Sweet Bye-Bye (10 page)

She looked surprised. “Was it something that I said?”

I knew that going to see a shrink was a mistake! That kind of crap was the very reason I never told people my business. Why would I want to hurt myself? Was she trying to build up some kind of crazy case against me or something? I regretted telling her any of my business. Lord only knew what they did with their information. And what if they reported all this stuff back to my job? I could hear it around the office now: “Don’t tell anyone it came from me, but Chantell called Canun in the middle of the night talking nonsense, now she’s talking to a shrink, and I heard that her shrink thinks she is suicidal.” The girls in HR would be gossiping about this for weeks.

16

Crawling Back

A
fter I recovered from my therapy visit, I spent the rest of the day trying to stay busy and move right along with my life; I was even praying when I remembered to. The phone rang as I went into the kitchen. I’d bought fresh flowers from a street vendor earlier, and they were sitting on the counter drying out and in need of water. I opened the cabinet under the sink and looked for a vase. The phone rang again.

“Hello,” I said. I turned on the water and rinsed the vase.

“Chantell, this is Eric.”

“Eric, I am not coming over, so what do you want?”

“I just want to talk. Why are you still mad at me?”

I took the flowers out of the plastic and untied the bundle. They were bright pink with long green stems. They sort of looked like sunflowers except for their big pink round heads. “I’m not mad at you, Eric. I just need some stability in my life.”

“Chantell, we have to talk. I want us to move forward too. We have to pull it together. What about our trip to Mexico?”

I knew that he’d come crawling back sooner or later. And to be truthful, he was right. With everything else going on, I hadn’t really thought about how we’d handle Mexico. But I wasn’t going to let on that we were on the same page. Nope, first I needed to hear how much he needed me, and missed me.

“Hello!?! Eric?? You’re not going to Mexico with
me.
”

“Chantell, I paid my money just like you did. And I’ve taken time off work already. So, trust me, baby, I will be going to Mexico with you.”

Look at my baby, I thought, all demanding to be with me and everything! I smiled. “Forget that, Eric! You’re not—”

“Look Chawnee, let’s stop playing games. You know that I miss you. I need to see you. We have a lot to talk about, and, baby, I’ve got you something.”

This was working better than I expected! I took a paring knife from my wooden chopping block and cut some of the stem off of the three flowers. I tested the length and saw that they were long enough to fit in the vase perfectly.

“Chantell, let me come over.”

“You must be kidding,” I said, though in my mind I thought of how nice having company would be. And I did want my present! I hoped it was jewelry.

“You’re not foolin’ with that girl on the boat?”

“No, baby.”

I leaned against the kitchen counter. The cabinet above me was slightly ajar. I reached up to close it, and something in it caught my eye. It was the Mason jars. I reached up and grabbed two of them. I set them down on top of the counter and put the vase back under the sink. I’d bought a box of jars last year when I decided that I was going to learn to make fruit preserves, like my mother used to.

“Baby, she wasn’t anything to me. I’m not interested in her. I love you.”

And there it was. He loved me. That’s what I needed to hear. Loneliness was an ugly thing. I put the flowers in the two jars. They looked beautiful.

“Just for a little while.”

“Okay, Eric,” I said, “but don’t expect anything from me. And you’re doing all the talking. I don’t have anything to say,” I said. “And don’t think I’m doing anything with you either,” I added.

By this time next year, I would have a phat rock on my finger! I knew which one I wanted, too. I’d seen it at a jewelry store in the Hillsdale shopping mall. It was a carat-and-a-half princess-cut diamond set in a platinum ring.

“Okay, Chantell, I’ll see you this evening when I get off of work.”

“Wait. Hold on a minute. What time? You can’t just come over here whenever you want to, you know? So don’t even think that.” He needed to fully respect me as his wife-to-be.

“Okay.” He laughed. “Umm, let’s say seven-thirty?”

“Okay, honey. I’ll see you then,” I said.

I didn’t have a job to go to, so I didn’t know how I would spend my day until Eric got off work. I wasn’t going to Tia’s. I didn’t feel like going back to Daddy’s. I knew that I shouldn’t spend any money, so any major shopping was out. I needed to get some fresh air. I already had fresh flowers, but I could use some incense, to refresh the house, and that was cheap.

I took my shower and went through all of my clothes in the closet. Gucci, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, INC, and all the others. They didn’t matter at the moment. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, and with Eric Summit fighting for us to be together, I didn’t have to be. He loved me. I pushed past all of the clothes and put on a navy blue NYU sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. We were going to work it out—I’d make sure of it—and we could move on with our lives. Yes, that made me feel a bit better. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, put on a bit of eyeliner and lipstick, and left the house to get my incense.

Berkeley was a place where the people were unlike any other folks. There was a sense of calmness there, yet it was, well, Berkeley. Home of the hippies, the revolutionaries, the homeless, the street vendors, the eclectic, the artists, the musicians, the insane, the extremely wealthy, and of course, the students of the university. And they all walked the streets together. I’d always liked Berkeley. It was an unusual retreat, a haven. It was a place where most people who were abstract enough to stand out somehow blended in and stayed a spell.

It was just the place to get my mind off my thoughts. I pulled into the Berkeley flea market. There were people there who were from all types of places and nations. Ethiopians, Indians, Asians, Caucasians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Cubans, Trinidadians, and African Americans. A perfect melting pot.

The smell of gumbo drifted through the air from one of the vendors over in the exotic foods corner. People were walking, chatting, selling old bikes, and applying temporary henna tattoos to arms, belly buttons, ankles, and nipples. There were people selling deodorant and toilet paper, eight-track tapes and old clothes. There were old framed paintings on velvet, and big wooden forks and spoons that used to hang on people’s walls thirty years before. An antiquer’s dream come true, that’s what it was. People sold stuff on tables made of old sawhorses with wood paneling laid on top. The makeshift tables looked like they had been torn out of old abandoned houses.

I walked around until I found an incense dealer. “How much for these?” I asked the lady.

“Ten for a dollar, yaknow.” She was a black woman with a hard accent. She was probably only forty, yet she had several teeth missing in the front. The woman looked tired, like she had seen very weary times in her life.

I grabbed a single bag off the little bundle of long plastic bags that lay on the table in front of me. Then I began to pick up different kinds of incense and smell them one by one.

“That one called Frombradi,” she said. “It means ‘let go, and let love.’”

I smelled it. Let go and let love was what I was talkin’ about! It smelled thick and heavy, yet fruity. Like amber wood and mango fruit. I put some in the bag. I grabbed another and inhaled its scent.

“Oh my goodness,” I said. “This is wonderful. What is it?”

“It’s de lemongrass,” she said.

It smelled very clean and citrusy. But not in a furniture polish sort of way—in a lovely grapefruit-and-lemon-spice-in-an-evening- bubble-bath sort of way. I loved the smell. I was very drawn to that smell. I hadn’t done much of that lately—paid attention to things that I was naturally drawn to. I’d read somewhere that we should take notice of what affected us. What we gravitated to. I inhaled again. I was definitely drawn to Frombradi, and lemongrass. I added more lemongrass into the little bag.

I had maybe ten in the bag when I heard the sound in the near distance. Drums. A couple of bongos, then more joined in. It was exciting, and I wanted to go see. It was so—so Berkeley-like! I quickly filled up the little bag with twenty and headed toward the music.
Dun-du-du-dun, dun-du-du-dun-du-du . . .
People were gathering at the northern corner of the flea market. Four people played, then there were six, then ten, and before you knew it, there were as many as twenty players, mostly men. They were sitting on the ground. Their legs were crossed and they were having a real jam session. No other musical instruments, just bongos. And you could hear them finding one another’s vibe in the air. And when they got it, you knew it. They all played together on some universal rhythm. People stood around tapping their feet and moving their legs. Everyone was vibing off of this feeling that was being expressed through fingers tapping on leather. At first I thought I’d watch. Then I started moving to the beat, and it was hard to resist. Without thinking, I “let go” like the Frombradi incense and moved my body in motion to the music, not knowing what my next move would be. I was not sure if others were staring at me. I didn’t care. I danced. My eyes were closed. I moved and I swayed. Caught up in a zone, I grooved to the wordless thumps. If Charlotte could have seen me, she would have had a fit. To her, this was not ladylike. Here I was approaching thirty years old and acting like a vagabond, a gypsy. I moved my hands in the air. It was freeing. There was no fear, and no worry of what people thought of me. My clothes didn’t matter. And had I been wearing old sweats, or stiletto heels, I still would have danced that way at that very moment. The only important perception of me was my own, I thought. I opened my eyes, and there was a whole group of people dancing. We were all just one, just us and one thud of the drum played by many people. I wondered if they did this every week.

That evening at home, I flipped through my closet again and wondered what I was going to wear for my premarital date with Eric. We hadn’t seen each other in a month, and I wanted to look tempting. I lit a Frombradi incense.

I’d brought home more fresh flowers from the market. I took them into the kitchen and cut the stems down to fit in more jars. I filled some Mason jars partway with water. I put two big white flowers in one jar, some pink ones in another, and mixed up the colors in a third. The pink flowers had a hint of yellow on the inside and looked beautiful. To me, flowers looked much prettier this way. More pretty than if they were in some $150 vase.

I didn’t need a therapist. I just needed to dance a little bit, see Eric, get some flowers, and a little bit of Frombradi. I put one jar on top of my glass and wrought-iron coffee table. I left one on the counter in the kitchen and took another to my bedroom, placing it on my nightstand next to the bed. I reassured myself that Eric would not be in there tonight, but he’d be here soon.

I’d just stepped out of the shower when my doorbell rang. “Just a moment,” I yelled toward the door. I sprayed on some Vickie’s Secret body moisturizer. I was a bit nervous about seeing Eric, and I tracked water all over my carpet as I stepped out of the bathroom.

I slid on a short, one-piece tangerine dress that I knew was too short to wear anywhere except in the house. I rationalized that I wasn’t actually trying to seduce Eric or anything, I just wanted him to see what he would get every day if and when he stopped running the streets and committed to me exclusively. Besides, I’d just gotten out of the shower, and I needed to wear that dress so I could easily apply lotion to my legs and arms and still have clothes on. I dimmed the lighting and went to the door.

“I’ll be right there.”

If this worked out, I was going to see what he thought of honeymooning in Jamaica. “Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s me, Chantell,” said Eric.

I opened the door and my porch light helped me to catch a vision of masculinity at its highest. He wore a slightly tight gray shirt that emphasized his muscular body. It fit snugly over his ex-football- playing arms. He wore gray slacks and thick, heavy-looking black leather shoes that were cut straight at the toes and smooth all over. He smiled and his pearly whites glistened. His mustache was immaculate. It couldn’t have been more perfectly lined. And he smelled like a hundred-dollar bottle of Issey Miyake cologne.

“So, can I come in?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

I stepped back so that he could come in, but the porch light allowed him to check me out first. He looked at my face, my legs, my dress. He looked at my French-manicured toes. Then his hand came from behind his back, and he handed me a hat-sized box.

“Here, beautiful,” he said.

I squealed. He watched my every move. His mouth formed into a smile. He nodded his head a couple of times at me and walked in. I smirked—he was so arrogant, with his fine self!

“Open it,” he said.

I smiled. “Okay.”

I opened the medium-sized black-and-white box that was trimmed with golden ribbon. It was a new Chanel handbag, and it was cute, cute, cute! It must have cost $300! I could see that he loved me. I kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, baby. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

He was a sweetie. I went over to the television and turned it on for him. I was still dripping water from the shower. I could feel the heat from his eyes burning on me. I turned around toward him and saw the way that he sat on my couch. I noted how long his legs were. And tried not to lust. I would be Mrs. Summit soon enough. His elbow rested on the arm of my couch, and his fingers gently supported his tilted head. His gaze was so intense.

“Here.” I handed him the television remote.

He turned on the TV to this soft music station. The screen went blank and Maxwell crooned out of the speakers in my entertainment center.

“I’ll be back,” I said as I grabbed the lotion that I’d brought out of the shower and headed toward my room.