I didn’t tell them about Kwanzaa being at the mall. All of them would’ve come over, and I didn’t want that kind of a scene. All for the best. I’d decided to let all of that go. To stop struggling.
Harmonica came up the stairs, his dark sweater wide open over his crisp white shirt. He told us, “Seventeen-ta-one.”
I said, “Odds are that wide?”
“What?” Womack snapped, his nostrils open wider than his eyes. “They’re out on my property taking bets?”
Harmonica repeated, “ ’Bout seventeen-ta-one odds. I put five dollars on the one, hope I get the seventeen five times over.”
“That would get you eighty-five dollars.” I nodded. “About the same as it was on the Trinidad and De La Hoya fight.”
Womack’s lips were tense, pushed forward. He frowned at me and his chin dropped, tongue stuck out of his mouth.
He griped, “Ain’t fair, Vince. This ain’t fair. Not at all.”
I told him, “Let’s go. People’re waiting. I have to get to work.”
“Wait, wait, hold on. Let me go use the bathroom first.”
“You just used the bathroom.”
“I have to go again.”
“Womack, son,” Harmonica sang out in that rugged, bluesy voice. He smiled so broad, spoke in a teasing tone. “It’s show time at the Apollo. They ready for you to sit center stage and release the grease.”
“Oh, you so funny, Daddy.”
“Release the grease, son. Let’s go on down. Quit acting like you got xenophobia; get yeomanly like we expect you to be.”
“Oh, now you’re really cracking me up with those five-dollar words.”
“Son—”
“Let me take a pee first, could ya?” His arms were flapping; his dejected stride took him through his daddy’s part of the duplex, heard him fuming and grumbling as he passed by the African statues and masks. “This ain’t fair, Vince. You know you ain’t right. Didn’t think you were serious. Invited the whole damn neighborhood to watch. Ain’t that some crap. Never knew you could be so cold-blooded. Never knew, never knew.”
Harmonica opened the door and waved his hand at the crowd. A signal. The ball stopped bouncing. A few people clapped, chanted Womack’s name. One of Womack’s boys anxiously pulled a metal chair out center. Another one of his sons ran out of the house, big smile on his face, a long extension cord in his hand. It was long enough to make it center stage. Another son hurried out with the hair clippers. He plugged them in. Clicked them on. Gave us the thumbs-up. We gave him the same signal. Same wide smile.
I said, “We got juice to kill the juice.”
Harmonica nodded. “Seventeen-ta-one.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I would’ve bet on the seventeen.”
“Naw, I mean seventeen-ta-one that hair of his clogs up the clippers.”
We laughed.
He went on, “When you get as old and have a zaftig belly like me, you appreciate all the zaniness you can get your hands on, even if you have to make your zealot son walk zigzag like a zombie.”
“You finished the book.”
“Done got a little mo’ educated in my head.”
More laughter.
He pulled out his C-band and he played. We walked down the stairs and he played all the way. The clippers were in my hand when Womack made it to the back door and headed down to take his seat. Harmonica was rocking this world. People were clapping their hands, even a few joined in and did a two-step to the beat that Harmonica had created.
Just what I needed. Harmonica always gave me what I needed, when I needed it. Yes, men like him should live forever.
33
Dana
I left the mall and went to ReMax. A visit that I wanted to last fifteen minutes, but it took two hours because everybody wanted to know what happened to Gerri. A story I’d refuse to tell a million times.
Since Gerri wasn’t going to be around for a while, I referred clients to other co-strugglers. Went over Multiple List Services. Contracts. Files in escrow. Office manuals. Information on my primary farm area. Names. Addresses. Asked who wanted to buy my Thomas Guide, the book that diagramed all the streets and addresses in Los Angeles. Areas I’d grown to know like the back of my hand.
My Thomas Guide. A miracle book. From here to Palm Springs to San Francisco to San Diego, I could find any address I needed to find.
That was when I realized how much I knew about Los Angeles, how much I had learned about real estate and its hustle, how proficient I had become.
I went to ask a superior how I would set up a payment plan for what I still owed ReMax in desk fees.
She pushed a button on her computer, said, “Let’s see. Your balance is . . . well, your desk fees balance is zero.”
I repeated, “Zero?”
“Now leave before I change my mind.”
I went into my office, pulled my bill from the IRS out of my purse, and closed the door.
I opened the letter from the IRS. A sigh later I picked up the phone and called the Uncle Sambo office in Fresno to have a chit-chat about my delinquent taxes. After dealing with recording after recording, a real person picked up. I went through my hard-luck story, wanted to know if I could reduce my payment plan on my delinquent taxes.
The rep said that wouldn’t be necessary.
My balance was zero.
I hung up before Sambo changed his mind.
A couple of hours later, I hooked up with Rosa Lee at the Vegetarian Affair. I’d promised her when she had me trapped on the phone, no way I could flake out. The schoolteacher looked like fine and sophistication in her copper-colored slacks, reddish brown blouse, open toe pumps, and big, curly hair that was always stylish on her little bitty head. There was a brief smile as I came in the door, but then the expression on Rosa Lee’s face became all business.
I told her, “No way you have four kids.”
“I tucked my uterus back in. Damn thing started hanging.”
We laughed.
I copped a squat on a bar stool that faced Santa Rosalia Avenue. Ten-foot wrought iron bars went around the mall’s perimeter. Five minutes later, I was wolfing down a barbecue sandwich made from soybeans. Waiting to see what type of conversation I was going to be having. In my mind, I was on the 10 heading east, leaving all the palm trees and dry air behind.
I said, “I’m surprised.”
“At what?”
“You’re the first person who hasn’t asked me what happened.”
“You want to talk it, you’ll talk about it.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Me either. That’s not the conversation I want to have with you.” She chewed her bite of tofu sandwich at least twenty times before she swallowed. “We haven’t had that much time to get together, which I really hate, so I wanted to steal a moment. After you head back to the Big Apple, never know if we’ll ever see each other again.”
“True. But the world ain’t as big as it seems. People always run into each other again.”
“That’s the truth.”
“How are things with you and Womack?”
“What do you mean?”
“Vince said that, well, that things were rough and, other things.”
“I guess that means you’re talking about when Womack told Vince that he thought I was having an affair?”
“Yeah.”
Rosa Lee laughed.
I didn’t. “Rosa Lee, what’s funny?”
“We’ve had our ups and downs, like everybody else. Yes, some days are better than others. An affair? Get real.”
She told me about the night she went to Lucy Florence.
“I saw him behind me. Can’t hide a head shaped like his.”
Some more chuckles.
“Dana, this brother, this actor on one of those silly WB shows was all over me before I could get in the building. ‘Damn, my sister, lookin’ good. I can get you in to see a taping of my show.’ The whole spiel.”
“What you do?”
“Told him his show was filled with trite buffoonery, programs like his were a disgrace to all people, hoped he had a day job, something better than the Amos and Andy role he played, and kept moving. Dana, that fool stared me down the rest of the night. If Vince wasn’t there, I would’ve been scared.”
I chewed and swallowed. Listened.
She told me that Vince had sold his Z. One of the mechanics at the Nissan dealer wanted to buy the car, and he sold it to him on the spot. Vince needed the money to do something for a friend. At first I thought he had loaned the cash to Rosa Lee and Womack, then I paused, a light came on. “He paid my bills?”
She smiled a little.
I asked, “Why?”
She shrugged. “He wants you to have a better start wherever you go.”
My throat was getting tight, but I swallowed water, washed down the the emotional feeling.
She said, “I shouldn’t’ve been the one to tell you.”
“Now I want to cry.”
“You should. If you left without saying good-bye, that would’ve hurt my heart. Never part like that. People remember you by your first impression, but they also remember how you leave.”
“Makes me wonder what you think of me.”
Rosa Lee said, “You’ve done things I can’t condone.”
“No doubt.”
“You’ve got this up-frontness, this attitude, this daring that I’ve never had. At least not the way you do.”
“My blessing is my curse. I talk a good talk, but I’m not as bad as I sound.”
Rosa Lee ran her hand through her hair as she shook her head.
I asked, “What’s going through that little head of yours?”
“The idea that after having four babies for him, Womack would still get jealous and think that I would even consider having an affair. I’d never do that to him, or to my children.”
We ate a while.
“Dana, I know what happened between you and that friend of yours from New York. Vince told Womack and my hubby told me.”
“News travels fast. That was a mistake. Major mistake.”
“I’m not judging you, because it’s your body, and your choice. Only you can know the thoughts, the things in life that caused you to make that decision. But let me tell you something. Something that I believe when it comes to men.”
“Okay.”
“Every man that lays with you leaves his essence inside of you. All of that mixes up and becomes part of your unborn children.”
“Is that scientific?”
“I failed science. Just my opinion.”
She leaned forward. I got ready for one of her lectures.
She said, “I think that’s why some kids are so messed up today. At work, as soon as I get a problem child, the first thing I do is look at his or her home profile. Ninety percent of them have the same thing in common: they live with single parents and the mother has to work two jobs to make ends meet, if she works at all. Then, if their mother is married, she has several kids by multiple men. Not saying that she did it intentionally, because nobody wants it like that, but that’s how it worked out.”
I smiled bitterly at my friend. “I hear you.”
“It takes as long as three generations of hard work, three generations of sacrifice to correct the wrongs.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you come from broken homes, single parents, you can’t deny it, can’t erase it, that’s your legacy. But you don’t have to continue it. You can relinquish what you want to make it right for your children, set the example. Then they have to do the same for their children, and so on. I don’t come from a line of doctors or lawyers, but my family has two generations of lasting marriages. To me, that’s more important than a Ph.D. This is Womack’s first. He’s given up a lot for his children, has struggled for me, just to make sure that his kids have a little bit better than what he had. There’s no man better.”
“I understand.”
A moment passed.
She said, “That night when Vince followed me, all of that came to me. I made it back home, looked at my home, my family. And I cried. I think I had forgotten all Womack has done for me. Women take men for granted too.”
I nodded patiently, but I experienced some discomfort. I wondered how deep Rosa Lee was going to get.
She continued, “That’s why I hate Malaika. And I don’t use the word
hate
too often. Hate isn’t healthy. It damages the hater more than the one who’s hated.”
“That much I know.”
“I’ve always seen right through her. So self-centered that she doesn’t understand what she’s doing to her own daughter.”
She sipped her soda; I sipped mine.
Rosa Lee caught herself. “Listen to me ramble.”
“No, it’s okay. I understand what you are saying. Vince deserves the best.”
“We all do. You deserve the best. Here or wherever, you deserve nothing less.”
“I agree.”
“Vince deserved a better hand than the one he was dealt.”
I couldn’t respond to that.
Then Rosa Lee said, “I was hoping you’d be the one to give it back. But that was just me hoping. Me loving my friend. He’s not a weak man, but he needs a strong woman.”
Just then Rosa Lee looked across the parking lot, and her red lips eased up into a smile. A brother was coming across the blacktop.
I said, “Look at you. You talk all that righteous smack, then flirt with the first brother that walks up.”
“He looks so good, I wish I had a mattress tied to my back.”
I stared at the man in jeans and a Negro League T-shirt, then shrieked, “Oh, my God.”
Rosa Lee chuckled. “Yep.”
“Womack cut all of that curl out of his head!”
“Got his ear pierced too.”
Later on I’d find out that Vince had made a deal with Womack. The price he had to pay for spying was cutting that curl out of his head. Womack and Rosa Lee’s beautiful self-made day-care center were all heading our way. Ramona was in a blue stroller. The skinny little boys were laughing and bouncing and helping their daddy push the carriage.
We high-fived, laughed like positive women. The kind of laugh that made the world feel better. I started to get up.