Casting Down Imaginations (34 page)

“Oh, please!”

“You are. You don’t even listen to rap music.”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“But I do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And you think
you have to be perfect just because you’re a Christian, but nobody ever said
that. You put way too much stress on yourself, like saying I gotta be a certain
way to be your man. You just wastin’ precious time, baby. Instead on waiting for
me to become the man of your dreams, why don’t you be with me now, and help me
become that man that you want.”

Just as I was about to answer, he leaned over and kissed me
in the mouth. It caught me off guard. It felt so good, so right. It felt great.
Long and passionate. Before I knew it I was caught up and lying on my back, and
he was on top of me.

“Wait, wait,” I stopped him.

He pulled back, suddenly emotional. “I love you, Karen,” he
told me, breathing heavy. “I love you like I never loved anybody else in this
whole world. And I been loving you. Every since Spanish class. ‘Memba that?”

I smiled. “Yes. You used to always copy my homework before
the teacher came in.”

“I needed that class to graduate,” he told me. “Just like
right now I need you in my life to live.”

My heart fluttered.

“And you know what else?” he asked me.

“What?”

“I’m gon’ make you my wife one day.”

I gasped, ready to cry. Did he really say what I think he
just said? After all this time, all this praying, did he really just say that
to me?

“Someday. I don’t know when, but someday. I love you girl,
and I’m gon’ marry you. I promise you, your name is going to be Mrs. Terrance
Thomas, and we’ll have another child. Shoot, we’ll have two or three if you
want. Just don’t leave me girl.”

I grabbed him and pulled him close to me. I could feel his
heart beat against my chest, and mine beat against his. They beat
simultaneously. And that’s how I knew all of my dreams were about to come true.

“I love you, Terrance,” I cried softly into his ear as I
hugged him. “I love you so much.”

“I need you too, baby girl,” he told me. “I need you to
live,” he declared, and kissed me again.

I kissed him back. And in that kiss I let go of all of my
worries, all of my insecurities, and all of my religious rules and reasonings
of why I couldn’t let this man love me the way he wanted to and the way I felt
he needed to.

“Whoa,” he cautioned, still kissing me. “We better stop.”

“I don’t want to,” I managed to get out while his tongue was
still in my mouth.

“You sure?” he asked between kisses.

I nodded, then closed my eyes.

forty eight

Anaya

The lustful jeers and cheers of the
audience I was entertaining faded away as soon as their sounds hit my ears. I
was completely drunk. I usually made the most money on Saturday nights, and I
was looking forward to emptying the pockets of the perverts who surrounded me.
I just had to figure out a way to swing around the pole without falling down
like the complete drunk that I was.

I started to remove my top, but something
suddenly wouldn’t let me. I was picking up a weird energy from somewhere, and
it wasn’t from the alcohol coming out of my pores. I searched the room to find
out where it was coming from, even though my vision was blurred from the shots
that I’d taken earlier.

I recognized a gentleman in the far back of
the room. Not him exactly, because he was sitting down at a table, and he held
his head down. I couldn’t see his face, but he had on a nice hat that matched
his coat. It was a nice coat, too. It had to be serving him well with the night
chills we were having.

I just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t
looking at me. Why wasn’t he enjoying the show? Surely I was his type. Cute,
curvy. Didn’t he want to see everything I had? Wasn’t he at least curious to
see why all of the other men and a few women in the club were cheering me on?
Didn’t he know I was the best dancer in Prestige? What was wrong with him?

I twirled around the stage, trying to get
the crowd excited to get the attention of this one man. He didn’t budge. He
kept his head down, as if he were embarrassed or ashamed. Maybe he was. Maybe
he was married and felt guilty, like he would be cheating on his wife if he
looked at me. Maybe that was his problem. But it still didn’t make any sense.
He came this far. Why not peek?

There was just something about that coat,
though. I’d seen it somewhere before. Somewhere…

I kept dancing and did a few tricks on the
pole. Some came up to give me money. Others begged me to undress. I started to,
but again something stopped me. It was the gentlemen in the back. The gentlemen
in the back with the coat and the hat. His defiance was causing me to lose my
buzz, and I didn’t like it.

He turned his head suddenly and looked at
me. I didn’t catch his whole face, but the dim lighting above his head let me
see enough of his eyes to recognize him through my drunkenness.

I was suddenly sober.

I felt my eyes bulge as I realized who was
in the room with me.

I remembered where I’d seen that coat.

…And that hat.

I’d bought them both as a gift for someone
that I loved very much.

And I never wanted that person to know I
was a stripper.

Oh no!!!...

I wanted to throw up and pass out at the
same time.

Deacon Patterson!!!!!!!!!

forty nine

Anaya

With vomit in my mouth, I ran offstage behind the curtain. I
tried to find a trashcan but was unsuccessful and unloaded in the middle of the
hallway. Two girls were standing close by and scattered with disgust.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I head Jeff scream as he
came my way. “Girl, you better get back on that stage!”

“I can’t,” I tried to explain, but more vomit erupted out of
me, barely missing his snake skin shoes as he walked up to me.

“Ewh! Awh, hell nawh,” he griped. “You better not be pregnant.”

Derrick came around the corner to my aide as Jeff continued
his fit. He helped me walk to the dressing room where I sat at my vanity while
he fetched me a cool bottle of water.

While he was gone I realized that I was shaking. What was
wrong with me? That could
not
have been Deacon Patterson out there. He
would never be caught dead in a place like this. I was trippin’. I had to be.
That was just some guy who happened to look like him and had a coat and hat
that looked similar to Deacon’s. That’s all. I was just trippin’.

Just trippin’…

Derrick walked back in and gave me the water, along with a
cool towel that he rested on my forehead.

“You alright?”

I nodded and took a drink of the bottle.

“Alright. You got a client out there who says he wants to
talk to you.”

I froze. “Client?”

He nodded.

“Did he have on a coat?”

He seemed puzzled that I asked, but nodded. “Yeah.”

“And a hat?”

He nodded again.

I burst into tears. “That’s not a client. That’s my father!”

His eyes grew wide, then panic struck his face. He looked
about as scared as I was.

“Oh… damn,” he empathized with me.

I hopped up from my seat and began to pace the floor. Hot
tears were streaming down my face. What was he doing here? But more importantly,
how could I face him? What would I tell him?

“What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” I asked over and
over again. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. I never, ever wanted Deacon
to know that I was a stripper. I had planned on waiting a few months to tell
him the truth about school, and I then wanted to present him with a check for
the tuition money that I wasted. I wanted to stick with the lie about working
on campus part-time. He was never supposed to find out about this! Stripping
and Prestige were secrets that I was supposed to take to the grave. I couldn’t
believe everything was unraveling so fast before my eyes.

“Relax, relax,” Derrick tried to soothe me. “Look, I’ll go
talk to him.”

“No, you can’t. I know Deacon. He isn’t going to talk to you.
He’s only going to want to talk to me.”

“The deacon? I thought you said that was your daddy out
there.”

“No, no,” I shook my head with impatience. “Look, I don’t
have time to explain. Just go out there and try to get rid of him.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t going to talk to me?”

I collapsed into the chair. DAMMIT!!!

“You gotta face him,” Derrick said softly.

I rambled about a dozen curse words and pinched myself to see
if I was having a nightmare.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll stand close by to make
sure he doesn’t try to get physical with you.”

I shook my head. There was no need for such precautionary
measures. I knew that Deacon would never dream of hitting me. I just had to
face him. There was no sense in running from it or trying to escape it. He’d
already seen me. Against better judgment, I went to my locker and took a shot
of vodka in an attempt to prepare myself for the drama that was about to
unfold.

“You alright?” Derrick asked me.

I nodded, even though I really wasn’t, and took a long robe
from

my locker and tied it around myself tightly. I was now hot,
but at least I was covered up.

“I’m gonna go out with you.”

“Go before me, and stand to the side, away from us. It’ll be
better that way.”

He agreed and went out of the room. With knees that were
threatening to buckle, I slowly followed. Deacon was standing at the end of the
hallway. Another security guard was standing there with him, but it was clear
Deacon was not at all intimidated. I dragged my feet on the way, wishing that
if I prayed long and hard enough for this to be a dream that it would turn into
one. As soon as I got close to him, I started to cry all over again.

“Deacon…” I managed to get out between sobs.

I couldn’t look him in the eye. I held my head down the
entire time, so ashamed that he saw me in this situation.

“My daughter,” he whispered. There was so much pain there. I
could hear his tears through his voice. He was disappointed, and betrayed also.
I understood why. How could I let him down like this? He bent over backwards to
give me a good life. I always had food, shelter, and clothing, something that I
couldn’t say about the other girls that I worked with. And he made sure I knew
the difference between right and wrong. And I did. He worked hard to send me
off to college, and what did I do? I stole my tuition money to pay for an
apartment and an abortion, then turned around and became a stripper. No man
wanted his daughter to grow up to become who I was today, but here I was. A
pitiful mess.

“What’s going on, here?” he asked me.

I just stood there, unable to speak, shaking and crying. He
stared at me for a long time and didn’t say a word. His broken heart made it
hard for him to speak.

“I called the school,” he finally said between tears. “I
wanted to come up and surprise you.”

His words were coming out slow, but I heard every one of
them.

“I was so happy to see you a little while ago. I wanted to
come spend some time with you. But I didn’t have your address anymore. So I
called the school ‘cause I wanted to find you. When they told me that you never
registered after the fall, I almost lost my mind. It felt so horrible to know
that you would lie to me for so long about something that didn’t matter. If you
didn’t want to go to school, all you had to do was tell me. I wouldn’t have
made you go. Baby, I could have directed you into other things. I’m a father,
and that’s what fathers do for their children. I would have helped you, Nya. I
went down to the dealership and they did a search on your car, and that’s how I
found out you were working here.”

I still couldn’t look at him. All I could do was cry harder.
I watched the tears drip from my nose and splash on the ground in front of me.
I started counting them just so I wouldn’t fall out.

“I just wanna know why, baby girl,” he said. “What is this?
What are you doing here?”

I couldn’t answer, but I knew he was waiting on me to. I
shrugged, even though he probably couldn’t tell because I was shaking so
fervently.

He walked over to me and spoke truthfully. “I don’t know
what’s going on with you,” he said. “But you know I’m worried. I don’t know
what you’re running from. Maybe it’s me,” he said with such emotion that I
almost fell to the ground. I hated that he felt that way. Nothing that I did
was his fault. Didn’t he know that in my eyes he was the best man in the world
and could do no wrong?

“Maybe I tried too hard,” he continued. “Folks always told me
not to be so protective of you. But I was only like that ‘cause I loved you,
and I wanted to protect you. I didn’t wanna see nothing happen to you. You my
only child, and you look so much like your mama. Every time I look at you, I
think about her. Maybe that’s why I was just trying to keep you to myself. But
I never meant to hurt you.”

I collapsed onto him and buried my face in his chest. He
wrapped his arm around me, giving me a partial hug. His tears poured onto my
face. I freely let them fall.

“Now I love you, baby, and I always will. You hear me? I
always will. But I gotta tell you. I didn’t raise you to live like this. I
don’t approve of this here. You too smart for this, baby. You got a good brain
up there in that head of yours. Use it.” He squeezed me tight and kissed my
forehead. “I love you, baby. And I always will. No matter what, I still love
you. Nothing you can do will ever change the fact that you’re my child. And
when you get tired of running, believe me when I tell you that you can always
come home. You can always, always come home.”

Deacon let go off me and walked away. He didn’t look at me.
It was too painful. I watched him walk away, and as soon as he was out of sight
I ran into the locker room, gathered my things, and cried all the way home.