My Soul Cries Out (13 page)

W
hen I picked Alaysia up at the airport, she hugged me real hard and long. When she stepped back to take a look at me, I could tell she had to force herself not to say anything about how much weight I gained. We chit-chatted all the way to the hotel. We checked into our suite, and on the way up in the elevator, she said “I hope you brought some exercise clothes with you. They have a nice gym here.”

Working out was the last thing on my mind. “Oh, I forgot. I guess I could exercise in my scrubs.” I didn't tell her I couldn't fit any of my stretch pants.

“We can check out what they have in the gift shop. I'm gonna go meet with my tenant to get it out of the way so we can have the rest of the weekend to ourselves. Wanna go take a look at our old spot?”

“Nah, you can take the car. I think I'm gonna relax.” I didn't want to take any trips down memory lane. I met and fell in love with Kevin while living in that condo. He first impressed me by cooking gourmet meals in that kitchen, and we had many an all-night movie session when Alaysia was on one of her many trips out of the country. I even slept in his arms in my bedroom several times. I remember thinking him such a gentleman for not trying anything.

That was the last place I needed to go right now.

After Alaysia left, I curled up in a ball on the bed and tried to take a nap, but ended up tossing and turning for an hour. I couldn't shut my mind down. Was I really going to pick up and move to Atlanta? I had never lived anywhere but the Baltimore /D.C. area. I didn't see my parents a lot, but I had never been so far away from them. It was nice knowing I could get to them when I wanted to. Was I really just gonna up and quit my job and have no reliable income? What if Alaysia's business didn't work? She could always call her dad, but what would I do? Would I be able to get the divorce finalized in three months? What if Kevin refused to do things easy and I had to go to court and fight a big legal battle?

My head throbbed. I wandered over to the mini-bar to find some water. It was filled with tiny bottles of alcohol. I hadn't really drunk since college, but something about the cuteness of the miniature bottles fascinated me.
Don't even think about it, Monica.

I grabbed a bottle of water and lay back on the bed. Scary thoughts about my future haunted me. Would I ever get married again? Would I ever have a baby? Or would I spend the rest of my life alone? Husbandless and childless.

I couldn't seem to shut down my mind. I walked back over to the mini-bar. I knew better, but I needed a momentary escape.

I screwed the top off a bottle of vodka and took a swig. My throat caught on fire and it tasted horrible. Nothing like the sweetness of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. I held my nose and finished it off. I made a mental note that I didn't like vodka.

Next, I tried some champagne. It tasted a lot better and went down a lot smoother. I pulled some snacks out of the mini-bar. Bad idea to drink on an empty stomach.

After emptying a lot more little bottles, my head went from throbbing to buzzing. I needed to get a nap before Alaysia got back. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and heard a click. Alaysia was trying to use the electronic key in the door.

I ran across the room and swept the empty bottles into the trashcan in one fell swoop. I ran back to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth out with some toothpaste. All the running made me dizzy.

Alaysia finally got the door open. She barged in, talking, face flushed and eyes glowing. “Hey, sorry it took so long. He wanted to buy the place, so we discussed some terms. I'm so excited. It'll give me a big chunk of change to invest in my business. I want to take it to a whole new level. Wait 'til you—” She frowned and tilted her head. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” I tried to look normal.

“Why do you have that idiotic grin on your face?”

“You know, uh, I'm excited about your business and the condo and all that, uh, good stuff.” I deliberately enunciated my words to avoid slurring. Alaysia had always told me it was a good thing I was a good Christian 'cause I was a bad drunk.

She walked up on me and sniffed. “What have you been doing?” She walked over and picked up the trash can. “Monica Harris, have you lost your mind? Tell me the cleaning people did this.”

“Nope.”

She stood with her hands on her hips. “What's wrong?”

I shrugged. “Nothing's wrong, just trying to get away from my thoughts.”

“What thoughts?” She sat down on her bed and took off her shoes.

“If I talk about them, I won't be getting away from them.”

“You're not getting away from them anyway. They're still there and will be there in the morning when you sober up, only louder. You know that's not the answer. Tell me about the thoughts.”

“One thought leads to another and they take on a life of their own, and then my brain starts to swirl in circles, trying to keep up with the thoughts. They keep swirling in my head.” I was getting dizzy describing them.

“I'm putting on some coffee.”

“I don't need any coffee. I want to go to sleep.”

I lay back on my bed while Alaysia disappeared into the little kitchenette. I heard her clinking around for a while, then smelled coffee brewing. Smelled like she made it extra strong. My stomach didn't appreciate it and started swirling.

She brought me a steaming mug. “Here.” The way she said it made me know not to object. I sat there and sipped the coffee like an obedient child.

She sat down on the bed across from me. “Tell me about the thoughts.”

I frowned. “Who do you think came up with the word ‘divorce'? It's such a mean little word. Do you think it sounds so bad because of what it means, or is there something inherent in the way the letters are put together that make it a bad-sounding word?”

“Oh, boy. Here we go on a perilous trip through the mind of Monica. A trip made all the more dangerous by the ingestion of noxious chemicals.”

“Deevorce. Divorce. Deeeevvvvooooorrrrcc-ceeee. It starts with ‘di' which has negative connotations to it. Then the ‘vorce'. It's like something bad or painful, like force and vortex mixed together. I'm about to go through an industrial strength, high-speed blender. I'm going to be deeeeevorced.”

I took a big slurp of the ultra strong coffee and winced as it singed the roof of my mouth. “Think I'll ever get married again?”

“You never know. You may walk out of this hotel and meet Mr. Wonderful. Make you forget all about Kevin.”

“Oh, no. I need at least two years to flush this whole situation out of my system so I won't be carrying baggage into the next relationship. I can see it now. If he goes to play basketball with his friends, I'll be standing courtside, watching to make sure they're not gay. If he goes shopping for clothes too often or if he can cook, I'll suspect him. No, I need some time before another relationship.”

“Mm-hmm. Drink your coffee.”

“Would I ever
want
to get married again? I mean, maybe marriage is overrated. You give away too much power. You hand someone the key to your heart, the most delicate, yet most important part of your anatomy, and trust them to take good care of it. They rip it out of your chest and drop it on the ground and stomp on it, and when you scream and ask them how could they, they look at you and say, ‘I'm sorry, it's not my fault. It's because of something that happened to me when I was ten.' Then they pick up your mutilated heart and press it back into your chest and try to fold your ribs and chest wall back over it and say, ‘Okay, beat again, pump the blood, work like nothing ever happened'.”

Alaysia grimaced. “Lovely. The rantings of a drunk nurse.”

“Let's say I get through this two-year period and my heart heals and starts working again. You think I'd be dumb enough to give someone else the key to it and say, ‘Here you go. It just got healed, but I give you permission to rip it out and mutilate it'? That, by definition, is insanity.”

“I couldn't think of a better word to describe this conversation.” Alaysia got up and pulled a T-shirt and shorts out of her suitcase.

“Then again, I can't be in a relationship without giving my heart away completely. What's the point? If I'm going to be in love, I'm going to be in love. I don't believe in doing it halfway. Which is what got me into this situation in the first place.”

“Monnie, you can't blame yourself for loving Kevin, and you can't blame him for what happened. He didn't mean to hurt you.”

“And that, my friend, is the scariest part of it. That someone can love you and not mean to hurt you, but destroy you anyway. And don't be defending him. You're supposed to be my friend.”

“I am your friend.”

“Then act like it. Either join the pity party or go home.”

Alaysia laughed.

“What if I do decide to get married again? I mean what are the stats these days? When we first got to Howard, they told us ten women for every one man. You count all the brothers getting killed in the black man's war, then all the black men in prison, then the gay men . . . a sista ain't got much to work with. How many girlfriends do we have our age that ain't got no man and no prospects either? The only thing saving us is the lesbians. That's the only thing helping out the ratio.”

I leaned forward, almost falling off my bed. “You're not gay, are you, Laysia? Is that what this celibacy thing is about? You got fed up with the brothas and switched over to the sistas? You could tell me. It'd make my chances better.”

Alaysia laughed and shook her head. “I'm not gay. Just taking a break from black men.”

I nodded and pointed a finger at her. “Now you got the revelation. I'ma find me a Latino man—a Puerto Rican hottie. They black anyway. Or maybe I'll find an Italian man. They're pretty dark. I could try an Asian, but they don't have much spice to them. Maybe I'll just get me a white man. Naw. I better stick with my Puerto Rican hottie.”

“You know how people treat interracial couples. You sure you can handle that?”

“It ain't like that for black women. Think about it. When you're out in public, you see a black man with a white woman and pure hatred rises up in you. Why? The ratio. That's anotha brotha the sistas lost. When you see a black woman with a white man, it don't bother you. You say, ‘I feel ya, girl. I ain't mad at ya. Do your thang.' You think you're okay with it because you sympathize with the fact that she wasn't able to find her a black man. But secretly, you're glad because that sista has tilted the ratio a tiny bit more in your favor.”

“You are out of control.”

I stood up and did a little salsa dance. “Yeah, man, a Puerto Rican hottie.” My dance didn't last long because it made the room spin. “Next time, I'd have to get to know him for at least five years before I even think about marrying him. I'd have to know his high school friends, his neighborhood friends; I'd interview his parents, want to know about his past relationships. Maybe I'd make him take a lie detector test—question him under hypnosis or something. I would say he'd have to be a sincere man of God so I could be assured he was telling the truth, but so much for that.”

Alaysia frowned.

“And I need a manly man next time. He'd have to be a mechanic or a construction worker, or a garbage man. Someone who comes home dirty and stinky every day. Yeah, that's safe. He'll have to have a garage full of tools, and will always be working on the car or fixing something in the house. And he will
never
talk about his feelings. He won't know his way around a kitchen, either. When I ask him how I look in an outfit, he won't turn away from football on television and will say ‘Fine, babe,' then slap me on the butt and tell me to bring him a soda. When I bring it to him, he'll pull the top off with his teeth, drink it in one gulp and let out a loud belch and stuff his hand down his pants.”

Alaysia was rolling on the bed, laughing at me.

“We haven't even gotten to the whole issue of kids. If I am ‘blessed' to get married again, after the initial two-year ‘Kevin wash-out', then the five-year ‘new man investigation', we'd need to be married at least three years so I could be sure I wanted to stay, then I would
think
about having kids. Which would put me at the ripe old age of thirty-nine. I know too much about what kind of babies old eggs could make.”

“A lot of women are having babies when they get older these days. It's a trend. The career woman of the new millennium, getting established in her career and having kids later.” Alaysia scooted onto the floor and did some stretching exercises.

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but I ain't having no old-egg baby.”

“No, come on, Monnie. One of my clients swears by it. She had one child with her first husband when she was twenty-four, then got divorced. She got remarried at the age of thirty-seven and had another daughter a year later. She said motherhood when she was more mature was much better than when she was twenty-four. She thinks all women should wait until they're older to have their children.”

“Say what you wanna say. I don't want no old-egg babies.” I slurped down the rest of my coffee. “The way I see it, Kevin wasted my time. He took my precious reproductive years. Six of them. Now I'm stuck never getting married again and having no babies, or at best, getting a late start and having some old-egg babies.”

“Monica, you've been thinking about all this too much.”