“He’s your daddy,” Jeannie said, slipping her arm around my waist, “but I think he got some girl in him, too.”
I put my arms around her and hugged her close. Then Little Eddie got mad at me hugging his mama and started hitting me. It felt good.
society for
the preservation
of sorry-butt negroes
“Honey if you asked that smiling, charming, sweet-talking boyfriend of yours what a steady paycheck looked like he wouldn’t have a clue.” Maxine peered over her Armani glasses as she sipped a double latte. “He got Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message all wrong. Harrison Boyd does not have a dream, he’s got a scheme. What do you need his sorry butt for?”
“Maxine, maybe you don’t understand what it is to love a black man who has hopes that aren’t that easy to come by,” Abeni answered. “Sometimes you just have to have faith in a man. I think there will come a day when Harrison will definitely get over. And I want to be the black woman by his side that day.”
“Oh, I get it.” Maxine rolled her eyes. “It’s a black thang and I wouldn’t understand because I’m not as black as you. Is that the four-one-one?”
“I didn’t say you weren’t black,” Abeni said. “But check it out, Maxine, you’re nineteen and you already have an associate degree, and you have a smoking job. Do you really think that life is that easy for every black person out here?”
“No, I don’t,” Maxine said. “But I know this. If I got my game together I don’t want to be hanging with anybody who doesn’t even have a game. And you, my ebony princess, are a fine chick. You’re in college, pulling some heavy grades, and how old are you, twelve?”
“Going on nineteen.”
“You’re going on nineteen, you have a head on your shoulders, and one day you will own your mama’s beauty parlor. So you’re going to have your smarts, your business, and your sweet, sweet self. What do you need a sorry-butt Negro like Harrison for? He’s just one of these smooth-talking dudes looking around for a crutch and thinking he’s found one every time he sees a black woman. Two years ago he was going to start his own basketball league. Last year he was bringing in drugs from the Middle East.”
“Rugs, Maxine, you know he was trying to import rugs for all the new apartments in Harlem,” Abeni said. “And that was a good idea. It would have worked if he had spoken Arabic.”
“Now what’s he going to do?” Maxine tilted her head sideways. “Or doesn’t it matter just as long as he’s anatomically correct? Are you really that desperate for a man?”
“I am not desperate.”
“Well, girlfriend, it’s up to you. But sooner or later you’re going to have to make up your mind about that man. ’Cause the way I see it, he’s going to sweet-talk you into marriage, a bunch of cute little babies, and a long hard life before you wake up.”
“Maxine, Harrison is okay, he just reaches a little too far sometimes,” Abeni said.
“You need to be like your sister,” Maxine went on. “That girl is into her books, working around the shop, and that’s it. I’ve even seen her fix stuff around the shop with her tool kit, so she don’t even need a man.”
“Noee fixes stuff because she has a knack for it, which she got from our father,” Abeni said. “And that has nothing to do with needing a man.”
“Yeah it do, girl. That’s God’s way of telling her to keep her legs closed and her nose sniffing out slick-talking dudes like Harrison!”
It was hard to argue with Maxine. Harrison was twenty, had dropped out of high school three years earlier, and had been chasing one idea after the next. Somehow they all seemed good when Harrison was sitting in front of Abeni explaining how he would get rich if he just followed a few simple steps. Harrison was a big man, with a round face that made her want to smile when he came around, and you did not say no to those soft brown eyes.
Yesterday he had taken both of her hands in his, and with that low, sexy voice of his said, “The thing everybody is forgetting about is high-density cable. Brothers are out there buying some smoking sets and hooking up the high-density but they’re getting tired of having to watch reruns from 1970 and old movies that somebody’s colored. What they need is some today television. Some short, hard-hitting pieces that speak to the African American community.”
“And that’s what you’re going to be making?” Abeni had asked.
“Abeni, it can’t miss,” Harrison leaned forward. “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking if I can get you and your family to come in with me, we can bust in on the ground floor.”
Yes, it had bothered Abeni to listen to yet another of Harrison’s schemes. Nothing that Maxine had just said was new except for the last comments about making up her mind about Harrison. Abeni wasn’t even sure how much she cared for him anymore. She knew she was tired of making excuses to her mother and hearing the jokes around the beauty parlor about Harrison’s latest schemes.
* **
It took her two entire days to run all of the issues through her mind, and might have taken longer than that if Harrison hadn’t called her.
“I got to see you tonight,” he said. “I feel something momentous is going to happen.”
He got her to agree to meet him in the New Pam-Pam’s restaurant across from Harlem Hospital at seven-thirty
Abeni was tired, she had worked all day, had done four stylings from wash to set, and had “touched up” Mrs. Gunning’s hair so that her bald spot didn’t show.
“Do you think I should comb my hair straight back or to one side and maybe a little to the front?” The elderly lady looked at Abeni in the mirror.
“I just think if you keep your chin up and put a little dark powder on the top of your head your bare spot won’t show so much.” Abeni smiled back at her. “You’ve got nice eyes and you want to keep the focus on them.”
Mrs. Gunning hadn’t appreciated Abeni’s suggestion and mentioned it to Mama Evans.
“She don’t like it, but you were right,” Mama Evans said. “I’ll bet you the next time you see her she’s going to have that chin up and batting them eyes all over the place.”
Harrison was already in a booth in the New Pam-Pam’s when Abeni arrived. He held up his hands as if he were framing her in a shot as she made her way to the back.
“You have star quality,” he said. “Some people have to work like a dog just to look presentable on film, but I think you have it naturally.”
“Harrison, we have to talk,” Abeni said, feeling more tired than she’d thought she was.
“Don’t tell me your mother doesn’t see the opportunity to invest in Abeni Studio Productions?” Harrison leaned back in his seat. “I just can’t believe a woman that perceptive is going to let a chance like this slip by.”
“I didn’t even tell her about your filmmaking,” Abeni said. “Because I don’t believe in it myself.”
“You what?”
“No, that’s wrong.” Abeni held her hand up before Harrison could interject his ideas. “What I don’t believe in anymore is you. I think—I know—I need some serious distance.”
“Abeni, honey, what are you saying to me?” Harrison asked. “You know I’m Harrison Boyd and I know you are Abeni Evans. So, knowing who we are, and what we mean to each other … go on and tell me what you are trying to say.”
“What I’m saying”—Abeni hoped she would get the words out—“is that we—Harrison Boyd and Abeni Evans—are through. You need to pack up your ego and your dreams and go your way, and I need to pack up my ego and my dreams and go my way. I’m really sorry, but I have to make a choice about what my life is going to be about.”
At least that’s what Abeni told Mama Evans she said.
“And that’s when he got down on the floor and started acting like a fool?” Mama Evans put down the jar of Miracle Gel.
“That’s when he got down on the floor and started begging me not to leave him,” Abeni said. “Everybody was looking at us.”
“I know they were because
Ethel—you know her, she got good hair on the top of her head and naps in the back—was in the New Pam-Pam’s and she told Zinnia Lucas, and once you tell that girl something you might as well put it in the Amsterdam News. So what did you say?”
“I was too embarrassed to say anything,” Abeni said. “Harrison is over six feet tall and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds, so you can’t miss him.”
“And he was crying, too?” Mama Evans asked.
“Mama, he wasn’t like shedding a few tears, he was bawling and throwing himself around and crying so loud people from the front counter came back to take a look.”
Harrison’s getting down on his knees and crying so loud had shaken Abeni up. But it had been so embarrassing that she was speechless and didn’t say one way or the other what she was going to do. People at the counter were looking at them and shaking their heads. Abeni took a deep breath and just looked at Harrison for a while; then she just got up and left. She called Maxine the minute she got into the house and told her what had happened.
“And I know you are not thinking about taking him back?”
“I don’t know what to do,” Abeni said. “I really think he loves me, even if his plans don’t always work out.”
“Don’t always work out?” Abeni heard Maxine suck her teeth over the phone. “Girl, Harrison Boyd is just a dog like every other two-bit hustler out there. And don’t come talking nothing about love to me. If you need some cute dude—and Harrison is not that cute—to support for the rest of your life go and adopt you a little Vietnamese baby or something. He doesn’t need a woman, he needs a mama who can come around with a sugar teat in one hand and a checkbook in the other.”
“I told him I’d let him know,” Abeni said. “So I have to call him and tell him something.”
“No, you don’t! I guarantee he will call you and come up with some brand-new pitiful story,” Maxine said. “He’s supposed to be your man and you’re the only one that can’t see his game.”
Abeni heard herself promising Maxine that she wouldn’t call Harrison, but in her heart she still wasn’t sure. After all, Harrison was her boyfriend, not Maxine’s. He might not have been perfect, but she felt she owed him something just for caring for her.
The phone rang again and Abeni thought it would probably be Maxine with some more advice. She looked at the phone display and saw that it was Harrison.
She was kind of thinking that if she and Harrison just cooled it for about six months maybe they would just drift apart and she wouldn’t have to go through the drama of the split-up.
“Abeni, you in there?” Noee called.
“I got the phone, Noee,” Abeni said. “Hello, Harrison.” She tried to keep her voice impersonal.
“I need you to do it again.” Harrison was talking fast again, his voice edged with excitement.
“Do what again?”
“Look, honey, breaking up with you was one of the biggest, most gripping moments of my life. I could feel myself going through changes. What I realized when I got home was that for the first time I had to reencounter my entire existence.”
“And?”
“And what I knew I had to do was to relive that moment and put it on tape,” Harrison said. “You know it’s not usual when a person looks into the mirror of a moment and sees—I mean really sees—who he is.”
“So what are you saying you want to do?”
“I want you to go through the whole thing again,” Harrison said. “I know it was emotional for you, but that’s all right. Life is really about emotions dressed up like ordinary activities. We think we’re working, or riding the bus, but we’re really in transit from one emotion to the next.”
“So you want me to break up with you again?”
“I even spoke to Debbie up at Pam-Pam’s and she said it would be okay if we didn’t take longer than fifteen or twenty minutes to get it done.”
“Whoa, wait a minute—”
“It means that much to me, Abeni,” Harrison said. “Not as much as you mean to me, but this might change my life forever.”
Abeni knew she should have said no, should have told Harrison that she didn’t want any part of it, but she didn’t. What had her friend Terry said? “That man must be loving your brains out.” No, he wasn’t, but they had been going together for enough years for some people to think they were already married. And it was true, Harrison could just about talk her into anything. She didn’t have to call Maxine to know what their conversation was going to be like. But she did.
“Girl, he’s trying to game you! He’s been practicing some of his sweet talk and now he’s going to get you back up into Pam-Pam’s and run it up and down the aisle and he’s going to have you backing up so fast you won’t know what hit you. This is just one sorry-butt Negro who has got his own preservation society and that is you. And puh-leeze don’t tell me that you owe him something because you’re the only one giving anything.”
If she hadn’t told Harrison that she would be at Pam-Pam’s at two-thirty and hadn’t known that he had arranged for Debbie to give them twenty minutes, Abeni might have still backed out. She understood Maxine’s point of view and had written down what she was going to say to Harrison, and told herself that no matter what he said, she wouldn’t back down.
“Harrison, I have a serious problem with you,” Abeni said, trying to ignore the video camera that Harrison’s friend was holding and the lights arranged around the back booth in Pam-Pam’s. “I just don’t believe we can make it anymore.”
“You don’t believe …” there was a catch in Harrison’s voice as he spoke. “Abeni, I thought you would always believe in my dreams. I thought you would always be there for me.”
“I did, too,” Abeni said. “But I just can’t anymore.”
“Baby, look, we—you and me, Harrison and Abeni— have meant so much to each other over the years. Knowing that—what we’ve meant to each other and how much I’ve loved you—what are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say—” Abeni felt terrible inside, and ashamed, and embarrassed, but she was determined. “I’m trying to say we’re through.”
“You can’t be serious.” Harrison took her hands in his. “You can’t look me in the eyes and say—”
“We’re through!” Abeni said, looking Harrison Boyd directly in the eyes.
“Oh, no!” Harrison’s head snapped forward into his outstretched hands.
A woman across the aisle gasped and spilled her coffee. A teenager took a quick step backward as he saw Harrison’s entire body start to shake. The sobs were heartrending. When the big man looked up, his face was already streaked with tears.
“Please … baby …” Harrison’s lips moved but no other sound came out. Then he put his head down on the table again and seemed to twist in agony as his body slumped to the ground.
Abeni’s eyes opened wide as she watched Harrison, bent nearly double, sobbing on the patterned tile floor. After a long moment he looked up and lifted a trembling hand toward her. Again the lips moved but no sound came out.
“He’s trying to beg her,” a slight brown-skinned man shook his head sadly. “But the words just ain’t coming!”
When Abeni got over the shock she could feel her anger rising. Harrison didn’t say anything about all of this performance. She didn’t know where else Harrison was going with it but she had some suggestions in mind as she stood up.
“Yo, girl, give him a chance,” a young voice called out.
On the floor Harrison was still on his knees, still looking up at her, now with both hands open and pleading.
Abeni slid out of the booth, turned on her heel, and pushed her way through the crowd. There were some boos and catcalls and at least one woman called her a nasty name.
She barely managed to avoid a gypsy cab as she crossed Malcolm X Boulevard. She was all the way up to 138th Street before she noticed she didn’t have her cell.
Back at the shop, she told Noee, “By the time I got here, I didn’t need a
cell, I could send out any message I had using hate waves!”
“I don’t see why you went down there in the first place.”
“I’ve been going with the man for umpteen years and he asked me for a simple favor,” Abeni said. “I didn’t expect him to do something stupid like screaming and hollering all over the floor in public and embarrassing me to death. People looking at me like I’m some kind of cold-hearted freak or something. They actually booed me like I was a baseball team or something! I wish I had taken off my shoe and beat him in his big head.”
“What you crying for now?” Noee asked. “It’s over, right?”
“You can say that again.”
“So move on, big sister,” Noee said. “Move on.”
Which is exactly what Abeni Evans did for the next four months. She moved on with her work at the Curl-E-Que by taking a course in thread waxing, moved on in her personal life by starting a diary of her accomplishments, and moved her mind completely away from the entire classification known as sorry-butt Negroes.
Then Harrison called.
“Can you hear me? The traffic on Piccadilly is brutal this time of day.”
“Piccadilly? Where are you?”
“I rented a little place on Jermyn Street in London,” Harrison said. “Our film is being shown here and I got to tell you, it’s being well received here at the Brixton festival. Two studios are thinking of picking it up for national distribution.”
“What film?”
“My documentary on the war between the black man and the black woman,” Boyd said. “One review said that the episode in Pam-Pam’s was the strongest thing he’s seen in years. I’m just wondering if you want to come over for the closing ceremonies. You’re a star over here, baby. A stone star. Your picture is all over Leicester Square. I think I can get you some interviews with the BBC. What do you think?”
Abeni looked in the mirror to make sure she was awake. “Harrison Boyd, are you telling me I’m a star because I broke up with a black man?” she asked. “No, I’m not coming.”
“Hey, you don’t mind if I’m recording this, do you?” Harrison asked. “Matter of fact, would you mind saying the whole thing over again? Abeni? Abeni? You there?”