Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
My Friday night ritual consisted of me, a small pepperoni pizza pie, a six-pack of Corona, a pint of ice cream, and a movie rental.
I’d already had four slices of pizza, making my already mammoth-size gut bulge out even further.
Tomorrow, I told myself. I’ll go back on my diet tomorrow. Oh, wait a minute, tomorrow is Saturday, I thought. Saturdays aren’t good days to start a diet. Maybe Sunday?
No, Sunday is the Lord’s day. No room for the diet deities.
Well, Monday it is, I told myself and gulped down my second Corona.
Immediately after I drained the bottle I felt guilty.
It seemed as though I worked hard at everything except me.
I worked hard at my job, worked hard at keeping my son in school and on the right track, worked hard at keeping my home comfortable, but I always seemed to neglect myself.
My feet were in need of a pedicure, and as much as I hated to admit it, Chevy was right: I needed to do something with my hair besides pull it back into a ponytail.
But right now I had no money for those luxuries. I had to save every penny because I knew within the next few days I would be receiving a letter from my son begging for one thing or another.
I tugged my T-shirt down over my bulge and had to laugh at my circumstances. It’s funny, I thought, how all four of us came from the same place, all with parents who hadn’t made it out of high school but behaved as if landing a city or government job was as big as hitting the state lottery.
They instilled in us the importance of education.
Prayed that we’d all find a way to get into college—and pay for it too.
But being black in America had turned them into staunch realists who made sure to drop a copy of the Chief on our pillows every Thursday, every city application and federal examination deadline circled in red.
If they had had any dreams, they never commented on them.
Some of us did make it into college. The some of us being Crystal and Noah.
Chevy felt she didn’t need college. She believed her brains, beauty, and street smarts would carry her as far as she wanted to go. And so far they’d carried her practically around the world and had gotten her into some pretty interesting social circles along the way.
She was smart and savvy. And Crystal and I both agreed that she could have so much more if she used her powers for good rather than evil.
As for me, I was an average student, more Cs than Bs, but always my teachers would comment on the back of my report card “a joy to be around.”
Not that that did anything for my average. But they were also fond of saying “Geneva displays great effort.”
And I did. I worked my ass off when I did go to school.
I liked school, to tell you the truth, but at fifteen when the cutest boy in the senior class approaches you, takes you by the hand, calls you a “fox,” and then says, “You wanna go with me?” all thoughts of education go right out the window.
I know that happened for me. All my energy was turned to doing whatever it was I had to do to keep Eric interested in me.
Including cutting school and using my lunch money to buy him sappy “I love you” greeting cards, and letting him have me “raw dog” on my childhood bed, on my mother’s bed, and, when we had no place else to go, on the top-floor stairwell in the adjoining building.
Needless to say, those reckless sexual acts disqualified me from participating in the race for a college education, as well as the one I’d barely been running for my high school diploma. It was all over the minute the little square box on the plastic stick I pissed on indicated that I was pregnant.
But I persevered. Yeah, I was a single teenage mother on welfare, struggling to make a home for my newborn son in a space that was already overcrowded and slightly dysfunctional.
But it seems to me that any family has to have at least a splatter of dysfunction to be considered normal. Whatever that is!
I took GED classes at night while my mother watched Little Eric, and even though she bitched and moaned the whole six months I went, when I passed with flying colors she was the happiest I’d ever seen her.
It’s been an uphill battle ever since that day.
Taking the best I could get jobwise meant a three-year stint at the local McDonald’s and turns as a cashier girl at a five-and-dime, Key Food, and Foodtown.
Finally I landed a job at the Macy’s perfume counter and then my present position as a receptionist at AIW.
I’ve worked hard as hell to get this far, and while this far may be nowhere to some people, it’s everywhere to me right now.
I’ve started thinking seriously about college. At first the thought of going to college scared the hell out of me—I just didn’t think I was smart enough. But I’ve met enough degree-carrying stupid people in my life to change my mind about that!
Ring, ring, ring.
My thoughts were interrupted by the telephone, and I answered with a full mouth.
“Hello?”
“Are you eating pizza?” Nadine’s voice floated through the receiver. At first I felt guilt, but that was short-lived. “Bitch, get a life!” I screamed into the phone and slammed it back down onto the base.
Just for that, I snatched another slice of pizza out of the box and greedily inhaled it. That’d show that size-six bitch!
I popped the Steel Magnolias videocassette into the VCR and leaned back to watch it for the umpteenth time. It always makes me cry, and I was PMSing so hard that a Hallmark commercial could have sent me over the edge.
I was just at the part where Julia Roberts is going to have her seizure. I clutched the pillow to my chest and held my breath.
Ring, ring, ring.
Don’t the phone always ring at the most inopportune times?
It better not be that damn Nadine again, or I swear I’m going to call the cops.
I snatched up the remote and pressed pause before I answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Eric.”
“Hey,” I breathed.
“What you doing?”
“Getting ready for a date.”
“Liar.” He laughed.
“What, you think I don’t date?”
“I’m in the neighborhood.”
“And?”
“Thought I might come up and see you.”
“For what?”
“Well, I got a few dollars I wanted to give you to send to Eric at camp.”
“That’s your excuse for coming here? You could have dropped it in the mail, or, better yet, sent the check directly to the camp.”
“C’mon, girl, stop giving me such a hard time,” he said, laughing.
I thought that right about now a warm body was better than a long hard cry, and I said, “Okay, c’mon up.” But I told myself that this was the last time.