Getting to Happy

by Terry McMillan

  “I’m putting them to bed in a few minutes. You know what I’ve been meaning to ask you, baby?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Where are you thinking of taking me for our sixth wedding anniversary?”

  “I don’t know. That’s five whole months from now. You pick the place this time. How’s that?”

  “That’s fine. Let me ask you something else, baby. Do you know a woman named Bernadine Wheeler?”

  “That name doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”

  “Because she called me.”

  “What do you mean, she called you? When? About what?”

  “She said you’re her husband.”

  “That crazy bitch lives out there in Phoenix, and she’s been stalking me ever since I started going out there for work. I think she might even be locked up somewhere. Did she call you from a pay phone? If so, it means she’s finally in a facility. Don’t believe a word that bitch says. And how’d she get your number?”

  Bernadine took a breath. “This crazy bitch didn’t call your wife, James or Jesse, whatever your real name is! She called me. I don’t even believe this shit is really happening. I don’t—”

  “What the hell is going on here? You mean to tell me both of y’all broads have ganged up on me? What kinda bullshit is this? Bernie, don’t believe a word—”

  “You know what, James, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Bigamy is a felony. Which means you can go to prison for it. So, I’ll tell you what. I dare you to bring your lying ass anywhere near the Arizona state line. I dare you! Try it and you’ll be behind bars in a New York minute. I still can’t believe this is happening, but thank you, Belinda.”

  “Thank you Belinda?”

  “You’re welcome,” Belinda said in a warm voice, as if she was giving Bernadine a high five through the phone. “Women need to stick together and stop sorry men like Jesse from getting away with so much. They want us to be enemies, when they’re the ones who try to pit us against each other. You okay, girl?”

  “I’m fine. What about you?”

  “Now y’all getting chummy! What is this shit?” James yelled, but then the pitch in his voice changed to nice, a falsetto, the one he’d used the entire time he’d been married to Bernadine. She could hear it as plain as day now: the phoniness. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?

  “Look, baby, I’m leaving the office right now and I’ll be home in about a half hour.”

  “I don’t think so,” Belinda said with conviction. “Your key doesn’t work, and, I’m filing to have this bogus marriage annulled in the morning. Bernadine, you know you can do the same. I already looked into it.”

  “You can’t do that. We’ve been married too long.”

  “Hey,” Bernadine said, “since you’re the big-time lawyer, James, you should know how this works.”

  Belinda was laughing again.

  “What’s so damn funny, Billy? And what about my kids? You can’t stop me from being with my kids. And plus, that’s my house you’re living in. My car you’re driving.”

  “You want me to cut it all down the middle and give you your half, is that what you want, Jesse?”

  There was complete and utter silence. He was in a corner and he couldn’t lie or whine or cry or weasel his way out of this one.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “To you both. I didn’t mean to hurt either one of you, can’t you understand that?”

  “I’m sorry, too, Jesse James, sorry I ever met your lying ass. You really should be ashamed of yourself. God made a huge mistake when he wired you.”

  Bernadine hung up.

  This happened six years ago. To Bernadine, sometimes it feels like yesterday. “Fuck!” she says when she opens her eyes and looks around her bedroom. A wave of fear paralyzes her and she can’t move. Her heart is racing, as if she’s been running. Her forehead is wet and so are her pajamas. It’s not from night sweats. She finished with that almost two years ago. Her hands are tingling but she can’t shake them. Not yet. She can blink, which she does until she’s batting her eyes—anything to send the pain of the past back where it came from. She doesn’t dream about the whole ordeal anymore. Occasionally, it just shows up and jumps inside her. When it does, she waits the five or ten minutes it takes for her breathing to slow down and she can feel the blood flowing into her fingertips.

  Right now, the sun is peeking through the space between the shutters. Bernadine knows she needs to get her act together because her daughter and a friend are flying in from Oakland this evening. They’re students at Mills College, and it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend. They’re coming to interview for summer camp counseling jobs in Tucson.

  She counts to three, rolls on her side and opens the drawer to the night table. She reaches for two prescription bottles. Swallows the Zoloft dry. She almost doesn’t know why she still bothers taking it every morning, because her spirits don’t seem to have gotten any higher. Next, she grabs the Xanax. When she shakes it, nothing rattles. Her doctor prescribed them years ago to help her get through episodes like this. She doesn’t usually take them every day, but she feels better knowing they’re here.

  She could use one now. “Shit!” she says, pulling the drawer all the way out, hoping there might be an old bottle lying behind the others. But she knows this isn’t the case. She speed-dials the pharmacist for a refill, and without taking a shower, slips on a T-shirt and some shorts, then decides to brush her teeth and wash her face. In less than ten minutes, Bernadine is standing in line behind a little redhead girl who she takes to be about three. Her pale legs are dangling through the slots in the grocery cart. She has a black baby doll squished between her belly and the metal bar separating her legs. She’s sucking her thumb. Suddenly, she pulls it out of her mouth and it falls on top of her baby’s curly head. “Hi,” she says to Bernadine, smiling, her small teeth already protruding.

  Braces are in her future, Bernadine is thinking as she smiles back. “Hi,” she says to the little girl. Her dad, a stocky guy on the verge of being fat, is at the counter, paying as well as listening to how best to administer this medication which is clearly for his daughter.

  “I haven’t seen you in a long time!” the little girl says to Bernadine. She is smiling as if they go way back and she’s delighted to see her.

  “I know,” Bernadine says, knowing she has never seen this little girl before. “How have you been?”

  “Fine,” she says. “You need medicine, too?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Me, too. My belly is always hurting. Does your belly hurt, too?” she asks.

  “No, my belly doesn’t hurt but I sure hope yours feels better soon.”

  “What hurts for you?” she asks.

  “Emma,” her dad says to her. “Just say bye-bye to the nice lady.”

  “Bye-bye,” she says to Bernadine.

  “She’s very friendly, as you can see,” the dad says. “She says the same thing to everybody. Have a great day.” He pivots the cart to Bernadine’s right and whisks down the pet food aisle.

  Bernadine is still mad at herself for marrying James before the ink had dried on her divorce from John. She was feeling like an empty parking space and James simply pulled in. John was her first husband. They were married eleven years. Fell in love in college back in Boston. Had two children: Onika and John Jr., both now in college. Back in I989, Bernadine was taking hot rollers out of her hair because they were getting dressed to go somewhere, though she can’t remember where, when out of the blue John told her he wanted a divorce. She does remember snatching those rollers out of her hair and hurling them at him after he told her it was Kathleen, his bookkeeper, who was ten years younger than her, and white. For years, Bernadine hated John for the premeditated way he slung this news in her face. They had made a pact in college that if their feelings toward each other started to deteriorate they would let the other know before either of them cheated. John obviously broke his side of the promise. It made her feel like a homicide victim.
But there was no funeral.

  This felt like the second time she’d been killed.

  Her friends had a hard time accepting all of it. Belinda Hampton kept her word and sent Bernadine all the legal documents proving she was indeed married to James, too, and not long afterward, Bernadine’s marriage was annulled. She removed James Wheeler’s name from everything and was surprised to find out how intertwined their lives had become during the six years they were married. It was about this same time Bernadine discovered James had been systematically robbing her for years. That she had paid for all those trips back and forth to D.C. This was when she went to see her doctor. She started having trouble falling asleep. Having anxiety attacks. In the beginning she worried if he hated her enough that he might try to harm her. It took years for her to stop worrying, but by that time, she was mad at herself for having been such a fool. She has not seen or heard from him since.

  Pills have helped her fake it. Helped her to smile when she was supposed to, to hold back tears when they were inappropriate, to forget she hasn’t been kissed in six years, not been touched in six years and not had an orgasm in six years. All this trying to forget only made her remember more. That she’s lonely. That she often feels like she weighs a ton.

  Today is one of those days she has to put the bullshit on the back-burner, which won’t be hard to do because her daughter is coming home tonight. For three days Bernadine will be happy. She’ll be a hands-on mother and her smiles will not have to be manufactured. Over the next nine or ten hours, Bernadine will clean all the rooms the housekeeper ignores—especially the nooks and crannies in the kitchen—and she’ll give Onika’s room extra-special attention. She’ll spend hours in Bed Bath & Beyond where she’ll buy an espresso maker she can’t afford, but it’ll be a surprise since Onika’s always having one at Starbucks. She’ll also buy new towels and a matching rug for her daughter’s bathroom. She’ll go up and down every aisle in the grocery store just to be sure to get all the ingredients for some of Onika’s favorite meals. She hasn’t cooked for her daughter since last Christmas.

  By seven o’clock, Bernadine lies across the bed to take what she likes to call a nap.

  “Mom, where are you? I’m home! You better not be in bed! It’s only eleven-thirty!” Onika yells as she and her girlfriend barge into Bernadine’s bedroom. She thought she’d heard them running up the stairs, but by the time she’s able to slide her head from under the pillow, the two girls are standing over her. Bernadine rolls over and tries to open her eyes but they flutter and close again.

  Sleeping pills will do that.

  “Mom, wake up! We’re here!” Onika says even louder this time, and starts rocking Bernadine back and forth.

  “Hi there, baby girl,” Bernadine mutters as she slowly sits up and gives her daughter a peck on the lips. She knows she looks disastrous, because she can see from the mirror her hair is smashed flat on the side she’d been sleeping on, the mascara has given her black baseball smudges under her eyes and to top it off, she still has her clothes on: a white wifebeater and goldenrod capris.

  “Hello, Mrs. Harris,” Onika’s friend says. “I’m Shy.”

  As Bernadine combs her fingers through her hair and gets up, this young lady is towering over her. Onika looks even more petite than her five feet two inches standing next to her. “You don’t have to be shy around me, sweetheart.”

  “It’s short for Cheyenne,” she says.

  “That’s a pretty name. And since you’re my daughter’s best friend, you can call me Mom if you want, or Auntie’s fine with me, too.”

  “Thanks then, Mom!” Shy says as she bends down and gives Bernadine a soft kiss on the cheek. “And thanks for having me. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about you.”

  “Well, O’s prejudiced. Even though I’m not her real mother, I love her just the same.”

  Shy is obviously taken aback hearing this and glances over at Onika.

  “I’m just teasing. Very nice to meet you, Shy.”

  “Whew!” she says.

  Bernadine can now tell that Shy’s dreadlocks are bright red. It also looks like she’s probably mixed with something. Her skin is the color of sand. She’s pretty in an odd sort of way. She also looks athletic. “Well, you sure look like an athlete,” Bernadine says, mostly to see if her assumption is right.

  “Soccer it is,” Shy says, proudly.

  “When did you cut your hair off?” she asks Onika, since it’s almost as short as Bernadine’s was centuries ago when she chopped it off close enough to see her scalp. She did it to piss John off after he’d told her he wanted a divorce. He never liked short hair on women, especially his wife.

  “Shy cut it for me, last week. We were just fooling around. Do you like it?”

  “I do.”

  “Look, we didn’t mean to interrupt your zees, and you do look tired. I just wanted you to know that we got here okay. Didn’t you get my messages?”

  “No. When’d you leave them?”

  “Right before we got on the flight. A few hours ago.”

  “I haven’t checked the voice mail at home and I can never hear that cell phone because I always have it on vibrate.”

  “It’s all good, Mom. We couldn’t get on three flights. Standby from Oakland to Phoenix is really hard. We couldn’t even get seats together, but we made it.”

  Onika smells like blueberries. Bernadine spots the new tattoo on her forearm. It looks like Chinese but she doesn’t want to ask her what it means right this minute. It can wait. Besides, she knows Onika will tell her anyway. There are rings on eight of her fingers. Thin and thick silver bands of various shapes. Onika’s fingers are short, too short for all this jewelry. But she’s young. Bernadine reminds herself to keep her middle-aged, maternal thoughts to herself. “Aren’t you guys hungry? I’ll fix you something really quick.”

  “No, it’s okay, Mom. We had a slice at the airport. We’ll find something to snack on. I want to show Shy around the crib. And our killer view. This is her first time ever in Phoenix.”

  “Okay, but if you change your mind, let me know. I could stir-fry something. It’d only take a few minutes.”

  “Go back to sleep, Mom, we’ll see you in the morning. We’re pretty wiped out, too. Six hours in that airport was taxing. Every college student in the Bay Area was either going skiing or heading home.”

  Bernadine looks at her daughter. She can’t believe her baby is going to be a junior in college and she’s old enough to buy booze. From the time Onika was in high school she’d told Bernadine she knew she wanted to go to a woman’s college. At first it was Barnard and then Smith but she wanted to be close to home so she chose Mills. She’s majoring in social anthropology with a minor in book art. “It’s really about the fine art of bookmaking,” she’d said. She’ll never get a job, but Bernadine wouldn’t dare say it.

  “Thanks anyway, Mom,” Shy whispers, and puts both hands on Onika’s shoulders and slowly shuffles her out the door.

  After Bernadine watches the news she remembers she forgot a few items she needed to make Onika’s favorite omelet: fresh crabmeat, sour cream, tomatoes, black olives, scallions and yellow and red bell peppers. She’d been so busy thinking about dinner she forgot about breakfast. She brushes her teeth and washes her face and hears Jay Leno saying something about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise getting engaged. “It’ll never last,” she says, turning to the screen.

  She leaves the TV on and runs downstairs. It’s freezing in here because she forgot to turn the heat up after she’d finished cleaning. She grabs a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge, and on her way to the garage spots the girls’ backpacks leaning against the door. They look like penguins.

  God, she envies them. Being able to dream about their future. Do whatever they want to do. That their biggest worry is their GPA. Bernadine hopes her daughter and son cherish these years. John Jr. is a first-year graduate student at MIT. His primary interest in life fits into urban studies and planning. Bernadine has had to
sit and listen to him lecture her about this stuff as if he’s a commentator on CNN or like he’s explaining what happened on Lost. He’s headed for Washington. She can feel it.

  When she gets back from the grocery store, she puts everything away and spots the washed and folded towels she bought for Onika still sitting in the laundry basket. She forgot to put them in her bathroom! She tiptoes upstairs, and since Onika’s door isn’t completely closed, quietly pushes it open with her hips. She’s not sure at first if her daughter and Shy are just lying very close together or if they’re in fact wrapped in each other’s arms. As she walks past the bed, she can see that this is exactly what they’re doing. Holding each other. Out of all the times Bernadine used to sleep over with her girlfriends, she’d never held any of them like this. In fact, they’d always fought over the blankets.

  She must’ve been standing there longer than she realized because the girls break apart as if they suddenly feel her presence. She knows why they were holding each other this close. She’s not stupid. And she’s suspected this about her daughter for years. Onika has never had a real boyfriend that she was ever aware of, and Bernadine never asked why. She always assumed that if her daughter wanted one she would’ve gotten one.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you two,” she says after she sees their eyes pop open. “I just wanted to put these in your bathroom, O. Go on back to sleep.”

  They sit up straight. Like soldiers at attention. Now, they’re leaning against the headboard and wearing a fearful look. Bernadine sees they’re trying to inch away from each other without making it apparent. It is apparent. There was no space between them and now there is.

  “I sleep very hard, sometimes, Mom,” Onika says.

  Shy looks scared shitless, like a child used to being abused—as if Bernadine might hit her or something. Shy decides to play it another way. “We’re just used to sleeping in those twin beds at school. It’s really tight.”

  “I didn’t know you two were roommates.”

  “We’re not, but we will be in the fall,” Onika says.