Chapter Eleven #2
As we grew older, we were no longer in Sunday school class together, but we were both in youth choir and he took that time to continue his harassment.
He stood behind me on the risers, and when I turned around one day he tweaked my nipple and said, “Nice titties.” Another day, he spit in my hair.
Kevin wasn’t around and the other kids were so scared of Jackson they pretended he was the coolest thing ever. They didn’t want to become targets.
I took to sitting in the church office next to my mother’s desk as often as I could, doing homework or reading while she worked.
I could tell that annoyed her, and she asked me constantly if I wouldn’t like to sit in one of the classrooms or go outside and play.
I did not, so she sighed regularly and stepped over me on her way to the copier and filing cabinets.
It helped some, but Jackson still found ways to get to me. Awful ways.
When I was finally deemed old enough to stay home alone, life got better, but it still triggered me to be in that building.
I continued in adult choir like a good girl, and did things with the youth group since Jackson never did any of them, but I counted the days until I left for college and would be able to go months at a time without setting foot on the property.
I did indeed make the final edits to my book Wednesday evening while Lisa played hearts across the room, but that just meant I needed a push on my new project. On Friday, I poked my head into Vera’s office after class, happy to see that it was just the two of us. “Hey.”
“Hi, Sam. How’s everything going?”
“Well, thanks. How’s everything for you?”
“Can’t complain. What’s up?”
“This might sound strange,” I said. “But may I interview you?”
Vera squinted at me suspiciously. “What’re you writing about now? You know how to teach school.”
“About running.”
Vera’s expression changed immediately. She had run marathons in three states and ran shorter charity races all the time. She usually had a flyer or two on her door advertising upcoming events around town. “Now you’re talking.”
“I can take you to coffee.”
“You don’t have to buy me anything, girl. You free now?”
That surprised me. “Sure.”
She grabbed her purse. “I know the best place. You want to drive or should I?”
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting opposite one another in a cute little coffee shop sipping lattes and eating pastries.
It was just a stone’s throw from the campus; most of the time was spent getting to my car.
“So,” Vera said, leaning forward. “What do you want to know? Don’t you run at the gym? ”
I hated running. “Not really. I try from time to time, but it’s not my thing. I’ve got a story going about a more seasoned runner dragging a newbie along.”
Vera laughed. “Girl, I took my sister running for the first time. She went out and bought all this expensive spandex and shit and after ten minutes she fell out and puked on the side of the road.”
“Damn. I bet somebody got some good stuff at Goodwill.”
“Oh no, she ran her first half-marathon last month. She’s got the bug now.”
Vera talked for nearly an hour, and I scribbled in a spiralbound notebook like I used for class in middle school.
We talked about why she took up running, her first few memories, how she trained and kept motivated.
She told me in beautiful detail what it felt like at mile eighteen of a marathon when her body was ready to quit and she came across a hill.
She bragged on the other runners in her Black women’s training group.
She told me what she’d said to encourage her sister and how she’d run her sister’s first 5k so slowly it hurt just so the two of them could cross the finish line together.
She was so animated she almost sold me on joining her for one of the races posted on her door. Almost but not quite.
After I’d collected all the information I needed and then some, I was about to thank her and suggest we get back to school, but she cocked her chair back. “I forgot to ask you how your date with Maudie went.”
I tried not to make a face. “It was fine, but we’re definitely not compatible.”
“Oh?”
“She’s into cats and tofu and math and that shit.”
Vera nodded. I could see that she wasn’t into those things either. “Not just about the breasts then.”
I kicked her under the table when she grinned. “We didn’t get that far.”
“That’s a shame. That it didn’t go well, not that you didn’t get that far.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I don’t need to be dating.”
Vera studied my face carefully. “Who’re you crushing on?”
I smiled and looked away. “Nobody you know. I should go.”
Vera picked up her phone. “Ah, hell, I have class in ten minutes.”
“I’ll drop you off at the door. Thank you for this. I’ll mention you in the credits.”
She waved me off, but I could tell she was pleased. “You’re very welcome, girl.”
I wanted to see Lisa before she left for the beach, but when I walked Ollie past her house, her car wasn’t there.
As it got later, I thought about texting, but I knew she probably needed to pack and get ready.
Instead, I did something crazy. With less than one hundred pages written, I sent in a proposal to my editor-in-chief for my romance.
She had gotten used to receiving a couple each year back before I was on my meds, but she sometimes had to nudge me now.
One way or another, I’d never sent one in without most of the book written, or at least an extremely clear sense of where things started, conflicted, and ended.
I just felt this one. It felt so good. This had to be one of the best ones I’d ever started, and it was fleshing out so, so nicely.
Then, I freaked out.
Saturday morning, I let Ollie out to pee and paced my house over and over.
What had I done? I could write the editor-in-chief and rescind my submission, but that would make me feel absolutely worthless.
I had to do this, but how the hell could I?
The date to deliver my manuscript was in just a couple of months.
Years ago, that would have been no problem.
Years ago, I could have had it done, tweaked, ready to go in six weeks.
Sure, I could write with Lisa in my life, in my living room, in my subconscious, but what if that changed?
What if she moved? What if I drove her away? God, what had I done?
By the time Ollie came in, I was desperate.
Knowing full well what I was doing, I skipped the next step in my daily routine: pulling the pill sorter out of my cabinet and swallowing my handful of meds.
I skipped it and went on to the shower, feeling guilty and ashamed and crazy excited all at once.
After classes that morning, I didn’t have to be anywhere for a full week.
It wouldn’t hurt anything. I could get so much done.
I could get the whole damn thing done and spend the next couple of months refining it.
By the time I got to school, I’d convinced myself that I was doing the right thing.
We had a lovely discussion about Gloria Naylor in Lit class and spent half of Creative Writing reading bits of our latest work and giving constructive criticism.
It felt amazing to see the shy smile on Jasper’s face when people said his excerpt was remarkable.
I’d had him in Lit class last year when he was known as Shon’te, and I loved watching him come out of his shell and bond with the other students.
Mary, my senior citizen, had also gotten many wonderful comments on her story, and we walked to her car together embroiled in a conversation about pantsing versus planning.
She admitted she was a compulsive planner who wanted to learn to write on the fly, and I laughed and said I was so completely following a wild hair on my current idea I didn’t know where it was going.
I was going to figure that out this week.
It took a while for the drugs to get out of my system, so I knew I had to be patient, to work slowly at first. I went to the gym after class and then took Ollie to the dog park, where he and a white-muzzled lab mix named Montgomery romped around like they were six-month-old puppies.
A doodle named Scooter also spent a good amount of time trying to hump him, so I cut our visit short and headed home, where I took my laptop and settled into my usual spot on the loveseat.
I put up my feet, stared at the ceiling, pictured Lisa sitting on the middle pillow of the sofa.
Nothing. I finally went to the cabinet and got a strip of chicken jerky, dangled it in Ollie’s face, and tossed it onto the sofa.
He looked at me like I was being totally stupid, but humored me and lay down, a bit off center, to eat his snack.
Where was my plot going? I had scenes—oh, I had scenes—but did I have a way to put them together to get to the general gist of what I’d submitted in my proposal?
I slowly began to knit two of the early scenes together, creating fascia, and felt good about it.
At some point, Ollie slithered off the sofa and snuck off down the hall, probably to my bed, but I didn’t care; it was working.
Tomorrow, I told myself, I’d find a calendar and a notebook and start planning for real.
Tomorrow came, and I skipped my meds again.
I started feeling it, feeling the itch to write while pushing a cart around Kroger at noon.
I had nothing to scribble on so I pulled over to the edge of an aisle and texted some ideas to myself.
By the time I had my groceries, I was desperate to get home and flesh things out.