Always (6 page)

Before the sound of the bell left the air, I was out the door. Since I always made a point of sitting in the front row, that was no big deal. I only had five minutes to get to my next class, and it was on the other side of the school. I knew if I ran, I could go by Cheryl's class, find out what was wrong, and get back to my Americanism Versus Communism class before the bell rang.

I was running down the hallway full speed wearing my football jersey with the big “35” plastered on the back of it. As I slid and skipped through students, I looked down at my watch and figured I was making good time. Two or three football players tried to stop me; one tried to tell me something about his decision to go to UCLA. It didn't matter, because I now had only three minutes to see Cheryl, kiss her, and get to class. As I ran down the hallway, my best friend on the team, David, yelled at me, “Hey, Stang! Wait a minute!” Most of the fellows in school called me Stang, which was short for Mustang.

“Can't, man. I'm in a rush. I'll getcha' on the comeback.”

He ran up behind me, and said, “Listen man, I need to tell you something.”

I looked at my watch and slowed down. “What, Slick, I'm in a rush.”

“I know, I know, but dig on this, blood.” And then he looked the other way as he got closer. “It's your honey.”

“What about Cheryl?”

“Man.” And then he looked down.

“David. What's up, man? Something happened to Cheryl?”

“Listen, jack. You know you my ace boone coon'. But you don't need to go round that corner.”

I just looked at him, because I now knew why she was crying. As I tightened my jaw and my fist, I just had to see who
he
was. I walked toward the corner with the other students coming toward me like salmon swimming upstream, and David hollered, “Stang! Don't start anything. It might mess up your ride, man. You got a full ride, man. Don't blow it.”

The scholarship offers were the least of my concern as I
turned the corner. I remember how hot it was. At least ninety-five degrees under a tree. I was full of sweat from the run and now my heart was beating like a snare drum.

There she was, standing next to him. Darius Kingsley. Darius was a wide receiver on our team and dumb as wet clay. In fact, this was the first year he was out of special ed, and he and Cheryl were in first-period cooking class together. They were not holding hands, smiling, or anything. They were just standing closer than acquaintances stand. And then she looked up at me.

“Henry? What are you doing here?” The look in her eyes confirmed everything I needed to know.

“What do you mean, what am
I
doing here?”

“Aren't you supposed to be in AVC? You gonna be late.”

“What's going on, Cheryl?”

David stood behind me, and said, “Man, cool down. It ain't worth it, blood. Not for some chick.”

“It's not what it looks like, Stang,” Darius said.

“What does it look like, Cheryl? Since when is this dumb”—I paused for the right word and it just sorta rolled out—“
dumb
motherfucker walking you to algebra?” Neither Cheryl nor David had ever heard me curse before, but no other word seemed to fit.

“Who, who, who you calling dumb!” Darius stuttered with this sinister smile on his face as his eyebrows arrowed downward and he took a couple of steps in my direction.

“He called your punk, short-bus-riding ass a dumb motherfucker!” David said. “You ain't got no business even talking to the chick!”

“You, you, you ain't in this shit!” Darius replied. “So you might wanna find you some business to get into and stay out mine.”

“Listen, Stang, let's go, man,” David said, tugging on my jersey. “We ain't losing our ride fighting over no damn broad, man!”

Darius dropped his books, spread both arms crucifixlike, bugged his eyes, and sneered, “Yo, David, you really want sum a dis? I been wanting to peel off in yo ass anyway.
You know I ain't scared of your backwoods, musky, sced-of-deodorant country ass!”

As David and Darius traded insults, Cheryl and I spoke with our eyes. It's funny. I guess because we were together so much, our communication went beyond the physical. For only the second time in my life, I saw her tears fall. Those hazel eyes, her full brown lips, and her body were expressionless, but her face glistened from a tear track on her cheek.

I could tell she wanted to say something to me, but she could not. What was it? Did she feel more comfortable with Darius? He, after all, didn't expect anything from her. He wouldn't push her to stay on the A-B honor role. He wouldn't bring her college catalogs and stick them under her nose. He wouldn't insist she start a college fund and save her money while other girls her age headed straight for the mall they had just built in town.

We broke our stare into each other's eyes as a teacher came out of the classroom to quiet David and Darius. I turned to walk away and I heard her plead softly, “Please don't leave, Henry. Please don't leave me. I need—I want to tell you something.” But for a moment I couldn't stand the sight of her. I already knew, in a way, what she both needed and wanted to say.

As I walked around the corner, the bell rang, students bolted for their rooms, and I heard the door to her classroom close. As it did, I leaned against the redbrick wall trying to catch my breath. For the first time, something happened to me that had never happened before. My chest burned, there was a white blindness and I couldn't think straight. There were no colors, no noises, yet my eyes were wide open. It was as if I had entered this chasm, and I knew my life would never be the same.

It was not supposed to be this way. I'd planned every detail of my life and this was not a part of it. And then David came by and said, “Listen, man, I gotta get to the coach's office, but we gonna handle this later on. You cool?”

“Hey.” I looked at him with not enough strength to crack
even a fake smile, and said, “Yeah I'm cool. I'm cool, man. Get to the gym.”

“All right, man. I'll see you after school in the weight room. Hold ya' head up and don't be late this time.”

As David ran away, I heard Darius talking to another girl in the hallway. I had too much to lose to waste my time with him or Cheryl if this was the type of guy she wanted to be with.

I walked slowly toward my class, trying to think of an excuse for Mr. Rivers. But as I walked, Darius passed me, and said, “Man, if that's your woman, you better keep that fine ass of hers on a leash, because a brother like me would—”

I waited in the dean's office for more than two hours. They called in our principal, Dr. Langston, and the head football coach to determine the best way to handle such matters since I was an athlete. At that time colleges, especially Florida A&M, were strict about player conduct, and my coach did not want it to affect my ride. Apparently I'd knocked out one of Darius's front teeth and shaken another one loose. I don't even remember the punch, it happened so fast. One minute he was saying something, and the next I was waiting for Nurse Arndorfer in the dean's office holding a wet paper towel around my split knuckle.

Later David told me he had seen the two of them together at a house party. He said he never saw them kissing or even holding hands, but he had noticed that Darius would walk her to all the classes I could not due to my schedule.

When I got home that day, I wanted to call her. I wanted to call her so bad. Because even though it was her who was in the wrong, I felt guilty. For the past three years we had spoken on the phone at least once a day. As I paced in my room, it occurred to me that she and I had never so much as had an argument before. Sure, we had a Romeo and Juliet–like pressure from my parents, but that was a minor thing, because she knew I loved her, and up until that day, I knew she loved me.

We used to say our love was so deep, the word
love
could not possibly define it. That true love transcended four letters. I once read that Eskimos have more than fifty words or phrases for
snow
, because snow affects their lives in so many ways. So it befuddled me how four letters could begin to describe the love for a brother and the love for a job and my love for Cheryl. I felt the word
love
was deficient because I was supposed to use this word to describe just how much
she
meant to me? So we had our own word to describe how we felt. And that word was simply
always
. Because we felt that our love would never die and would last forever. That it would last . . . for always.

When the phone rang, my heart stopped. I remember falling over the couch onto the floor to answer it.

“Stang. What's up, man?”

“‘Sup?”

“Damn, man, you sound like stewed shit. Listen. I got some good news for you. Coach handled that situation. He told Dr. Langston that he would discipline you, because he didn't want you to miss any days from school. He said he would have you run stadium steps and your parents would have to pay to get Darius's teeth fixed.”

“Umm.”

“Umm? That's all? Umm? You know, they talked that punk out of calling the pigs. If you had a record, you could have forgotten about FAMU. You know how Coach Gaiter is.”

“I'm happy, man. I just—”

“Yo, get over it, brother,” David shouted. “Like Coach says, either you're the hammer or the anvil. That's life. Deal with it and move on!”

The next day I was at the stadium running the steps and trying to focus on my halfback physique. Coach Niblack sat in the distance watching me but it didn't matter. I felt good running up one row and down the other. I never stopped my conditioning after the season, so I was in the best shape of my life. Up one row and down the other. I attacked the steps as if I were trying to punish them. I wanted to push
my body to the limit, and Cheryl out of my mind. Up one row and down the other. Then I did something I rarely did. I pulled off my shirt and tossed it on the bleachers. I knew a few girls from the pep squad were watching and I could hear them making comments, but I never looked back. At this time I was getting more definition in my thighs and abdomen. My chest, which was always large, was now accompanied by a flat stomach and thick triceps. As I ran, sweaty and hot, I had no time to even get tired, I was too busy punishing the stadium and trying to forget Cheryl.

And then I saw her, and almost tripped on a step. I regained my balance and I could hear a couple of the girls giggle. When they did, Cheryl looked around and noticed me running. We had not spoken the previous day, although someone had called the house two or three times and held the phone without saying anything. I'd called her house and done the same thing. She knew it was me. I knew it was her. But neither of us knew how to give in.

As she watched, I continued running. I ran harder, as if the answer to what had happened to our “for always” were buried in the cinder-block steps. Up one row and down the other. Up one row and down the other. I pounded the steps as if they contained answers. I could feel my heart pump acid throughout my body and it didn't matter because I saw her and I saw Darius. I saw them standing closer than close and I saw her tears. I saw her choosing to stay here with him instead of going to Tallahassee with me. And then I sprinted the rest of the way, skipping two or three steps as I ascended to the top. Sweat flung from my arms like a wet mop being shaken outside a back door. Breathing heavily, I finally stopped and gathered my composure, determined that I would stare her down. When I looked in her direction, she was gone.

After school I got off the bus and ran home as fast as I could. Herbert, who came in a distant second, thought it was because I wanted to control the TV. Getting to pick which program to watch on television was the last thing on my mind. I listened to the radio and did my chores and my
homework with one ear waiting for the phone to ring at all times.

That night my parents went to church, and while I was tempted to call her, I didn't. I picked up the receiver one time and held it so tight to my ear I felt my biceps cramp, then Herbert noticed and asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I lied as I returned the receiver to its cradle and decided that the next day in school I would resolve this one way or another. I didn't need her and the more I thought about it I didn't even want her. I had my pick of any number of females so if our for always was over . . . so be it. Then the phone rang.

“Hello?” While the person didn't say a word, I did hear background noise. It sounded like the faint sound of traffic, but I wasn't sure. My head said “Hang up and make her call back,” but my heart would not allow me to play the game. “Hello?”

“Henry . . . Henry, I love you. That's all I can—wanted to say.”

I said nothing as I held the phone, trying to form the words. Previously four letters could not contain our love. Now four thousand could not share the way I felt. My love for her was infinite, there was no doubt in my mind about that, but I didn't want her to know just how much I
needed
her.

There was silence until she said, “I know . . . well, I know what I did was wrong and I'm sorry. I just . . . Henry,” she said with tears in her voice, “I do love you. And I hope you can still love me too.”

Say “I do,” say “I do,”
I shouted in my thoughts.
Say “I do!” Just say the damn words!
But my stubborn tongue would not allow the sound to pass my lips.

“You know, Henry, sometimes I wonder if we could have ever stayed together, because—”

“What do you mean, if we
could
have stayed together? You quitting
me
?”

Silence. “Let me finish,” she replied as what sounded like a semitrailer blew its horn in the background. “I wonder if one day I could be the right person for you. I mean, my life
right now is crazy and I don't know if I'll be able to fix it. I don't know . . . Actually, Henry, I can't be the person you want me to be. I can't live up to your—”