Playing Hard To Get (18 page)

The steam from the heaters in the other buildings filled the empty lot with a moist heat that softened the loose soil beneath Tamia’s feet. Trying to keep up with the people in front, she cursed herself for wearing heels as they dug into the dirt. She looked down at the tip of her gray suede shoe and saw what looked like gold dust.

“Oh, crap!” she said, forgetting her leaders and pulling out her cell phone to get a little light.

She shined the light on the grass. The gold dust was everywhere around her.

“What is this?” Tamia said, holding the light higher. The cell phone’s blue glow highlighted from the bottom of the cross to its loop, where Tamia stood, the outline of an ankh.

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“I can’t believe you came,” Malik said later when Tamia had found her way to the back of the lot where an open field hosted a crowd of what looked like a hundred people. Above them was a huge, wooden ankh, suspended in the air by chains that were linked to the surrounding buildings. A tall oak tree, whose branches seemed to reach out into the crowd, was centered beneath it.

“Really, I can’t believe I came either,” Tamia admitted, looking around the crowd. Men and women wore Afros and dreadlocks, head wraps, and some even had short buzz cuts with Adinkra symbols etched into the napes of their necks. They were all adorned with nose rings and intricate African neckwear. Some wore gold and bronze; others had silver and wood. While they all seemed like they were at a party, dancing to a set of African drummers and smiling at each other, it was quite different than the one Tamia had left in the city. “I thought I’d be too late,” she added.

“We’re just getting started,” Malik said. “Brothers and sisters will be coming out here all night.”

“So, what is this? Why are all of these people here?” Tamia asked as an older man who had one huge dreadlock spiraling down his back walked past beating a drum and chanting as if in a trance.

“It’s the crescent moon.” Malik pointed to the sliver of a bright white moon above them. “In our itan, our history, it meant fertility—the line between life and death. It is time for the Erena for some brothers who are being reborn to the purpose of their spirits, elevated to a higher spiritual consciousness—the ori orun.”

“You do realize that I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say things like that?” Tamia chuckled. “I mean, you have to know that.”

“Yeah.” Malik smiled back at her. “Basically, it’s a rite-of-passage ceremony.”

“Thank you for the translation.”

Suddenly all movement and chatter from the increasing crowd of onlookers around them stopped.

Behind the drummer’s syncopated beat trailed seven men dressed in so much white, the moon, the clouds, and stars seemed more luminous above them. They were all bald, and ancient Kemetic symbols and markings Tamia didn’t yet understand were penciled into their scalps, cheeks, and foreheads in white paint. Tamia watched intently as they organized into a circle and chanted a complicated rite to the ancestors before libations were poured into the soil around them. The drummer continued chanting what was becoming a song, as he led them around the tree.

“They died and now they’re alive,” Tamia heard. She turned and now Kali was standing beside Malik, draped in a beautiful red sari. Her eyes were locked on the men.

Tamia turned back around. Their composure and steady focus defied the bitter March wind that was numbing her toes. Their eyes were focused east as they called out with the chanting drummer.

“Eshu?” Tamia repeated one of the words she could make out. “Eshu? Elegbua?”

“They’re calling for the Orisha, or safe travel,” Kali said, grabbing Tamia’s hand, “of the crossroads.”

This went on for hours. Sweat poured from the men’s heads, but they went on chanting. The wind swept up icy dirt from the fields around them, soiling their white clothes, but they went on chanting. The frigid temperatures sank lower with the moon as it crossed the sky, yet they went on chanting into the night.

And while Tamia had thought of every ill-informed comment she could consider about what she was seeing, watching the men fight so dedicatedly to change, be so connected with a culture she didn’t know or understand that seemed so inextricably connected to other things she knew, her innocent, clear mind was moved, opened in a way a twister of a Rubik’s Cube feels after turning the toy to its final position of completion. There was something about what they were doing, what the people gathered around them to observe, what she was seeing, that seemed more real, more natural, more intelligent than anything she’d ever witnessed in her entire life.

“Ayo,” Malik said and Tamia’s stare was broken by the vision of a woman standing between her and Malik. Kali had left long ago when the crowd encircled the group of men after it was clear the night could hear no more of their chanting. The rite was over.

“Malik,” the woman said, hugging him in a familiar way that showed more than the two had said in their greeting. Ayo’s light brown skin, high cheekbones, and sultry, slanted eyes provided the ingredients of a beauty that usually stunned both men and women into gazing at her before they really saw her. She looked unreal, like the spray painting of a person in a Benetton ad. Even the little golden pin earring that sat on her nose seemed perfectly in place. Not one ginger-colored dreadlock on her head was out of place.

“Tamia,” Malik said like he was introducing his prom date, “this is Ayodele. She teaches poetry arts at the Freedom Project.”

“Poetry arts?” Ayo laughed and playfully plucked Malik. “It’s just poetry. Why do you have to be so dramatic, Malik?” The two laughed at what wasn’t a joke and Tamia realized that she was the third wheel in a conversation. It was like she wasn’t even standing there. “I’m so sorry, my sister,” Ayo said, turning to Tamia and then she was just beside Malik, her skin the perfect contrast to his. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Mine too.” Again, Tamia was pulled into a hug. She noticed that Ayo also smelled of frankincense.

“So, are you a…” Ayo looked from Tamia to Malik. “You two are like…”

“I was invited by Malik,” Tamia said.

“This isn’t her thing,” Malik added. “She’s my attorney. I invited her here so she could learn more about what we do.”

While everything Malik revealed to Ayo was true, Tamia didn’t like the way it sounded. Like she was simple. Uninformed. A visitor. At once, Tamia’s shoes, clothing, purse, hair, earring-less nose were stacked up against everything opposite Ayodele was and had.

“Well, many thanks and blessings to you, Sister Tamia, for helping us. Brother Malik is a leader in our community and we couldn’t do what we do without him.”

Malik looked at Ayo like she was reciting marriage vows or giving him a check for $1 million. Tamia thought that she hadn’t ever seen any grown man look at any woman with such respect, such love, such schoolboy wonder.

“Well, I’m going to get inside,” Ayo said. “My toes are freezing in these boots. I know your feet are cold too, sister.” They all looked down at the gold dusting the tips of Tamia’s shoes.

After Ayo hugged both Tamia and Malik and walked off into the crowd, Tamia playfully chided, “You sure you don’t want to go with her?”

“She’s just my friend,” Malik said. “Just someone who works with me.”

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Hours later, as Tamia lay in bed wondering at how the scent of frankincense and myrrh hadn’t yet left her body and feeling the steady pulse of the African drum still thumping in her stomach, the phone rang and Troy was on the other end.

While some other sisterfriends might have been alarmed by the time of the call, Tamia rolled over and answered as if it was noon and not far after midnight. The friends had never been very good at limitations.

Whispering from her position in the corner of the inside of the bathroom door where she could still see Kyle in bed sleeping, Troy told Tamia about the triumph at the meeting, the pressure on her heart, and the fear she’d been keeping secret for a long time. Both friends cried as Tamia admitted how Troy had been changing and how sometimes she felt the best friend she’d pledged a sorority with in undergrad was absent even when she was present, and she couldn’t understand why.

“I don’t know why he married me,” Troy said. “I just can’t figure out why. This isn’t me. This place. These people. I can’t do this.”

“Kyle loves you, Troy. That’s why he married you.”

“What if his love isn’t enough? What if we can’t make it on that?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Ms. Lovesong, and say love is always enough to make it. Both of us know that sometimes love can be beat down and look just as ugly as hate,” Tamia said sincerely. “But I do know you have to take the chance. And what makes you think you’re not worth the chance? That Kyle wasn’t lucky to find you?”

Troy looked at Kyle’s sleeping body, watching his chest rise and sink. He reached out to her side of the bed.

“He’s not like me, and I don’t want to change him,” Troy said. “Before he met me, he didn’t know the difference between Polo and Purple Label. He didn’t curse. He didn’t even watch television.”

“People can’t live like that—all shut in from the world,” Tamia said. “Did you ever think that maybe he likes that about you? That you know about the world and can share it with him?”

“What is there to share? And what if everything I’m sharing with him will take him further from who he is? Further from being a man of God?”

“You can’t punish him for being a man of God and you can’t punish yourself for living your life. If you two are going to make it you have to try to live in both worlds, with both histories.” Tamia tried not to sound like she was still crying, but she was. It hurt her to hear her friend in so much pain. Troy had changed her entire life to try to make her marriage work. “Troy, you’re one of the most godly women I know. Forget about the church and all of that stuff. If God is love, then you’ve got more than most people. You love your family and you love your friends. And even when you’ve fallen short, I’ve seen you fight for all of us and remind us how to love one another. Now, I’m not one of those sisters in the club at the church. I’m not sanctified”—Tamia and Troy laughed—“but I know that kind of love is good and godly, and Kyle is lucky to have it.”

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The next time Pastor Kyle Hall reached for his wife in the night, she was there and reaching back to him. While he was asleep, her touch immediately and fully woke him. He opened his eyes and saw her nude breasts facing him and leaning toward the sheets. He moved his hand from Troy’s open palm to her and looked at her face. And while any other night when he’d touched her in this way, his mind tried to recall if it was a holiday or what he’d done to deserve this, this time, all he thought was “beautiful.”

“I love you,” his wife said, her arm crisscrossing his and reaching beneath the sheet.

“I love you too.”

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It’s one amazing thing when a woman is born luminescent. It’s another amazingly spectacular thing when the same woman forgets how bright and dazzling she is for a very long time and then, through some kind of intervention, is reminded.

Two weeks after the Queen Been Competition led Troy to inspire the biggest coup d’état in First Baptist history, the Virtuous Women’s annual bake sale raked in its biggest profit ever and just like that Troy had a palpable reminder of the significance of her own brand of luminosity. While she dared not contribute a cake of her making, she used her connections and wit to lead a fierce marketing campaign throughout the surrounding neighborhood that led to a line of eager customers waiting outside the church the morning of the sale. “What are all these people waiting for?” Sister Julia asked Troy, who was busy walking down the line to offer guests hot tea as they waited. “You,” Troy responded. She handed Sister Julia, whose Five-Flavor Bundt was the sweetest and softest she’d ever had, a flyer with the woman’s image on it as she held one of her cakes. Realizing that the women of the church presented the most compelling and memorable branding behind the products they were selling, Troy created flyers featuring the images of each of the women with the cakes. So they weren’t just selling this cake and that cake—it was Mother Beulah’s Sock-It-to-Me Cake, Sister Sarah’s Sweet Potato Pie, Sister Mildred’s bread pudding, Sister Junnie Mae’s pineapple upside-down cake, and Sister Lena’s 7Up Cake. Everyone in line had an order—they wanted the entire cake, wanted to meet the women who’d made them, and even when everything was gone the Virtuous Women were still taking orders. Needless to say, the mothers and sisters, who’d been reminded of their own luminosity as customers argued about who’d get their cakes and begged for pictures and secret recipes, had nothing but smiles and kind words for their First Lady. “First Lady is smart,” Sister Julia said, smiling after a reporter from the
Amsterdam News
Troy invited begged her for the recipe for the Five-Flavor Bundt. “I’m humble…but my cake is good.”

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Sister Julia Reid’s Five-Flavor Bundt (As Passed Down at a Card Party…Before Sister Julia Got Saved)

If you have a sweet tooth, this sweet cake is sure to satisfy. Invite a few friends over and indulge with vanilla bean ice cream.

Cake Ingredients
:

2 sticks butter

3 cups sugar

½ c. vegetable oil

5 large eggs (well beaten)

3 cups flour

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 c. milk

1 tsp. each almond, lemon, vanilla, coconut, and rum extract

Directions
:

Cream butter, sugar, and vegetable oil until light and fluffy. Add eggs (which have been beaten until lemon in color). Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Add to butter and egg mixture and beat approximately 1 ½ minutes, adding milk for smooth batter consistency. Fold in the five flavors. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 1 to 1 ½ hours. Stick toothpick in to make sure it’s done. Leave in pan.