After The Dance (18 page)

No, rather than venture outside and give either of them the satisfaction of knowing just how much they’d managed to get me riled, I left my window peeking post and
spent the rest of the night drifting back and forth between sleep and trying not to speculate on what all the two of them might have been doing over there.

I can’t help it, man. I dig the girl, okay? Even after what I’d just witnessed, I was still wanting very much to extend her the full benefit of the doubt. I mean, after all, what reason would she have to lie about what’s been going down between her and dude? But as far as slick is concerned—man, I should have known from the jump his yella ass wasn’t up to nothing good. And the next time he fixes his mouth to say something foul in my direction? All I can say is, he’d best bring his “A” game and come ready to play hard ’cause I’m ’bout through being Mista Nice Guy.

And to think, I woke up the next morning in a good mood. Really, all I had on my mind was kicking it with the kinfolk, eating some ribs, and savoring the sweet taste of my Aunt Bessie’s homemade ice cream. All that worrisome stuff having to do with brother Scoobie and Mr. Carl, I’d resolved to put on the back burner to be dealt with some other day.

So I was in my room getting ready for the trip when Nora started pounding on my door. “Yo, Faye. You up? Loverboy’s here to see you and he’s got flowers.”

Hell, girl, my mood took an immediate turn for the worse. I marched out of my room and into the kitchen with every intention of pulling the brother to the side and tactfully reminding him of some of the promises that had come out of his mouth just last night. Please, if only it could have been that simple. First of all, the brother in question wasn’t Scoobie.

An eyeful of his back and Nora’s big moon-pie face were what greeted my entry into the room. I should have known by the slick grin on the heifer’s face, she was up to something. She was cheesing hard and looking dead at me when she said, “So, Carl, what you got planned for this fine Memorial Day?”

I cleared my throat, hoping to distract him, and he did turn around and smile, but he also kept right on gabbing with my traitorous roomie. He said, “Not a whole lot. My girls are hanging out with my ex and her new man; my cousin Squirrel rode up to Chicago yesterday with my Uncle Westbrook; and all of my other friends are spending time with their families, or you know, have made plans that don’t include me, so …”

And like the low-down cow that she can be sometimes, Nora giggled and said ever so sweetly, “So why don’t you come and go with us? Faye won’t mind. The more the merrier, she always says. Isn’t that right, Faye?”

I could have choked her. Strangled her dead right there on the kitchen floor. She knew I didn’t have the heart to veto her invitation—not with Carl standing there holding a durn armful of yellow carnations and wearing a smile of my making.

Hey, it wasn’t like I went over there looking for an invite. All I called myself doing was letting the sister know that one, I wanted to be taken seriously, and two, I didn’t intend to let her late-night caller’s challenge to me go unanswered.

If she didn’t fancy the idea of me tagging along, she should have doggone well gone ahead and put her foot
down. All she had to say in so many words was, “Look, man, I’m feeling pressured, okay? You need to back off and give me the space I need to think this thing through,” and I would have been more than happy to oblige her.

Instead she took my doggone flowers and led me to believe everything was on the up-and-up—until we’re all set to hit the road. Being that it was her car we were taking, I did the gentlemanly thing and offered to both drive and put a couple dollars’ worth of gas in her tank. Though she nodded her consent and tossed me the keys, rather than join me in the front seat, she climbed her big butt into the back, claiming she was tired and in need of some room to stretch.

I tried to convince myself that after having kicked it with me for most of the weekend, she probably was feeling a bit drained. What I didn’t want to think about was how the time she’d wasted doing Lord knows what with her late-night guest might have fit into her fatigue equation. And then there was the silence. While Nora, as usual, talked her fool head off, Faye was pretty quiet the whole way down. But every once in a while I’d glance at her in the rearview window and notice her eyebrows all scrunched up, as if she were brooding about something.

The only saving grace was that the trip wasn’t a long one. Water Valley is, thankfully, only an hour and a half or so drive from Memphis. Once we got there I figured it best to just temporarily put aside my concerns about the bad vibes I was picking up from Faye. I wasn’t about to let her funky little attitude keep me from being anything less than cordial when it came to meeting and greeting her folks.

She comes from a nice enough clan—mom, dad, couple of brothers, and the usual assortment of elders, cousins, and kids. They’re somewhat on the loud and country side, but you don’t have to be around them for longer than a minute to know that they’re basically good people who care about one another. Her old man is a semiretired truck
driver and a pretty easygoing sort of guy. He gave me the usual interrogation concerning my intentions towards his “babygirl,” but it was fairly laid-back and lighthearted kind of stuff. On the other hand, Faye’s two older brothers, Frank and Grant, let it be known in so many words and gestures that they weren’t above whupping the black off my ass if they found out I wasn’t doing right by their li’l sis. And then there was Mrs. Abrahams, Faye’s mom, who treated me like I was already a member of the family—called me “son,” waited on me hand and foot, and kept asking if Faye had been taking good care of me.

It also didn’t take me long to hone in on the fact that ol’ girl’s family had anointed her their “chosen one.” You know, the one most everybody tries to push out in front of the pack and encourages to go forth and do well; the one all the old folk pin their own deferred dreams of a better life on; the one thought of as smart and talented enough to one day do not only the family but the whole damn race proud! Doesn’t every decent, working-class, God-fearing Black family have at least one? I know amongst my own kin, it’s my sister Sheila, the serious scholar and tenured English professor, who proudly wears the crown.

But getting back to ol’ girl’s peeps, overall I’d have to say that hanging out with them was a whole lot of fun. To tell the truth, at one point I was having such a good time feeding my face, sipping on Uncle Chester’s evil-tasting homemade wine, playing cards, and swapping lies with the fellas that I damn near forgot all about Faye. Who knows when I would have noted her absence if Nora hadn’t come over and whispered into my ear, “Better go check on your girl. I think she might be needing some attention—if you know what I mean.”

So, dutiful lover that I am, I went inside and found Faye sitting alone in the den, blowing smoke into the hum of the air conditioner.

When I asked what was wrong, she gave me one of
those curt “nothings” that usually mean something. So I said, “Then why are you sitting here in the dark puffing yourself full of nicotine?”

She took a moment to snuff out her cigarette before she said, “I came in to get out the heat.”

I said, “Come on now, Faye. You’ve hardly said ten words to me all day. Are you upset with me about something? Is it that you didn’t want me to come?”

She shook her head and said, “I’ve just got a few things on my mind, is all.”

I took a chance and asked, “Might I be one of those things?”

With a sad little smile creasing her lips, she said, “You might.”

After squaring my shoulders, I said, “And what about your friend? The one I saw over at your place last night?”

Rather than answer, she sighed, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes.

Even though I wasn’t completely sure I’d be able to stomach the truth, I went after it anyway. “Something happened, didn’t it? Something between you and him that changes the way you feel about you and me?”

With her eyes still fastened shut, she said, “If you want to know the truth, Carl, yes, something did happen. But like I told you already, it was a long time ago. How I feel about you and me is a totally separate issue.”

She sounded earnest enough, but just to be sure I said, “So does that mean you’re still open to what we discussed the other day—a one-on-one, I’m your man, you’re my woman type of scenario?”

Before she said anything, she blinked open her eyes and focused them on me. Then, in a soft voice she said, “Sure, I’m still open to that, Carl. It’s just that … well, it’s complicated. I still need some time. It’s not the kind of decision I can just turn around and make in a day.”

Feeling better, now that some of my fears had been
openly addressed, I plopped down on the floor in front of the chair where ol’ girl was seated and said, “Well, what about a night, then? I’m saying, when we get back home, you could come on over to my place, I could draw you a warm bath, give your back a nice rub, your feet a slow, sensuous massage—and then, if you act right, I could even throw in a little toe-sucking here and there.”

I slid off one of her shoes, nibbled on her big toe, and pretended like I was fixin’ to make good on the promise, right then and there. And for the first time that day I got a genuine smile out of her.

“You play too much,” she said. “Now give me back my shoe.”

“No, the problem is you don’t play enough,” I said as I rose up on my knees and shoved her shoe down the front of my pants. “Now come down here and give me some sugar and I’ll give it to you.”

She laughed and said, “If one of my brothers should happen to walk up in here you’re gonna have a whole lot of explaining to do.”

I said, “So what you waiting on? Hurry up and get your butt down here.”

To my surprise, she did. She eased herself onto the floor next to me, plucked her shoe from my pants, and when I leaned over to collect on my end of the deal, ol’ girl laid ’em on me—long, sweet, keep-a-brother-coming-back-for-more kind of kisses that almost made me forget we were still in her parents’ house.

There was an urgency in her kisses, an urgency that both thrilled and scared me in much the same way the look I saw in her eyes did when we finally paused to catch our breaths.

But before either of us could say anything, Nora poked her head around the corner and said, “Ooh wee, I’ma sho’ll tell it! Mr. and Mrs. Abrahams, you better get in here quick. Faye and Carl in your den, down on the floor, fixin’ to straight get freaky with it!”

The trip to Water Valley couldn’t have been more perfect—for Carl, that is. He got rave reviews and durn near a standing ovation from the home folk—especially my mama, who made a big show of fawning all over the man, like he was royalty or something. And Carl seemed right at home sitting out under the shade tree, drinking wine out of a jelly jar, and backslapping with my big-headed brothers.

But out of everybody, I’d have to say it was my father who really surprised me. I was in the kitchen stirring up a big pitcher of lemonade to replace the one we’d already finished when he strolled in and said, “How you like your mama’s new refrigerator?”

At first glance, the question came off as an entirely legitimate one. My mama had been needing a new refrigerator for the longest, but given the shaky state of my finances, I’d been hard pressed to come up with the cash—that is, until that fateful night in the mall when I’d bumped into Scoobie with his open checkbook and guilty conscience. I’d taken half of the money and turned it over to Nora as an extra payment over and beyond what I already give and owe her. The other half I’d sent on to my mama with instructions for her to make Daddy or one of my big-headed brothers take her to pick out the fridge she wanted. But it wasn’t long after I assured my dad that as long as Mama was happy with her choice of appliances, I was too, that I realized his true motive for wanting to talk to me.

“So … Carl tells me he’s a FedEx man. You know, ever since you got on down at the VA your mama’s kind of had her heart set on you bringing home some nice doctor, one of them smart, good-looking Ben Carson/Marcus Welby types.”

Rather than let my daddy in on the fact that I’d hardly
be interested in such a beast, I just played along with him. “Well, if the way she’s been doting on him is any indication, she’s either changed her mind or else is looking to trade you in.”

My daddy laughed and without skipping a beat, turned around and asked, “You known him long?”

I told him the truth, which was, “He’s been subletting the condo next to ours for close to eight months now.”

Looking all serious, my daddy came over and stood next to me before he said, “From what I gather he’s more than just a few years older than you, isn’t he? Been married before and he’s got, what? Two or three kids?”

I didn’t know if he was asking or telling, but in any case my response was, “I wouldn’t go reading too much into his having come along with us, if I were you. By no means is this some sort of ‘let’s go meet the folks’ kind of visit. At the moment and until further notice, all we are is friends, okay?”

My dad grunted and said, “I’m sorry to hear that. He seems like a decent enough fella. But I guess I always have been kind of partial to a man with calluses on his hands. Lets you know he ain’t afraid of a little hard work. And you know the way they make stuff these days, it don’t never hurt to have a man who knows how to fix a thing or two.”

I said, “Daddy, please. Would you stop already?”

He said, “What? I ain’t trying to pick ’em for you. That’s the kind of meddling I leave to your mama. Long as I get me a grandson out the deal, I don’t really care one way or the other.”

I laughed and told him, “I’ll be sure to make a mental note of that.”

Even though he was grinning, I knew he was halfway serious about the grandson thing. With five kids between them, it’s not like my brothers haven’t been trying, but thus far all the grands they’ve brought home to meet the old man have been girls.

After he left the kitchen, I couldn’t help but wonder how my father might react to the secret I’d been keeping from him and the rest of the family for the past twelve years. Would his disapproval and disappointment eventually give way to acceptance and pride? And what were the chances of him ever coming to like Scoobie as much as he already seemed to like Carl?