It's Only Love

by Roy Glenn

  “I tried once, and he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “You shouldn’t give up, though.”

  I was serious. For me, now more than any other time in my life, being who you really are on the inside-and-out really matters to me. No one should have to fake it.

  “I’m not,” I said, and we continued to walk and talk.

  “That’s my Uncle B. He’s married to Aunt Anita, and they have twin daughters, Desana and Dior.” Victor looked around. “I don’t see them, but those two are a trip. They were the babies in the family for years, until Uncle Willie got married to Tina and now they have five kids.”

  “Grill master, right?”

  “Right. Come on, I’ll introduce you to her.”

  Victor led me back around to the area where I had first met the two older ladies. But by this time, they had been joined by two other ladies. One of whom looked to be about my age or a little older; she was nursing a baby.

  “I see you found him,” curly wig said as we approached.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’ve met already?”

  “Kind of. They were nice enough to tell me where to find you.”

  “But we haven’t been properly introduced,” eyebrows said.

  “Well then, Natasha, this is my great aunt, Sophie, and my great aunt, Claire.”

  “Nice to meet you, Natasha,” Aunt Sophie said to the sound of somebody clearing their throat. Victor turned quickly.

  “Aunt Anita, this is my friend, Natasha.”

  “Nice to meet you, Natasha,” Aunt Anita said. “You must be somebody special. He usually doesn’t bring anybody to these things,” she said, and took a swallow of her beer.

  “That’s because you ran off the last one, Anita,” Aunt Claire said.

  Aunt Anita took a big swallow and pointed at Aunt Claire. “I ain’t say nothing to that girl. Y’all better stop telling that lie on me,” she said, and everybody laughed. Victor turned to the woman with the baby, who by that time had finished feeding; he held out his arms and she handed him the baby.

  “Natasha, this handsome young man is my cousin, Robert. Say hello.”

  He was adorable. “Hi, Robert,” I said, and he started to squirm and whine in Victor’s arms. It pulled at my heart to see him holding a baby and I didn’t want to explore the reason why it did.

  “And that is his mother, my Aunt Tina.”

  “Nice to meet you, Natasha.” She stood up and took the baby from Victor and walked away with us. “And it’s Tina. And I told you to stop calling me that.” she turned to me. “I’m only a few years older than him, Natasha, and it makes me feel old every time he says it.”

  “I understand,” I said, and we all walked toward the playground. Some children were swinging and going down the slide.

  “Those are my two oldest daughters, Katrina and Suzette,” Tina said, and I almost took off running when I saw them turning double-dutch, but I didn’t want to leave Victor’s side. I hoped they’d still be playing later, though.

  “You look like you want to go over there.” My head shot over to him.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  He stopped. “Do you want to go and jump?

  “You wouldn’t mind?” I asked excitedly.

  “Not at all. If I can get a chance to see those pretty legs move, I’m all in,” Victor said, and Tina just shook her head.

  My face got warm, but I wasn’t embarrassed enough to not rush over there. Once I got in and started jumping, I very quickly found out that Katrina and Suzette were professionals. They were turning almost too fast for me.

  Almost.

  I kept up and had a ball, before asking for time out, because sweating on a date was not a good look. And yes, even though Victor didn’t come to my apartment to pick me up, I was calling this a date. Before we left them, Shayla told me that I was the bomb for an older lady.

  “It doesn’t get any better than that,” Victor said, and we walked off in the direction of the beach.

  Chapter Eight

  Victor

  After leaving the playground, Natasha and I walked around and I introduced her to some more of the family; and eventually, we both got tired of saying, “No really, we’re just friends.” So we both agreed that we should save the introductions until the food was ready.

  “This way, I introduce you one time,” I said as we walked toward the beach.

  “I say we’re just friends and then we can eat,” Natasha said, but I knew my family and I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

  When I invited Natasha, I really didn’t think she was going to come. I thought her saying maybe, was just her way of being nice. I had no intention of introducing her to the “funky bunch,” as me and Stevie used to call them. But unless she decides to leave, she gets to meet the rest of the fam. Other than my Aunt Anita, we hadn’t seen any of my “you should find a nice woman to marry” women in the family, nor had I seen any of the “why ain’t you banging her?” men. That would come soon enough.

  I looked at Natasha as we walked, and asked myself once again, why wasn’t I banging her?

  The food was ready and just about everybody was eating when we walked up. Okay, so, picture this, Natasha and I come walking up. The first one to see us is my cousin, James. He frantically starts tapping his sister, Sydney. I watch as Sydney’s mouth dropped open. Her father, my Uncle Eddie sees Sydney’s mouth wide open and turns around and he looks at Natasha.

  “Damn! Would you look at her,” Uncle Eddie said and my Aunt Patrice hit him upside the head and it was on from there.

  “See, I told y’all Victor was here,” Aunt Claire said. “Got me thinking I’m seeing things.”

  “Who’s the young lady, Victor?” Maggie shouted over the rumble of conversation.

  After we went through our now, well-rehearsed we’re-just-friends routine, we were permitted to get some food. Once we got our plates, Natasha collected her bone from Uncle Willie, and that immediately became a point of contention. You see, every year Uncle Willie man’s the grill, and every year, fam goes up to him and ask him to save a particular piece of meat . . . and every year he says no!

  “You get what piece you get. Bad enough I got to stand over this hot-ass grill, now y’all want me to cook your meat to order,” he’d complain. But when the word got around that he let Natasha pick out her own piece, he had to answer some questions.

  “I was just trying to make a good impression after Anita ran off the last one,” was Uncle Willie’s only defense.

  “Y’all need to stop telling that bold-faced lie. I didn’t say anything to that girl,” Aunt Anita said.

  That’s when I noticed that the fruit salad that Rhonda made wasn’t there. I looked around and I notice that Paul and Vanessa weren’t there, either.

  “Paul and Vanessa didn’t make it?” I asked when we sat down to eat.

  “You know those are newlyweds,” Aunt Michelle said. “My son and his lovely new bride probably stayed home to do what newlyweds do.”

  “If I was a newlywed, I wouldn’t be here with you people, either,” Aunt Anita said and looked at Uncle B. “I’d be home fucking, too.” Then she winked at him.

  “Keep talking, Anita,” Aunt Michelle said. “B got that look like he about to take you home.”

  “How you know that ain’t what I want?” she asked, and everybody laughed. By the way, once people finished eating and began breaking up, it wasn’t too much longer after that, when Uncle B and Aunt Anita quickly disappeared.

  After a while Natasha and I disappeared, too, and walked off in the direction of the beach. And that was when Natasha finally got around to asking the question I’d been waiting for her to ask since we started our dance.

  “Why aren’t you seeing anybody, Victor?” she asked.

  “I was.” I replied.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Chantel. But you already knew all that.” I smiled at her.

  “What do you mean?” Natas
ha returned my smile with her patented “I’m too innocent to know what you’re talking about” look.

  “I’m sure Vanessa gave you the lowdown.”

  “Huh?”

  “My granddaddy used to tell me, ‘if you could huh, you can hear.’” I began to gesture with my hands. “Vanessa—the two of you talked about me over lunch.”

  Her “I’m too innocent” look turned to bewilderment.

  “Vanessa broke her lunch date with Paul to have lunch with you. So he called me.”

  “Guess I’m busted, huh?”

  “I asked them about you, why shouldn’t you ask them about me? I might have been Jack the Ripper or the Boston Strangler.”

  “But you’re not. Are you, Victor?”

  “No. I’m not,” I said, and she smiled at me.

  “No, you’re not. You’re a very nice man and a very . . .” Natasha paused, “. . . good friend.”

  The friend zone.

  “And you have a very nice family.”

  “That bunch?”

  “Yes. They remind me of my family.”

  “They do?” I asked in surprise. I pictured Natasha’s family as being nothing like mine.

  Professor and Doctor Edwards’s family, I shook my head. Nothing like the funky bunch.

  “What? You think you’re the only one with trash-talking aunts and touchy-feely uncles?”

  “And I am really sorry about that, too.”

  “No need.” Natasha laughed. Her laugh was so intoxicating to me. “And believe me; I got some aunts and uncles that could probably drink your Aunt Anita under the table. I remember plenty of family gatherings where the half-gallon bottle of Wray and Nephew would be on the table while they played dominos, and they’d get drunk as Cooter Brown.”

  I laughed. “I guess families are the same all over.”

  “They are. But now I’m curious about something.”

  “About what?”

  “How come you never talk about your mother and father?”

  I took a deep breath and looked at Natasha. I knew sooner or later, if this thing went any further, that we’d have to talk about it. A little breeze was blowing off the ocean, and Natasha looked beautiful against the backdrop of the setting sun.

  Perfect time to bare my soul to—my friend.

  “My mother’s name is Susan. You met her two brothers, my uncles Don and Willie, and her two sisters, my aunts Anita and Patrice. She was the youngest. I never knew my father. His name was Jesse Matthews. They met in high school and fell, what my grandfather called, stupid in love.”

  “I see.” I looked at the look on her face and wondered how much of this I wanted to share with her.

  “So here’s how the story goes. My mother turned seventeen in June, my sister, Rhonda, was born in July. The following June, both of them graduated from high school, and they got married two weeks later in July. They had been married for three years when my brother, Stevie, was born. It was a year and a half later when my mother told my father that she was pregnant with me.”

  I glanced at Natasha. She seemed content to listen to my story without comment, and that made me wonder what she was thinking.

  “Before I was born, he joined the army so he could support his family. He said that he was going to send for us as soon as he got finished with basic training.” I paused for effect. “She never saw or heard from him again.”

  Natasha’s facial expression changed from compassionate listener to one of sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said in a way that made me feel that she felt my pain. “I can’t imagine what that must feel like.”

  It made me feel more comfortable about continuing. “With three kids, no husband, no job, and nowhere else to go, my mother moved back in with her parents.”

  “Your grandparents.”

  “Yes.” I walked with my back a little straighter. “My grandfather was a great man, and my grandmother was a wonderful woman, who showed me so much love.”

  “I can tell that they were wonderful people by the way your eyes light up when you talk about them. After everything that you guys had been through, I am glad that they were there for you.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But not all my childhood memories are happy ones.”

  “I think all of us can say the same thing. But I imagine yours was a difficult childhood until your grandparents took over.”

  I had reached the point of no return. I could end the story right here and change the subject to her family. But for some reason, I wanted to tell her everything.

  “I remember my mother telling me that it was my fault that my father left her. She said they were doing just fine until I came along.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say to a child,” Natasha said with a look of disbelief on her face.

  “She did, and it used to make me cry every time.” I laughed. “You wanna hear something funny?”

  “Yeah, I’d love to hear . . .” Natasha said, and it seemed like she was hanging on every word I said. I looked at Natasha, gazed into her eyes, and I felt like what I was saying was important to her.

  “I was such a cry baby when I was little that Stevie used to call me Vickie.” Natasha laughed, and she laughed hard. “And if you tell anybody, you and I are going to have words.”

  Natasha straightened up. “Right . . . got you . . . your secret’s safe with me or its pistols at dawn.” She said, and then she burst into laughter again.

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m sorry, Victor. I just can’t see you being a cry baby, and your brother calling you Vickie.” Natasha shook her head. “That’s my sister’s name.”

  “Believe me, it didn’t last long.”

  “What got you out of it?”

  “My grandfather. It didn’t matter where in the house he was or what he was doing, as soon as he heard me cry, he was coming to shut it down.”

  “What would he do?”

  “He’d come in the room. I’d be crying, Rhonda would be holding me, and Stevie would be laughing. He was a big man, so when he’d appear in the doorway he’d fill up the frame. He’d say, ‘Let him go, Rhonda.’ Then he’d tell Stevie to stop laughing at me and get out of there. Then he’d say, ‘Come here to me, boy. You stop that damn crying, boy, right now, you hear me?’”

  “Did you?”

  “Not right away. Then he’d put his big fist in my face and ask me if I wanted him to give me something to cry about.” I laughed. “I’d try my best to dry my eyes and straighten-up my face, because although he never hit me, I was scared to death of him.”

  I smiled at Natasha and she smiled back.

  “My father never hit me, either.” Natasha paused. “That was my mother’s job and she turned it into an art form.”

  “So did my mother. She was like this mad-crazy ninja assassin.”

  The two of us shared a laugh, Natasha took a step closer to me and I fought the overwhelming urge to hold her hand.

  “Anyway, he’d tell me stuff like be a man, and that big boys don’t cry, and I was his big boy. And after a while, I wasn’t a cry baby anymore, because I knew what was expected of me.”

  “You learned to cut yourself off from your emotions,” Natasha said; then she dropped and shook her head as if she finally understood something.

  We walked in silence for a while, as I decided whether I wanted to tell her anymore of my story. I imagine Natasha was politely waiting to see if I’d continue. And then she broke the silence.

  “So, you’re not a cry baby anymore, what happened with your mother?”

  “So now my mother was twenty-three when I was born. She was young, pretty, and suddenly single. With her parents as built-in babysitters, my mother started going out, having a good time, and eventually she met a man. She used to bring him around sometimes at first, but he didn’t like us. Especially Rhonda; said she had too much mouth. He was right about that. Rhonda still got plenty of mouth, but who’d she get that from? She got it from our mother.”

  “The apple very
rarely falls far from the tree,” Natasha said, smiling at me.

  “Anyway, he wanted to marry her and he had a job in DC, and they were going to move there. She told me, Stevie and Rhonda that once they got settled, she was gonna come back for us.”

  “Did she really?”

  “Yeah, same line my father ran on her. Rhonda never believed that she was coming back for us and after a while, Stevie gave up believing and they both stopped getting on the phone when she called. But not me; I believed her lies every time she’d call. It was always gonna be the next month or two. Jimmy just started a new job and once we got settled . . . it would always be. But it never happened.” I looked at Natasha, and then I told her something that I never told anybody, not even Rhonda. “For the longest time, I always felt like I was the reason she left us, too.”

  “I know that must have been hard on all of you.”

  “It was. It was hard on the whole family. Leaving her kids like that broke my grandmother’s heart. She was never the same after that, and then she had a stroke. My grandfather worked from well before the sun came up, until nine, ten o’clock most nights after that, to take care of us and his sick wife. He’d work, and since my grandmother couldn’t, Rhonda took care of us. A lot of people in the family quietly say that my mother doing what she did is what caused my grandmother to have a stroke, and that sent my grandfather to an early grave.”

  “I know that you’re probably tired of hearing me say I’m sorry. But I am. Sorry you had to deal with that so young. But the man standing in front of me overcame all of that. And I’m thankful.”

  She may not have understood my life the way I lived it, but I was happy that she listened without judgment. That was when I saw somebody that I definitely wasn’t expecting to see, and her being there raised red flags.

  Bria Abbott. What’s she doing here?

  I made a mental note to tell Paul and turned my attention back to Natasha. She had been talking the whole time and I didn’t hear a word of it, but whatever she was saying ended with, “I can’t even imagine.”

  I laughed to myself. “I guess you can’t. I’m sure your childhood was nothing like mine.”