Sweet St. Louis

  “No it wasn’t. If it was, we would have been the only people there.”

  “I had never been there before, and you had only thought about it,” Sharron said. “And that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about, like the museum we just went to, and Beale Street, and this whole trip to Memphis,” she said. “Do you know that my friend Celena has never come down here with me in what, close to six years since I’ve known her?”

  “Not once?”

  “Not once! She always had an excuse not to go. So, of course she got jealous when I said that you were going with me this time.”

  “At least she likes me now,” he said.

  Sharron thought about her aunts, Miriam and Julianne. How would they judge Anthony? How many questions would they ask him? How many questions would they ask her about him? And how many assumptions would they make? Frankly, Sharron had a pair of tough aunts. Her mother had been tough herself. Sharron’s good nature came from her father. Not that her mother could not be easygoing at times, she just was never fluent with it like Sharron was.

  “Are you hungry yet?” she asked Anthony.

  “I been hungry.”

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I figured we’d eat eventually, so I wasn’t in no big hurry about it.”

  “We’ll get a big meal at my aunt’s house later on, so we don’t need to eat that much down here,” she told him.

  He nodded. “Fine with me. So go get my dinner and I’ll be relaxing right here, honey,” he joked.

  Sharron looked him over and said, “I hope you don’t think that’s the way it would be with me, because you can get your ass up and get your own dinner. I’m not hardly going to be the cook and the waiter,” she snapped.

  Anthony laughed and said, “Don’t get so touchy about it. I’m only playing with you.”

  “Yeah, as long as you know,” she huffed at him, grinning. “And don’t think that I’m all up for that Superwoman thing either, because I’ll get just like your mom on you,” she warned.

  Anthony didn’t like the sound of that. His mother could be brutally cold sometimes.

  Sharron read the panic on his face before he even said anything. “Don’t get so touchy about it. I’m only playing with you,” she mocked him.

  He grinned and said, “That shit wasn’t funny.”

  Sharron stood up and grabbed his hand to pull him along with her. “Come on before we get too comfortable in here and I start wanting my own house right now.”

  Anthony chuckled real good at that. He had those same thoughts about houses on his mind for weeks. His friend Tone had inspired that thinking with his carpet cleaning job.

  “So, when do you think you’ll be ready for that big move?” Anthony asked Sharron.

  “What big move?”

  “Moving into a place of our own.”

  She looked at him and froze. “You mean before marriage or anything?”

  Marriage hadn’t crossed his mind as strongly as moving in. Moving in was a lot easier to swallow.

  “You don’t have to be married to get a nice place together. Because I’m ready to move away from Tone right now,” he said to her.

  Sharron had to think for a minute. Her friend Celena thought that moving in with a guy was like a cow pumping her own milk for the farmers. I don’t know about all of that, Sharron assessed to herself.

  Anthony snapped her out of it and said, “I got you again, hunh?”

  “What, you were only joking about that, too?” Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.

  “If it makes you that nervous, then yeah.”

  She sucked her teeth and said, “That’s a cop-out. I mean, if that’s how you feel, then I have to deal with it. You want us to move in?”

  Anthony backed off of the idea. “We may end up doing that, but for now, I guess we’re all right where we are. I mean, you’re gonna be going to school for nursing soon, and you’re gonna need your space to do your thing.”

  “But if we moved in together, then we wouldn’t have to miss each other in the meantime.”

  Anthony smiled. “I believe that’s how it works. Yeah.”

  Then it wasn’t such a bad idea to Sharron. I really need to think this over, she pondered, more on the positive side than when she first heard it.

  They walked up the street and ate a bite of fried chicken and potato fries before it was time to head over to Sharron’s Aunt Miriam’s on the far northwest end of Memphis. They arrived and parked outside a much larger brick house than Sharron’s father’s, with a driveway and a two-car garage.

  “So, this is it, hunh?” Anthony asked, grinning.

  “What?”

  “Your aunts get to rip me apart.”

  Sharron laughed. “You got your mom to rip me apart.”

  “No I didn’t,” he told her. “All I did was introduced you to her.”

  “Yeah, and with no warning. And it was on my birthday at that.”

  “I guess you can get me back now,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “My aunts aren’t that bad. Just be yourself. You know how to handle women,” she advised, grinning.

  That’s what Anthony was most afraid of, being himself. Players usually were when it came to settling down. And older women generally knew who they were. They had lived long enough to pick up the flirtatious vibes. Sharron knew it too. But she didn’t care anymore. She was willing to fight for him if she had to. He was her man regardless. Her visit to her aunt’s would be more of an announcement than an interrogation. Anthony had already passed through the only court that really mattered. Sharron’s.

  “Nice-looking place, too,” Anthony said of the five-bedroom house.

  “Yeah, my Aunt Miriam and Uncle Che’ are doing all right.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They both work for the city government of Memphis.”

  “They’re political people?”

  “Not really. They just work for the government. I never really even asked what they did. My Uncle Che’ does have a law degree.”

  “His wife runs the show, though, hunh?” Anthony asked teasingly. It seemed as if more emphasis was on her aunts than on her uncles, so he assumed that they were dominant women.

  “I guess you can say that,” Sharron admitted. “My Uncle Che’ doesn’t really get excited about much.”

  “And is your cousin Mia their daughter?”

  “Yup. I guess she just didn’t get all the attention she needed as their third child. My cousin Che’ Junior is doing all right. He’s the oldest. And so is my cousin Helen.”

  “Well, are we going in or what?” Anthony asked. He noticed that they hadn’t budged from the car.

  Sharron smiled at him and said, “Come on.” By that time, it was close to six in the evening.

  “I see they drive some nice cars.” Anthony noted a white Infiniti and a black Mercedes-Benz parked in front of the garages.

  “That’s another reason my father had issues with them. We were never into the money like they were.”

  “I see.”

  They walked inside and were smacked in the face with a pouring out of love.

  “Sharron, baby, look at you!” her aunt gushed with a big hug as soon as she spotted her niece. “You look as good as your mother used to look at your age.”

  Oh, gee, thanks, Sharron thought sarcastically. That sure sounded good.

  Anthony stood off to the side, waiting to be introduced, while looking over the elegant home: paintings, small sculptures, vases, and quality furniture.

  This is the kind of home that Tone was talking about, he mused. I wouldn’t mind having a crib like this myself. No doubt!

  “This is my Anthony,” Sharron said, introducing him to her aunt.

  “Your Anthony, hunh?” her aunt asked.

  Sharron was already protecting her man without even realizing it.

  Anthony looked over the full-figured brown woman in her dark blue power suit, and immediately wondered about Sh
arron ten years down the road.

  “How are you doing?” he greeted her.

  She asked, “Anthony, are you a real black man or a pretender?”

  He looked at Sharron, who looked sternly at her aunt.

  Aunt Miriam smiled and added, “Tough question, ain’t it? It didn’t use to be.”

  “Well, what’s the definition of a ’real black man’?” Sharron asked her.

  “Let Anthony answer that,” she responded. “And excuse me for asking you, Anthony. But we just had a book club discussion last night, and that was one of the key questions in the book we were reading.”

  “Did you ask any other men about it?” Anthony quizzed her.

  “Well, my husband already knows that a real black man takes care of family business. I’m just more concerned about asking these younger men out here who don’t hold up their ends of the bargain.”

  “How is Mia doing?” Sharron interjected. She knew exactly what her aunt was getting at. And she and Mia were two different people.

  “You’ll see her. I’ll let her tell you all about it. She’s tired of me being in her business anyway. But she’s dying to see you.”

  Sharron looked at Anthony and smiled. “So I’ve heard,” she commented.

  “So, how long have you two known each other?” her aunt asked.

  Anthony smiled, remembering his mother asking Sharron that same question months ago.

  “Since the heat of spring?” Sharron answered, no longer ashamed of it.

  Miriam raised her brow. “Well, you two do know what they say, don’t you? The heat cools down after a while. Then what?”

  “We strike another match,” Sharron countered.

  Good answer.

  Her aunt smiled and chuckled at her cleverness. “Hmmph. I sure hope you have a lot a matches to strike.”

  Sharron was ready to go to battle with her aunt but decided not to. Just let it go, she told herself. My Aunt Miriam has plenty of reasons to lack faith in a lot of the young black men out here, but much of that has to do with the choices that we make as women as well I could have had Sean Love a long time ago, but I chose to wait for an Anthony Pooh. So I’ll just have to live with that decision and not complain about it.

  Once they had another minute alone, Anthony said, “Your father wasn’t lying when he talked about your aunts.”

  “My Aunt Julianne is not as bad as Miriam,” Sharron told him. “Thank God,” she added.

  When most of the family arrived for the get-together dinner and Sharron’s summer visit home, Anthony found himself in the heat of the discussion while Sharron fought off the wolves. Not that he couldn’t represent himself; Sharron just wanted to make certain she did her part to support him. Then there was cousin Mia, who wanted time alone with Sharron, away from her new man and the family so they could catch up on things.

  Mia looked healthy, positive, and energetic. She became depressed after her first child and broken heart. She grew more depressed after the second. And by the third time around, she was suicidal.

  “So, how is it with him?” she wanted to know, more concerned about Sharron and her man than how her cousin was doing on her own. They were outside on the front patio.

  “What do you mean, how is it?” Sharron asked her. She knew good and well what her cousin meant. She meant was it secure? Was she satisfied with him? Was he satisfied with her? Did they really have a chance to make it together? If so, then when was the wedding, and could she be a bridesmaid?

  Sharron knew what her cousin wanted to hear. She wanted to hear that a relationship could actually work out for her same-age cousin, who was once extremely close to her. The best of friends and family.

  “You know, how does he treat you?” Mia asked again.

  “With respect,” Sharron answered. Because he knows that I respect myself, she wanted to add. She had run her cousin’s story through her mind a thousand times and still could not understand it all. Mia had wanted her first love to be a part of her life, so her first son was a given. But when the first daughter came along from a new man, and then another daughter from a third, Sharron had to ask herself, What the hell is going wrong? And when it all came out in the attempt of suicide with an overdose of pills, it was obvious that Mia was desperate for love. From anywhere! And from anyone. So she refused to abort her “babies,” while her lawyer father fought with all of his power to make sure that she could keep them with mandatory counseling. It was all family history Sharron had tried her best to block out, just in case she too could slip that far into the abyss for love.

  “Are y’all gettin’ married?” her cousin asked her with all seriousness.

  “Why has everyone been assuming marriage tonight?”

  “Because you brought him all of the way to Memphis with you. That must count for something!” Mia countered.

  “Well, we haven’t even talked about marriage. Not seriously. We just started talking about moving in.”

  “Movin’ in? Oh, no, girl, don’t do that,” Mia warned her. “That’s how it all gets started. Then they start taking advantage of the situation. And you can’t even get them to come home half of the time.”

  “You’re gonna move in together eventually if you’re getting married,” Sharron told her.

  “Yeah, but then it’s different because you’re bonded.”

  “And you think that changes something?”

  “It should”

  “Well, it don’t. And if you don’t have a bond before you get married, then I don’t know why so many people think that they’re gonna have one afterwards. It doesn’t work that way. Marriage should be the icing on the cake, and not the cake.”

  Mia just stared at her. “You always understood things so much better than I could,” she said. Then her head went down. Sharron didn’t like the sight of that at all. But what could she say to her cousin? That things would get better? Lift up her head and look forward to the future? You’re going to find somebody to love you one day? What could she tell Mia to soothe her pain? Realistically? So she hugged her instead. And hung on to her. Until Mia couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I know my kids are looking for me in there, Sharron. Let me go and find them. You know, I’m a three-time mother now.”

  She left Sharron standing outside alone, like so many men had left her.

  “Why are you so quiet?” Anthony asked Sharron. They were on their way back to her father’s house that night.

  She shook her head at the wheel. “I’m just thinking about my cousin.”

  “Mia?”

  “Yeah, man. What do I do about her?”

  Anthony looked straight ahead and asked, “What can you do?”

  “Yeah, like, start her life all over again, right? With a snap of my fingers.”

  “But that wouldn’t be fair to her kids. They’re here now. And I hate to say it, because it may not be the thing she wants to hear, but the only thing she can really do is look out for them. And I’m just being real about that,” Anthony suggested.

  “I know you are,” Sharron told him with a hand on his knee. “And you know what, we’re supposed to be sleeping at the hotel tonight. I just remembered.”

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I mean, it is kind of late to be checking into a hotel now, ain’t it?”

  “No. We can still check into a hotel.”

  “I just don’t want to press the issue. We have to get our stuff from your father’s house anyway. By the time we do all of that, we might as well chill there.”

  Sharron shook her head and made her own decision. “No, we can get that stuff tomorrow morning,” she said. And that was that. She headed to a nice Memphis hotel, because she wanted to be close to her man that night, and without any restrictions.

  “Daddy,” she called from their room on the seventh floor, “I’ll be home with your car in the morning.”

  “Well, where are you?”

  “We’re at the Radisson downtown.”

  “The Radisson? Don’t
you need your change of clothes and your toothbrushes?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I know, Dad. Anthony said that too, but I was too tired to drive home and have to drive back to the hotel. We’ll just have to get that stuff in the morning.”

  “Okay. Well, Lucille was waiting to see Anthony, but she knows I have to go to work tomorrow morning, so she’s gone now. I guess she’ll meet him when she comes over on Sunday maybe.”

  “Yeah, Sunday. And we can even go out to get a bite to eat,” Sharron suggested.

  “It’s a deal,” her father told her.

  When she hung up the phone, she looked over to the bed at Anthony watching cable television, and flung herself on top of him.

  “Anthony, this has been a long day.”

  “I know.”

  “So are you tired?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really tired?” she asked, undoing his pants.

  “Yup,” he added with a smile.

  “Too tired for a warm bath together?”

  He grinned and said, “Not if you can carry me in there. Because I don’t even feel like getting up right now.”

  “I can compromise. Let’s just get under the covers then. Are you too tired to do that?”

  “Naw,” he told her, helping her with his pants.

  Sharron stripped them both to their underwear and climbed into the hotel sheets with her man to wrap her arms around him.

  “What do you think about my family so far?” she asked him. “Can you deal with us?”

  “Why, you think I can’t?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  He thought about it and nodded. “Yeah. Family is family.”

  Then she caressed his tool. “Are you too tired for this?”

  He smiled again. “Do I still have to use protection?”

  “Of course you do. Let’s not get sloppy just because I’m on the pill now. We’re not ready to start a family of our own yet. Or are we?” she asked him.

  He said, “I’m ready when you are. But I guess that first we have to figure out all of the arrangements. You know, stuff like, where we would live? How we would separate our bills? How we would watch our kids? And then you have to finish up with your nursing school, and I have to figure out if I want to open up my own shop one day.”