Deal With It (12 page)

“Who told you that I had a detention?” I asked.

“My new team captain, of course. Jade,” she said.

Jade was the one who had snitched on me?

“I sent her to check on you because I know how close the two of you are. It took great character for her to come back and tell me the truth. Most friends would lie for each other. But Jade didn’t, and I was proud of her. You could learn a lot from her, Indigo. Jade is a wonderful role model.”

Didn’t she mean Benedict Arnold?

Tameka

Grandpa
Drew’s heart wasn’t as strong as I thought it was, because somewhere between my late-night conversation with Vance and the wee hours of the morning, it stopped pumping. When Mommy crept into my room and gently touched my hair, I knew something was wrong. She sat on the side of my bed; the tears on her face glistened in the moonlight.

“Wake up, baby,” she whispered.

“Grandpa Drew?” I asked. I already knew.

“He had a second heart attack, but he couldn’t survive this one. He passed away,” she said. “But he didn’t suffer long.”

Tears began to fill my eyes. I thought about Grandpa Drew and how funny he was, and realized that I would never see him again. I would never hear him tell his corny jokes again, or hear his laughter. He’d always laughed at his own jokes. He would wrap his arms around me and tell me not to worry so much.

“You worry too much, ladybug,” he would always say. “Don’t be so serious all the time. You’re just a kid.”

“I’m not just a kid, Grandpa. I’ll be sixteen on my next
birthday,” I’d told him when I was fifteen, grinning from ear to ear.

I was fifteen when I’d last seen him. I suddenly wished I had gone with my parents to see him when he had his first heart attack. At least then I could’ve talked with him again. I could’ve heard one more of his silly jokes. I could’ve said goodbye. But now all I had were memories.

“How’s Daddy?” I asked Mommy. “Is he okay?”

“I had to call him at the studio. He’s on his way home.” Mommy wiped tears from my eyes with her fingertips, but they kept flowing.

“I can’t believe that he’s gone. It just doesn’t seem real,” I cried. “I just called him two weeks ago to tell him about my grades. He was so proud of me.”

“He loved you so much,” Mommy said, “and even though he’s gone, he still lives right here in your heart.” She touched the center of my chest.

“It’s so weird, because when you and Daddy came home a few weeks ago, he was doing so much better,” I whispered in between tears.

It was true. After my parents had come back home from checking on Grandpa Drew, he had been doing better. The doctors had been so positive, telling us that he would recover as long as he changed his diet, but they obviously didn’t know Grandpa Drew like I knew Grandpa Drew. He loved to cook, and he loved to eat. And he loved to eat stuff that wasn’t good for him—like lots of butter and fried foods. He could eat a loaf of bread in a couple of days’ time. And he didn’t know a thing about exercise. He would walk outside to get the newspaper or the mail, but that was about it.

Tears began to flow like a river. My face was soaked from just thinking about Grandpa Drew.

“We’re going to North Carolina for a few days,” Mommy
said. “We’ll probably leave in a little while. You’ll have to go with us this time, Tameka. You might have to miss a few days of school. And that means dance-team practice, and probably a game, too.”

“I wanna go, Mommy. I need to say goodbye to Grandpa Drew,” I said.

“Why don’t you start getting packed. And make sure that you take one of your Sunday dresses.”

“For the…funeral?”

It was weird saying the word
funeral
while talking about Grandpa Drew. It gave me a funny feeling. It was the same feeling I’d gotten when Mommy said, “He passed away.” It was almost as if she was referring to someone else. It was like when you watch the news, and they talk about people dying in car accidents or people who are murdered. You didn’t really give it a second thought, because it was no one that you knew. It was not someone who had bounced you on his knee when you were a little girl. It was not somebody who had kissed your forehead and squeezed you tight before tucking you into bed. It was not the person who you had made milk mustaches with or the person who had tickled your feet until you’d almost wet your pants.

“Yes, for the funeral,” Mommy said. It was hard to believe that Grandpa Drew was really gone.

After Mommy left, I stared at the ceiling for a while. I felt a little numb and wanted to just lie still for a moment. Wanted to try and picture my grandfather’s smile, but couldn’t. I wondered if he would become just a distant memory in my mind. I hopped out of bed, opened my closet and pulled a shoe box down—the one that held stacks and stacks of pictures that I’d collected over the years. I sat on the edge of the bed and sorted through the photos until I found one of Grandpa Drew. It was a photo of him reclining in his easy chair, a big smile on his golden-brown face. I smiled at the photo, and then tears filled my eyes.

I wanted to change the mood, so I popped a CD in and bounced to the music. I pulled my overnight bag out of the closet and started filling it with underwear and socks. Then I packed a few pairs of jeans and a couple of sweat suits with the cropped jackets. I gathered my CDs and stuffed them into my CD case. I placed various bottles of Victoria’s Secret shower gel and lotion into my overnight bag. I packed everything except for a dress. Couldn’t bring myself to pack that.

After I pulled myself out of the shower, I slipped on a pair of sweats and a polo shirt with the Aéropostale butterfly on the breast. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and rubbed some lip gloss on my lips. I slipped on my sneakers and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Ready?” Mommy appeared in my doorway, looking adorable in her pink sweat suit, with a brown shirt underneath. Her funky haircut was looking hot.

“Yes,” I answered.

“You okay?” she asked and sat on the bed next to me, wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “We’re all gonna miss him.”

I nodded a yes.

“Which dress did you pack?” Mommy asked.

There was the issue of the dress again, the dress that led to the funeral. The funeral that led to the reality that Grandpa Drew was really gone. I shrugged my shoulders.

“Baby, you have to pack a dress,” she said, “unless you’re gonna wear your Apple Bottoms to the services.”

I cracked a smile but really didn’t feel much like smiling. “I don’t know what to pack.”

“Are you kidding?” Mommy headed for my closet. “All those dresses you have. You need to pick one. And let’s get moving. Your daddy’s warming up the car. We’re about ready to pull out.”

She left the room and shut the door. I searched my closet
for a dress. I would wear a dress, but it wasn’t going to be black or any other dull color. This would not be a sad occasion. Grandpa Drew enjoyed life, and I wouldn’t make this dull for him. I would wear red or pink. Maybe I would even wear a white dress. I grabbed dresses in all three colors, stuffed them into my bag.

“Are you ready, baby?” Daddy met me at the top of the stairs, grabbed my bag.

“Yep,” I said.

“How you holding up?”

“Good.” I kissed Daddy’s cheek. “How you holding up?”

“I’m doing fine, baby. Thanks for asking.” Daddy placed his arm around my neck, and we headed down the stairs arm in arm.

I could tell this was going to be a long weekend, for both of us.

Tameka

In
the backseat of my parents’ SUV, I listened to one of Rihanna’s CDs while flipping through the latest copy of
Vibe
magazine. I wasn’t really reading. My mind was a roller coaster of thoughts. I wondered if Grandpa Drew was in Heaven yet. Wondered if he’d gone there immediately, or if he’d waited around for a little while. Maybe he was waiting for us to get there, to say goodbye.

I wondered if Vance would miss me. Wondered if he would hook up with Darla while I was gone, or if he would stay true. He’d promised to keep in touch while we were apart, but I couldn’t help wondering if I could really trust him. After all, I’d given him an intimate part of myself, just so he wouldn’t have to go looking for it somewhere else. I pulled up his photo that was stored on my camera phone, stared at his cute little smile. I hoped and prayed that our relationship could withstand these few days apart.

I pulled up the calendar on my cell phone. It was the seventh day of March, and my visitor hadn’t paid me a visit yet. My
visitor was my menstrual cycle, which usually paid me a visit on the first day of every month. It was like clockwork—I never missed it, and I was never late. But here I was, seven days past due, and I was nervous about it. There was no way I could be pregnant. After all, Vance and I had used protection. We had taken every precaution to do things the right way, so I dismissed that thought altogether.

My phone vibrated. I’d received a text from Vance.

WUP? he asked.

On my way to NC. Grandpa Drew passed away.

He knew who Grandpa Drew was. I talked about him all the time.

Sorry 2 hear dat.

Thx.

U OK?

Yes.

I will miss u.

Ditto. The truth was, I missed him already.

As we pulled up in front of Grandpa Drew’s house, my heart started pounding uncontrollably. I knew that my grandfather wouldn’t be rushing to the car to greet us, as he usually did. He wouldn’t even be inside waiting for us, with a piping-hot meal on the stove—some concoction he’d gotten off the Food Network. He wouldn’t be reclining in his easy chair. Inside, I would find only Aunt Helen, my daddy’s oldest sister, and my cousins Jason and Roni, who had lived with Grandpa Drew. Aunt Beverly was probably on a nonstop flight from Cincinnati, and Uncle Rich and his family would be driving up from Florida.

“I’ll get the luggage later,” Daddy said as he stepped out of the car.

Aunt Helen stood on Grandpa Drew’s front porch, an apron tied around her waist.

“Is that my little Tameka?” she asked, obviously forgetting
that I wasn’t
little
Tameka anymore. I was a sixteen-year-old, high-school-going, driver’s-license-having Tameka. I was one year older than her daughter, Roni, so she should have known that I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

“Hi, Aunt Helen,” I said.

“Give me a hug,” she said. “You’re growing up to be so pretty.”

I hugged her tightly, and when she finally let go, she hugged my parents.

“Something sure smells good, Helen,” Mommy said.

“Well, I knew that you all were coming, so I threw a casserole in the oven. Come on inside and take a load off.” Aunt Helen went inside and headed straight for the kitchen. “Jason! Roni! Come on down here and say hello.”

Roni rushed downstairs. A much shorter version of me, she wore her hair similar to mine, flat ironed and hanging on her shoulders. She wore a tight pair of jeans and a Guess T-shirt.

“What’s up, Tameka?” She smiled, a pink cell phone glued to her ear.

“Hey,” I replied.

“Where’s your brother?” Aunt Helen demanded.

“I don’t know. Upstairs, being stupid, I guess,” Roni said. “Hi, Uncle Paul and Aunt Mel.”

“Hi there, Roni,” Mommy said.

“The jeans are a little bit tight, don’t you think?” Daddy asked Roni and then turned to Aunt Helen. “You let her wear stuff like that?”

Obviously, he hadn’t seen some of my jeans and how they hugged my hips. He was usually asleep when I left for school in the mornings and still at work when I came home from school. He might not approve of lots of my outfits were he to see them.

“That’s how they’re wearing the jeans now, Paul. Tight and slender at the ankles,” Aunt Helen said. “Not much different from Mel’s little outfit over there.”

Aunt Helen smiled at Mommy, but Mommy didn’t smile back. It was no secret that Aunt Helen was a little bit jealous of Mommy’s figure, especially since she didn’t quite have one. Aunt Helen reminded me of the comedian Mo’ Nique, with her oversize hips and her large breasts. She was always well dressed, and her hair was always together, but she shopped in the big women’s section of the store. And deep down inside, I believed that she was jealous of my mom’s curves.

“Hey, girl, if you got a figure like mine, why not wear something to enhance it?” Mommy asked and then sashayed toward the kitchen. She seemed to be taunting Aunt Helen with her size-seven Apple Bottoms jeans and Apple Bottoms top, which hugged her just right. She never let Aunt Helen get to her. “Now, let me go on into this kitchen and see what you got cooked up in here, Helen.”

It was no secret that Daddy’s oldest sister, Aunt Helen, didn’t care much for Mommy. Aunt Helen resented my mother for getting pregnant with me at the age of sixteen and ruining my daddy’s future—or at least the future she thought he should have. He was supposed to go to college and maybe even become a lawyer, but instead, he’d ended up dropping out of college, getting married and becoming a father at a very young age. Aunt Helen had thought my mother was too fast for Daddy. After all, Mommy had grown up on the opposite side of the tracks. With a single mother who sang in nightclubs, Mommy hadn’t been good enough for my daddy in Aunt Helen’s opinion. She’d tried keeping them apart, but it hadn’t worked. They’d been too much in love, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Grandpa Drew had raised his children alone, since his wife died after giving birth to Aunt Beverly. My daddy and his siblings never even knew their mother, and I often wondered if Aunt Helen might’ve turned out better if she’d had a mother
figure. Maybe then she wouldn’t have so much resentment from having to help raise her younger brothers and sister. Because she’d been forced to be a mother figure at such an early age, she went around trying to be everybody’s mama.

“Let’s go upstairs.
106 & Park
is on,” Roni said and then headed up the steps.

I followed her upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms in Grandpa Drew’s house. It was so weird walking up those stairs and past my grandfather’s bedroom, knowing that he wasn’t there anymore. I stopped in front of his bedroom door, looked inside. A pair of his khaki pants was lying across the bed, and his ties were still hanging on the closet door.

“I hate that he’s gone,” Roni said. “I miss him already.”

“Me, too,” I said. “I wish I had come when he was sick. Then I could’ve at least said goodbye.”

“I wonder whose gonna protect me now,” Roni said.

“Protect you from who?” I asked.

“From the barracuda lady down there,” she said, referring to her mother, “and from Lucifer.”

“Who’s Lucifer?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she said and changed the subject. “Did you get those jeans at 5.7.9?”

“The Gap,” I said. “Clearance rack.”

In one of the other guest bedrooms, my cousin Jason sat on the edge of the bed, crouched in front of the television, playing a video game. He never looked up as Roni and I stood in the doorway.

“Hey, J,” I said.

“What’s up, Tameka?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the television.

“Didn’t you hear barracuda lady calling you?” Roni asked him.

“What does she want?” he asked, his eyes still steady on the TV.

“Go find out!” Roni said before moving on to the third
bedroom, where I could hear
106 & Park
’s host, Terrence J, introducing the next musical guest who was appearing on the program’s Freestyle Friday competition.

The bedroom, which was painted soft pink, was the one I had shared with my cousins Roni and Alyssa since we were toddlers. Aunt Helen had decorated the room especially for us. When we were five, she had the Powerpuff Girls all over the wall. When were ten, it was SpongeBob who danced on the walls. And once we became teenagers, the cartoon characters that were painted on the walls were replaced by posters of Omarion, Usher and Mario—our three favorite entertainers.

“Terrence J is so fine.” I grinned and then plopped down on one of the twin beds, remote control in hand. I propped the pillow behind my head.

“He’s a’ight,” Roni said and then bounced onto the bottom bunk across the room. We always left the top bunk for our younger cousin, Alyssa. We always slept in the exact same beds when we visited Grandpa Drew’s house.

Alyssa, who was on her way from Florida with her parents and younger twin brothers, would probably have pictures of Usher all over her cell phone. She would carry one of his CDs around in her purse, asking if we could listen to it a million times. While Roni and I could pass for sisters, Alyssa looked more like her mother’s side of the family—lighter skin, long, curly hair and light brown eyes. She was much skinnier, too. Aunt Helen was always trying to fatten her up with smothered pork chops and mashed potatoes and gravy. Alyssa played just about every sport that her school offered—basketball, volleyball and soccer. She was an all-around athlete and was sure to get a scholarship somewhere. She wanted to attend Spelman with me, but of course, her parents wanted her to stay closer to home and attend one of the universities in Florida.

Roni, on the other hand, didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities. Not anymore. She had once been on the cheerleading squad and the volleyball team at her school in Charlotte, but when her grades took a nosedive she was kicked off both teams. After Aunt Helen decided to get married during Roni’s freshman year in high school, Roni’s behavior did an about-face. She started getting into trouble at school, and her grades were so horrible, she almost got held back a grade. She did whatever it took to make her mother miserable, and I couldn’t count the number of times Aunt Helen called my daddy for him to “talk some sense into Roni,” as she put it. She’d even sent Roni to Atlanta to spend a couple of weeks at our house during the summer, just to see if that would help her behavior. My mother had said she was the perfect angel; she just needed some attention and a little bit of TLC. The moment Roni went back home, her behavior went right back to being horrible.

It was no secret that Roni hated her new stepfather, Grant, like she hated green peas—green peas made her throw up. He was always barking orders at Roni and Jason, like they were animals instead of human beings. When they complained to their mother, she would simply say, “You need to get used to Grant being around. He’s not going anywhere.” And that seemed to depress Roni all the more. She was convinced that Aunt Helen was blind to who the real Grant really was.

“He’s a bastard,” she told me once. “And he cheats on my mother. I know who it is, too.”

“How do you know?” I’d asked.

“I just know,” she’d claimed.

“Have you told Aunt Helen?” I’d asked.

“She wouldn’t believe me,” she’d said. And that was how we’d left it.

As I watched
106 & Park,
it was hard to stay awake. I needed toothpicks to hold my eyelids open, and since I didn’t have any, I let them fall shut. Gave in to the sleep fairy and dozed off completely.