Sweet St. Louis

by Omar Tyree

  A piece of me for a piece of you.

  And she still wanted that piece. Bit by bit. Until she could no longer have it. Until she could no longer take it. Or until it was no longer available to her.

  A thousand dollars was a small price to pay to fill up the emptiness she would feel in her heart if she did not at least try to take that chance on long-lasting love. She had to at least try to hold on and see if Anthony could be true. She couldn’t allow him to just slip away from her palms like sand in the wind. Somebody had to hold on. Somebody had to try and make it last. Somebody had to stop the madness! Because the madness of easy separations had only increased the hunger for love, while decreasing all of the faith that it took to make love a reality. And somebody had to have faith, and let faith lead the way!

  So Sharron sucked up all of her doubts and realized the most valid mission in life: to love somebody so bad until it hurt not to. She gathered her leg strength and her heart together and made that walk to the bank to withdraw a thousand dollars in big bills.

  But if I lack love, I have nothing at all, she told herself while waiting in line for their money. Because she saw it as a chance for both of them. After all, bailing a man out of jail was no small thing. Unless, of course, he made a habit out of it. Yet, she had to give Anthony that opportunity to prove himself.

  When she felt the money in her hands, she couldn’t wait to arrive at the St. Louis Holding Facility and get her man, ignoring everyone. Their chance at love was between him and her and not the world. It was none of their damn business! Including the taxi driver who looked at her funny when she told him her destination.

  She arrived at the gates and barbed-wire fencing that surrounded the gray brick building of the St. Louis Holding Facility and paid her fare. Then she climbed out of the taxi and took a deep breath.

  “I got your back, baby. I got your back,” she mumbled to herself, approaching the front door and slipping in. Everything else was a blur. She told them who she was there for. She gave them the bail money. She signed some paperwork. And she waited on a small, wooden bench for what seemed like an hour.

  Anthony walked out and stood before her with his things. Sharron looked into his eyes and knew that she had made the right decision, because his eyes were filled with her, like two reflecting mirrors, filled with warmth, appreciation, commitment, and real love.

  Anthony didn’t even speak to her. They didn’t need any words. He grabbed Sharron into him and hugged her with everything he had, over seven hundred minutes of anticipation since the hour that he was arrested. And Sharron held on to him with twenty-four years of desire to love a brown man for as long as she could breathe.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he told her, breaking away softly and leading her to the front door. When they made it back outside to the sunshine, Anthony looked into Sharron’s eyes and told her, “You know I owe you for this.”

  She countered, “I don’t want you to owe me. I want you to love me. The right way. By never doing anything that would break us apart. And by never giving up on us.”

  He held her hands right there outside the St. Louis Holding Facility’s barbed-wire gates, a free man, and committed himself to his woman with a slow nod. “All right then. I’ll do that. I’ll love you the right way. Forever, girl. ’Cause you’re my lady. No doubt!

  “You looked out for me. So I gotta look out for you,” he said. “And not just because you bailed me out. But because I want to. And I love you.”

  She smiled and squeezed his hands tightly in hers. “I love you, too,” she told him. “And not because you’re driving me crazy. But because I believe in you. And I believe in us.”

  Everybody in the world wants to be in love with somebody. However, too many of us have lost focus on what it takes to stay there. So after the attractions to the faces, hair, skin, eyes, and bodies of our potential mates, we must then evaluate their intelligence, creativity, spirit, self-respect, and economic stature. Economically speaking in terms of human progression, and not simply capital gains. Like the age-old invention of the wheel, relationships based on love were meant to roll forward. Sometimes they roll backwards before finding their way, but they were never meant to stand still, idling, and rotting away. And in their forward roll, they grow stronger.

  So by the time Anthony and Sharron arrived at the impound lot and paid the necessary charges to reclaim his car, he had told her everything about the night before, and Sharron was satisfied in putting her worries to rest.

  “We’ll go straight to my bank after this,” Anthony promised her. He was thoroughly inspecting his car on hands and knees, searching bumper to bumper and underneath.

  “There’s no damages on her,” the impounder addressed Anthony during his inspection. He was a burly man in a tight gray shirt, appearing to hold his stomach up from the pull of gravity.

  Anthony ignored the man and continued to look for the faintest scratch on his Chevy, failing to find any. He rose to his feet and nodded, pleased with the results of his search. Then he opened the passenger-side door for his “lady.”

  The burly man asked him, “Is everything all right by you?” He knew that it would be. He had done a thorough job with the car.

  “Yeah, it’s good,” Anthony mumbled to him. He just wanted to drive his car the hell out of there, and forget about the entire nightmare.

  Sharron smiled at him when he slid behind the wheel.

  “You really love this car, don’t you?”

  Anthony frowned and said, “I just don’t trust these impounds. They don’t give a fuck about your car. All they care about is the money they charge you to get it back from ’em.”

  Sharron just shook her head and strapped herself in as they drove through more barbed-wire gates and hit the free roads of St. Louis. And as she looked back, she pondered the regularity of so many brown-skinned American men, locked behind similar gates in correctional facilities all across the country.

  “What did you feel like while you were in there?” she asked him. “It just seems like those places are magnets for black men. Why is that?” she asked rhetorically. She had a few obvious reasons behind it, but the racism game was getting very old.

  Anthony looked straight ahead, well on his way to his downtown bank office, and answered, “Too many of ’em have nothing to do with their lives … and nothing to look forward to to keep them out of there.” Then he looked at Sharron and smiled. “And women like you to bail them out.”

  She grinned at it, but thought too much to laugh. “So, what happens to your friend Tone?”

  Anthony shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can do about that now. All I can do is hope that he makes out all right. Because I’m not going to jail. They know I’m innocent. So after the court date … I guess I’ll just see him when he gets out.”

  Sharron looked surprised. “You mean, you wouldn’t go and visit him?” she asked curiously. Anthony would have surely wanted someone to visit him.

  He chuckled at it. “It’s fucked up, ain’t it? But after last night, I don’t want to be nowhere near jail! I mean, I can still write to him. But visits?” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Good! Sharron thought to herself. Not to disrespect the love that Anthony had for his boy, it was just that jail was no place for a sane man to feel an affinity to. And boy did she feel good about his response to that! Because some men took macho loyalties to the point of ridiculousness.

  They arrived at Anthony’s bank downtown, and he hopped out to run inside with the engine still running.

  “I’ll be right back out with your money,” he told Sharron with a proud smile. It felt good to him to be able to give his word and to stand by it!

  Sharron sat still inside the car, smiling from ear to ear, and was moved by that herself.

  I got a good man, she told herself. He actually does what he says he’s going to do. In an era of love where black men increasingly dropped the ball, Anthony Poole’s sure hands were indeed treasures to
behold. But when he made it back to the car, his hands were empty.

  He sat back down in his driver seat and sulked. “You know what they told me in there? They said I can’t get my money out today,” he said, looking straight into Sharron’s face.

  “Why not?” she asked him.

  “Something about my funds not being available.”

  “Well, when will they be available?”

  “They told me like in four days. They said a couple of my check deposits bounced.”

  “So, you had about a thousand dollars on the nose? How much could you take out?” she asked him.

  Anthony read the panic in her face and began to laugh. “Naw, I’m just bullshittin’,” he told her. “I got the money.” He dug inside his pants and pulled out a white envelope filled with ten one-hundred-dollar bills, to replace what Sharron had withdrawn from her bank earlier.

  She shook her head and grinned, counting her money as they pulled away.

  “What were you about to say to me? ‘You’re a lying asshole!’” he mocked her, assuming.

  Sharron continued to smile and didn’t answer.

  “My girl Celena told me not to bail you out this morning,” she confided in him instead.

  Anthony looked over at her, then back to the road, and was noticeably upset by it.

  “Are you glad you didn’t listen to her?” he asked.

  Sharron glued her eyes to him and nodded. “You know I am. I don’t let her control my life. She didn’t even tell me where you were calling from. I was thinking about moving out after she did that.”

  Anthony looked at her with determination and said, “I’m serious about that, Sharron. I think it’s about that time for me. Especially after this shit! I need somebody to come home to. God was giving me a message, and I’m damn sure listening to him!” he joked. But he was dead serious.

  Sharron laughed out loud. “I’m serious about it, too,” she said. “But a lot of people say that moving in can spoil the relationship.”

  Anthony held his tongue on it for a minute. Then he asked her, “You believe that?”

  She answered, “I don’t know. I never did it before.”

  “Did it spoil your relationship with Celena?” He thought better of that question and said, “Well, maybe I should take that back.”

  “Yeah,” Sharron agreed with a nod. “Because she gets on my nerves a lot. But I guess it just takes getting used to.”

  “Everything takes getting used to,” Anthony told her.

  Sharron broke from their conversation and asked, “Where are we going?”

  They were heading north on Route 70.

  “I’m taking you to work,” he told her.

  “Don’t you have to be to work too?”

  Anthony said sternly, “Look, don’t worry about me. I’ll make up something. But after what you went through to get me out, I’m driving you to work. Are you straight with that?” he asked her.

  Sharron smiled that easy smile of hers again. “Yeah, I’m straight.”

  “Good. But I ain’t in no hurry to get you there either,” he told her, placing his right hand on her left knee. He squeezed it and drove no faster than fifty miles an hour in the slow lane.

  Sharron Francis continued to smile, feeling like a queen in her chariot. Then she undid her seat belt and slid over next to her king to lay her head against his strong shoulder, confident that they had tomorrow, and next week, and next year.

  And as they cruised north on Route 70 toward the airport, well below the speed limit, they both looked ahead to holding each other after work that night and making love … sweet love, like it should be … in St. Louis … and everywhere else in the world.

  Acknowledgements

  PEACE & LOVE to Pamela Artis who is still hanging in there and helping me to organize and edit new and improved material. She’s like the Energizer Bunny; keeps reading and reading (smile). Let’s outlast all of the competition, Pam. I have about eight more books waiting in the wings for you. To Tierney Davis and Walter “Rap” Pearson for my St. Louis research. And to Sister Jamilah Nasheed for inviting me out to St. Louis in 1997 when I first came up with the idea.

  Peace & Love to my uncle Joseph McLaurin, the creative force and passionate Web master behind www.OmarTyree.com. Two thousand hits per month ain’t too shabby for an author who’s never been on many national television shows. What will happen to our #1 author’s Web site if I do hit national TV? BOOM! We blow up! So keep the new ideas rolling out strong, Joe.

  Peace & Love to my aunts: Shelly, Gina, Tu ta, Dee Dee, Shirley, Hazel, Florence, Stella (RIP), Anita, Burlie, Eltie, Jaycina, Greta, Bert, Sharon, Linda, Rudy, and Eassie (RIP). My sisters: Dee Dee, Darlene, Cydnee, Paula, and Kate. My cousins: Donna Jean, Claranell, Mamie, Estelle, Hodgie, Theresa, Cassandra, Liz, June, Adrienne, Priscilla, Nettie, Penny, Hellen, Jackie, Judy, Ashley, Quanie, Sabrina, Diane, Robin, Paula, Lauri, Sherri, Dawn, Sebrena, Angel, Lisa, Tina, Tiffany B., Tiffany F., Monique, Rasheeda, Kieara, Sharisse, Shanae, Squirt, Ki-Ki, and Boo-Boo. My nieces: Deanna, Dominique, and Amani. Also family: Joy, Bernadette, Evelyn, and Helena. And my wife’s girls: Dawn, Nadeje, Kai, Ashleigh, Monique, Pascha, Octavia, Toby, and the twins, Amina and Ayesha.

  My grandmothers: Mert (RIP), Betty (RIP), Gerri, Dorothy, and Frances Clarke. My mother-in-law Donna. And my six godmothers: Peaches, Linda, Donna, Ruth, Mariam, and Ellen. Keep looking after me for my mom, you guys. Much respect!

  Peace & Love to my agent, Denise Stinson. We have a big contract year coming up. Let ‘em know, Denise, “Omar Tyree is loaded with new book ideas and definitely here to stay! But he wants people to know that he’s here! So put the cheese on the table and switch on the high beams!”

  R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Assertive marketing is the key to the castle! Let’s just DO IT!

  Peace & Love to my fourth new editor at Simon Œ Schuster, Geoffrey Kloske. Thanks a million for introducing me to the head honchos up at the office on Sixth Avenue. Now they can place my face of charm, intelligence, determination, and commitment to my name. I’m no spoiled artist over here. I’m a thinker and a doer! So support the man with the plans and commit to a golden future.

  Peace & Love to Georgia’s Brown Restaurant in Washington, D.C., for letting me snap that handsome back jacket photo at your place on 17th and K Streets, Northwest. And thanks to my main man Daniel McNeill for all of the photo shots you continue to snap of me.

  Peace Œ Love to new friends: Bernard Love for turning up the heat in Kansas City (MO) with “The Breakfast Brothers.” Anthony Weatherly in Chester (PA). Brother Malik and “The Home Team” in Los Angeles (CA) for turning me on to the West Side. Teresa and Antoine for making me feel at home in St. Louis (MO). Traci L. McKinley and Sister Garbo in Little Rock (AR). Melissa Lee for hooking me up in Trenton (NJ) through Wendy “What” Williams and crew. Lisa Evers for hooking me up on the “Street Soldiers” of New York (NY) side of things. And Sherry McGee for blowing up the book market in Detroit (MI). Also to Raynelle Wiggins (DE), Deborah Ramcheran (PA), Tanya Moss (NY), and “Zee” (GA)—keep writing your hearts out, sisters. Sweet St. Louis is for all of you who search for love! Maybe us hardheaded men will finally understand one day that love is a blessing and not a curse.

  To Tulsa University, Temple, NYU, Lincoln, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Bowie State, Del. State, Del. Tech., College of Staten Island, and Wesley College for inviting me to educate your campus population on the issues of my novels. Or at least those who came out to hear my loud behind speak (smile). Ask them what they learned. Ask them if Omar knows what he’s talking about. Ask them if they’d invite me back again…. Definitely!

  To the magazines and newspapers that gave me love: News Dimensions (DC), The News Journal (DE), The New York Daily News (NY), Black Issues Book Review (VA), Dialogue (DC), Mosaic (NY), Grace (TN), Upscale (GA), Philadelphia Tribune, (PA), Philadelphia Daily News (PA), Rap Pages (CA), The Daily Press (VA), The Oakland Press (CA), The Black Suburban Journal (DE), Harlem Overheard (NY), and San Francis
co Bay View (GA).

  Last but not least, and in alphabetical order—DRUM ROLL PLEASE—I’d like to give a special thanks to all of the book clubs and literary groups who have supported my mission to uplift the mind state of the people: African-American Literary Book Club (NC), African-American Literary Forum (GA), African-American Sisters Club (NY), Afro-American Reading Book Club (SC), Agape Reading Club (NY), The African-American Authors’ Network (OH), The AKAs (USA), Baltimore Reads (MD), Black Author’s Literary Cruise Konnection (NC & GA), Black Expressions Book Club (KS), Black Literary Sisters (VA), Black Men Advocating Reading (GA), Black Women’s Literary Guild (MA), Books For Us (GA), Borders Reading Group (NJ), The Black Bookworms (TX), Brain Storm, The Book Club (GA), The Black Library (MA), The Busara Nayo Bookclub (PA), Campbell’s Theories Book Club (MD), DeBose Music, Film & Books (PA), Diva’s Book Club (DC), Doubleday Book Club (IN), Drum & Spear Books (DC), The Deltas (USA) EZ Street Online Book Club (DC), Go On Girl #3 (NJ), Houston African-American Writers’ Society (TX), The Imani Book Club (CA), Kindred Spirits Book Club (CA), Literary Expressions (FPO, AP), Literary Speaking Book Club (MD), Mahogany Cafe Book Club (OH), Moonstone Inc. (PA), Msichana Rafiki Literary Club (NJ), The Next Phase African-American Women Book Club (TX), Onyx Book Club (GA), Page Turners Book Club (MD), Phyre & Eyce (PA), A Reading Circle of Friends (DC), Sibanye, Inc. (MD), Sistahs With a Vision (NJ), Sisterhood Book Club (TX), Sister 2 Sister (MA), Sister Circle Book Club (CA), Sister Friends Book Club (DC), Sisters & Brothers of Hotlanta (GA & DE), Sisters Searching For Knowledge (TN), Sisters With Books (WI), Soul Sisters Book Club (TX), The Saturday Afternoon Book Club (MD), The Shaw Literary Group (NY), Tenaj’s Books (FL), Tennessee State Book Club (TN), Thee Writa’s Block (PA), United Brothers & Sisters Communications Network (VA), and all other supporters that I’m unaware of. Let me know for next time!