Boaz Brown (36 page)

I ordered a steak and Stelson had barbecue ribs. The food was scrumptious, and I had no qualms about licking my fingers in that restaurant. I saw enough buttcracks and cleavage to last me a lifetime at Tiny Tim’s. I figured all was fair in there.

Between songs, Stelson and I applauded the singers, decent and horrible. Two little girls sang one of Britney Spears’s songs and got a standing ovation. They sounded a mess, but the crowd encouraged them nonetheless. I was starting to like old Tiny Tim’s place.

Out of the blue, Stelson dared me to sing.

“What?”

“I’d love to hear your singing voice.” He motioned toward the stage.

“You are asking for a slow and painful death if you want to hear me sing,” I laughed.

It all happened so quickly. Stelson grabbed my hand, pulled me toward the stage, and got the crowd chanting my name, “LaShondra! LaShondra! LaShondra!” I’d learned from my brief experience in the crowd that once you were out of your seat, they didn’t relent until you sang at least a few bars. Even I had heckled a noticeably shy woman into singing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” only moments before.

When Stelson finally got me to the stage, I whispered in his ear, “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Hey, I’ll sing with you if you want me to,” he laughed.

“No.” I shooed him away. “You asked for it.” He stepped back, and I threw my jacket to him. The crowd cheered as though I had
really
taken something off. They just didn’t know—I was about to cause them permanent auditory damage.

“First I was afraid.
. .“ From that point on, everybody sang along with me, including Stelson, as I closed my eyes and belted out the words to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” as if I had been down that road a million times.

I cracked on all the high notes and was off tune, I’m sure, for most of the song. But that didn’t matter, the crowd’s cheers made me forget, if only for a while, that I was a grown black woman with problems and issues. For those few minutes, I was the crazy me that I used to be when I was a kid, out on the playground chanting with my little friends—back when all I had to worry about was doing my homework and making my bed.

I did a Diana Ross diva move and pulled Stelson up on stage with me. He and I shared the microphone for the last few chorus lines. I felt as goofy as all outdoors, but
it
was unadulterated fun. Lost in the music and the moment, I screamed/sang the words to the triumphant song of overcoming love’s pain.
“I will survive. Hey, hey!”

We screamed with the crowd when the song was over, and rushed back to our seats doubled over in laughter.

“Oh, Stelson,” I said, holding my sides, “I haven’t done anything that crazy in a long time.”

“You were great, sweetheart.” He kissed me on my cheek—and a little too close to my ear. I do believe my earlobes picked up a signal and transmitted a message to my entire body: we are back in business—be on alert.

“You weren’t too bad.” I raised an eyebrow and then gave him a smile.

We left Tiny Tim’s much later than I had predicted, but the night had been worth the few hours of sleep
it
cost me. “Thanks for everything,” I said as Stelson pulled into my driveway.

“You’re sincerely welcome.” He parked and came around to open my door.

We walked up to my porch, and I motioned for him to join me on the swing. I smiled, remembering Peaches’ reaction to my choice of model 2104 when I’d had the house built.

“Why you want that big, country porch?” she’d asked. “People don’t have porches anymore.”

That night I was glad I hadn’t listened to her. Stelson sat next to me and gently pushed us off. The swing creaked slightly as we swayed in the crisp spring evening air. I pulled my legs up onto the seat and rested my head on his solid chest. His skin lay flat on his muscles. I wondered if he had an inch to pinch anywhere. We rocked there for a while, enjoying what was left of Saturday.

“My grandmother used to have a swing like this, only it was in the backyard. There was a big old cover on top of it. She’d make us stay outside all day, playing in the hot sun until we were just about to drop. If we told her we were thirsty, she’d say, ‘Go get some water from the hose,’ and we had to drink that hot, nasty water.” I laughed. “We got about two shades darker every time we went to Grandmomma Smith’s house in the summer. We
had
to play over there. All that watching television and playing video games was out when we went to her house. In the summertime you played until you were funky, and the only way you got in the house was when she felt sure that you would fall fast asleep after a hot bath and dinner.”

“Sounds like your grandmother was pretty tough,” Stelson snickered. “She reminds me of my uncle Rellis. That man would whip any child with or without a moment’s notice. He didn’t care whose child you were, and he didn’t care anything about child protective services. He told me one time that if I called them, he’d whip me right in front of them and then he’d turn around and whip them, too, just for comin’ on his property.”

“Your uncle Rellis must have been black.”

Stelson laughed.

“I can’t imagine you gettin’ a whipping,” I thought out loud. “When I was little, I used to think that only black kids got whippings.”

“You didn’t get out much when you were little, huh?” he laughed.

“It’s not that. I used to watch
The Brady Bunch
and all those shows with white families, and I never saw those kids get a whippin’. Contrast that with
What’s Happening!!
and
Good Times.
The black kids got whippin’s, but the white kids never did.”

“Well, that certainly wasn’t the case in my house. I used to think we were the only white kids that got whippin’s.”

“What was the worst whippin’ you ever got?” I asked.

“Let me think.” It took him quite a while to come up with one. “Hmm. I guess it would have to be the time that I stole ten dollars out of my momma’s purse.” The Louisiana drawl came out with his memories, taking him back in time. “It was so stupid. I must have been about ten years old. There was no one else in the house except my mom and me. I heard the ice cream truck coming and I asked her if I could have some money. She said no without offering any kind of explanation.

“I got so mad, I decided I was going to get the money on my own. So I sneaked into her room and took ten dollars out of her purse—ran around the corner because by that time the truck was already coming up the next block over. I bought myself a Bomb Pop and a Chick-O-Stick. And I walked right back into that house with the Bomb Pop and that Chick-O-Stick like she wasn’t going to notice.”

“You came back in the house with the evidence?”

He nodded. “LaShondra, I can’t even tell the story now without thinking about that whippin’. I promise you, the beating she put on me kept me out of the Louisiana state penitentiary. I thought I was gonna die that day. I really did.”

“I just can’t see that. You’re too good, you know?”

“So are you,” he said.

“How do you figure I’m too good?” I asked, raising my head to look at him for a moment, then slowly lowering it as he spoke again. I wanted to feel his chest vibrate with every word.

“Your faith, your confidence. The way you give yourself to kids no one else wants to spend
time
working with. And the way you handled me with a long-handled spoon. It’s like you bring out the best in me. I really, really like that.”

Stelson pushed us off again. I glanced at my watch. “Ooh, I’ve got to get to bed. We’re just all out here swingin’ on the porch like we don’t have church in the morning.”

“Yep.” Stelson stole a peek at his watch, too. “Doesn’t look like I’m going to make the eight o’clock service.”

He stood by me as I searched for my keys. “Thanks again for everything tonight.”

“It was my pleasure. By the way, I’ve got another business trip scheduled for Tuesday. I haven’t looked at the itinerary yet, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be back until Thursday afternoon at the earliest.”

“How can you not be sure of when you’re going to be back?” I asked him—it sounded like an old line. I hadn’t asked him that the last time he left for business, but for some reason I wanted to know.

“Well, my secretary arranges all these things for me. And to answer the real question that I think you’re asking,
it
has never mattered to me how much I traveled or how soon I could get back home— not until now.”

I felt a little ashamed. “I’m sorry, Stelson. I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything. It’s just that I’ve played the game before and I am
not
the one.”

“Neither am I. And that’s precisely why I’m here with you right now.”

Moonlight wedged between us and illuminated Stelson’s face. I felt his touch on my arm, and the hairs on my arm stood at attention. Then he leaned in and hugged me for only an instant. My heart felt like it was gonna thump right out of my chest. In that moment the sleeping giant within me woke, and girlfriend was hungry. I wanted to jump up and wrap my arms around his neck, hook my legs on his hips.
Good Lawd, it’s been a long time.
But Stelson pulled away.

“Good night, LaShondra.”

“Good night, Stelson.”

Call me special, but I watched him through the peephole as he walked back to his car. Was he walking, or was he gliding? He was smooth, but it was a different kind of smooth. The kind of smooth that’s inherent.

Stelson wasn’t trying to be masculine or divine. It just oozed out of him. It was an inside-out thing. He was a man who had been perfected in God’s love, and he couldn’t have stopped it from flowing out of him if he wanted to.

Chapter 18

Daddy came in from work and hung his jacket on the coat rack. I ran from the living room to greet him, but stopped when I noticed his hand all bandaged up. “What happened, Daddy?”

“What’s the matter, Jon?” Mother rushed in behind me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, gently examining the white gauze wrapped around the wound.

Daddy grimaced and pulled his hand back, walking past us and taking a chair in the kitchen. “Got bit by a dog. Little mutt snuck up on me and took a chunk out of my hand.”

“Daddy, why don’t you just quit working there?” I asked innocently.

“A grown man’s supposed to work. How do you think we got all this food? How do you think we pay for your clothes and this house?” he fussed.

I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s why you go to work?”

“Let me see it again, Jon,” Momma said, stepping between Daddy and me. She held his hand in hers and turned it over.

Momma grabbed Daddy by the arm and led him into the bathroom, where she tended to his hand. I eavesdropped on their conversation and learned that my father had fourteen stitches and would be off work the next day, with pay. When she’d finished changing the bandages, they both went back into the kitchen and Momma made Daddy something to eat.

“Daddy”—I approached him casually—”are you gonna have a scar on your hand like the one behind your ear?” This was my roundabout way of inquiring about the long, interesting flaw that always showed itself to me with my father’s profile. It looked puffy, like there was a big worm or something just under his skin. He’d never talked about it, but I couldn’t understand how something so obvious went without mention in our home. “Huh, Daddy?”

Daddy’s eyes narrowed, his glance piercing through me. “You stay out of grown folks’ business, you hear me?”

He said it with such ferocity that I never asked him about the scar again.

* * * * *

I called Peaches to let her know Grandmomma Smith had passed. I gave her all the details, and she said she’d be at the funeral.