The Makeover (8 page)

“Alright now,”
Mr. Rodriguez grunted towards Phoenix then smirked.  “Long as you’ve
stopped to chat, might as well come over here and adjust me in my wheelchair,
Mija
.  My legs keep bothering me.”

“Sure thing,”
Phoenix groaned, wanting to tell him that she had not
stopped to chat,
but to say a quick hello.  She walked over to the wheelchair and helped
Mr. Rodriguez lift himself further back into his chair so his amputated leg
would not rub the hard plastic edge of the chair.  “That better?”

“Yeah. 
You here to see your mama?” he asked as he patted her arm in greeting and
gratitude.

Phoenix smiled,
remembering that long before Mr. Rodriguez had lost his leg, he had shown
interest in her mother, after her father had divorced her mother and gone back
to Haiti for good.  He had been kind.  After his wife died suddenly,
Mr. Rodriguez had leaned on
Magalie
for
support.  Eventually he had tried to woo her mother, always bringing some
Dominican dishes and pastries from his family’s restaurant, or flowers for her
mother on the mornings after her overnight shifts as a Home Health Aide. 
He would ask her out, but her mother kept accusing him of looking for a woman
to take care of him.  Having been heartbroken,
Magalie
kept testing his true feelings for her.  She had put him through many
challenges, often reacting in a critical, judgmental, and cold way to Mr. Rodriguez’s
efforts to get close to her.  Eventually, her mother’s angry, bitter,
distrustful spirit had caused him to give up on her forever.  Of course,
that was when her mother figured out that she was in love with him.

“Yes.  She
wanted to see me.”

“How’s that
fella
your mama keep saying you getting married to?” Mr.
Kembro
asked.  He was looking at her now, his eyes
skimming her over the reading glasses perched on his wide nose.

“He’s
fine.  Everything’s fine,” Phoenix lied, as her cheeks burned.  She
was thankful for once that she had such dark skin.

“Well, Young
Lady, you got to get ready for that wedding of yours.  Every time I
seent
ya
,
ya
look like you was
puttin
’ on even more weight,
Phoenix.  And you used to be such a pretty little girl, too, even with
that dark,
dark
skin of yours!  You was cute!  I know that man
is wit’ you, but you see, men, right?  We are visual creatures. 
Ya
got to look
ya
best to keep a
man
int’rested
.  If
ya
don’t,
ya
can expect a life where ya’ll be up wee
hours in the morning looking for him to come home.  Mark my words,
Honey.” 

Mr.
Kembro’s
careless words almost drowned Phoenix like the
harsh white waters of the Colorado River.  He had no idea how close to the
truth he was as he dealt out another hand for them to play cards.  Mr.
Salas, always the quieter one in the bunch, nodded vigorously.

“I-I
know.  You’re…right, Mr.
Kembro
,” Phoenix bit
her lip to stop its tremble and was thankful for her sunglasses.  “Well, I
got to go up and—”

“Fe, it’s not
just about weight,” Mr. Rodriguez let his grumpy demeanor fall away as his eyes
came to life with compassion.  “Some men like women who are more…
thick.  It’s about taking care of yourself, really.  Look at
me?  I always
looked
pretty trim.   But I had that sugar
and refused to listen when the doctor told me to cut back on the foods I loved
to make when I ran my restaurant.  What Dominican person don’t like their
maduros
or their
café con
leche
,
very sweet?  But me? I didn’t listen.  Now, I have half of one leg
and the other ain’t working out either, which is why they got me in this
chair.  Those foods we all like, the things we do instead of
exercise?  They mess us up.”

“Yeah, and I
can see
ya
poor diet is
messin
’
with
ya
skin too,” Mr.
Kembro
interjected, looking up from his card briefly to peruse her, before tossing a
card onto the small table between them.  “With skin dark as molasses, last
thing you need is pimples.”

“Okay! 
Well, thanks for your help.  You’re right.  I do need to be
careful.  My mother is expecting me.  See y’all later. 
Bye!”  Phoenix’s smile was forced as she waved and hurried away. 

When she
reached the elevator she gasped and drew huge breaths.  She did not need
her mother to see her in tears.  “I just can’t believe that I look so bad
that people got to lecture me right on the street.”

When she
reached her mother’s apartment on the seventeenth floor in the old public
housing building, she paused to pull out her hand mirror.  Her hair was
tied with a scarf since it had not been done in over a month.  Her eyes
were swollen and red.  Her skin was shiny with sweat.  And although
she had showered, she was wondering if her mother would be able to tell she had
been drinking so early in the morning.

Before she
could ring the bell, the door flew open.  Her mother stood there with her
eyebrows raised.  “Well?  Why you stand in the hallway like
this?  Come inside.”

“What, Ma? You
were standing at the door waiting for me, or something?” Phoenix asked as she
swept past her mother to slump on the armchair without her usual kiss of
greeting.  She didn’t want to sit next to her mother on the couch.

Her mother said
nothing at first, just stood there, wrinkling her nose. 

Phoenix slowly
took her sunglasses off, blinked, and regarded
Magalie
Jean-
Baptiste
.   “What, Ma?  Why are
you staring at me like that?”

“You look
horrible, that’s why!  And you smell…funny.  Not like you haven’t
bathed, but like…you’ve been drinking.  Like it is coming out of your
skin.  Have you been drinking?”

Sheepishly,
Phoenix looked away.  “Last night, I had a couple of drinks.  But I
showered this morning, so I am amazed that you can smell it.”

“Listen, you
don’t
smell
like someone who had a couple of drinks the night before,
but like someone who has been drinking
a lot
over the past few
days.  You smell sour.”

“Well, I don’t
know.  Maybe it’s your imagination, Ma.  Can we move past this,
please?  You summoned me here, and I am here.  What did you want to
talk about?” Phoenix struggled not to suck her teeth, clench them, or even roll
her eyes.

Magalie
went into her kitchen and returned with a glass of
water.  She handed it to Phoenix and snapped, “Drink!” 

She stood in
front of Phoenix with hands on her hips until Phoenix downed half the
glass.  Only then, did she sit on the couch and glare at her daughter for
several minutes. 

Phoenix
finished her water and waited. 

Magalie
crossed her arms.  “I want to know what you
are doing.  You haven’t been around for weeks, you tell me you broke off
the wedding—”

“It’s called
off, Ma! Called off.  Why can’t you get these sayings after living here in
this country for over thirty-five years?”

“Okay,”
Magalie
pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, “
Called
off
the wedding.  But why do they say called off?  It does not make
sense.  Maybe turned off the wedding?  Or put off?  But you
can’t call off something.  How do they expect us immigrants to learn
English when it’s so difficult?”

“Ma, look,
never mind, alright? Your English is fine.  You speak better than some
folks that have never left this country, let alone someone who is learning it
as a third language.  But you didn’t call me to discuss that.”

“No.  I
want you to tell me what is going on.  And I mean the truth.  You are
my daughter and I want to know the truth.”

When Phoenix
sighed in protest,
Magalie
held up a hand and said, “
Now
.”

Phoenix’s
stomach clenched.  She knew what her mother would say, same as she always
said.  She also knew what her mother would tell her to do and why she
would tell her to do it.  She looked around the spacious, but cluttered, three-bedroom
apartment.  “Where’s
Grandmere
? Where’s
Charles?” 

“Your brother
is with his girlfriend.  Your grandmother is with your uncle in Brooklyn.”

“Oh,
okay.”  Phoenix continued to look at the wall unit, the pink, flowery
sofa, the old tube television, the china cabinet, the dining table, the framed
pictures on the wall. 

Magalie’s
nose wrinkled.  “You look horrible. 
You look like you lost some weight, but your stomach is sticking out of your
shirt.”

Phoenix bit her
lip hard. 
Not now, Ma.  Not now.

“Okay, Fe-
fe
.  You are looking around the place like you have
not been here before.  You lived here twenty-two years!  Nothing has
changed.  Now stop wasting time and tell me what is going on!”

Phoenix stared
at her mother.  Although her mother’s long, raven hair was now lined with
gray; Phoenix could have been her twin. 
Magalie
was shorter, standing at five-one to Phoenix’s five-six.  But Phoenix had
inherited her mother’s molasses-colored skin, heavy upper-body and slender legs
and hips.  Her mother’s skin was blemish free, but suffered from dark
circles under the eyes from years of working overnight shifts as a Home Health
Aide and then a Nurse’s
Aid
at a nearby adult
home.  The dark circles, beginnings of crow’s feet, and laugh lines showed
her mother’s age of sixty-two.

“What? You look
and look, but don’t speak.  Tell me what happened, Phoenix!”  The
look in
Magalie’s
eyes told her that she would not
ask again.

Phoenix looked
down at her chipped nails, studied the month-old fuchsia nail polish. 
“Cedric and I broke up, Ma.  I don’t know what else there is to say.”

“Tell me what
happened!
Grace a
Dieu
!
(For the grace of God)
Pale!
”
(Speak)

Phoenix cleared
her throat, knowing that when her mother began speaking “
Kreyo-lish
”
a combination of the French-based Haitian dialect and English, she wasn’t too
far away from getting hysterical. 

Phoenix covered
her face as it crumbled in her palm. 

Seeing the
tears leak between Phoenix’s fingers,
Magalie
asked
in a soft tone, “What did that man do, Fe-
fe
?”

“He cheated on
me, alright!  He cheated!  There, you happy now?”  Phoenix
shouted.  She took several breaths to contain herself.  Grateful her
mother had not slapped her for her tone, she continued.  “I came home a
couple of weeks back after hanging out with Nic and San.  We had gone to a
restaurant to finalize the plans for the wedding.  When I got home, I
caught him.  He was with this Asian chick, Ma…”

Phoenix sobbed
as images of Cedric in their bedroom with the girl began to take chunks out of
her numb heart.  She glanced at her mother who was still seated across
from her on the couch, wishing that
Magalie
would
come over and place her arms around her.  But her mother had not hugged
her since her high school graduation several years earlier. 

Her eyes fell
on the bottle of rum in her mother’s liquor cabinet.  Her throat burned
with a longing for one taste…

She cleared the
craving out of her throat and continued.  “He told me he had been messing
with her for a few weeks.  He said he loved me but wasn’t sure he was in
love with me because…because of the way I look…”

Magalie
crossed her arms and pursed her lips.  “
Hmmmm
.”

“He said he was
grateful for the things I’ve done for him and he wanted to marry me because I
was good
for
him, but that he wasn’t physically attracted to me because
of my weight and skin problems.  He said he blamed me for not working on
it because that was what kept him from falling in love with me.  So he
cheated, Ma.  And I walked in on him.”

Magalie
remained silent as Phoenix bent over her knees and
continued to cry from a place deep within her.  Her throat became
ragged. 

“So then what
happened, Fe?”

“So I beat the
crap out of him, and the girl caught some of it too.  After we had it out,
he told me he was sorry but I put him out anyway.”  Phoenix jumped up and
grabbed a napkin from the dining room table.  “I couldn’t take it,
Ma.  The things he said to me.  The way he cheated on me.  So I
told him to leave.  He begged to stay, but I told him.” 

Magalie
was already shaking her head, saying, “No, no.”

Phoenix, who
was wiping her face, paused to stare at her mother.  “What do you mean,
‘no, no?’  He lied and cheated—”

Magalie
threw back her head and laughed.  Its sound
was like glass breaking.  “So you broke off the wedding for
that
?”

Phoenix’s hand
dropped to her side and she let the napkin fall to the floor.  “What?” she
shrieked.   “What do you mean?  Of course!  Didn’t you hear
what I said?  He cheated and lied because he felt I was too fat and—”

“Listen, little
girl, you have a lot to learn about men.  Sit down.  I want to tell
you something.”

“But—”

 “I said
sit down!”
Magalie
widened her eyes to tell her
daughter that she meant business.

Phoenix stomped
over to her chair.  “What?”

“Listen, Phoenix,
I know it hurts right now, just like it always does when a man does what men
do.  You’re not the first woman to have a man cheat and you won’t be the
last.  They always have a reason because it’s the way they are!  It’s
what we have to deal with as women.  You should have never broke off the
wedding. Never!”