Choose Me (6 page)

Then I thought of Rashid Ali, the director of African American admissions at the university.

Rashid was a divorced father of two preteen girls, a man I had been attracted to since he first arrived at CU six months ago.
He had a great sense of humor and kept me laughing through all the academic bureaucracy and pettiness of office politics.
During staff meetings, we would pass notes back and forth as if we were in high school. A few months after he started, I agreed
to go to a staff party with him, even though I knew we were of different faiths. Whether it was the festive atmosphere or
a mutual lack of companionship, sparks flew. As we were dancing, he asked me if I would be willing to convert to Islam and
I replied, “Only if you convert to Christianity.” We laughed and resolved to be friends after that. Every once in a while,
however, I sensed something more than friendship toward him, which made me wonder if I was meant to come into his life and
convert him.

When the phone rang again a few minutes later, I reluctantly walked inside and answered it just before the voice mail could
kick in.

“Mother, where were you?” Tony demanded. Over the years, I had gone from Mama to Mommy to Ma. Only when they were angry or
condescending did my children refer to me as Mother.

“In the garden.” I hunted the kitchen drawers for a bandage.

“Why don’t you take the phone with you?” he chastised me, as if I were the child. “It’s cordless. It reaches out there.” Tony
had appointed himself my protector, taking over the man-of-the-house role after his father left, a role he refused to relinquish
when Victor moved in, then resumed after we broke up.

“Don’t speak to me like I’m not up on technology,” I admonished him. “You know I don’t like talking on the phone outside.
It’s so uncouth.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Speaking of which, have you seen him?”

“Eli? Once, at the bookstore. You know we’re on opposite sides of the campus.”

It gave me a sense of relief that my children were together, even though they were miles away downstate in Carter, Illinois.
When they were little, they were never really close, although they were almost a year apart like Maya and I. They fought constantly,
verbally and physically, into their teenage years. Ironically, it wasn’t until Tony went away for his freshman year that they
began to form a bond.

“What’s all that noise?” Tony asked.

“I’m looking for a bandage,” I said, opening another drawer. “I pricked my finger.” I finally found a Band-Aid with a deteriorated
wrapping, but the bandage itself was still fresh. “Please keep an eye on your brother,” I reminded him. “I don’t want him
messing with those college girls, interfering with his studies. You know how he is.”

“Ma, I told you. He’s an adult. I can’t watch him every day.”

Eli had inherited his father’s good looks and flirtatious nature. During high school, he had had many girlfriends and my biggest
fear was that I would be a grandmother before I was forty. Sometimes I wondered if he would have been better off joining the
air force despite the imminence of war instead of a college campus crawling with hot-blooded females.

“Tony, just talk to him, counsel him. He still needs guidance.”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” This was his usual line of defense.

“Yes, you are,” I told him sternly.

“Okay, okay,” Tony said quickly, knowing he had gone too far with his comment. “I spoke to your ex-husband.”

“How
is
your father?”

“He’s fine. He has a new girlfriend.”

“That’s nice.” Anthony’s personal life had ceased to concern me long ago. Of course I cared about him, for example, if he
got seriously sick or hurt, but the details of his private life were of little significance. The only thing I had asked of
him when we split up was that he stay involved in his sons’ lives, unlike my own father.

“Have you talked to Grandpop?” he asked.

“No.”

“What do you tell us? ‘Just because he doesn’t call you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call him.’”

“Hmmm.” I hated it when my words came back to haunt me, especially when they came from the children I raised.

“I hope you’re using this time wisely, like to finally find yourself a man,” Tony commented. “Now that we’re not in your hair,
you can concentrate on making yourself happy.”

“I am happy,” I said defensively. “You know what Titi used to say: ‘Don’t count on anyone—’”

“‘To make you happy,’ I know,” he finished for me. “But you’ve got to admit, it might make life a little less lonely.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes you can be with someone and still be lonely.”

“True.”

I smiled, and thought proudly of how my eldest son had grown in the past few years. Our relationship had changed since his
early turbulent teenage years, when he was fifteen and I had discovered he was dating a twenty-year-old woman. I promptly
called the young woman’s mother—because she was still living at home—and told her that I would call the police if her daughter
ever came around my son again. Tony accused me of ruining his life shouting,
“You’re just jealous ’cause you don’t have a man!”
Now, at nineteen, he had been saved for over a year, seriously concentrating on his education, with little time for love.

“Have you been to church down there?” I asked.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Are
you
staying away from those college girls?” He didn’t answer right away and for a moment I panicked. I knew Tony was a serious
and sensitive soul. The year before, a girl from church had broken his heart and it had taken him several months to recover.
Until then, I never realized that men suffered from rejection just as much as women. My fear was that he would fall in love
again too quickly and drop out and get married before graduating. “Tony?”

“Ma, I don’t have time for women. I have a full course load, and my job.”

“How’re your classes?”

I listened as he talked about his classes and his professors before closing with our usual, “God bless you. I love you.”

Before I could reach the back door, the phone rang again.

“Hey, Ma! Miss me?” It was Eli.

“Who is this?” I kidded, sitting down again.

“Ha-ha. You’ve become a comedian in your old age.”

“Don’t make me go down there, boy.”

Eli was the comic relief in the family. He was the one who kept me laughing whenever I thought I was going to fall apart.
Nothing seemed to faze his good humor. When his father and I divorced, Eli, at three years old, asked,
“Is Daddy taking the big TV?”
After Victor moved out, thirteen-year-old Eli had matter-of-factly said,
“Now we’ll have more food left over.”

“How do you like college so far?”

“It’s raw! I’ve been to three parties since I’ve been down here. And the females? Girls, girls every night. I think you should
know, I’m not a virgin anymore.”

“Elias!” I warned as he cackled into the phone.

“I’m kidding, Ma. I haven’t been a virgin for years.”

I ignored his little confession. “Have you been to church?”

“Maybe next week.”

“Maybe, nothing. You better go.”

“Si, Madre,”
he said sarcastically in his phonetic gringo Spanish.

“Ready to come home?”

“Like you want me back. You know you want to have that man over.”

“What man?”

“The one you been hiding.”

“Yeah, right.”

After we said our good-byes, I decided I had had enough gardening for the day. I had plenty of paperwork to do, but working
at the computer at home did not appeal to me after staring at one most of the workweek. I printed out hard copies of the college
brochure I was editing and an editorial I had started a week ago to the
Tribune
regarding the inappropriate transferring of students with behavior problems, then packed a bag for the lakefront. I changed
out of my overall shorts and T-shirt and into my weekend incognito attire: an Indian sari made of bronze gauze with a matching
scarf, which I used as a headband to hold back my hair. Wooden bangles, amber shell earrings, and leather sandals completed
my ensemble. If I had my choice, and if the ground wasn’t so polluted, I would go barefoot.

I drove to Montrose Harbor, my favorite spot. Before my mother died, my parents would take us here for picnics to escape the
suffocating city air. About twenty-five feet above the lake, there were man-made limestone revetments arranged to resemble
steps. Maya and I used to call them cliffs, chasing each other up and down the steps, pretending we were orphans who lived
on the beach while our parents cuddled at the very top. Swimming and diving was forbidden because of the rocks below the water’s
surface, but every year, inevitably there were news reports about some foolish teenager or drunken adult who thought they
were invulnerable and ended up with a crushed spine or fatal injury.

The lakefront was filled with people walking, running, sunbathing, and playing sand games. Farther down the coast, boats of
every size and model were cruising back to the marina as the skies darkened. As I settled on one of the available stepstones,
reviewing and proofreading my work, I couldn’t help but get distracted by the magnificence of the horizon in the distance.
Right after the divorce, the lakefront was the first place I brought the boys after returning to Chicago from North Carolina,
to contemplate my future without Anthony. Tony took one look at the horizon and asked,
“Is that heaven, Mommy? Is that where we go when we die?”
Ever since then, the lakefront was where I escaped when I needed to talk to God. If I closed my eyes and concentrated really
hard, all the noises around me would wither away: traffic, voices, barking, and momentarily, the world would be as God had
originally intended, and would one day return—peaceful, like paradise.

My reverie was interrupted by the sound of drumming coming from the dog beach, which had just opened up. Regretfully, I thought
about King and wished I had brought him. Shoving my papers into my shoulder messenger bag, I made my way in the direction
of the familiar Afro-Caribbean beat. A small crowd was forming a semicircle around the three percussionists playing two congas
and a bongo. Instinctively my head began to bop in appreciation and nostalgia, though I didn’t dare move the rest of my body.

“Muevete, Morena!”
called one of the conga players. I realized he was speaking to me since I was the only dark-skinned person in the crowd.
He was bare chested, his shirt tied around his head like a turban. I knew if Maya or Simone were around, they would have no
problem dancing in public. The conga player kept grinning in my direction, urging me to move, tempting me with his hands as
they banged furiously on his conga. He was a handsome Hispanic, brown like me, and too young, but still I could not help but
feel a connection, even a slight attraction. I glanced hesitantly at the off-beat dance moves on the part of some of the onlookers
and I thought,
These people don’t know
me. I had my shades on and my weekend outfit so no one would recognize me.

As I moved into the circle, swaying my hips and shoulders, I recalled an old Puerto Rican dance my mother had taught me as
a young girl called
bomba,
a dance with strong African roots. During the days of slavery in Puerto Rico, bomba dancers would form a circle and take
turns challenging the drums with their raised skirts to ridicule the fancy attire worn by plantation ladies and to poke fun
at the slave owners.

At first I felt embarrassed, wondering if the onlookers were thinking,
Minorities sure know how to dance,
but then I didn’t care. It had been so long since I had danced to the music of my youth. I lifted my skirt just above my
knees, shaking it in the direction of the copper-colored
congero,
who laughed and whistled, shouting the call-and-response phrases that are the style of the bomba dance.

Just as I was getting into the beat, and the drummers were taking turns banging out solos, lightning lit up the sky, followed
by thunder. Then the rain fell. The musicians stopped, protecting their instruments with their shirts.

When I stopped dancing, a couple of the onlookers complimented me as they dispersed. I took my time walking to my car, not
caring that my hair would soon frizz up.

“You made it rain,
Negrita!
” the conga player yelled, running past me, his shoulder-length braids slapping his face.

I smiled. It had been a long time since anyone had called me Negrita, a term of endearment my mother used for me because I
was the darkest in the family. For one brief moment, I felt liberated, free from the mundane worries in my everyday life:
work, irrational thoughts, men. In my car, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest, listening to the rain slapping
the car’s exterior like a car wash.

A tapping at the window startled me and I looked up to find the conga player grinning at me as the rain drenched him. Cautiously,
I manually cracked the car window.

“You wanna go dancin’?” he asked in a thick Chicago accent that reminded me of the first Mayor Daley.

His question caught me completely off guard, and I was temporarily speechless. I looked at his wet, goateed face, at the beads
of rain clumping his eyelashes, then down at his bare tattooed torso, reed-thin without an ounce of body fat. Raindrops were
splashing through the crack and hitting my face. Five years ago, the old Eva would have taken him up on his offer. Five years
ago, I would not have given the consequences of my actions a second thought. The new Eva knew dancing was the last thing on
his mind. And the new Eva blamed me for encouraging him with my dance moves.

“I’m Christian,” I replied, hoping to scare him away.

“Yo tambien,”
he said, lifting the gold crucifix from his neck toward me.

“Estoy casada,”
I told him, using my old lie that I was married to keep unwanted men away.

He held up his left hand to show me a ring and grinned. “Hey, me too.”