He knew more than she realized. Our longtime neighbors who lived across the street, a Filipino family, socialized with Dad and the other woman. Turns out the wife was always spying on my mom. “I saw Theresa leave last night,” she would narc to my dad. “Where did she go?” My dad was always Mr. Neighborly, acting like the mayor of our street, and my mom was more interested in reading a book inside than chatting in the driveway. Other couples also became complicit as they began to double-date with my father and my mother’s stand-in. I guess she just seemed like a better fit for their friend Cully. They wanted Mom out.
I watched Dad try to make the ride bumpier for Mom. I could tell he hoped he could buck her off, but she was not going.
“He always was a great provider,” she told me. “He made sure we had a really nice home and that my children were well taken care of.”
It was, she said, a lesson from an epic fight she had had with her own mother. As a teenager, Mom worked in a hospital as a cleaner. My grandmother happened to be there one day and Mom complained about how much she hated the job.
“Shut up,” my grandmother told her. “Shut your mouth and get your check. When you find a different job, then you leave. But otherwise, keep your head down, shut your mouth, and get that check.”
Mom paused. “We had a good life.”
THE NIGHT MY DAD FINALLY GOT HIS WISH, HE WAS HOME FROM WORK before Mom. I was visiting from UCLA. Tracy was at the house and Dad said something cruel to us girls, who knows what, and we both started crying. He left and my mother came home to the chaos of daughters in tears. Tracy screamed that Dad was mean. Mom calmed us down and eventually, we went to bed.
My mother stood alone in the kitchen. My father had left her a note saying that he wouldn’t be home until late. He had spelled her name wrong: “Teresa.” They’d been married nearly thirty years.
He didn’t know that my mother had called the bank that day. She’d tried to pay their property taxes and the check bounced. Their bank account was overdrawn. She remembered the night before, when my father announced that he wasn’t paying for braces for my little sister. “She doesn’t really need them,” he’d said.
He had just been on another business trip.
Something in my mother finally broke.
She turned the note over and took a pen.
“I am leaving you,” she wrote.
She went to her brother’s house. My uncle was living in Fremont with a roommate, and then my mom became his roommate. Tracy stayed with my dad and finished high school, but there was a point when she was living with my mom in Fremont and going to high school in Pleasanton.
My mom insists she only found out about the affair when she met someone who knew Dad from AT&T.
“You have a beautiful home,” she said.
“You’ve been to my house?”
“Yes,” she said. “Cully was the chair of the tennis tournament last year.” The lady described the house, and also the other woman. She had been standing next to Dad, acting as if our house was her house.
I wasn’t ever formally introduced to the other woman. She just appeared, now with a name. Toni.
My parents divorced my senior year of college. The divorce was final in early June. He married the other woman on June 9. I graduated from UCLA on June 16. Dad skipped my college graduation, because Toni insisted on an immediate Hawaii honeymoon. I don’t blame her. My graduation was going to be a family moment shortly after the family had been dismantled.
But of course I had to go to Dad’s wedding. By then, they had moved to Phoenix, Arizona. It was never clear when they bought their new house. But it didn’t matter. They had, and this wedding was on. My dad had invited his mother—whom we all called Mama Helen—to fly in from Omaha, but he had neglected to tell her the reason why. He couldn’t tell her he was getting remarried, because, well, he hadn’t told Mama Helen he’d gotten divorced.
It was Mama Helen’s first flight, and she brought hard-boiled eggs and chicken packed in little baggies. She smelled up the plane, and since she was hard of hearing, she also spent the whole flight yelling.
Phoenix in June was hell degrees. When we arrived at Dad and Toni’s house, we came upon a crew of aunts and girl cousins making homemade wedding souvenirs. Before she had time to figure out what was going on, someone rushed over and took Mama Helen out dress shopping “for an occasion.”
My sisters and I joined our aunts at the table. Half of them had only just found out about the wedding themselves. Somebody looked up from the tchotchkes we were making and asked, “Did anybody tell Mama Helen?”
My father was called in.
“Did you tell Mama Helen you’re getting married?” an aunt asked.
“I’m gonna tell her,” he said.
“Does she know you’re divorced?” said someone else.
“I’m gonna tell her. I’m gonna tell her.”
The place went up in guffaws. “Oh, shit!” said a cousin, as the rest did impressions of my dad’s frightened face.
When he finally got the nerve to tell his mother, shortly before the ceremony, Mama Helen’s solidarity with my mom was like Sister Souljah. It was fascinating because, mind you, this woman was never a fan of my mother’s. She called her “piss-colored” for the bulk of the marriage. But this whole deal didn’t sit right with her. Not at all.
She decided to speak her mind at the church. My soon-to-be stepmother had a family member who was the pastor. He went on and on about this blessed union. That’s when Mama Helen piped up from the front pew in her deaf-lady voice.
“She’s a whore,” she said to no one in particular, meaning the entire church. “Home-wrecker.”
NOW, OUR BOYS CALL TONI NANA, AND SHE IS A LOVELY GRANDMOTHER. She and my dad still take their trips to Hawaii. People move on.
After the divorce, Mom left Pleasanton to move back to Omaha. She was ready to start over. Instead of an easy retirement, she chose to help a relative who had a problem with drugs. This relative repeatedly got pregnant, and one by one, these babies came to live with my mother shortly after their births. This retirement-age woman adopted these children, now aged nine, eight, and six. Two beautiful girls and the youngest, a boy. My mother refused to let them be separated from each other.
She busts her ass to keep up with these kids. She has discovered emojis, this seventy-year-old woman, and she’ll send me a wineglass with an exclamation point. She is also queen of the wink-and-tongue-out face.
I see you, Mom. I see what you are doing for these kids, and how you keep them together. I give you respect, because nobody is going to give you praise for doing what black women have done forever, raising kids who are not their own.
Nowadays, I catch myself starting conversations the way she used to. I think back to when we Union girls confronted her about this need to connect with strangers. It was just that she is a decent human being with a genuine curiosity about other human beings. She already knew what made my father tick, and the people of Pleasanton for that matter. They held no surprise.
“There are so many more people than you realize,” she told us girls, “people who look up to the same sun and the moon and the stars. It’s your birthright to explore this world.”
It’s only as small as you make it.
six
WHO HATES YOU MOST?
The cast of Being Mary Jane was holed up in a conference room while the crew investigated a gas leak on our Atlanta soundstage. Eventually we each reached the end of memes and Snapchat filters on our phones, so to kill time we started trading stories.
“Okay, who in your life has hated you the most?” someone asked.
People talked about a costar they’d gotten fired, an ex they brazenly cheated on. Amateur hour. Basic stuff. I knew I had the winner: a girl from high school named Queeshaun.
Queeshaun was best friends with Angela Washington, who was dating Jason Kidd when I met him. This was my junior year of high school, while I was technically dating Tyrone Reed, a stoner rebel from a nearby town. Tyr
one had gotten his arm broken by the police, so obviously his cast had FUCK THE POLICE written on it in huge block letters. He would lean the cast out of his convertible VW bug when he drove around town. So rebellious.
Jason Kidd was the best high school player in the country, six foot four as a junior, and already famous among sports fans and college recruiters alike. His high school, St. Joseph’s, could seat eight hundred in their gym. With Jason on the team, they were forced to move their games to a venue that seated five thousand, and people still got turned away.
I was in a Saturday afternoon girls’ basketball tournament, and I stayed to watch the guys play. I was performing a bit, throwing out tips to the players, even Jason. It worked. Jason sat at the end of the bench, a towel around his neck. He knew everyone in that place was watching him, but he suddenly lifted his eyes to look right at me. It wasn’t eye sex, just “I see you.”
At half time, I went to the bathroom and there was Angela. I knew her from playing ball, because she was a star player for Livermore High. Our teams often competed against each other. Standing at the sinks, we talked about the game.
“That Jason is amazing,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “he is.”
She walked out and went right over to Jason and I realized, Oh, she is totally his girlfriend. There went that idea.
At the end of the game, she left with Jason’s parents, and he went over to the team bus. He lingered behind so I could catch up, and when I did, he asked for my number. We then proceeded to talk all hours for the rest of the weekend, and made a pact that on Monday I would break up with Tyrone and he would break up with Angela. We did so, with a generous round of “It’s not you, it’s me” for everyone.
I got right into being Jason’s girlfriend and I wanted everyone to know it. I would go to my beloved Kim’s Nails in Oakland, getting the letters of his name spelled out with a heart on my nails. J-A-S-O-N-K-I-D-D-♥. Don’t judge me. I felt like a boss bitch.
The Friday before Christmas break, my school had a pep rally during lunchtime. My girlfriend Paige was a cheerleader, so I was right there, sitting with friends on a lunch table right at the front watching them perform. Fantasy Direct, a group of high-school-age DJs, was running the music. They were black and Latino, and from neighboring towns. But one, Hector, lived across the street from me.
Suddenly, this big black girl walked in with a determined stomp in her step. She had dookie braids, a pink ribbon woven into each one. She immediately stuck out to me, of course, because you know there were no other black girls around. Way across the room, I saw her go up to Hector, who then pointed in my direction. I looked behind me, thinking, Who could she possibly be looking for?
Then she started stalking through the crowd, about four or five people deep, around my lunch table. As she got closer, she lunged through a wall of people to get to me. But I still didn’t understand that I was the target.
This girl is just really angry, I thought. Somebody is going to get their ass kicked. Meanwhile, the white people were practically clearing a path for her, just assuming that the black girl was there for the other black girl.
“I’m gonna whoop yo’ ass, bitch!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, pointing right at me. “I’m gonna whoop yo’ ass!”
I swear, I looked around like, “This couldn’t possibly be about me.” Eventually, the school security dragged her off school grounds by the shoulders. “I’m gonna get you, Nickie Union!” she yelled as they pulled her out the door. “I’m gonna come back after school and kick your ass!”
I was shaking as if I’d had a near-death experience. I had no idea who in the world this bitch was, and now all these white girls were staring at me.
“Oh my God,” went the chorus. “Oh my God, are you okay? That was, like, so terrifying.”
So I marched over to Hector and asked him why he sent her over to me.
“Oh, Queeshaun?” he said. “You don’t know her?” He acted with total innocence. “She asked where you were. We thought you invited her.”
“Hector, you know who comes to my house,” I said. “And not a one looks like this bitch. Thanks a lot.”
I immediately went to a pay phone and called my big sister Kelly. “COME GET ME NOW,” I demanded, and I sat in the parking lot for the half hour it took for her to drive from San Jose State, where she was going to school. When I saw her, I stood up, waving like some castaway flagging down a helicopter.
“Where the hell is she?” she said, flying out of the car and darting her eyes around sniper style.
“She left,” I said. “But she’ll be back.”
“We’re gonna wait for her.”
“Uh, no!” I started screaming. “Take me home!” I was not giving this girl a chance to come back and kill me.
“Nickie, you have to face her,” she said. “Otherwise you’re a coward.”
“You stay, then,” I said, getting into the car and locking the door. I waved. “Tell me how it goes!”
When my mom got home I kept talking about how I was traumatized by “the day’s events.” I practically needed a fainting couch after what I had been through. But my teen/girlfriend priorities kicked in, and I asked my mom to take me to the mall because I still needed to get a Christmas gift for Jason.
We went to a Structure and I picked out the brighter of two Cosby-esque sweaters. I was smug as hell, having turned the day around. As we were getting ready to leave, I half-heartedly hummed along to the mall Muzak’s “Jingle Bells.” My mom and I went down the main escalator and I decided that crazy Queeshaun chick had the whole Christmas break to figure out she had me mixed up with another girl.
Midway down, my self-satisfied haze cracked. I saw my nightmare come to life in the form of Queeshaun standing at the bottom of the escalator, talking to, of all people, my freshly minted ex-boyfriend Tyrone, with his FUCK THE POLICE cast. They both looked up, and I immediately began trying to run up the down escalator.
“Nickie,” my mom yelled, grabbing me by the back of my coat to stop me.
“Mom, that’s her,” I yelled. “That’s her.”
She turned and stared at Queeshaun, who couldn’t believe her luck.
“I can’t believe,” Mom said, “you are scared of a girl wearing a bullet bra.”
I had no idea what Queeshaun’s bra had to do with me, since I was going to die at the bottom of that escalator. “I’m gonna whip yo’ fuckin’ ass for Angela,” Queeshaun yelled, as we slowly moved toward her. “I don’t care if your mama’s here. I’mma whip yo’ mama’s ass, too.”
As we reached bottom, Tyrone tried to drag Queeshaun away with his one good arm. I took the opportunity to run past them, but my mom stayed behind and got right in Queeshaun’s face. Once Queeshaun said “I’ll fight your mama,” my mother—who is absolutely not this person—started nodding like Clair Huxtable about to school Theo, right there in front of Mrs. Field’s Cookies. Mom wasn’t about to fight this girl, though Queeshaun certainly would have come to blows with my mother. As Tyrone held Queeshaun back, my mother stood as tall and straight as can be. She was trying to show me the importance of standing your ground. Meanwhile, I was halfway down to McDonald’s, yelling back, “Just come on!”
Finally, Mom relented and followed me. The whole car ride home I was shaking, but my mom had no sympathy whatsoever.
“That girl,” she said. “She’s got that fool bullet bra on. I can’t believe you would be afraid of a girl like that.”
“Mom. She came up to my school to kill me and she just tried again. Of course I’m scared.”
“You should never be afraid of anyone. Certainly not the likes of her.”
By the time we got home from the mall, Queeshaun had left a string of messages on our answering machine. This was one of those old-school answering machines, and my dad walked in to hear Queeshaun’s threats.
“We’ll just call her parents,” he said. He then made a big deal of looking her family up in the phone book and calling her mother
.
Satan’s mom was not impressed.
“What are you gonna do? They’re kids,” she said. “Let our daughters handle it.”
He hung up and right away, Queeshaun started burning up our phone. Cully Union told her to stop, and when she wouldn’t, we just let her run out the answering machine tape. “Your monkey-ass dad is a snitch, bitch,” she said. “I’m gonna kick his ass, too.”
Dad being Dad, he decided to bring the whole answering machine to the police station. He played the tape for the all-white Pleasanton PD, and at first they were concerned. Then, as Queeshaun’s insults and craziness took on the feel of a stereotypical crazy black woman comedy sketch, they couldn’t stifle their laughter.
“Yo’ monkey-ass daddy is a motherfucking punk nigger snitch” put them over the edge.
“Wait,” a blond cop finally said, trying not to smile. “You don’t even know her?”
“No,” I said. “I swear.”
“Why would she do this?”
“Apparently I hurt her feelings, because I started dating her best friend’s boyfriend. Excuse me, ex-boyfriend.”
That did it. The whole station erupted into guffaws.
“Look,” said the blond guy. “This is not enough for us to go on. If she physically touches you, call us.”
If she physically touched me, I knew I’d be dead. I took a break from imagining my funeral, lavish with tears, and called Jason to ask him about Queeshaun. He told me Queeshaun was rich and had a huge house. That came as a shock. It made no sense that someone rich would have dookie braids and want to kill me. One or the other I guess I could have comprehended, but both were overkill. The irony is that my initial assessment of her was exactly that of my white peers: If she has dookie braids, she must be poor. If she is a big black girl, she must be angry. Although in this case, this bitch really did want to kill me.
Jason thought it was funny that she was acting so crazy. “She’s harmless,” he said.
“Say that at my funeral,” I told him. “This bitch is nuts.”
Jason and I were still dating right into league basketball season. My team was set to play Angela’s twice, and of course the first game was on her home turf of Livermore High. Angela stared at me on the court, and Queeshaun looked like she could barely contain herself in the stands, where she was sitting not so far from my “monkey-ass dad.” I had begged Jason to come, but he couldn’t because he also had a game. My sister was supposed to get off early from her job at the Limited so she could be there to protect me, but no such luck. My whole team was terrified, because everyone and her white mother had heard about Queeshaun.
We're Going to Need More Wine Page 7
