Sweet Bye-Bye (9 page)

She was accusing me right off. Jeez, lady, I had a lot going on, and I was trying to be in a good mood. I’d only been in the door for thirty seconds. Can you let me get in the house before you start digging?

“I’m going in this afternoon,” I told her, biting the side of my lip. I knew what I was doing, and it was
my
business.

“Oh,” she said doubtfully, like she knew me so well. She was always suspicious of me like that. I am full-grown, in case she hadn’t noticed. I put her on the list of people that I was sick of.

“Is my dad up?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s up there watching the ball game channel.”

My parents had just had marble floors and new white carpet put in. I stepped out of my new pointy-toed brown leather boots, set them by the front door, and headed up the stairs. Their bedroom door was cracked, so I pushed it open.

Daddy was sitting up in bed looking healthy, watching television. He was clean-shaven, as usual, except for his thick salt-and-pepper mustache. He had a big shiny bald head on top, and salt-and-pepper hair on the sides that he brushed downward from ear to ear.

“Hey, Baseball Ballerina!” Daddy was recovering well.

“Hey, Papa Doe’s Pizza!” I said.

My dad and I got along great. We’d been calling each other silly names ever since I could talk.

“You’re up and about bright and early. Why aren’t you at work, babygirl?”

“Oh, I took the morning off. I’ll probably go in this afternoon.”

“I see. Where is your coat? It looks like it’s going to rain. Did you go out this morning without one on? Chawnee, don’t you leave here without a coat. You hear me? Shoot. Girl, it’s colder out there than a polar bear’s behind.”

I laughed. “Okay, Daddio.”

He was funny. He constantly compared stuff to everything’s butt. No matter what the topic was, he found a way to make it into a lesson with a butt in it. If I told him to taste a spicy food, he’d say, “Girl, that food is hotter than a flea’s butt running across a campfire.”

“Here, Daddy,” I said. “I brought you something.”

I reached into my Prada backpack purse and took out a Monterey Jazz Festival baseball cap, to add to his collection. I went over and put it on his head. “Next February, when you’re up to it, you and I are going to the jazz festival.”

Daddy smiled. “Yep . . . By then, I’ll be as good as new.”

No prostate cancer or heart attack was going to get the best of my dad.

I thought about the coconut-shell anklet that I had on. It would make a nice bracelet for him. I took it off and grabbed his wrist to fasten it on.

“Aww naw!” he teasingly grumbled. “Here you come decorating me wit a whole bunch of barrettes and clamps and fasteners!”

“Aww, Daddy, this ain’t no barrette, it’s a bracelet for you. Hold still.”

Daddy huffed and puffed, but I knew he secretly liked the gift. I giggled and closed the fastener. My daddy wouldn’t leave me. He couldn’t leave me; nobody cracked me up like he did.

Charlotte walked in the door with Dad’s omelet and she started in on me. She waited until I got in front of Daddy to comment on my new braids. She was always trying to make him see the “real me,” and she’d been doing it since I was little.

She pointed at my long black extensions that I’d gotten cornrowed down to my butt. “You’ve been going to work looking like that?” she asked.

I sucked my teeth and didn’t say a word. My braids were something that I’d wanted to do for a long time. Ever since I’d seen Eve sporting some long blond ones in a video.

“Well, you won’t make VP of advertising looking like that. That’s not professional,” she said.

“Charlotte, I don’t really give a flying freak right now. Okay?” My chest started to feel tight again.

“Hey! Hey! Hey! Chantell, you calm down and watch your mouth!” said my father.

“Yeah, girl your mouth is somethin’ else,” Charlotte said. “You’re so pretty, but that attitude just makes you ugly. You need to stop all that!”

“Now hold up on, you guys!” my daddy said sternly. “We’re not doing that this morning. Okay?”

I rolled my eyes. Charlotte was always provoking me. I really didn’t care what corporate America thought right then. Corporate America didn’t care about me. I didn’t care about corporate America. And what did
she
know about corporate America anyway? She hadn’t worked in ten years.

I sat there and hung out with her and my dad for as long as I could. The three of us watched television together in silence. When I left it was still cold but the sun was out. I took my keys out of my purse and zipped up Charlotte’s red sweat jacket. Daddy was right, it was too cold to be out without a coat.

In the car, I checked my voice mail; Eric had called. “Yes, Chantell. I just left a message at your office too. I guess you’re in a meeting. Look, baby, I’m not sure why you’re trippin’. Those girls weren’t anybody to me. We were just talking, that’s all,” he said. “You know I want to be with you. So you need to stop acting like that, and come over here tonight . . .”

I took the phone from my ear. That was exactly what I didn’t need to do! What I needed was for Charlotte to get off my back. What I needed was for my daddy to fully recover. I looked at my long fingers and the glossy coat of peach nail polish on the tips. What I needed was for Eric to marry me. That was what I needed! I hit the delete button.

14

Take a Stand

I
’d driven around thinking for a few hours before I heard my stomach grumble. A hot pastrami sandwich had been on my mind for a couple of days. I spotted a yellow Subway sign just off the freeway and pulled into their parking lot.

A buzzer sounded when I walked in the door and up to the counter. Metal edges outlined the glass, through which I could see green-and-white lettuce shreds, tomato rings, black olives, green peppers, and little pieces of paper that covered the meats and cheeses.

“. . . Hey, sweetheart? I’ve got a customer. Hang on a minute,” said the tall, thin guy from behind the counter. He set down the phone and put on a pair of plastic gloves.

“Hi. How are you today?” His skin was the color of peanut butter, and his face was still spotted with acne.

“Just great.” I smiled my normal smile.

“White or wheat?”

“Um, wheat.”

“Six-inch or foot-long?”

“Six-inch.”

I ordered my hot pastrami sandwich, a bottled water, and a bag of Lay’s and sat down at a table. Why did they put the sandwich in a plastic bag even after you’d told them that you were dining in?

The employee retrieved the phone and proceeded to talk. “Okay, we’ll leave as soon as I get off work, and we’ll get there about eight.”

I unwrapped the paper from my sandwich.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just tell your father. It’s between us men. Kristen, leave it up to me. I’ll do the talking . . . Baby, we’re not going to sleep in separate— We’re not— I’ll just explain. Honey, I am your husband. Alright? It’s me and you forever.”

I took a bite of my warm sandwich. It wasn’t as flavorful as I thought it would be. I chewed slowly and glanced toward the guy, who looked to be about nineteen or twenty years old. Her and him forever.

I smiled as I remembered being a teen and struggling for my independence. I remembered how difficult it had been for my dad to deal with the fact that I had a boyfriend. He’d had a fit. He’d tried to scare the guy whom I thought I was in love with by saying that he’d grown up on the mean streets of Chicago and had mob connections. Then he’d changed our phone number and put me on restriction. I smiled remembering that awful day.

The guy behind the counter went on. “Well, we’re adults, you know. We’ll just say to them— Baby. I’ll say it! Don’t worry. We
are
going to finish school and everything will be okay. I’ll be ready to leave here at four-thirty. I love you too. Okay, bye.”

The kid behind the counter was willing to stand up with, and for, his girl. I needed to get Eric to see that he was supposed to stand up with and for me. I needed a lot of things. I needed Canun to know that he couldn’t dump his issues off on me, and I needed Charlotte to stop attacking me at every corner. But right then, I needed Eric to want our relationship like the kid behind the counter wanted his.

I picked up my cell and dialed Eric back. It rang.

“Yeah.”

“Eric, it’s me. Eric, did you do anything with that girl on the boat?”

“What? No, Chantell. You know me better than that!”

“Then how come you left with her?”

He let out a long breath of air. “Chantell, I’m at work. And I can’t talk about this now, okay?”

I looked over at the young man who was taking fresh hot bread from the oven. Then I said what I thought.

“Eric, I think we should get married.”

“Chantell, I’ll talk to you later, babe. Bye.”

I hung up, and wanted to scream. Two long years I’d wasted on him. I’d given him over seven hundred days of my life! Why wouldn’t he stand up for me? I took my sunglasses off the top of my head and put them over my eyes. What was wrong with me?

I needed to talk to someone. I looked in my purse and found the EAP card again.

The call screener answered. “Thank you for calling the Employee Assistance Program. My name is Mitch.”

“Yes. Hi, Mitch, I need to talk to someone. Like a therapist or something,” I added.

“Sure. What kind of concerns are you having, ma’am?”

“I don’t know, I have a lot of bills and pressures, I think I just quit my job, my relationship is a joke. My stepmother picks on me . . . and I’m just tired.”

“Slow down, slow down, it’ll be okay. I’m here to help,” he said.

He took my name and address and found two therapists in my area.

“Do they have a specialty area that they work in? I mean, I want to talk to someone who specializes in stress.”

As opposed to someone who specialized in Tourette’s syndrome, or someone who was afraid to walk under ladders.

“Ma’am, I’m no therapist, but it sounds like your issues are pretty common. All of our therapists and counselors are fully trained and accredited and can assist you with stress. I’m sure that we’ve got help for you, but I’ll tell you something. Whatever your problems are, pray about them, it always works for me.”

“Okay,” I said and wiped away the tears that had been burning in my eyes and refusing to fall.

He gave me the two therapists’ names and numbers and told me to call them. “If one doesn’t work, try the other one. If neither clicks with you, call us back and get more referrals. Sometimes it takes a little work to find a good person for you to talk to. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I was lucky. I phoned the first one, and she happened to have a cancellation. She said that I could stop by that afternoon.

15

San Francisco’s Got a Lot of Birds

I
arrived at the therapist’s office that afternoon. I was the only one in the waiting room. It was a small, plain-looking office in a large building in San Francisco. There was an old beige couch in the waiting area, and two card table chairs across from it, with a wooden end table in between—on which lay a birdwatching magazine and a
Reader’s Digest
. The pictures on the walls were dusty.

The therapist’s door opened and she asked me to come in. She had long black hair with thin strips of gray throughout. I sat down on a hard chair next to her desk.

“So why are you here today?” she asked.

I said, “Well, I’m tired.” I didn’t know what to say.

“Please go on,” she said.

“Well, I’m not sleeping good at night, and I think I don’t have a job anymore.”

“Why would you think that? What happened?” she asked.

Not knowing where to begin, I said, “Well, my boss keeps doing underhanded things to me.” I then described a painful incident: “Last week he told me that he needed to turn in a report on the number of new business contacts that I had made within the last two weeks. I counted up all of mine and they totaled forty-eight. So I submitted forty-eight new names. When he got my numbers, he pulled me to the side and said with a chuckle that he didn’t think that forty-eight was a realistic number to submit. He said that was an awful lot of new contacts even for me. He said that upper management wouldn’t believe I had truly made that many contacts. So I said fine. He said he would tone down my number to something believable, like twenty-six or thirty. I didn’t necessarily like it, but I said fine—whatever! He was my boss and knew what he was doing, right? Well, when all the offices around the country had turned in their numbers, headquarters put them all into a spreadsheet and sent them out to us. Everyone’s numbers were displayed, and mine was near the bottom. The report showed that nearly everyone reported that they had made more calls than I had. Canun himself said that he’d made forty-one new contacts!”

“And how did that make you feel?” she asked.

Whoever said there was no such thing as a stupid question had never met this therapist. It had made me feel terrible, of course! I had been pissed! Really pissed. But to her I just said, “It made me upset.” I must have looked like I was holding back because she looked into my eyes like she was trying to read me.

Then she said, “What are you thinking about?”

I said, “I don’t know. I guess about how I don’t really have anyone that I can talk to.”

“You’re not married?”

“No.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No.”

“What about your parents? Tell me about them,” she said.

“Well, my dad is around, but he’s been sick, so I don’t want to burden him with all that I’m going through. And my stepmother, she likes to see me in turmoil. My real mother died when I was five.”

The therapist said, “Chantell, do you ever have thoughts of hurting yourself?”

“What? No!” I said, annoyed and wondering where she was going with her questioning.

She was staring at me all hard. If she was going to start tripping, I was going to leave. She said, “Well I am just asking, because it seems like you’re holding something back. And I wouldn’t want you to do anything harmful to yourself.”

Okie-dokie! This woman was a fully trained and accredited looney. I picked up my purse and said, “I’m sorry. This isn’t really working for me. I have to go.” I took my $10 copayment out of my wallet and set it in front of her.