Man Enough For Me

by Rhonda Bowen

  “I don’t know,” Jules said thoughtfully. “I just get this feeling that there’s something going on he’s not telling me about.”

  “Okay, where is this coming from?” Tanya asked, in confusion.

  “Last week he went totally schizo on me when I showed up at the store unannounced.”

  “Girl, please,” Maxine said, rolling her eyes and beginning to walk again. “Even I know better than to show up at Truuth’s place unannounced. There ain’t nothing a black man hate more than feeling like someone done snuck up on him.”

  “But it wasn’t just that,” Jules continued. “He had some guys in his office, and they looked … shady.”

  “They looked shady,” Maxine deadpanned. “Well, since you put it that way, I guess we should call the police right now.”

  Jules rolled her eyes, ignoring her friend’s sarcasm.

  “What did he say when you asked him about it?” Tanya asked, tossing her long blond hair and switching her Coach shopping bag to her other arm. With all that she had spent, Jules imagined it must have been pretty heavy.

  Jules couldn’t imagine spending the way Tanya spent, even if she could afford to. There was something about dropping one thousand dollars on a handbag that didn’t seem right to her. But Tanya had grown up with money, and so she was used to it. In fact, Jules was sure that if Tanya had to carry one of Jules’s stylish, but less expensive purses, she would break out in hives.

  “He just said they were guys he worked with and that it had been a bad day. He was having some problems at work, and it was nothing,” Jules said, narrowing her eyes. “Then when I tried to find out more, he clammed up on me, talking about ‘it’s a business thing’ and he can’t talk about it. What does that mean?”

  “It means that it’s a business thing, and he can’t talk about it,” Maxine said.

  Jules still wasn’t convinced.

  “Okay, well, answer me this,” she said, turning to Tanya. “You’re the business major. How is he keeping the Sound Lounge afloat? No way are record sales alone bringing in enough money to pay staff, and overheads, and run the night programs. They barely charge decent cover at the door.”

  Tanya laughed. “I don’t know, Jules. Look at Triad. How are we managing to say afloat, paying for artist promotion, travel, staff, production, and everything else? It’s the by-faith business model they don’t teach you in school. I suspect the Sound Lounge is running on the same principle.”

  “Come on, do you really think Germaine is the kind of guy who would do something shady?” Maxine asked.

  “I don’t know. The whole thing just seems a bit strange,” Jules insisted. “Maybe all this is a sign.”

  Tanya and Maxine glanced at each other.

  “A sign of what?” Tanya asked cautiously.

  “Maybe God’s trying to tell me something about this guy.”

  “Pay up,” Maxine said, outstretching her hand to Tanya.

  Tanya grimaced and pulled a fifty dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to Maxine. Jules looked back and forth between the two of them in confusion.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Maxine and I had a pool going on how long it would take you to sabotage this one,” Tanya explained, looking sadly at her purse. “She said two months. I said five. I had faith in you, Jules. Couldn’t you have held out a little longer?”

  “Hold up,” Jules said, placing her hand on her hip. “So both of you expected that Germaine and I wouldn’t work out?”

  “No, Jules,” Maxine said, as if she was talking to one of her pediatric patients. “Both of us expected you to mess it up at some point or another. Sweetie, it’s what you do.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, Jules,” Tanya said. “Every time you start dating a guy, you’ll go out with him for a while and everything will be fine, wonderful even.”

  “But then one day out of the blue, you’ll find something that’s wrong with him,” Maxine continued.

  “Usually it’s something small that you don’t approve of,” Tanya added.

  “But no matter what it is, you’ll pick at it and dwell on it until it becomes this big issue.”

  “And then you’ll break up with him, and it will be over.”

  “Like I said,” Maxine concluded. “It’s what you do.”

  Jules stared open mouthed at her friends, who were ordering frozen yogurt from Yogen Fruz, as if they had not just psychoanalyzed her entire relationship history.

  “You want anything, sweetie?” Maxine asked, glancing back at a dumbfounded Jules. “Yeah, you look like you could use a smoothie,” she said, answering her own question. “Can I get a banana-strawberry smoothie, please?”

  A few moments later, when they had found a table in the food court, Jules regained her ability to speak.

  “Do I really do that? Do I really create issues out of nothing?” she asked in despair.

  Maxine and Tanya nodded, looking at her sympathetically.

  “Why do you think you’ve never had a boyfriend for more that eight months?” Maxine asked.

  “You’re always looking for flaws,” Tanya said, licking a glob of yogurt from her spoon.

  “Oh, no. I’m becoming my mother,” Jules groaned, dropping her head on the table.

  “It’s okay, honey. Now that you know, you can do something about it,” Maxine said.

  “I guess,” Jules said, as she stirred her smoothie with her straw. How had she not seen this before? How could she not have recognized her own destructive pattern of behavior? Jules took a sip from her smoothie thoughtfully. “I guess I just never wanted to settle, you know?”

  “Yeah, but there’s settling, and then there’s accepting someone for who he is and giving him time to grow into the person he is going to be,” Maxine said.

  Jules took another sip as she thought about Maxine’s words. One side of her brain knew Maxine was right. The other side still wasn’t convinced.

  “I don’t know, Maxine. How do I know the difference between when there is a real issue and when I am just being psycho. What if God is trying to give me a heads up on a brother, but I mistake it for my own paranoia?”

  “That’s the other thing you do,” Tanya said, sitting up suddenly.

  “What?” Jules asked, now more confused than ever.

  “You use God as an excuse to chicken out of things you’re afraid of,” Tanya said. “At the first sign of trouble you play the ‘maybe it’s a sign’ card and pull out.”

  “I do not!”

  “You do,” Tanya and Maxine said in unison.

  “You’re right. I do,” Jules said, as she slumped down in her chair. “It’s just that … you guys know that I have such a bad history with guys. Remember Omar?”

  Yes, they all remembered Omar, the guy Jules had dated for six months before she learned that he had not one, but two baby mammas that he was not supporting. In fact, if one of them hadn’t cornered Jules in a Loblaws supermarket parking lot one Sunday afternoon, she might have never found out about it at all. Omar certainly had no intention of telling her.

  Jules shuddered. Just the memory of the whole situation made her skin crawl. She had vowed never to let anything like that happen to her again.

  Tanya was hunched over the table laughing as Maxine recounted the parking lot incident.

  “Oh, Jules, where do you find these guys?” Tanya asked.

  “In church, T,” Jules said, her eyes wide.

  “Look, I can definitely see where you are coming from with your perfection issues,” Maxine said. “But don’t use God as a crutch for your cowardice. Your relationship with God ain’t always peachy, and He’s the almighty. Why do you think your relationships would be perfect when you’re dealing with simple, old, flesh and blood men?

  “God wants to guide you in your relationships, but you can’t keep running off every man He sends to you.”

  “Yeah, girl,” Tanya said, rubbing Jules’s arm encouragingly. “If you’re not sure about Germaine, then
maybe you should talk to the Big Man. Pray about it. And trust me, He’ll give you an answer so clear, you won’t have any doubt it’s from Him.”

  Later that night, as Jules prepared for bed, Tanya’s words came floating back into her mind. She slipped to her knees by her bedside and poured her heart out.

  “Lord, You know I depend on You for everything, and right now I really need a word from You. I really care about this man, but I’m not sure about him. There are a lot of things about him that I don’t know—a lot of things he won’t share. You know I want to trust him, but I don’t want to make the same mistakes I have made before. Show me what to do, and direct me according to Your will. Speak to my heart as only You can, and fill me with Your peace. I ask all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

  As Jules climbed into bed, she felt a quiet peace flow through her. No matter what happened, she knew that God would work all things out for her good. He had promised that in His word, and Jules believed it. After all, He had never failed her yet.

  Chapter 9

  As the day when Jules was to see her mother came closer, Jules grew more and more anxious. She had been so preoccupied with the Germaine mystery that she had almost forgotten about the promise she had made to her mother a few weeks earlier to have dinner with her when Davis came to town. But when Momma Jackson called two weeks in advance and told her to clear her schedule for Sunday, July 18, Jules knew there was no way she could back out.

  Since then it had been like counting down to a dentist appointment. In fact the more she thought about it, the more she dreaded it. At least the last time she had seen her mother, she’d had her aunt, Maxine, and seventeen members of the Kendalwood Women’s Ministry Department there acting as a buffer. It had been the Women’s Ministry brunch, one of several similar events that Momma Jackson insisted on holding at her house and guilting Jules into attending.

  At those types of events Jules could manage her mother. As long as she continuously mingled with the guests, and didn’t stay in one spot too long, she could usually avoid her mother’s death ray. However, at smaller family gatherings, it was more difficult.

  She remembered painfully this year’s New Year’s breakfast, which she had passed with her mother, Davis, Keisha, and her Aunt Sharon. Momma Jackson had spent the whole morning lecturing Jules on how she worked too hard—so hard that she couldn’t make time to start a family of her own. At that moment she had paused to commend Keisha for finding a prize like her Davis. Then Momma Jackson had launched off into her soliloquy about how God never meant for women to be alone. And, in one of the rare occasions when she mentioned Papa Jackson, she cautioned Jules to be careful that she was not becoming like her father, who was too busy and too independent to be married to anyone.

  Jules cringed at the memory. Only Momma Jackson could say the word “independent” like it was some fatal disease.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she was on the phone calling Davis.

  “You’re coming, right?” Jules asked over the poor connection. Even though they were technically on the same land mass, Davis sounded a million miles away.

  “Of course I’m coming,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be there on Thursday evening; quit worrying.”

  “Momma said you were coming on Friday.”

  “Yeah, I was, but I changed my mind and decided to come a day earlier.”

  “And you didn’t tell Momma?” Jules asked, surprised.

  “Nah, I want to spend some time with Keisha, and I know once I get to the house me and Key’ won’t have a moment alone.”

  Jules smirked. “Well, well, is that the precious son lying to his mother?”

  “I’m not lying,” Davis said. “I’m just leaving out some information, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t let me hear nothing about you and Keisha shacking up in some hotel somewhere for the night,” Jules warned. “You know Keisha’s big mouth sister will find out and let me know.”

  Davis laughed. “No way, sis. I’m staying at a friend’s. Keisha’s crazy momma would kill me if I tried anything like that.”

  Jules laughed. It was true. Even though Keisha’s family had pretty much adopted Davis, they were still by the book Christians, and they would tolerate no fooling around between Davis and their daughter. Davis still joked that though he and Keisha had been together for years, he wouldn’t even risk kissing her in front of them, much more trying anything else. Jules could understand. With Momma Jackson, it was pretty much the same.

  “Speaking of Keisha’s big mouth sister,” Davis said. “I hear you’ve been bouncing all around town with some guy. How come you didn’t tell your little brother you found a dude who could put up with you?” Davis asked cheekily.

  Jules rolled her eyes. She had known it wouldn’t be long before someone leaked her relationship with Germaine to her family.

  “It wasn’t a big deal, we just started going out a little while ago,” she said, giving Davis the Cliff Notes version of the Germaine-Jules story.

  “Well, it sounds like you guys got pretty serious in that little while,” Davis said. “And I know you didn’t tell Momma, because she would have called up the whole world by now.”

  Jules groaned. “Of course I didn’t tell Momma. I like this guy, remember?”

  “Well, it’s gonna be pretty hard to keep him a secret when you bring him to family dinner this weekend. Who are you going to introduce him as? Your really good friend that you’re not dating?” Davis asked. Jules didn’t have to see him to know he was smirking.

  “I’m not going to introduce him at all,” Jules said simply. “He’s not coming.”

  “Come on, Jules, what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that our mother will embarrass me to death and have him running for the hills.”

  “If he can put up with you, then he can handle Momma,” Davis said.

  “Davis, please,” Jules said. “Ghandi couldn’t handle Momma.”

  Davis laughed. “Okay, but Momma is going to be really mad when she finds out you’ve been dating this guy for months and didn’t tell her—and that’s assuming that she doesn’t already know, because you know she knows everything.”

  Jules sighed. She had thought of that possibility. But that was a chance she was willing to take. She needed to sort out her own issues with her mother before she could bring someone else into the picture. Especially someone who she was really starting to care about.

  “Look at it this way,” Davis reasoned. “It will be an opportunity for you to see how cool this guy is under pressure. Besides, with him around, Momma will probably be on her best behavior.”

  Jules snorted. She highly doubted that.

  “If nothing else, bring him so I can meet him,” Davis cajoled.

  “I don’t know about that, Davis.”

  “Just think about.”

  Fifteen minutes later when Jules hung up from talking to her brother she began to seriously consider the possibility of inviting Germaine to dinner on Sunday. Was it too soon? She didn’t want him to read more into the request than there was. But at the same time, Davis was on to something: maybe having Germaine around would tone her mother down a bit.

  Or maybe it would amp her up.

  She had better not take that chance. No, Germaine definitely wouldn’t be going to this one.

  But on Sunday morning, with the stress of the evening’s event taking a toll on her, Jules felt herself caving in.

  “Hello?” Germaine mumbled, clearly still half asleep. It was 6 a.m., and she knew he was probably wondering who could be calling him at that hour on a Sunday morning.

  “It’s me, Jules.”

  “Hey, baby, what’s up?” he asked, only slightly more alert.

  “I need you,” Jules said, working hard to keep calm despite the feeling of panic building in her gut.

  “Huh?”

  “Can you come with me? Later? To my mom’s?” Jules asked. “She wants me to come for dinner. And I know it’s last minute,
and I really wasn’t going to ask you, because I thought it was too soon for you to meet her, but I can’t do my mom by myself. I mean I won’t be completely by myself, my brother will be there, but he really doesn’t count ‘cause she likes him—”

  “Jules, it’s okay,” Germaine said, stopping her in the midst of her ramble. Jules’s poorly disguised anxiety had fully awoken him.

  “Okay? Does that mean yes? You’ll come?”

  “Yes, I’ll be there.”

  “Okay. You can pick me up at five,” she said, hanging up the phone before he had a chance to protest.

  Eleven hours later Germaine was knocking on Jules’s apartment door. On the second knock, the door flew open and a restless Jules stood before him.

  She looked absolutely gorgeous in wedges and a loose-fitting, yellow halter dress. However, it didn’t take much for Germaine to realize that she was more than a little uncomfortable.

  “Hey, you okay?” he asked, as he stepped inside.

  “Yeah, sure, I’m fine.” Jules tried to force a smile. He saw right through it.

  “Come here,” he murmured as he pulled her into an embrace. Jules wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly. Jules sighed. If he knew what she did, he wouldn’t be so sure.

  “Let’s go,” Jules said.

  “So there are some things you need to know,” Jules continued once they were in the car and on the way to Whitby. “Here are the rules—”

  Germaine laughed. “There are rules?”

  Jules looked at him as if he had grown a second head. Was he serious?

  “Of course there are rules,” Jules said incredulously. “And you plan to come out of this evening alive, then you better follow them.”

  Germaine shook his head.

  “Okay, so here goes. My mother will ask you a million questions. Attempt to answer all of them. If you don’t, she’ll think you’re rude. Some of them will be very personal; don’t be alarmed or offended. It’s just her way. She will ask you what you do. At no point can you call the Lounge a nightclub, or a disco. No matter how you try to spin it, she will think you’re working for the devil—”