Up at the College Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Michele Andrea Bowen

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: April 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-53761-2

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  Also by Michele Andrea Bowen:

  CHURCH FOLK

  SECOND SUNDAY

  HOLY GHOST CORNER

  This book is dedicated in loving memory of my godbrother,

  Eric Alphonzo Haskins (aka Broskie)

  April 8, 1948, to August 22, 2007

  We miss you, with your grinnin’ self!

  Acknowledgments

  Wow!!! I can’t believe that I have been so blessed as to reach the point where I am writing the acknowledgments to Up at the College. Readers, you all have been so sweet and supportive, and patient. I am so thankful for you, your love, and your prayers.

  With any book, there are a lot of people to thank. And while I can’t put everybody in this acknowledgment, know that I appreciate and love you all.

  First, thank you Grand Central Publishing. Karen Thomas, my editor, Latoya Smith, and Linda Duggins—thank you for your help and support. To the gentleman who so graciously creates my beautiful book jacket artwork—thank you one more time. I love this cover!

  Thank you, S. B. Kleinman. Your copyediting was “on the money” and enhanced the quality of this book. Plus, shout-outs to the publicity team—Tanisha Christie and Nick Small. I appreciate all of your help.

  Pamela Harty, my agent. Girl … we’ve been through what some folks would refer to as “trills and trybulayshons.” Thank you, from my heart.

  I want to give a shout out to my “big brother,” Coach Joe Taylor, head coach of Florida A&M University’s (FAMU) football team, and play cousin, FAMU’s former head basketball coach, Mickey Clayton. Your input helped with the construction and development of the characters Head Coach Curtis Parker and his assistant coach, Maurice Fountain. Plus, Beverly Taylor, my good friend of over fifteen years, really schooled me on life as a coach’s wife. Whew—never knew that it was so akin to being the first lady of a church. My hat goes off to both you and Mrs. Clayton.

  Thank you, Elaine Cardin, owner of Lakewood Hairquarters in Durham. It was so much fun writing you in as the character who gave Yvonne her fabulous makeover.

  To my girls—Jacquelin Thomas and Victoria Christopher Murray—almost a decade that we have been in this business together. And God ain’t thru’ with us yet.

  My church, St. Joseph’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina, along with my choir, The Inspirational Singers. Love you much.

  My pastor, Reverend Philip R. Cousin Jr., and First Lady Angela M. Cousin. You two are mighty people of God and a blessing to the AME Church.

  Ken and Ava Brownlee—y’all know I cannot write an acknowledgment and not put you all in it.

  And my family. My mommy, Minnie Bowen, is always there for me and my babies, Laura and Janina. What would we do without MaMa? My grandmother, DaDa, my Uncle James (Bishop Nelson) and my Aunt Bessie (Mother Nelson), along with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Love to all of you.

  But most importantly, I thank and praise the Lord in the name of Jesus. None of this would have been possible without the Lord, who is my everything.

  I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.

  Psalm 34:1–3 (NKJV)

  Michele Andrea Bowen

  June 4, 2008

  PROLOGUE

  Yvonne sat on the floor, surrounded by the boxes crowding up the living room, wishing she had said “Yes” instead of “No” when her parents asked if she wanted them to come up to Richmond and help with the packing. The movers were coming in three days and Yvonne felt like she could use six.

  She didn’t want to move out of her home. But she had to because Darrell, her soon-to-be ex-husband, had threatened to fight her for custody of their two daughters if she didn’t take the girls and get out of their home by a certain date. Nobody who heard this story could believe that a man would put his wife and children out of their own home based on the bogus assumption that this house was his simply because Yvonne was an at-home mom when they bought it.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Who is it?” Yvonne spat out, and then kicked a half-filled moving box, hurting her toe.

  The doorbell rang again, this time followed by loud and insistent knocking. Didn’t this person hear her say “Who is it?” Yvonne thought as she snatched the door open, ready to flip off on whoever was on the other side. Her angry glare met the bewildered expression of the young lady cradling a crystal vase filled with three dozen velvety pink roses.

  “Mrs. Copeland?” the young woman asked in a kind and soothing voice.

  “Yes?” Yvonne said, her voice a whole lot softer.

  “These are for you.”

  “Me?” Yvonne raised an eyebrow, wondering who thought she needed a vase full of expensive pink roses when her budget was so tight.

  “Yes, they are for you,” the young woman answered and put the vase in Yvonne’s hands.

  “Come on in,” Yvonne said over her shoulder, as she put the vase on top of the white baby grand piano and turned to sign for the flowers.

  “You have a beautiful home, Mrs. Copeland.”

  All Yvonne could do was nod. The house was very beautiful. But it was not her home anymore. She said, “Do you have a pen?”

  The young woman reached into the bag on her shoulder and put a pale pink envelope into Yvonne’s outstretched hand.

  They are not paying me enough for this, she thought, watching Yvonne trying to figure out what in the world was going on.

  “These flowers are not from the florist. My boss, your husband’s lawyer, was instructed by Dr. Copeland to deliver your separation agreement and these flowers to you.”

  Yvonne couldn’t believe Darrell. Today was Valentine’s Day and he knew how much she loved Valentine’s Day. It was like he was doing everything in his power to hurt her as badly as he could. She felt the weight of the envelope and tried not to admire the e
xquisite, fine linen stationery in her favorite color. Valentine’s Day, Yvonne kept thinking as she whispered, “Why me?”

  “Mrs. Copeland, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Yvonne answered, as she struggled to blink back hot tears. She had been prepared for hurt, surmising that she couldn’t get through a divorce without some casualty of the heart. But she didn’t know it would be this bad.

  The young woman had never met Yvonne but she knew that in her worst moment, Mrs. Copeland had never done anything to be treated like this by her husband and the father of her children.

  Tears streamed down Yvonne’s cheeks as she stared into the kind blue eyes of this unlikely bearer of bad news.

  “Mrs. Copeland, I could get fired for saying this to you. But you have to know that any man who treats you with such disregard is not worth your tears. I pray that the day you leave this house, you will step out on faith, trust God, and never look back.”

  Yvonne sat down on one of the moving boxes. She put her face in her hands and sobbed. The young lady sat down and put her arm around Yvonne’s shoulders.

  “I know you might not feel this right now, but God is on your side, and He will see you through this storm.”

  Yvonne nodded. See her through. How many times had she heard those words in the past few months? As far as she was concerned, God seeing her through this disaster was a pretty tall order. Here she was, a well-educated, forty-three-year-old black woman with two daughters, unemployed, forced to leave a home she didn’t think she’d ever be able to buy again, and crying on the shoulders of a blond, blue-eyed white woman who looked like the worst problem she’d ever had was being a day late paying her rent simply because she had forgotten to post a reminder on her calendar.

  The young lady reached into her bag and pulled out a baby blue suede Bible. She turned to the first chapter of Luke and found verse thirty-seven.

  “You know,” she said, “it says right here that ‘nothing is impossible with God.’ Not only is He going to see you through all of this, He is going to create for you cause to give a wonderful testimony about the glory of the Lord. And whenever it feels like it can’t get any worse, you just remember that nothing, absolutely nothing is impossible with our God.”

  “Thank you,” Yvonne whispered, thinking that she was experiencing one of those “it can’t get any worse” moments right now.

  “I’ll let myself out,” the young lady said as she got up and walked to the door.

  By the time Yvonne’s three days were up and February seventeenth, moving day, rolled up on her, Yvonne was ready to transform this season in her life into a “gone are the things of the past” event. She walked through the house, making sure that all of her boxes were in place, and came upon the last unsealed box, pulled back the flaps, and peered inside at the worn white satin wedding album. It was obvious that Darrell had tossed the album into the box, apparently hoping to convey that he did not want any reminders of her in this house.

  “I wonder if he plans on tossing the girls in a box, too,” Yvonne mused. She pulled the wedding album out of the box and stared at Darrell’s thin, solemn face on what was supposed to have been one of the “happiest days of her life,” wondering why the boy had ever formed his mouth to ask her to marry him. Even during their best times together, Darrell always found something wrong with Yvonne. Throughout their marriage, he lectured her relentlessly on what he contended was her “tendency to act like a simpleton, marred even more so by her country ways and mannerisms.”

  She stared at herself a moment, wondering why the pretty twentysomething in the picture, with yards and yards of delicate lace trailing behind her, didn’t have the sense to bunch up that dress and run. She couldn’t help but think about the day Darrell came home and announced, “After much contemplation, relentless journaling to soothe my endless vexation with you, tai chi, acupuncture, and colon cleansing to rid myself of the impurities brought on by my anxiety over this situation, I have decided that I must find my way back to my original self through a wrenching detachment process some refer to as a divorce.

  “And please, turn off that clamor,” he snapped, referring to the music on her CD player. “I can barely hear myself think above all of that rump-shaking, bass-thumping garbage.”

  “Darrell,” Yvonne said evenly, “this is a Jonathan Nelson CD, and he is a gospel singer.”

  Darrell snorted in disgust. He disliked gospel music even more than he did hip-hop and rhythm and blues.

  “You want to sit down?”

  “No,” he answered. “I prefer to stand.”

  “Okay. Suit yourself.”

  “That’s the problem with you, Yvonne,” he snarled. “You are so simple. I mean, look at me. I’ve spent years earning a PhD in Exotic Agricultural Studies, done postdoctoral studies all over the world, and I continue to expand my intellect in every way possible. But you”—Darrell snorted in disgust—“you are content to walk around grinning over the smallest and most insignificant matter. You are enamored with R&B and gospel music, but rarely do you want to listen to anything that expands your mind. I have yet to walk into this office and hear something worthwhile like the Brahmin Folk Shamans.”

  Yvonne was not going to dignify that comment with a response—even though she had plenty to say on the matter. The one time she tried to listen to a song by that group just to please Darrell, the leader’s voice, which was weird, gave her a splitting headache. He sounded just like Chewbacca from Star Wars. She stared at Darrell for a moment and thought about going off on him and putting him out of her office. But she heard a soft voice in her spirit whispering, “Get still and be quiet.”

  Neither said a word. The longer they were silent, the more peaceful Yvonne became, even though her husband’s agitation escalated with each passing second. When Darrell finally spoke again, he was so mad for a moment he literally forgot how to unclench his teeth. His words came hissing out.

  “We’ve been together a total of sixteen years and it feels like an eternity spent betwixt and between Heaven and Hell. I want you and the girls out of my house seven weeks from today. And here are the terms of our pending separation,” he said as he tossed a heavy envelope at her feet.

  Yvonne was stunned. She didn’t know that her husband, her babies’ daddy, felt this way about her. Oh, she knew that Darrell was going through something—he was always going through some kind of dramatic episode. But this? This was something beyond the usual “Darrell is going through something or another.” This was a carefully planned kill, steal, and destroy mission.

  When Darrell stormed out of her office that day, it was the end of her marriage and life as she’d known it over the past decade. Yvonne remembered sitting at her desk staring at the ocean screen saver on her computer until she got bored enough to initiate the excruciating process of putting her shattered life back together.

  Even now, Yvonne marveled at all the things she didn’t do or didn’t say. Whenever she relayed the story to family or a close friend, they all said the same thing.

  “Girl, you mean to tell me that he said all of that and you didn’t yell, get to cussin’, cry until snot ran down into your mouth, put sugar in his gas tank, smear his car with creamed corn, send nasty e-mails to his boss, or open up a bunch of magazine subscriptions in his name?”

  “Nope,” was all Yvonne had said. As much as she had wanted to do all of the above and then some, she had not been able to do anything but ask the Lord to provide her with protection in the midst of this raging storm—a Holy Ghost umbrella that wouldn’t bend back and be ripped out of her hands by a particularly harsh and bitter wind.

  Yvonne dropped the wedding album on the floor, stepped on it, and then kicked it across the room. She sealed the box and went through the house one last time before the movers were scheduled to arrive. When she was sure that all was in order, Yvonne went into the kitchen and made herself a big, fat, simple, country, and ghetto-licious sandwich with the bologna she bought specifically for this da
y. She washed out the empty mayonnaise jar in the sink and filled it up with red Kool-Aid. She wrapped the sandwich in a piece of wax paper, grabbed the jar of Kool-Aid, and went and sat on the kitchen chair she’d put on the front porch to sit in while she ate this sandwich. She swallowed the last bite right before she saw the nose of the moving truck rolling up the street. It was the best meal she’d ever eaten at this house.

  ONE

  Yvonne’s oldest daughter, D’Relle Copeland, sneaked and turned the car radio from her mother’s favorite station, the old school Foxy 107, to her favorite, 102 Jamz in Greensboro, then turned the radio off right before Yvonne walked out of the house.

  “You know she is going to turn it right back to her station. She always does.”

  “Shut up, Danesha,” D’Relle snapped at her younger sister. Sometimes Danesha acted like her calling in life was to tell and comment on everything.

  Danesha rolled her eyes at her sister, mumbling, “You are such a butt-head.”

  “God don’t like ugly.”

  “Then He sho’ don’t like you. ’Cause whenever I look up the word ‘ugly’ in the dictionary, all I see is a picture of D’Relle Lenaye Copeland.”

  “Middle schooler.”

  “Yo’ mama,” Danesha shot back, and then shut up when Yvonne opened the car door and it dawned on her that she was talking about her own mama, too.

  “Middle schooler,” D’Relle said as she licked her finger and wrote an invisible score in the air. Danesha, an eighth grader, hated that she had to wait another year before she could go to Hillside High School with her older sister.

  Yvonne slid into the driver’s seat, buckled her seat belt, and turned on the radio. One of her favorite older rap songs, “Just Walk It Out,” was playing: “East side walk it out, west side walk it out …” She knew D’Relle had rigged the radio and wished something her old school ears couldn’t stand to listen to was on so she could flip the switch on her smarty-pants fifteen-year-old. But she opted for an even better comeuppance for Miss Thang.