Hold Me in Contempt (2 page)

“I just told you I'm in love,” he said. He leaned across the table and added softly, “I'm gonna marry her.”

I was about to laugh before I realized that he was dead serious. Then a wave of confusion mixed with anger and maybe a little bit of caution washed over me, leaving me silent.

“That's why I invited you to brunch,” Kent went on, “to tell you I'm in love and I'm getting married. I need you, yo.”

“Need me? For what?”

“It's nothing really. Small fries for my big sister. See, Lydia got into some shit, so it's gonna be hard for us to get her into the country.”

“Us? What? Are you kidding me? So that's why you invited me here? To get your prostitute girlfriend into the country?”

“Don't call her a prostitute,” Kent said, raising his voice. “She ain't like that. She's a good girl. She just got into a little trouble. That's all.”

“What kind of trouble?” I looked at him as crazily as he sounded.

“She has some family in BX, and she was here last year visiting. Five-O picked her up in Hunts Point, saying she was hoeing, but it wasn't nothing like that.”

“Really?”

“Nah, yo. She was there for her cousin's bachelor party. That's all.”

“So, the police just randomly found her walking the street in Hunts Point, which is known for prostitution, and arrested her?” I hoped he'd hear the insanity.

“Word!” Kent confirmed, chewing on a bite of the smoked salmon omelet he'd ordered. “And that's why we need you to pull some strings for her. They say she can't come back to the US. Not even if I marry her. And you know a nigga ain't moving to Rio to be with the meda-medas for the rest of his life, so I need you to get shorty here.”

“No can do,” I said flatly.

“Yes you can.”

“Sure can't.”

“Why not? You're the assistant district attorney for New York County. I know you can pull some strings. Call in some favors. Fuck it, call the mayor!” He laughed.

“No. I don't work in immigration, and I certainly don't call in favors for this kind of crap. I save that for things like Rucker Park . . .  ​and what was that drama you got caught up in on the turnpike?”

“Oh, you're going to bring up that cracker trooper? A nigga was just taking a piss.”

“
On
the highway,” I reminded him.

“So? That's in the past.” Kent sat back again, deflated. “See, I knew you'd bring that shit up. Knew you'd act funny. I thought inviting your sadiddy ass out to this spot would actually make you act right. But you ain't got no act right for your baby bro.”

“That's a double neg—” I started, but stopped myself. “Act right? So, I don't have any act right because I don't want to get involved with you trying to marry some woman you just met?”

“Yup. That's how you act,” Kent said in a way he knew would get to me. “Like you always forget what it's like out here for niggas like me. Just trying to find love and shit. Nah mean? Folks blow up and forget where they came from. Forget how they got where they at.” His eyes cut me accusatorily.

For all of Kent's faults, his many shortcomings, he never failed to support me at whatever I was doing. Our parents became addicted to crack when we were in elementary school, and though he was ninety-eight seconds younger than me, Kent jumped into the role of caretaker. He stopped going to school and ran errands for the drug dealers so we had something in the refrigerator and coats in the winter. And even though our father eventually went to rehab and got clean, Kent stayed on the block to pay my way through Morgan State University and gave me a suitcase filled with hundreds when I was accepted to Columbia Law. It was the classic story of many families in our neighborhood at that time. Drugs took a lot away from us, but then drugs also made it possible for us to survive.

“Lydia is gonna be my wife. I love her. She's everything I've wanted in a woman—soft, beautiful, nice,” he said as I ate and looked away, rolling my eyes. “She ain't nothing like these chicks here.”

“I'm sure she's great, but why do you have to marry her? Why get married at all? I thought you said you didn't want any more kids. What's the point?”

“That's the thing, yo. Lydia don't want any more kids either. She already has four. She don't want no more shorties.” Kent smiled like this was a plus.

“I can't listen anymore. I can't even listen anymore. This is crazy. Are you serious? You're a thirty-one-year-old man. There's no way you could think this is a good idea.”

“See, you're judging Lydia. You don't even know her. Look, why don't you come through the crib tonight? We gonna be on Skype and shit. You'd like her,” Kent said, trying to make it sound as if the idea had just come to mind, but it was evident that it was all a part of his plan to pull me in. “And you can see your father. I know you ain't been home in a minute.” Kent still lived in his childhood bedroom in the brownstone our grandparents left our father.

“I've been drowning at work,” I said. “And I can't come tonight. I'm busy.”

“Too busy to meet your future sister-in-law?”

“Meet? What am I supposed to say to her?”

“Well, you ain't gonna be saying much.” Kent laughed slyly. “Because she don't hardly speak no English.”

“What? How do you—I don't even want to know,” I said. “I'm busy tonight anyway. Tamika's son has a fencing match, and I promised I'd be there to support him.”

“Fencing? What the fuck cuzzo have Miles doing that shit for? That tall-ass nigga need to be balling. He's, like, five-seven at ten. I got connects at Christ the King and St. John's, too. Get him that fat scholarship.”

“She just wants him to try different things. Expand his range, so he's not stuck on the basketball thing like everyone else where we came from,” I said, realizing that Kent wasn't listening to anything I was saying.

His eyes were molesting something behind me that I knew from experience likely had a big behind and huge breasts. I turned to see what he was eyeing so I could blast him for mentally groping a woman after he'd solemnly sworn his love and devotion to Latin Lydia. But when I twisted my neck, I wished I'd stayed set on Kent.

Hipster Holly was seating two people I never wanted to see again in life. Two people I'd wished dead on more than one occasion. My ex-fiancé and my former roommate/best friend. At once I wanted to disintegrate into the concrete and dribble down into the sewer—well, maybe I wanted that for them. I just wanted to disappear.
Poof
.

“Yo, honey is bad. Ass and titties on an Asian chick?” Kent was fantasizing in his own little world and probably had no idea he was speaking aloud. “She got a little black in her though. Skin kinda brown. She sexy as fuck.”

“Shit.” I turned back to the table and struggled so hard to swallow a gob of sad spit that had gathered at the back of my throat that I was sure everyone outside of the restaurant could hear me. I could feel my enemies turn to the table and notice me. Suddenly, I was overly aware of how my black linen slacks weren't ironed, my Hebru Brantley T-shirt looked dingy, and I was in worn-down flip-flops—​not the chic stilettos I'd purchased for the sole purpose of running into them at some point. But here? Why here? 44 & X was my favorite brunch spot, and everyone knew it. They knew it. The three of us had had brunch here together. I looked like a budding lesbian who couldn't get anyone but her twin brother to take her out to brunch on Sunday afternoon.

“Real recognize real. Don't act like she ain't fine.” Kent laughed like I was being petty and looked at me sinking deeper into my seat. “What? What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Look, are you ready?” I asked quickly, covering my half-eaten omelet with the napkin that had been sitting on my lap.

“Ready? What? I ain't finished eating yet.” He pointed down at his smoked salmon omelet, which was covered in so much ketchup, it made me want to vomit. “I know you ain't that jealous. She's fine, but—”

“I know her.”

“Oh, that's what's up. Hook a nigga up.” Kent sounded relieved and probably completely missed how his suggestion undermined everything he'd invited me to the restaurant to achieve.

“That would be impossible,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, because you're allegedly in love with someone you met, like, five minutes ago and about to get married—”

“I ain't married
yet—
”

“And she's . . . ​on a date.” Hot tears were gathering behind my eyes at that reality.

“Fuck that. Ain't no way that little nigga is hitting that shit right. I'd bag shorty in a minute.” Kent laughed. “Put me in the game, Coach Kim. Hook a nig—”

“Look at the man sitting at the table, Kent,” I directed, irritated. “
Look
at him.”

“What I need to look at this nigga for?” Kent squinted for a minute, and then his mouth fell open like he was looking at a dead body for the first time. “Yooooo, that's Ronald
McDonald
. Your ex—” He stopped himself and looked at me. “Oh, that's the . . .  ​Asian Kim? Wait, he's fucking Asian Kim? You ain't tell me that.” He looked back at her. “I thought I recognized that ass.”

“I did so tell you,” I said, feeling a little tear slide from my left eye. “I told you what she did, and—”

“Oh, don't start on that shit, Kiki Mimi,” Kent said, leaning toward me like a basketball coach about to pull me out of the game. “You can't let that lame nigga see you over here crying. That shit was, like, two years ago when y'all called off the wedding.”

“One year, two months,” I divulged.

“So. Yo, dead that. You moved on. You better than that nigga Ronald McDonald. I mean, that nigga's
real
name is Ronald McDonald. Come on. You couldn't marry that clown.”

He was trying to build me up, but hearing the word
marry
tore me apart, and a few more tears escaped my eyes. Then Kent placing his hand on my shoulder to comfort me opened the floodgates, so I jumped up from the table to rush inside to the bathroom before I unraveled into a mess.

I went into a stall and locked the door behind me like a monster was on my tail when really it was just my past. Ronald McDonald was a funny name, but my history with him was nothing to laugh about. I loved that man intensely and without warranty. We'd met our sophomore year at Morgan State. He was skinny and too smart. He was always talking about how he was going to be a lawyer when he graduated from college and how he was going to save all the poor black people of the world. I'd always been really smart, but I had no idea what I intended to do after Morgan State. I was the first person in my family to go to college, and all I knew was that after I graduated I wanted to get a good job so I could go home, find my mother, and pay for her to go to a good rehab place in someplace like Malibu or Denver like all of the white celebrities did on television.

Needless to say, skinny Ronald McDonald and all of his big talk about plans and the future was more than attractive to me. I just craved his direction, and soon his dream became my dream. By junior year, he was my best guy friend, and we planned to go to law school together after college. But there was only one thing missing from our dynamic duo: both Ronald and I were virgins. Kent and his drug-dealing crew had scared all the neighborhood boys off when I was in high school, so I hadn't so much as made out with anyone.

All of that changed one night during homecoming weekend junior year. Ronald had pledged Kappa the semester before, and he was in his chapter's step show. I got there early with my girls and sat in the front row ready to cheer him on. We were debating who'd look the hottest onstage and who'd likely drop his cane mid-performance. I mean, some of these guys we'd known since our freshman year, and now they'd pledged and become pseudo celebrities on campus—or so they thought.

When the Kappas hit the stage, Ronald was in front of me. And he was moving his body in ways that tickled the little space behind my ears. By the middle of the show, he was shirtless and working his cane so fast, beads of sweat trickled down hard abs I'd never seen. I kept thinking, “What has he been doing all summer?” My girls were cheering and screaming his name, but I was speechless, standing there with my arms folded over my chest and feeling something new, twitching and hot, between my thighs.

Ronald didn't drop that damn cane at all, and by the time he shimmied off the stage with his frat brothers, snaking his body back and forth, I knew I was going to be waiting for him in his dorm after we finished partying that night.

I didn't say a word to my girls. In two years on the yard, I'd learned that every single one of them had a big mouth, and I was so afraid that if I did something with Ronald and told them, it would get out and people would call me a “Kappa set-out” (code for “whore”). But there was nothing wrong with doing and not telling, and I knew Ronald wasn't the type of guy to go telling his frat brothers all of his business, so once we all left the club where Ronald had been strolling with his brothers through the party before drooling freshman girls, I was waiting right outside his door.

He smiled and invited me in like it was any other night and we were about to have one of our “bestie” sleepovers and watch old reruns of
Martin
after smoking a little weed, but I told him not to turn on the television. I was already drunk enough to act out what I was feeling between my thighs, and while he was in the middle of a panicky retelling of his performance, like I hadn't been there, I jumped right on top of him on his bed. I could tell he was nervous. He hadn't ever seen me like that. His hands were sweating and I could feel his heart beating into my chest as he kissed me like the Tin Man from
The Wizard of Oz
.