Deal With It (6 page)

“Please take me to McDonald’s, where the rest of my friends are, so I can catch a ride home.”

Vance pulled his car keys from the pocket of his jeans, held them in the air. “Let’s go,” he said.

In the car, he turned on V-103’s Quiet Storm.

“You mad?” I asked.

“Nah, I’m cool,” he said. “You cool?”

“I’m okay.”

“I didn’t mean to rush you into something you weren’t ready for, Tameka. I’m sorry.” He sounded so sincere.

Now that was the Vance I knew—sweet, respectful. His fingertips brushed against my cheek.

“Thank you for understanding.” I smiled.

He shrugged.

I could see the golden arches up ahead, and I wondered if I’d made the right decision. After all, we were in a serious relationship. Not just a fly-by-night, casual sort of thing. We’d made vows and promises. I just wondered what was required in a serious relationship. Did you give up your right to say no? Not to mention, girls were throwing it at him on a daily basis. It was just a matter of time before he considered going somewhere else, and I knew it.

“Just let me know when you’re ready,” he said.

I buttoned my coat up, slipped my gloves onto my hands, pulled my toboggan onto my head and braced myself for the night air.

Vance

I
listened to the score on ESPN as my eyes slowly drifted shut. I hit the mute button on the television and hit the power button for the stereo. Lil Wayne spit some lyrics to me on 107.9. Things with Tameka hadn’t gone as planned. She wanted to wait until we had talked about having sex before we actually did it. What sense did that make?
What a waste of an empty house,
I thought as my head bounced against my pillow, and I struggled to stay awake and catch the score from the game.

My phone vibrated on my nightstand. I picked it up. A text from Tameka.

WUP?

Nuthin, I typed.

Just wanted 2 say GNITE.

U OK?

Yes.

Cool.

CUIMD, she typed. It was her favorite phrase. See you in my dreams.

:-O I gave her a yawn to let her know that I was sleepy.

GNITE, she responded, and then she was gone.

I kicked my sneakers off and heard them hit the floor with a loud thud. I pulled my shirt over my head and removed my jeans. I was down to my boxers and tube socks. I thought I heard a noise, like someone was in the house, even though I knew I had locked up. I decided to go downstairs and check the doors, make sure the house was secured. I peeked into the garage just to make sure I’d let the garage door down when I came in. I checked the front door, made sure it was locked. Checked the back door. All locks were secured. I swung open the refrigerator door, hoping for a late-night snack. I searched the freezer and ended up with an ice-cream sandwich and a bottle of Gatorade. I took the stairs two at a time to my room, plopped onto the bed. My phone vibrated again. Maybe Tameka had had a change of heart and was planning to sneak out of the house and head back over here for a nightcap—that way we could finish what we’d started earlier.

I picked up my phone. Read the text.

Hi U.

It wasn’t from Tameka, and I didn’t recognize the phone number.

Who is this?

Guess.

Someone wanted to play games, and I wasn’t in the mood. It was too late at night, and I wasn’t in the best of moods, anyway, after losing to the worst team in the district. Not only had we lost our game against a team that sucked, but on top of it, I had issues with my girl, too.

Not in da mood 4 games.

It’s Darla. From Am Hist.

Darla from American history? The fine girl with the cute little dimples?

How did u get my #? I wanted to know. I didn’t remember giving it to her.

Got my sources:)

Girls had a way of tracking you down, no matter what. The more you tried to avoid someone, the more they chased. However, with Darla, I didn’t mind the chase.

WUP? I asked.

U looked good on da court 2Nite.

U were there?

Yes.

Cool.

U got a G-fnd, huh?

Yep.

Serious?

Somewhat.

Cool. Let’s B friends.

Sounds good.

CU L8R.

L8R.

She was gone, but thoughts of her still danced in my head. So much so that I wasn’t even sleepy anymore. I wanted to text her again but didn’t. I hoped that she would text me back, but she didn’t. It was better that way. I had a girl, and Darla was way too cute for her own good. She would have me distracted, and I didn’t need that right now.

I closed my eyes really tight and hoped for sleep.

Saturday morning, and I had a laundry list of chores. Cleaning the guest bathroom was at the top of that list, along with mopping the kitchen floor and vacuuming the family room. My parents were sticklers for a clean house, and they didn’t hire anyone to do it. My mother cleaned like a mad-woman, and they depended on my sister, Lori, and me to do our part. And since Lori ended up going to Philadelphia with them to visit my grandmother, she weaseled out of her chores.
In my opinion, because she was twelve years old, she was able weasel out of a lot of things.

It simply wasn’t fair that she had the bigger bedroom, a bigger television and a huge closet to hold all her clothes, which she received for absolutely no reason whatsoever. If she aced a math quiz, she got a new outfit. When she made the volleyball team at her school, she got a new Nintendo Wii system, with four new games. I made good grades on a daily basis, and I was the starting guard for the school’s basketball team, but I didn’t have a Nintendo Wii. I was still using the PlayStation I’d got two Christmases before, and the joystick barely worked, de-pending on what day it was. My sister was truly rotten and got on my nerves just for the heck of it. If it had been up to me, I would’ve been an only child. Instead, I was stuck with her for at least the rest of my life.

I wiped down the toilet in the guest bathroom, poured a little Pine-Sol into the bowl in order to make the room smell fresh and clean. After vacuuming the family room, I collapsed onto the leather sofa, placed my feet on top of the coffee table. That was a no-no when my parents were home—feet on the furniture was absolutely out of the question. But what my parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. They were way too involved in my decision making, anyway; my dad was, at least. Especially when it came to my college choice. I knew what I wanted and was mature enough to make my own decisions, but trying to get him to see that was like pulling teeth.

When my phone vibrated, I jumped. Looked at the screen. Jaylen.

“What up, fool?” I answered.

“We going to the mall?” he asked.

“For sho.”

“You picking me up?” he asked.

“Um, I’ll think about it,” I teased.

“I’ll be ready when you get here,” he said and hung up before I could object.

Jaylen was my best friend. We played ball together and hung out most other times. We’d been tighter than glue since the first grade. The girls loved his six-foot frame, light brown skin and good hair. He was broke most of the time, though, and borrowed lunch money from me on a regular basis. That was what kept him from keeping a regular girlfriend. Girls expected you to take them to a movie or to McDonald’s once in a while. You couldn’t do that if you were always broke.

I put the cleaning products away and then rushed upstairs to take a shower. I was hungry but decided I’d grab something at the food court at the mall. I listened to
SportsCenter
as I sat on the edge of the bed and tied my green-and-white Nike sneakers. I decided on my Southpole jeans and my green-and-white Southpole shirt. I brushed my hair until the waves appeared, and got upset when I saw a pimple growing on my light brown forehead. It was all I needed.

The minute that Jaylen hopped into my car, he took over my stereo.

“You gotta hear this track that we put down last night,” he declared.

Music was his life. It was all he thought about. He had a makeshift studio in his basement, where we spent hours recording and putting lyrics to beats. Sometimes on the weekends, we recorded until the wee hours of the morning. We had enough music to drop a demo. We were good, both of us could flow, but the problem was getting someone to listen. That was why I hoped for a chance meeting with Tameka’s father. He had a lot of pull in the music industry, and I knew that if he ever heard our stuff, he would be impressed.

As the music filled the car, I smiled. It sounded good.

“Where’d you get that beat?” I asked.

“You’ll never believe it.” He grinned. “You know Terrence Hill from the basketball team, right? Well, his little brother, Trey…I think he’s, like, ten years old or something…He creates beats….”

“Come on, man. A ten-year-old created this beat?” I asked.

I wanted to meet this musical genius. I didn’t know Terrence that well, but he seemed cool. I guessed he would be our go-to man from now on, whenever we needed a hot track.

“I kid you not,” Jaylen said. “Get it?
Kid
you not.”

Jaylen had the corniest sense of humor of anybody that I knew. He wasn’t the most popular dude at school, but he was cool. He was more like family to me, because we’d known each other for so long. We’d grown up on the playground of our elementary school together, skinned our knees together, and both of us had lost our two front teeth in the same week.

The beat was hot, the lyrics were hot, and we bounced our heads to the music all the way down I-287.

Tameka

The
relaxer was cold against my scalp, and it didn’t take long for it to begin to sting. I bit my bottom lip in order to ease the pain. It was no secret, I was tender headed. Cynthia knew it, and she usually took extra care in making my beauty-shop experience as painless as possible.

“You burning, sweetie?” she asked as she slapped the rat-tailed comb against my scalp.

“A little bit.” I frowned.

“Just a few more minutes and then we’ll wash it out,” Cynthia said. Her hair was in a red Afro, and low-cut jeans hugged her hips. “How you doing over there, Mel?”

“I think I’m dry,” my mother said.

“Meka, you go on over to the shampoo bowl. Mel, you can have a seat right here in my chair.”

Saturday mornings at the beauty shop took up half of our day, but it was always worth it, because we looked so fly when Cynthia finally finished working her magic on us. It was cool sitting there listening to all the latest adult gossip. I always learned something new—grown-ups were a trip.

I leaned my head back against the shampoo bowl and Cynthia washed the relaxer out of my hair. The smell of the shampoo that she’d used to wash my hair filled the room, made my scalp tingle. Cynthia was running her mouth nonstop with the heavy woman who sat under the dryer across the room. They talked about what was on sale at Dillard’s, traffic and Cynthia’s latest trip to Las Vegas. She had won two thousand dollars at the slot machines but then lost it all before she left. But she’d had the time of her life.

Cynthia wrapped my hair and then sat me under the dryer. I flipped through an
Essence
magazine and read a few of the articles. After getting bored with that, I flipped open my cell phone, decided to send Vance a text message. The night before had left us both feeling awkward, but I hoped we could get past it.

Hey U. I sent a quick message, waited for the reply.

There was none. I figured he’d probably slept in, as he did most Saturday mornings. The heat from the hair dryer made me doze.

“Okay, let’s go, Meka.” Cynthia woke me up with a tap on the shoulder. “Go sit in my chair.”

I opened my eyes and glanced across the room at my mother, or at least at the woman I thought was my mother. The woman favored her, all the way down to the tight-fitting red Guess shirt and the skinny jeans. The only difference was this woman had a short, sassy haircut, and my mother wore her hair thick and shoulder-length.

“How do you like it?” this woman asked, staring straight at me.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I told you I was cutting it all off.”

She really was my mother, only she’d lost her mind.

“That is so cute,” said the skinny woman who’d just hopped from Cynthia’s chair. She grinned from ear to ear. “I want my hair just like that, Cyn.”

All eyes were on Mom and her new short haircut. It
was
cute,
but I couldn’t believe she’d just cut all her hair off, like a crazy woman. My daddy was going to flip out. The more I looked, though, the more I liked it.

“Do you like it, Tameka?” my mother asked.

“It’s cool,” I said. “Looks good on you.”

My mother was a brand-new woman.

It was well into the afternoon, and I still hadn’t heard from Vance. I opened my phone and stared at the blank screen. Decided to send him another text message.

Where R U? I asked.

No reply. Not right away.

At da mall, was his response ten minutes later.

Buyin me something? I teased.

What U want? he asked.

Pretzel & smoothie, I said.

Those were our two favorite things at the mall—a hot pretzel dipped in mustard from the pretzel shop next to Dillard’s and a peach-mango smoothie, which we usually shared. Vance usually drank more than his share of the smoothie, leaving me with about one-fourth. But I didn’t care. It was our thing. The more I thought about it, the more I missed Vance. I had replayed the night before a million times in my head. What if I had given in to Vance? Maybe I wouldn’t feel so distant.

Peach mango? he asked.

Yep.

You got it. I could almost hear his smile.

We were okay. He wasn’t mad, after all, and that was enough for me.

Cynthia styled my hair in a cute flat-ironed look. The usual. Unlike my mother, I was afraid to try new things. It was always safest to go with the usual. I wished I could be more like her—confident, self-assured. Instead, I questioned my every thought,
and every decision was calculated. It was rare that I just did something out of the ordinary. I was too worried about what people would think if I failed.

In the car, I tuned the radio to 107.9, and the voice of the Saturday-morning disc jockey Mizz Shyneka rang out across the airways. After she gave her little spiel, she spun a track, and Mommy and I bounced to the music. Hip-hop was something that we both had in common. We traded CDs like best friends did, and if I couldn’t find one of my CDs, she was usually the culprit. I’d usually find it in the CD player in her car, or in her bedroom.

“You want a chicken sandwich from Chik-fil-A?” she asked. “I’m kinda hungry.”

“I could use some chicken nuggets,” I told her.

“Your hair looks fabulous.” She smiled as she pulled into Chik-fil-A’s drive-through.

“Look at you, with a short haircut!” I laughed. “What is really going on? You got a new boyfriend or something?”

“I just needed a change.” She ran her fingers through her short locks. “Maybe Daddy will pay more attention….”

She seemed serious when she made that comment. I knew that my father’s absence from home and the fact that he was a workaholic bothered her more than she let on.

“He does pay attention, Mommy.”

“Yeah, when he’s home,” she said sarcastically. “I just wonder how much time he actually spends working.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. She sounded insecure. “Do you think he’s doing something, you know, wrong?”

“I just think he spends too much time away from home. That’s all.” She forced a smile and changed the subject. “What are you having with those nuggets, sweetie?”

“Um, um, just some curly fries and a Coke.”

I was thrown off by her comments. It almost sounded as if she thought he was having an affair. Suddenly it dawned on me.
What if he was? Would he leave us for someone else? Would they get a divorce like my friend Jade’s parents had? She had talked about how terrible it was when her mother moved them to New Jersey after her parents were divorced. And even though they’d moved back to Atlanta, her parents never got back together. Instead, her father ended up marrying someone else. That would be a nightmare. I couldn’t think about that. Mommy was just being silly. Daddy would never leave us.

Once in my room, I hit the play button on my stereo. Rihanna’s voice rang through the room. I fell backward onto my bed and listened to the music. Wished this were a different Saturday. On a different Saturday, Vance would’ve sent me a text as soon as his feet hit the floor. He would’ve invited me to the mall. It was then that it hit me—maybe he was at the mall with someone else, sharing a pretzel and a peach-mango smoothie with her. I needed to know for sure, and there was only one way to find out.

“Mom,” I yelled as I rushed downstairs to the kitchen, where she was loading dishes into the dishwasher, “can you take me to the mall?”

“I can drop you off and pick you up later on. I have a book-club meeting this afternoon,” she said. “Are you going by yourself?”

“I think Indi and the other girls are already there. I wanna try and catch up with them,” I told her.

“Are you ready now?” she asked.

“Let me just grab my purse.”

I rushed upstairs, grabbed my Coach purse and placed some eyeliner on my eyes and lip gloss on my lips. I checked my jeans out in the mirror and thought they looked okay. I slipped my Nike’s off and placed my Coach-designed Chuck Taylors on my feet. They were beige and brown and matched my Coach
purse. I grabbed sixty dollars out of my stash from my jewelry box with the ballerina on top. The jewelry box had been a gift from Daddy when I was five years old. He knew even back then that I would be a dancer.

Daddy had an eye for talent. As a music producer, he was in the business of deciding who had talent and who didn’t. And his job was an important one; Mommy and I had always known that. She had always been his biggest supporter, but our conversation at Chik-fil-A had me doubting the strength of that support. I needed to know what our future held.

After dropping me off in front of Macy’s, I watched as Mommy drove away. I was glad she had her book-club sisters to keep her company while I hung out at the mall. I checked my purse to make sure my cell phone was inside, pulled it out and called Indigo. There was no answer. I could’ve sworn they’d said they were going to the mall. I sent her a text message and then stepped inside Macy’s.