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  “Does she have a nice body? She looked really toned to me.”

  “She was wearing a girdle,” Neville said. “She’s really flabby. She’s had some surgery too, so there are these ugly angry-looking scars across her belly.” Neville faded off and then shuddered with the memory.

  “So how did you manage to…you know?”

  He was seated on the bed now, his back to me; he was doing something with his hands. I leaned over his shoulder; he was holding his penis, stroking it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, instantly aroused, my voice heavy with lust.

  His penis swelled with every stroke, and we both watched in quiet awe.

  “Do you want some?”

  “Oh yeah, baby, Mama wants some,” I said, lying back, tossing the sheet off my naked body, and spreading my legs.

  Geneva

  monday morning, I decided to take three pills.

  I’d really gone overboard yesterday. The chips, hot dogs, and Pepsi-Cola at the theater and then Chevy and I went to this diner called Oswald’s on Amsterdam Avenue and had cheeseburgers, vanilla shakes, and apple pie. And then I came home and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I washed down with a tall glass of milk.

  So I’d slipped a little. We all do every now and again, and that’s why I have these little yellow pills to help me out when I do.

  As soon as I took them I started feeling better. Those pills were like an energy shot to my system. Sometimes, though—and I’ll only admit this to you—I do get a little light-headed, but that’s about it.

  Charlie came out of her room, dressed in a pink and blue dress that was as wrinkled as I don’t know what.

  “What happened to your dress, Charlie?” I asked as I started toward her. It was nearly eight o’clock and I needed to drop Charlie off at school and make it to work by eight-thirty.

  “I dunno,” Charlie responded as she stood transfixed in front of the television.

  The good feeling was leaving me. “Come here,” I barked, suddenly angry at the world.

  Charlie didn’t flinch. I charged toward her, swooping her up and carrying her into my bedroom. She began to wail.

  “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you!” I bellowed, shaking the open palm of my hand in front of her face. Charlie’s mouth snapped shut, but her eyes continued to spill out salty tears.

  The ironing board was a solid fixture in my bedroom. I never took it down; I just left it standing against the wall, in between the dresser and the television stand. I hurriedly pushed the plug of the iron into the outlet. Once it began to sizzle I snatched at Charlie’s arm. Her eyes were filled with fear as she reached for the hem of her dress, intending to pull it off.

  I slapped her hands away. “We don’t have time for that.”

  I got to work late of course, a full thirty minutes late. Thank God my boss wasn’t there. But Darlene was, and she glared at me when I rushed through the door.

  “Don’t say a word,” I said, holding my hand up and moving swiftly past her.

  I’d served at least ten customers by the time the call came in. “Geneva, it’s for you,” Arthur, the fry cook, said as he held the phone out toward me.

  “This is Geneva.”

  “Geneva, this is Eric.”

  I rolled my eyes at the sound of my ex-husband’s voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just got a call from Charlie’s school…”

  My heart began to race. What had happened to my baby? Why did they call Eric instead of me?

  “What’s wrong?” I screamed.

  “Calm down,” he urged. “The teacher said that Charlie just started crying and then asked them to call me—”

  “Crying? Is she sick, hurt—”

  “No, Geneva, she’s fine. Just a little shook up.”

  “Shook up?”

  Eric’s voice dropped to whisper. “Yeah—I went to get her and she told me that you yelled at her and then that you ironed her dress…”

  I looked at the phone. Eric’s voice faded in and out. Suddenly my head seemed to be filled with cotton. “What—Eric, what did you say?”

  “I said, Geneva,” Eric began again in a tight voice, “that Charlie told me you took a hot iron to her dress while she was still in it.”

  Chevy

  all of that torture for a horrible meal and a measly fifty dollars!

  It was Monday afternoon and I was still stewing over that fiasco disguised as a play I’d attended at the Lincoln.

  Geneva and the other patrons had enjoyed it to no end. And of course they had—they were as sophisticated as dung bugs—dung bugs’ entire world revolved around shit!

  I probably could have gotten more money out of Geneva if we’d left from the side exits and not back out through the front, because there, set right out front, was that street lit author Persistent Pablo.

  Persistent Pablo, from what I’d heard, had spent eight years in the Kansas City penal system. He’d acquired his GED and had self-published his first book while serving the last six months of his sentence.

  He’d found his readers in the hair and nail salons. The welfare offices and Laundromats.

  When his two-year probation came to an end, his father loaned him his Nova, and Persistent Pablo, along with his boxes of hard-core street lit, set out for New York City, where he’d promptly sold over three hundred books from the trunk of his car.

  Some New York publisher had zoned in on him by the time he’d self-published his fourth novel: A Nigga Dies in Brooklyn.

  That book brought him instant fame, and now Persistent Pablo could be found in bookstores nationwide.

  He didn’t do book signings—well, not formal book signings inside of bookstores; he preferred to hold court on city sidewalks, and one was sure to find him and his bright red Escalade—the hood spray-painted with his likeness—along with his sales crew and hundreds of copies of the twenty or so titles he’d published, outside any event where there would be a large attendance of black folk.

  “Oooooh, Persistent Pablo!” Geneva had shrieked, her hands digging into her pocketbook as she plowed through the crowd toward him.

  “I read Pussy Galore and Cock’s Pit!” she gushed once she was in front of Pablo. “I looooooooooooved them.”

  Tall and reed thin, Pablo looked as if he’d fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

  “Thanks for da love, my shorty,” he said, grinning triumphantly.

  Someone please save me.

  Geneva walked away with three of his ten-dollar books.

  As we made our way to the diner I said, “Geneva, how can you read that garbage?” Geneva didn’t even answer me—she was already devouring the words with same hungry enthusiasm she’d devoured those three franks at the Lincoln.

  A soft knock came at the door, pulling me from my musings.

  “Come in.”

  In walked LaTangie. Tan-gee.

  “How y’all doing, Chevy?” she said as she swayed over to the chair and sat down before I could object. “You all had a good weekend?” she continued when all I did was glare at her.

  “How can I help you?” My tone was firm, professional.

  She was unfazed by my rudeness.

  “Well, Anja wanted me to stop in to make sure that you’d received the invitations for the Holloway party on Wednesday.”

  Yes, I had received the invitations. Which were really more like four gold tickets to the hottest social party in Brooklyn.

  Taking place in the halls of the Brooklyn Museum and at twenty-five thousand dollars a head, the Holloway party was the benefit event of the season, if you were a Brooklynite.

  This year the funds raised would go to the renovation of a ten-story apartment building that had been abandoned by its owners some twenty years ago. The city had taken it over and the Ain’t I A Woman Foundation had purchased it for a song. The foundation intended to turn it into a shelter for single mothers and children—all of whom had been diagnosed with the AIDS
virus.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well,” LaTangie began, twirling her red hair around her index finger and cocking her head childishly to one side, “Anja wants me to collect them and bring them to her.”

  Why didn’t Anja just call and ask me to bring them to her?

  My eyes held LaTangie’s as I picked up the phone and pressed the speed dial that would connect me to Anja. The call immediately went into voice mail, but I pretended that she answered.

  “Anja, Chevy here…What? Yes, she’s sitting right here. I thought it best that I deliver the invitations to you directly because we need to discuss a few things, if that’s okay with you? Yes, okay, see you in five.”

  I hung up the phone. LaTangie’s doe eyes stretched to saucers.

  “I’ll bring them to her,” I said with a smug smile. “You can go back to whatever it is you do.”

  LaTangie’s face remained sweet as she rose from the chair. “Okay then, Chevy, you all have a nice day,” she said as she turned and exited my office.

  I wasn’t sure, but I believe I heard the word “bitch” float to me on the back draft of the closing door.

  Geneva

  i was on the bus home soon after I hung up the phone.

  To tell you the truth, I couldn’t remember much of what had happened that morning. I do remember ironing Charlie’s dress, but I sure don’t remember her being in it. The morning was a blur and that wasn’t unusual—most of my mornings were a blur. I was always running late, always in a rush.

  Eric had taken Charlie to the movies and he would meet me back at my place. I wasn’t looking forward to that: I knew he was angry even though he’d tried hard to keep his voice low, his words civil.

  The bus swerved, just missing a pizza deliveryman on a bicycle but sending me careening into the lap of a passenger. The man, a white male, was red with embarrassment—I’d crushed his New York Times and his Dunkin’ Donut. “Sorry,” I muttered as I pulled myself back to my feet.

  I could hear snickering from some of the other passengers. I dropped my eyes in shame and got off at the next stop, which left me ten blocks from home.

  “Where the f—” Eric started but then stopped. Charlie stood beside him, clutching his hand. “Where have you been?”

  “What? I left work as soon as you called me,” I said, not ready to meet my daughter’s accusing eyes.

  “Geneva,” Eric began, his tone impatient, “that was two hours ago.”

  I blinked. Two hours? I looked at my watch; it was one o’clock. I didn’t have an answer to Eric’s question, so I just looked down at Charlie and said, “You feeling better, baby?”

  Charlie nodded her head, but her eyes were wounded. I sighed, my heart breaking into a million pieces. “Mommy’s sorry for yelling at you this morning. You know sometimes Mommy gets—

  “’Tressed,” Charlie said.

  “Yes.” I grinned. “Sometimes mommy gets stressed.” I reached out to her, planting my hand on her head. “Do you forgive me?”

  Charlie nodded again. Releasing her father’s hand, she took tiny steps until she was at my side.

  I looked up at Eric. His eyes were fuming.

  “You know,” he spoke through clenched teeth, “if she’d told her teacher what you’d done, the school would have called child protective services on you.”

  “She’s making it up,” I said. She had to be. Why would I do something like that to my child? “You know she has a wild imagination. She probably just didn’t want to be in school today.”

  Eric’s face registered doubt—in who or what I wasn’t sure—but nevertheless, his eyes softened. “Hey, sweetie,” he said, easing down to one knee and coming eye level with Charlie. “I’ll see you next week, okay?” Eric tweaked Charlie’s nose and then hugged her.

  “Okay, Eric,” Charlie said. Charlie had never warmed to calling him Daddy.

  Once we were in the apartment, I tried to remember what had happened between the time I’d left the diner and my arrival at the apartment. I remembered falling on the man and then getting off the bus and walking home. It couldn’t have taken me that long to cover ten blocks—or maybe it had?

  Oh, well—I had so much on my mind, maybe I’d just kind of dazed out and my body went on autopilot.

  And this thing with Charlie—she had to have been lying. Children told lies all the time, even the dangerous types that could get a parent placed behind bars. I’d have to talk to her about that. Not today, though, but soon.

  Crystal

  i was not happy to be back in New York.

  I’d only been home for three weeks, but it felt like a year. I’d returned to a shitload of paperwork, e-mails, and meetings that took up most of my day. On top of that, I had to attend the gala event at the Brooklyn Museum, something that I truly did not want to do. I just didn’t have it in me to put on an evening dress and my happy face.

  I so wanted to be back in Antigua, barefoot and braless, sitting on Neville’s veranda and staring out at the sea.

  When I arrived home my answering machine was filled with messages. One from Chevy advising me that she would see me at the gala, two from my mother, ten from Geneva, who with each message sounded like a different person—I was beginning to think that she was bipolar—and one from Noah saying he was flying in on Friday, May 26. I wasn’t to tell Chevy, because he wanted to surprise her.

  I refocused my attention on the task at hand. Somehow over the past few years, my job description had changed from schmoozing to crunching numbers. I squinted at the columns and columns of digits and, as I could have predicted, my head began to hurt.

  I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the bottle of Tylenol I kept there for just these moments. After popping two pills, I washed them down with a bottle of Fiji water. I made a mental note to call the optometrist in the morning. These sudden headaches were becoming more frequent.

  I leaned back in my chair and waited for the medicine to take effect. Just as the pain was starting to ebb from my temples, the phone rang.

  “Crystal Atkins.”

  “Chrissy?” Peyton, my mother, questioned from the other end of the line.

  “Hi, Mom, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, sweetie, how are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine. You sound stressed.”

  “That too. Just a headache. What’s up?”

  My mother was silent for a while; I suspected she was carefully choosing her words. We’d spoken just once since I’d returned, and that conversation had been brief.

  “Oh, nothing—I was just thinking about you and wanted to hear your voice,” she said.

  I knew she really wanted to hear the details of my trip, but I wasn’t telling.

  “Thanks, Mom. Glad to know you care,” I said drily.

  “Of course I do, honey. Listen, I thought maybe if you could get a few days off you could come out and visit with me?”

  Now, she knew I’d just gotten back from Antigua. “I can’t take any more time until July.”

  “Well, how about I come and visit you?”

  Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but I just wasn’t in the mood to have her in my space for an extended period of time. She had a bad habit of rearranging my things, going through my drawers, and wanting to talk—in explicit detail—about my sex life.

  “Um, Mom, I’m really up against it here at work, and now is just not a good time. Let me get back to you with a date.”

  “Oh, I understand.” She was wounded; I could hear it in her voice.

  “But hey, Memorial Day weekend is next week. Maybe I can get a cheap flight out then,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t even try.

  “Yeah, baby, that would be nice,” Peyton said, her voice light. “Okay, honey, the girls just pulled up.”

  “Oh, where are you all off to?”

  “Bingo, and then later, target practice.”

  “Target practice, with guns?”

  “Yes, sweetie.”<
br />
  “Why do you need to know how to shoot a gun, Mom?”

  “Hey, a girl has to know how to protect herself,” Peyton said, and then, “Ta-ta, sweetie—remember, Mommy loves you.”

  And with that she was gone.

  I placed the phone back down onto the base. That mother of mine had a better social life than I did.

  It was just past eight o’clock, and from the looks of things I would be here for at least another two or three hours.

  I looked down at the pages before me and the pain in my head started its thumping once more.

  The ringing telephone pulled me from my slumber. I looked at the clock and it said it was just past midnight.

  I was annoyed—the first time the phone rang, it was around eleven. I was so tired, all I could do was pull the pillow over my head—I told myself that whoever it was would just have to leave a message.

  Now it was ringing again. I gave in and answered.

  “H-hello?” My voice was hoarse, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello?”

  “Crystal?” My name came out as if the person calling it was in a tunnel.

  “Y-yes. Who’s this?” I asked, pulling myself into a sitting position and stifling a yawn.

  “It’s Neville.”

  This was a spot of sunshine on an otherwise gray week. I brightened.

  “Neville! How are you?” I squealed, suddenly no longer tired. “Make me jealous—tell me about the beautiful warm days and crystal clear waters.” I laughed, pulling my knees up to my chin.

  “Baby, how beautiful can it be when you’re so far away?” Neville responded in that sexy Antiguan accent that never failed to make me wet.

  I grinned; he was a man who knew how to make a woman feel like a woman.

  “It’s so nice to hear from you, Neville. What’s going on?” I asked, straining to hear Antigua’s night sounds.

  “Not a thing, girl. How are you?” Neville asked, and his tone shook a bit, as if he knew that I was going through something. I felt the tears begin to well up in my eyes, but I blinked them away and turned up the cheer level in my voice.