CHAPTER 29
1987
HOWARD UNIVERSITY HOMECOMING
Run DMC, LL Cool J and The Beastie Boys performed that week. Drinking and partying was the theme that surrounded Howard University's annual homecoming celebration. They performed at the university's free outdoor Yard fest concerts. All the different sororities took a turn on the catwalk during the annual fashion show making it a blast. Other hip-hop celebrities and singers were there, as lines and lines of students, local college students, even people from in and out of town showed up by the droves, just to party that weekend. Add up all those factors and you have one of the key social events on Washington's calendar —a cross between the NBA All-Star Game, Bike Week and Mardi Gras.
Tailgating before a football game, alumni reunions and parent-student get togethers are the highlights of most colleges' homecoming festivities, but Howard's is on another level. There were other items on the week's agenda, such as lectures, faculty sessions and alumni brunch and networking events. But for good or bad, the celebrities and the parties—almost all of which took place at nightclubs off campus and were not sponsored by the university, were the focal point.
Two such locals were there, as opposite as they come. One local, was an eighteen year old, black female who lived her whole life in the inner city of Baltimore, in the mist of the biggest drug epidemic in the 80’s. The other was a young, energetic white male, from a wealthy and powerful family, who attended a prestigious local college for medicine.
A black fraternity entertained the crowd; stomping, clapping and chanting as they stepped. It was during the performance that their eyes met for the first time.
“Hey, Banks…Banks,” whispered one of David’s friend and fellow college students that came with him from their university. “That girl over there in the yellow has been eyeballing you ever since we got here, man.”
David, who everyone called ‘Banks’, shifted his eyes towards the girl in question as he continued to bob his head to the rhythmic beat of the step show. Speaking in a low voice, he informed his black nerd-like friend.
“Be cool man. I know she’s looking. I’m just waiting for the right moment to approach her.”
“Man, you better do it quick before somebody beat you to her. She is hot.” His eager friend warned.
David wasn’t biding his time. He was scared to death and building up the courage to talk to her. Besides the fact that she was the prettiest girl he ever laid his eyes on, she was black and he was white, and didn’t know what to expect from her or the vast majority of black dudes that might get upset. Every thirty seconds or so, he would peer over and steal a glance, and every time, she stared back and smiled. Finally, after an intermission in the show, he made up his mind and took a chance and walked right up to her to introduce himself to her.
“Hi, I was standing over there and I been noticing you looking over my way, and just wanted to come over and introduce myself.” David said timidly. The girl looked at him and frowned and shifted her weight to her other leg.
“I wasn’t looking at you… I was looking at the guy behind you.”
“Oh, I apologize.” He murmured. He turned around and was ready to literally run away from embarrassment, but he heard the girl chuckle and called him back. “I’m just playing with you. Come back here.” The shy David turned back around and looked into her bright, smiling face and was able to breathe again in relief. He flashed her a smile and said.
“Oh, I see you got jokes. But I won’t lie… you had me ready to pick up my face from the ground.” They both laughed.
“So what’s your name?”
“My name is Remy.” David displayed a surprised looked and joked.
“Like the cognac?” Remy heard the same thing most of her life and replied.
“Exactly like the cognac.” she smiled and asked him
“So, what’s your name?”
“My name is David.” He said as he flashed a nearly perfect set of white teeth and stuck out his hand to her to formally introduce himself. Remy smiled and took his hand into hers, while staring in his bright blue eyes.
They began to hit it off well, and for the rest of the show, they stood closely by chatting and getting to know each other, barely even watching the show. When it started to get dark, and the performances were nearing a close, Remy looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late. She wanted to get home late because of the long and grueling bus and train ride back to Baltimore from DC.
“Listen, I have to get ready and head back home.”
“Where do you live, because I’m driving and I can take you wherever you need to go?” David welcomed. Remy thought fast. The last thing she wanted was to let him find out that she lived in West Baltimore and lied.
“No, it’s okay, I live too far anyway. I live in Baltimore County.” She lied. Excitedly, he looked over by his friend and said, “That’s no problem… me and my buddy here goes to school in Baltimore. We stay in the dorms.” It was nothing more she wanted than to get a lift. It would save her nearly three hours of travel time even if he dropped her off at the train or bus stop in the county, but she decided against it.
“No, it’s quite okay, maybe next time.” She said, giving him a warm smile. David put his head down and submitted.
“I’m sorry, you don’t know me from Adam and I’m already asking you to get in my car to take you home. Stupid me.”
Remy ensured him.
“No, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that I had to stop off at my cousin’s house here in DC anyway and they will give me a ride all the way from there. I might end up staying overnight like I always do.” He chucked her a small smile, and eyed the ground as they walked.
Remy felt bad, so since she had to take a bus to the train from DC anyway, she’d just let him drop her off there shaving off an hour time, then offered.
“You can take me by where she lives if you want?”
His bright smile came alive once again and said, “Cool. My car is only two blocks away.”
They talked all the way to his car, and sat next to him in the passenger seat and talked some more while David’s friend admired them from the backseat. Remy was real impressed with his intelligent conversation and how he used big words with breeze during idle conversation. Words she couldn’t even pronounce. But when she arrived to her destination, which was only a block away from the train station. He pulled to the curb and said, “Wait one second.” She watched him open the car door, run around the front of his car, and opened the door like a gentleman and extended his hand to help her out.
It was safe to say, that she was stuck on him from that moment on. She never met a person like him and most of all, she never even dated, and much less fell for someone outside her race.
From that day on, they grew closer and closer, seeing each other nearly every weekend, dinner, movies and holding hands while walking in the park. Until ultimately, two weeks after meeting, they made love for the very first time in his dorm room and falling for each other even deeper.
One day in the afternoon, the phone rang. Remy hoped like hell that it wasn’t her job calling to see if she could come into McDonald’s today to work. They always did that on her weekend day off. Pissed off by the mere thought, she rolled her eyes, sucking her teeth as she picked the pressing comb up from the stove. Fanning the hot comb back and forth to cool it off, she had no intent on going in, because she had to look her best when she met up with David later that day.
Rachel, Remy’s thirteen year-old younger sister, looked up from the black leather chair pulled from the dining room table. Their momma would have a fit if she came from the back room and saw her chair in the kitchen, caring none that it was the one with the rip in the seat cushion.
“Want me to answer the phone?”
“No,” Remy said, her face in a frown. “Now turn around before I burn you.”
Two…..three more times the phone rang.
“I think we should answer it. Ma gon’
be pissed if it wake her up.”
“Ma got her ringer off. Now hold your head down, I got to get my hair done too and you wasting my time, so sit still.” she said, mushing her sister in the head. Seconds later, the ringing stopped and the tension from Remy’s shoulder’s thawed. Once she finished pressing her sister’s hair, the way she did every Sunday. She planned to put on the baddest and sexiest outfit she had in her closet. Last night when she called him at his dorm room, he asked to take her out to eat. It would be their first date. Just the thought made her smile. There was something about him that she liked, even for a white dude.
“Remy!” Frightened by her mother’s voice, Remy jump. “Ouch,” her sister cried, clutching the back of her neck as she leaped from the chair.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. Ma scared me!”
“Why the hell y’all let the phone ring off the hook and you know I’m trying to sleep? And why is my got damn dining room chair in the kitchen? I told y’all lil’ asses to use the stool.” In no mood for her mom’s rant, Remy said, “Rachel, put the chair back and get the stool and the Vaseline.”
“You been applying for more jobs?” Her mother asked in a voice barely above a whisper. Brows furrowed, Remy said, “no, why?”
“ ‘Cause.” She reached in the pocket of her robe and pulled out the cordless. “Some white man name from your job is on the phone for you.” Vexed, Remy stood staring at and angry with her mother for answering it. She warned her mother before she laid down not to answer the phone because it may be her boss, and she had a date that night.
“Go ahead, take it. You need all the work so you can help out with some of these bills around here. So here, take it!” Her mother said, shoving the phone in her chest. Remy took the phone. And with the sickest voice she could muster, she said, “hello.”
“Remy?” His voice was harsh, but professional. “I need you to come and cover a shift for me today. What time you can get here?” Remy coughed.
“Mr. Dodson, I’m feeling sick and can’t make it in tonight.”
“I don’t have time for any of your excuses Remy. Get your butt up and get down here in an hour missy, or don’t bother coming in on Monday.” Remy looked at the phone and frowned and did what she should have done long ago and spat.
“You know what Mr. Dodson, what you need to do is learn how to speak to your employees. You can keep your stinking job because I quit. I’m going back to school anyway!” She clicked off the phone and smiled.
“Ooh, mama…….” Her little sister yelled over her shoulder. “Remy just quit her job at McDonalds!” It didn’t matter that her mother knew and continued to smile. She wanted something bigger out of life and McDonald’s was not in her future. David Banks was definitely rubbing off on her, she thought.
* * *
After a nice dinner at a local college dive, Remy and David decided to walk and talk, getting to know each other. The after rain breeze made it a bit chilly, but being the gentleman that he was, he offered her his jacket, setting the stage of the proverbial boy meets girl to the tenth power. Walking slowly, with all the signs of first date awkwardness, Remy began to wonder what’s been on his mind since the day they met last weekend.
“Can I ask you a question David?” Remy asked softly.
“Sure, you can ask me anything you want.” It took her several seconds to gather her thoughts to word it just right without sounding overly stupid.
“Have you ever dated a black girl before?” she finally said as she eyed the ground.
“No. I never have.” He answered honestly. She looked in his face and asked.
“Why me?” she questioned. “What makes me so special?” David stared straight ahead, and continued lumbering forward, then shrugged his shoulders and answered.
“I honestly don’t know. But I do know it’s a combination of things.”
“Things like what? Give me some examples.” David turned and stared into her smiling face.
“Well, one of them is that smile you’re wearing right now. It’s like you can light up the world with it.” Remy blushed.
“You smooth, I have to give you that, but I guess what I’m really trying to say is do you see me as your chance to taste the nectar of some forbidden fruits just to brag to your friend and say you had a black girl?”
David paused in place, and gazed into Remy’s eyes with disappointment and seriousness.
“Listen Remy, I could understand why you are apprehensive and would ask me such a question. You have every right to because that’s what most of my friends talk about. But I have to tell you. I don’t have it in me to treat women like that and play on their emotions and feelings. It is a vicious and disheartening feeling to be wounded in that manner, to prey on a person’s heart, especially women. That day I met you, I spotted you immediately, way before you saw me. I actually followed you because I was floored and smitten by your beauty. It was like gravity was pulling me towards you. Then the moment came when you spotted me staring at you. When our eyes met, I was instantly paralyzed. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. But you kept looking at me with that smile of yours. That’s when it really hit me. Could a girl that beautiful talk to a nerd like me?” Remy tapped him on his shoulder.
“You are no nerd. I find you to be cooler than most of the guys I know.” David snapped his head towards her and asked.
“Are you serious? You really think of me as cool?”
“Not only cool. You are cute, smart and you have great manners. What? Nobody ever told you that before?” Remy watched David shake his head like a little boy who was forced to eat his spinach.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Remy.” He said coyly, as he eyed the ground. “I don’t have much experience with the female gender and I really don’t know why I’m telling you this, but….” David let out a breath, as he looked up towards the stars in the sky. “I’ve only been with one other girl, and she wasn’t, you know, like a girl. She was one of my nannies, and it was a disaster. Even back then because I was extremely shy and a little premature if you know what I mean.” Remy chuckled on the inside only, but she got his point.
“I don’t believe I said that.” David said wary. But Remy assured him.
“No, you can tell me anything. I love when a boy is honest with me, I think it’s sexy.” She smiled.
“If that’s the case, I can tell you much more embarrassing things.” He joked. Remy laughed also. As they walked slowly, Remy tripped suddenly on a crack in the sidewalk and he quickly reacted and took her by the hand and held on to it. Before long, they were walking hand in hand, and didn’t let go.
As they walked hand in hand, that’s when Remy first noticed the burning eyes of the passerby’s that bored through her.
“Does it worry you or does it feel funny to you that people are staring at us?” David didn’t bat an eye and said.
“Doesn’t matter to me any, you can’t stop love and love never fails. You don’t pick it, it picks you.” Remy was stunned that he said that so easily. Then listened to him recite a poem.
“Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me, for I am much ashamed of my exchange. But love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit; for if they could, Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy.”
“That was beautiful. What was that?”
“It’s Shakespeare. An ode to blind love.” He said flatly. Remy was in awe of his beautiful mind. It simply drew her closer to him as she took her arm into his. The odds were against her, she thought, but she couldn’t help but fantasize, could it really be?
****
Over the course of two months and a half, Remy was swooned and in genuine love with David Banks. He mesmerized her with the way he talked, his vast and wide array of knowledge of people, subjects and global events. She could sit and listen hours on end, and absorb things she never knew. He even motivated her to seek out and start looking for different colleges to attend a
nd build her future. She started dressing differently, no longer wearing tight fitting every day urban wear and began wearing similar clothing that the diverse white girls she saw on his campus— loose fitting jeans, comfortable tee’s and blouse.
Remy bought into his philosophy that, “You are the sum total of who you think you are.” And, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” She started spending hours on end at libraries, studying and reading different books to build her knowledge and vocabulary. She started carrying a small dictionary in her bag, so when they were together, she would make mental notes of words he would use during conversations that she didn’t know. She would then excuse herself and go to the bathroom to look it up, and use it in conversations also.
Remy thought David was the smartest person on earth. She spent hours, then days with him inside his dorm room as he studied. The thought that she was dating a man who was studying to become a doctor was surreal to her; often times very uncomfortable and daunting because she felt unworthy in his presence, beneath him, and out of place. She was bedazzled by all the text books he had to study: biology, chemistry, humanities, social and behavioral science, physics, mathematics and the list went on and on. She was intimidated. On top of that, she felt the burning eyes that were placed on them when they were out in public, being the odd looking interracial couple holding hands. Even that took a lot of getting used to. But David was above it all, nor did he care and proved it to her over and over, never once making her feel insecure or out of place.
The Circle: Rain's Story Page 13
