Crystal
Crystal
This time next year I’ll be thirty-six. The middle of the road, the halfway point between whatever this is and forty. I’m not scared. I’ve read all the magazine articles. “Forty and Fabulous.” “You Know Who You Are When You Reach Forty.” “Sex Is Better at Forty.”
I’m well prepared.
I hold a BS and a MSfrom Princeton and Cornell Universities, respectfully.
Five foot nine inches, one hundred and thirty-five pounds, honey-colored skin, hazel eyes, and an ass like a racehorse’s.
I am a prize filly, at least that’s what my boyfriend, Kendrick, tells me. And he should know—he rides it well.
I live in a turn-of-the-century building on Central Park West. Funny, I read something once that said people generally die five to ten miles away from where they were born and raised.
Well, I was raised exactly one block away from where I live now. Right on the corner of 90th and Columbus Avenue. Come to think of it, we were all raised there, and we all got out. Well, everyone except Geneva.
So here I am, living a block away from the projects, in a beautiful building with a doorman who refers to me as Ms.Atkins and is at my service whenever I need extra hands to help with my groceries or Bloomingdale’s bags.
I have a two-bedroom, two-thousand-square-foot tenth-floor apartment.
Moet, paté, and Evian fill my refrigerator the way government cheese fills Geneva’s.
I am the director of the Ain’t I A Woman Foundation. We assist women who are in abusive relationships. We get them out of their unhappy situations, place them in safe houses, and counsel them until they feel confident enough to reenter society.
I am one of a handful of African-American women holding a top director’s position in an old-boy, stuffed-shirt, all-male, all-white private organization.
I know I’m a token and I know I have this job because over the past twenty years a lot of brothers and sisters have been popping up on Fortune magazine’s wealthiest people list. Black people are pulling some serious bank, and AIW wanted some of that money.
Installing me as director guaranteed donations from Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan.
I can’t say if affirmative action helped me, so I’ll just leave that alone. I do know that I worked my ass off to get to this point.
Children?
I used to think about having children all the time. I kept scheduling and rescheduling the year I would finally get pregnant. But something always disrupted my plans: a change in boyfriends, another promotion, the state of the world.
And then I looked up and I was thirty and then thirty-two, and so I just started telling myself that there was no place for a child in my life. I mean, how would I do it? Where does a child fit into traveling around the country and working thirteen-hour days?
Then I turned thirty-three, met Kendrick, and started hearing my biological clock ticking loudly inside my head.
Two years later and it’s so loud at times that I can hardly sleep at night.
Kendrick and I have spoken about children in passing. He says he would love to have a baby with me, a little girl. He has a son from a previous relationship. But he says now is not the time. He says we need to enjoy our lives before we settle down and have babies.
I never hear the word marriage from him, just babies . I assume he means marriage too, just like in that movie Ghost , when Demi Moore knew that Patrick Swayze meant “I love you” when all he would say was “Ditto.”
So I pushed back my baby-having year and just hope that Kendrick’s schedule is open at the same time mine is, because I love him and we’re good together—when we are together.
He’s been working so hard these past few weeks. Running from one country to another, buying and selling property, initiating plans for new buildings.
There’s been very little us time, but I don’t complain. I know that being with a successful black man can be lonely sometimes.
Sometimes after he returns from an exceptionally long business trip, he’s cranky and wound up so tight he snaps at every little thing.
But I understand and work through it with him until he feels more like himself again.
And when we do finally get him back to the Kendrick that I know and love, he’s got to jet off again.
So that’s me. Crystal Atkins. Not bad for a girl who was raised on welfare and ate pork and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Not bad at all.