Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel for Grown Ups

by Jayne Allen

  I drove like a zombie that only knew the basic rules of the road. My hair was pulled neatly under a baseball cap, but I still had on my dress from the night before, only replacing my heels with Uggs and I dropped a Burberry trench across my shoulders. As crazy as I’m sure I looked, I felt so much worse. I did everything I could to keep the events of that dinner from replaying on loop in my mind; it was my only defense to avoid the self-inflicted emotional torture worse than death by a milliontiny paper cuts.

  When I got to Crestmire, I waved myself past the front desk. I wasn’t sure if visiting hours had started, or even if there were visiting hours. I barely had the energy to mutter “Tabitha Walker” in passing by. Perhaps the aide at the desk recognized me, or perhaps mercifully she recognized the desperation of heartbreak the way that only a woman can see in another person. I was thankful that she didn’t stop me and headed straight for Granny Tab’s unit. The door was unlocked, as was customary for the nighttime. I knocked on the door three times and opened it up, letting my voice announce my presence. I headed my slumped frame into Granny Tab’s bedroom to find her groggily just lifting her head up to focus her half-sleeping eyes on me.

  “What are you doing here this early Two? Is everything ok?” she asked.

  I could barely hold back the tears to answer. I spoke and crossed the floor over to her at the same time. “No, no, it’s not ok. It’s not ok. It’s not ok.” And that is all I could muster. It was all I had in words to describe what had happened to me. It was the only way I could describe what Marc did to a year and a half of my life without my input or consent. What it felt like to be unconsulted in the disposal of a relationship that we both were in. “It’s not ok,” was the only rebuke I had for a man that had treated me like a car that you could trade in for a better one, just like when he swapped his BMW for that Porsche he drives now. “It’s not ok” were my very only words. And it was all I needed. Granny Tab, laying on her side, scooted back from the edge side of the bed toward the middle and opened out her arms, with the top one holding the blanket and sheet she was laying under askew. I dropped my baseball cap on the floor, along with my trench, stepped out of my Uggs, and laid directly next to Granny Tab. My head found its place in the soft part between her neck and bosom as her arms closed around me. And there, for the first time since I can remember, the first time since I was a little girl I laid with her and cried.

  Chapter 10

  The knock on my door, although expected, startled me still because I had allowed myself to get lost in my newfound identity as a recent “dumpee,” following my “911 bring wine” text to Laila about 45 minutes prior. Between us, a “911” text meant get over here faster than the police in a white neighborhood and bring a bottle of wine, because we’re going to need it. It didn’t require any follow up “are you ok?” question because, with a 911 text, you already knew the answer. It also didn’t require a “what happened?” reply because you knew that’s what the wine you were bringing was for. Once, Laila sent me a 911 text that said, “911 bring wine—2 bottles.” That was when we were in senior year in undergrad. Sometime near the bottom of the first bottle, I learned that Laila’s professor had invited her for a threesome with his wife at some LA swinger sex party. We drank the entire second bottle to try to forget what we talked about over the first one. Laila never reported him, or made any kind of fuss about it—it had been the end of the semester and she had received an “A” in his class. We knew it was inappropriate, but what recourse was there when everything turned out all right? It just became another scar on our liver and $4 dent in our bank account. That was $4 because we were drinking “Two Buck Chuck” back then, a wine since replaced by the demands of our much more sophisticated palates, refined over many trips to Napa, Sonoma and Santa Barbara.

  I still hadn’t changed out of my dress from the night before. I left a small lagoon’s worth of tears at Crestmire for the morning until I was finally able to make my way home to rehydrate and continue crying on my sofa. My 911 to Laila was a last-ditch effort to avoid calling-in sick to work the following day. I must have been quite a sight, with my usually immaculately coiffed one-day post hair appointment hair all disheveled, sweated out from not being wrapped the night before, a fluffy pink terry cloth robe swinging open over a very nice, very expensive Leger dress and Uggs, of course I was still wearing the Uggs. Laila took one look into my bleary eyes, with blood vessels streaking across my sclera like red lightning, and engulfed me with a big hug. The wine bottle she was holding in her left hand made a slight thwack against my right shoulder blade.

  “Girl, I got the 911!” Laila said, ushering us both inside and heading straight for my kitchen area. “How bad is it? What happened?” She asked as she opened the wine bottle and pulled two glasses out for us.

  “Marc….He…broke up with me last night.” I poured the words out with a fresh glut of tears, collapsing again on my sofa with my face in my hands. I had already put a box of tissues near my feet from earlier and used one to swipe at my running nose.

  Laila finished filling our glasses and made her way quickly to sit next to me, pulling me into her so that my head could rest on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to say Tab. I’m so sorry,” she said, her hand rubbing the top of my arm for comfort. “Do you want me to go key his car?” she asked me, trying to feign seriousness. “Because, I will—just say the word and I will light that Porsche right up!” I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “That car is too important to him to scratch. It’s probably like a voodoo doll—you scratch the car, and he’d start bleeding,” I said, reaching deep inside myself to try and continue the humor. Although, part of me wasn’t joking. “Laila, he just kept saying that he couldn’t be what I wanted and that he wasn’t even willing to try. And I’m thinking, what the fuck have I been doing for the past year and a half with my life? With my time? Wasting it with his ass?” That was all I could get out before the tears started to fall again, triggered with just the thought of Marc’s coldness—his ability to “cancel” our relationship like it was an unwanted magazine subscription.

  “Fuck him. For real, girl. Fuck him!” Laila said with full animation. “If he doesn’t know what he’s got and how amazing you are, then fuck him. He doesn’t deserve you. You can find so much better.” I wished so hard that I could believe Laila when she said that. But, it just seemed like our go-to consolation every time a relationship didn’t work out. Sitting here, in my 30’s, with the clock speeding down on my fertility, it sure didn’t seem as true as it did a few years ago. The reality was that I couldn’t just say “fuck him” and walk away. I had invested valuable time—relationships pass in dog years when you’re in your 30’s, and you can’t give up valuable real estate in your childbearing window without needing a return of some sort.

  “I guess what hurts the most,” I said. “It’s that he could just let me go, just like that—over nothing. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.”

  “Tabby, I’ll tell you what my dad told me,” Laila said. “He said, ‘a man can only value you as much as he values himself.’ You can’t let this get to you—you’re amazing.” I wanted to hear her. I wanted to be as strong as she thought I was. I wanted to believe her description of me over Marc’s actions. I just couldn’t. I felt so weak and helpless sitting there, weighed down by my own self-pity, with hope floating away from me like a lost red balloon released by a child’s clumsy hand. Even the lowest part of the string was out of my reach. Marc valued his car, and he valued his job, and he certainly valued his degrees; he seemed to value his family and his boys—friends he kept from undergrad and grad school. So, I didn’t buy it that he was incapable of valuing someone. Just, why couldn’t he value, or why didn’t he value me?

  “Or maybe it’s just me, Laila.”

  “It’s not you. It’s him. Fuck him. I’m seriously going to go toilet paper his house. I’m going right now.” Laila made the move to get up from the sofa. I halfway believed
her.

  “He lives in a condo building, Laila.” I chuckled in spite of myself.

  “Well, then, I’m going to go to his building and send a toilet paper roll up by the Concierge. And I’ll tell him, to say, Ms. Joon said ‘this is for you, because you’re a piece of shit!’”

  We both broke into laughter and by that time, the wine had started to soak into my countenance, releasing some of the sadness sitting on my diaphragm, daring against my breath. Suddenly, I could breathe again, and at least the pilot light was back on in my spirit. I pushed the heavy thoughts of Marc, and especially what that meant for my future, as far back in my mind as I could to change the subject.

  “What’s up with your new guy?” I asked.

  “Oh, Laurence?” Laila said, coyly, blushing in a rare way.

  “Oh Laurence?” I mocked her, playfully. She knew better than to pretend. “Girl, yes. The man that you told me about who we’re going to pretend isn’t married for the purposes of this conversation, although we both know that he is.”

  “Well, we know now,” Laila said. “He didn’t have his ring on when we met, girl, remember?” I nodded.

  “Um hum.”

  “He’s fine though. It’s a strange thing to say, but it’s actually going well. It’s almost like he’s not married. You know? He calls me all the time, he’s so supportive, attentive, wants to see me—so, I know the deal, but…” The smile that had been hiding in Laila’s eyes spread to her lips and broke its way out between the glint of her white Invisalined teeth.

  “You like him,” I accused.

  “Yeah,” Laila said softly. “I do.” We both sat for a moment in contemplative silence, understanding the weight of her words and not understanding them all at the same time. “Well, are you going to tell Alexis?” Laila said, shifting her body.

  “Alexis?” I echoed, thinking. “No, I don’t want to tell her now. I’ll just wait until her birthday party. I bet she’ll figure it out when she doesn’t see Marc with me.”

  “You’re not going to tell her? Oh, I know why.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Thing. I know she loves me, but sometimes it does feel like she’s looking for my relationships to fail, so that she can wave that ring in my face.”

  “Girl, in all of our faces! Lexi’s my girl, but she puts way too much on the fact that she’s married.”

  “She’s been like that since high school. When I went to the magnet school and she went to the regular high school with all the neighborhood kids. It was like that became her thing, you know? Being in a relationship. She always had a man and I didn’t and I guess that became her own version of a superpower. Unfortunately, it was pretty much Rob the whole time, even when he was doggin’ her ass out.”

  “I didn’t know him back then—he seems pretty mellow and Lexi is always saying how great he is and how happy he is to be working steady now. I understand, though, he’s got a lot of ain’t shit-ness to make up for,” Laila said.

  “You said it. I’ve known them too long. That’s part of it. You know they’re going to make that birthday party torture. We had to RSVP our plus-ones by name.”

  “Girl, at least you got a plus one,” Laila said, snorting with light disgust. “She didn’t even extend one to me.”

  “Well now, I wish that was my situation,” I said, exhaling heavily.

  “That party is a full week away!” Laila said. “You’ll have forgotten all about Marc by then and found somebody new on Tinder.”

  “What do I look like being on the news and being on Tinder? Girl, bye. I’m going to go and I’m going to get there and do what I do best…drink.” On that note, we clinked our wine glasses and left the rest of the unanswered questions to rest at the bottom of an empty bottle. The untouched card for Dr. Young sat on my table as a reminder that while Marc has considered his options, I needed to focus on my own—before they went away.

  Chapter 11

  I was already two drinks in heading west on the 10 Freeway to make it to Alexis’ birthday party. An Internet search confirmed my suspicion that two drinks before driving was just about the legal limit. After making it through the first full week following my breakup with Marc, I wasn’t trying to risk another cop car pullover. From the very first minutes of Monday morning, my only goal this past week had been to get to Friday. Not my only goal, actually, my other goal was to make an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist who could help me freeze my eggs and liberate tens of thousands of dollars from my bank account. I got one of those goals done; it was Friday, I had made it here and nobody had died yet. I knew I needed to stop dragging my feet on the egg freezing, stop hoping for minor miracles, and just make the appointment. Why couldn’t I just call and make an appointment?

  Lexi’s birthday dinner party was being thrown by Rob. It wasn’t one of the 5’s - 35, or “Oh Lordy, 40”—so I figured that’s why they were so stingy with the guest list. Plus, the dinner was being held at Fig & Olive, a gorgeous Mediterranean type of place in the section of chic restaurants and boutiques on La Cienega, in the part of West Hollywood that borders Beverly Hills. The white plastered exterior, resembling a modern villa with generous patios, gave a sexy contrast with the black iron window framing and the terracotta-tiled floor in the interior. Fresh flowers, the dimmed lighting in subtle chandeliers and low-sitting table candles did the rest to bring romantic Casablanca to the end of just a short drive across the city. Marc and I had come on one of our first dates here, I remembered with a pang. We hadn’t slept together yet then, and I thought he was using this restaurant to close the deal that he couldn’t. I still made him wait, although, just until the very next date—I didn’t want him to think he had won. I was grateful for that now, as I stepped out of my car at valet; at least tonight I wouldn’t have to manage through the memory of a milestone moment sitting next to an empty chair. I already missed him enough as it was, and although I hated to admit it, I started using his old t-shirt as a pillow cover just to smell him before sleeping.

  Sliding out of my car at the restaurant, I knew I looked good, and on this night my iridescent sequin t-shirt dress ended on my thigh just shy of where modesty would have required. My legs felt strong and shapely underneath me and the stilettos I was walking on pushed my calves into perfect lines, allowing me to stride gazelle-like and very confidently into the restaurant. Behind me flowed an invisible cloud of white flowers and the faintest sandalwood. I needed a pick me up after Marc’s disposal. I might not be seeing him tonight, but I looked and smelled as if I were, and as if my intention was to be certain that he realized his mistake.

  “Tabby!” Alexis was the first of the birthday group to see me as I walked through the door into the private rear patio area where her dinner would be held. Rob certainly had gone all out—flowers decorated nearly every open surface and elegant ivory and gold balloons were stationed in the corners. It almost looked like a small wedding reception. “Oh my God, you look amazing!” Alexis said, embracing me with outstretched arms. She pulled back and looked to each of my sides and behind me. “Where’s Marc?” I smiled, thinking to myself, well that only took her 90 seconds to ask.

  “Marc’s not coming, Lexi,” I told her calmly, trying to decide on which one of the explanations that I had just spent an hour in the bathroom mirror rehearsing I would use next. “He…he and I…” I had to pause, having trouble deciding whether or not I was going to just say it. “We…broke up,” I said, and watched her face fall—the exact reaction I had attempted to avoid. “But, I’m fine! Totally fine!” I added quickly. “It’s for the best, pretty mutual, you know?” I said, trying to make the nodding of my head in sync with my words make them truer.

  “Well, girl, you look fine! You look damn fine!” Lexi said looking me up and down like a dude would. “I’m so sorry though, I know how much he means to you…I mean, meant.” She hugged me. “Maybe it’s just temporary. And in the meantime, there might be some cute friends of
Rob that show up by themselves—you never know! I think I have someone to introduce you to—a doctor,” she said smiling as someone I didn’t recognize started to pull her away.

  “Go! Go! Say hi to your guests!” I said, probably overdoing the cheer factor and waving her on. “I’m going to find Laila and we’ll talk later!” I tried to seal it with the biggest smile that I could manufacture, like the glint from my teeth would hypnotize her into forgetting that I had just told her that I broke up with my boyfriend of the past year and a half.

  Lexi freed her arm from her captor, dropping her head to the side a bit with pursed lips looking at me, “Girl, you know that Laila’s not here yet.” Of course, I thought. “I saved you two seats together on that end.” Lexi pointed me in the direction of the left side of the room. “Rob and I will sit in the middle, and you and now, Laila, will be just across. And as soon as Todd gets here, I am making an introduction!” Alexis said with a wink.”

  “Todd?”

  “Girl, Rob’s friend, the doctor!” The thought of someone new made my palms start to sweat.

  “Lexi, I’m not sure I’m ready…it just hap..” Lexi cut me off.

  “Tab, don’t be silly, you look great, and he’s quality—I promise. Just be open—for me? It is my birthday…” Lexi said, batting her fake eyelashes in my direction. I did look the part, and there was no sense in wasting a sexy dress and heels. Lexi had a point.

  “Ok.”

  “You’ll meet him…with an open mind?” Lexi asked, raising her eyebrow.

  “I’ll meet him—with a mind as open as I can make it.”