Choose Me (22 page)

Cara sat off to the side against a wall, biting her fingernails, an indication that something was up. I scooted over next
to her. She looked up and gave me a quick smile. She scribbled a message on my ditto sheet:
Can I get a ride home? My mom’s working late.
I wrote back:
Sure. Is everything okay?
Still biting a fingernail, she wrote:
Me and Chris broke up.
I rubbed an affectionate circle on her back.
Sorry,
I wrote,
his loss—big time!
Looking around, I observed that Chris was noticeably absent. I also noticed that my nephews were missing.

Johnny didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t commenting as much nor did he seem bothered that the girls were subdued. It was his
turn to lead the instruction, so I let him do his thing because it wasn’t about competition tonight, but receiving the spirit.
As the class drew to a close, Pastor Allen, who had been observing, called on me to read from Psalm 141, interrupting my note
passing with Cara. “Unless you ladies have something else you want to share with the rest of us?” he asked, causing everyone
to laugh, everyone except Johnny.

Flustered, I flipped toward the end of Psalms, which I had yet to finish, and started reading. When I scanned ahead to verses
3 and 4, I paused, reading the words in my mind first, before speaking them out loud, softly,
“Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips, Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take
part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies.”
There were some snickers from a few of the mischievous students when I read the last phrase.

I tried to keep my face expressionless and innocent, so as not to draw attention to myself. But internally, the words condemned
me. At the same time I took the words to heart. God was definitely trying to tell me something.

As the youth members began to disband, Johnny blocked the exit door and said, “Remember, immediate gratification may seem
more powerful than the long-term reward, but the penalty is tremendous. It’s what we do when we don’t think. It’s what we
do when we don’t wait on the Lord.”

He was looking straight at me as he spoke the words, his face disparaging, which made me wonder if he sensed my spirit was
in turmoil. I looked away just as Cara came up to me, ready to go.

For the first ten minutes of the drive, Cara didn’t talk much, answering my questions about Chris, school, and home with shrugs,
nods, and shakes of head. Then as I neared her street in Logan Square, she began talking, in between bites of her fingernails.

“He kept, like, trying to touch me,” she said in her low voice. “When I moved his hand from one place, he, like, kept putting
it somewhere else. He never did that before, when we were just lip-kissing. Then, we started soul-kissing and he, like, he
became this whole other person.”

“So you broke it off?”

“Yeah, I had to push him off me. I pushed him so hard he hit his head on the brick wall. He came at me like he was going to
hit me but I pushed up on him and he backed off.”

“Cara, you have to be careful,” I told her, double-parking the car in front of her building.

She sucked her teeth. “I’m not scared of him.”

“It’s not about being scared. It’s about being safe. It’s one thing to defend yourself when someone hits you first, but it’s
another to be the aggressor.”

“I
was
defending myself,” she insisted. “I was madder at myself than at him. You know how I used to say that I didn’t understand
how girls let boys talk them into having sex?”

“Yes?” I answered cautiously.

“It’s not even about that. It’s not about peer pressure. It’s about fighting yourself, fighting temptation. It’s like you
almost have to have your mind in the spirit all the time, like that scripture said, or you’ll give in. You know what I mean?”

I sighed. “I do.”

I saw myself in her, but differently than I had before. Her teenage hormones were changing her much like Adam’s kiss had awakened
the sleeping desire in me. My advice to her would be simple because it would be much easier for her to grasp the corporal
consequences of sex than the spiritual ones. All she had to do was look around at other girls who had given in to temptation:
the ones who had gone through abortions or been infected with diseases, who became single mothers, and whose education would
be postponed or abandoned. I, on the other hand, knew that the spiritual consequences of yielding to temptation would be detrimental,
and thus, worse. I understood that when it came to boys and men, even the strongest of girls and women lose their willpower.
For as long as I could remember, I had witnessed women lose their minds and make unwise decisions when love, or men, were
involved. It affects all kinds of women, whether poor and undereducated, intelligent or well off; none are immune. Maybe that’s
what God meant when he told Eve,
“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Perhaps that was why women felt pressured to “have a man.” It went beyond being innate because it was a mandate from God.

*   *   *

As I headed home, I called Maya from my cell phone. Normally, I wasn’t the kind of person who talked on a cell while driving.
Most of the time, I failed to turn it on and Maya and Simone would always harass me about not being able to get in touch with
me. I reserved my phone for emergencies, like when my car broke down. But I was experiencing a crisis of sorts, which required
urgent intervention and additional reinforcement from my sister, who I knew would understand what I was going through.

“Why weren’t your sons at Youth Night?” I asked her.

“I was too tired.” She sounded preoccupied and I sensed something was amiss, hoping it was with Alex and not Luciano. “What
was the topic?”

“Living by the spirit versus the sinful nature.”

“Hmm. So, what’s up?” she inquired, waiting.

“Nothing, just going home.”

“Something’s up. You
never
call from your cell phone unless something’s up.”

She was right. She knew me as well as I knew her. “I kissed Adam.”

“And?”
she prodded.

“It was a mistake.”

“How did it feel?”

“How do you think it felt? After five years, a touch on my arm feels like fire.”

Maya laughed. “I know the feeling.” She turned away and scolded one of the boys. “Marcos, do you see me on the phone? You
can use the phone
after
I’m off. Go away.”

“I’m calling you because I need some encouragement in the right direction. Away from him. I don’t want to compare notes.”

“Kissing doesn’t always lead to sex. Why can’t you kiss him and enjoy it and not analyze it so much?”

“Because we’re not twelve and he’s not going to be happy just kissing for too long.”

“‘L’ doesn’t have a problem with it.”

“How long do you think that’s going to last?”

“I don’t know. I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

“So, you’re planning to sleep with him eventually? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, I’m not planning anything. If it happens …”

“Things don’t ‘just happen.’ You know that. Step one leads to step two, and so on.”

I heard the boys calling her and arguing in the background.

“I don’t want to hear it!” Maya shouted away from the mouthpiece, though she might as well have yelled in my ear. “You know
what, you guys need to relax! I’m not kidding!
Re-lax!
”

“What
is
the problem?”

“You know how they get when I’m on the phone. All of a sudden, everybody needs attention.” She paused as I heard Marcos asking
her a question. “I don’t know when I’m getting off the phone, okay? You’ll know when I hang up.” She exhaled. “Sorry. Sometimes
I wished I had had them when you had yours, then they’d be gone by now. Listen, why don’t you just ask him if he can be in
a relationship without the consummation?”

“Because …” I started, but then I stopped because I couldn’t verbalize the truth. I knew even though Adam appeared to be a
good man, he was foremost a man. He was flesh before he was spirit. For him, being in a relationship involved sex. I wasn’t
ready for another marriage any more than Adam was ready for his first. And if a relationship didn’t lead to marriage, what
was the purpose of being together? “I just want to be able to go out with a man to the movies or dinner every once in a while.”

“You already have someone to do those things with—me and Simone. As much as you protest, you want male companionship, period.
You need a man in your life.”

“Maybe I do
want
a man, but I don’t
need
—” I started to protest.

“I want to believe you’re going to find a man who’s going to wait until the wedding night, but in this day and age, I don’t
know if it’s possible, hon.”

“What happened to ‘with God, all things are possible’?”

It was clear that calling Maya was a mistake. When she first got saved, after Alex’s infidelity threatened her sanity and
their marriage, she was able to find comfort and justification in the scriptures for staying with him and forgiving him. I
found solace in her fearless, selfless example. I concluded that if she could survive something as devastating as finding
her husband having sex with another woman in their minivan, I could endure anything. Now, her salvation was in as much turmoil
as mine. She could not counsel me.

And then I realized she had indirectly given me the answer. Why not call and frankly ask Adam? Whatever answer he gave me
would influence my decision. Even though there was the possibility that he could lie and tell me what I wanted to hear, I
didn’t think he would. At least, I hoped he wouldn’t.

“Did you remember to call Pop?” Maya asked. “It’s his birthday.”

I gasped. “I forgot. I called him a couple of weeks ago and he never called me back.”

“You know he doesn’t check his messages. Anyway, it’s not like he called us on our birthdays. If Marcos hadn’t mentioned it,
I probably would have forgotten, too.”

“Did you send him a card?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I signed your name.”

“Thanks. I’ll give you half on the card.”

“No, you buy the next one. Father’s Day.” The commotion in the background started again. “
That’s it!
Marc-Luc … I’ve had it! Let me let you go. I’ll talk to you later—NO! Nobody’s calling any little fast girls—” The line went
dead.

Once I made up my mind to confront Adam, I tried not to think about what his answer would be, because deep down part of me
knew that the likelihood he would be willing to have a chaste relationship was next to nil. And the more I tried not to think
about our kiss and the inevitability that I would never touch his lips again, the more it came into my mind.

After talking with Maya, I started to drive toward the lakefront, then changed my mind and drove to the gym instead. The gym
was one of the few fitness centers that stayed open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, not only for people who worked
unconventional hours or who were exercise freaks, but for people like me who needed to blow off steam. I was determined to
purge the demon of desire from within me, so I stayed at the punching bag longer than usual until my body was coated with
sweat and I smelled like a man. When I stopped to buy a bottle of water from the vending machine, I noticed how men and women
alike looked at me as if I were a crazy woman on a mission. I never sparred with the other women because I didn’t like to
get hit. Hitting unleashed my aggressions and cleared my mind, but getting hit only made me angrier. As I punched the bag,
the words I had read earlier came back to me:
Set a guard over my mouth … keep watch over the door of my lips, Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil
… I punched the bag harder and faster.

The combination of Youth Night, Maya’s suggestion, and boxing made me feel rejuvenated. When I got home, I slipped into a
hot, soaking bath, something I hadn’t done in a long time. I lay back in the tub, with the phone on the vanity table, so I
wouldn’t have to get up if it rang. Then I remembered I hadn’t called my father. I bit the bullet and dialed his number on
the speed dial. As I listened to each ring, I closed my eyes, waiting. My father’s answering machine wasn’t picking up, so
I figured he had probably disconnected it, something he had done before, or he had turned the ringer off so that he wouldn’t
be disturbed. Sometimes, I believed he was home, just listening to the phone ringing. After the tenth ring, just as I was
about to hang up, he answered.

“Happy Birthday, Pop,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“How are you?”

“Tired.” A decorated firefighter until a year ago, my father had refused to retire until the department forced him. Even before
his retirement, it seemed like something was missing from his life. Now with no work to keep him occupied for part of the
day, his life seemed emptier. He told me he started playing the piano again but besides visiting the older members of our
family who still lived in Chicago, I really wasn’t sure what he did with his time.

“How are my grandsons?” he asked.

“They’re good. You should call them.”

“If they need anything, they’ll call me. I got a card from Tony.”

“Did you get ours? From Maya?” I asked, cringing.

“I did.
Gracias, mija.
”

I leaned into my neck pillow and closed my eyes. Talking to him was like watching TV, a one-sided activity, waiting to see
what happened. I was too exhausted to keep the conversation going. Through the phone, I listened to him inhaling and exhaling,
a sure sign that he was still smoking. He had promised to quit after his older brother, my uncle, was recently diagnosed with
emphysema. But I didn’t harass him.

“So, you married yet?” he asked.

I opened my eyes. What a strange question for him to ask. “Wh— Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know. I just think you should consider marriage again. Now that the boys are gone.”