Insanity (15 page)

Bryant thought about that as unfair dilemma. Why does a hard-working girl from the inner-city have to be the “chick on the side”, while the softer, suburban types, like Garrett’s woman, get to be the wifeys?

Bryant shook it off and said, “She’s much
more
than just sex thing, man. She’s dead serious about where she wants to go in life. Her whole family knows that about her.”

Garrett shrugged. “That don’t mean she’s gonna be successful. Sometimes it’s just too much catching up to do for a city girl to handle.”

Garrett was being as frank as they come. It was a tough world in the move up in society game.

Bryant agreed with him on that note. “Yeah, I know. She’s still a little rough around the edges. That’s why I’m letting mom and Ms. Wanda break her down for a minute. I’m curious to see how she’s gonna handle it.”

Garrett chuckled at the idea. “That’s why you left her in there by herself?”

Bryant shrugged. “She’s gonna have to deal with it eventually anyway, if she’s trying to step up. And if she can’t handle it and acts a fool . . . well . . . good riddance.”

“That’s how it has to
be
, man,” Garrett told him. “My lady had to go through it too, and she’s already
polished
. But I wouldn’t mind a little
Queen
on the side if she knew how to act with it,” he added with a chuckle.

Bryant still couldn’t wrap his mind around that part. “Look, man, why does a guy always have to have a chick on the side? Does your lady know you feel that way? Why can’t we just choose women who can be everything we need them to be?”

“Because they’re not
going
to be,” Garrett answered. “You know how many girls we’ve been around already. And it’s always the same deal. You’ll have the polished girls who don’t like to fuck, and girls who like to fuck who are never
polished
. That’s how you got involved with this girl in the first place, B. You knew she wasn’t wifey material. She was a
meantime
girl. So,  you brought her over here hoping that she falls on her face and stops you from getting too involved with her.”

He laughed and said, “I know how you are.”

Bryant took another sip of his drink and thought about it.

That’s why she made me wait for so long before she got back to me, because of opinions like Garrett’s,
he mused.
No matter what a woman does afterwards, if she’s willing to give it up early, a man will find a way to disrespect her for it.

Suddenly, Bryant began to feel sympathy for her. He told Garrett, “You make it sound like all women are
damned
if they do and
damned
if they don’t.”

His insightful comment forced Garrett to think. “I mean, I wish it
wasn’t
that way. Then I could stop cheating on my lady so much,” he stated in lowered tones, while turning to face the house. He didn’t want to get busted while running his mouth about his honest views of relationships. But his uncompromising honesty only made Bryant more adamant about his views.

“You know what, man? There are
plenty
of men out there who choose the right women who give them everything they need. You just have to know a good thing when you have it in front of you.”

Garrett continued to grin. He considered the idea of a one-package woman to be naïve.

“Yeah, okay. You can believe that shit if you
want
. But more than
likely
, you got a lot of men who just stopped complaining about what they
knew
they couldn’t
get
, like
our
dads. And you learn to do something else to fill up your time and passions, like fishing and golf. But I’m not at that age yet.”

“At that age for what?” Garrett’s fiancé walked out back and asked him. Gwendolyn was a graduate from Maryland University and an AKA. Tall, curvaceous, light brown, and easy-going, she was just what a spoiled man wanted, a woman who stayed out of the way and catered without drama.

“To start fishing and golfing on the weekends,” he told her. And he was glad she had only heard the tail end of their conversation. “You know, I still like playing some
hoops
while my body can still take it,” he added and laughed. Then he quickly changed the subject. “But have you met Bryant’s girl
Queen
yet? He wants to see what you think about her.”

Bryant grinned, marveling at his friend’s skills of spontaneous wit and effective maze running. An elusive man had to learn how to cover his tracks, and Garrett was now an
expert
at it. He simply
refused
to be trapped by a woman.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

As Bryant led them back into of the house and into the dining room to introduce Gwendolyn to Queen, he was pleasantly surprised to witness Queen leading a lively discussion about Catholic and Private schools.

“You just never know about some of the nuns and priests. All of that pent of sexuality leaks out in weird ways,” she expressed.

“Ain’t that the
truth
,” Wanda agreed with her. “I’m skeptical about all of those people.”

“But now, at
private
schools, everything is about paying up to stay in the in-crowd,” Queen noted. “But that’s just how America goes. You gotta pay the cost to be where you wanna be. So if I had to throw on a tight little cheerleader uniform for the in-crowd to know and accept me, then that’s what I had to
do
.”

She looked incredibly comfortable inside of the room. All eyes and ears were focused on her. She was the
Queen
of
attention
again.

Wanda looked at Clarisse and gave her a knowing nod. The young woman had engaged their table of family and friends well, and she had changed their initial opinions of her.

 Bryant read the positive energy that flowed through the room and felt good about it.

Damn!
he thought to himself.
I leave her alone in the room with my family for a minute and look what she does.
It sounds like she handled her business in here.

Despite her past indiscretions and red flags, he was still rooting for her.

“Queen, I want to introduce you to Garrett’s fiancé, Gwendolyn. She’s more of your
age
in here,” he joked.

Wanda took mock offense to it. “Oh, so what are you trying to say, young man?” she asked him curtly. “You better watch your
manners
in
here
,
boy, and stop showing your little ass, ’cause I will
still
jump all over you. You ain’t too big for a good
switch
of the vine. And I’ll do your tail like my
grandmother
used to do us.”

The room of company laughed boisterously, and was always thrilled by Wanda’s antics. And by the time they were ready to head out and catch the fireworks down at the Baltimore Harbor, Queen had won them all over.

“All right now,
Queenie
, you guys have a good time down at the Harbor,” Wanda told them out the door. “But I’m a little too
old
now to get caught all up in that traffic for twenty minutes of fireworks. I can watch that on TV.”

“It’s
being there
that counts,” Garrett commented, heading out to catch the fireworks with Gwen.

“Well, go
be there
then. Nobody’s stopping
you
,” Wanda snapped at him.

Clarisse was amused by it all. Good lively friendship made life worth living.

“Y’all just be
safe
down there tonight,” she warned her son and his friends. “You know how Baltimore can
get
sometimes. And Bryant, you make sure you bring
Queen
back to see us again. You hear?”

It was a significant remark that Bryant didn’t plan to take lightly. His mother even stepped up to hug her before they left, with his father, Ramon, right behind her.

“All right now, son. Be good,”

Bryant climbed into the car with Queen and hooted, “Damn. What did you slip in their drinks?” He couldn’t believe how fast she had gotten along with them all.

He pulled out of his parking space behind Garrett and Gwendolyn to follow them down to the Harbor, while Queen continued to wave at his parents through the window. Then she smiled in the passenger seat, looking very satisfied.

She told Bryant, “I was just being myself in there. Like I told you, I’ve been around a
lot
of different people. So you just find the common ground to talk to them about.”

“And you found common ground with
Wanda
?”

Bryant still couldn’t believe it. Wanda seemed to hate
everyone
.

But Queen chuckled at it. “She reminds me of my Aunt Allison, actually. You just have to find out what she agrees with, and that’s all it takes for her to like you.”

Speaking of Queen’s aunt and family, Bryant had lingering thoughts of betrayal on his mind and couldn’t shake them so easily. His family didn’t know what
he
knew.

“So . . . let me ask you something,” he started. “Have you been in any other situations like the one with your cousin?”

Queen cut through the chase. “You mean sleeping with someone else’s man?”

“Yeah.”

He wanted to make
certain
she wouldn’t fuck around on
him
.

“No,” she told him. “I mean, I didn’t have a
boyfriend
at the time, so I was basically
single
. But if I had a
man
. . .” She looked him right in his eyes before she finished. “ . . . then I
definitely
wouldn’t have
gone
there. And after that situation happened, I didn’t really feel comfortable with older guys anymore. It was all too
stressful
. So I stopped talking to
all
guys for a while and went back to dealing with people my own age who I could, you know, be on a more equal footing with.”

Bryant grinned, imagining the disappearing acts that she had already showed him. “Yeah, you can sure cut the water off when you want to,” he hinted.

Queen smiled, catching his drift. “You already
know
,” she boasted. “I mean,
please
, I’m not that girl that my cousin tries to
paint
me to be. It was just a one-time thing. But she keeps bringing it back up, over and over and
over
again, like a sick damn
nightmare
.”

Bryant nodded from the wheel as he approached 95 North on the highway.

“Okay . . . Forget about all of that,” he told her with a pause. Enough was enough.

I need to just leave that alone,
he told himself.
The past is the past, and that’s where it needs to stay . . . As long as she never does that to ME with MY family and friends.

He moved to change the subject by popping in a CD from Maxwell.

Queen recognized the man’s seductive falsetto immediately.

“Hey,
Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite
. I
love
this album,”

Bryant smiled, knowing the mood he wanted her in for later. He was setting the tone for a late night at his South Baltimore apartment, where he didn’t intend on allowing her to sleep.

Little did the man know . . . Queen was playing her
own
seductive tune. And it was much stronger than his.

Her Next Move

December  1998

“I
’m pregnant.”

Queen let her words hang in the air for a minute as Bryant comprehended them.

“Are you sure?”

They were relaxing on the sofa at his South Baltimore apartment, watching reruns of the
X-Files
on his 36-inch color television set.

Queen showed him the results of the home pregnancy test, a simple white stick displaying a positive symbol at the tip.

Bryant eyed the foreign contraption in confusion. “That’s all it needs to say to confirm that you’re pregnant?”

Queen grinned at him. “Yes.” She waited again for his response.

“Well, umm . . .” Bryant couldn’t find the immediate words to express himself. He was perplexed, somewhere between surprise, happiness, fear and anger. He didn’t know how to feel about it.

He responded to the anger first. “I thought I
pulled
.”

Queen grimaced and argued, “Bryant, come on, you
had
to know this would happen. And I told you to stop doing it without a condom.” She wasn’t really upset about it; she was only stating the facts.

“Well, how come you didn’t
force
me to wear it then?” he had the nerve to ask her.

Queen only stared at him. “Is it
my job
to keep telling you what to do? Evidently you didn’t want to wear them anymore. You wanted to really
feel it
,” he mocked him.

Bryant admitted his guilt through the silence. Then he responded to his fear.

“So . . . what do we do now?” He was nervous about their next step. How serious were they to remain a couple?

“You tell me,” Queen suggested.

“Well, you know we’re both still in grad school,” he mentioned.

“And . . . ? There are
plenty
of pregnant women in grad school. They’re
grown
.”

Yeah, but they’re probably married too,
he thought. He didn’t want voice it though. He then began to doubt her homemade test.

He pointed and said, “We don’t even know if that thing’s accurate or not.”

“I haven’t had my cycle in two months,” Queen informed him.

Bryant heard that and reverted to anger. “How come you didn’t say something then?”

“I wanted to make sure.”

“Make sure of
what
? That you’re
pregnant
?”

It was beginning to sound like a setup, one that he had walked himself right into. Over the past couple of months, he had gotten good and comfortable with the girl,
too
comfortable. She was practically living with him now. But Queen flipped the script on him.