The Company We Keep (5 page)

I
t was Nicole’s idea to leave the party early, but not with Teri. A drummer from an up-and-coming reggae group, and Nicole’s recent past, had arrived late. As soon as he had spotted Nicole, he was ready to grab her and run. Nicole was feeling hornier than ever. She was ready, and as anxious to run with that drummer as those daredevils who ran with the bulls through the streets in Spain every year. She plowed through the crowd like a backhoe trying to get to the bathroom quickly, with Teri nipping at her heels.

“Did you know your maintenance man was going to be here? Did you know he’d be coming here solo tonight?” Teri asked, speaking to Nicole in a low, controlled tone of voice, even though they were off by themselves in a corner outside one of the three upstairs bathrooms. Nicole had just emptied her bladder and touched up her makeup.

Teri had to admit that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had more fun than tonight. She’d danced off and on for the past hour. She had consumed so much more champagne she didn’t give a damn who saw her hovering over the table snatching fried chicken wings with both hands. Before that, she had devoted her attention to the caviar and quiche. Her lips were so greasy, at one point, a snotty black woman who had avoided the black entrees because she didn’t want the non-black guests to
think of her as just another Negro rolled her eyes at Teri in disgust. To show that despite her status she was still a “sistah” with obvious ties to the ’hood, and proud of it, Teri gave that blond-weave-wearing bitch the finger. Then she grabbed several more chicken wings and slapped them onto a saucer. She chewed like a squirrel as she spoke to Nicole.

“You mean Carl?” Nicole asked with a blink and a twitch of her bottom lip. Despite the fact that she had just checked her makeup, there was still some lipstick on her teeth and some grease on the side of her cheek.

“Whatever the hell his name is,” Teri snapped. She used the same napkin she had just employed to wipe grease from her bottom lip to wipe Nicole’s cheek.

“No, I didn’t know Carl was going to be here tonight,
Mama
,” Nicole quipped. “And of course he’s here alone. What do you think I am? Some hoochie who would leave a party with some other woman’s date?”

“You’re going home with some other woman’s
husband.
Is there a difference?”

“Carl and Debbie are separated. They’ve been separated for two years. The only reason they are still married is because wifey is such a bitter bitch that she wants him to suffer, so she refuses to give him a divorce. They lead separate lives.”

“They still live together, girl. You told me that yourself. And you and I both know how people in our business talk.”

“I also told you that he was still there because of his son. The boy is fifteen, so in three years, Carl can leave.”

“And be with you full time? Three years is a long time to wait for somebody’s leftovers.”

“Unless we are talking about virgins, everybody is somebody’s leftovers,” Nicole snarled.

“Greg hurt you when he left you for that other woman. I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“Greg was my husband. He had certain commitments to me that he didn’t fulfill. Being with Carl and the other men I see these days is all about me having a good time. Nothing more. If I don’t get much more than that, it’s still all good because I don’t expect it.”

“So you let Carl use you?”

“Use me! Ha! If anything, I’m using him. The last time I hooked up with him, he couldn’t even bust a nut. But I
always
get mine. With him and every other man. Shit.” Nicole laughed and folded her arms. But then she looked more serious than she had at any other time that night. “What’s your point?”

“Sex isn’t everything, Nicole,” Teri said in a weak voice. “Don’t you want more?”

Nicole nodded so hard her turban slid to the side. “Right now I want more sex,” she admitted, rearranging her headgear. “T, you know I love you to death. We both say a lot of shit to each other when it comes to our love lives. I know that what I say to you goes in one ear and out the other. You should know by now that it’s the same way with me. I’m a big girl and I can do whatever the hell I want and with whomever the hell I want. Life is too short and I want to enjoy it while I still can. And you should, too! Shit. If I were in your Jimmy Choos, I’d have thrown Harrison over my back like a sack of flour and hauled his black ass to the nearest motel room as soon as I saw him tonight. But you didn’t!”

“That’s not what I came here for,” Teri insisted, leaning against the wall. They stopped talking and waited for two other female guests to pass by and enter the bathroom, both so drunk they didn’t even notice Nicole and Teri, anyway. Teri maneuvered a thick slab of meat off the chicken wing bone with her tongue. “At least I’m enjoying the food,” she said with her mouth full.

“That’s not all you’re enjoying. I saw the way you looked at Harrison. You looked like you wanted to fuck that man out the door. Then you had a second chance to do the same thing with Dwight! Girl, just about every other woman in this place tonight would have done just that. What you do is your business, honey. And what I do is mine. Let’s not forget that, okay? Now help me get this damn poncho back on straight.” Teri helped Nicole adjust her black poncho and then she watched her stumble down the steps like a wino. Teri shrugged and started to attack another one of the chicken wings on the saucer in her hand, even though she already felt like a sow gone wild.

Before Teri could leave the spot she occupied, Nicole returned
with a sheepish look on her face. “Uh, I just wanted to let you know that Harrison is still here.”

“So?” Teri managed, still chewing.

“He’s been keeping to himself most of the night and I’ll bet it’s because he’d rather spend his conversation on you…”

Teri stopped chewing. “Where is this conversation going?”

“Teri, I don’t know what you are waiting for. And maybe you will get exactly what you want one of these days. Knowing you, you will. But in the meantime, have yourself some fun, girl. There is nothing wrong with that. You could probably wrap Harrison or Dwight, or any other man, around your little finger if you wanted to. Do it while you still can.”

Nicole’s words gave Teri something to think about, but not for long. However, it did make her lose her appetite. She set the saucer on a table outside the bathroom, even though a couple of chicken wings remained. “Are you through? Is there anything else you need to say to me?” Teri asked, licking grease off her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she had behaved so “ghetto.” It was a liberating experience.

“I had a dry spell—by choice like you—for a year after Greg did his disappearing act. It didn’t bother anybody but me.” Nicole paused and shrugged, then gave Teri one of her sharpest looks. “I decided that if I couldn’t beat ’em, I’d join ’em. I hooked up with a couple of…uh…on-call maintenance men, as you like to call them, and I’ve been happy ever since. I want you to be happy, too,” Nicole concluded with a pleading look on her face.

“I am happy,” Teri insisted, dismissing Nicole with a wave as they both moved toward the steps.

Teri decided to locate Harrison and wish him luck in the New Year. She decided that that was the least she could do. But by the time she and Nicole got back downstairs, where she had summoned enough nerve to locate and approach Harrison, it was too late. Teri spotted him walking out the door with the same bitch who had rolled her eyes at Teri when she saw her gobbling up those chicken wings a little while ago.

Teri looked at Nicole and blinked. Nicole saw what Teri had just seen. She looked at Teri, shook her head, then gently rubbed her arm. Teri felt as stiff as a board and was hot to Nicole’s touch.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Nicole offered. “Right now, I’ve got a man waiting for me outside. But if you need me, I can send him on his way.” Teri gave Nicole a sorrowful look and shook her head. “All right then. Listen, you drive carefully,” Nicole told her before she left.

T
he afternoon after the rapper’s party, still slightly hung over, Teri attended service at the same church with her beloved grandparents. The predominantly black congregation spilled out of the old white building with its tall steeple.

It was warm for January, even for L.A. The rays from the sun stung Teri’s eyes. She was sorry that she didn’t have her sunglasses with her. Some of the two hundred members looked and behaved like they couldn’t get off the premises fast enough.

“Baby, we know you probably want to spend the rest of the day with the other young folks,” Teri’s grandfather said, knowing the reaction he would get from Teri. He said the same thing every time they left church together. He knew her response was always going to be the same, but he liked hearing her say it anyway.

“Don’t you start that,” Teri scolded, brushing lint, ravels, and fuzz off the lapels and arms of the blue serge suit he wore, which he should have disposed of thirty years ago. “I am with the folks I want to be with today,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “Now let’s get to the house and do some serious kicking back and some serious eating. We want to start the New Year off right.”

The elder Stewarts had raised Teri after her parents died in an automobile accident when she was eight. And as far as they were
concerned, they were still “raising” her. Despite their advanced years, their minds were still fairly sharp and they still applied a lot of good old-fashion common sense when it came to most things. But Grandma Stewart would have still been spoon-feeding Teri if she had her way.

The light green adobe house with the neat lawn and cobblestone walkway that the Stewarts owned was nowhere near as opulent as the mansion that Teri had partied in the night before. But given a choice, she would have chosen the modest single-family home in a middle-class black neighborhood over anybody’s mansion any day. It was one of the few places where she felt totally at peace. It was also the one place she could go where she didn’t have to do a damn thing to gain anybody’s approval. She could eat greasy chicken wings here all day and all night and not worry about some uppity so-and-so looking at her as if she had brought down the whole black race.

“What are you thinking about, girl?” Grandma Stewart asked Teri as soon as they parked in the driveway and got out of the Lincoln that Teri had cosigned for them the year before. Teri had also made an ample down payment and paid the first six notes. Financially, the Stewarts could afford to manage on their own. With their combined pensions after forty years’ service, each working for the post office, and the fact that they had made some good investments over the years, they were more than comfortable. But Teri had a six-figure income, a first in her family. She had everything she wanted or needed. With no children or siblings to shower with affection and gifts, she did more than she needed to do for her grandparents, whether they wanted it or not. Last year, she almost had to hog-tie them and have them carried onto the cruise ship where she’d booked them a seven-day cruise to the Mexican Riviera as a surprise for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They’d come home wearing sombreros, smelling like tequila, and grinning like teenagers.

“Oh? Who me? What am I smiling about? Oh, I was just thinking about what Reverend Upshaw said about Lot’s wife…” Teri told her grandmother.

“Wasn’t that a wonderful holiday sermon? I swear to God,
whenever Reverend Upshaw gets loose in that pulpit, I feel Jesus go through me to the bone. Don’t you?”

“I sure enough do. Uh, let’s get in the house and get comfortable,” Teri insisted, escorting her grandmother into the house with her arm around her shoulder.

The Stewarts’ furniture was old but sturdy and well-cared for. A maroon couch, a matching love seat, and a La-Z-Boy dominated the cozy living room. Doilies that Grandma Stewart had made and shaped with starch and beer bottles covered the dark oak coffee table and the end tables and lined the windowsills. High-back chairs faced the big-screen TV in the room that was also a dining room where meals were served on a long, low wooden table covered with a crocheted white tablecloth. Brocade draperies covered the windows in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. Everything in the house could easily last another twenty years before it fell apart. Grandpa Stewart had built this house that Teri loved so much many years ago with the help of some of his church members. And just like it was with Teri, this house also felt like home to a lot of the church members, too.

This was a typical late-afternoon dinner gathering, served buffet style so it was every man, woman, and child for himself. It didn’t take long for every single person to have a plate in hand. Old, stout Maybelle Hawthorne, wearing a white floor-length frock that looked like a bathrobe, had a plate in each hand. Both contained generous mounds of food threatening to spill onto the freshly waxed linoleum floors. Some folks stood in groups of three or four, talking as they ate. Others sat or meandered throughout the house.

The destination for most of the males was the room with the big-screen TV where a previously recorded Lakers game was on, featuring Dwight Davis. There was almost as much emotion displayed in the living room as there had been during Reverend Upshaw’s fiery sermon. This was the “down-home” atmosphere that kept Teri focused and balanced. This was where her character had been formed. This lifestyle had made her the caring, hardworking, no-nonsense person she was today. No matter what happened in her future personal life, this was what she would always measure her sense of values against.

Grandma Stewart had spent most of the day and half of the night before “cooking up a storm,” as she had declared. In addition to a deep-fried turkey, five Crock-Pots full of collard greens, four platters of corn bread muffins, six mac and cheese casseroles, and enough yams to feed a small army, there were six huge pots of black-eyed peas—more than enough for every person present to have several helpings. Grandma Stewart didn’t care how much everybody ate. And she made it clear that she didn’t want anybody to leave without eating some black-eyed peas.

“Everybody knows that if you want a New Year to start off right, you got to start it off with some black-eyed peas,” Grandma Stewart announced, spooning peas onto a huge plate for herself. Black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day had been a family and cultural tradition for generations. For a woman who liked to cook and eat rich food, Teri’s grandmother was a petite woman with an attractive but chubby face that resembled a chipmunk. Black moles dotted her warm brown face. Her husband was only slightly larger with a mole-like face, a head that resembled a coconut, and sparse, wiry white whiskers on the sides of his face that looked like they belonged on a cat. Teri had her grandmother’s eyes and her grandfather’s full lips, but she had inherited her five foot seven inch height from her mother’s side. One of her biggest sorrows was that her maternal grandparents had both died before she was born so she’d never know what else they’d passed on to her.

Teri enjoyed good southern cooking as much as everybody else in the room. And even though she didn’t think of herself as a superstitious woman, she ladled more peas onto her plate than anybody else. There was nothing else on her plate, not even one of the golden corn bread muffins that her grandmother had just removed from the oven with steam still floating above them like miniature clouds.

“Girl, I know you are not going to bypass that turkey and those greens,” Grandma Stewart commented, frowning at the contents on Teri’s plate.

“The peas are enough for me right now,” Teri declared, stirring a few drops of hot sauce onto her meal.

“Well, if all you are going to eat are the peas, you’re going to
wind up with enough gas to light up Florida. Are you all right? You look a little peaked. I hope you didn’t stay out too late last night. I woke up and called your house around eleven-thirty last night and you hadn’t come home yet. I hope you are not running around with the wrong crowd, drinking and doing whatnot. You know how we worry about you, with you still out there by yourself as manless as a nun…”