Sweet Bye-Bye (18 page)

After church, when everyone was leaving, Keith went over to Pastor Fields and reintroduced himself. Her eyes lit up when she recognized him. She gave him a great big hug. I smiled, remembering how she used to love little Keith Rashaad. Then he pointed over to where I was sitting, and I waved. They motioned for me to come over. I’d been back at the church for over a week, but I had been too ashamed to go up and say hello. I walked over to them.

“Hi Pastor Fields,” I said with a huge grin.

She looked at me above her glasses, then pulled me to her. “Little Chantell, oh my goodness! Look at you! It’s so good to see you. It’s so good to see the both of you. I am just overwhelmed with happiness.” We talked a bit more before we left the church.

Keith and I strolled down the sidewalk and talked.

“Keith, church was great. When did church get like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, all the young people that go to church nowadays, it’s amazing. I remember church being for grandparents. A place where kids went because their grandparents forced them to go.”

Keith chuckled. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It seems there are lots of churches these days that are reaching out to young people. It’s like there’s a spiritual revolution going on or something.”

“Yeah, and it’s pretty cool.”

I opened my car door, put my Bible in the backseat, and said, “So, where are we going now?” I surprised myself with how comfortable I was getting with him. I guess I just assumed that we’d hang out together a while longer.

“Wherever you want, princess,” he teased. He knew that Dad used to call me that. I smiled.

He didn’t go over to the passenger side, but stood near the door of the driver’s side with me. He stared at me. “I want to put my arms around you.”

I looked down at the cement.

“Remember when I asked you if you trusted me?”

“Yes.”

“I asked you that because it’s important to me that you do. I love you, and I have loved you all of my life.”

I didn’t know where he was going. “You love me
how,
Keith Rashaad?”

“I love you enough to want to build up our friendship, and nurture the connection that we share.”

I told myself that I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was trying to remember the oath that I had made to myself, so that I wouldn’t get confused. What the heck was it?

Keith said, “What I am saying is that I don’t want to lose you again, Chantell. And I’m wondering how you feel about me.”

I thought Keith Rashaad Talbit was the most real, most grounded, most handsome, and most loving man that I’d ever seen.

But then it came back to me, my oath that I’d taken. I didn’t intend to be left again. Keith Talbit was the third great loss of my life, and I had absolutely no intention of being left again. Period dot. And with careful planning, I wouldn’t be. I had a boyfriend, and things wouldn’t get any more serious than they had when we were kids.

So I said, “Let’s see, how do I feel about you? I feel we are tried-and-true friends.”

“Hmm” was what he said, and I thought he might have looked a little disappointed. But he put his arms around me and hugged me just the same. And, for just a moment, I lay down the oath and felt his arms around me, and life was good.

32

The Key

E
ven though the ride wasn’t the smoothest, riding with the top off of the Jeep always relaxed me. The sun was going down, and the breeze from the Pacific Ocean was making the temperature in the Bay Area nippy. I drove up and down along the familiar San Leandro streets where I’d grown up. There were children playing on sidewalks and in driveways. There were houses that had lights on in the kitchen, and you could see mothers making dinner for their families. I parked in the cul-de-sac on the sidewalk in front of my parents’ house.

There, four teenage boys played basketball with a hoop on a large black pole maybe as high as an official court. They played hard. They seemed unaffected by the cold. They were running and sweating intensely. Their shirts were off and their backs were shiny. Two teenage girls stood nearby on the sidewalk watching. One had all of her hair pulled back into a ponytail that swung each time she laughed. The other had her hair parted and pulled into a ponytail at the top and let loose in the back. They wore short jean shorts that barely covered their little behinds. And they had teenage figures and little white tops on, which matched with their clean white sneakers.

One girl stood with a hand on her hip, yelling things to the boys in the street.

“Dunk it, Anthony!”

“Uh-ohh, Taj, here it comes. Here it comes!”

“Ahh, that was tight!”

“Y’all tight! Do that at the game, Anthony.”

I watched and listened. Then someone said to me, “It’s cold out here. You coming in?” It was Charlotte.

“Oh, hi, I didn’t even hear you walk up.”

Her expression was stern and serious as usual. “I see, come on in. Your dad is upstairs.”

I got out of the car and headed past Charlotte’s Ford Tempo toward the door. Her backseat was full of groceries. She opened the door on the driver’s side and I went around to the door on the passenger side. She filled her arms up with bags and said again, “Your daddy is upstairs.” I opened the door, wrapped my arms around three bags, and closed the door. I wondered if she knew that my daddy and I were going to talk about my real mother.

“Okay,” I said.

We came into the house through the garage. I stepped onto the marble floors, headed into the kitchen, and set the bags on the counter. Their kitchen was always immaculate. Never any crumbs on the counter. Never any tomato sauce splashed on the can opener. Never any dust between the stove and the refrigerator. I’d never say it, but Charlotte was excellent at cleaning. I wasn’t this way. While I did what needed to be done, I was far from the perfect homemaker. I grabbed the bananas out of the bag and placed them in the fruit bowl. Then I rinsed off the apples and put them away too.

She must have thought I was stalling because she asked, “Are you going to go upstairs?” She didn’t say it in that “I’m trying to start a fight with Chantell” tone that she sometimes used, the one that got on my nerves so badly. No, her voice sounded cracked and an octave deeper, like she wanted to cry.

I put the fruit down and followed the shiny marble floor to the front door. I looked around the living room at all of the white French provincial furniture that never got sat on. I looked down the hall toward the den area, where everyone who came over relaxed. Then I looked up to where I was supposed to be headed, up the stairs.

I took off my shoes and put them near the front door next to the big wicker basket that housed new socks for visitors who didn’t want to walk around barefoot. I didn’t know what to expect. I headed up the stairs slowly. For a moment, my mind went back to the day I found my father collapsed in his room. I looked down at my newly pedicured feet. My toenails were powder blue, and I’d had white butterflies painted on the nails of both of my big toes.

I tried to ignore the rapid pace of my heart. I put one foot in front of the other, and I looked at the white butterflies. I imagined them flapping their wings and flying up the stairs as I walked.

I peeked in and there was Daddy. He lay in his bed half asleep and half watching the news. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked good. I said another quick thank-you to God as he sat up and turned down the volume. Daddy had a big, strong voice and so my suspicions were aroused by his lowering the television’s volume. He was really making me nervous.

“Hey, Daddy.”

“Hi, Chantell. I am glad you finally made it. I really want to talk to you.”

He reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his water bottle, and took a sip. He removed the eyeglasses that he always wore and looked at me very seriously. Daddy always tried to make everything okay for me, and this demeanor was one that I rarely saw. We were going to talk about my mom, but was he going to tell me I’d hurt her? If I’d done something to her, then I was sorry.

“Daddy, what is it?”

Daddy held up his hand at me as if to say, Don’t speak.

“After your mom died, I used to pray for strength and knowledge as to what to do.” He looked away from me and at the dresser in front of the bed. “You was a girl, and I used to worry if I was doing the right things for you. Did I hug you enough? Did I comb your hair nice like the other little girls? Would your mother agree with the bedtime that I’d set for you? But you turned out real good, so I must have did okay.”

I smiled and nodded. “You were a good parent, Daddy.”

He held up his hand again. “Please, baby, let me finish. I’m trying to say, I’m so very proud of you, baby.”

He paused and chuckled. “I worried about you, though. I had reason to be concerned. Some of the things that came out of your little mouth sometimes made me nervous.” He laughed.

It felt like Dad was going to drop a bomb on me. Like maybe my mom hated me, or maybe his checkup at the hospital didn’t go so well.

“Please, Daddy, what’s the matter?”

“Honey, just let me finish talking. Anyway, you were just like your mom—smart, pretty, and creative.”

The door opened and Charlotte came in. I don’t think we’d ever spoken about my mother in front of her. I swallowed. Oh boy.

She sat down in the chair next to the bed. Daddy just kept on talking.

“You look just like your mom now,” said Daddy, gazing at me again. “I knew that one day you’d want to talk about Zarina. I’ve been waiting for it. We’ve been waiting for it.” He looked over at Charlotte.

“Your mom was energetic and full of spirit. She loved life almost as much as she loved you. She had a magnetic vibe about her. People loved her. She always meant what she said, and if she made a commitment to you, then she would kill herself trying to keep it.”

Daddy looked as though he might cry. “I remember when we moved into our first home. One year, on Thanksgiving, your mother invited the entire block to our house. All of the neighbors came over before they sat down at their own tables to eat their meals. There must have been fifty people in our little living room standing together. We all held hands and prayed as a whole. Then everyone took turns and said something that he was thankful for. It was beautiful. It became a routine too, Thanksgiving at our house. We did that every year from the day we were married, up until the very end.”

How beautiful. I closed my eyes and tears fell.

Dad continued. “Your mother was ill often, and when she was pregnant with you, the doctor asked what to do if he was forced to choose between her living or your living. I told him that we’d go home and we would discuss it. But she said that there was nothing to discuss. She told the doctor that if life had become a game that would result in a coin toss then he should just count her out. She said she refused to play heads or tails with her child.”

I covered my eyes and cried. I cried because my mother was beautiful. She was more than physically beautiful; she was truly beautiful.

“She went to the hospital on a Wednesday afternoon,” said Daddy. “For two days she lay in the hospital bed in labor. I felt like I was losing my mind. Her pain, my guilt. It was torturous. But on that following Wednesday”—Daddy’s voice cracked—“the three of us, we went home as a family.”

I mourned some more for my mother the way that I should have long ago. I cried tears of happiness because I felt whole and fortunate to have come from two good people. And tears of sadness because of a longing that I’d held hidden deep inside of me for so long.

Then Dad took Charlotte’s hand and held it. I looked at both my dad and Charlotte. I had one more question. “But Daddy, through the years you never mentioned my mother. You guys acted like she was never here. It seemed like nobody cared that she ever even—”

I couldn’t swallow. The knot in my throat was huge. It was right there at the bottom of my throat. The tears rolled down my cheeks fast. I cried until that longing feeling that was hidden away in the base of my stomach surrendered. It covered me from my head to my toes. And Daddy and Charlotte let me go through it.

I was still sitting on the edge of the bed when I looked up, and Daddy motioned for me to come closer to him. He reached out and hugged me. Charlotte sat next to me and rubbed our backs.

“I’m sorry, baby. I cared. We cared,” he said. “We just couldn’t do nothing about it.” He took a deep breath and said, “At first, I couldn’t talk about it. I felt so sorry for you, Chantell. Losing your mom hurt me to the core of my being. Watching you interact every day, without her, that just ripped me up. Then you got really quiet, and it seemed like you just closed up. We tried counseling. I tried talking to you, but you never budged.”

I wiped my eyes with my knuckle. I didn’t remember counseling.

I cried for my mother. I cried for my father. I cried for all of us. Too many tears for my knuckles to wipe away. I let them fall freely. I looked over at Charlotte, and she was crying too. “We’ve just been waiting for you to ask about her.”

My father got out of bed. He wore the brown-striped pajamas I’d bought for him last Christmas. He didn’t move like someone who just had surgery a couple of weeks prior. He was getting around pretty well. He put his brown feet in his slip-on brown leather house shoes and went over to the dresser. He opened the drawer and took out an old crinkled manila envelope. Opening it, he took out a single key on a chain.

“This is a key to a space at Darryl’s Mini Storage downtown. Go to space number seventy-seven.” He handed the key to me.

“What’s in there, Daddy?” I asked.

“Things for you. Go see.”

And that is all that he would say. I took the key and put it in my purse. In a little bit, Dad would start clicking the channels on the television and telling me about how many games were left in the Raiders football season.

It was getting late. I hugged them both, thanked them, and told them that I should get home so I could wake up for work in the morning. Tomorrow, I thought, I’d go to the storage and see what was in there. My parents walked me outside. The crisp night breeze hit me and it felt cold. Very cold. I’d gotten a lot of information about my mom that night. But soon, I’d have more.