Up at the College Read online

  “D’Relle, you go and sit in the backseat with your sister.”

  “But, Mama, you drop me off first.”

  “So what’s your point,” Yvonne replied, knowing that D’Relle was working hard to think of a reason to stay in the front.

  D’Relle got out of the car and went and sat in the back with Danesha, who snickered and then said, “Mama, D is breathing on me and rolling her eyes just ’cause she has to ride in the backseat like she is in middle school.”

  “Stop breathing on your sister.”

  “But, Mama, I look like a chump sitting back here like this, losing cool points.”

  “Then get up and get moving and don’t miss your bus again,” Yvonne told her, not caring if she never earned a so-called cool point ever again. “And from now on,” she continued, “every time your lazy butt misses that bus, you will ride in the back for the entire day. ’Cause I get tired of driving you to school when I don’t have to.”

  “I ain’t never heard you complain about driving Trog to school, just me,” D’Relle snapped at her mother, and then rolled her eyes to add to the effect.

  Yvonne drove back up into the driveway, put the car in park, and got out. She opened the back door and reached for her oldest child.

  D’Relle grabbed the passenger-side seat belt strap in a feeble effort to stay in the safety zone of the car. But when her mother began to climb into that backseat, D’Relle started to cry and whimpered, “I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean it. Okay, Mama? Okay, Mama?”

  “D’Relle, if you ever take a mind to talk like that to me again, you are going to need the SWAT team to get me up off of you. Do you understand me, little girl?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” D’Relle said, sheer relief pouring all over her when Yvonne finally retreated from the backseat.

  Danesha was still and quiet, hoping to fade into the seat upholstery. The last thing she wanted was for her mama to break off a piece of what she was about to put on D’Relle and then give it to her. But her plan to remain unnoticed wasn’t foolproof. Yvonne’s keen mama eyes bore into Danesha with greater precision than any laser.

  “And you better watch your step, too, missy. I have plenty left over of what I was planning to give your sister. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Danesha whispered.

  “Now let’s see if we can do what we’ve been trying to do all morning—leave this house and get you two to school,” Yvonne snapped, and then turned the radio to the Light gospel station. She hiked up the volume on what she secretly knew D’Relle and Danesha believed was the countriest gospel song ever written in modern history. She tried not to laugh when she saw the sisters try to sneak and roll their eyes when the words “Jesus is my doctor, He brangs me all my medicines … in the room” blasted out of the car windows for eerr-body to hear.

  D’Relle started praying under her breath, “Lord, PLEASE end this song before we get to the turn light for Hillside.”

  Yvonne waved at Danesha and pulled off from her last school stop, Durham School of the Arts Middle School entrance, and gave a sigh of relief. If those two weren’t getting on her last nerve this morning, she didn’t know who was. Yet irrespective of the “lil’ negro chirrens show” the girls had put on this morning, life was more pleasant and peaceful than it had been in years. And to add to her joy, Yvonne couldn’t even describe the relief she’d felt when Darrell called to announce that he was going on an academic sabbatical in Vietnam.

  Six whole months without having to lay one eye on Darrell Edward Copeland and his wifey-to-be, Dr. Bettina Davidson, was the best news she’d heard in a very long time. Darrell was pompous and difficult. But that Bettina? The heifer was sneaky, mean, and always trying to take a shot at a sister from somewhere in the cut. Six whole months without those heathens in her life was enough to make Yvonne want to get out of her car and do the Holy Dance right out here on Highway 751.

  Yvonne turned the radio to Foxy 107. An old Keyshia Cole song was playing. She turned the radio up, so as not to miss one note of one of her favorite songs. “I remember when my heart broke, I remember when I gave up loving you …” Yvonne could practically feel those words, sung to such a lovely melody with the smoothest jazz piano solo tinkling in the background.

  Yvonne remembered the day her heart broke—felt as if it would never be made whole again. She used to wish, in the most painful moments, that there was some kind of Krazy Glue from Heaven she could apply to all of the fragments of her heart and put it back together. And sometimes it seemed as if nobody understood what she was going through. It was in those moments of the worst pain that she realized Jesus understood and He had everything she needed to put her heart back right. The day she gave up loving Darrell to Jesus was the day Jesus took her heart in His hands and healed her.

  She was glad to be at a stoplight—it gave her some time to enjoy the beautiful blue sky, made even lovelier by the fluffy white clouds, and the warm sunshine bathing her face. It was a wonderful day and Yvonne was glad that her heart was free and full of joy. Folks just didn’t know how heartache and too much struggling could dim even the sunniest day. But to be able to pray those clouds back and bask in God’s love was something wonderful, and Yvonne didn’t take it for granted.

  “Thank you, Lord, for all that You’ve done for me,” she said out loud, glad the DJ decided to really go old school and do an “instant replay” of the song. Sometimes, you just needed to hear one of your favorite songs more than once. Yvonne knew that God had been so good to her. She had a wonderful home in Cashmere Estates, and the perfect job as a designer and adjunct professor in the Department of Interior and Exterior Design at Evangeline T. Marshall University, or Eva T., as the school was called by most black folk in Durham County.

  Yvonne turned left onto Okelly Chapel Road and then turned left again when she reached the entrance of the university, which was located where the Durham and Chatham County lines intersected. She drove down the narrow street leading to the Daniel Meeting Building, where she worked, eyes scanning the area for a parking space. There was a shortage of decent parking spaces on campus, and if that wasn’t bad enough, just across the road stood the brand-new Athletic Department with more spaces than they needed or ever used during working hours. She wished somebody could get through to the athletic director, Gilead Jackson, and persuade him to let her department use some of those spaces.

  But Gilead was the kind of negro who loved having something other people wanted. And it made his day every time he stood in his picture window and watched folks from other departments driving around and around the campus looking for a decent place to park. When asked why he was so mean and stingy, Gilead said, “Those parking spaces are mine, and I can do whatever I want to do with them. If I choose to let them sit there empty, then that’s just the way it is going to be.”

  The departments in close proximity to the Athletic Department’s parking spaces, like Yvonne’s building, decided to go over Gilead’s head when he issued that bold, ugly, and callous statement during a faculty senate meeting. But they soon found out that those efforts were in vain because their president, Sam Redmond, was prone to looking the other way when Gilead Jackson was the subject of his faculty’s concern. A few folks decided that they would just up and out-bold Gilead and parked in those spaces anyway. That rebellion was quickly put to rest, after everybody’s car was towed to a barbed-wire-fenced lot in Chapel Hill with pit bulls running all over the place.

  The faculty was furious, especially when they heard about those mean guard dogs standing watch over some folks’ prized Mercedes and Lexus cars. They threatened Gilead with a boycott of all Athletic Department activities at the next faculty senate meeting. His response?

  “This is a historically black institution of higher learning. Do you honestly think that I believe all of you black people are going to give up football, basketball, track and field, tailgating parties, homecoming, butt-jiggling cheerleaders, and the Battle of the Bands competition over some parking
spaces? Y’all negroes best get up on out of my face before I honor my well-earned reputation as a Class A, Division I Butt-Head.”

  Yvonne had been at that meeting. She could not believe Gilead had gotten up at a university meeting and talked like he was a thug on the corner, getting ready to throw down. But she had to remember that they were at an HBCU, and there were some behind-the-scenes black people shenanigans occurring that boggled the mind and would run a white person crazy. Black people. She loved her people and she loved and cherished black institutions. But sometimes … black folk were something else.

  She spied a decent parking space and eased her brand-new, sea-blue metallic-colored Infiniti FX45 SUV into it. Yvonne and the girls loved this car. The day they bought it, they rode all over Durham smiling and laughing, having the time of their lives, and hollering out the windows at anybody they knew. But this car was just the icing on the cake of the many blessings God had poured into their lives once Yvonne released her old life into His hands, and the divorce became final.

  She had a year-to-year position in the Department of Interior and Exterior Design at a decent salary, along with a lovely 2,100-square-foot cottage, for the price of a modest two-bedroom apartment, in Cashmere Estates. It was nothing but the Lord who led Lamont Green to lease the home out to her for 850 dollars a month, in exchange for her upgrading and designing it for the virtual tour of cottage homes on the community’s website. Yvonne also served as the in-house consultant for upgrades and changes to all homes in Cashmere Estates.

  She got out of the car and went around to the back to get her bag filled with floor samples, paint samples, and swatches of materials for the furnishings needed for the university’s newly rehabbed building for the alumni, boosters, and trustees. Yvonne set the bag on the ground, closed the back of the SUV, and headed inside. She set the bag down one more time, and was about to pull at the heavy door when her eyes lighted on Tangie Bonner, one of the university’s assistant managers for food services, getting out of Rico Sneed’s car. Rico was married to her friend Marquita Robinson Sneed, and didn’t have a semblance of a job at Eva T. If her memory served her correctly, Rico worked at UNC in Chapel Hill. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning, and if what she knew about most state jobs was correct, old boy should have been on the clock about an hour ago.

  She watched Tangie leaning down and sticking her head into Rico’s window, butt twitching back and forth, like whatever was being said sho’ was sounding good to her. Yvonne felt a stab of pain in her heart. Marquita was a sweet person and didn’t deserve to be disrespected by either of them. Even though Rico had never been one of Yvonne’s favorite people, she’d never pegged him to be a liar and a cheat. She always believed that he was a trash-talking and opinionated braggart—but not a cheat, and especially not with a cheap trick like Tangie Bonner.

  Plus, Tangie should have been ashamed of herself, considering the many times she had been to Marquita’s house, soliciting her help with a special catering job at the school that food services wasn’t equipped to handle. Not to mention how many times the girl had been at the house stuffing her face with some of Marquita’s good food, or bemoaning the loss of one more man who Tangie had previously claimed was the one. And there were absolutely no words to describe a man who would tap some tail off a woman who had been all up in his wife’s house.

  Yvonne could hear Rico laughing and wished she couldn’t imagine what that negro looked like sitting in that red Cadillac STS, grinning and talking trash. Because she knew exactly what he looked like—had seen him countless times whenever they were around Marquita and her family. It was a good thing for those two that Yvonne didn’t have her nail gun down in that bag, or else she would have shot out all of Rico’s 350-dollar tires.

  She went into the building, momentarily refreshed by the song playing over the department’s sound system. Elder Jimmy Hicks’s “I told that ole’ devil to get on out of my way, he’s got to move,” was playing. Yvonne loved that song. It said exactly what the saints felt when the enemy was standing in the way causing trouble. There were two gospel musicians who could get you going good in the morning, as far as she was concerned: Elder Jimmy Hicks and Keith “Wonderboy” Johnson. Their earthy, down-home songs always told it like it needed to be told.

  One of the best things about working in this department was that it was staffed by saved, sanctified, and Holy Ghost–filled folk. That was rare. Most times there were a few saved folks in the cut, but never like this. And it was a beautiful thing to work with people who loved the Lord and worked hard to live and work in line with the Word of God.

  Yvonne unlocked the door to her office, which was more like an office/workshop. The room was about the size of a large family room in a good-size home. The walls were painted a soft and soothing shade of gray, with charcoal on all of the wood trim and molding. Her door was brick red, as were the wooden blinds and her desk and shelves. There were large plants in charcoal- and brick- colored pots placed along the windows, which practically surrounded the entire room. Industrial steel lighting hung from the ceiling, and there were two large steel cabinets at the back of the room that were full of rolls of upholstery fabric, area rugs, paint, and a host of interesting tools and items. There were also two ebony-colored wood tables, surrounded by brick stained steel chairs, with charcoal- and brick-colored tile flooring. Yvonne had decorated her own office, which was the envy of many of her colleagues.

  She flipped on her computer, typed in the password, and then began her morning ritual of opening the blinds and checking on her plants. The phone rang just as she was about to stick her finger down into the soil of one of the plants.

  “Do you ever answer your phone on time?” her cousin Maurice’s wife, Trina Fountain, asked.

  “I answered it on time this time,” Yvonne responded defensively.

  “Quit lying,” Trina told her. “You know that you got to the phone on time by accident, and you probably wasn’t even concerned if you got to it on time or not.”

  Yvonne didn’t say anything. Trina was right. She didn’t care if she didn’t get to the phone on time. All she had to do was check her voice mail, and then call whoever it was back. What was so bad about that?

  “Uh … huh … your butt always gets quiet when you get called out,” Trina told her. “So, are you still coming to the house for dinner this evening?”

  “I think so—have a lot of work to do today,” Yvonne answered.

  Trina blew air out of her mouth, exasperated. “You know something, Yvonne? It’s high time you got a life, so that you can be out where the right man will be able to find you. He’ll find you out there working and having a full life.”

  “Well, I am trying to have a full life. But I really don’t know what there is that I can do about the man. I mean, if the brother is going to find me, it shouldn’t matter what I’m doing. God will help him find me, don’t you think?”

  Trina was quiet a moment. Yvonne did have a point. God could do anything. If the Lord decided the man He had for Yvonne was supposed to find her while she was walking through her neighborhood in those old ratty-looking sneakers she loved to wear, that is exactly how the brother would find her. Nonetheless, Yvonne really did need to schedule more time to have fun and be in the mix of things a bit more. As far as Trina could tell, the poor thing didn’t even know the art of light flirting. A brother approaching Yvonne better be prepared to get looked at like he was crazy, or figure out a way to draw her out into some conversation.

  But then, she really couldn’t fault Yvonne too much on that account. How could she know how to flirt when she’d been married most of her adult life to an old stick-in-the-mud? Plus, the girl had met very few brothers worth her time. And lately, she had been approached by some interesting specimens.

  Why did the brothers who needed to keep walking always have to be the first ones to get in a sister’s face when they discovered that she had been dumped by a man? Did they really think she was so desperate for a man that she wa
s game for an encounter with them? To date, poor Yvonne had been hit on by a permanent part-time security guard at Durham Regional Hospital, who kept his wife safely hidden in South Carolina, a preacher who called her house late in the midnight hour on his way home to his wife, and a broken-down curmudgeon twenty-nine years her senior, who was what Yvonne referred to as “just a boll weevil lookin’ for a home.”

  “So you’re still coming to the house, by yourself, without the girls, to hang out with me and Maurice, right?”

  Yvonne didn’t answer Trina, because right now she was absorbed with watching Tangie Bonner and Rico Sneed. That girl was still hanging over in the window of his car. And were they kissing on campus in the daytime in front of the Athletic Center of all places? That had to be one of the busiest spots on campus.

  “YVONNE!” Trina yelled into the phone. “Are you even listening to me?”

  “YES!!! It’s just that I am standing at this window watching Tangie Bonner and Rico Sneed acting like they go together.”

  “Because they go together,” Trina told her. “I thought you knew that. Tangie’s building is very close to yours, and she and Rico haven’t been all that discreet. About the only person who doesn’t know is poor Marquita. I know I shouldn’t say this but what did she ever see in that dumb, think-he-got-game negro?”

  Yvonne shrugged and then said, “I dunno” when she remembered that Trina couldn’t see her. “Girl, do you know that this trick has some tissue paper hanging right out of her shoes? What kind of bama mess is that?”

  “Are those some yellow pumps?” Trina asked.

  Yvonne pulled the blinds up so she could get a better look at the shoes from her office window. Thank goodness she was on the first floor. “Yeah, she does. How’d you know that?”

  “’Cause she had those things on when me and Maurice ran into her trying to act like she wasn’t out with Rico, when we went to that Jill Scott concert over in Raleigh. I could not believe she was all dressed up on a date with another woman’s husband, with some ugly yellow patent leather pumps from the Big Lots clearance bin on her feet. And if that weren’t bad enough, the trick had some Kleenex hunched down at the front part of the pump, where the top of the tissue was hanging over that hump in the middle of your foot.”