giggled. Every time his mother got mad and started to fuss at him, all he could do was crack up laughing. Soon Coco was laughing too. And she felt much better after she drove away.
She and Q were no longer kicking it. A few weeks ago, she had finally broken down and admitted that he wasn’t Chance’s father. Coco hadn’t heard from him ever since.
And, Ricky, a man she recently met, agreed to meet her at a movie theater. She hated to bring her toddler with her on a date, but she didn’t have enough nerve to ask Henrietta for more than what she did.
“It’s me and you tonight, little homie. And Mommy’s got a date, so you be on your best behavior, you hear me? Don’t be cussing and shit.”
Coco found Ricky waiting on her in the lobby. He was casually dressed but looked nice and smelled even nicer. Coco was all smiles when he paid for everything including their snacks. Ricky told her he did not mind that Chance had joined them.
The evening was starting out well, and that made Coco feel good and hopeful.
They all sat in the last row at the top section of the theater. They stretched back in their big lounge chairs and enjoyed the two-hour film. Coco covered her son’s eyes during the sex scenes. And when she felt Ricky squeeze her hand while the couple made love on the screen, she already predicted where the night was headed.
“Let’s go hang out at your crib,” he suggested after the film was over. They were standing outside in the parking lot.
She hesitated but told him, “All right. We can go chill at my spot for a minute.” Coco got in the car and drove toward her house with Ricky following behind in his vehicle.
“What the hell,” she told herself. “I just met him, but I have needs. It’ll be all right.” Coco made up her mind, even though she was nervous about inviting a strange man inside her house. She’d met him at Burger King eight days earlier. They had exchanged phone numbers and talked every day for hours ever since.
“He’s cool,” she said again, but it bothered her that he never offered to disclose exactly where he lived. And when Coco had asked Ricky if he had a woman, he shrugged and told her, “It’s complicated. But you good.”
So there they were, inside her home. It was cold as ice because the AC had been cranked up all day. When she went to turn down the thermostat Ricky told her, “Don’t even worry about that. I’m about to heat you up real good, Miss Lady.”
“Oh, all righty then.” She laughed, then went to place Chance down in his bed. She prayed he’d stay put for the next few hours. Even though she’d promised Henrietta she’d return to get her kids by a certain time, Coco knew it would not happen and she did not care.
“God knows I need this,” she said once she got back to the living room. Ricky looked at her in admiration. She had quickly changed into another outfit and was modeling it for him.
Coco had lost more weight. She was looking good with her hair pinned up in braids. Her hair was still coarse and thick, and she resembled a queen, though she hardly felt like one. She wore a short-sleeved leopard print dress with her favorite pair of fi
ve-inch red leather pumps.
She sashayed over to Ricky, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him. His lips were cold, chapped, and hard as brass. The texture of his lips was a turnoff, but she kept going.
He reached inside her dress, which was a V-neck style, and squeezed both her breasts.
“Woo, these are some jumbo-ass tits. You got implants?”
“No, they’re real. Can’t help it. It’s always been that way.”
“Don’t apologize, baby. Be proud of what God gave you.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I am.”
“I’ma start calling you Nicki Minaj.”
She laughed and enjoyed the feeling of his hands flicking her nipples.
Ricky closed his eyes and tried to kiss her. She squeezed her mouth shut but he managed to force his tongue inside.
Oh, great, she thought. It feels like I’m being kissed by a washer and dryer.
Her eyes remained open. She glanced at his forehead. It was big, round, thick, and greasy looking. She took a sniff of him, and he didn’t smell so good by then. Ricky was the type who easily sweated through his clothes, and his shirt felt damp as he pressed himself against her.
Ricky came up for air and gave her “the look.” Although her heart felt sad, she backed away from him and began walking toward her bedroom. She knew they’d end up in the bed that she’d slept in many times with the love of her life. It had been a few months since Calhoun had ditched her, but Coco often thought of him.
With each step she took, Coco heard a voice in her head.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.”
The voice sounded exactly like the talking crosswalk that pedestrians hear when standing at an intersection before they cross the street.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.”
Five minutes later, Coco was naked and lying on her back, both her legs spread wide. Her red pumps were still attached to her feet. She was moaning and groaning. And Ricky’s fat penis was tearing up her vagina as he shoved his torso against hers over and over.
“Ugh,” she grunted. “Ugh, ugh.” She gritted her teeth while the man with the sweaty back, sweaty chest, and hairy arms huffed and puffed and said nothing.