I Left My Back Door Open (11 page)

“Maybe she doesn't want to attract flies.”

“Negative, negative, negative.” Phil draped the T-shirt over the bike's handlebars.

“Maybe I'll sleep in it,” I said.

“If you sleep in it, nobody'll see it but your cat.”

“How do you know that?” I asked defensively.

“Sarita woulda told me if you were dancing in the sheets.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, glaring at Sarita.

“I don't tell him your business,” she cut in quickly.

“You didn't tell him about Skylar, did you?”

“Is that the mediator?” Phil asked.

“Sarita, you have a big mouth!”

Sarita bit back her bottom lip and looked apologetic. “I'm sorry, girl, me and Phil were gettting along for a change and it just sorta slipped out.”

Phil gave me a puppy dog look and patted my shoulder. “Dee Dee, you should understand. After all, there's nothing exciting for us to do down here on the South Side. So sometimes we just have to resort to gossip.”

eight

I know that diets don't work. I'm not going to pretend to myself that I can stick to a low-fat diet based on willpower alone. That's just not realistic. It doesn't take into account why I eat and what's eating me. Letting go of weight is one of the most complex things you can do. First off, you don't want to
lose
weight. Because then you'll go looking for it. Instead, you want to
release
weight. Scales don't work, because people become obsessed with weighing themselves. When they gain a little weight, they eat to comfort themselves, and when they lose a little weight, they eat to celebrate. I learned all that from reading
Thin Within
by Judy Wardell.

What I'm mainly doing is eating the foods I love, but cutting down on portion sizes and eating only when I'm hungry. I'm also saying no to sugary and high-fat foods most of the time, but not always, because then I'd feel deprived like a person in jail, and I'd want to bust out. I don't eat or drink diet stuff because I don't like substitutes and besides, the only people who eat and drink diet stuff are overweight. The trick to releasing weight is to think and act like a thin person, according to
Thin Within
. My goal is to cut way down on eating for emotional reasons. When I find myself heading for the fridge, especially at night, I will ask myself, “What do you
really
want?” Oftentimes, it isn't food. Sometimes, I'll call a friend or light candles and meditate or listen to music or take an aromatherapy bath or read or spend quality time with my cat. Sometimes I know I'm really hungry for love and none of that stuff totally works. That's when I masturbate, and sometimes it's really beautiful, but often, its just ends with a few intense jolts. That's cool, because I just needed to release some tension. And it's a lot healthier than binging and purging. Of course, I'd rather be hugged up with a man. That goes without saying.

I still hadn't heard from Skylar, and I was trying hard not to call him. I'd dialed his number a few times and hung up before the phone rang. I was seriously tempted to eat for emotional reasons. I was fighting loneliness and the memories of my stepfather that at times threatened to overwhelm me.

I jumped at the chance to go swimming with Sharon at her downtown health club, high atop the Swiss Hotel. It was a healthy diversion and we needed to catch up. But swimming made me hungry. And it felt good to satisfy my hunger, I thought, biting into one of the green apples they gave away at the health club. Only an apple wasn't quite getting it.

“It's funny, but I'm glad that I'm not in your position anymore,” Sharon said as we stood in the hotel hallway.

“What position?” I asked, pausing to look at the view while we waited for the talking elevator. The window faced Navy Pier, and I automatically picked out the building that housed my radio station.

“Waiting for some man to call,” Sharon said pointedly.

I sighed as the elevator arrived and the mechanical female voice said, “Going down.”

Sharon was practically a card-carrying lesbian now. She'd subscribed to the local lesbian rag and had attended a black lesbian conference at Malcolm X College. She was talking regularly to a sista she'd met there named Michelle. They'd gone out for coffee, but hadn't kissed yet.

“I don't have to follow the damn rules,” Sharon crowed as we entered the empty elevator. “Why should someone have the power to initiate just because he has a penis?” I was glad that the door didn't open at that moment.

“I mean, what are you, chopped liver?” Sharon continued. “Why can't you call Skylar your damn self?”

The elevator stopped and a couple got on, then people got on every few floors. So I didn't respond until after we each pocketed a few of the sample Swiss chocolate bars in the big goblets in the lobby.

“You know why,” I said finally, as we exited.

“Because if he's really interested, he'll call you,” Sharon answered in a singsong voice.

“It's true,” I insisted.

“It's sad but true.”

“Give me credit, though. I'm not sitting by the phone, moping. I've been active, walking, taking belly dance classes, and we just swam. I've been seeing friends and having fun.” I savored the warm breeze blowing off the Lake.

“You do have a life, thank goodness. But it's just nice to be able to be yourself, romantically. When I was with men, I always had to calculate and premeditate. It was like I was playing a role. I'm so happy to be able to put down my damn script. Men and women play too many games.”

“Don't rub it in.”

“What would happen if you were just yourself with Skylar? Just called him because you wanted to. What would happen if you felt just as free to suggest a date as he did? What would happen?”

“The sample would be ample and he'd move on to a real challenge, that's what would happen,” I answered quietly, as the doorman offered to hail us a taxi.

“If you can't risk being yourself, what's the point?” Sharon asked.

“That's so retro.” I groaned. “We women haven't been able to be ourselves since the seventies. I mean, you could live in T-shirts and jeans and still get a man back then. You could have sex on the first date and he still called you again. So long as you were willing to
continue
to have sex.” I chuckled.

“You could even make all the moves,” Sharon agreed.

“Then the eighties came and men were men again and girls were girls.” I sighed.

“In the fifties, women weren't allowed to say ‘yes' and in the sixties and seventies, we weren't allowed to say ‘no,'” I added. “Now, we're caught somewhere in the middle. But we're still not liberated. How can you be liberated if there aren't enough good men to go around?”

“Provided that's what you're looking for.” Sharon raised her eyebrows.

“Unfortunately, it is,” I said. “In some ways I envy you,” I added wistfully.

“Has it come to that? A straight woman, envying a lesbian,” Sharon whispered as the doorman deposited us into a cab. “Wonders never cease,” she chortled.

“I have no desire to be a lesbian,” I whispered back. “It's just that a good man is so damn hard to find.”

“Dearborn Park,” Sharon told the taxi driver.

“Don't look at that spot on the carpet,” Sharon ordered as we entered her townhouse.

“Now I
have
to look,” I said, staring at the dark spot on the turquoise rug.

“I'm so pissed. My sublettors spilled red wine and I don't know what I'm gonna do. I guess it could've been a lot worse. Aside from that damn spot and using the wall for a dartboard, I got off light. I kept most of their security deposit.”

“They didn't really use it for a dartboard, did they?”

“No, but they hung so much shit on the wall, they may as well have.”

“Where's T?” I asked, following Sharon into her living room.

“If you don't hear any loud music, that means she's not home. Enjoy the peace.” Sharon turned the stereo on to V103, a popular soul station with a nice mix of hits and dusties.

“It seems like yesterday, when our parents were yelling at us to turn down that daggone music,” I reminisced as I settled into a stuffed denim chair.

“Yeah, but at least we listened to real music. You can't compare Motown to the mess they call music today. I could make a rap CD myself. You don't even have to be able to carry a tune now,” Sharon said, walking toward the open kitchen area.

“Remember, they said that we couldn't compare Motown to Billie Holliday and Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald?”

“Yeah, but
nobody
could've predicted this,” Sharon called from the kitchen.

“Some of it's not bad.”

“You're not subjected to it as much as I am.”

“Well, what's up with your youth?”

“We got into it.” Sharon returned with glasses containing a sparkling fruit drink.

“About what?” I sipped my drink.

“Curfew. She thinks she's all of a sudden grown. Comes in and out when she gets ready.” Sharon headed back toward the kitchen.

“How late did she come in?”

“It was after eleven,” she said over her shoulder. “And I'm not going to have it. If she makes her bed hard, she's gonna have to lie in it.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“It still holds true,” Sharon insisted.

“I never thought the day would come when you would utter such words. Can't this generation of parents, who invented sex, come up with anything new to say?” I shouted.

“Sometimes, the old school is the best school.”

“That's so lame. You didn't say that when we were tearing the old school down.”

“Everything changes when you become a parent,” Sharon said, returning with a tray of cut-up vegetables and cheese and crackers. “Ask anybody who's raised kids. You spend the first twelve years of their lives worried to death that someone may harm them; then you spend the next six wanting to hurt them yourself.” Sharon plopped back against the stuffed denim sofa with a stalk of celery between her teeth.

“Before you do anything rash, let's talk,” I said, reaching for a broccoli crown on the coffee table. “I counseled Tyeesha last week and she hadn't jumped off the deep end yet. Maybe there's no reason for you to get alarmed.”

“Dee Dee, I know she's had sex,” Sharon said between celery chomps.

“How do you know that?” I asked through a mouthful of dip.

“I'm her mother. Tyeesha and I have always been close. And the mother-daughter bond can be the most intense relationship in the world. I know my child, I know her energy. I know when it changes. And it has changed. I've lost my baby,” Sharon said tearfully.

“Don't even go there. T will always be your baby.”

“It'll never be the same, though. She'll never be innocent again.”

“Tyeesha's got a long way to go before she knows shit from Shinola. She needs guidance
now
, more than ever.”

“Dee Dee, it's hard. It's like something was snatched from me,” Sharon said, putting a piece of cheese on a cracker. “I have never even met this boy. He's not even a boy, he's a man. Tyeesha finally admitted that he's eighteen. I should bring charges.”

“Now, now,” I comforted her. “It's not like he's over twenty-one. Three years' difference isn't that horrible.”

Sharon sighed. “She's still a minor and he isn't. And I'd be willing to bet that my baby got the short end of the stick. She probably didn't even enjoy it. He probably just used her. It was just a booty call as far as he was concerned.”

“Well, you're not going to always be there to protect her, now that she's almost grown.”

“Remember when she was about four and we used to live down the street from that Chinese restaurant and we'd get take-out? And Tyeesha used to say that when she grew up she was going to own a Chinese restaurant, remember that?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “It was so cute, T was so precious. We'd play with her with the empty white cartons. We pretended to work for her, remember? And she would fire us, saying that we forgot the soy sauce.”

“Moments like that slip by and you can never bring them back.” Sharon shook her head sadly. “No matter how much money you have, or what you accomplish, you can never bring them back.”

“Nobody can bring back the times. That goes for good times as well as bad times. But we always remember the good times, and pretend to forget about the bad ones.”

“I still think that T's doing this to get back at me,” Sharon said. “She will do anything she can right now to undermine me. Just because I need to be in somebody's arms and hear soft words whispered in my ear. She's determined that I'm not going to be happy. After all the sacrifices I've made.”

“She's just tripping.”

“I understand why she's upset. I know it's a rude awakening, but she's going to have to realize that the world doesn't revolve around her.”

“She's an only child. It's just been the two of you for so long.”

“I have needs of my own. Everyone would understand that if I were looking for a man. I haven't even brought anybody home. The way T walks around here pouting, you would think I was getting busy right here on the rug.”

“You have a right to a social life. Tyeesha's just feeling threatened. At her age, she's still insecure about her own sexuality. You know how confused folks are at fifteen. They think they have all the answers and they don't even know the questions.”

“Dee Dee, in some ways you're lucky not to have kids.”

“I'm starting to see it that way myself. Sarita's mother says it was easier for her to raise five kids than for Sarita to raise Jason. Despite all of the advances, it seems like it's harder to raise kids now than ever.”