Down On My Knees Page 6

  “Whew, it’s nothing and everything,” she answered, staringinto the semidarkness.

  “Oh, I see, it’s a riddle.”

  “No Greg, it’s a shame. It’s a shame that we’ve been hooking up for years on and off between other lovers who’ve passed through our lives. I think we continue to hold part-timespaces for each other only because of a comfort level we share.”

  Taking the time to consider Grace’s heartfelt interpretationof their long-term commitment-free arrangement, Greg scratched at the stubble on his chin and then said the first thing that came to mind. “Are you pregnant?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Okay, cool. So we can get back to butt-naked business, then?”

  “Negro, you must be insane!” Insulted, Grace punched him in the chest.

  “Ouch, that hurt!”

  “So does what I’ve allowed to happen for far too long. I’m in my prime, and wasting my best years getting down with you, no strings attached.”

  “It’s been good, though,” Greg argued. “You have to admit that.”

  “Yeah, I guess, but it hasn’t been fulfilling.” Grace sat up on her elbows and looked Greg in the eye so that she could detect whether his next statement would be a lie. “Greg, I want you to be honest, even if you think it’ll hurt my feelings.”When it appeared that Greg was trying to decide whether to lie or not, Grace popped him again.

  “Hey! If you don’t stop hitting me, I’ma call the po-po. I’m not above calling the law.” He rubbed the sore spot vigorously.“Okay, the truth.”

  “What do you think about getting married?”

  “Who, with you?” he squealed, panic making his eyes as big as saucers.

  “Not necessarily with me, stupid, but now that you’re gettingall indignant about it, why not me? Tell me why, after all this time, you’ve not once asked me to get involved in a more substantial relationship than just getting together like this.”

  “Well, there was that one time I tried to introduce you to this white girl at my office, but nooo, you weren’t into a mé-nageà trois.” After joking his way through a tense situation, Greg offered the most sincere answer he could. “Grace, I’ll say this, but I don’t need you hitting me. Us beige brothas bruise easy.” When she smirked at Greg, he almost laughed. “Okay, then. You must know that I care about you and I think you’re a great catch, just not the right one for me.”

  “Oh, you’ll need to elaborate, because I don’t understand how such a great catch can’t be right for you.”

  “Look. I’ll explain it the best way I know how. You have a nice body, a pretty face, and you even do that thing with your tongue, but you can also be moody at times. Besides, I can’t deal with a woman who already has everything she needs. In case you’ve missed it, a man likes to feel needed even if he isn’t. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.”

  “Me, moody?” That was all that Grace heard. “Forget you, then. Get out of my bed,” she ranted, kicking at him. “Get out!”

  Greg threw up his hands to defend himself. “Hold on, Grace! Hold on, now.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because this is my bed!” he answered wildly, stating the obvious.

  “Cool, be that way,” Grace spat, snatching the sheets from his clutches. “Then I’ll get out and never ever let you put your grubby hands anywhere near ‘sweet precious’ again.”

  Laughing under his breath, Greg shook his head. “That might bother me if I thought you could actually pull it off. Grace, don’t be hasty. You enjoy sex as much as I do. You’re a freak, just like me. That’s why we’ve gotten along like two freaky peas in a pod for so long.”

  Grace leaned in closely toward the assured expression plastered on Greg’s face. She said, “Maybe you’d like to think I’m wilder than most, but you haven’t even seen my best tricks, and now you never will.” She made her tongue dance just the way he liked, then put it away and smacked her lips closed.

  “You’ve been holding out on me?” Greg asked excitedly. He was even more stimulated than before, wanting to experiencewhat she’d kept from him.

  “Uh-huh, and holding back, too.” Grace went around the bedroom, gathering her things to get dressed. When Greg eased up behind her, she felt admittedly weak in the knees but found the strength to hold firm when she saw his reflectionin the dresser’s mirror along with hers. “See, that’s what I’m talking about. I want a man who can hold me like this every day, not just when he’s trying to jump up and down on me today.”

  “Aren’t you taking this a bit too far?” Greg protested. “I mean, we’ve seen each other through some tough times. Doesn’t that count for anything? Doesn’t that matter?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Not enough, anyway,” Grace replied. “If it weren’t so trifling of me, it’d be kinda funny, the way I’ve been fooling myself into thinking that it did matter, and that’s my fault.” Grace quickly wrestled on her running shorts and workout top before tossing her sweats into the gym bag she’d brought along for appearances. She turned around to face Greg and then placed her arms around his neck affectionately. “Greg, at times you have been a dear friend to me, and for that I’m eternally thankful, but from now on the only fool I’ll be is for my husband. Oh, and by the way, I’m taking the freak sack with me.”

  “Uh, that’s not a good idea, Grace,” he objected, with both hands raised in a pleading position. “You gotta leave the bag o’ tricks.”

  “And why would I want to do that?” she questioned, holdingthe bag behind her back.

  “See, ’cause some of those tricks in that bag were donatedby some uh ... other sistahs.” Greg gulped like he had before and braced himself for another quick jab to the chest.

  Grace was repulsed by the revelation. “You mean you’ve been using these same toys on other women? That’s so nasty, Greg. Yuck!” She held the cloth bag at arm’s length for him to reclaim it. “At least you had the decency to wash them.”

  “Huh? You can wash them?” he mumbled awkwardly.

  “Now I’ve got to rush home, disinfect myself, and pray I didn’t catch anything. Stupid!”

  As she strutted away from his side door, Greg followed in close step behind her with the bedsheet gathered around his waist. “Grace! Grace!” he hollered after her. “If you do this, you live with it, but don’t walk away acting like you’re Halle Berry fine, because you’re not!”

  “And you’re no Denzel, so that makes us about even,” Grace sniped evenly through clenched teeth.

  “See ... See here, Grace. That’s just like a woman, alwayswanting what they can’t have. Denzel’s already gotta wife!” With Greg standing in the doorway of his home, the wind kicked up, exposing Greg’s freshly shaven pubic region.

  Grace frowned at it disapprovingly. “And somewhere out there is a Denzel for me too, baldy!”

  Halfway back down the tollway, Grace turned the radio off. She devoted the long ride home to deep contemplation over the roads she’d traveled down, ultimately leading her to this place, the place that had her sneaking out of the house for a late-evening rendezvous and lying about it. That was the same place that convinced her to schedule monthly flextimeromps around Tyson Sharp’s availability. Loneliness was that place. She despised it, but often found herself trapped there, in another compromising position, before recognizing her surroundings. Once again, it had lured Grace into its clutches, and afterwards sent her home with the radio off, devoting the long ride to deep contemplation, sadness and regret.

  7

  Shakespeare in the Hood

  The morning after, Grace pulled up in front of the high school to drop off André. For some strange reason, she felt it necessary to hug him as if he were heading off for his first day of kindergarten, instead of just another day in ninth grade. “Mama, are you all right?” André asked when Grace held firmly onto the sleeve of his thin jacket. “Ma, I’ll be late.” Eventually she released him, wanting to say how sorry she was for leaving him alone to slip by and hook up with Greg, bu
t she immediately reconsidered when realizing it would have served no purpose. Lamenting her affair could have also opened a disastrous line of questioning she wasn’t prepared for, so she waved good-bye with a faltering smile.

  “Have a good day, son,” Grace said in parting.

  “Yeah, thanks,” André responded awkwardly, wondering if there was something else to be said. “That it?”

  “Just that I’ll pick you up at Skyler’s after the parent-teacherconference tonight. Don’t forget to send my thanks to his grandmother.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell Miss Pearl.” André darted off toward the school building with his book bag bobbing up and down over his left shoulder. Before Grace dragged herself from the curb, she observed how her child had grown so independentand self-assured without having a man around to emulate. So many other fatherless boys had become involvedwith gangs, or drugs, and subsequently the law, by his age. But André wasn’t actually fatherless. His father was thoughtless and selfish, although Grace was too proud to demandactive participation from him in their child’s life. She wouldn’t have known for certain if he were still alive had it not been for the thirteen years of steady child support sitting in a trust fund with André’s name on it. Grace hadn’t seen “the sperm donor,” as she called him, in almost as long as she’d been depositing the full extent of his parental assistance.Honestly, she gave up imagining how life would have been for her if she had married Edward in college, like other young expectant mothers nearing college graduation. Since André stopped mentioning his father a few years before, Grace followed his lead. Other than those monthly deposits, it was as if he never really existed at all. On the other hand, Grace was constantly reminded to the contrary each time she viewed Edward’s image when looking at André’s.

  When Grace snapped out of her daze, she was startled by a host of anxious parents in the drop-off lane, leaning on their car horns. She got the message that the time had come for her to move on. André already had.

  André strolled into the classroom along with twenty-threeother chattering teenagers. His teacher, Wallace Peters, was smartly dressed in a dark plaid sports coat, white button-downshirt, and khaki slacks. He wrote two words on the blackboard in bold print, DESTINY and AMBITION. Mr. Peters had the distinction of being known as a teacher extraordinaire, talented and adored by his students. So much so, that the kids rarely missed his English literature class, which was a required course, when ditching other subjects was commonplacein the urban high school. After Grace had moved to the suburbs, she promised to keep André around more people who looked like him so she rented out their older home and wisely retained ownership for André to continue playing basketball in that district.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wallace,” saluted several students as they entered his classroom. The young girls flirted behind his back, knowing he wouldn’t have tolerated that sort of foolishness had he been aware of it.

  “Don’t let him catch you checking him out like that,” whispered the same cheerleader who had offered her phone number to André.

  “Shoot, Mr. Wallace knows he fine. All the lady teachers peep him every chance they get,” her girlfriend replied discreetly.“And they don’t care who see ’em. Humph, you can’t make my momma miss a parent-teacher meeting with him, when you can’t drag her butt down here for nothing else.” The young girl was right on several fronts. Her mother had it bad for the attractive teacher with thick eyebrows, flawless skin, and what some might have thought of as great hair. Additionally,several female teachers structured their breaks around his, looking for the chance to discuss poetry, current affairs, or the most popular question, Why he was so fine and still single.

  “Mr. Wallace, is the test gonna be this Friday?” one of the young men asked.

  “Not if it’s a pop test,” he answered cleverly. “Those are given when you least expect it.”

  “Since I’m expecting one on Friday, it won’t be given then, huh?” the boy answered, undoubtedly unprepared for the exam.

  “One can always hope, Tariq,” Mr. Peters remarked, with a cordial grin. “One can always hope.”

  “Keep hope alive,”André joked, in his best Jesse Jackson impersonation. The classroom lit up in unbridled laughter. Skyler, seated across from his little buddy, was an honored guest in freshman lit for the duration of the semester. Although he was passing a senior-level English course, he’d asked for a special concession to brush up on the basics beforegraduating in the spring. Within the first week of class, Mr. Peters discovered the real reason Skyler wanted to be in the class with André.

  “It would serve Tariq better to keep his book opened,” countered the witty instructor. After a clamorous chorus of “Oohs” sounded off the walls, the teacher turned toward the words he’d written on the board. Mr. Wallace pointed at them emphatically, and then he pointed at the students likewise.“Destiny and ambition, young people, those are the two most determining factors in your becoming what you are meant to be, or not.”

  “Is that the question?” a young man quipped, after having studied Hamlet the month before.

  “No, Marcus,” answered Mr. Peters. “It’s the answer, that we’re looking for today. The answer,” he added, scanning their faces. Now that he had their full attention, their minds were also opened to new, unforeseen possibilities for their futures. Mr. Peters began pacing in front of his desk. The children’s eyes followed him back and forth. “We are currentlystudying another of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, Macbeth. I have been trying to come up with a practical example to illustrate what Macbeth was going through and how his experiences apply to you.” Skyler tossed a glance at André from the corner of his eye, suggesting that all of them were about to get hit with some heavy philosophizing. Skyler’s assumptionwas correct, and many of his classmates’ lives would be permanently altered after the discussion had time to sink in.

  “Take Macbeth, a smart, rugged soldier,” noted Mr. Peters.“He was given all that he needed while serving King Duncan during battle, and he was also rewarded with great wealth and power. One night, three witches came to him and shared a prophecy that he would some day be king himself. Now, that was good news, and Macbeth believed it to be true. Upon arriving home, he told his wife what the witches prophesized. Lady Macbeth decided that the quickest way to fulfill the prophecy was to assassinate the current king post-haste. . . That means right away. Understand this, class, how Macbeth’s ambitious wife persuaded him to go against his best thought of waiting it out. After Macbeth had the king killed and took his seat on the throne, he also had to kill the star witnesses to cover it up. Eventually, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to sleep because his dreams became filled with disturbing visions of ghosts. Listening to Lady Macbeth had influenced him to seek something very valuablethrough dishonest means.” The students were locked on to the teacher’s every word. When he began pacing again, their gazes grew even more intense. “Ultimately, Macbeth’s blind ambition changed his life, and later caused him to be murdered in the end. Of course, his wife and children met the same fate, as you have read for yourselves, I’m sure.” André’s mind was racing, as if viewing a fascinating trailer to an upcoming movie he hadn’t seen. “I know that some of you are thinking that kind of stuff happened a long time ago, so let’s apply those circumstances to modern occurrences.”

  There were so many blank faces staring back at him, becausevery few students understood his intent. “We’ll tackle it one incident at a time. First, the witches coming to Macbethcould have been nothing more than his own desires of being king manifesting themselves into his personal thoughts.”

  “Was there anything wrong with that?” someone asked from the back row. “I mean, people have been telling me all my life that I could be anything I wanted to be, even the president if I believed it. That’s kinda like the king, right?”

  “Yes it is, and you are correct. There was nothing wrong with Macbeth wanting to be rich and powerful, but he let someone else get inside his head and convince him to do wro
ng.”

  “Ooh, that’s right!” the cheerleader shouted. “Macbeth’s wife kept picking at him until she punked him to snuff out King Duncan. That was wrong.”

  “Yeah, that Lady Macbeth was a trip,” Tariq chimed. “I know too many brothas on lockdown now because of triflin’ females.”

  “Whut-ever,” the cheerleader snapped back.

  “That may very well be true, Tariq,” Mr. Peters agreed. “But I’m sure there are many more brothas responsible for sending their friends to prison because of—”

  “Peer pressure,” offered Skyler. “I thought that was somethingnew, but I guess it’s been getting people twisted for centuries.”

  “Exactly!” Mr. Peters slapped his hands together when he felt the discussion moving in the direction he’d counted on. “Once Macbeth decided he would take the crown, he deviseda plan to jack it, as you young people like to say.”

  “But once he jacked the crown, he had to pop, I mean kill, all the witnesses,” said the boy sitting next to Tariq. “Mr. Peters,Macbeth should have divorced ole girl before she got him jammed up. Didn’t they already have a big crib?”

  “They did, at that, but ole girl wanted more, and she wanted it fast,” the teacher explained.

  “Mr. Peters, I can see why someone might get talked into doing something they figure they can get away with, but it never seems to work out that way,” the cheerleader’s cohort reasoned. “Or else there wouldn’t be more black men in prison than there are in college. Didn’t the Macbeths know that all they had to do was wait on the king to die on his own? I mean, he was real old.”

  “Let me ask the class this.” Mr. Peters was really cooking. He had arrived at the point he’d dreamt of when he agreed to teach young inner-city students. “If you all knew that a nice home, a nice car, and a good life were waiting for you on the other side of that door and around the corner, would you allow your destiny to unfold and work toward meeting it, or let your ambitions and other people lead you down the wrong path? And before you answer, remember that Macbethcouldn’t enjoy his kingdom because the nightmares and ghosts of the men he’d killed continued haunting him.”