Casting Down Imaginations (13 page)

fourteen

K
aren

I was standing at the stove melting a ham and cheese sandwich
when someone knocked on the door. I never had any visitors, so I knew it was
Terrance. I was glad. Since he’d showed up on campus, he was all I could think
about.

“Who is it?” I asked, walking the short distance to the front
door.

No response. I looked through the peephole and saw Terrance
standing there grinning from ear to ear.

“Who is it?” I asked again, staring straight at him. I wanted
him to answer me.

“Man, who you think it is?” he joked.

I giggled and opened the door. He stepped past me and walked
inside.

“Excuse me,” I stopped him. “Where do you think you’re
going?”

“Why you tryin’ ‘ta act tough, girl? You know you want me in
here.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

He ignored it. “What you got goin’ on today?” he asked.

I sighed and closed the front door. “Well, unlike you, I have
final exams to study for.”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “Everybody runnin’ ‘round, flippin’ out
over those things.”

“Yeah. You would be too if you had five of them to study
for.”

“I seriously doubt that,” he bragged.

“Why?”

He pretended to dribble a basketball. “’Cause, girl, I got
skills. What professor you know gon’ flunk me wit’ the way I dunk?”

I turned back to my ham and cheese melt. “You want one?”

“What you in here tryin’ to cook, girl?”

I held the sandwich up with my spatula. “Ham and cheese. I
got more bread, cheese, and ham left. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

He frowned. “No thanks. You wanna go to the gym and watch me
hoop?”

I grinned. This part of Terrance still hadn’t changed. He was
still a big-headed showoff, but he could back up everything he bragged about.

“For how long?” I asked. In high school he could play for
hours on end. I had studying to do.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, lil’
mama. As soon as you get ready to leave, we’ll be out. We don’t have to stay
long ‘cause they don’ already seen me play plenty of times. That’s why they
want me.”

“Listen to you.’”

“What can I say?”

I turned the stove off and put the sandwich on a plate. “Just
let me eat this and change my clothes. Then I’ll be ready, okay? Give me about
ten minutes.”

I hurried into my room and quickly rummaged through my
things. I needed something that showed off my figure, but it couldn’t be too
sexy. Snacking on the sandwich, I finally picked out a pair of skinny leg jeans
and a thin long sleeved button up blouse. It was a little dangerous to wear in
December, but one great thing about Texas was that even the coldest day had a
little bit of summertime in it. I would just have to bring a jacket with me and
be back by five o’clock.

I took my shirt off and exchanged my cute jeans for the
tighter pair. I was just buttoning them up when I felt the presence of someone
else in the room with me.

I turned around quickly and gasped. Terrance was standing
right there watching me, getting an eyeful.

“Terrance!” I grabbed my blouse and held it across my chest.
“What are you doing?”

He held out my cell phone.

“Um, your phone,” he tried to explain.

He was just as shocked as I was, but I didn’t know if it was
because he saw me half naked or because of my anger.

“Who is it?” I snapped. It had better be either Jesus or
President Obama on the telephone.

“It’s your mom,” he said, dangling the phone. “I told her you
were changing, but she said to give you the phone anyway.”

He stood there watching me. Then his eyes began to travel
downward. I felt like a piece of meat.

“Terrance!”

He brought his eyes back up to my face. “Want me to tell her
to call you back?”

“YES!”

He nodded, but didn’t leave.

“Get out!” I screamed.

He hurried out of the room and closed the door behind him. I
flopped down on the bed and buried my face in my hands. Whatever happened to
knocking? This situation with Terrance was getting out of hand. It had only
been two days since he got here, and he’d already seen me without my shirt on.
What was next? Was he going to walk in on me while I was in the shower?

He knocked on the door.

“What, Terrance?” I asked, growing more and more impatient
with him.

“My bad, Karen,” he apologized. “I thought you would have
been all changed by now, that’s why I came in. I’m sorry, a’ight? I didn’t mean
to walk in on you and I know you mad.”

I put my shirt on and fastened a belt around my waist. When I
finished I opened the door.

“Knock next time,” I said to him, grinding my teeth. “As a
matter of fact, always knock.”

He looked down at me with sad eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

I walked past him and the two of us left for the gym.

**********

“Ooohhhhh!” the crowd in the gym echoed hysterically. It
didn’t take long for everyone to realize that Terrance was there, and once they
found out he was going to play, the place filled up quickly. Luckily, Terrance
reserved a spot for me on the first row next to a few of the guys on the team.
The people in the crowd were pushing and pulling each other, all out of
excitement for what Terrance was doing on the court. They loved him.

“Oohh, girl he can play,” an excited onlooker said to the
person next to her.

“Yes he can,” the friend replied. “You know if he comes here
he will definitely put Daytown on the map. We’ll win everything! And he is so
fine!”

I smiled. Terrance
was
fine. The way he ran that ball
made him
super duper fine.

Terrance jumped up and slapped the ball out of one of his
opponents’ hands. It must have been the ultimate disrespect in basketball
judging from the crowd’s reaction. They were on their feet screaming and
hollering as Terrance dribbled the ball all the way to the other side of the
court and dunked it. If they simply loved him before, they were completely in
love with him now.

“Tasha,” the girl behind me said to her friend. “I
want
him.”

“Christy please, okay?” her friend said, irritated. “Let’s
just watch the game. What about Eric?”

“Eric can’t play like that,” she answered. “Besides, what he
don’t know won’t hurt him.”

“There you go,” Tasha said. “You so nasty.”

“No I ain’t. I’m grown. And Terrance is grown, too, and what
two grown people do is their own business.”

No… she… didn’t. I was ready to start swinging. She better
keep her eyes and her hands off my man!

I turned to exchange a few words with her, but then turned
back around to face the basketball court once common sense gripped me. I
couldn’t be mad at this girl. Terrance wasn’t my man anymore. What we had
before no longer existed.

“I don’t know, girl,” Christy’s friend continued. “He
probably got a baby somewhere. Where is he from again?”

“I can’t remember, but I ain’t heard nothing about no kids.”

“Dudes be keeping that on the low. You know how they do. They
ain’t gon’ tell you about that because every female knows that along with a
baby mama comes drama.”

“I ain’t scared of no female,” Christy foolishly boasted.
“Shoot, if she want some she can bring it.”

Tasha laughed. “You so stupid, girl. Shut up. You just saying
that ‘cause she ain’t here.”

Neither one of them knew it, but the girl they were referring
to was sitting right in front of them. I was his baby’s mama. I could have
turned around and popped her in the mouth for thinking that she could take me.
Dizzy chicken-head…

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Karen Stephens, get yourself
together, girl. Act like you got some sense. That’s the old you. That’s the old
Karen. We haven’t seen her in years and we don’t want to see her again. That
Karen is long gone. That Karen does stupid things, but not you. You’re grown
now, and you’re more mature. Progress, Karen. Not regress.

“You heard about the party Saturday?” Christy asked.

“No, what party?”

“The guys on the team throwing Terrance a party Saturday
night. It’s supposed to be off the hook, and yours truly is on the welcoming
party.”

Welcoming party? What welcoming party? I didn’t hear anything
about a welcoming party. Why would it be on Saturday anyway if he was leaving
on Sunday? That made no sense. She was stupid. She didn’t even know what she
was talking about. If anyone was a welcoming party, it was me.

“What?” Tasha asked, not believing her. “You mean you’re
gonna…”

“Uh huh,” Christy answered slyly.

I didn’t like the way this sounded.

“But what about Eric? Christy, you have a man. Why you acting
like that?”

“Eric, Eric, Eric. If you love him so much, you go with him.
He’s old news. But Terrance, Terrance is the one I want, and I’m gonna make
sure I get him.”

The buzzer from the scoreboard sounded. I waited patiently as
Terrance shook hands with the other players on the court and came towards me.

“You look tired,” I told him, appreciating the sweat
glistening all over his body.

He shook his head. “Nawh. Those two little games can’t hold
me. That was just practice. You ready to go?”

Someone cleared their throat. “Excuse me.”

Terrance and I both looked up. Two barely dressed females
stood in front of us, each one with boobs the size of Houston poking out of
their shirts. They made me sick. They had to be wearing push-up bras on top of
those implants. God wouldn’t be that unfair to me.

“I’m Christy,” one of the girls introduced herself. “And this
here is my friend, Tasha.”

Tasha waved half-heartedly. Terrance nodded her way but I
didn’t say a word. They were about to piss me off for the second time today.
For all they knew I could have been his girlfriend. They hadn’t even asked.
They just walked up on him like I wasn’t even there. How could they be so
disrespectful?

“So you gon’ be on campus for the rest of the week, huh?”
Christy asked.

Terrance nodded.

“Good,” she said, and placed a folded piece of paper in his
hand. “Well if you get bored…” Her eyes drifted over to me as if she were seeing
me for the first time. “Or if you just need something a little bit more
exciting… give me a call. I’ll be waiting.”

NO SHE DIDN’T!!!!!

I stood there with my mouth hanging open, baffled that
Christy actually had the nerve to insult me right to my face.

Her friend Tasha tried not to laugh. I wanted to jump in her
face and drag her across the basketball court by her weave, but I held my composure.
I had enough faith in Terrance to know he would come to my rescue. He would
tell her that he wasn’t interested in the trifling escapade she had planned for
him. He’d explain to her that the real reason he even came to Daytown was to
see me and his real joy was being with me.

“Okay,” he said as he stuffed the paper in his pocket.

Christy looked at me like she had already succeeded in
stealing him from me. Humiliated, I tried to keep a straight face as she and
her friend walked away.

I was hurt. Was he really just gonna take another girl’s
number right in front of me like it wasn’t anything? How disrespectful could a
guy be?