Sweet Bye-Bye (11 page)

“Where are you going?”

“To my room. I’ll be right back.”

He motioned toward the lotion bottle and said, “Let me do that for you.” He held out his hand for the lotion.

“No,” I said.

“Girl, stop trippin’, and let your man do it.”

“Oh, okay,” I giggled.

He laughed, got up from the couch, and motioned his hands for me to lie down. I did and told myself that maybe it was just innocent when he was talking to the woman from Australia. I didn’t stay and join them, so for all I knew, I’d probably jumped the gun.

My living room smelled of mango fruit and smoked wood as the incense curled throughout the house. Eric went to my room, brought back a pillow for me, and put it under my head as I lay on my stomach. He poured some Vickie’s Secret lotion in his hands and rubbed them together.

He started with my feet, rubbing the lotion all over and pressing firmly into the arches of my feet with both thumbs. I cooed like a newborn. I needed to tell him that I was supposed to be his wife. He rubbed my calves, massaging the muscles and applying just the right amount of pressure.

“Eric, I don’t want to have premarital sex anymore. We’re getting older.”

“Chantell, we have been dealing with each other for a long time.”

I closed my eyes and gave in to this sensation that was how heaven must feel.

His strong yellow fingers went up my calves, rubbed my thighs. He raised my dress to get the back of my thighs, but I smoothed it back down. This was getting out of hand. He went up to my shoulders, rubbed in those creases. “Ohhhhh” was all I managed to say.

“I know,” he replied.

I had to stop this. What about the promise I had made to God? I prided myself on keeping my promises. Eric went for more lotion, and I turned over and faced him. I slid my bright orange dress back down again and looked at him. I shook my head no. He leaned down over me and gave me a little kiss on the lips, and nodded yes. Lotion was still all over his hands. Now was the time to tell him.

I put my manicured fingers to his face and said, “Let’s get married, Eric.”

With his knees in my couch, he leaned his face down toward me and looked me square in the eyes. He said, “Okay.”

I was so happy. “For real?”

“Um-hmph,” he said.

We were engaged! I kissed his forehead and his cheek. I didn’t need no therapist; there was nothing wrong with me. I was going to call Tia and tell her that I was joining her in the ranks of the married. Maybe I’d go over to my old church and see if my old pastor could marry us quickly. This was great. Me and my little dress were somethin’ else!

Eric sat up and pulled his shirt from over his head. I kissed his chest. My husband. I knew that I’d made that promise to God for a reason. Now, look, I could be Mrs. Eric Summit as early as next weekend.

“Let’s celebrate,” he said in a thick voice.

“Okay,” I said.

But he wasn’t my husband quite yet. “Do you have a condom?” I asked.

“No worries, baby,” he said as he pulled one out of his pocket. Good. We hadn’t been apart so long that he’d forgotten the rules.

Man, I couldn’t wait to tell Tia!

17

Thank You and Good Night

L
ater that evening, Eric and I lay in my bed, underneath my goosedown comforter. We’d been watching television, and he’d dozed off. We were wearing the matching pajamas that I’d picked up for us at Nordy’s last Christmas. We were finally getting some use out of them. They were green-and-cream paisleys with ducks patterned on them. He had the pants and the shirt, and it was mostly green. I had the big nightshirt, and it was mostly cream. I watched television and listened to his nighttime sighs until I got tired. I grabbed the remote, turned off the TV, and moved closer to him. I stared. The waves in his closely cut hair could make you seasick if you weren’t careful. I rubbed them in the direction that he’d trained them to grow.

I lay there fantasizing. We were going to make some pretty children one day. Tall, strong ones that were beautiful shades of brown. Little football players, like their dad. And little girls with perfect little preteen physiques and long hair. And they’d dance in leotards to jazz and ballet. I got closer and put my arm over his chest. He smelled good. The thought of us getting married made me feel comforted; I made a soft sigh as I exhaled. He felt me snuggling close to him.

“Night, Sabrina,” he mumbled.

I sat there frozen. I didn’t say a word. I took my arm from around him, put lots of blanket in between us, moved back over to my side of the bed, and closed my eyes. I was thinking that I must have heard him wrong. I kept trying to figure out what sounded like Sabrina. West Covina. A tambourine-a. The night scene-a.

As I thought about it more, my eyes started to fill with water. I wiped the tears away, cuz this wasn’t a time to be weak. Besides, I now realized what he’d said. He hadn’t said good night, Sabrina, he’d said, good night, sweet dream-a’s!

I shook him. He frowned. “Eric! Eric, wake up,” I said. I touched his shoulder with my hand, and he fanned it like he was shooing a fly.

I shook him again. “Eric Summit!”

He opened his eyes. “What?”

“Eric, if my old pastor, Pastor Fields, could marry us next weekend—you know, just a small little service until we could save for a larger shindig—could we do it?”

He yawned. “What? Naw, girl! Are you still on that kick? We ain’t getting married just like that!” He rubbed his eyes.

“You’re playing with me, right? Eric, you distinctly said that we could get married. I hadn’t had sex in almost four months because I was trying to be faithful to God. And I broke that because—” My voice was cracking, and I wiped away a tear before it reached my cheek.

He shook his head and lay back on the bed. “You’re just determined to tie me down, huh? Chantell, I am not ready to be tied down. So back up.”

“Well, why did you tell me that we were going to get married, then? You said it like I could go get my dress.”

I didn’t know what to believe anymore, then the anger rose up in me. “You told me that we were getting married, then you lay in my bed, called me by another woman’s name. How am I pressuring you, huh? How?” My voice cracked.

He shook his head like I was just pathetic. “Girl, I didn’t say all that. What I said was—”

I couldn’t take it. I slapped him upside the head as hard as I could. “Get out. Just get out of my bed!”

“Chantell! You’d better not hit me anymore. Understand?”

“No, I don’t understand!” I wasn’t afraid of him. Eric may have put me through a lot, but one thing that he didn’t do was put his hands on me. “And who the heck is Sabrina?” I demanded to know.

He just shook his head and tisked, like I was a hopeless case, and looked around for his pants.

“That’s right. That’s right! Get out of my bed! Get out of my life! Who wants to marry your old cheating behind anyway!”

I did, but that was beside the point.

Oftentimes, when you lose something, it heightens your desire to have it. I hadn’t given Eric two years of my life for nothing.

When he left, I put my head in the pillow where he had been, smelled his scent, and cried.

18

Sunday Morning

T
wo days had passed and I was still moping around. Humiliated is a good description of how I felt. I could still smell Eric’s scent on my pillow when the sun’s rays came through my window and hit my bed. I opened my eyes when the phone rang, but I just lay there. My plan to get Eric to marry me had failed, and I felt both alone and ashamed.

I wanted to hear something good. I needed to hear something good. I clicked on my thirty-six-inch television, and a man on an infomercial boasted that he could teach you to make a fortune in real estate if you sent in $299.99. I clicked the channel again, and Andy Griffith and Opie sat in the front of a police car on the black-and-white TV screen. With another click, a stainless steel, state-of-the-art juicing machine sucked the juice out of an orange, making instant juice. I clicked again and a choir in electric blue robes sang as they held a high-pitched note uniformly with their mouths in an O. I thought about my old church with the brown wooden cross on top. I remembered they displayed a big banner out in front that read: “Come Fellowship With Us!”

The alarm clock read 8:52 a.m. I looked over at my walk-in closet and spotted a cream and blue two-piece suit with the cleaner’s plastic wrap around it, one that I hardly ever wore. I took the suit out and turned on the water in the shower.

The Faith Center was a big beige two-story building that could seat more than two thousand people. As a child, I remembered my grandmother being involved in the building fund and new member service committee. Membership then was well over six hundred, but on any given Sunday there were three or four hundred people there. But now with all of the cars brimming in the parking lot, I bet it was hard to get a seat.

I was embarrassed about trying to go to church; I knew that Jesus forgave, but it felt like everyone in there was looking at me like they knew something was up. So I rushed up the big steps and into the front lobby with my head down, incogNegro. I hoped that Pastor Fields didn’t recognize me. In addition to misleading God and getting my freaky deaky on Friday, I hadn’t been to church in over a decade, and to make things really bad, I didn’t know what I was thinking when I selected my apparel that morning. The suit was cute, it came from Bebe, but the three-quarter-length cream jacket fit me like a bustier, and the slit in the back of my cream skirt went almost all the way up to the jacket.

I was headed upstairs to the balcony to find a corner and be alone when an usher touched my arm. “Good morning, God bless you, sister, we’re not seating anyone in the balcony just yet. We want to fill up the main sanctuary first. Please follow me.”

Oh, great, I thought. I followed her over to the doors that entered the sanctuary, and another usher escorted me to a seat.

A woman that I knew, Sister Monica, was posted at the doors to the right. I remembered her from going to church long ago with my grandmother. She’d been a single young lady who’d had a set of twin boys, and found Christ when she was about twenty years old. I must have been eleven or twelve years old back then.

The inside of the church was decorated in blue and white. The pews were made of solid oak and the seating area was covered in a dark blue fabric. The walls were white and the windows were covered in stained glass that reflected the sun with different colors of blue, yellow, red, and green.

I recognized a lot of the faces, though I didn’t speak to anyone while I waited for church to begin. I sat there quietly in my guilt and chewed on a piece of gum. There were people everywhere, black folks, standing and talking. Older ladies in hats. Deacons in the front row. Young ones, old ones. Tons of young people in jeans, all casualed out.

I thought about my little ploy on Friday night and wondered how I could have gone about it differently. A woman came up to the microphone and asked us to close our eyes and pray before service began. I bowed my head and tried to clear my mind.

I thanked God for my father’s continued recovery. I asked Him to guide me. I asked Him for direction with my job. I asked Him to aid me in my relationship with my stepmother. I asked Him to bless my friends and family. I told Him that I’d gone for months without sex, and that I knew that I’d blown it, but that I knew Eric was for me. I asked Him to let Eric see that we needed to pair up and build our lives together. Amen.

“Excuse me, baby, are you Sister Hattie Brumwick’s granddaughter?” said a high-pitched voice that sounded like a squeak. I knew that voice.

“Yes, I am. Hello, Sister Mable,” I said and turned to the row behind me.

She looked the same as ever. She was a big woman and walked with a cane. She had gray hair that she wore in shiny silver curls. She wore a gray dress with a white collar and clip-on earrings with big teardrop-shaped pearls dangling from them.

“Come here, chile, and hug my neck! How you doin’, baby?” She extended her arms to me over the bench.

I hugged her. “I am good. How are you?”

“Oh, good, good. I am good. I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, and held on to my hand. “How is your father and your stepmother?”

Wow, this woman had a memory on her!

“They are well. How is your family?” I asked.

“Everybody is blessed. Molina is up there. You remember my granddaughter, don’t you?” she said and pointed up to the balcony.

“Yes ma’am, I do.”

Losing the card game to Molina was the reason that I’d had to kiss the little boy, up there in that balcony. I looked up, and now the balcony was filled with as many adults as children.

“Yep. I am glad you’re here, baby. You doin’ the right thang. Just come on back to Jesus,” she said.

I nodded uncomfortably and turned back around. I wasn’t entirely sure that I should have been here in the first place.

Two minutes later, the church’s double doors opened and the choir came in.
“Prais-es to your name, Lord! We’ll sing prais-es to your name!”
They sounded like a band of angels. Extraordinary.
“Prais-es to your name! Hallelujah! Prais-es to your name!”
With glorious roars, and smiles on their faces, they marched in to the tune of the music. I watched in awe as they clapped their hands and sang their hearts out.

Lifting you up!

Hallelujah!

Prais-es to your name!

When they finished singing, the choir took their seats in the choir stand. Pastor Fields took to the podium. She looked pretty, in a long white robe and her hair all pulled back into a long gray ponytail.

She looked around and spoke into the microphone as she began. “Did you shut the door on yesterday when you got up this morning?”

I looked at her and stopped chewing my gum.

She said it again. “I asked you if you shut the door on yesterday when you got up this morning the way that God says for us to do in Lamentations 3:23? We are all human and we err sometimes, and when we do we can’t afford to go around holding on to junk. Jesus paid the price for our sins, and all that He requires is for us to confess our sins with a clean heart and ask for forgiveness.”