Choose Me (21 page)

“You want something to drink?” she asked abruptly, hurrying out of the bathroom.

“Sure,” I answered, though what I wanted to do was leave altogether. She went into the kitchen and I withrew to the living
room. I sat in a rattan chair and rubbed my hands together.
What was I doing?
I brought my hands to my face and smelled strawberries-and-cream all over again. I wiped my hands on my thighs and looked
at her wedding picture.

“Was your husband … your ex … Puerto Rican?”

“No. He’s Black.” She entered the living room with two wine glasses.

“I don’t drink,” I told her.

“It’s sparkling white grape juice. Non-alcoholic. It’s good.”

I took a glass and tasted it, nodding in agreement. “So, you like Black men, huh?”

She gave me the dirtiest look. “I hate when people say that,” she said, curling up on the cream-colored pillow-back sofa.
“You sound just like my father. Just because I happened to marry a Black man and dated a couple of them doesn’t mean I prefer
them. I’m attracted to them, just like I’m attracted to Latin men and an occasional Caucasian. My sister’s husband is also
Black. Well, half Black. You can’t help who you like, or fall in love with—or think you love.”

I was amused by her defensive stance and played into it to take the edge off my frustration. “It’s okay to like the brothers.
I’m not mad at you.”

“If you saw my cousins, you’d think they were Black. Some of them are darker than you.”

“Shoot,
you’re
darker than me,” I cracked.

“Look—” she started, tilting her head in warning.

“Relax,” I said, laughing, holding out my hand because she looked like she was about to take my head off. “I’m just messing
with you.”

She set her glass on the coffee table and began to section her hair with her fingers and twist it into individual coils. I
watched, puzzled.

“You straighten your hair with a relaxer so you can twist it?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah. I don’t really like my hair straight. I just relax it to get the kinks out.”

“Why don’t you lock it?”

She flinched slightly. “Too drastic. I mean, certain hairstyles look better on some people but not on others—”

“You mean it’s okay for Blacks?”

“No,” she said in a condescending tone. “I’ve seen a lot of people who aren’t Black with locks and locks look good on them.
I mean, for me, it would be drastic. I’ve never colored my hair or cut it or anything like that. Maya’s the one who’s always
experimenting with her hair.”

I watched as she continued twisting her hair, wondering if she was going to bring up the kiss we had just shared. I decided
to be direct. “Are you really celibate?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation as she continued twisting.

“For how long?”

“Awhile.”

“Months? Years?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I was just curious … Do you go around kissing men, getting them excited just for kicks?”

She stopped twisting her hair and looked directly at me. “No. I guess I should apologize. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It
was wrong.”

“It felt right.”

“That’s the problem. Not everything that feels right
is
right.”

“Are you saying we … you and me …?”

“I’m saying I can’t … how do I say this? I can’t start a relationship that involves sex before marriage, or that doesn’t lead
to marriage. No matter how much I’m attracted to a man. Especially since I don’t want to get married anytime soon.”

“So you’re not going to be with a man ’til you get married?”

“That is my plan.” She leaned back into the sofa, interlacing her fingers.

“You do that a lot,” I pointed out.

“What?”

“That, with your hands. It reminds me of that kid’s game. ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple …’”

“‘Open the door and out come the people,’” she finished, wiggling her fingers.

“I do that with my niece and nephew.”

We laughed, and I relaxed for the first time as she finished twisting the last few strands of her hair and I sipped my drink.
I tried to think of the best way to say good-bye. I could lie and say I had started seeing the girl whose card I accidentally
gave her that first night. Or I could just tell her the truth, that there was no way I could be with a woman whom I couldn’t
make love with at some point. Marriage was in my future but the future was not anytime soon. I have heard of men who said
that when they met the woman of their dreams, their first thought was,
“That’s the woman I’m going to marry.”
That’s what I wanted to feel one day, to know that when I met
the
woman I was going to marry, that I would know it right away, without a shadow of a doubt.

The ice in my glass was melting but I sipped the watery white grape juice anyway to keep from talking. King staggered sedately
into the living room, a canine version of John Wayne. That was one scary animal. He nuzzled his oversized head on Eva’s lap
and I watched with slight envy as she caressed his loose jowls. She didn’t look like she needed anybody, least of all a man.
All she had to do was kiss that beast or allow him to lick her face, and my decision to bow out would be sealed.

I turned my attention to the words of the current song playing:
“It’s because there is someone who’s got my back, oh yes, there is someone I’ll never lack, the one and only one, yes, the
one and only one
…”

She broke the quiet first. “It’s been a while since I’ve been with a man that I felt … I had any feelings for,” she said,
still stroking the dog. “So I don’t know if I kissed you because you just happened to be here or if it’s … because it’s you.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be pleased or insulted by her explanation.

She went to the bookcase and pulled out my tattered book and handed it to me.

“I finished reading your poems. I really liked them. I liked the way you titled the poems with numbers, like the chapters
in the Bible. Do the numbers have any significance?”

“They relate to a particular date, or year. Like ‘Father, Eighty-Three.’ My father died in 1983.”

“So it’s autobiographical,
no
?”

He smiled wryly. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Very clever. You were what, seventeen? My mother died when I was fifteen.”

“I guess we have a lot in common.” I hoped she didn’t ask me anything else about my father; the topic was off-limits.

“Have you tried submitting them to a publishing house?”

“I don’t think anyone’s interested in my therapeutic verse. I wrote them for me and gave them to my family as gifts, in case
I didn’t, you know, get through the cancer. Then I found I had more copies than family.” I laughed. “I have more copies in
storage. I’ll send you a newer copy.”

“There
are
Christian publishing houses.”

“Hmmm,” I said vaguely. I leaned back and relaxed, turning my attention back to the CD, enjoying the beat more than the singer
who rattled on in what sounded like a foreign language. It was hard to believe he was speaking English. On the last track,
I was able to make out some of the words from my favorite Psalm, number 23:
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life …

“‘
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,’”
I sang along in a fake Jamaican accent.

She smiled. “Do you want to borrow the CD?” she asked when the track finished playing. “It’s a copy. My sister has the original.”

I thought about that for a second. If I borrowed it, I would have to eventually return it, prolonging the inevitable. “I better
not.”

She pressed the eject button on the remote control and put the CD in its case, handing it to me. “You let me read your book,
I can let you borrow my CD.”

When I still hesitated, she sighed with exasperation and said, “I tell you what. You can keep it. As a thank-you for the tea
and the oil. I can always burn another one using my sister’s. That way, you don’t have to worry about returning it.”

We talked about writing and music, boxing and God, but we didn’t discuss the kiss in the bathroom again. On the tip of my
tongue were the kiss-off lines I had used on other women to let them down easily or to get rid of them as quickly and painlessly
as possible, depending on who they were.
This isn’t working out for me. There’s someone else.
Also in the back of my mind were the sweet-nothings and quasi-lies disguised as terms of endearment, which I had used on
other women in order to break them down, to move the relationship to the next level.
I’m a one-woman man. I woke up this morning with you on my mind.
Or the most potent of them all,
You know I love you girl,
though I was very, very careful about using that one. But then maybe I wouldn’t have to say anything at all. Something told
me Eva’s resolve would be difficult, if not impossible, to break. She was backed by a powerful force I wasn’t sure I wanted
to mess with, someone definitely out of my league.

A KISS IS
never just a kiss. As harmless as it might seem, a kiss is never innocent. Especially between a man and a woman.
Especially when it is on the mouth. A kiss is only the first step, the beginning of bigger and more complicated things. This
was what I constantly reiterated to the students in the Youth Ministry during our rap sessions.

When you’ve done something wrong, even if it felt right, it is easy to convince yourself that as long as no one got hurt,
everything is alright. I knew I never should have allowed Adam into my house. Simone would say the reason I was feeling guilty
was that I had been brainwashed to believe premarital sex—or any activity leading up to it—was wrong. But because I had been
there before, and knew how bad things could get, I knew I couldn’t engage in casual sex anymore. It would be like taking two
steps back, regressing to the old days of uncertainty and powerlessness. In the beginning, I could deceive myself into believing
everything was fine, but eventually reality would hit.

And yet, after Adam left, I couldn’t stop reflecting on our kiss in the bathroom, about what could be, and then about the
worse-case scenario if I gave in. Day in and day out, I thought of his hands in my hair, holding my face, caressing my lips.
Every time I made a cup of spearmint tea, I thought of him. When I thought of his hair, the long, thin ropes, fuzzy and sturdy
between my fingers, I was reminded of my first Black doll. Until I was five, my mother had always bought Maya and me White
dolls. Then one day I stood in the middle of a crowded Toys “R” Us store and screamed, “I don’t want a White Rub-A-Dub Dolly,
I want a brown one!”

I hated myself for losing control, for allowing him to come into my thoughts at any given moment. We had departed with no
promises of keeping in touch, no mention of where, if anywhere, our kiss would lead. What did I expect? I couldn’t go any
further with him without compromising my beliefs. If I pursued him, I would only be leading him on.

In the days following the kiss, I couldn’t help wondering how the old anti-smoking ads had exaggerated, proclaiming that kissing
a smoker was like kissing an ashtray. There had been no hint of nicotine on his breath, his lips, only the slightest minty
taste of chewing gum or mouthwash. Maybe he had made up his mind he was going to make a move. Maybe my prayers that he would
be delivered from the addiction of smoking had worked, I thought. Maybe he would come to church more often, get saved, and
… Periodically, I had to literally shake my head in order to get Adam out of my mind, get out of the flesh and back into the
Word.

Times like this I wished I could relive my initial conversion, when I longed for that feeling of rebirth I had experienced
when I was first saved, like breathing fresh air or walking in from the cold into a warm kitchen. Back then, reading the Bible
was like reading poetry, the words flowing with a rhythm of their own. Back then, I couldn’t understand, couldn’t fathom,
how some people denied God. I couldn’t get enough of God then. Every night since Adam’s kiss, I prayed for that feeling again.

During the next week, I immersed myself in church: morning and evening service on Sunday; Bible study on Wednesday, which
I had been missing lately; ending with Youth Night on Thursday.

When I arrived at Youth Night, Johnny was all business, quickly going over his structured lesson plan of typed questions.
I was distracted, thinking about the terms of the celibacy contract I had broken so far, like being alone with a member of
the opposite sex and soul-kissing. Adam was also not officially “a man of God.” Then I thought,
I’m an adult, not a teenager!
So why was I seeking redemption?
Brainwashing,
Simone would say.
Christian guilt,
Maya would say. Too many voices in my head, too many cooks in the kitchen.

We were supposed to study Galatians and Psalm 141 in preparation for Johnny’s lesson and I tried to concentrate, stumbling
through my Bible. Silently, I read along as Johnny called on various students to read out loud. Galatians 5, verses 16 and
17 stayed on my mind:
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what
is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so
that you do not do what you want.
I allowed the words to sink in and prayed that the spirit would flow through me, filling me inch by inch.
Why did I let down my guard, allow Adam into my spirit?
I thought guiltily, then I shut my eyes tightly to push the reprimand out of my head. I listened as Johnny took over most
of the instruction, answering questions from the most outspoken students about the peer pressure they endured with regards
to sex and what to do when they were taunted for being virgins. As always, when Johnny was in charge, I noticed that the boys
were more vocal than the girls, who shrugged or gave brief answers when called upon.