Sweet Bye-Bye (27 page)

“Hi. Can I have a venti, almond rocha, lowfat latte, with room for extra cream?”

“Sure thing,” said the lady behind the counter. “And what will you have, sir?”

The man said, “I’ll have a triple espresso.”

“Coming up!” said the lady behind the counter. She wrote on two cups and passed them along. The customers went over to the other side of the bar and waited.

“Hi, may I help you?” she asked.

I didn’t know what Keith drank, so I ordered what I usually got. “Yes, can I have two decaf, soy, grande caramel macchiatos, and two coffeecakes?”

“You got it!”

I looked at my watch. It was 8:33 when I drove away. Keith Rashaad should have been home by then. He was an amazing man. I was so glad that I’d matured enough to come to my senses. I loved him so much, and all he wanted me to do was to show it. And I just couldn’t wait to get to his house!

My hands were full with the coffee, the pastries, and my clutch handbag, so I closed the door with my backside. I walked up to Keith’s door and knocked lightly. There was no answer. I set my things down and knocked again. Louder this time, but there was no answer. I knocked even harder. A blond guy in jeans and a sweatshirt must have heard me knocking because he came out of the apartment from next door and said, “Can I help you?”

“Oh, no thank you, I’m just stopping by to see my friend.”

“Who? You mean Talbit?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s gone. He left yesterday.”

“No. He was supposed to stay around another week, I thought.”

“He was, but he didn’t. My name is David Peralta. I’m the complex manager here. Keith signed out last night.”

I ignored him and went over to Keith’s window by the door. David don’t know nothing. The off-white tweed curtains were slightly open. Inside, the furniture was still there, but all of his personal things were gone. His board with the pictures. Gone.

He was gone. How could this be happening? I didn’t even have his phone number. I wasn’t able to tell him that I understood what he was saying. And he thought that I didn’t love him.

David stood there with me.

“But I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

He shook his head and said, “That’s tough. I’m sorry. But maybe it will still work out. Maybe he will call you.”

His words really got to me. What was he talking about, “maybe it will still work out”? Didn’t he just say so himself that the man was gone?

I left the coffeecakes and the coffee in the tray on the ground and ran to the Jeep. Inside, I put my arms around the steering wheel, hid my face, and cried. It startled me when David, the manager, knocked at my window. He had my stuff. I rolled down the window and he handed me the bags and my coffee.

“Here. Cheer up. Things happen, but you never know how they’ll turn out.”

“Thank you,” I said and wiped my eyes. David was trying to be nice. I didn’t turn and hide. I told myself that it was okay to be vulnerable, that there was nothing for me to be ashamed of. That’s what that therapist said, anyway.

“Hey David?”

“Yes?”

“Want a coffeecake?”

He smiled. “Sure. Thanks.”

On the way home, I tried to call Keith on his cell phone. The recording said the number was no longer in service. And I remembered Keith saying that it was the hospital’s phone.

50

A Deer/Dear

I
arrived in Hayward and drove up the big hill that led to the college. I’d always thought it strange that someone would put a university up on a hill. The letters CSUH had been sculpted into the grass, and a red-and-black triangle sign directed you to the little road that led to the campus. Why did love have to be so difficult and so hard?

I was stopped at the light for a few moments, while students crossed the street and headed for the dorms. Then, from nowhere, something moved quickly in my peripheral vision. It was big. Although it was rare, mountain lions had been known to come down from deep in the hills of the Bay Area, to visit the humans. I was more than a little scared.

It was probably just a big dog. Then a big deer bolted across the semi-busy street right in front of my Jeep. With its huge antlers, it moved swiftly and gracefully as if it were a ballerina and the street were a stage. It happened so fast that I might have thought I was dreaming, except that cars had to slam on their brakes, and students froze in their tracks. I watched the galloping deer, front legs in the air almost ready to touch the ground and the back legs pushing off the street at a perfect slant.

Lovesick, I squeezed the steering wheel tightly. The deer was beautiful, and he made me cry. I shifted to overdrive and drove past a few well-kept neighborhoods with perfectly manicured lawns. A raccoon lay dead in the street, while a man walked a little brown-and-white beagle on the sidewalk with no leash. I hoped the dog wouldn’t run out into harm’s way. I passed them, and in my rearview mirror I saw the man pick up the little dog.

I finally reached Ron and Tia’s house, and saw Tia’s convertible Sebring in the driveway and Ron’s green-and-white fishing truck next to it. I reached in the backseat and took out the bowl of ambrosia salad that I’d made for our dinner. I went in through the garage carrying the glass bowl. The walls were lined with supplies and cans of sprays and linoleum rolls. I knocked on the door that led to the kitchen and it opened slightly.

“Hello, anybody home?” I said.

“Come in. We’re in here!” said Tia from a distance. I walked in through the kitchen and set the bowl on the table.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” they greeted me.

Ron and Tia were on the couch together. She was sitting between his legs with her head back on his chest, reading a magazine. Those two could sit underneath each other all day.

“What are you guys up to?” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

“Oh, not much, just enjoying my husband’s day off. He’d work eight days a week if he could.”

“Hush, woman. If I stayed here every day, you’d be so sick of me,” said Ron jokingly.

Tia put her magazine on the table in front of her and walked barefoot over to the bowl that I had brought. “Yumm, Chawnee, did you put lots of pineapples in the salad?” she said and looked at me. Then she saw the phony smile I wore.

“Uh-oh, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I’m okay. I did. I put in a lot of pineapples because I knew that you’d be looking for them.” I tried to giggle.

Over on the couch, Ron yelled, “Hey, Chawnee, where is this new guy Tia say you’re seeing? I was hoping you’d bring him and we could play some tonk.”

I was about to cry. Tia waved at Ron and said, “Hold on a minute, baby.” She walked over to the couch and leaned down to him. “Baby, Chantell and I are going to talk in the back room. We’ll be back.”

By the time we got down the hall, I felt terrible because I was crying wholeheartedly and spoiling the dinner party. I sat down on her bed and began to recount the story. I told her everything, not just the good parts about eating fresh strawberry cake while he washed my car. I told her about the dinner that I missed, and how I kept feeling he was going to leave me and go back to Boston. I told her about how he’d said things like “I love you,” and “I trust you,” but I didn’t know how to reciprocate. I told her about shoplifting Lemonheads, and the board he had at his apartment with a picture of us on Halloween. I even told her about the trip to Santa Cruz and the rented bikes and the kiss and little girl singing about the babies coming in the carriage, and how it scared me.

When I told her about the lake, and how Eric had sung his rap song where he called me a fake bi——, her eyes got big. And then I told her how I hit him, and he knocked me down, and how Keith Rashaad fought to protect me.

She stopped me. “Wait a minute, missy. I want to make sure I understand you right. Are you telling me that you hit the man? In front of the man’s friends? And in front of your new man?” Even I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. She was dumbfounded. “Girl, you’d lost your mind!”

I kept talking, and it felt good to tell the whole truth. I thought about the therapist who told me to “feel your feelings.” I told Tia the stories, but really I was speaking for me. The more I spoke, the clearer I felt. Renewed, washed in realness and truth.

“When all was said and done, he told me I didn’t have my priorities in order. He asked me what good was money and clothes if I’d never even felt the beauty of a sun rising. He told me ambition was nothing if you really didn’t know what happiness was.”

Tia sat there quietly with her hands folded in her lap. “Keith Rashaad’s a good guy.”

“I know,” I cried. “And I lost him. Tia, I mixed him up with mine and Eric’s foolishness and I lost him! He just walked away from me, and I haven’t heard from him since. What am I going to do, Tia?”

“Well, right now, you are going to calm down and you’re going to get a hold of yourself, and we’re going to go have some dinner.” My friend put her arm around my shoulder, and we walked back down the hall. “Then you’re going to listen, and trust. Isn’t that what you’re learning in church?”

I nodded. We went back into the kitchen. Ron stood at the stove stirring a big pot of jambalaya.

“I was getting worried. Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes, we just needed to do some girl talking,” said Tia.

“Yeah, Tia was lending me her ear, and listening to my problems. But I’m okay now.”

“Well, I’m sure glad. Now let’s eat,” he said.

We sat down and ate dinner at their little farm table near the kitchen. There were fresh yellow flowers on the table, and I could smell their fragrance.

“So what are you going to do with the paintings?” Tia asked.

“I have been thinking about it. I don’t know yet. I’ve put in calls to some of the art societies, and I am going to get their advice.”

“Good idea.”

Ron’s food was delicious, as usual. He was a wonderful cook. I looked at him. There was something that I really wanted to know. “Ron,” I said, “how did you know that Tia was the one for you?”

“Well, I knew something was up when I realized that I thought of her both as my friend, and yet romantically. I’d looked at her flaws and they didn’t matter. When she and I were together nobody else existed. When she wasn’t around, I could smell her. Then it dawned on me that there was nobody on earth more important to me than she was.”

“You’re so good to me,” said Tia.

I looked at them. Seeing their love and trust made me smile. Then I looked up at the new painting that I had given her. She’d put it on the wall in the dining area. It was my mother’s painting of a farmhouse.

“What do you think? Does it go good in here?” asked Tia.

“Yes, it looks perfect right there,” I said.

51

Metamorphosis

I
t was the middle of the night, and I’d tossed and turned, back and forth, till finally I got out of bed. I needed to get out of there. I needed to go see the sunrise.

In the dark, I walked over to the closet. I turned on the light and put on some gray sweats and a gray sweatshirt. My heart and my soul needed some attention.

The clock on the wall read 3:57 a.m. when I walked out my front door. I drove around with the window down so that the breeze hit my face. I approached the toll for the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Out of my ashtray, I scraped together two dollars in change and rolled down the window a bit more. The toll collector was a very slow-moving woman. My arm was extended to hand her the money for what seemed like forever. She finally took the money and I drove through.

I drove around San Francisco. It was dark, and the water surrounding the city made the air really cold. I rolled up the window and turned on the heat. It blasted me like puffs of air shot in your eye during an eye examination. I drove around the city past the people. The wanderers of the night.

My clock read 4:22 when I came to a big paved hill. I drove up it as I had so many times in high school. It was a steep drive, and the lighted cathedral at the top illuminated the dark sky.

Tonight, there were other cars parked on the street at the top of the hill. There were people relaxing and enjoying the view, mostly couples and teenagers. Some folks sat in their cars and talked, others sat along the steep hillside. I got out, pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt, and drew the strings tight. I wasn’t sure what I was doing out there. I had no plans. I walked up to the top of the hill, stood next to the cathedral, and looked out at the bay.

The view was incredible. I could see the bridges and expanses of water. I could see San Mateo, all the way down to Palo Alto, and beyond. I saw huge skyscrapers and cars and boats and trees. The trees at the top swayed uniformly, like maybe they were dancing. Dancing the dance of the earth, or bowing and praying to God.

Trees were just trees; nothing phony; they lived to serve their purpose. I recalled Keith’s calling me on what I thought was important: “Cars, shoes, clothes, and money.” Is that who I was? A material thing, is that what I’d been? I knew the answer.

Material things were indeed my cover. I’d showed the world that I was about possessions. But I needed to peel them off so I could find me. I sat down on a rock and thought. I’d been afraid to be vulnerable. I couldn’t even tell Keith that I loved him too. He’d said he couldn’t make me be someone or something that I didn’t want to be.

If I had a pen and paper handy maybe I would have written down all of the things that I wanted to work on about me. Maybe I would have written down the pros and the cons of my behavior and analyzed them or something, but I couldn’t. So I moved down to the grass and sat with my knees up to my chest. I picked up a little rock for each time I realized something about me that I needed to change. I took a breath and looked out into the dark sky. It was starting. The sky was starting to turn to a lighter blue.

I wanted to put the materialistic thinking behind me. I picked up a rock. I’d been afraid to be vulnerable. But you had to trust someone, at some point, or your life would be hollow. I picked up another little rock. I was obsessed with looks, mine and everyone else’s, so I picked up two little rocks and put them in the growing pile. I’d been angry because I never got to know my mom. I picked up another rock. As a child, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me when Mom, Grandma, and Keith left. I was really afraid of being abandoned. I picked up a rock for each of them.