My girls smiled at me but didn’t say anything.
• • •
As I was driving home on I-20 in my Jeep Wrangler with Jarena, we kept talking about the debate. Jarena admitted she learned something, and just as I was about to respond, I spotted a White Expedition that looked like Jovan’s. “It figures that I would see a car that looks like Jovan’s when I’m trying to forget about him.”
When I got closer, I saw the license plate was MUZAC1.
He told me he was in LA. I sped up to see who was driving just to be sure. I crossed a lane in front of a car to get beside the SUV. It’s him.
“What are you doing?” Jarena squealed, her body swaying as I shifted gears.
I turned down her passenger side window and leaned as far as I could. I screamed at him although his window was still up.
“What are you doing here?”
Then I saw Chula lying on his shoulder asleep. Her body was curled into his, and his head was lying on top of hers like he wanted to touch her in every way that was possible as he drove. I finally realized what had been pissing me off for the last few months when I saw them together. Jovan never even touched me in public because he didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea, he told me. Obviously, that rule didn’t apply to Chula. And if he allowed that in public, there was no telling what was going on when no one else was around.
I felt like I had been struck by lightning. Jovan looked, but I could tell he didn’t recognize me at first. I drove my Jeep into his lane so that he could see me clearly.
“Mimi, what’s going on?” Jarena shrieked, but I ignored her. I was on autopilot, no longer responsible for what was going to happen next.
Jovan pounded on his horn while turning down his window.
“Hey, what the hell?” he shouted just before he recognized me.
His face changed. First, I saw shock in his eyes and then fear. I felt more powerful than I had in the whole three years we had been together. He sped up, jerking his vehicle into another lane. I slammed my foot into the accelerator, going 100 miles an hour to catch up to that nigga and his trick.
“If this is your suicide mission, I choose not to accept it,” Jarena yelled while holding the edges of her seat and moving with the zigzagging of my Jeep. “Let me out of here.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until my whole face was wet.
“I’m so tired of his lies, but he gon learn tonight!” I shouted.
It was the ultimate adrenaline rush! After driving on his bumper for a few miles, I took it one step further. The front of my Jeep smacked his SUV with a BOOM. The car screeched as he sped up again. I sped up too and hit his car a second time.
“You and that bitch gon die tonight!!! You HEAR me Jovan?” I yelled as loud I could. “DIE bitches!!!”
After hitting him for the third time, Jovan flew across five lanes to escape and got off at the next exit. I thought about chasing after them again, but each time I’d hit his car, I’d felt a little better.
I was ready to go home. I hoped the front end of my Jeep wasn’t too damaged, but it would be worth it if I could finally prove to Jovan that you couldn’t play with my feelings and get away with it.
“You better be glad I’m a praying woman, because God was the only one who saved us,” Jarena screamed in my face. “And you better pray that Jovan and Chula aren’t hurt! I can’t believe this! Are you trying to get arrested?”
“I told y’all I would be done with Jovan after tonight, and I am,” I said calmly, turning down my window and letting the cool night air that flooded in dry my tears.
CHAPTER 6
May
Jarena
AFTER THREE MONTHS OF being a visitor at Hidden United Methodist Church, I placed my membership at the country church hidden in the middle of the city. My decision came in stages. The first part happened when I decided to stop being a visitor at the back of the church the Sunday after Valentine’s Day. Instead of sitting in the back as I had for the two Sundays I had visited before, this Sunday I sat in the middle. I just felt the Lord had a word for me, as my grandmother would say.
When the devotion was over, a deacon ambled over to me. His dark skin was slack and folded with age, but his curly Afro, although all white, was as full as the head of hair of a man decades younger. His best feature was his watery but smiling eyes.
“Ma’am, before you run out of this church for the third time, I thought I would introduce myself,” he said, reaching out his hand toward me.
“I didn’t know that anyone other than maybe the ushers had noticed me,” I said, as I shook his hand.
“Young lady, you may be able to get away with not being noticed in those megachurches we have all over the city, but here we see everybody, whether they want to be noticed or not,” the man said as he chuckled. “My name is Deacon Stanley.”
“Jarena Johnson.”
“Ms. Johnson, I don’t know if you plan on staying for the whole service, but we’re having a visitors’ luncheon after church,” he said. “We do this periodically, so you came on the right Sunday. I hope you join us.”
“I think I will,” I said in spite of myself. I guess there was no turning back now. I was going to get to know these people whether I wanted to or not. I kept listening for the word the Lord had for me during the service, but I didn’t hear anything.
The church was so small, I wondered where it could possibly have enough space for a luncheon. But I was led down a rickety spiraling stairway at the back of the church to a very clean but still musty-smelling basement. It was like Thanksgiving—fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collards, sweet potatoes, apparently all for one visitor—me. The smells of my favorite food spread out on a long table, unruly kids tagging each other from one side of the basement to the next, and everyone smiling and chatting made me feel like I was being hugged.
As I sat on a folding chair, eating from a paper plate on my lap, the deacon came up to me again.
“I want to invite you to our Bible Study” he said. “We’re getting ready to start studying the book of Acts this Wednesday, so you haven’t missed anything. It starts at 7 p.m., and it only lasts an hour.”
I smiled. “I just may come. I’m pretty busy during the week, and unfortunately I have pretty long hours, so we will see.”
After getting home and shedding my suit, I decided to check out Barry’s Facebook profile on my laptop. I had been lurking on his page every day since I accepted his friendship request a week earlier. I purposely only posted a few pictures on my page because I didn’t want everyone knowing my business, but that didn’t stop me from scouring my friends’ pages to piece together their lives through what they shared online.
According to Barry’s profile, he lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a Coca-Cola Bottling Consolidated senior brand manager. As I scrolled through his pictures, I saw that the woman who appeared in at least half of them was his wife, Naomi (Sweet) Simpson. And she looked sweet too. She had the perfect toffee-brown skin with the perfect congenial smile and long, thick hair that she wore feathered. She looked perfectly coiffed, the opposite of me with my long limbs and massive curly Afro. I clicked on the link to take me to her profile page, glad to discover that she hadn’t made it private. Even her career was sweet. She was a fourth-grade teacher. And they had two adorable kids—a boy, Bartholomew IV, and a girl, Amber.
A sound on my computer interrupted my investigation. Barry was trying to chat with me. I almost got up and ran away from the computer to look in the mirror first, before remembering he couldn’t see me. I debated for a second about responding, and then I decided to take a chance.
What’s the worst thing that can happen on a computer?
“Thanks for accepting my friend request, Jarena,” Barry typed.
“Of course man, how are you?” I typed.
“I can’t complain,” he wrote. “So are you running the world yet?”
“LOL,” I typed. “Hardly. I do have my own company though.”
“I know. 85 South Public Relations, right?”
“Oh, so you been checking up on me, huh?”
“Every now and then I Google you,” he typed.
A tingle started in my chest and went to my fingertips. I typed a response but deleted the words, wondering how to be casual with a guy that I used to love.
“You there?” he typed.
“Yes,” I typed. “I’m sorry. Got distracted for a second.”
“Oh I’m sorry. Are you busy? I just wanted to say hello. If you need to go, I understand.”
“Naw, I’m fine. So what’s up?”
“Just wasting time on Facebook!”
“I know, right!”
“So why are you wasting time on Facebook? Shouldn’t you be hanging out with your wife and family? I guess you have a family by now.”
“I do. A boy and a girl. I’m supposed to be working! LOL. Got caught up on FB for a sec. So do you have a husband and family? I couldn’t tell from your profile.”
“Nope, not married, no kids. Working on it though. Just fabulous friends and a career for now. :)”
“If you’re like you were in college, when you’re ready to get all of that, you will.”
“Well, I don’t want to keep you from your work, plus I’m sleepy.”
“Yeah, I need to get back to work. Nice catching up with you. Bye.”
I wasn’t sleepy. I figured that if we kept communicating, I would inevitably unload about my relationship issues. And then he would probably think about how he proposed to me and I turned him down and never looked back.
And then I started thinking about Hidden United Methodist Church. The elderly deacon looked like an older version of the pastor of Redemption Baptist Church, the church I went to with my grandmother in Vidalia. I remember the pastor, Dr. Baker, always made time to ask me about my schoolwork or living in the “big city of Atlanta.” He would bend down to my level, looking me in the eyes as he spoke to me. Reminiscing, I realized how special it was for a pastor to pay attention to even the youngest of members that way. And I wanted to feel special again. Like I belonged somewhere. Had a family that missed me when I wasn’t there. Hidden United Methodist didn’t have all of the people and programs that Cascade Baptist offered, but that wasn’t what I needed then.
• • •
A meeting with Jovan in my office in March also propelled me to join Hidden United Methodist. Although music producers were notorious for being night owls and not showing up anywhere before noon, Jovan was on his grind any time of the day. That singular quality was my top reason for taking him on as a client. His hustle made it impossible for him to not earn money, and that would earn money for me. Our meeting was scheduled for 10 a.m., but he sauntered into my office twenty minutes early.
I studied him as he walked. It always made me smile that he dipped from side to side as he moved, almost as if music played in his head at all times. His gold-and-diamond studs in each ear seemed to glint on beat with his rhythm.
“J.J., I hope I’m not too early,” he said.
“Naw, you’re alright.” I turned my swiveling desk chair and stood up to greet him. “How are you?” I gave him a side hug and sat back down.
“Chillin’. What you know good?”
“Working, that’s all. Have a seat.”
He sat down in one of my chocolate leather couches.
“So I just want to make sure everything’s tight for Chula’s album release.”
“So far I have ten press events scheduled, and Mimi has agreed to interview Chula on her show.”
“Good. Do you think Chula’s accent is too strong? She grew up in Southwest Atlanta, but her parents are straight Puerto Rican. Like they just off the boat. They don’t even speak that much English. Her English sounds like Spanish sometimes.”
“You’ve met her parents?” I said, moving my chair closer to my desk.
“Yeah, my son and I kicked it with her folks a few times. Good people, too.”
“What? Hold up,” I said as I went over to the couch where Jovan was sprawled and sat down.
“In the five years or so that I have known you, I have never heard of you hanging out with any woman’s parents, and you definitely don’t take your son around any woman. So that’s why Mimi is freaking out. You really like this girl.”
I tried to focus on his eyes through his dark shades, but I couldn’t see them clearly, even up close.
“She’s a nice lady.”
“Naw, it’s more than that,” I said, my voice rising higher. “If y’all are dating, I need to know so that if anyone asks, I know what to say.”
“J.J., I meet beautiful women all of the time. You know that,” he said slowly, as if he was carefully considering what words he used. “But Chula is a different kind of chick, I gotta say. She’s just really sweet, even though she really wants to be a star more than anything. She’s ten years younger than me, though.”
“I thought you were one of those bachelors for life. You know, the type of man who is married to his career but sees women on the side. But if you are considering marrying Chula, she is grown.”
“I aine say nothin’ ’bout marriage,” he said as he laughed. “I just like being around her.”
As I looked at him, I knew he was downplaying his emotions. I had been telling Mimi for years that Jovan was not the settling-down type. But the way he looked when he was talking about Chula was the way Barry used to look at me just before he asked to marry me.
“Are you still seeing Mimi?” I said, forgetting that this was supposed to be a business instead of a personal conversation.
“Ere now and then,” he said as he looked down.
“Anyone else you’re seeing?”
“Damn, you worse than my mother,” he said as he pulled down his shades a bit. “I got a few in rotation. Chula’s stock is rising, but I’m not trying to get married. All of this is between us, right? Attorney-client privilege?”
“Well, I’m not your attorney,” I said with a laugh. “But yes, this is between us. And I’m not trying to advise you on your personal life since I’m just your publicist, but since you are ‘seeing’ one of my friends and your brand-new artist at the same time, I’m telling you that you need to be careful. I don’t want to see Mimi hurt, and you know she would be.”
“I’m not lying to anybody, and I never have.” He took off his shades completely. “I like variety, and I’ve always told every chick I see that monogamy is not my thing. What else can I do?”
“Nothing, I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders and returned to my desk. I guided our conversation back to the promotion campaign for Chula’s debut album, but inwardly I reflected on our conversation and my career in general. I sensed this love triangle between my friend, my client, and his protégé was going to get messy before it got better, and I wanted no part of it. But that wasn’t the only thing that was irritating me. It was becoming clear that I wanted no part of the whole PR industry anymore. That thought had been on the periphery of my mind for a while, but it crystallized and came to the center during my conversation with Jovan.
When I was in college, I wanted to be in public relations because I loved communications, writing, and being persuasive. And I wanted to get paid well. And when I watched Atlanta hip hop blow up all over the world, I knew that PR in Atlanta hip hop was where I needed to be. But in retrospect, all of my hard work was feeling meaningless. A lot of the lyrics in the songs I promoted now were explicit without reason or just foolishness. If my mother and grandmother were still alive, they would be shocked that I was affiliated with that kind of music. Not to mention that very few of the men that I met in the industry over the years were worth anything.
The first sermon I heard from Pastor Moore came back to me. He preached about how he was called into the ministry. God had told him, “You will be speaking in a pulpit one day.’” He wasn’t the only one that heard those words. I felt like God told me that when I was six years old. One Sunday, I told the pastor
at Redemption Baptist that I wanted to speak, like him, to lots of people about God. I remember him and the rest of the church laughing because they probably thought that I was a precocious but misguided kid. And on top of that, I never saw any women speaking like he did, so in my child’s mind, I figured women couldn’t do that. Whatever my calling was, whether I was called to be a speaker of some sort or not, I knew I wouldn’t find it promoting Wassup ‘Señorita or any other hip hop album.
• • •
“Aine no such thang as a Lone Ranger Christian. The devil gets you when you by yourself,” was another one of my grandmother’s homespun proverbs. After the last Friday in April, I knew I couldn’t be a Lone Ranger Christian anymore. I was finishing up a press release just before lunch, but I was also logged into Facebook, and Mimi’s show was playing on the radio too.
And then I heard a sound from Facebook. It was Barry messaging me. Since February, we had been messaging each other a few times a week. Not conversations: a “Have a great day” or “Happy Friday” or “What are you doing?” here and there. Nothing deep. Over time, my boundaries loosened like the elastic in my old sweatpants I used to wear when we studied together in his apartment. One day, I posted a rant about being stuck in traffic and he sent me a direct message that made me laugh out loud. “Better to be stuck in traffic than in traffic court.” I got so many speeding tickets in college, some of the courthouse personnel knew me by name. After that, it was clear we were just old friends catching up online, and I no longer flinched when he messaged me. It was like being surprised with a piece of candy every once in a while. His messages sweetened my day and made me smile.
“Happy Friday, Jay! What do you have going on this weekend?”
“Nothin’ much, hopefully nothing, Bama,” I replied.
“Jay” was his college nickname for me, and “Bama” was my college nickname for him, since I thought he was country and the fact that he was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama.
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