How Stella Got Her Groove Back (2 page)

But how? And where do you start? I look down at the coffee table and notice Quincy forgot the stationery I bought him so he could write to me and his homies while he’s away. Maybe
I
should write a few long-overdue letters or something to some folks. That’s it! Yeah, I’ll write to a few long-lost relatives and to some folks I haven’t seen or talked to in ages. Just little notes. Some maybe-you-think-I’ve-forgotten-you-but-here’s-a-gesture-to-let-you-know I-haven’t notes. Hell, I remember when I used to write tons of letters. Now who has time to even call anymore? A lot of times when I do call I’m secretly hoping the person won’t be home and that I’ll get the answering machine because I know there’s something else I could or should be doing that’s a helluva lot more productive like washing clothes or doing something in the kitchen but the portable phone is too staticky in the laundry room and kitchen which means I have to stand in one place and talk which is why it’s so much easier to leave a two-minute message (if they’ve got a decent machine) than it is to talk for a half hour or longer, depending on where they fall in your chart of closeness, trying to cover what has happened to you both over the last week month year or two.

I know I’m not alone because I’m forever getting messages from estranged friends and relatives who are pissed because I haven’t returned their phone calls from whenever and they say things like, “Girl, I could be dead and you wouldn’t know it what kind of fucking friend are you Stella we used to be close did I do something that I don’t know about” and I shake my head no or they say we just had a baby or I finally got my divorce and I just wanted you to know that I don’t live in Atlanta or Memphis or Los Angeles anymore, and oh by the way, I’ve got a brand-new grand-baby and did you get the pictures if you did you didn’t say nothing about how cute he is and hell, he’s got three teeth now or he’s walking or in kindergarten and this is the MCI operator with a collect call from BENNIE please press one if you accept and two if you decline and sir the party’s not at home and he says okay but can I leave a message anyway and then there is a click and he is just one of my many relatives who call from the penitentiary but then there’s hey yeah Stella this is your cousin Rafiki As-Salaam-Alaikum my sister peace be unto you all praises are due to Allah and hey I know you surprised I ain’t calling collect but my lady let me use her calling card for a month and you still ain’t sent me no pictures of you and I’m still working on my own defense and I was wondering if you could send me fity dollars for some toiletries and such cause my mama ain’t been up to see me in over six months she mad at me and my lady ain’t got no mo transpo to get way out here and I been in the hole for the past month for something I ain’t even did but it’s all good and anyway let me know if you can do that and baby, this is your aunt Junie calling and I don’t know if you know it or not but Miss Willamae’s in the hospital and I know you remember her cause she used to baby-sit you when you was a baby and you know she got cataracts and she had to have that operation finally that she been putting off because of her having all them insurance problems and everythang but you remember her she’s Miss Bessie’s cousin’s sister from her first marriage to Silbert what used to live on the corner of Moak and Fortieth Street, right down the street from Ms. Lucy when she was living and anyway you went to school with her granddaughter but I can’t remember her name right now but pray for her even though she’s doing much better now and I just wanted to touch base don’t get to talk to you much no more and how is Quincy these days? I bet he’s tall as you and how old is he now (there is a long pause because she’s waiting for an answer) and like a fool I say, “He’s eleven and a half, Aunt Junie,” but even though you don’t stay in touch I want you to know that you both are in my prayers and the Lord is watching over you and I’m gon’ call your sisters as soon as I hang up since the rates is low. Love you, baby. I wonder if her machine is gon’ get all this and Stella? Did you get this whole message, sugar?

I also don’t get very many letters either—maybe five or six a year and that’s counting the preaddressed prestamped envelopes I give Quincy when he’s away at camp—and shoot, I know at least a thousand people and at least five hundred of them live more than five hundred miles away. Far enough away to write.

It just feels like nothing is the way it used to be anymore and it’s not that I’m on some nostalgic trip or anything but I just wonder if I’m feeling like this because I can’t believe I’m really forty-fucking-two years old because people tell me all the time I don’t look forty-two and to be honest I don’t have any immediate plans of really acquiring the
look
if there is a way to look when you’re forty-two and I certainly don’t feel forty-two even though I don’t know how I’m supposed to
feel
being forty-two and what I do know is that I’m not
angry
about being forty-two but it feels like I’m slowly but surely catching up to my mama because she was only forty-two when she died and I’m thinking how is this possible that I could ever be the same age as mama? I wonder if I could secretly be having a midlife crisis?

Ever since Walter and I split up I guess I have been a little numb. I don’t dislike him or hate him for being who he is but I certainly stopped loving him because of it. He bored me to death. Living with him was like living in a museum. It was drafty, full of vast open spaces and slippery floors. He wasn’t a bad person, but I just didn’t care for his attitudes and later on his principles turned out to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from mine. He wanted me to be just like him. I wanted him to respect our differences. I ended up telling him that he should’ve married himself, and later that he should try fucking himself. And this is what we basically argued about. Who we were. We never seemed to come to any neutral turf where both of our feelings and positions were acceptable or at least tolerable. We sort of kept this demerit scoreboard for the last eight years, until we ran out of space. He and I both knew that our time was up, so we didn’t make a big tadoo about it, we just agreed to stop this before we ended up hating each other.

We were both running on high octane and barely had time for sex anymore and when we did we were both so exhausted the thought of actually being tender and sensuous and playful was not something that even crossed our minds. Or hearts. We just did it to get off, to relieve some of the tension. Some of the stresses and strains of the day that we brought home with us. At times I felt like his prostitute and I’m sure on occasion he probably felt that way too. It got old. And after a few years of this, I started wondering if I’d ever feel any excitement or passion toward him or any man again, and now that it’s been a few years since our divorce, I’m pretty much feeling the same way.

Nobody has rocked my world, as the saying goes. Nobody has made my heart flutter like it did when I first met Walter, or even when I fell in love with Chad, and I don’t dare go all the way back to high school or college when the world stopped spinning when Nathaniel kissed me. All Dennis did was smile at me and I was like Elvis: all shook up. I didn’t know the power of love was so powerful. But I liked it. Liked feeling like I was full of clouds. Like I could probably run a marathon without ever training for it. Like I was “on” something that was causing me to have a continuous flow of energy, making me feel excited about and see beauty in just about everything. I could walk down the street and feel myself grinning and people would look at me and simply grin too. This is when I thought I understood what God intended for us to feel.

But then the bullshit always had to enter the picture and contaminate everything that had been so beautiful. Like where were you and why do you have to do that all the time and how come and when are you and I don’t really give a flying fuck if you do but because I felt like it and if you can’t handle it tough shit but as much as I wish I could I can’t even begin to imagine but just the thought of you don’t no not anymore but we could if you weren’t so damn stubborn because hell I can’t help it if I was and yes you are trying to change me into something that I’m not and want to see how long I can resist this shit want to watch me repel and don’t remind me how much we used to have that’s the past and it’s gone baby live in the here and now and check it out this is getting too thick for me and I’m like sinking somewhere low and my heart weighs a ton here lately and as a matter of fact the mere sight of you being in your presence for any length of time depresses the hell out of me and I don’t need this shit who needs this shit so I’m like out of here.

All I know is that I was sort of already using my reserve tank when he left and afterwards being alone took some getting used to. A person can get on your last nerve, drive you to drink, but you still kind of miss their sorry ass after they’re gone is what I found out. That empty space he left sort of turned into an ache for a minute, or I should say a few months, maybe even a year. It was like this secret longing I felt to replace the void he left with something or someone else. Only I didn’t have the energy. Quincy took up a different kind of space, required a different kind of love. It wasn’t until a year and a half ago that I realized I had not felt the warmth of a man’s body next to mine, that my lips hadn’t trembled, that my breasts hadn’t throbbed or between my legs hadn’t been wet from anybody’s hands except my own, and it made me sad, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I was waiting for
him
to knock on the front door, I guess, and just say, Here I am. Your worries are over, baby. I’m here. But there has been no knock. I haven’t even bumped into him. Haven’t seen him. Haven’t walked past him in an airport and felt any current radiate from his body to mine. Not at all. Not anything close.

But it’s okay. Because all I know is that marriage wears you out and I’m not sure if I have the energy left for it. All my married friends are mostly miserable. They’re just in it because. They started it. Those kids. The money would be all fucked up. Lifestyles would change. Alimony. Child support. And that fucking mortgage and all those cars and visitation and fuck it, let’s just stick it out. Some of them don’t even sleep together. Some of the men—a lot of the men—are into serious affairs but unfortunately the chicks on the side don’t have a clue that most of them have no intention of leaving. The men just need a reprieve. Want to break up the monotony. Smell somebody new. In some cases it’s the only way their dicks can get hard and blast off anymore and hell to them it’s worth it.

Which is why I have pretty much come to the conclusion that marriage itself is a dead-end institution. I’m not doing it again. All I want is a little companionship. No ring. No “I do till death do us part,” because I said that once and we’re both still very much alive. Folks expect too much from one another and when you don’t won’t or can’t deliver you fall short and eventually begin to piss the other person off and years go by and the two of you simply tolerate each other. I wasn’t born to live like this, and especially with a man. I know God didn’t have some master plan where we were supposed to fall in love and then work our asses off to make it work and then it doesn’t and then we end up feeling worse longer than we felt good. There’s something inherently wrong with this whole notion. It seems like everybody is striving for perfection. The perfect fucking spouse who will make you feel perfect. But I know for a fact that no such person exists. I know for a fact that I am far from perfect, but there have been many instances where I didn’t believe that. I fought hard for the right to be right. All I was doing was trying to preserve my right to my own self-image, but I’m here to be whoever I am and if I happen to be a little fucked up then accept me fucked up as I am or leave me the fuck alone. Because if there’s ever going to be a change in my behavior or my personality I will do it myself and I don’t need you nagging me telling me how fucked up I am because you know what? you’re pretty fucked up too.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me not only to fill back up again but to get my engine started. I’ve been divorced now for almost three years and haven’t been on a legitimate date in almost a year even though I have a number to call when I just have to have some even though it’s not passionate but purely maintenance-oriented sex and I thank God he’s married because I wouldn’t want him any other way and these last few months have been tough because he’s turned into such a lazy fuck and he’s pissed at me for not returning his calls and hiding from him really but I’m tired of having sex with him for the sake of getting off because I have to work too hard and he’s started banging me the way he probably bangs his wife, like he’s a slug, and I don’t like kissing him one bit and I’m at the point now where I just can’t do it anymore. Sex should not be cumbersome. And I don’t like the idea of searching for love or trying to conjure up passion. Which is probably one reason why it feels like I’ve lost a lot over these last few years. I know things can never be the way they were (and I wouldn’t dare want it back) but there are a few relatively simple things I’ve stopped doing that I want to put back in my life.

I wish I could call Delilah. But I can’t. She’d only been my best friend since college and we only talked on the phone every other day and she was the most brilliant person I ever met and we could talk about anything and she lived all the way in Philly and then last year she decides to surprise me and die suddenly from some stupid liver cancer that she didn’t even tell me she had until she was in the fucking hospital and then she was gone the next week and there was a lot of shit we still needed to talk about. A whole lot of stuff. Years and years’ worth of stuff. She knew I was going to miss her ass and I
do
miss her black ass and the only way I can make the hurt go away is to do one of two things: pretend that she’s still alive and that we’re just not on speaking terms, which we went through from time to time, or pretend that she never existed. Trying to do both has required a great deal of effort and imagination and whenever I’m not looking my heart plummets down real low and I can hardly tolerate the longing.