Sweet Bye-Bye (6 page)
On my twenty-eighth birthday, I remembered being a little nervous about nearing the big three-oh. To help me be more accepting she’d told me all kinds of things—for example, that being thirty years old would feel great. “It’s like breathing deeply after holding your breath for a very long time,” she’d said.
I’d told her that she was full of it, but I loved her anyway. We’d been best friends for over five years. We met when she came into the newspaper one day to file some papers for her cosmetology school, Elnora’s Beauty Training Center, which had been passed on to her by her mother. I was leaving when she came in. She asked me where the public notice office was, and her hair looked great. I showed her where it was (upstairs), and asked her where she got her hair done. She’d been my best friend ever since.
She stared at me, waiting for me to answer her question.
“I’m alright. I guess. I’ve been better.”
“Chantell, you’re like little black Barbie. You have your own house, car, college education, clothes, and credit,” she teased, “and you’ve got bruhman with all them muscles. That is all the stuff that you’ve said you wanted. What’s the matter?”
I laughed dryly. I hadn’t told her about the little breakup yet. “I don’t know. I think I am just in need of a break.”
“Well, you and Eric are still doing Mexico, right?”
“Yes, but that’s over a month away, and we’re not exactly the happy couple.”
“Uh-oh. What’s happened?” I had to love her, she knew me so well.
“Nothin’,” I said as I swayed my head and pretended to really be into the song. We sat on the couch in the living room, finishing up the last of a greasy bag of microwave popcorn.
“That long silver skirt that you bought is off the hook. Which shirt did you get to go with it?” I said.
“I got the first one I tried on. Remember? The white one with the long sleeves?”
“Oh yeah. That one was cute.” I nodded.
I bopped around a little more and put a kernel in my mouth. “Girl, I love me some perfectly microwaved popcorn.” It was my weakness, and I’d certainly had my share of it that day.
“Mmm-humph. So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothin’, I don’t know. Eric is just out there being Eric, and I just don’t know if I am happy.”
“Well, you have to take care of yourself first. Love yourself, Chantell. Treat yourself good.” She pointed to our bags that sat beside me on the couch. “And I am not just talking about clothes and stuff. I mean, spend some time thinking about what you’re made of, Chantell, and meditate. That helps me.”
“I’m taking care of me, but my relationship isn’t making it any easier right now.”
“What’d he do?”
“Nothing, Tia. You know Eric, flaunting himself around, like he is all that. Flirting with other women. You know.”
“Yes, I know. Chantell, you love beautiful men. You’ve been through this kind of thing before. You know what happens. You know the pros and cons of that kind of relationship.”
Okay, here we go.
“That kind of relationship.”
Now Tia, my very holistic friend, was going to remind me of her golden rules that she lived by the whole year that she was single as an adult: Never date a man who thinks he looks better than you do. Don’t build your relationship on looks or sex. Always use a condom. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Whatever. Anyways, we did use condoms. Plus, Eric just flirted. He just liked attention. He wouldn’t go any further than that. Besides, we didn’t have sex anymore anyway. But back when we used to, he and I really did practice safe sex. Most of the time. I mean, there were a couple of slip-ups, but probably 90 percent of the time we were safe.
Actually, this was a sore subject with me, because the thought of diseases scared the daylights out of me. Always had, and truthfully, I hadn’t had an HIV test since that one time I’d gotten the nerve to be tested in college. And all of those “Get tested” commercials that they showed on television didn’t help me.
I remembered when I took the test. The school’s health center gave them out free and anonymously. That was eight years ago. It was negative, of course, but I could never bring myself to go and take another one. So from then on out, I’d just tried to “be careful.”
“Look, Chantell, all I’m saying is for you to know yourself and know your man.” Then she added, “I like Eric, and I think that you should be with him if you want to. I just want to see you happy. So if you love him, hang in there and work it out. I know that you can get to where you need to be.”
I giggled.
“What?” she asked.
“Who do you think you are, Oprah Winfrey?”
“Whatever!” She laughed.
I laughed too, then said, “Tia, it’s easy for you to say. You’re married. If you tried dating, you’d see.”
“No thanks! I’m committed.”
I laughed, but in all seriousness, she was always a source of encouragement for me, and I appreciated her and her efforts. She was conservative, but she had a great sense of humor. She had to have one to be married to her husband, who kept everyone laughing all the time.
“Make jokes if you must, but take care of yourself,” she said.
“I will. And I’ll be just fine. Really,” I said with a shrug to let her know I had no worries.
She didn’t look totally convinced when she picked up her keys off of the table and put her jacket over her arm. I got up from the couch and followed her toward the door. She added, “And remember, if you need to get away before Mexico, you can always use the cabin in Tahoe. Just say that word, and it’s yours.”
“Thanks, girlfriend,” I said and gave her a hug. “And Tia, we’re not going to wait six months before we do this again. Right?”
“Nope, we’re not. How about we plan something for next week?”
“Okay, I’ll call you on Monday and we’ll set it up.”
She put her cheek to mine. “Okay, love you.”
“Love you too.”
I would have felt like a fool telling Tia about the disaster on the boat. I was a walking, talking, breathing robot that always prevailed. I never got hurt. I gave good advice to friends and loved ones. If anyone had a problem, all they needed to do was see me, and I’d help them to get through it. You see, I was an expert. Oh, the friends that I had, I had their backs. Need a makeover? Go see my guy at my health spa. Having legal problems? Go see my friend Jonathan, the attorney. Having relationship problems? Tell Chawnee what was the matter. Just pick up the phone and call me, we’d talk for hours. My difficulties? Now they were another matter altogether. Rarely did anyone see any. Because you see, I was perfect. I was a strong black woman. I was resourceful, and I defended myself at all costs.
I put my feet up on the couch and tried to relax. Actually, I didn’t know when I had started acting this way, but I’d played this game for so long that I couldn’t shut it off. Humph, I wore more masks than Barry Bonds had hit home runs.
Tit for Tat
M
ina and I couldn’t stand each other! But we had something of an unspoken truce at the office. We ignored each other above all else. That way, nobody got slapped and we both got to keep our jobs. Mina would have been the one getting slapped, though. I just put the fact that she was the cause of my and Eric’s current falling-out in the back of my mind and stored it. Nope, I was sick of her and not about to take another smidgen of that overly competitive little cow.
I played with a pencil on my desk, glancing at the photos sitting on the shelf above my desk as I spoke into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Strautimeyer, I’ll swing by your office first thing tomorrow morning to pick up the disk with the artwork . . .” The photo of me and Daddy dressed alike in blue Meyers Automotive coveralls was on the end. “. . . No worries, Mr. Strautimeyer. As long as your agency has the ad designed and we don’t have to make any revisions to it, we’ll make the press time for this Sunday’s paper.” The picture was taken a couple of years ago. A day when the guy that worked at the front counter of the shop had called in sick and I used a personal day to go fill in for him. Daddy was so proud I was there with him. “I’ll handle it . . . Okay, you too. Have a good evening.”
I hung up the phone and made a note in my Palm Pilot that I was to stop by Skyway Modems tomorrow morning to pick up their full-page, full-color ad that they were running in the main section of the paper this weekend. Mr. Strautimeyer had pulled a full week’s budget from a radio station and another paper to be able to run this ad. It was a nice upsize compared to the half-page black-and-white ad that they usually ran in Sunday’s paper. I knew Mina Everett was probably fuming because several of her smaller accounts’ advertisements were being bumped out of the highly sought-after and widely viewed Main News section.
I was glad that my dad was recovering, and I tried to keep that spirit of gratefulness about myself all day every day. But at work, things got so heated, sometimes I just forgot.
I tried not to gloat when I thought about how Mina’s new account, Fashion Nails, would likely end up in the Sports section. The account probably wouldn’t want to do business with her again. She had to be a little bit upset about that. Served her right! God do not like ugly.
I hadn’t seen her up close since she sat at my table with her friends and Eric at that boat party. Now she approached my area in a yellow button-down shirt that barely covered her up, her fiery red hair down again.
“Hi there, Mina,” I said with a smile and a voice that dripped with sarcasm.
She squinted her green eyes at me as she walked past and stopped two desks down. She was probably stealing an account from someone who was away. I chuckled a bit and tucked my hair behind my ear.
She looked over in my direction. “Chantell, would you do me a favor and tell Eric that my friend Stephanie said to meet her at their normal place for dinner?”
That did it! I’d vowed that I wasn’t taking any more mess from Mina, and that was exactly what I meant. She would say
anything
to try to hurt me!
“Oh, okay, Mina,” I said to her. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
What a liar! Eric didn’t have any “normal place for dinner” spot with anyone except for me. Mina Everett was going to find out that I could get just as petty as she could.
The Test
I
was still fuming on the ride home. I left San Francisco and had gotten through the Bay Bridge, but then the traffic came to a standstill. When it started to creep along again, I got off the freeway and took the side streets. I cracked my window and drove down the city streets. I thought about that silly woman at work as I rode past the old church that my grandmother used to take me to.
The beige-and-white two-story building still sat there, its grass looking green, its bushes cut in a long rectangle. The parking lot was filled with cars. I wondered what they were doing in there on a Friday night.
It had started to rain a bit by the time I got to the grocery store. A lady sat outside the store and asked for donations for the Veteran’s Relief Fund. As I approached her, she shook her white bucket. I heard change rattling at the bottom. Usually, when I had extra, I gave. I gave to the homeless, I gave to the United Negro College Fund, and I gave to the local women’s shelters. But today I was tired and not in the mood.
The lady sat behind a card table, with a nurse’s hat pinned in her hair and a badge clipped to her candy striper uniform. She had a cigarette in her mouth, but she’d unknowingly turned it the wrong way. She shook the white bucket at both another man and me as we grabbed carts and headed into the store at the same time. She stared at us and flicked her lighter with her thumb. The fire rose up and she put the flame to the brown filter of the cigarette. The filter melted a bit. I tried to look straight ahead and not notice.
“D**n it!” she said as she threw the cigarette to the ground.
I went into the store, toward the meat and cheese aisle. I grabbed the envelope sticking out of my purse, thinking it was the grocery list that I’d made that morning. It was actually a doctor bill. I looked in my purse and discovered that I’d forgotten the list at home. This was how I ended up exceeding my planned budget every month. I continued down the cheese aisle. I knew that Colby-Jack cheese was on the list. I grabbed a block of cheese and moved farther down the aisle to the turkey breast. A man was pushing a grocery cart containing two little girls whose coal-black hair was tied with green ribbons. They were probably three and four years old and singing Barney songs while bobbing up and down, and making a bunch of unnecessary racket.
“I love you, toot, toot, toot . . .”
They argued over whose turn it was to sing. “Okay, you go. Okay, now it’s my turn! Okay, you go. No, it’s my turn!” They were squealing and whining, and their father just walked along pushing the basket, like he didn’t hear a thing. The two children, in light blue nylon jackets and pink ski boots, finally got on one chord, and sang,
“Standing outside with my mouth open wide . . .”
and proceeded to make gagging noises. Forget the turkey breast, I needed to change aisles.
I walked fast toward them and got over in the lane to pass. A lady and her husband walked toward me pushing a cart. They were arm in arm, and poking along. They both had handfuls of the fresh pistachios that were sold in bulk in the big white tubs near the fruits and vegetables. They munched and laughed and dropped the shells of the stolen nuts on the floor. They were too close for me to pass. I was trapped, and the kids continued to sing. I tried to wait for them to pass, but it had been a long day.
“Umm, please excuse me,” I said. “I’d really like to get by.”
The man with the children walked past the couple and made enough room for me to go around them. The couple looked so happy, just grinnin’ at each other and poking along. Standing close to each other and pushing their cart together. I looked at the pistachio thieves and rolled my eyes. Then I tisked at the man with his humming brats as they stomped their little feet on the metal bars below them like little marching drummer boys. It sounded like a miniature earthquake to me. I left the aisle glad that I wasn’t in either of those scenarios.