by Ni-Ni Simone
He eased my zipper down and my heart raced in my chest. “You got any condoms?” I asked him, knowing that that wasn’t what I meant to say.
“Yeah ...” He started pulling my pants down. “I do.”
As he went to take off my shirt I said, “Josiah, stop ...” But I guess he didn’t hear me ’cause he was beginning to feel parts of my body that I knew were taboo.
“Josiah, stop.”
He still didn’t stop.
“Josiah!” I screamed and pushed him off me. I quickly pulled my pants back up. “I said stop.”
He leaned back and looked at me. “Here we go again.”
“What you mean here we go again? I already told you what the deal was and you keep pushing.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could tell in his eyes he was holding a conversation with himself.
“I don’t wanna disturb our flow or whatever”—I started buttoning my shirt back—“but I don’t wanna do this and I’m sure of that. If you want me to leave, you know ... I’ll understand.”
“Did I ask you to leave? You runnin’ again, huh? Where you runnin’ to, Dollah?”
“Dollah? Is that what this is really about? What, you listening to Deeyah now?”
“At least I know she ain’t lyin’ to me.”
“I’m not lying to you!”
“Seven, please.”
“What do you mean, Seven, please?! Don’t try and put this off on me! This is about you going too far and you being mad because you didn’t get the scholarship you wanted. That’s your fault, not mine! And yes, Dollah was my boyfriend and maybe you two don’t get along but that’s not my problem and I don’t appreciate this!”
“Well, then maybe you oughta find something else to do, especially since you ain’t doin’ me.”
I could swear that he heard my heart crack in half. “Excuse me, what?! What you say?”
“I’m sayin’ maybe”—he shook his head—“you should step.”
“Step?” Did he really just say that? Step?
“Yeah, bounce, like I’m gettin’ real sick of playing with you. You too much work, plus you lyin’ to me, and it’s gettin’ under my skin that you were Dollah’s ex-girl anyway, especially if you were with this cat when Ibn was killed. So yeah, ma. You should bounce. I’ll see you when I see you.”
I did all I could to hold my tears back. I was determined he would never see me cry again. “I’m convinced that you just had a nervous breakdown, talkin’ to me crazy like that. But you know, my mistake for thinking you were stand-up and for thinking you were really about something. My mistake for thinking that you loved me! But you don’t love me, you only love yourself! You don’t deserve me, I’m too much of a diva for you. What you need is a skeezer! Stupid ass! I hate the day I ever met you! And let me just tell you this before I go, whatever hurt you feeling behind your brother, you need to get it out, because it’s nobody’s fault and especially not Dollah’s that Ibn is dead!” I fixed my clothes, slid on my coat, and picked up my bag.
“Yo, Seven, hold up, calm down, ma, ai’ight?” Josiah stood in my way.
I shook my head no.
“You know I love you, right?” he pleaded with his eyes.
I waved my hand under my chin. “Josiah, please, it’s a wrap.” I took my Wifey earrings off, and threw ’em at him. “I’ll hollah.” And I stormed out the door.
By the time I got home, Josiah was sitting on my porch. I looked at him and couldn’t feel a thing. My heart was missing, half of it was left on his floor and the other half was underneath his feet.
“Yo, let me hollah at you?” he said.
“For what,” I snapped as I attempted to walk past him. “Go talk to Deeyah.”
“I wanna talk to you.”
“Didn’t you just say you were gettin’ sick of me? So be about yours and step.”
“I’m being about mine and that’s why I’m here.”
“Don’t nobody here belong to you!”
“For real, Seven, you pushin’ it.”
“I ain’t pushing nothin’.”
“Oh, okay, I tell you I love you and you just gon’ play me?!”
“You don’t know how to love me.”
“I wanna learn.”
“For what, you think it gon’ get you some?”
“Get some, man, please, does that even exist with you? If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be here.”
“And what you want? For me to be impressed? Like for real”—I sighed—“you giving me a headache. Just disappear!”
“Oh, now I should disappear, anybody that hurts Seven should just go away? I’m not your father, I’m not about to move to California, and this ain’t about to be over. But I’m not about to sweat you outside on no porch. Call me when you get your attitude in check.”
“Yeah, you keep waitin’ if you want to.” I opened the door and slammed it in his face.
Cousin Shake was sitting on the couch in the dark with “The Best of Eric B. & Rakim” playing when I flipped on the light. “Fat Mama, what’s wrong?”
Instead of telling him to mind his business I broke down and started crying. I knew I couldn’t tell him the reason why, but I just needed to let it out so maybe by the morning I could let this whole thing go and my feelings for Josiah would be done and over with. “I can’t talk about it, Cousin Shake.”
“You can tell Cousin Shake anything.”
“I just can’t talk about it now.”
“Okay, well you tell me when you get ready. All I want you to know is that I want what’s best for you.”
“Oh, Cousin Shake,” I sniffed, “that was really sweet.”
“Thank you, Fat Mama, because I know you want the best for me, too.”
“I do.”
“Well, then you need to get up off my polyester long johns. My lil’ fifty-year-old tender just bought me these.”
“I shoulda known it was too good to be true.” I rolled my eyes and went to my room.
17
Don’t break my heart
If you do I’ll cry forever...
—SHANICE, “DON’T BREAK MY HEART”
Somebody forgot to tell me that it hurt this bad. Honestly, I didn’t know I had tears like this. I go to sleep crying and I wake up in tears, because I can’t stop crying. Tears are in everything I do. When I take a bath, when I’m at school, at work, at home. They’re in everything and for the past three weeks that I’ve been crying I don’t know what to do. And just when I think okay, today will be a good day, I see him staring at me in school. Or Shae gives me a note that he asked her to slide to me. Or a song plays on the radio that reminds me of how much I love him. Or I smell him, or I look too quick and swear I see him. Everything is him. It’s weird, it’s like my life is so mundane and so out of whack at the same time. I can’t remember what I did before he was in my life. And what hurts is that every time I try to think of what I did or where I went when I wasn’t with him, I come up empty, nothing comes to mind. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And here I am, looking at a phone that doesn’t ring and feeling an ache that won’t go away.
It’s only seven o’clock at night and already I was in bed. I held my pillow over my face and Omarion’s “Ice Box” was on rotation. I don’t wanna eat and I can’t sleep. It’s official, I’m lost and I no longer know who I am.
“Seven.” Toi cracked our bedroom door open, the light from the kitchen drifting in behind her.
I didn’t answer but heck, she knew I was there. She closed the door behind her and I could hear her breathing as she walked over. She was almost eight months pregnant now and her breathing started to sound like a struggling air conditioner. I wished we didn’t share a room because then I could put her out.
She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Why don’t you call him or talk to him?”
Tears filled my throat. “No.”
“Why, Seven?”
“He didn’t like me, he was using me. All he wanted to do was screw me. He wanted to come into
my life, get me to love him, and then when I think that he’s here and not going anywhere he tells me to step, just like Daddy did Mommy and just like Daddy did us.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You’re not Mommy and he’s not Daddy. And Mommy and Daddy’s relationship is not our problem. Stop taking that on. You have to live your life. And he loves you, Seven, he does.”
“I can’t talk to him. I can’t.” And just as I started wailing, Cousin Shake started banging on the door.
“Crying ass. ’Scuse me, I mean my dear Fat Mama, Josiah’s out here. I told him I ain’t appreciate you crying around here for the last year and that you ain’t ate in over six months. Then I told him that you been going to bed at seven o’clock every night and that I really had a problem with him. I asked him to leave twice but he told me he wasn’t here to see me. He lucky I ain’t punch him in the face. I told him the next time you around here crying all night, I was gon’ rock ’em to sleep.”
“Yeah, Bubble Butt,” Man-Man screamed. “He standing here looking at me now, and I told him you were around here passing out and carrying on, how Mommy had to have the old ladies from the church come pray over you. Just say the word and I will check this bobblehead-lookin’ pop-tart right in his chin.”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “Wasn’t no old ladies here prayin’ over me! And tell ’im I said go home.”
“You tell him,” Cousin Shake said. “Since you don’t seem to appreciate anything me and Man-Man did and we out here helping you. We ain’t the ones around here lovesick.”
“Ya got that right,” Man-Man said.
“Please talk to him, Seven,” Toi pleaded.
I took the pillow from my face and wiped my eyes. My hair was all over the place but I didn’t care, my eyes were swollen, and my gear was jacked. I wore a pair of green and white polka dot girl boxing shorts and Josiah’s white tee, which still smelled like him.
When I stepped out my room, his face lit up. And unlike me he was still fine. I hated that I was still checking for him.
“You look real pretty,” Josiah said.
Man-Man and Cousin Shake fell out laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Cousin Shake said. “I done heard it all now.”
“Yeah, Cousin Shake,” Man-Man said, “she look like she stinks.”
“That’s enough!” Toi barked. “Seven, y’all should go in the living room.”
When I walked in the living room my mother was coming through the door. “Josiah,” she said, filled with surprise. “Hi, I’m glad to see you.”
“How you doing, Mrs. McKnight?” he asked. I could hear the sadness in his voice.
“I’m fine, sweetie.” My mother winked at me. “I’ma go on in here and talk to my cousin and my two other children. You two make yourselves comfortable.”
Once my mother left, Josiah and I stood still and stared at each other. “So ... wassup?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, real talk, keep it funky, wassup? You want this to be over? You want me to bounce ... forever?”
“Who told you that?”
“You did.”
“And how is that?”
“By the way you act.”
I didn’t respond, instead I was silent.
“Seven,” he said, “I don’t even know what to say no more. I’m sorry, I am.”
“You really hurt me.”
“So you gon’ punish me forever?”
“I just need some time.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, yo, peep this. I’m here, but I can’t keep fighting for you and you don’t want me to win. So you tell me when you ready to be mine again.” He reached in his jacket pocket. “I guess I assumed too fast that you would be around so I bought your ticket for you to go to my Senior’s prom with me. My colors are black and silver if you’re interested.”
I managed to keep my I-could-care-less face on. I knew I was hurting him, but there was no way he could even begin to understand how I felt.
He placed one of the tickets in my hand. He walked toward the front door. “Just in case.” He opened the door and I walked behind him. I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t. The tears that were clouding my throat suppressed my words.
As he stepped out the door he turned around, stroked my hair to the back, and kissed me on my forehead. “Besides my mother, I’ve only loved two other people and they both left me.” Tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. I wanted to hug him and hold him and I know I should’ve, but what was I supposed to say? Everybody always told me that at sixteen I was still a kid and that boys should be the last thing on my mind. That I wouldn’t and didn’t know what real love was, and I guess at this moment, the very moment when I should’ve felt grown and handled myself like the woman I needed to become, I didn’t. I was a little girl and I said and did nothing. He turned away from the door and left. Now I knew for sure that I’d ran him away.
18
I got this ice box where my heart used to be ...
—OMARION, “ICE BOX”
After Josiah left my house the other day, school wasn’t the easiest place to be but I had to go. I tried not to look at Josiah as Shae and I ate lunch. “You and Melvin going to the Senior’s prom?” I asked Shae.
“Girl, please.” Shae smiled. “He wantin’ get matchin’ suits made.”
“What? Gucci? And you gon’ show up.”
“Girl, please.” Shae frowned. “I ain’t hardly wearing no Gucci suit.”
“Well, your man is country.” I smiled for once.
“Yeah, but I ain’t. I’d rather go to the prom in a boat or Cousin Shake’s hearse.”
“I can’t wait for the Senior’s prom,” Deeyah said as she floated by our lunch table. “Me and Dollah gon’ be beyond fly.”
“Who cares?” Ki-Ki muttered as she and Yaanah walked behind Deeyah.
“I’m tellin’ you.” Yaanah frowned, rolling her eyes in her head. She and Ki-Ki waved as they walked by. I gave ’em half a wave but I still wasn’t feeling them.
“Seven,” Dollah said, sliding next to me at the lunch table. As if on cue, Josiah’s eyes were glued to me.
“What?” I spat at him. “Your jump-off moving too fast for you?”
“Listen. I want you to come to the Senior’s prom with me.”
I looked at him like he was crazy, especially since Deeyah just passed by here and said that she was going with him. “You know what?” It was time to give homeboy the business—this had gone on long enough. “I don’t know what kinda game you and homegirl are playin’ but I’m not no pawn and I don’t appreciate what you think you doing. I don’t want you. And you know that so stop asking me stupid things and stay outta my face! I don’t like you. My heart belongs to someone else and it ain’t you! Now move or I swear I will slide you!”
“Oh, it’s like that, Seven?”
“What”—I blinked my eyes—“you ain’t know.”
“I’ll hollah,” he said.
“Yeah, you do that.” And he got up from the table and left.
As the lunch period ended, Josiah walked past my table and nodded his head as if to say “That’s right.”
“Well, it’s about time!” Shae said as the bell rang for us to report to class. “Now, would you please go get your man?”
19
It’s true love
When you can’t be without me
Like I can’t be without you ...
—FAITH EVANS, “TRU LOVE”
“I don’t believe that you had somebody make you a signature Gucci dress. You know that’s not right,” I said to Shae as she dressed in her Gucci tube top dress.
“Don’t hate.” Shae smiled. “Please don’t.”
She stood in front of me fully dressed. “Now give it to me.”
I looked her up and down. “You fly.”
“Ai’ight, girl. My man waitin’ on me.” She smiled, stepping into her living room where her fathe
r and a few of her aunts were snapping pictures of her and Melvin. I have to admit I was feeling some kinda way about Josiah, and although I’d worked a couple of extra hours and bought a dress, I knew there was no way he’d wanna see me. It’d been over a month since we broke up and I was sure he was over me.
Once Shae and Melvin left, I headed back home. My mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner. “Shae and Melvin look so cute.”
I sat down to the table. “You saw them?”
“Yeah, when they walked out the house I was looking out the window and snapped me a picture. Shae is a part of this family, she’s over here enough.”
“Yeah”—I sighed—“she did look real cute.”
“So”—my mother stirred a pot of rice—“you’re not going, huh?”
“No,” I snapped.
“You’re welcome to take down that tone,” my mother said, now opening a can of corn. “You know, Tina called here.”
“Tina?”
“Josiah’s mother.”
“So what, we break up and you two become friends?”
“Umm maybe, or maybe she’s just worried about her son. She called me to tell me that Josiah is going to the Senior’s prom alone.”
“That’s nice.”
“Uhmm, so you don’t wanna go?”
“Nope. Sure don’t.”
“And why not?”
“Because Ma, all I see is Daddy when I look at Josiah and I just can’t forgive him.”
“Seven”—my mother turned to face me—“just like Dollah didn’t kill Josiah’s brother, Josiah is not your father. Stop dealing with my heartache. I know you are hurt by what your daddy did and I am, too, but you can’t make Josiah pay for something he didn’t do. Everybody deserves another chance.”
“Would you ever give Daddy another chance?”
“If it means you living your life then maybe ... I would.”
“Do you think I know what love is, Ma?”
