When You Come to Me (8 page)

THE HOUSE ON TRENT ROAD became her second home. She got more of her studying done there then she ever could in the library or in her dorm room, where her roommate and her pitiful boyfriend still prevailed. She was there during the week, with her books in tow, coming over to teach Brandon how to cook a meal, she was there on the weekends, watching reruns and ordering pizza. She generally was there when Sophia wasn’t, whenever she was bored and needed someone to talk to, or when Brandon needed someone to vent to about Sophia’s many rants of his behavior.

“Where do you go every night, Natalie?” Sammy asked her as they watched a rerun.

She wanted to tell her roommate that she’d finally found a place of peace, her place of escape. Instead, she chose to be as secretive as possible; she got a kick out of being a young woman of mystery.

“Just someplace,” she said quietly.

If she wasn’t sure of how important Brandon was to her, she most certainly realized it the Friday night that Scotty called her from Brandon’s phone, early into her sophomore year. It had been a slow night for her and she, who had chosen to stay in her dorm room, and lounge on her bed, watched television. She’d just dosed off when her cellular phone rang. She didn’t answer it initially, couldn’t think of one person that she wanted to talk to that late at night. When it rang again, she grew nervous, thinking it could be someone from her family. She rolled over groggily, slid off the bed, and went to retrieve the small device off her desk.

She’d cleared her throat, and had answered no more than above a whisper.

“Yes? What do you want?”

“Natalie, it’s me, Scotty.”

She, who leaned against the desk for support, now raised her body, opened her eyes a little more, thinking the worst immediately. If the way her stomach churned wasn’t an indication that she cared for the boy, then surely her heart pounding was.

“What’s up?” she’d responded.

“It’s Brandon…”

There was a lot of noise in the background, and a couple of times, she swore she heard Brandon, attempting to yell into the phone.

“Clearly,” Natalie said.

“Did I wake you?”

“That’s not important right now,” she told him. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He told me to call you,” Scotty said. “He told me that he wanted to see you…”

Natalie huffed. “And it couldn’t wait till morning?”

“He said it was important…”

“Scotty…”

She heard Scotty clear his throat, and in a very low voice, told her, “He’s been drinking, Nat…”

“And you can’t drive?”

“No,” he told her. “But if I could, I would drop him off by the dorms. Natalie, he’s really messed up, and he won’t shut up, and he won’t leave the bar until he sees you…”

“Good, Lord,” Natalie sighed. “Alright, alright…tell him that I’m on my way…”

She was allowed to bring her car to school that year if she promised to take care of it. It was her sister Sidney’s old car; a small, black, Toyota Camry. It donned a cracked headlight and the engine had a tendency to overheat in hot temperatures, and did absolutely nothing year-round but sit in their driveway at home, taking up space. Her younger sister Maya, barely a high school senior, who’d only been driving their mother’s tan minivan for over a year, wanted it for herself, but her mama had given it to Natalie, because she was older, far more responsible and needed it the most.

She barely drove it, wanted to conserve as much gas as possible, kept the tank full at all times, and tried to keep the car looking as pristine as possible. The only times that she did drive it were when she got hungry and had forgotten to go to the grocery store, or when she was driving into downtown to buy a book from Greg’s Book Shoppe on Foundry Street.

She’d parked in an illegal spot on Washington Street. She walked the length of the sidewalk in nothing more than a pair of slouchy jeans and a pullover, her hair pulled back into a loose chignon, stopping before the doors of Boars Head, hearing rock music and the smell of stale beer, filter out into the streets.

She attempted to call Brandon from her dying cell phone, but only got his voicemail. Then, she tried Scotty. No answer. She tried them both again, feeling her frustration climb, watching people walk in and out of the bar. When she received no answer, she walked into the bar, shoved past the people, saw neither Scott Kelly, nor Brandon Greene. Her frustration turned into anger.

She would ring that Brandon Greene’s neck when she saw him! She’d had enough of him! Enough of the games, dear, Lord! When she saw him, she would give him a piece of her mind.

Her cellular phone vibrated in her hand. She huffed, pulled it into view, and looked at the screen.

Brandon G. calling…

“Where on God’s green earth…?”

“Natalie, it’s Scotty…”

“I’m here, and where are you?”

“We’re around back…the line was too long in the bathroom…Brandon started throwing up…”

“We had a fight, Nat,” Brandon slurred to her on the way back to the house on Trent road. “Sophia and me, we had a huge fight.”

“That doesn’t surprise me…”

“It’s almost over, Natalie,” he continued, with a victorious laugh. “I can feel it, damn it! Goddamnit, it’s almost over, Natalie Chandler…”

“Brandon, if your language doesn’t change, I’m pulling over and letting you out, and you can walk back…”

“Don’t threaten me, girl,” he said. “You—you—you wouldn’t do that…”

“Lord, can you get it out? Your language is perfect right now, I swear…”

He looked at her, heavy-lidded and wide-grinned. “You’re better than her…”

“I didn’t know that there was a need to compare…”

“She’s perfect,” he said. “But you’re better…”

“She’s your girlfriend,” she sighed. “No one should be better than your girlfriend…”

“She’s a bitch…” Though frustrated, Natalie couldn’t help but chuckle quietly at the emphasis he put on the word bitch.

“Brandon Greene, I swear…”

“She doesn’t think that I should go to grad school here…”

“That’s your decision, isn’t it?” Natalie asked, looking over at him for the first time. “Last time I checked, you didn’t have a ring on your finger…”

“Exactly! U—U—UGA has an awesome business school…I could go for marketing, get my masters and get a great job…”

“That’s a decision you need to make soon, right?”

He nodded. “Exactly. I could keep paying rent on the house and just go to school here. My folks are okay with it, why she isn’t, I’ll never understand…”

“Well, where does she want you to go to school?”

“That’s just the thing, Natalie Chandler,” he sang funnily. “She doesn’t want me to go to grad school at all…”

“It’s your decision, Brandon…”

“Tell me what I should do, Natalie,” he whispered. “If you tell me to go, then I’ll go…”

“Brandon, I can’t make a decision like that for you,” she told him.

“Yes you can,” he said. “I trust all of your decisions…if you tell me that grad school is right for me, then grad school I’ll go…”

“Brandon, you’re drunk,” she sighed, gripping her wheel tightly. “You shouldn’t make such drastic decisions when you’re like this.”

“What?” he said. “I’m fine, damn it…I could go another round…”

“Well, throwing up like that suggests that you can’t…”

“I can hold my liquor, girl,” he laughed haughtily. “When you drink then you’ll know…”

“I don’t think that day will ever come…”

“Yes, it will,” he told her, poking her arm. “And I’ll get you there…we can get drunk together…”

“I think you should cool it for a little while…”

“Nat, if it weren’t for my drunkenness, we would have never met…”

“And just think of how perfect my life would have been…”

“I don’t take your sarcasm personally,” he said, reclining in his seat. “I take it in stride. Meeting me was the best thing that ever happened to you…”

“That’s arguable…”

“Decision time, Natalie…grad school or no?”

“Brandon, I’m not making that decision for you.”

“I give you permission…”

“And I don’t take it,” she said. “If you and Sophia have a future together then you need to tell her what you want…and if she loves you, then she’ll agree…”

“Fuck that,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You’re making the decision…”

“Fine, fine,” she sighed. “You probably won’t remember this in the morning anyway…go to grad school here, Brandon…”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Besides, if I left…I’m almost certain that you’d miss me…”

Natalie Chandler was a natural caretaker. She could easily recall all of the times that she was there for her sisters when they got sick, or when they got stuck, when she was there for her grandmother, her mama, her aunts, her cousins.

So it was no surprise that Brandon ended up sleeping on his own hardwood floor, while she fell asleep in his bed. She found herself rolling over every once in awhile just to check on him. This moment followed a couple of hours in his black-tiled bathroom, slouched on the cold floor. She caressed the back of her Caucasian friend while she heard him retch, emptying the contents of his poisoned stomach into the toilet. She then glanced up at a small-framed picture of him and Sophia on the top of the toilet.

Where was she? Why wasn’t his beloved Sophia on the floor with him? What sort of purpose did she serve if she wasn’t there for him? The smell was almost unbearable, but she loved being there for him then.

“I’m sorry, Nat,” he muttered into her neck as he rested his groggy head on her shoulder once he’d finished.

“Shhh,” she’d instructed, smoothing down his messy black hair. “It’s alright, you silly thing…”

Natalie wrapped her arms around him tightly, rubbing his forehead till he passed out to soft snores.

Yes, she’d sat right there with him on the cold tile floor, her, barefoot, him, sloppily dressed, his weight, too heavy for her to move initially.

Yes, his drinking problem was beginning to scare her, following a year’s worth of solid evidence and observations, following a year’s worth of late night drunken phone calls, telling her about how cool he thought she was, about how funny he thought she was, about how cool it was that one of his closest friends was a black girl.

Yes, Brandon’s instability brought her to him, provided her with a year’s worth of closeness, provided her with enough room to give a rat’s behind about him, though she was afraid to tell him that she feared his problems were getting worse.

Natalie couldn’t believe how close she’d held him there on that bathroom floor, couldn’t believe how comfortable she was just sitting there with him, at three in the morning.

#

In her sophomore year, her workload became almost too much to bear, and she spent the majority of her time in the library, alongside Asha Castile, whom she’d grown ridiculously close to in a short amount of time. She’d found her, miraculously, in the student union one night, late in her freshman year, reading the same chemistry book as she. What followed was a remarkable discovery that they had been in the same class all semester and did not know it. They connected on the pure irony that the only two black girls in the entire class would not recognize nor acknowledge each other. Sharing the same major, the same skin complexion and the same cultural background gave the two girls an ample amount to talk about.

Asha was louder, far more outgoing, wore her neat tight dark brown coils in constant up-dos, with her flashy earrings occupying her small caramel ears, and with her humor, her knack for the social and her need for constant peer communication, Asha was part of every black organization on campus. That meant that in the beginning part of their sophomore year together, her cellular phone was constantly ringing, and in the most random places, Asha’s natural magnetism attracted the hellos of random passersby.

Asha Castile was a true bayou baby, hailing from the verdant swamps of Louisiana. Her dialect was low, rich, thick, several years more mature than her status as a teenager would suggest. On occasion, Natalie found herself looking at her friend, wondering how Asha retained the capability to tolerate her contrasting daintiness, her quietness, her religious reservations.

“I hate this bullshit,” Asha grumbled, throwing down her chemistry book. “Electrons, protons…fuck this!”

They had midterms coming up. And although Natalie had felt more confident that she’d do well, Asha could self-combust at any moment at the thought of it.

“It’s alright,” Natalie chuckled, tapping her friend on the shoulder. “It shouldn’t be that hard.”

“Please, Nat,” Asha said. “Of course it won’t be hard for you. You’re a damn genius. Do you know how many guys want to get with you?”

“Please don’t bring that up now.” Natalie rolled her eyes.

“Oh, I will, because I’m sick of studying this shit, and I’m ready to talk about what you’re not ready to talk about.”

“We’re not talking about it. Don’t even say his name…”

“Andre,” Asha teased. “Andre Thomas.”

“Stop it…” Then Natalie’s phone rang.

Natalie was relieved. Ever since the night outside of the student union that short, crooked-toothed, yet unbelievably sweet Andre approached her, innocently admitting that he’d liked her since the beginning of freshman year, Asha hadn’t been able to let it go, finding it quite and endlessly funny.

Although Natalie didn’t find Andre attractive at all, she also didn’t find much time to think about other boys either. At least, not in the same way that she watched Asha and her other girlfriends talk about them. To Natalie, boys were a waste of time, and space, and held her back from achieving her goal.

Brandon G. calling…

Except for that one…

She sometimes regretted giving him her phone number that night, drinking chamomile tea, because he seemed to call her for all the wrong reasons. Though their friendship had started unbelievably strong, it seemed that their entire camaraderie was based off of his uneven and incredibly strange relationship with Sophia Baldwin. Brandon Greene would call and Natalie would listen patiently, she would listen to all of the bad things that Sophia said, or how she flirted with the frat boys from Theta Beta, or how high maintenance she was. Despite her growing affection for her friend, she feared that the topic of “Sophia” was increasingly growing out of control and too much for her to handle.