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  “So?”

  “So? So!” Noah squealed as he turned and faced me. “There are two of them and they’re standing three feet apart, chirping to each other!”

  I was still confused as to what chirping was but thought it best not to press Noah in his unstable state of mind.

  “Oh, damn,” I said, and rolled back over onto my side. I wished he would just shut up; I needed to be alone with my thoughts…with my memories of last night.

  My stomach was doing backflips, and I could feel myself becoming moist. I hurriedly shoved my hands between my thighs. If I was careful, I might be able to give myself a little pleasure without Noah noticing.

  “There are six of them now, Crystal!” Noah screeched, kicking the bench at the foot of the bed in anger.

  I removed my hands. Guess not.

  Chevy

  i had to fuck him twice. Twice! After the second time I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach a third, so while he was sleeping I eased out of the bed, dressed myself, snuck through the house in search of money—change, really, so that I could get on the railroad—but what I found was the motherload!

  What made me pick up that Bible that was lying on the desk in the study? I don’t know. Shoot, maybe it was Jesus himself.

  I opened the Bible and it flipped right open to the spot where three hundred dollars in crispy new twenty-dollar bills had been stashed.

  I was out of that house and down the driveway in the blink of an eye. I had no idea in which direction the Long Island Rail Road lay, but I would walk all night if I had to in order to get away from Carl Matherson and his doorknob dick.

  I would walk straight to Manhattan…shit, clear to Timbuktu if need be!

  Noah

  that damn Crystal.

  I wanted her to stay another night. I practically begged her.

  But she didn’t. She couldn’t, so she claimed, saying she had to get back home because she had exterminators coming to the house. That sounded like a lie to me.

  When she left, she got the full monty with regard to what I had been complaining about. Cupcake and her crew had a grill made out of an oil drum in the front yard, and guess what they were roasting?

  A hog!

  Cupcake had the audacity to send one of her little nappy-headed heathens over to invite me to the cookout.

  Can you believe that shit?

  You would have thought we were having our annual block party, because she’d blocked off the entrance to the street with her Hummer and before I knew it there were children playing in the street, and Guatemalan ice hacks selling their frozen treats, and only God knows where the clown came from.

  But the pièce de résistance was the black cowboys, propped high on their steeds and offering rides to the kiddies, five dollars a pop!

  “Hey, man, c’mon over. I got swine, baked sweet potatoes, potato salad, butter beans, corn bread, and Kool-Aid!” Cupcake screamed over the music at me when I returned from walking Crystal to the train station.

  I just kept walking, pretending that I hadn’t heard a word.

  Surprisingly, the cookout wrapped up by eleven. I was prepared for one of their all-night soirées. So when it suddenly went quiet, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  I’d developed a twitch, and at the sound of a child’s voice, my eyelids would go spastic. Now I stood there tense, waiting for a sound, a noise, a thump, something—nothing happened, it remained quiet.

  After some time and few glasses of wine, I was relaxed. I even put in Floetry’s latest and let their European soul wash over me.

  I was good and drunk when Merriwether crossed my mind, and so I reached for my cell phone and dialed her number.

  “Yes, hello—may I speak with Ms. Merriwether Beacon?” I heard myself say in as sober a voice as I could muster.

  “This is Merriwether.” The response was dry.

  “Oh, hey, Merriwether, this is Noah.”

  “Noah?”

  “Noah Bodison,” I said. “Your husband…I mean, ex-husband, gave me your number.”

  Silence.

  I cleared my voice and continued. “He said you wanted to speak to me about something urgent.”

  “Noah, is that really you?” Her voice had softened, and for some reason I imagined her gray around the temples and wearing a hairnet.

  A giggle escaped me and I muffled it with a fake cough. “Pardon me,” I spouted.

  “Noah—oh my God, it’s been a long time.”

  I thought back. It had been a while. Exactly how long I wasn’t sure, so I said, “It’s been a minute—so what’s up?” I hoped against hope that she didn’t think I was still into pussy.

  “Um, well, not a whole lot. I am single again, but I guess you know that since you saw Will.”

  “Yeah,” I half said, half burped, and then looked accusingly over at the empty bottle of Pinot Grigio. “’Scuse me,” I said.

  “Sure, no problem. Are you still living in Brooklyn?”

  “Well, kind of. I spend most of my time in London—you know, where I saw you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she breathed, and I could hear some rustling in the background. “How’s the family?”

  Okay, this bitch just wasn’t going to get to the point, was she? She didn’t know my people—we’d had one sweaty, funky, sex-filled night and that was all!

  “So what did you need to speak to me about?” I asked, getting straight to it.

  I thought the connection had gone dead, because the silence was so long.

  “Maybe we should meet?” she said.

  Meet?

  “I think that anything you need to say to me can be said over the phone, Merriwether.”

  “No, no, not this, Noah. I need to see you face-to-face.”

  Now I was getting worried.

  Chevy

  when I arrived at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it was just past six in the morning. Fifth Avenue was a ghost town, and I found myself standing on the stone steps with the priest.

  “Good morning, sister,” the bent black man greeted me.

  “Yeah, morning,” I grumbled. I’d spent most of the night walking the dark neighborhood roads in search of a Long Island Rail Road station. I felt like I was trapped in an Outer Limits episode. At some point I must have crossed into the white part of Hempstead, because all of a sudden I looked up and a police cruiser was on my heels.

  “Are you lost, lady?” a white female with cropped bleached-blond hair and Bette Davis eyes asked me, after lowering the flashlight she’d damn near blinded me with.

  I straightened my back, clutched my plastic bag closer to me, and said, “Yes, I am lost.”

  I didn’t know how true those words were until I followed the aging monsignor into the church and settled myself down onto the wooden pew.

  So this is what I’ve come to, I thought as I sat staring at the white world’s likeness of the savior. His head was tilted forward, but his eyes seemed to watch me. I turned my gaze away.

  The last time I’d been in church I must have been twelve years old. I had been raised a Catholic. My mother had switched from the Baptist faith to Catholicism when she married my father. My maternal grandmother, however, was a Bible-thumping Baptist, and the summers I spent with her found little me wedged on Sunday mornings between my grandmother’s wide hips and the scrawny ones of my cousins, listening to the word passed down by the minister.

  I always felt that the best part of the service was the choir. They would get to singing and I would somehow float into the aisle on the wave of the music, stomping my feet and clapping my hands, gripped by the Holy Spirit!

  I laughed to myself. Those were good days—what had happened to those days?

  My eyes found JC’s again.

  “We had a good relationship a long, long time ago,” I said, on my feet now, walking toward him. “What happened?”

  JC just watched me. I moved closer.

  “Did you forsake me?”

  “You forsake yourself.”

  I fr
oze where I stood and my heart skipped three beats. Had JC actually spoken to me? To me, Chevanese Cambridge?

  This was a miracle! I fell down to my knees and tried hard to remember the prayers of my youth, but for some reason all my mind was able to dig up was the tune and words to that rap song that was so popular a few years back: “Everybody in the club getting tipsy!”

  I clasped my hands together and shook my head wildly. There had to be something good in my mind, in my heart, in my soul…I concentrated harder and then I heard: “Jesus walks…”

  Kanye West’s tribute to Christ.

  I opened one eye and peered shamefully up at JC and muttered a pitiful “Sorry, that’s all I can come up with.”

  “I’m sure it’s okay,” the voice said again. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the statue. His lips hadn’t moved. Perhaps JC was speaking to me with his mind.

  “Thank you,” I responded.

  “No problem,” the voice said, and I realized it was coming from behind me. I spun around on my knees.

  “You!”

  Crystal

  kendrick called and said he would meet me for brunch, but I told him that I had a doctor’s appointment at ten and that he should meet me after that.

  I’d set up this appointment weeks ago. Dr. Spade was one of the few doctors I knew that worked on Sunday, and that fit right into my schedule.

  I sat on the table dressed in the green and white paper robe, my feet crossed and swinging while I waited for Dr. Spade to come in.

  I was actually smiling, and that wasn’t like me, especially at my once-a-year gyno visit. I hate the nakedness, the cold gel, and the even colder steel stirrups, but it was a necessity in this day and age, and so I felt it was better to grin and bear it than to have an attitude. And besides, I truly had something to be grinning about.

  Kendrick Greene was back in my life. Well, I should say the new and improved Kendrick Greene.

  We’d shared a lot in the two days we’d spent together. I hate to say it, but having him in my life made me feel like a whole woman again.

  “Crystal, how are you?” As Dr. Spade walked in, his sky blue eyes danced.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled and moved myself into position. A dark-haired, dark-skinned nurse followed him into the room.

  “Hello, I’m Sharon,” she said, offering me a broad smile.

  Dr. Spade sat behind the small steel desk, and peered down at my chart. “I see you’re going to be forty next month, Crystal.”

  Don’t remind me.

  “Yep!”

  “I’ll give you a referral for a mammogram, okay?”

  “Yep!”

  “But you have been checking your breasts on your own, right?”

  Of course I had, and lately they seemed to have grown a size.

  “Sure have.” While I didn’t really feel the need to mention it, something in me said I should: “And they’ve been sensitive for nearly a month now.”

  Dr. Spade looked away from chart. “A month?”

  “Yes.”

  He laid the chart down on the desk and asked me to drop the top of my gown.

  I focused on an empty spot on the wall while he rolled my breasts in his hands. Normally, I allowed myself to think about mundane things, but today for some reason I imagined Dr. Spade’s hands were Kendrick’s…not just Kendrick’s but Neville’s as well. Kendrick had the left breast and Neville had the right one and before you knew it my imagination was in full swing, because I could feel each of their mouths, hot and wet on my nipples.

  “Crystal?” Dr. Spade called my name.

  I snapped back to reality, ashamed of my fantasy.

  “Everything seems fine,” he said.

  “Oh, good,” I said, pulling my gown back up over my breasts.

  “So is there anything else?”

  “Yeah, um, I want to get some birth control pills,” I said shyly.

  Well, if this thing with Kendrick and me was real, we would just naturally want to drift back to the days when we could enjoy each other without the hindrance of condoms.

  Dr. Spade smiled. “No problem, but we have to give you a pregnancy test before we prescribe anything.”

  “Of course.”

  Geneva

  by Sunday morning I was so tired of the sound of my ringing phone that I ripped it from the wall.

  By noon, my son, Eric, was coming through the door.

  “Ma!” he called out to me. I was in my bedroom, playing Candy Land with Charlie.

  I walked into the living room. “Yes?” I responded calmly.

  Eric walked toward me, looking everything like his father. “What’s going on with you? Deeka’s been blowing up my phone like a madman.”

  I shrugged and went to sit on the couch. “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  Eric came to sit beside me. He watched me for a minute, his face swirling with concern. “You don’t look well. Are you okay?”

  What the hell did he mean, I didn’t look well? I looked fabulous. Why, just this morning I was admiring myself in the mirror and my reflection said, “Guuuuurrrrl, you look good!”

  “I’m fine,” I said, touching my face.

  Eric sighed, leaned back into the cushions of the couch, and asked, “So what’s up with you and Deeka?”

  Who the hell was he? I was the adult here, the parent; he had no right asking me about my personal business. Did I ask him about what was going on with him and the girl he was shacking up with? Hell to the no, I sure didn’t!

  “Mind your goddamn business,” I snapped, and jumped up off of the couch.

  Eric’s face twisted with surprise and then hurt.

  “Ma, why are you speaking to me like that?” he asked, reaching his hand out to me.

  Why was I speaking to him like that? This wasn’t like me, snapping at my baby for no good reason.

  “I-I’m sorry, sweetie,” I moaned, melting back down to the couch again. “Mama’s just been a little stressed out, with losing my job and all.”

  Eric took my hand in his. “You know you don’t have to worry about money, Ma. I got you until you can get back on your feet again. Deeka got us gigs rolling in left and right, and—”

  I snatched my hand from his. “I don’t need your goddamn charity!”

  It was Eric’s turn to stand. His eyes were wet. “Okay, then,” he mumbled, and shoved his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans. “I’ll just go say hello to Charlie, and then I’m out.”

  “Whatever,” I said, and turned my face away from his penetrating stare.

  Noah

  merriwether was kind enough to come to Brooklyn and meet me. I guess she sensed my hesitation in leaving the borough.

  We would meet at Bread Stuy, the neighborhood coffee shop located on Lewis Avenue off MacDonough.

  I was halfway through my second cup of coffee and slice of red velvet cake when she finally walked in, thirty minutes late.

  I almost didn’t recognize her. When I last saw her, she was petite and shapely, with long flowing tresses. What was standing before me now was a woman who was barely five-four and weighing a good 190.

  She’d cut her hair off and was now sporting short bleached-blond locks. Her nose was pierced and the blood red lipstick she wore took away from her golden complexion.

  “Noah?”

  I looked up into the brown eyes of a stranger. “Yes?” I said, my mouth crammed with cake.

  “Merriwether Beacon!” she shrieked, and threw her fat arms out at her side.

  I stared blankly at her.

  “Merriwether,” she said again, slowly lowering her arms and looking a bit miffed.

  “Of course,” I said, suddenly springing to life.

  Damn, I thought, what a few years could do to a person. “You look fabulous,” I lied as I stood and gave her a halfhearted hug.

  “Thank you, so do you,” she said, and took the seat across the table from me. “So how have you been?”

  I sighed. Hadn’t we covered this over the phone the o
ther night? I glanced at my watch. I didn’t want to stay long—Cupcake and her crew were probably having a meeting to decide how they would violate my house a second time.

  “Fine—so what did you want to talk about?”

  Merriwether looked over her shoulder and through the pane-glass window. I followed her gaze. No one was out there, just a line of parked cars.

  “Well?” I pressed.

  “You see,” she began, looking down at her hands. She seemed nervous and unsure of how to break whatever news she had.

  God, I hoped that she wasn’t going to tell me she had a disease or something. I thought back. Yes, we’d used a condom, but nothing was a hundred percent, was it?

  I shook the worry off me; I’d had at least three AIDS tests since I’d been with her and they’d all come back negative.

  “When we were together, something happened…I mean, I found out something not too long after, and…”

  She stopped midsentence, wringing her hands and looking around at the would-be writers that filled the coffee shop, all tapping away on their laptops, sure they were producing the next New York Times bestseller.

  “Yes?” I urged.

  “Well, it’s like this,” she said, and then took a deep breath. I leaned in close and waited.

  Crystal

  it can’t be,” I said.

  “Well, these tests are pretty reliable, but we can give you a blood test just to make sure,” Dr. Spade said.

  I had been in shock before, or at least I thought I had, but as I sat there in the backless office chair, I felt like the world as I knew it had just dropped away. I figured this is what people mean when they say they feel as if the rug has been pulled out from beneath them.

  “But I just finished my period,” I lamented, looking desperately at Dr. Spade for some type of explanation.