Just Too Good to Be True (11 page)

CHAPTER
2

Barrett’s Backfield in Motion

Dear Diary,

Nico came by last night real late and put it down on me. My call to Brady had me all amped up and I sure did need some loving, so seeing Nico was perfect timing. When that man gives it to me, it feels like he’s sending shocks of pleasure through my body. He had me straddle him, and in his booming voice he whispered, “Make that pussy talk, baby. Make it talk.” I don’t care how fine these college boys are, none of them can compare to my Nico and his experience.

In honor of the first football game of the season, we played a little game ourselves—the football player and cheerleader. I put on my uniform, and I arranged my hair in two long ponytails with gold and green ribbons tied around them.

The girls on the squad wear these little green A-line skirts that are really short, with gold tights under them. I wore my skirt but said fuck the tights. Nico went crazy. The top is a midriff halter, gold and green with
Jags
across it. Most of these girls are so flat-chested they can get away with a little nude bra, but me and the twins need a full-fledged sports bra.

Nico told me I looked like a teenage girl, and I told him he looked like the older brother of my high school friend who I was secretly having an affair with. We drank champagne and just laughed together until the wee hours of the morning.

The sun woke me up and I rolled over and realized that Nico was gone, leaving behind his T-shirt for me to caress and inhale his masculine scent.

It’s game day, and at age twenty-nine I’m making my debut as a college cheerleader, and for some strange reason it excites me. I remember wanting to be a cheerleader when I was in junior high and my mother telling me she wasn’t wasting her hard-earned money for some pleated polyester skirt for me to shake my ass in.

It’s funny how things sometimes turn out.

CHAPTER
3

Carmyn vs. May-Jean

T
oday was the day I’d been waiting for since the end of last season: game day at Central Georgia University. I got to the stadium about three hours before the game so I could greet Brady and his teammates as they unloaded from the buses and walked to the stadium in the pregame ritual known as Jaguar Walk. My heart was bathed in such a feeling of pride when I got a glimpse of my son leading his team through the crowd. Brady was dressed in a dazzling white shirt, gold tie, and blue pin-striped suit, and as team captain he was the first player to follow the coaches and state troopers as they strolled into the dressing room. Along the way, they gave handshakes and hugs to the fans who lined up on both sides of the route to welcome their football heroes. Since I was at the beginning of the line, I got to give hugs to both Brady and Delmar. A lot of fans had posters of Brady shirtless, which I wasn’t sure I liked, and they were grabbing at him to sign them. Didn’t they know he had a game to play?

At the start of the game, I stood up with over 80,000 cheering fans as the band played the national anthem and then the school song.

When the band started playing the CGU fight song, I screamed even louder as I looked for Brady, and the cheerleaders led the team through the band and on to the field.

“CGU…CGU…CGU,”
the crowd cheered.
“Go Jags Go! Go Jags Go!”

My heart burst as Brady and two of his teammates met the opposing team at the center of the field. Just as the coin was tossed, a woman wearing a faux mink jacket, carrying a tub of popcorn and a liter of Coke, moved in front of me, blocking my view. I figured the Jaguars had won the toss when I heard the roar of the crowd.

“You must be Brady’s mom. I’m Maybelline, Delmar’s mom. May-Jean for short. He told me I would be sitting next to you,” Maybelline said. “It sho was nice of yo boy to give me a ticket, since that son of mine gave all his tickets away.”

“Hello,” I said with a smile and a glance at her tight-fitting getup, thinking,
The 1980s want that outfit back.
But I quickly told myself to stop being judgmental, folks are entitled to wear whatever they want.

“So sorry to hear about how Katrina forced you to move,” I said.

“Girl, that bitch did me a favor. I needed to git my ass up and out of humid New Orleans anyway, and I’m making a little money off it,” Maybelline said.

I fought hard not to raise my eyebrows and turned my attention back to the game. On the first play, the quarterback took the snap, faked a pass, and then handed the ball to Brady. At first he did a stutter step and it looked like he was going to be tackled in the backfield, but he sidestepped a defender, then ran behind Delmar, who plowed through several more defenders, giving Brady a clear line to the end zone.

The first play of the game—and Brady had scored with an eighty-yard run. This was going to be my baby’s year for sure. The entire stadium was on their feet, cheering, waving flags as the band played. I was jumping up and down, clapping my hands while I watched Brady race to the sideline into the huge arms of his teammates.

“Yeah, Brady. You go, baby,” I yelled.

“Eat ’em up. Tear ’em up. Give ’em hell, Jags,”
the crowd cheered after the band played the fight song.

“Yo boy is good, but I don’t think he would have done that if my son wasn’t blocking for him,” Maybelline said.

I didn’t respond, but something inside of me just wanted to haul off and give Maybelline a good slap, or at the very least tell her what I thought of any woman who would leave her son because she wasn’t ready to be a mother. Who was ever really ready to be a mother? You just did it.

“Do you think she’s mixed?” Maybelline asked.

I was trying to watch the game and ignore her, but I heard her voice again.

“I think she is mixed. Honey, after a while everybody gonna be mixed with something. Just a bunch of mutts. I bet she is mixed with sumthin’—don’t you think so, Carmyn?”

“Who?” I finally said, hoping she would stop her yacking.

“That girl down there on the field. I guess they call them pep girls.”

I glanced down on the field in front of the bench and saw a pretty, light-skinned black girl. I wondered if this was the Barrett Brady had mentioned.

“I don’t know.”

“I think she is. She remind me of one my girlfriend’s daughters from New Orleans. But that bitch was too evil to go to college. Just like her mama,” Maybelline said to herself, because I wasn’t listening. I was watching my baby play.

For most of the first half, I watched Brady as he raced for over 143 yards; still, I couldn’t really enjoy the game because of Maybelline’s constant jabbering. Whenever Delmar ran the ball, blocked for Brady, or made any kind of play, Maybelline would say, “You go ’head, Delmar. Run that ball. Do it, baby! My baby gonna be making plenty money real soon….”

All of a sudden, Maybelline grabbed my hand. “Girl, is that ring real or is it cubic zucchini? Look like you’re doing all right for yourself.”

I quickly pulled my hand back and said, “Of course it’s real.”

When halftime arrived, I quickly grabbed my purse and started to move away from my seat.

“Where you going?” Maybelline asked.

“Uh, I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I said, wondering why I had even told her that.

“Good. I gotta go, too. That cold drank is running right through me like beer normally do,” Maybelline said.

“What?” I asked a bit more abruptly than I had intended.

“You got wax in your ears, darling? I got to pee.”

During the trip to the restroom, Maybelline wobbled beside me on leopard-skin pumps that were way too high for her. I noticed that we had become the center of attention. I didn’t know exactly what it was that was getting so much notice, because there were so many possibilities.

It could have been her fur, or maybe the green, skintight Capri pants clinging to a shape that was long past its prime. Or maybe it was the striped tan shell that was struggling to contain the heavy, sagging breasts that bounced as Maybelline moved through the stadium thoroughfare as though the fans had come to see her.

I was thankful when we came to the entrance of the restroom. I quickly ducked into one of the stalls. When I saw the spotted shoes beneath the wall of the stall next to me, I just shook my head, wondering how I could get rid of Maybelline.

Suddenly, I heard a knock on the metal stall and heard Maybelline say, “You handling yo’ bizness over there, Carmie?”

I didn’t respond, silently praying that the second half of the game would move faster than the first.

When the game was
over, Maybelline hung around outside the players’ dressing room, clinging to me like a bad skin infection. I would have preferred to savor the Jaguars’ 35–14 victory over Texas Tech and Brady’s 234 yards rushing and two touchdown passes alone, rather than listen to Maybelline ramble on about nothing.

“That was a good game, wasn’t it?” she said.

“Yes, it was.”

“Our boys make the perfect team. If they keep playing like this, they’ll win all the games, don’t cha think?”

“Yup,” I said, trying my best not to encourage this woman into any additional conversation as we waited for our sons.

“We should get together before the next game. Maybe you can come by my place,” Maybelline said.

“You live up here?” I asked incredulously.

“Yep, but let’s keep that to ourselves. Delmar don’t know I took a little six-month lease on an apartment.”

“Why are you hiding that from him?”

“Because, honey, you know what they say. You got to spend money to make money,” Maybelline said, laughing.

I didn’t have a clue as to what this crazy woman was talking about, and I really didn’t want to know.

“Are you and your son real close?”

“Very.”

“Where’s his daddy?”

“Dead.”

“I know that ignorant-ass Jesse wishes I was dead. Look at him standing over there acting like he don’t see me. Can you believe he told my son I was dead just because I was trying to follow my dreams and make something of myself,” Maybelline said, smiling sorrowfully at me. “I was going to be a model slash dancer.”

“How did that work out for you?” I asked, thinking I knew why Jesse wanted to protect his son from embarrassment. Fathers, like mothers, sometimes have to make decisions that will protect their children. I certainly understood that.

“It didn’t. I wasted so much of my life, bouncing around here and there, letting men lie to me, tell me that I was going to be this and that, when all they wanted was one thing. A little taste of what’s between my legs. I ain’t got shit to show for all the joy I brought them men. But God has a plan. One day I was reading some magazines at the supermarket and I was thumbing through a sports magazine because there was a fine-ass man on the cover, and I see my baby’s name, and how he’s gonna be drafted and make a lot of money.”

“So that’s why you got in touch with him?”

“I was always planning on gettin’ around to it, but when I read that, I told myself it wasn’t no time like the present. I hear all the time ’bout young athletes buying houses and cars for they moms, and I’m Delmar’s mom. Ain’t no way around that.”

I saw my son walking toward me, so I stepped away from Maybelline and met Brady halfway. Maybelline walked over toward Delmar and his dad, who had a big smile on his face as he hugged his son.

When Brady approached me, there was someone beside him, a young lady wearing a cheerleader’s uniform with a very short skirt and sporting a bare midriff. She was the same girl I saw down on the field.

Brady gave me a huge hug and I kissed him on the cheek. I patted him on the back and whispered in his ear, “Great game, baby. This is going to be your year.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you,” Brady whispered back as he gave me another big hug.

He tried to step out of our embrace, but I still held tight to him.

“So where are we going to dinner? I need to call Lowell and let him know where to meet us,” I said.

“Ma,” Brady said, seeming to avoid the question. “This is Barrett. Barrett Manning,” he said, urging her forward with his hand placed at the small of her back. The gesture was too familiar for my taste.

Barrett stepped in front of me. She was pretty enough, I thought, in a fake-boobs, too-much-makeup kind of way. She had long hair that was styled nicely, very keen features, and a nice little shape. She looked like a poor man’s version of Ciara—that singer Brady had a photo of on his wall back home. Barrett looked like she could be a mixed-race child, but I wasn’t sure. But immediately, there was something that I didn’t like or trust about this girl. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew I would discover what it was if she stuck around.

“Hello, Ms. Bledsoe,” Barrett said, extending a hand. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“And I, you,” I said, shaking Barrett’s hand and adding nothing else.

I directed my attention back to my son and asked the question again.

“So what do you feel like for dinner? I’m starving,” I said. I was hoping that Brady hadn’t invited Barrett to dinner.

Brady seemed hesitant. He dropped his head and looked down at his gym shoes.

“Brady, what’s wrong?”

“Ma, why don’t you and Lowell go on without me? I promised Barrett I would go to dinner with her at this private club I’ve been dying to go to. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No, you didn’t tell me,” I replied. My feelings were hurt that Brady wanted to spend time with this girl rather than his godfather and me.

“Sorry, Mom, but tell me you understand?”

“No, Brady, I don’t quite understand,” I said softly. Ever since his freshman year, Brady and I had had a football-weekend ritual. I would drive up a couple of hours before the game, then join Brady and Lowell for dinner after the game. It was always that way, and now Brady wanted to change it. It was something I looked forward to, a way of spending quality time with my son while he was away at college.

“Ms. Bledsoe,” Barrett said, stepping forward and opening her mouth when she shouldn’t have. “I wanted to invite you to the private club, too, but they only had a reservation for two. I called to see if we could change it, but since it’s a football weekend the club was booked solid.”

“Thanks, but I wouldn’t have intruded anyway. What’s that expression? Oh yes, ‘three’s a crowd,’” I said as I eyed Brady, who looked away. Where was this little heifer getting money to take my son to a private club? I thought. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Brady to have a girlfriend. I did. But it had to be the right one. I could tell minutes after meeting Barrett that she wasn’t the one.

“Thanks for being so understanding,” Barrett said.

I ignored Barrett and looked at Brady and said, “So will your godfather and I get to see you before I leave?”

“Sure, Ma. I’ll come by Lowell’s as soon as we finish dinner.”

“Okay, baby,” I said as I gave him a half-hug.

“Brady, I don’t know if you can do that,” Barrett said as she tugged on Brady’s shirt.

Brady released himself from me and turned toward her.

“What?”

“I have something else planned. I’ll tell you about it later,” Barrett said.

“Okay,” Brady said. My son looked like a puppy eager to please.

“I hope to see you again real soon,” Barrett said.

I gave her a fake smile as I thought,
Don’t count on it, sister.

“Ma, before we go, let me take a picture of you and Barrett,” Brady said as he took his digital camera from his backpack.

I didn’t want to take a picture with this girl, but it was hard to say no to my son. So I stood next to Barrett and forced a smile. Thankfully, she didn’t put her arm around me, and I didn’t put mine around her.

“Okay, say ‘
Go Jags!’
on three. One…two…three,” Brady said.

“Go Jags,” I said through clenched teeth and a tight smile.

“Is something wrong with
your steak?” Lowell asked. After ordering my regular surf-and-turf dinner, I had spent most of the evening looking aimlessly at the other patrons as I picked at my steak with a fork.