The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil (8 page)

But I didn’t have to say a thing ’cause Brooklyn’s mouth was still running. She had no plans of shutting up, either. Not
that I was studying Cash or Brooklyn. Every single thought I had was on Adam Langston.

I became a determined girl, but it wasn’t hard to catch a boy who wanted to be caught. We bonded first over the only subject that I was good at—math. After Adam saw me in the library (which became my hangout after what Cash said about straight girls) every day for two weeks straight, we became inseparable. On our one-month anniversary, we declared our undying love for each other.

Of course, the world thought we were just young. I heard it all—y’all don’t know nothin’ ’bout love; it’s just puppy love; it won’t last; first loves never do.

Even Brooklyn, who’d been going after Cash since we were five as if
he
was a drug had the nerve to have an opinion.

“Just know that he’s gonna have lots of other girls besides you, ’cause that’s just the way boys are.”

But no one and nothing mattered to me and Adam. No one knew what our pubescent souls knew—that before the world began God wanted us to be together (at least that’s what Adam told me in a poem he wrote for me on my thirteenth birthday). From the way my heart melted at those words, I knew he had to be speaking the truth.

Strangely enough, the only person who was thrilled about our hookup was my mother. At least, at first.

“That Langston boy sure is polite,” she said after the first time she met him. “He’d be a good one to keep, Evia. Think you can do that?”

But then her song changed about two years later when she came home one day and said, “That Langston boy ain’t the son of Dr. Langston!”

I had no idea what my mother was rambling about, so I just stayed right at the kitchen table trying to finish my homework.

My mother had stomped into the kitchen. “Girl, don’t you hear me talkin’ to you?”

“Yes, Marilyn.”

“So, why you tell me that he was that doctor’s son?”

“Who?”

“That boy. You told me he was the doctor’s son!”

“No, I didn’t.” I frowned. “I don’t even know who that doctor is.”

“Uh-hmmmm.” She lit a cigarette, leaned against the counter, and glared at me as if I was a liar and a thief. She stayed quiet for a long time before she asked, “Y’all doing it?”

At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she rephrased it and made her question clear.

“No!” I said, completely shocked that she would use the real
F
word with me. The one thing about my mother was that as classless as she was, she never really cursed. She’d get close, always adding a letter or two here and there. Like she’d say “fluck” or “shite.” But I guess she was so mad that Adam wasn’t that doctor’s son that she had to use the real word. “No!” I repeated and slammed my math book shut. “We’re not doing it.”

“Uh-hmmmmm.”

I could tell she didn’t believe me, but I didn’t know what I could do about it. Big Mama had talked to me about sex a little, but I’d never talked to my mother.

“Well, that little boyfriend of yours and his mother don’t have nothin’. So, you better keep your legs closed.”

I guess if Adam had been the son of that doctor, my mother would’ve been giving me sex lessons.

I’d told my mother the truth—Adam and I weren’t doing a thing. Not because we were only fourteen—most of our friends were already doing the do. Our abstinence was part of our plan.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Adam said to me one day after we’d been hanging out at the movies with Cash and Brooklyn. Our friends hadn’t seen a single scene of
The Godfather III
though. Right there, in the movie theater, Brooklyn and Cash had had sex. Not that I was shocked—they did that all the time … they and everyone else, but not me and Adam.

Now, Adam and I did go below the belt plenty of times. But it was just with our hands and a few, few times with our mouths. But that’s where we stopped, ’cause we were gonna do this right. We had a plan and a purpose.

“Yeah, we’re gonna get out of here,” Adam said as we walked along Martin Luther King Boulevard. As he eyed some of Duke’s boys handling their drug business in front of the liquor store, he added, “We weren’t meant to be here. We’re not supposed to live like this, ’cause you and me, we have a higher calling.”

Many times when Adam talked, his words and thoughts went right over my head, but like all the other times, I just nodded in agreement.

“Education,” he continued talking, “is our ticket. Our way out.” He nodded. “Yup, that’s what Ma always says. Education.”

From the moment I’d met Adam, he’d talked about three things: God, his mother, and education. He had big dreams of college in New York, and studying abroad in Paris, then getting a big-time job somewhere exotic like California or Canada.

But the best part of his whole plan was that he was gonna take me with him.

“We’re smart, Evia. We’re going to be one of the statistics,” he always told me. “We’re going to be the ones who got out. The ones who were able to rise up above their circumstances. People will be reading about us one day. Shoot, one day, I might even be president!”

Oh, yeah, my boo dreamed big. I mean, the president part was a stretch. I guessed Adam forgot that he was black and there was never going to be a black president. But all I said was, “If you want to be president, baby, I’ll be right there with you as your first lady.”

Adam’s dreams became my dreams, and that’s what kept us celibate. Getting pregnant would derail every plan, so our dreams became our birth control, dreams were why we abstained, dreams helped us to hold out for three years.

Then, May of our sophomore year, the last days of school before summer. I couldn’t wait—Adam had gotten both of us jobs with the parks department. We were gonna be going around the city, cleaning D.C. parks—totally unglamorous, but Adam said it was good, honest work and that’s what mattered.

With only one day left, I was pulled from my last class—the history of black America—into the principal’s office. There, Mr. Watson, a crinkly old man who always sounded like he had a sore throat, gave me the news that my grandmother had died. He could’ve just reached into my chest and yanked my heart out—it would’ve felt the same way.

Never had I dealt with such loss, such grief. The sorrow wasn’t just in my head, it was all over me; my whole body ached. My tears just kept on coming; hour after hour, I mourned for Big Mama. Not only because I wouldn’t see her again in this life, but now that she was gone, there would be no one left on earth who loved me like she did.

Every time I said that, though, I had a feeling that I was breaking Adam’s heart.

“I will,” Adam told me over and over when I asked him who would love me now. “It’s different from Big Mama’s love, but I will love you more. I’ll love you always. I’ll love you best.”

It was because of my grief and because of his love that right
after we left my grandmother in Holy Grounds cemetery, I ended up back at Adam’s apartment.

While his mother worked her second job on the janitorial staff at Georgetown University, I curled up on the sofa, thought about how I’d watched my grandmother’s casket be lowered into the earth, and wondered what it was going to be like to never hear her voice or feel her love again … and I cried. I cried so much that I could see the fear in Adam’s eyes, as if he wondered if someone could die from an overdose of crying.

He held me, consoled me, kissed me. But it wasn’t until his hands began to explore my body that my tears subsided. Instead of crying, I held him back. And kissed him back. And fondled him back.

This time, we didn’t stop with just our hands. We kept going all the way until neither one of us could ever claim virgin status again.

I may not have been crying when I finally sat up on that couch, but I was scared enough to cry. “We didn’t use anything,” I whispered to Adam as I pulled down my skirt; we hadn’t bothered to take off anything except for my panties. “You think we’re gonna be all right?”

“Yeah.” He tossed me my panties from the foot of the couch. “We’re cool.” Putting his arms around me, he added, “It’s okay anyway, because we’re gonna get married, and you’re the only girl I’ll ever be with … anyway … so …”

His words were so sweet, but I’d never heard his voice tremble until then. That was when I started praying the way Big Mama had taught me.

A couple of months later, I learned two things: that with prayer, God’s answers don’t always match our requests, and yes, you could get pregnant the first time.

We’d been so afraid when we’d borrowed money from five
different friends to purchase all those pregnancy tests and found out that we were going to be parents before we’d even be seniors in high school.

But although Adam wouldn’t let me even consider getting an abortion, our new reality didn’t kill our dreams. It was way tougher than we’d planned—school, kids, work, kids, college, kids, graduate school for Adam, kids. But just like he’d predicted, we got out—with our children and all.

Chapter 10

“Y
OU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD
and evil,” Bishop Cash Supreme bellowed from the pulpit. “You know the difference between right and wrong—don’t try to make this all complicated. When evil comes to your door, kick it out. When you have to make a decision, choose right!” he shouted. “I said, choose right.”

Brent Lamar, the musical director, hit the keyboard and Bishop Cash did his little jig, his signal that the sermon was coming to an end.

The congregation was on their feet—and that included Adam and me. I clapped with the rest of the parishioners, then the Holy Deliverance award-winning, seven-piece band did their thing and rocked the church. Church members were in the aisles, dancing, praising, all with their arms lifted.

To an outsider, we had to look some kind of crazy. But to us, the members, this was just a regular ole Sunday.

Even though Adam and I had been coming to Holy Deliverance for the almost eight years that it had been in existence, it still amazed me that Cash Supreme was the minister. I never thought Cash would leave the street game, because he was a smart-street cat who thrived as a drug entrepreneur. He rose in Duke’s hierarchy to the number two position. That distinction, however, also brought him notoriety with the police—not that they were ever able to put anything on him. Cash was always way out in front of Five-O, and if it had only been the police that Cash had had to worry about, he might still have been in the game.

But it was the other hustlers, the younger, tougher guys who’d risen up as the millennium had approached, who’d driven Cash to do what no one else could.

“Man, I’m getting too old for this,” Cash had told Adam one night when he’d come to our home. Though the two had remained really good friends, I hadn’t liked Cash in our house, hadn’t liked him or his game around our little girls.

But on that night, Cash had called—Duke had been murdered—and he’d needed to talk to Adam. I’d been scared, not sure what Duke’s murder had meant for Cash. But with the way Cash had sounded, I’d known that if I hadn’t said he could come to us, Adam would have gone to his friend. With me just days away from giving birth to our third child. I’d needed Adam with me. So, Cash had arrived, looking far more sad than scared.

As I’d sat next to Adam, Cash had confessed that it was time.

“There was no reason for them to take out Duke! They just wanted to drop him. They’ll drop anyone in a minute over nothing.” Cash had shaken his head, as if he’d still been in shock. “They don’t respect their own lives, so why would they respect mine? I’ve gotta get out … now.”

“Then do it.” Adam had been trying to pull Cash from the streets for years. “Duke’s death is a sign. Get out.”

Cash had nodded, then just as quickly had shaken his head. “But what am I gonna do? All I know is hustling.”

At first when I’d started moaning, Adam and Cash had thought I was just reacting to Cash’s words. But then, the three of us had looked down at the water dripping down my legs. There had been no time to talk to Cash about his future—Adam had had to get me to the hospital.

The next morning, our son, Ethan, was born—and so, too, Cash’s new hustle. Somewhere during the midnight hours, Cash had had an ephiphany.

“Just like Evia, I gave birth. To a new idea,” was how he’d explained it to Adam.

That had been the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard; except within a year, Cash had some kind of online divinity degree. Next, in his quest to become the right reverend, he’d married his number one ride-or-die, off-and-on chick, Brooklyn, because now that he’d been serious, he’d needed a first lady. And by the end of 2002, Holy Deliverance had been established.

When Adam said that he wanted to go to Holy Deliverance when it first opened, I’d agreed. That had shocked him; I was sure that he’d expected me to say that I wanted to stay at Solid Rock AME, where we’d been going, first with Big Mama, and after she’d passed, with Adam’s mother.

But I’d had to go to Holy Deliverance—at least once. Not only was the first lady my best friend but I’d also been curious—what was a drug hustler gonna do in a pulpit?

So on the morning of the church opening, Adam and I had taken his mother and our children to Holy Deliverance. In his very first service, Cash had brought it. Seriously … like he had really learned something from that quickie, bootleg online
class. Either he had done some real studying, or a hustler was just a hustler no matter what the game.

Though I loved his preaching, I did have to admit—he was a different kind of minister. First, unlike the pastor at Solid Rock AME, Cash never opened the Bible or really talked about scripture. His approach was more motivational, more positive, more uplifting than what I’d heard at Solid Rock. Cash preached about the goodness of God and how he wanted us to be prosperous—especially financially. How the Lord wanted blessings and not curses in our lives. And how all we had to do was claim what we wanted and with the right amount of faith, it would be ours. I left Holy Deliverance that first Sunday so hyped, more pumped up than I’d ever been at church.