Up at the College (32 page)

T
rina and Theresa stood up and waved when they saw Yvonne and Curtis wandering around with their plates loaded down with Marquita
Sneed’s good food and looking for their table. Curtis saw them first, popped a big, juicy shrimp in his mouth, and nodded
in the direction of the table. Normally he and Maurice sat at the table next to the president’s. But tonight they opted to
sit with friends.

As soon as Yvonne approached the table, Trina, Lena, Theresa, and Vanessa all gave Yvonne a thorough once-over. Trina said,
“I’m scared of you. Girl, what did you do to your hair?”

“You like it?” Yvonne asked softly, hoping that she hadn’t gone too far with this new do.

“Naw,” Trina said. “I don’t like it. Just wanted to talk about it.”

Yvonne tossed her hair and said, “Look good, don’t it?”

“I’ll say,” the extremely well-dressed white man, whom Yvonne knew to be Jethro Winters, said in one of the sexist voices
she’d ever heard coming out of a white man’s mouth.

Everybody at the table got quiet. They didn’t know how this white boy had appeared out of thin air. Just a few minutes ago
Trina had seen him sitting at the president’s table trying to act like he wasn’t hitting on Regina Young. And now he was over
here trying to find out who Yvonne was.

Trina had never thought she’d come to this conclusion about a white boy but Jethro Winters was an old pro ho in the tradition
of Reverend Marcel Brown out of Detroit, Reverend Brown’s now- deceased daddy, Reverend Ernest Brown, Bishop Sonny Washington
in Fuqua Varina, North Carolina, Parvell Sykes, Gilead Jackson, and Kordell Bivens. She couldn’t include Rico Sneed in that
list of Hall of Famers. Even though he was a bona fide ho, Rico didn’t have the kind of game that qualified him as an old
pro. People often didn’t understand that there were degrees, levels, and ranks to being a ho.

Yvonne knew all about Jethro Winters. She doubted he remembered that she had been the one playing the piano and singing church
songs while Lamont Green was beating him out of that coveted contract to rebuild Cashmere Estates. Jethro had been so mad
that day that he had turned beet red and stayed that way for a good hour or so.

As far as Yvonne was concerned, Jethro Winters got exactly what he deserved that day. Because he didn’t have a right, or any
business coming up in their church with a camera crew to announce that he was getting the DUDC contract to develop Cashmere
Estates. Only heathens did some craziness like that. And judging from the way he was trying to roll up on her right now, it
was clear that Jethro Winters was a heathen. It didn’t matter that the boy was rich, educated, and one of the movers and shakers
in their community—he was a heathen.

Yvonne surmised that the odds of her running into Jethro Winters in a setting where he’d be able to flirt with her were slimmer
than her chances of being shot with a blowgun by a warlord from a South American rain forest. Yvonne didn’t know if she should
ignore this white man or just smile politely and sit down. But Jethro Winters was not one to let a beautiful woman ignore
him or give him the brush off with a polite smile and ladylike sit-down.

“Little darling,” he said in that low drawl that attracted every high-end, gold-digging skank in Durham County to him, “don’t
you think a thank-you or something is in order?”

“Uh … thank you … uh … I think,” Yvonne said and put her plate on the table. She noticed that Curtis, who had
been trailing behind her, was now at that table, taking off his coat.

Jethro, oblivious to the impending beatdown, smiled and adjusted one of his suspender straps. As much as he wanted that Regina,
it had been a long time since a woman had captured his attention like this piece of rich milk chocolate. He loved chocolate,
especially when it was all wrapped up in delicate baby blue. He’d bet some money that this woman was wearing baby-blue lace
lingerie.

Jethro Winters’s wife, Bailey Catherine, started to get up, go over to that table, and snatch a patch of his moussed-up hair
right out of his head. But she opted to keep her seat when the woman’s man came to stand by her side and started preparing
for an altercation. If that big black fine representative of African-American manhood put his foot up Jethro’s behind, it
would be the best entertainment she’d had in a long time.

Bailey absolutely did not appreciate her husband acting as if he was ready to take that exquisitely beautiful woman, dressed
in that baby-blue suit to die for, upstairs to the hotel suite he didn’t know she knew he had. She didn’t know why he had
persisted in the chase with this one. It wasn’t as if the woman acted like that hussy sitting at their table. This woman was
clearly one of those goody-goody black church women. She did not like or want this kind of attention from her philandering
husband, or any whorish man treating her with disrespect for that matter.

This girl was what her two black employees, Charmayne Robinson and Chablis Jackson, called “old school.” And she knew enough
about traditional “old school” to know that this woman only wanted to hook up with a black man who was single and more importantly
interested in serving God. Her husband wasn’t black, he wasn’t single, and he was about as interested in God as he was in
doing his business honestly and above board.

Bailey didn’t know why she continued to put up with Jethro’s blatant infidelity. But then again, she did know—love. Bailey
Catherine Fairfax Winters, a beautiful and wealthy woman in her own right, had fallen hopelessly in love with this old reprobate
the very first time she laid eyes on him at Duke University. She’d been standing in the midst of several athletes laughing
and flirting, when Jethro, who was on the football team, broke through the circle of basketball players to capture her heart
with his smooth “What’s your name, darlin’?”

Jethro sighed longingly and smiled at just the thought of what he could do with all of that chocolate, especially if he got
his hands on some whipped cream. Bailey studied him a few seconds, got furious, lost her cool, hopped up, and made a beeline
for Yvonne’s table. Just as Curtis was getting ready to dust the floor with her husband, Bailey Catherine pulled out her checkbook
and laid it on the table right in front of Jethro. He almost choked when Bailey picked up the checkbook and removed the cap
of her platinum pen with tiny topaz chips sprinkled all over it.

The last check Bailey had written to get back at him for his cheating had been for over two million dollars. And if that had
not been bad enough, she had given that money to his rival, Lamont Green, which was one of the two deciding factors enabling
Green to win the contract from the Durham Urban Development Committee to rebuild what had once been the Cashmere Estates Public
Housing Community—a place he would not have set foot in if his life depended on it when it was a flourishing neighborhood
for low- and moderate-income families.

For years Jethro had sat back, practically rubbing his hands together in pure glee, every time something happened in the Cashmere
that would push the political and economic powers in Durham to close it down. It didn’t matter to him that innocent families
were suffering while the community deteriorated right before the city’s eyes. He didn’t care that mothers and fathers couldn’t
even let their children play outside for fear of a gun battle between opposing drug cartels. Jethro certainly didn’t lose
any sleep when the families left in the blighted development made desperate and heart-wrenching appeals to the public because
they didn’t have anywhere affordable to go.

One day Jethro’s patience (along with a few under-the-table financial incentives to some well-placed folk) paid off and his
dream of the community being dismantled finally came true. The Cashmere was closed down in the early 1990s and was allowed
to further deteriorate until Green Pastures won the contract and started rebuilding in 2006.

He always blamed that series of unfortunate events on his wife’s money being improperly placed. But that wasn’t the only reason
Jethro lost that contract. The second incentive to give that contract to Lamont Green’s company came as a result of the beatdown
Bailey Catherine gave Jethro’s trailer-park hoochie, Patricia “Patty” Harmon, at what was supposed to have been a private
work session between the Winters Corporation and the DUDC.

Bailey threw a right hook that was so deadly she knocked Patty Harmon out cold. The members of the DUDC knew they couldn’t
give Jethro that contract as soon as Patty’s unconscious body hit the floor with a loud thud. And Patty, who was also a member
of the DUDC, knew she wasn’t giving her soon-to-be ex-man that vote if her big, swollen-up eye and head depended on it.

“What is wrong with this crazy white boy?” Yvonne asked out loud, not caring who heard her.

“Girl, your guess is as good as mine,” Trina replied, not giving a hoot that these two rich white folks could hear every single
thing that was being said. Jethro should have kept his trifling butt where he belonged—over at Sam Redmond’s table with all
of those other unsaved, itching-to-hop-on-the-bullet-train-to-Hell heathens.

“The only thing I’ve ever been able to figure out is that he is a straight-up ho with Thirty-one-flavor Baskin-Robbins taste,”
Rochelle said flatly.

Bailey started laughing. She’d seen Charmayne and Chablis play that game with folks they were pissed off with—blatantly and
openly dissing them while they were standing in earshot of the conversation being held at their expense. She leaned over and
started making a notation in her checkbook for 1,500,000 dollars. Jethro looked at that check and started choking. The money
was coming out of the petty cash account he shared with Bailey. He turned red and hurried away from the table when Bailey
tore the check out of her checkbook.

She said in a rich and sultry contralto voice that sounded like a smooth chord on the alto saxophone, “One of my most valued
employees’ mom, Miss Shirley Jackson, once told me that there were times when the good Lord gave you ‘double for your trouble’
when somebody’s done you wrong. It took me a moment to place you, Ms. Fountain. But now I know you as the woman in charge
of remodeling the day care center and the new hospitality building for the university’s alumni, booster club, and trustees.
I liked your work and did a background check on you. Ms. Fountain, you are a classy woman, and you deserve a permanent position
at Evangeline T. Marshall University.”

Bailey put the check in Yvonne’s hands.

“What’s this?”

“The seed money for the endowment fund for your new distinguished professorship—The Bailey Catherine Fairfax Winters Professorship
in Interior and Exterior Design. I think that should give you peace of mind. And I believe there’s enough there to cover health
insurance.”

Bailey reached out and hugged Yvonne. She had a whole lot of respect for a woman who had to go it alone after the breakup
of her marriage, and yet refused to succumb to the okey-doke when men like Bailey’s own husband tried to hit on her.

Yvonne grasped the check in her hand in complete shock. She didn’t know how to respond until she heard Lena Quincey say, “When
God gives you a blessing you thank Him.”

Yvonne glanced at the check and then embraced Bailey. She was in tears—more at the miraculous, behind-the-scenes works of
the Lord than anything else.

“Thank you, Mrs. Winters,” Yvonne whispered. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“No,” Bailey told her as she stepped back and collected her things off the table. “Thank you for letting me witness what a
true woman of God looks like. Don’t change, Miss Fountain. God will bless you for being patient and faithful.”

Bailey walked off before the tears flooding her eyes started streaming down her cheeks. She didn’t know how much longer she
was going to be able to stay with Jethro. Time was passing and life was too precious to waste it on foolishness. She picked
up her scarlet cashmere wrap off the back of her chair at the president’s table and left. For the first time in months, Bailey
felt peace in her heart. She now knew that the only reason she’d been sent to this university was to be a blessing to someone
else.

Jethro reached out and grabbed her hand but she pulled it away.

“I have to go home” was all Bailey told him.

Everyone at the table had the question “why” plastered across their faces. But no one, not even her husband, dared to ask.
That was the nice thing about being in the minority. Bailey could always make a move that was chalked up to her being rich,
privileged, and white when she didn’t want to be asked or have to answer to anyone about her motives or behavior.

Jethro followed his wife but she hurried out of the banquet hall and hid in a corner so he couldn’t see her. When Bailey was
confident that Jethro had gone back to his table, she went to their car and peeled off, not caring how Jethro was going to
get home, that she was burning rubber on the expensive tires on his fancy brown Mercedes, or that she scraped the side of
Gilead Jackson’s wife’s red Infiniti sedan.

“Serves that boring, Chatty Cathy hussy right,” Bailey whispered. “I never did like a dumb woman who talked too much—and about
grass of all things. Not gardening—grass.”

Back in the banquet hall the DJ had finally finished setting up, and some smooth R&B sounds came through over the buzz of
voices, silverware on china, the clinking of fine crystal glasses filled to the brim with champagne, and the rustling about
of all of those finely dressed black folk. There was nothing like a gathering of dressed-up black people. The Ebony Fashion
Fair paled in comparison to the real thing.

“Let’s see that check, Miss Yvonne,” Lena Quincey said as she pulled out a bottle of anointing oil and got up to anoint and
bless that check.

Yvonne put the seven-figure check in Lena’s hand and waited for her response.

Lena smiled and said, “Praise God. We need to make sure that your pastor is here for this,” she told Yvonne as she pulled
out her cell phone. She waited a couple of seconds and then said, “Baby, get over here. And bring Lamont, Maurice, James,
and Terrence with you. Curtis is already with us … I can’t explain it on the phone. Put that food down and come on across
the room to where we are … Yes, I see you.”