The Circle: Rain's Story (19 page)

“Remy?” His voice was harsh
, but professional. “I need you to come and cover a shift for me today. What time you can get here?” Remy coughed.

“Mr. Dodson, I’m feeling sick and can’t make it in tonight.”

“I don’t have time for any of your excuses Remy. Get your butt up and get down here in an hour missy, or don’t bother coming in on Monday.” Remy looked at the phone and frowned and did what she should have done long ago and spat.

“You know what Mr. Dodson, what you need to do is learn how to speak to your employees. You can keep your stinking job because I quit. I’m going back to school anyway!” She clicked off the phone and smiled.

“Ooh, mama…….” Her little sister yelled over her shoulder. “Remy just quit her job at McDonalds!” It didn’t matter that her mother knew and continued to smile. She wanted something bigger out of life and McDonald’s was not in her future. David Banks was definitely rubbing off on her, she thought.

*
              *              *

             
After a nice dinner at a local college dive, Remy and David decided to walk and talk, getting to know each other. The after rain breeze made it a bit chilly, but being the gentleman that he was, he offered her his jacket, setting the stage of the proverbial boy meets girl to the tenth power. Walking slowly, with all the signs of first date awkwardness, Remy began to wonder what’s been on his mind since the day they met last weekend.

             
“Can I ask you a question David?” Remy asked softly.

             
“Sure, you can ask me anything you want.” It took her several seconds to gather her thoughts to word it just right without sounding overly stupid.

             
“Have you ever dated a black girl before?” she finally said as she eyed the ground.

             
“No. I never have.” He answered honestly. She looked in his face and asked.

             
“Why me?” she questioned. “What makes me so special?” David stared straight ahead, and continued lumbering forward, then shrugged his shoulders and answered.

             
“I honestly don’t know. But I do know it’s a combination of things.”

             
“Things like what? Give me some examples.” David turned and stared into her smiling face.

             
“Well, one of them is that smile you’re wearing right now. It’s like you can light up the world with it.” Remy blushed.

             
“You smooth, I have to give you that, but I guess what I’m really trying to say is do you see me as your chance to taste the nectar of some forbidden fruits just to brag to your friend and say you had a black girl?”

             
David paused in place, and gazed into Remy’s eyes with disappointment and seriousness.

             
“Listen Remy, I could understand why you are apprehensive and would ask me such a question. You have every right to because that’s what most of my friends talk about. But I have to tell you. I don’t have it in me to treat women like that and play on their emotions and feelings. It is a vicious and disheartening feeling to be wounded in that manner, to prey on a person’s heart, especially women. That day I met you, I spotted you immediately, way before you saw me. I actually followed you because I was floored and smitten by your beauty. It was like gravity was pulling me towards you. Then the moment came when you spotted me staring at you. When our eyes met, I was instantly paralyzed. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. But you kept looking at me with that smile of yours. That’s when it really hit me. Could a girl that beautiful talk to a nerd like me?” Remy tapped him on his shoulder.

             
“You are no nerd. I find you to be cooler than most of the guys I know.” David snapped his head towards her and asked.

             
“Are you serious? You really think of me as cool?”

             
“Not only cool. You are cute, smart and you have great manners. What? Nobody ever told you that before?” Remy watched David shake his head like a little boy who was forced to eat his spinach.

             
“I’m going to be honest with you, Remy.” He said coyly, as he eyed the ground. “I don’t have much experience with the female gender and I really don’t know why I’m telling you this, but….” David let out a breath, as he looked up towards the stars in the sky. “I’ve only been with one other girl, and she wasn’t, you know, like a girl. She was one of my nannies, and it was a disaster. Even back then because I was extremely shy and a little premature if you know what I mean.” Remy chuckled on the inside only, but she got his point.

             
“I don’t believe I said that.” David said wary. But Remy assured him.

             
“No, you can tell me anything. I love when a boy is honest with me, I think it’s sexy.” She smiled.

             
“If that’s the case, I can tell you much more embarrassing things.” He joked. Remy laughed also. As they walked slowly, Remy tripped suddenly on a crack in the sidewalk and he quickly reacted and took her by the hand and held on to it. Before long, they were walking hand in hand, and didn’t let go.

As they walked hand
in hand, that’s when Remy first noticed the burning eyes of the passerby’s that bored through her.

             
“Does it worry you or does it feel funny to you that people are staring at us?” David didn’t bat an eye and said.

             
“Doesn’t matter to me any, you can’t stop love and love never fails. You don’t pick it, it picks you.” Remy was stunned that he said that so easily. Then listened to him recite a poem.

             
“Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me, for I am much ashamed of my exchange. But love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit; for if they could, Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy.”

             
“That was beautiful. What was that?”

             
“It’s Shakespeare. An ode to blind love.” He said flatly. Remy was in awe of his beautiful mind. It simply drew her closer to him as she took her arm into his. The odds were against her, she thought, but she couldn’t help but fantasize, could it really be?

             
                                                                      ****  

Over the course
of two months and a half, Remy was swooned and in genuine love with David Banks. He mesmerized her with the way he talked, his vast and wide array of knowledge of people, subjects and global events. She could sit and listen hours on end, and absorb things she never knew. He even motivated her to seek out and start looking for different colleges to attend and build her future. She started dressing differently, no longer wearing tight fitting every day urban wear and began wearing similar clothing that the diverse white girls she saw on his campus— loose fitting jeans, comfortable tee’s and blouse.

Remy bought into his philosophy that
,
“You are the sum total of who you think you are.” And, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
She started spending hours on end at libraries, studying and reading different books to build her knowledge and vocabulary. She started carrying a small dictionary in her bag, so when they were together, she would make mental notes of words he would use during conversations that she didn’t know. She would then excuse herself and go to the bathroom to look it up, and use it in conversations also.

Remy thought David was the smartest person on earth. She spent hours, then days with him inside his dorm room as he studied. The
thought that she was dating a man who was studying to become a doctor was surreal to her; often times very uncomfortable and daunting because she felt unworthy in his presence, beneath him, and out of place. She was bedazzled by all the text books he had to study: biology, chemistry, humanities, social and behavioral science, physics, mathematics and the list went on and on. She was intimidated. On top of that, she felt the burning eyes that were placed on them when they were out in public, being the odd looking interracial couple holding hands. Even that took a lot of getting used to. But David was above it all, nor did he care and proved it to her over and over, never once making her feel insecure or out of place.

They even had
little pet names for each other. He called her his little Raindrop, because on their first official date, it was raining and she didn’t bring an umbrella and was soaking wet when they met up and it stuck. She called him her blue-eyed Beastie Boy, because of his love for the white rap group called The Beastie Boys. 

But more t
han anything, when they had sex he made love to her like no other boy before him. It was his touch, the way he looked in her eyes when they did, the whispering in her ear of compassion, set him a world apart. She absolutely loved being in his presence, she felt safe, secure, with no worries in the world. She was in bliss. When suddenly the unthinkable happened, she missed her period. Something that hadn’t happen since she was eleven years old. Then she began to develop morning sickness, headaches, and backaches. Begrudgingly, she didn’t want to believe it, but she had to face reality. Days later, at her local free health clinic, her worst fear was confirmed, she was pregnant.

*
              *              *

“Hello?”

“Yes, may I speak to David Banks?”

“
Okay, hold on.” said a male voice from inside one of the off-campus dorm building of John Hopkins University. Remy listened as the male voice yelled. “Banks, you got a phone call!” She never gave David her home phone number where he could reach her because she didn’t want to chance her sister or mother giving him too much information about her, particularly where she really lived, so she only called him.

“Hello?”

“Hey, babe, it’s me.” Remy said into the phone.

“Remy, I been waiting for you to call. I was starting to get worried.”

“I know it’s just that I was busy following and applying for different colleges. It’s been taking up a lot of my time, and I knew you had finals and didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Remy, you know I always have time for you and you can call me night or day. I love you like that.” Remy put her head down and blushed.

“I know……” she replied softly.

“Listen, I’m glad you called, I need to see you tomorrow… you free?”

“Yeah, I need to speak to you, also.” Remy heard a pause.

“Are you okay, Remy?” She didn’t want to put needless pressure on his mind and lied.

“Yes, everything is great. It’s just that I miss you, too.”

“Great, then I
’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, I got a surprise for you when you get here. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay, I love you David.” She said sincerely.

“I love you too Remy. Good night.”

“Good night.
” Remy slowly hung up the phone. Wondering who would have the biggest surprise and how he was going to take it when she tells him she was pregnant with his child.

*
              *              *

The next day, Remy got up early to get dressed and prepare
d for the long commute to Washington, DC to see David and give him the news.

When she pulled into DC, she called David to pick her up. This
was their normal pattern over the past two months when she came to see him.

When she spotted his car, she immediately grew concerned, because he had two other passengers riding along with him. As they got
closer and pulled to the curb, she saw that it was an older couple, male and female. A sting in her stomach suddenly hit her.

‘
Please God, don’t let it be’
, she prayed.

Remy watched David jump out of the ve
hicle with vigorous excitement. He walked up to her, and planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek, took her by the hand and led her closer to the car, just as the older male was exiting from the front passenger seat. David’s face was glowing with proudness when he introduced them. “Remy, I want you to meet my dad. The honorable Judge Banks.” He smiled. He was a tall man, Remy thought, just like David, and looked very distinguished and someone very powerful. His father and David were dead ringers for each other and knew the elder Banks had stronger genes.

He greeted her with a genuine wide smile and a handshake. The elder Banks studied Remy’s face and with admiration
as he praised his son.

“You were right, she is a looker.”

The three of them shared a laugh. David then took her hand again, and led her closer to the back seat and bent over and marveled.

“Remy, this is my mom. Mom this is Remy.”

Remy reach in and extended her hand inside the car, smiled and shook his mother’s hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

Still excited, David faced Remy and said. “My mom and dad came to meet you so they came up to treat all of us to lunch. I hope you’re hungry.”