Boaz Brown (29 page)

“And I might have kept right on doing it if I hadn’t received a call from a former lover who was HIV-positive. I felt like I had been thrown up against a brick wall when I found out I might have been exposed. Not knowing whether or not I was dying of a totally preventable yet incurable disease was the most horrific experience in my life, Stelson. I felt stupid and ashamed and guilty and afraid all at the same time. What’s worse, I could almost hear Satan laughing at me because the whole time I had been such a willing participant in my own demise.

“But God. . .“ I felt myself trembling at the mention of His name. “But God. All I could do was to ask for forgiveness and pray for the best. While I was waiting for the results of the HIV test, I laid out before Him and committed my life to him completely. I didn’t care if I had one year or fifty years left, whether I would be sick or well, whatever. The tests came back negative, and I haven’t looked back.”

“That is a wonderful testimony, LaShondra.” Stelson shook his head in astonishment. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

We met for breakfast before he caught his flight to Florida Monday afternoon. Even at Thani’s, an eccentric bakery boasting worldwide flair, people were staring and shushing others from talking about us too loudly. “It’s like we’re always on display,” I said to Stelson.

He nodded while taking a bite of his steak. “You’ll get immune to it after a while. I had the same experience when I went to Africa as a teenager on a missions trip.”

“I just don’t like feeling like a freak show.” I looked around the room. Heads turned sharply away from me; people pretending that they hadn’t been looking at us.

Stelson seized my attention. “Shondra, I haven’t connected with anybody as well as I’ve connected with you in a long. . .” He looked up toward the ceiling and then looked back at me again. “No, never.”

“Connected?” I asked.

“Yeah, connected,” he repeated. “I gotta tell you, when I went back to my office the day of the career fair, everyone was like, ‘Where did
that
smile come from?’ And I told them I’d just had lunch with an exceptional, beautiful woman.”

“And you knew I was exceptional after one lunch?”

“I knew when you walked into the foyer with your head held back and your shoulders squared that you were an extraordinary woman. There is nothing more attractive to me than a confident, secure woman. And when I found out that we shared the same source, I thought, ‘I have got to see this woman again.’

“By the way, what’s that fragrance you’re wearing?”

“What? I’m not wearing any perfume.”

“It smells flowery and light, like maybe some kind of body spray.”

Flowery and light?
“Stelson, it’s called oil sheen.” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. And Stelson looked so pathetically cute across from me, attempting to grin and bear his own ignorance.

“It’s okay, Stelson. You’re gonna be all right. Come here,” I said, leaning over our table as though I’d thoroughly considered what I was about to do. He met me halfway, and we kissed.

I just kissed a white man.

Chapter 14

Solomon McHenry was the one boy from the church whom Momma always said she hoped I would marry. He was quiet, serious, and never would help pass a note during a sermon. My mother knew the McHenrys well and swore up and down that she’d almost seen Solomon as a son-in-law in her dream.

I, on the other hand, loathed Solomon. He was extra greasy in the places that he wasn’t ashy. Where Momma saw tall, I saw lanky. Dark: crusty. Handsome: nine times out often, the boy had something hanging off one of his nose hairs. Yes, he could quote the Scriptures, and he played a mean tambourine. But that was about all Solomon could do for me.

Momma had it bad about volunteering folks for stuff. Didn’t matter what it was, if somebody at the church said they needed a child to do something, Momma would hastily offer me or Jonathan to fit the bill. So it should have come as no surprise to me when Momma informed me that she’d told Sister McHenry to bring Solomon over on Thursdays for help with his math.

“Momma, can’t Jonathan help him? Jonathan’s better at math than I am!” I complained.

“Hush your mouth, Shondra. Jonathan ain’t even in high school yet. You’ll be just fine.” She didn’t even look up from her Bible. Just turned another page, as though it were written:
thou shalt make thy children suffer unnecessary trials and tribulations.

“Momma, I just.
. .”
I racked my brain for an excuse good enough to cancel the check she’d already written for me. It was no use.

“You never know—you might like working with Solomon,” she hinted.

“I will
never
like working with him.”

Sister McHenry dropped Solomon off every Thursday at 6:30 for weeks, and I worked with him begrudgingly. Until he started getting it. I taught him, I questioned him, and I quizzed him until he knew how to solve for X a million different ways. Slowly, I began to see Solomon for what he was: a hard-working boy who was in the same boat as me, with parents who pushed harder than we could pull sometimes.

One Thursday, I had all the flash cards and triangle cutouts ready on the table, but Sister McHenry’s gray Thunderbird failed to groan up to the driveway. “Momma, will you call them to make sure they’re on their way?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you.
. .”
She sipped her tea quietly, holding out her pinky finger. “Solomon won’t be coming anymore. Sister McHenry said that he’s doing well enough on his own now. She said to thank you for all your help.”

“But we hadn’t even finished!” I protested.

“Be careful now, LaShondra. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were looking forward to tutoring that handsome Solomon.”

I nodded. “I mean, there was a lot more we needed to cover, that’s all.”

She took another sip. “I hope
you
learned a lesson in all this.”

* * * * *

Deniessa called me to confirm our next girls-only night. “So, you and Peaches should be here by six?”

“I’ll
be there by six. I can’t speak for Peaches.”

“You two aren’t riding together?”

“I don’t know, Deniessa. I haven’t talked to Peaches since Christmas Eve—and it was not pleasant.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I’m. . . seeing a white man.” I heard myself say the words for the first time. “And I didn’t tell her. She happened to see us out together and. . . I don’t know. It’s just crazy.”

“Wait a minute. Go back to the white man.”

Deniessa and I didn’t know each other well, but I figured since she’d let me peek at the skeletons in her closet, telling her about Stelson wouldn’t hurt anything. “His name is Stelson Brown. I met him at my school. We went out a few times. We went to church a few times. We have a good time when we’re together. It’s just. . . I didn’t tell Peaches anything about it because . . . well, you know why. I didn’t know how she would react.”

“So you haven’t talked to her in, what, over a week now? And this is all over a white man?”

“Not over a white man. Over other things—over a misunderstanding mostly. She thinks I lied to her so I could go out with Stelson, but that’s not true. Well, not technically,” I said.

“Okay, I’m still back on the white man,” she admitted. “Okay, how did you end up going out with a white man? I thought you couldn’t bring yourself to do something like this.”

“I know—and this crow I’m chewing is hard to swallow. I really can’t explain it, Deniessa,” I admitted. “It just happened. I went out with him. We have a lot in common—”

“Like what?”

“Our church backgrounds, our beliefs as Christians. We like the same foods and some of the same music. He likes working with kids—a lot of stuff.

“Now, let me ask you, Deniessa, would you be asking me all this if Stelson wasn’t white?”

“Eventually, yes,” Deniessa said. “But you gotta do a reality check, LaShondra. After all the things you said the last time we were together, the fact that
you
are with a
white
man is breaking news. I need details here. Let me ask you a nondiscriminatory question—is he fine?”

“For the record, yes, but that’s irrelevant.”

“No, that makes a lot of difference. I mean, if you’re gonna be with a white man, he can at least be one of the good-looking ones,” she laughed. “Is he rich, too?”

“He’s an engineer, a partner in his firm. And, just in case you’re wondering, he is also very kind and smart, and he treats me very well. Those are the kind of things you’re
supposed
to be asking me, you know?”

“Whatever, girl. I ain’t mad at you. Just so long as he treats you right—that’s the most important thing.” She gave me her stamp of approval. “So are we still on for Saturday?”

“Yeah. I’m in.”

Deniessa called me back within the hour. “Peaches will be by to pick you up at three o’clock Saturday.”

“What?”

“You two can talk this problem out on the way over. Bye!”  She ended the call before I could protest.

Three o’clock doesn’t mean three o’clock to Peaches. I’ve always known that. But as I sat in front of my television waiting for her, I grew annoyed at her lack of respect for my time. Maybe this was part of the reason why I knew she wouldn’t respect my decision to see Stelson.

At 3:15 she blew the horn. I threw my bag over my shoulder and marched toward the door. On the way out I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw—a frown brought my whole face down.

But even worse was the attitude behind it. I was ready to give Peaches a piece of my mind about a lot of things. A little piece of my mind, a little piece of her mind, and we could both be out of our minds by the time we got to Deniessa’s place.

I sent up a prayer before I left the house.
Lord, forgive me for having a bad attitude. Replace it with Your love and understanding. Help me to help Peaches and let me be open to hearing her out as well. Thank You for the friendship we share, and bless it to continue to grow. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

“Hello,” I addressed her cheerfully as I buckled myself into the front seat.

“Mmm,” she mumbled, throwing the car into reverse.

She popped in a gospel CD and started driving. We rode all the way to the interstate without a word. And then it started.

“Why?” she asked. “Why a white man? Why the lies, Shondra? Why?”

“Okay, first of all, I did not lie to you, Peaches. All I said was that I had
plans
.”

“But you didn’t tell me those
plans
involved a man, let alone a white man! I feel like I got kicked to the curb!”

“I didn’t kick you to the curb for a white man.” I turned to her, raising my knee up onto the seat and shifting my weight. “I just didn’t want to tell you anything about him until. . . until it was either over or until I thought it might actually go somewhere.”

“Well, is it over?” she asked.

“No. I think it’s far from over.”

She looked at me for a second, then back at the road. A dimple punched itself into the side of her face as she clenched her teeth. “How could you go there? I just. . . I just can’t understand it. It’s beyond me. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“How can you say that? I’m still Shondra.”

She sped up to pass a station wagon. “The Shondra
I
know wouldn’t give a white man the time of day. The Shondra
I
know takes pride in her race. And the Shondra
I
know wouldn’t sell out, because she knows that
our
people have come too far for her to turn her back on the brothers.
That’s
the Shondra
I
know.” Her deep crimson lips quivered in anger. “Ooh, this is crazy, Shondra. Crazy.”