by Mona Love
“I’m so over this shit, Keisha. Why don’t you just give it a rest? You’re beautiful. A man don’t define you,” Leitha said sincerely. “I think if you just wait and pray, God will send you the right man at the right time.”
I sucked my teeth and kept on applying my makeup. That was easy for Leitha to say. She had a man. Everyone needed someone. In my eyes, human companionship was just as essential as oxygen. I wanted to tell myself I didn’t need a man, but deep down it was ingrained in me that I did.
I sighed and threw my makeup brush on the vanity. I closed my eyes for a few long minutes and thought about what Leitha was saying. She was right. A man didn’t define me, but something about getting men’s approval seemed to haunt my life. I wanted to be accepted and loved and taken care of. Wasn’t that what all women wanted? Maybe it was because my father had walked out on my mother and me when I was eight. I’d always blamed myself for being fat as his reason for leaving. After his abandonment, I’d eat and eat and grow bigger and bigger. That was my comfort. No matter how hard I tried, I loved food . . . oh, and men. So I ate to comfort myself after the rejection from men, but I kept pursuing men in my need for their approval and the sham of comfort it provided. Do you see how that could end up being a crazy way to live?
My mother struggled, and she always preached about how much easier raising me would’ve been had she had a man. She couldn’t keep one either, which was why we had a revolving door in our house. I saw man after man and watched my mother suffer disappointment after disappointment. Sort of what I was doing to myself now. I once went to a psychic who told me I would have all of my heart’s desires one day, including a good man. I wanted to slap that bitch and ask for every dime of my money back. How could she possibly believe that I was worthy when even I didn’t believe it? It was crazy. I was crazy. But that didn’t change shit. I was still on every dating website, dating app, and social dating scene around.
“I just do it for fun, LeLe,” I lied, snapping out of the sad memory of my childhood. Fuck it! What did I have to lose? Self-dignity had been long gone. When you’re a big girl, everyone (women included) will make you feel like you don’t deserve shit in life but a tub of chicken and a girdle.
“Whatever. Just keep my number on speed dial in case your speed date is a serial killer,” Leitha half joked.
“They only kill skinny bitches, remember,” I joked back. We both laughed and eased some of the very real tension in the room.
* * *
I cannot lie, my heart slammed against my chest bone like the beater inside of a bass drum. I smoothed down my bright yellow Ashley Stewart sundress to make sure my Spanx weren’t rolling in the middle, and I shimmied my ample hips over to the next table. Oh, God! He was ugly as hell. This was the second table in the speed-dating cycle, and I was already ready to run for the door.
You ain’t pay a hundred dollars to waste it. Stick with it, Keisha.
The pep talks I gave myself were real at that point. I had to keep my head in the game. What if this place held my diamond in the rough?
As I moved from table to table, looking in the face of man after man, I had to really ask myself again why I was there. At this point, I had received more than one gawk and gasp at my size from the shallow bunch of stuffed suits who were there trying to find dates. And then finally . . .
I plopped down in the chair in front of a beautiful chocolate warrior. Instead of gawking or acting disgusted, he smiled. Not only did he smile, but he smiled like I had made his whole day.
“Hi, I’m Wilson,” he said, still smiling. His teeth were beams of light they were so white against his dark skin. His accent was noticeable right away. Nigerian? Ghanaian? Senegalese? I couldn’t place it right away, but he definitely wasn’t American.
“Keisha,” I said, parting an awkward, half-hearted smile. I had a general distrust of foreign men. The explanation would take a whole other book, but let’s just say I grew up wary of men with accents.
“Queen Keisha. You look beautiful tonight,” Wilson said, still smiling like his ass was half silly.
I cringed a little bit at that accent. I told myself I could make it through it, though. He was the first friendly face I had encountered, so that had to count for something. Wilson snatched his speed-dating number from the little holder on the table and nodded at me so I’d do the same. I was already tired of the pace of looking at man after man, so I followed his lead.
“Can we go someplace for a drink?” he asked. That shit was fast and forward, but who was I to question fate? Right?
“Okay,” I said. But I was thinking, a drink? Don’t think you’re getting away without feeding my ass, Prince Akeem from Zamunda!
I can’t lie, after I got past Wilson’s accent, I was impressed. He said he was in the United States on a school visa. He sounded like he was a hardworking student, and I was here for all of it. Shit, I had met American men who were born here with a million opportunities to go to school and weren’t doing shit but squandering their lives away.
Wilson asked me what I liked to do. I had to look at his ass twice. What the hell it look like I like to do? Eat!
* * *
“These are so good,” I mumbled as I cracked another snow crab leg in half with my bare hands and brought it up to my mouth so I could suck the sweet juice out of the middle before devouring the crab meat.
“In my country—” Wilson started.
“Errp.” I threw my hand up in front of my face. “Let me stop you there, Wilson. I want to enjoy this good food you’re paying for, so please don’t keep telling me how bad the food in America is compared to your country,” I said flatly. I had already had enough of that talk. It always killed me when people from other countries talked badly about America, especially when not one damn American soul had asked them to come over here. I always thought, if your country is so much better, why the hell are you here?
Wilson smiled and shook his head. “Okay, Queen, I understand.”
Dinner was great. I couldn’t say the conversation was any good because I had to keep asking Wilson to repeat himself with that accent, but he was someone I might see again. And I did.
Two weeks later, I sat in Wilson’s apartment in the one chair he had, looking around at the shabby furnishings. He kept apologizing and explaining that he was just a student with “meager” earnings, as he put it. It fascinated me how he could barely speak English but he used such big vocabulary words. Amusing and funny.
In any case, I put Wilson at ease. Shit, he was broke and so was I. I was just happy he hadn’t friend-zoned me yet, like most of the dates I had gone on.
“You look ravishing today, Keisha,” he said with that accent and his usual big-vocabulary word added.
“Thanks.” I smiled politely.
“I’m going to get ready. Make yourself at home,” he said.
He left me alone and went to the bathroom to finish getting ready for our date. Of course my nosy ass couldn’t just sit and be a normal good-girl date. I got up and started snooping. I picked up a picture frame and saw Wilson in a picture with a woman, two kids, a man, and another woman. I scanned the photo trying to figure out who was who. Maybe the woman sitting in the center was his mother? Maybe the other woman was his sister? I couldn’t tell.
I put the picture down and scanned his desk. My hand accidentally, yes, accidentally touched the keyboard on his laptop and the screen lit up. Of course my eyes were drawn to the bright light of the screen. There was a half-written email showing. I squinted and craned my neck so I could read it. I knew that might’ve been out of order, but oh, well, once I started reading it, there would be no turning back.
Dear Adjua,
I am missing you like crazy. I hope your experience at home is not as stressful as mine. I will be sending money as soon as I can. Please kiss Odjo and Bakari for me. I am missing them so much. I am still working on my plan to citizenship. I have met someone who seems easy to trick. Adjua, she is not beautiful like you, and she is so fat. Fat
like the rhinos in the bush. I hope that made you laugh. She is nice, but again, very fat. At home, she would have only been someone’s house maiden. No man would choose her for a wife for fear that he would not tell whenever she was with child. I purposely picked her because I could see the desperation in her eyes. She doesn’t love herself, and she is almost begging for love. It will be easy to fool her into thinking I really like her and even love her. I can tell it will not take me long to get her to marry me for my citizenship. I will have to deal with her until the time comes, and as soon as I can fool her, I will get the citizenship and send for you and the boys. It won’t be long. She is easy. Easier than any American girl I have met so far.
Anyway, enough about my fat fool. How is Maman? Is she
I heard a noise behind me but not over the whooshing sound of my boiling blood rushing through my ears. My chest heaved up and down, and my fists curled on their own.
Desperation in her eyes? Begging for love? Easy to fool? Fat fool? The words played over and over in my head until both of my temples throbbed painfully. I didn’t think I’d been that mad in years.
“Hey, are you ready to go?” Wilson asked with that stupid, disgusting accent and one of his dumb, goofy smiles.
“Fuck you!” I hissed. “I’m not so desperate and fat that you could fool me into marrying you so you can become a citizen, you piece of shit,” I snarled and stormed toward the door.
“Keisha! Wait!” Wilson yelled, grabbing my arm. “Let me explain.”
“Get the fuck off of me!” I barked, pushing him so hard he stumbled backward and landed on his ass with a hard thud. I was nothing to play with when I was hurt and felt backed into a corner. I had learned long ago how to defend myself.
“Just wait!” I heard Wilson yelling at my back as I slammed out of his apartment and raced down the stairs of his old-ass building. “Keisha!”
“Fuck you!” I screamed. “You’d be better off staying the fuck away from me if you don’t want to end up in a box back to Africa, you piece of foreign shit!”
I raced around the corner from his building and summoned an Uber. I didn’t know why the hell I didn’t drive! My blood was still boiling, but as soon as I sat in the back seat of my Uber, the tears came fast and furious. I couldn’t tell if they were sad tears or mad tears. I was so sick of this game with men. What about me screamed “desperate fat girl who will take any shit off of any man”? I mean I carried myself with dignity. I knew I was beautiful, in the face at least. Why? Why was God constantly punishing me with these scenarios? I tried to be a good person. All of my friends always went on and on about how I was the life of the party. I had tried it all: dating apps, blind dates, and even meeting men in the clubs. Nothing had gotten me further than tricky, using-ass niggas. Oh, and then there was the “I like you as a friend” niggas. Oh, and don’t let me forget the “you’re like a sister me” niggas.
“Have a good evening.”
“What?” I snapped, quickly realizing I was barking at my Uber driver for no reason.
“I . . . I just said have a good evening.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I apologized. I had been in another world thinking about my failures. I hadn’t meant to snap. “You too.”
When I got into my apartment, I quickly shut the door, locked it, put my back against it, and slid down to the floor. The tears came fast and furious, and I just let them.
Chapter 3
Better to Be Born Lucky
I groaned and slapped at my nightstand for my phone. As soon as I cracked my eyes open, pain rocked through my skull. “Fuck,” I hissed, finally locating my phone. “Hello,” I grumbled into the phone, my own breath threatening to kill me.
“Keisha!”
Ugh. I moved the phone from my ear quickly. My head was pounding too hard for the damn screaming.
“Keisha! You there?” I could hear Leitha even with the phone away from my ear.
“LeLe, what the fuck? Why are you screaming like that?” I rasped, my voice heavy with sleep and hangover. I had polished off a whole bottle of Hennessy the night before. Drowning my sorrows in liquor was better than trying to find the next stupid nigga to fill the void.
“Girl, listen to me! Somebody won the lottery last month at the store around the corner from your damn house! They haven’t claimed the prize, and they just showed the shit on the news!” Leitha yelled.
I sucked my teeth and shrugged my shoulders. She had to be fucking crazy. “So?” I grumped.
“So? Bitch, it was the same day you fell in the mall, met your Prince Charming who you let disappear, and were told by me to buy a gotdamn lotto ticket. Which I fucking hope you did!” She went on with so much feeling that I was all the way awake now.
I finally sat up, scrubbed my hands over my face, and wiped the sleep out of my eyes.
“Well? Keisha? Did your ass get a lotto ticket that day?” Leitha pressed.
“Ugh. Yes,” I grumbled. “But I don’t know what the hell I did with those damn tickets. That shit was weeks ago,” I said, looking out into my apartment like the tickets would just appear out of thin air.
“Bitch, I’ll be there in twenty minutes to help you look. You must be crazy,” Leitha said before hanging right up on me.
Leitha was not playing. As soon as I stepped out of the shower, I had just enough time to wrap myself in my terry-cloth robe before she was pounding on my door.
“Oh, my God, this girl,” I mumbled as I padded to the door. I snatched the door open, and Leitha rushed inside so fast a swift wind passed my face from her movement.
“Okay. Let’s start with what you were wearing that day,” Leitha said, wasting no time.
“Um, hello to you too, bitch,” I said, shaking my head at her. “Damn.”
“Bitch, you know I love you already. We don’t have to waste time. I’m telling you Keish, I got a feeling about this. That same deep gut feeling I had when I told you I knew my ass was pregnant before I had even missed my period.”
“LeLe, that shit is totally different. You ain’t have a deep gut feeling about that shit. You had your guts dug out and knew your ass ain’t use no condom, so you knew you were pregnant,” I corrected.
Leitha waved her hand in front of her face. “That’s beside the point. Dammit, we need to find those lotto tickets! Now, what the hell did you have on?”
Of course I remembered everything about that day, especially my encounter with Andre. I had replayed his face, his scent, his body, his mannerisms over and over in my head so many times that I felt like I actually knew him now.
I moved around my apartment and picked out the dress I had on. I grabbed the purse I carried and the jean jacket I had on over my sundress. I dumped it all into the middle of the floor. Leitha tore through the pile like a madwoman but came up with nothing. She looked up at me with pure terror in her eyes.
“Think, Keisha. When you cleaned out this purse, what did you do with all the stuff?” Leitha asked, her voice quivering.
My heart sped up. She and I were both thinking the same thing, and we both opened our mouths at the same time.
“I hope you . . .”
“I hope I . . .”
“Didn’t throw them away,” we said in unison.
Leitha ran to the small garbage can in my bathroom. Empty.
I ran to the garbage can in my bedroom. Empty.
“I take the kitchen garbage out way too often for anything to be in there a month later,” I said.
“Where else?” Leitha waved her hands frantically. “Fuck.”
Shit, she was acting like she’d lost a potentially million-dollar ticket. I mean, she was my BFF, so technically if I won, she won, but still.
“Let me check one more place,” I said, trying to have a glimmer of hope shine through my words.
I walked to the corner of my living room where I had a glass-top computer desk set up with my printer and a small file cabinet. Essentially, this was my “office.” I sat down in the office chair and filed through every
piece of paper atop the desk. Nothing. I looked at the printer desk and filed through those papers too. Nothing. Then, with my last-ditch hope fading, I bent under the desk and grabbed the little silver shred bucket I kept under there for months and months before I ever decided to shred shit. I pulled it up to my lap and dug through it. Leitha was hovering over me like a buzzard over a dead carcass. I didn’t even think she realized that her ass was pacing like a crazy person.
“Just dump it out already, Keisha,” Leitha urged.
I turned the chair around and turned the little bucket over onto the floor. It seemed like a ton of papers fell out. Who knew that little-ass bucket held so much shit?
Leitha bent to her knees and started sifting carefully through the pile. At first, it seemed so hopeless.
“Here! They’re here!” Leitha screamed triumphantly.
I swear, between the still-lingering hangover and the excitement of what might be, I almost had a gotdamn heart attack. I actually had to clutch my damn chest to keep myself from fainting and spilling out of that chair.
“Okay. Okay,” Leitha huffed, fanning herself with one hand and clutching the lotto tickets with the other hand. “I have the numbers. We have two tickets. How we going to do this?” she continued, huffing and puffing like she was about to hyperventilate.
“Girl, give me these damn tickets and let me check the numbers. You acting all dramatic, and for all we know, these shits are duds. Got me all riled up,” I said, flustered. I snatched the tickets and Leitha pulled out the paper she had with the winning lotto numbers on it.
“Call out the numbers,” I demanded, “slowly.”
“Okay,” Leitha replied. Then she blew out a breath.
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “Bitch, you missed your calling. Actress.”
“Shut the hell up and listen,” she said. “Two, three—”
“Hold on. Give me time to check both tickets.” I put my hand up. Leitha blew out an exasperated breath.