Insanity

  Bryant thought about that as unfair dilemma. Why does a hard-working girl from the inner-city have to be the “chick on the side”, while the softer, suburban types, like Garrett’s woman, get to be the wifeys?

  Bryant shook it off and said, “She’s much more than just sex thing, man. She’s dead serious about where she wants to go in life. Her whole family knows that about her.”

  Garrett shrugged. “That don’t mean she’s gonna be successful. Sometimes it’s just too much catching up to do for a city girl to handle.”

  Garrett was being as frank as they come. It was a tough world in the move up in society game.

  Bryant agreed with him on that note. “Yeah, I know. She’s still a little rough around the edges. That’s why I’m letting mom and Ms. Wanda break her down for a minute. I’m curious to see how she’s gonna handle it.”

  Garrett chuckled at the idea. “That’s why you left her in there by herself?”

  Bryant shrugged. “She’s gonna have to deal with it eventually anyway, if she’s trying to step up. And if she can’t handle it and acts a fool . . . well . . . good riddance.”

  “That’s how it has to be, man,” Garrett told him. “My lady had to go through it too, and she’s already polished. But I wouldn’t mind a little Queen on the side if she knew how to act with it,” he added with a chuckle.

  Bryant still couldn’t wrap his mind around that part. “Look, man, why does a guy always have to have a chick on the side? Does your lady know you feel that way? Why can’t we just choose women who can be everything we need them to be?”

  “Because they’re not going to be,” Garrett answered. “You know how many girls we’ve been around already. And it’s always the same deal. You’ll have the polished girls who don’t like to fuck, and girls who like to fuck who are never polished. That’s how you got involved with this girl in the first place, B. You knew she wasn’t wifey material. She was a meantime girl. So, you brought her over here hoping that she falls on her face and stops you from getting too involved with her.”

  He laughed and said, “I know how you are.”

  Bryant took another sip of his drink and thought about it.

  That’s why she made me wait for so long before she got back to me, because of opinions like Garrett’s, he mused. No matter what a woman does afterwards, if she’s willing to give it up early, a man will find a way to disrespect her for it.

  Suddenly, Bryant began to feel sympathy for her. He told Garrett, “You make it sound like all women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”

  His insightful comment forced Garrett to think. “I mean, I wish it wasn’t that way. Then I could stop cheating on my lady so much,” he stated in lowered tones, while turning to face the house. He didn’t want to get busted while running his mouth about his honest views of relationships. But his uncompromising honesty only made Bryant more adamant about his views.

  “You know what, man? There are plenty of men out there who choose the right women who give them everything they need. You just have to know a good thing when you have it in front of you.”

  Garrett continued to grin. He considered the idea of a one-package woman to be naïve.

  “Yeah, okay. You can believe that shit if you want. But more than likely, you got a lot of men who just stopped complaining about what they knew they couldn’t get, like our dads. And you learn to do something else to fill up your time and passions, like fishing and golf. But I’m not at that age yet.”

  “At that age for what?” Garrett’s fiancé walked out back and asked him. Gwendolyn was a graduate from Maryland University and an AKA. Tall, curvaceous, light brown, and easy-going, she was just what a spoiled man wanted, a woman who stayed out of the way and catered without drama.

  “To start fishing and golfing on the weekends,” he told her. And he was glad she had only heard the tail end of their conversation. “You know, I still like playing some hoops while my body can still take it,” he added and laughed. Then he quickly changed the subject. “But have you met Bryant’s girl Queen yet? He wants to see what you think about her.”

  Bryant grinned, marveling at his friend’s skills of spontaneous wit and effective maze running. An elusive man had to learn how to cover his tracks, and Garrett was now an expert at it. He simply refused to be trapped by a woman.

  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

  As Bryant led them back into of the house and into the dining room to introduce Gwendolyn to Queen, he was pleasantly surprised to witness Queen leading a lively discussion about Catholic and Private schools.

  “You just never know about some of the nuns and priests. All of that pent of sexuality leaks out in weird ways,” she expressed.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Wanda agreed with her. “I’m skeptical about all of those people.”

  “But now, at private schools, everything is about paying up to stay in the in-crowd,” Queen noted. “But that’s just how America goes. You gotta pay the cost to be where you wanna be. So if I had to throw on a tight little cheerleader uniform for the in-crowd to know and accept me, then that’s what I had to do.”

  She looked incredibly comfortable inside of the room. All eyes and ears were focused on her. She was the Queen of attention again.

  Wanda looked at Clarisse and gave her a knowing nod. The young woman had engaged their table of family and friends well, and she had changed their initial opinions of her.

  Bryant read the positive energy that flowed through the room and felt good about it.

  Damn! he thought to himself. I leave her alone in the room with my family for a minute and look what she does. It sounds like she handled her business in here.

  Despite her past indiscretions and red flags, he was still rooting for her.

  “Queen, I want to introduce you to Garrett’s fiancé, Gwendolyn. She’s more of your age in here,” he joked.

  Wanda took mock offense to it. “Oh, so what are you trying to say, young man?” she asked him curtly. “You better watch your manners in here, boy, and stop showing your little ass, ’cause I will still jump all over you. You ain’t too big for a good switch of the vine. And I’ll do your tail like my grandmother used to do us.”

  The room of company laughed boisterously, and was always thrilled by Wanda’s antics. And by the time they were ready to head out and catch the fireworks down at the Baltimore Harbor, Queen had won them all over.

  “All right now, Queenie, you guys have a good time down at the Harbor,” Wanda told them out the door. “But I’m a little too old now to get caught all up in that traffic for twenty minutes of fireworks. I can watch that on TV.”

  “It’s being there that counts,” Garrett commented, heading out to catch the fireworks with Gwen.

  “Well, go be there then. Nobody’s stopping you,” Wanda snapped at him.

  Clarisse was amused by it all. Good lively friendship made life worth living.

  “Y’all just be safe down there tonight,” she warned her son and his friends. “You know how Baltimore can get sometimes. And Bryant, you make sure you bring Queen back to see us again. You hear?”

  It was a significant remark that Bryant didn’t plan to take lightly. His mother even stepped up to hug her before they left, with his father, Ramon, right behind her.

  “All right now, son. Be good,”

  Bryant climbed into the car with Queen and hooted, “Damn. What did you slip in their drinks?” He couldn’t believe how fast she had gotten along with them all.

  He pulled out of his parking space behind Garrett and Gwendolyn to follow them down to the Harbor, while Queen continued to wave at his parents through the window. Then she smiled in the passenger seat, looking very satisfied.

  She told Bryant, “I was just being myself in there. Like I told you, I’ve been around a lot of different people. So you just find the common ground to talk to them about.”

  “And you found common ground with Wanda?”

  Bryant still couldn’t believe it. Wanda seemed to hate every
one.

  But Queen chuckled at it. “She reminds me of my Aunt Allison, actually. You just have to find out what she agrees with, and that’s all it takes for her to like you.”

  Speaking of Queen’s aunt and family, Bryant had lingering thoughts of betrayal on his mind and couldn’t shake them so easily. His family didn’t know what he knew.

  “So . . . let me ask you something,” he started. “Have you been in any other situations like the one with your cousin?”

  Queen cut through the chase. “You mean sleeping with someone else’s man?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wanted to make certain she wouldn’t fuck around on him.

  “No,” she told him. “I mean, I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time, so I was basically single. But if I had a man . . .” She looked him right in his eyes before she finished. “ . . . then I definitely wouldn’t have gone there. And after that situation happened, I didn’t really feel comfortable with older guys anymore. It was all too stressful. So I stopped talking to all guys for a while and went back to dealing with people my own age who I could, you know, be on a more equal footing with.”

  Bryant grinned, imagining the disappearing acts that she had already showed him. “Yeah, you can sure cut the water off when you want to,” he hinted.

  Queen smiled, catching his drift. “You already know,” she boasted. “I mean, please, I’m not that girl that my cousin tries to paint me to be. It was just a one-time thing. But she keeps bringing it back up, over and over and over again, like a sick damn nightmare.”

  Bryant nodded from the wheel as he approached 95 North on the highway.

  “Okay . . . Forget about all of that,” he told her with a pause. Enough was enough.

  I need to just leave that alone, he told himself. The past is the past, and that’s where it needs to stay . . . As long as she never does that to ME with MY family and friends.

  He moved to change the subject by popping in a CD from Maxwell.

  Queen recognized the man’s seductive falsetto immediately.

  “Hey, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite. I love this album,”

  Bryant smiled, knowing the mood he wanted her in for later. He was setting the tone for a late night at his South Baltimore apartment, where he didn’t intend on allowing her to sleep.

  Little did the man know . . . Queen was playing her own seductive tune. And it was much stronger than his.

  Her Next Move

  December 1998

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Queen let her words hang in the air for a minute as Bryant comprehended them.

  “Are you sure?”

  They were relaxing on the sofa at his South Baltimore apartment, watching reruns of the X-Files on his 36-inch color television set.

  Queen showed him the results of the home pregnancy test, a simple white stick displaying a positive symbol at the tip.

  Bryant eyed the foreign contraption in confusion. “That’s all it needs to say to confirm that you’re pregnant?”

  Queen grinned at him. “Yes.” She waited again for his response.

  “Well, umm . . .” Bryant couldn’t find the immediate words to express himself. He was perplexed, somewhere between surprise, happiness, fear and anger. He didn’t know how to feel about it.

  He responded to the anger first. “I thought I pulled.”

  Queen grimaced and argued, “Bryant, come on, you had to know this would happen. And I told you to stop doing it without a condom.” She wasn’t really upset about it; she was only stating the facts.

  “Well, how come you didn’t force me to wear it then?” he had the nerve to ask her.

  Queen only stared at him. “Is it my job to keep telling you what to do? Evidently you didn’t want to wear them anymore. You wanted to really feel it,” he mocked him.

  Bryant admitted his guilt through the silence. Then he responded to his fear.

  “So . . . what do we do now?” He was nervous about their next step. How serious were they to remain a couple?

  “You tell me,” Queen suggested.

  “Well, you know we’re both still in grad school,” he mentioned.

  “And . . . ? There are plenty of pregnant women in grad school. They’re grown.”

  Yeah, but they’re probably married too, he thought. He didn’t want voice it though. He then began to doubt her homemade test.

  He pointed and said, “We don’t even know if that thing’s accurate or not.”

  “I haven’t had my cycle in two months,” Queen informed him.

  Bryant heard that and reverted to anger. “How come you didn’t say something then?”

  “I wanted to make sure.”

  “Make sure of what? That you’re pregnant?”

  It was beginning to sound like a setup, one that he had walked himself right into. Over the past couple of months, he had gotten good and comfortable with the girl, too comfortable. She was practically living with him now. But Queen flipped the script on him.

  “So, you want me to get rid of it?”

  That stopped Bryant’s ranting cold. He wasn’t expecting her to say that. She made it sound real insensitive, as if they were throwing a stray cat out of the house. That forced him to think about his answer before he spoke.

  Get rid of it . . . ? Just like that? he questioned. That’s when he began to feel protective. No one had ever gotten pregnant on him before. This was his first possible child, and the thought of it locked him into a state of uncertainty.

  This would be my first child. But what if it never happens again, he mused. Desperate situations create desperate thoughts.

  Bryant remained speechless as he thought of it all.

  But Queen pressed him. “Well . . .”

  The added pressure of a decision only made him angry again.

  “Look, let’s just wait and see and ask a doctor first. What does your schedule look like for tomorrow?” He figured there was no time to waste. He wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else until he knew for sure.

  Queen smirked. She realized how easily she could work him over if she wanted to. An emotional man was silly putty in a woman’s hands.

  “I have a three hour lunch break from eleven to two,” she told him.

  “Okay, so I can meet you at the doctor’s office at noon. Just tell me where I need to go.”

  Queen nodded to him and made sure to keep her distance for the rest of the night. Instead of being soft, sappy and cuddly, she planned to be quiet, distant and introspective. The last thing she wanted to do is make him feel that she was needy. That would only scare him. However, Bryant was already scared.

  What the hell did I just do? he panicked. I totally let my guard down with this girl.

  Out of the blue, he told her, “I think I need some time alone tonight.” He couldn’t concentrate with her there. Her pregnancy news was an obvious distraction to him, and all kinds of anxieties were running though his mind.

  Queen didn’t argue with him. She grabbed her things and said, “Okay.” She headed to the closet near the front door to get her winter coat out. And it was cold outside in December. It was Baltimore.

  Bryant was shocked by it. He expected an all-out war with her, but the woman continued to confound him. She was a collage of opposites; cool heat, raw polish, excitable calm, and educated street. So he stopped her at the door with her coat.

  “You’re really gonna leave?”

  “Yeah, you asked me to.”

  “No I didn’t. I just said I needed some time alone. But that could mean just sleeping out on the couch.”

  “You didn’t mean sleeping out on no damn couch,” she snapped at him. That was more of what he expected from her, a feisty West Baltimore girl with attitude. However, Queen reverted to poise.

  “If you want me to stay or leave, just tell me.” It was his apartment and his decision. She had her own.

  But when he looked at her, she looked like a hopeless puppy dog at the door, ready to brave the frigid, midnight air. She ev
en wore a brown knit hat to warm her head. The whole scene made Bryant come to his senses.

  Shit, I can’t do that to her. I’d look like a crazy man, he told himself. And instead of sending her away, he hugged her at the door.

  “I’m sorry. This just caught me off guard, that’s all. I didn’t even know you had one of those pregnancy things. I thought you were taking a dunk in the bathroom all that time.”

  He smiled, but Queen didn’t think it was funny.

  She asked him, “What did you expect out of me?”

  Bryant was baffled by the question. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are your intentions?”

  He shrugged. “I like you.”

  “I would hope so,” she told him. “But other than that, what are we really doing?” It was a question every man and woman needed to ask themselves.

  Bryant felt like she had him on the spot, but instead of answering, he asked her, “What are your intentions with me?”

  “I mean, marriage, family, old age,” she rambled off in rapid fire. She was pregnant with his first seed and sounded very serious about their future.

  “Shit,” Bryant responded, smacked by her explosion of frankness. “So now the truth comes out. You expect for me to marry you because you’re pregnant?”

  “No. Like I said, if you want me to get rid of it, I will. I don’t want to force anything that you don’t want.”

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “I just told you.”

  “So, you want to have the baby then.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, why do you keep talking about getting rid of it?”

  “Because I don’t wanna be a single mother. I’ve seen what my mom went through to raise me by herself and I don’t wanna live that way.”

  Well, why you get pregnant then? he thought, but dared not to voice. Is wasn’t as if he had played no part in it.

  “Okay, let me get this straight; if you have this baby then you expect to marry me. But if I don’t agree to marry you, then you won’t have the baby? Is that right?”