Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) Read online

  “Yeah, but did he have to just give it to me like that? We could have at least had a discussion about it first or something. He just pulled it out of the backseat and gave it to me like he was handing me a box of chocolates or a birthday card.”

  “I have to agree that that was pretty tacky, but look beyond that point and look at what was really going on. He wants to protect his stuff, and you should want to protect yours too.”

  “But don’t you think that sets a negative tone for the marriage?”

  “Well, kind of, but at the same time, you can’t be too careful, Dina. As much as people intend for their marriages to last forever, things don’t always turn out that way.”

  Celeste was right, but still, Bertrand’s delivery was awful. Not to mention that in his eyes, on paper I looked like some little broken-down girl from the ghetto who needed him to save me. The sad part was, that was exactly where my life was at the moment—in need of saving.

  It got me thinking about my assets and what I did and did not have, and it actually made me a bit depressed, because at thirty-one years old, I felt like I should have more to show for myself besides my car, which was a few more months away from being completely paid for, but it wasn’t like I drove a Lamborghini. There wasn’t much blue book value to a twelve-year-old Honda Accord. Outside of that, I had a small term life insurance policy, which apparently counted as an asset, because it was included in Bertrand’s template.

  Even with me plugging in the value of my life insurance, my net worth still looked awful, reflecting a negative value. This reality was a huge slap in my face, but I couldn’t let Bertrand think I was seriously this broke, so I made up some numbers, inflating the amount of money I had in savings and beefing up my insurance policy values. By the time I was done fudging the numbers, I looked pretty good. All I had to do was explain to Bertrand what was going on with me getting calls from debt collectors. I’d just tell him that there was a certain part of my savings that I never dug into, no matter what. Didn’t make much sense to me, but he was so financially disciplined, he might go for it.

  With Bertrand’s original document now full of red marks where I made corrections to my financial standing, I dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, testing the waters.

  “Hi.” My voice was intentionally flat and stoic, as I was still feeling some type of way about this whole thing.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you about this . . . this . . . document,” I said, unable to get the words prenuptial agreement out of my mouth.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you, Dina,” he immediately blurted.

  “No, it’s all right. You just caught me off guard,” I lied. “I have had a chance to read through it thoroughly, and there are some things on it that need to be changed.”

  “Okay,” he said, more as a question. “Like what?”

  “Well, first of all, you didn’t have enough financial information on me to complete my portion, so the figures there need correcting.”

  “Okay,” he easily agreed.

  “Why did you do it without trying to at least find that information out?”

  “Well, I didn’t realize that I didn’t know any different. I mean, I know you’ve been talking about the shop being slow for a while, so I knew the salary part was right, and then you shared with me that you were having a hard time making ends meet, so I just assumed that your resources were exhausted.”

  “For your information, Mr. Bertrand Peyton, I do have other resources. I am just very careful about how I utilize them,” I said firmly, delivering my prepared lie.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I should have consulted with you first to make sure I had all my facts straight.”

  “Yes, you should have.” I let silence settle for a few seconds as a reprimand, then started speaking again. “Secondly, I want an infidelity clause added in.”

  “An infidelity clause?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you propose it states?” he asked.

  “I want it to say that if either of us gets caught cheating, as retribution, the injured spouse is owed the value of the current home where we reside, in cash dollars.”

  “What!” Bertrand sounded just as shocked as I was just a couple of hours ago.

  “In other words, if you cheat on me, you owe me the value of the home we live in,” I restated.

  “What about if you cheat?” he countered, sounding irritated.

  “Same thing goes for me. The clause works both ways.”

  “So let me get this right. You want to move into my house and then try to take it from me?” There was a disbelieving tone to his voice.

  “I don’t have to move into your house. We can buy a whole new house once we get married if you want to, and no, I’m not trying to take anything. I’m only trying to do what you’re trying to do—protect what is important to me.”

  “How is that?” he questioned.

  “Well, clearly, your assets are important to you, which is why you want me to sign a prenup, right?”

  “Okay,” he said in a “Go on” kind of way.

  “What’s important to me is my heart, and that’s what I want to protect.”

  “How is you trying to take my house protecting your heart?”

  “In my opinion, when you cheat on your spouse, you rob them of a happy home, so that’s what you need to replace. There’s no peace, love, and happiness inside four walls where someone has violated the marriage vows by cheating. So to make up for ripping away a happy home, the cheater has to replace it with a home that is just as valuable, where the injured spouse can live in peace.” Sounded fair to me.

  “That’s not right!” Bertrand barked.

  “Why not?” He was really going to have to explain his point of disagreement to me.

  “Because it’s not!”

  “And if you were to cheat on me, that wouldn’t be right, either.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just go back to living in your own apartment? Why would you try to take my house?”

  “Again, I am not trying to take anything. I’m only trying to protect what is most important to me. A house can be replaced, money can be remade, sofas and televisions and whatnot can be rebought, but you can’t unbreak a heart, and I want to be assured that number one, you won’t do that, and number two, if you do, there are consequences for it.” I didn’t see why he was giving me so much flack on this point.

  “So if you cheat, then what?”

  “I told you, the same thing goes for me. Wherever we live at the time the indiscretion is found out, whatever the value of that particular home is, I’d have to pay you that in cash.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” he huffed.

  “Why do you have a problem with it? Are you planning on cheating?”

  “It’s just not right, Dina,” he repeated without answering my question. “I’ve worked hard for everything that I have, and for you to just try to come in and take it all from me . . .” He trailed off.

  “Sounds like you might be a cheater to me.”

  “It ain’t even like that.”

  “Then what is it like? For me it’s no big deal.”

  “Because you don’t have what I have,” he retorted.

  “And you can keep all your stuff as long as you don’t cheat. I don’t see where the problem lies.”

  Bertrand pushed a heavy sigh into my ear. “I gotta think about this one.”

  “Take your time. I’m not signing this document without that being added.”

  “That’s just like a woman,” he mumbled under his breath, but audibly enough for me to hear him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll get back to you about it.”

  “Okay. Cool,” I stated before he uttered an obligatory “Love you.”

  “Love you too,” I said, almost too jubilantly.

  I tossed the document on the floor beside my bed and lean
ed back on my pillows. Well played, ma’am. Well played. The only thing was, I was having serious doubts about moving into his home, but now I couldn’t afford not to.

  Chapter 10

  Candis

  I didn’t believe in purpose. I didn’t believe that people were born to carry out a specific mission in life. I was sick of people asking me, “What’s your purpose?” Hell if I knew. I thought that if people were honest, they would admit that it was by happenstance that they’d become who they became. I’d heard too many stories of people saying, “I had no intentions on being a pastor, but God had other plans.” Or “When Sister Lettie prophesied over me and told me I was going to be a powerful first lady, I said to myself, ‘She didn’t hear from God.’ But sure enough, here I am.” They didn’t walk in purpose and destiny and all that crap.

  And even for people that had an idea of what they wanted to do and what they wanted to become, that didn’t always work out. “I tried my best to be a business owner from the time I was sixteen, but it just didn’t work out for me.” So I got right irritated when I was sitting in church, minding my own spiritual business, trying to keep my deal with God—although I felt like He played me with that whole Hamilton thing—and the woman on the platform with a wig bigger than her head pointed her finger at me and yelled into the microphone, “You confused because you don’t know your purpose!”

  I looked around, not realizing who she was talking to, but then she said, “You. Yes, you. Stop looking around, woman in the red blouse.” Oh, snap. That was indeed me. “You’ve got to understand your purpose and what you’re here for!” she chided. “Stop trying to be in control and do things the way you think they should be done. God knows what He’s doing!” she yelled at me in front of the whole congregation. “You sitting up there, trying to direct God in what to do and what to send you, instead of just doing what He’s called you to do.”

  Maybe I would do what He’s “called” me to do if I knew what it was. But I didn’t know, and how would I know? How does anybody know? I wanted to yell that back up there to her, but I knew that wasn’t proper church protocol. It kind of made me angry, not so much at her, but at God, because I had been praying and asking Him all kinds of questions about why things weren’t working out for me, and He wasn’t saying anything. Not a single word. So how was He gonna put me on blast like this in front of all these people, like I hadn’t asked Him about this stuff privately?

  “Come on up here,” the woman demanded. “I’m gonna lay hands on you right now and pray that your eyes be opened and your purpose be revealed!”

  People all around me started clapping their hands like I had won some kind of award. I was embarrassed, but I found myself following her instructions and heading for the altar.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Candis,” I stated, darting my eyes around me, feeling a thousand pairs of eyeballs burning a hole in the back of my head.

  “Lift your hands to the Lord,” she instructed further. Before I had a chance to do that, two female ushers came rushing toward me and stood at my back, I guess preparing to catch me and guide me to the floor if I should happen to faint. They could have kept right on tending to whatever they were doing before I was called up there to be publicly humiliated, because I wasn’t about to lie on this floor.

  I lifted my hands, and the big-wigged lady slapped my forehead with a greasy hand. As she yelled out some instructions for God to carry out, like, “Open her understanding, Lord,” “Show her the way, Lord,” “Let the scales fall from her eyes, Lord,” her hand violently shook my head back and forth, like she was trying to hurry up and shake salt onto some food. Then she started pushing me backward—I guess to get me to fall back—but like I said, that wasn’t gonna happen. I took a step back, and she stepped forward to maintain the pressure on my head. I stepped back again. Then she started yelling, “Don’t fight it! Don’t fight it! Yield unto the Lord!” The people around me seemed to get louder and louder, praying along with her. This time I stepped back twice, but she pushed harder, charging forth, determined not to let me go.

  That was when I decided to pray for myself.

  God, if you love me at all, even a little bit, please get this woman off my head. Let her go pick on someone else. Please, I’m begging you.

  I must have taken about four more steps before she finally eased up off my head by grabbing my hands instead. “I’m going to be praying for you, sista. You gotta let it go! You gotta let it go!”

  Let what go? What was she talking about? I didn’t have anything to hold on to except my sanity. What exactly did she feel I was hoarding? I was silent and tried to look however you were supposed to look when you were being pushed around the church sanctuary in front of a bunch of people. I guess that expression would be respectful, open, and in agreement. Honestly, I felt none of that.

  “Ahhhhh!” she uttered, letting out a revealing moan. “You’re looking for that man to come a certain way! You got your little checklist ready! Yes, you do. I see it,” she said, loud enough for the people down the street and around the corner to hear. “You done told God, ‘Send me a man, Lord, but he gotta be this tall and he gotta have this much money and he gotta be this color!’ Honey! He ain’t coming the way you think he should come. Trust me, you don’t want what you think you want! Oh yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah! It was the stone that the builders rejected that became the chief cornerstone. Don’t reject your blessing! Don’t push it away. He might not look like much on the outside, but there’s a blessing in there for you if you dig beneath the surface.”

  How was that for putting all my business on Front Street? That was what I hated about people doing what church folks called “giving you a word.” All your business was just as good as told. I would have tried to leave right then, but my purse was still in the pew where I’d been sitting, not to mention everyone was still staring at me.

  As soon as the benediction was over, I grabbed my purse and tried to hightail it to the car, but of course, there were people who felt the need to reach out and pat me on the arm or back with a look of pity on their faces.

  “Be encouraged, my sister.”

  Lord, have mercy. I should have known God would have a trick up His sleeve for me trying to wheel and deal with Him for a man.

  Chapter 11

  Celeste

  I scanned the menu for the cheapest thing listed while Candis and I waited for Dina to arrive. I didn’t know why we just couldn’t have eaten at Candis’s house. She loved to cook and was always throwing some type of social get-together. My wallet sure would have appreciated it. I had only thirty dollars to get me through the next week, and that was before I put gas in the car to get the kids back and forth to school and to job hunt. Being broke was the pits, and being broke but pretending you had enough money to at least have lunch with your girlfriends was even worse.

  I’d been out of work for three months now. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I couldn’t nail down another job. I was intelligent, ethical, professional, and I could blow any interview out of the water. I’d chalked it up to the economy, because that was what I heard everyone else blaming their troubles on.

  It was only because I had had the sense and discipline to have a little bit of a savings—which Equanto didn’t know about—and was able to draw unemployment that we’d not been evicted. I’d also applied for SNAP, or food stamps, as they were called back in the day, to make sure I could feed my babies. I was ashamed to do it, but with three mouths depending on me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I had to put pride aside and do what I needed to do.

  E had picked up a job at a fast-food joint to fill in the gap, but things weren’t that great between us. I was still bitter that he’d gotten me fired from my job. As for the something he needed to take care of that day, it amounted to him going to damn Las Vegas with a couple of his boys, wasting money, and getting drunk. He didn’t get back until the next afternoon.

  When I told him I’d been fired for being lat
e one too many times, he shook his head and said, “I swear you ain’t worth a damn. I told you to catch the bus.”

  We got to swinging and scrappin’ and cussin’ and throwing stuff and what have you, but when it was all said and done, I still didn’t have a job. And I still had a husband that got on my last nerve every chance he got, but he was my husband, and that was what marriages were made of. Ups and downs, goods and bads, ins and outs, and richer times and poorer times. This was definitely a poorer time, and the last place I needed to be was out at a restaurant, spending money on a meal. I should have just found something else to do at home, but since I wasn’t currently working and frequently needed an escape from Equanto, getting together with Candis and Dina had truly become the highlight of my week, so I’d decided to scrape my pennies together and go.

  “What can I get you beautiful ladies to drink?” asked our server, a young man who looked like he could be working his way through college. Lawd, I could use a drink right now! I waited to see if Candis ordered an appetizer, and lucky for me, she did.

  “I’d like a frozen strawberry daiquiri, and can you bring us the sampler platter please? We’re waiting on one more person, but we need something to nibble on,” she said.

  With appetizers coming, I could skip the entrée and enjoy something other than water to drink. I ordered a drink made of whiskey, peach schnapps, blackberries, mint, fresh-squeezed lemon, and lemon-lime soda. By the time I ate a few chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks, I’d be good.

  “How’s the job search going, Celeste?” Candis asked.

  “Girl, awful. If I don’t find something soon, I’m going to need a key to your place,” I said in jest, but really, I wasn’t kidding. “My savings is getting sucked bone dry.”

  “At least you had the sense enough to have a savings.”

  I didn’t comment, because truth be told, my savings account was now as empty as a used ziplock bag.

  Dina finally made it to the table, looking like she’d had a hard day. “Hey, lovelies,” she greeted.

  Candis and I answered in unison, while I slid to the left to make room for Dina on my side of the booth.