I Don’t Want To Be Handled #2
I was already moving. Behind me Tre started in, “You stay acting like you Zion Vanzant or some shit, man. Sick of it,” and Zion saying something about how between the two of them, he was glad one of them had some sense. I let the door cut them off.
B2 was smaller, the booth glassed off in the back. Raschad had his headphones around his neck, scrubbing a take on the screen. He looked up when I came in and read my face in about a second.
“Heard you bought Alyssa a Genesis. Didn’t go well, huh?” He pulled the headphones off and set them down.
“She complain to you?”
“No, she told Simone. Simone mentioned it to me.”
I closed the door. “I traded her Accord in. Transmission kept slipping, check-engine light hadn’t gone off in a month. It wasn’t a safe car for her or Micah, so I took care of it.” I didn’t soften any of it. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you the mistake was buying it. It wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t,” Raschad said. I’d come in braced for her brother to take her side. “She needs that car. You didn’t do one thing wrong wanting her in that seat.”
“Then we agree.”
“On the car.” He leaned back against the console. “Not on how you got it into the driveway.”
I waited.
“You see a problem, you solve it, Jules. No permission, you just execute. But you point that straight at a woman like my sister? You’re gonna hit a wall with her every time.”
“Why is that? Help me understand this.”
“You want to know what you’re up against?
Take this for example. Few years back, her house went into foreclosure.
I was on the road, making more money than I knew what to do with…
She didn’t tell me. Didn’t tell our mother or our sisters, because she knew if I found out through them, I’d have walked into that bank and paid the whole balance in a heartbeat.
So she sat in it alone. Lost her house. Moved in with Mama.
All of that, rather than let her own brother take care of her needs. ”
I thought about every small disaster she’d narrated to me like weather since I’d known her. The I’m fine and I got it she handed out like candy.
“She didn’t tell you,” I repeated.
“Not a word until it was done.”
Raschad crossed his arms. “Look, I’m not about to sit here and diagnose my sister. I’m telling you what I’ve seen. She lost a house before she let me help. Me. Her brother. So if you show up with a car and no warning, I don’t care how good your reason is, she’s gonna feel cornered.”
I looked at him.
I understood it. But understanding it didn't mean I could live with it. That same instinct that made her too proud to call Raschad was going to leave her and Micah stranded somewhere dark one night, and there was no version of me that could see that coming and do nothing about it.
“So I’m supposed to let the car sit in the lot and wait for her transmission to put her and Micah on the shoulder of the highway, because she’d rather that than owe me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Raschad shook his head. “I’m not telling you how to handle my sister, Jules. You don’t need me for that. I’m telling you what I know, and you do what you want with it.”
“Tell me the rest of it, then.”
He was quiet a second, deciding whether it was his to say.
“I’ve watched my sister a long time,” he said.
“I watched her marry a man who neglected her into the ground and made her think it was her fault. I watched her bury him and then find out who he’d really been, and never once let a soul see it land on her.
Before she moved here, I could count on one hand the times I’ve seen Alyssa letting her guard all the way down.
” He looked at me. “I’m watching her do it all the time with you now.
And you can’t see it, because you’re standing too close and she just threw you out of her kitchen. But I can.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You want to know what she lets you do?” he said.
“She trusts you with Micah. You know what that is, for her? Half the time she’ll call you first before me when it comes to him.
She gave you a backup key to her place before she gave me one.
I still feel some kind of way about that one.
” he shook his head, laughing. “She’s running ten miles next to you, trying to get marathon ready, when the woman has never let another person watch her struggle at anything.
” He set his headphones down. “She is letting you all the way into a life she has kept sealed shut. She just can’t do it without fighting you the whole way in.
Those two things are true at the same time. ”
I nodded. That reached me somewhere everything else had not.
"That reflex is older than you. Older than Malik. A set of keys isn't going to beat it." He shrugged.
"I'm not trying to beat it," I said. "I don't need her waving a flag. I just need her in a car that’s safe."
"For what it’s worth, Jules? She's changed more these past months than I've seen her change in ten. Her fighting you isn't her telling you no. I think it's just the first thing out of her mouth before the rest of her catches up. Give a minute. Let her come find the car when she’s ready. Either way, don’t take the keys back. She needs that car, you’re right. "
I stood there a moment longer, then thanked him and let him get back to the board.
I didn't call her on the way home. I wasn't ready to, and I wasn't all the way done being angry either.
Some of what I'd said I'd take back, some of it I wouldn't. But Raschad had put something in front of me that stuck with me the whole drive.
The car wasn't going anywhere. Neither was I.
I'd give it a couple days and let her come to it.