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  I felt my knees about to break, but there was no way I would let any one of these mu’fuckas see me cry. I cleared my throat, wrote out my ticket for my client to pay the cashier, and then I planned to keep on steppin’.

  Instead, Taj handed the cashier the ticket and stepped into my personal space. I could feel the cool peppermint on his breath.

  “Let’s talk,” he said.

  Reluctantly, I stepped to the back of the shop, where my small office was. I practically fell down in my oversized brown leather chair, placed my head on my desk and began to cry. How could Rowanda come in here and humiliate me? And how could Aunt Cookie let her? Why was it that I had to accept Rowanda? I hated the bitch! I hated the sound of her voice, and the way she reminded me of broken elevators, lion claw tubs, and blood.

  “Look, baby,” Taj said, “ease up a little bit. Cut Rowanda some slack.”

  “Cut Rowanda some slack? What about cutting me some slack?” I said, with snot dripping.

  At this point, I didn’t care what he thought. Hell, he wasn’t my man. I was my own man. I ain’t need him for shit!

  “You got a lot of fuckin’ nerve, Mister Yuppie-ass emergency room doctor! What do you know about being born in hell? You never came from a crackfiend’s pussy. You’ve never seen dope being slowly released from a bloody needle and yo’ grandma moanin’ about how it feel good, and all the while you wondering if she shootin’ up the rent money or the food stamps! You know what it’s like to starve, Taj? I didn’t think so!” I opened my office door and said, “Get the fuck out!”

  Taj turned around and grabbed me by my forearm. “Vera, throwing me out is no issue. I’m a cocky-ass black man from Newark, with a doctorate degree in medicine. I’ve been thrown out by the best of ’em, but you have to live with you. You must stop all of this self-defeating madness or else you will be strung out on a damn nervous breakdown.

  “Now, I’m here because you need me here. I’m already in your heart, so you can stop faking like throwing me out is easy. When you’re ready to stop throwing a tantrum, we’ll talk.” And he slammed the door behind him.

  I leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, feeling as if my chest would cave in. I wanted desperately to run after Taj and beg him to come back, but my pride wouldn’t let me. Instead, I pulled my knees up to my chest, tilted my head down, and cried. I cried so much that when I lifted my head up, my vision was blurry. I wiped my eyes, placed my head back down, and while the whistle of the breeze came through the window, thoughts of Rowanda raced through my mind.

  I thought that at some point I would be able to come back and finish working in the shop, but when I looked around, it seemed that everyone had left. At least five hours had gone by and I hadn’t even noticed.

  The darkness was comforting and cool. The window was cracked just a little, and I could hear the whistle of the cold breeze. The dampness of the wind reminded me of winter in the projects, and of the time when the lights were shut off and there were no candles to burn.

  I was seven years old and petrified of the dark. “I’m scared, Rowanda,” I said into the ear of the darkness. “I’m scared.” Nobody answered, but I could see Rowanda searching for a match, while I crossed my small seven-year-old legs and sat around the stove, wanting desperately to feel the heat.

  Rowanda wore high heels and a blond wig. She snuck out at night and nobody ever noticed. Grandma never cared. Rowanda would say how she always met a john and that I ain’t have to worry as long as she had the block locked.

  “What you scared of, girl? I’m here.” And she was. Even when her pimp stomped her in the face for not having all of his money, she still made sure I had something to eat. Getting stomped was just a chance she had to take.

  Rowanda found a match, and she reached and placed her head inside the stove. The gas fumes were rising, and when she placed the small fire on the pilot, she never really screamed when her face caught fire. She barely made a noise as the skin curled off, and even when the kids teased her and said that she looked like Scarface, she still hustled the block. She never even worried about how half of her beauty was left burning on the pilot of the gas stove.

  I fumbled along the wall for the light switch, because I couldn’t take my thoughts anymore. When I walked into the shop, I saw Taj sleeping in my station chair. I walked over to him and kissed him on his forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Taj.”

  He swiveled the chair around and grabbed me by my waist. “You need to stop this tough-girl routine. You’re chasing everybody away.”

  “I don’t mean to chase everybody away, but—”

  “But what? Don’t you know that you’re worth loving? Trust me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. What are you so scared of?”

  “Everything,” I found myself admitting. “Of dopefiends, lion claw tubs, men with silver belt buckles.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s all that I see.”

  “Then see me. I’m here.”

  “Why?”

  “Baby, I’m in love with you. But I’m not the type to pamper a little girl. I want a woman. And if you have to cry, baby, it’s all good, but you have to be a woman about the situation no matter what. That sad, deprived little girl routine has to end. Plus, I think you’re kinda cute wit’ your stubborn-ass.”

  “Stubborn?”

  “Mad crazy stubborn,” he said, giving me a peck across the lips.

  “And you love every bit of it.”

  “Too much of it.”

  “Taj, I’m sorry about Roger and the other day.”

  “Yeah?” he said with a smirk.

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry.”

  “Good, ’cause those three days without you were hell.”

  “Um, well, I was fine. No sweat. Those three days were a breeze.”

  He tilted his head and looked at me out the corner of his eye. “Yeah? The three days were a breeze? And you could breathe without me? You weren’t all Waiting to Exhale on the phone with the girlfriends, doggin’ me out?”

  “Could I breathe? Please, what you think? And on the phone with the girlfriends? My girlfriends and I, we don’t even talk like that.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Yeah, right? Well, could you breathe?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  Step Four

  “If that ain’t ’bout the corniest shit that I have ever heard! He need you to breathe. What he gonna do if you go outta town? Die? His ass ain’t Eddie Murphy. Y’all been watching too much TV!” Shannon said as she tried to squeeze her size sixteen into a pair of size twelve jeans.

  “I’m losing weight, girl. Can’t you tell?” she said.

  “I can tell you fuckin’ up those jeans!”

  “Whatever. Get to the real shit. You trying to slip up on me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Excuse me? You heard me. You trying to fall in love on me, Miss Vera? Miss ‘A big dick is just a big dick.’”

  “Taj is different.”

  “And how is that? He got a little dick?”

  “Oh, you think yo’ ass is funny! For your information, he got a Mandingo, Zulu warrior, West African dick!”

  “What, he got one of those Kunta Kinte dicks?”

  “Big and strong, like dynamite!”

  “Mm-hmm, and it got yo’ ass sewed the hell up!”

  “All right, I’ll admit I’m feeling him a little bit, but I’m not ready to commit.”

  “Take yo’ time, girlfriend. One thing about love, its ass is persistent.”

  “Love? Chile, please! I ain’t hardly in love.”

  “Yeah, that’s the same thing Lee said.”

  Lee? I know this heifer didn’t just compare me to Lee. Lee was a whole ’nother ball game, but nevertheless, she was our girl, and the shit that her man pulled on her was enough to make us wanna kick his ass.

  Lee had waltzed in the shop on Valentine’s Day with a gorgeous black tree, also known as James. I couldn�
��t help but stare, because I was shocked as shit. As a matter of fact, the entire shop was shocked. Here was the black Laura Ingalls, with Tyson on her arm. Hmph! Well, when Aunt Cookie saw these two, she almost died, and if it wasn’t for her being ashamed, I do believe that she would’ve cussed the black tree out.

  “What is your problem, Cookie Turner?”

  “Nothing,” she snapped. “I just gotta go.”

  “Why are you going out the back door?”

  She placed her hands on her hips and said, “Didn’t you just see what the dog drug in? You’ll never have me be a part of that.”

  At worse, I figured the man was married to one of Aunt Cookie’s girlfriends’ daughters or something.

  “Is he married, Lee?” I called her to the back and asked.

  “No, he isn’t married. Not yet anyway,” she said, laughing and wagging her ring finger.

  “Just be careful.”

  “Girl, please,” she said, waving me off and blowing kisses at him from my office door. “I got this.”

  And what she got was a fine mu’fuckin’ dog. Now, he was fine. Let me repeat that: he was extremely fine. Black as a coal mine, with a body that wore the essence of Africa. His eyes were a deep dark brown, and his eyelashes seemed to be the crowning of his strong, chiseled face. He spoke as if he had invented confidence, and all of this man stood about six foot three. And when he walked, Jesus! When he walked, he seemed to float above the floor, and he would slither in with his Versace double-breasted suit and his lips would glide as he said hello. Therefore, as you can imagine, when he walked in the shop, the entire operation shut the fuck down.

  There was very little attention being paid to the fact that he was slowly taking control. When he told Lee that she needed to lose weight, she thought the shit was great. When he told her that she needed to carry Ucchi instead of Gucci, she thought he was considerate. But what did it was when the nigga called me on the phone, with Angie and Shannon on the three-way, telling us that we needed to practice “minding our business,” because the tongue was a serpent, and the way he saw it, Eddie Murphy had a point and Oum FuFu needed to stay the hell away from the girlfriend crew!

  Now, that straight set the shit off. After he hung up on us, Shannon called Angie and me back, and we had our own conference call, better known as the get-’im-girl session. That’s when we decided it was on like popcorn!

  “All right,” I said, while lying on the bed. “I’ll make Roger think he’s getting some ass so I can get some background information.”

  “Good,” Angie said, “and I’ll try and screw the li’l twenty-two-year-old security guard downtown at the Prudential Building.”

  “What?”

  “Girl, you got to see him. He got an ass like butta!” she screeched.

  “What does that have to do with Lee?”

  “Nothing. I just figured since we were discussing men in law enforcement that I would throw that out there.”

  Anyway, Angie screwing the li’l security guard did nothing for Lee, and me making Roger think he and I would always be together didn’t do shit either. Instead, it aggravated the situation between Roger and me, and as the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. So, I had to swallow my pride and beg the truth out of Aunt Cookie.

  All she said was, “You, Angie, and Shannon need to meet me at the church for revival tonight.” So, we obeyed and went dragging along.

  When we arrived at church, we slid in the last pew on the left side, all the way in the back, near the section where most people eat and go to sleep.

  When the choir started singing, I turned to Angie and gave her explicit instructions. “If you get in here and start beatin’ that tambourine and hollerin’ out in tongue, I’ma slap you!”

  “You have officially lost your mind,” she said. “Now, mess with me and I’ll make the old ladies come back here and lay hands on you.”

  Before I could respond, out walks the pastor dressed in a purple robe with “The Blood of Jesus” written across his chest. Oh my God! I had to do a double take, because there was Lee’s man, armed with a Bible, and his first lady sittin’ and grinnin’ in the third row. Needless to say, church was over for us. Now we had to figure out a way to break the news to Lee. Me, I figured just let the bitch have it straight out, but nooo. Shannon and Angie insisted that we hold onto the information until they felt Lee was strong enough to handle it. They insisted that she was too fragile.

  “Fragile?” I asked.

  “Fragile,” Shannon and Angie said simultaneously.

  “Her ass ain’t fragile. She just stupid!”

  And since then, those two had been walking around Lee on eggshells, as if she was Princess Di or some shit, but I didn’t think so. The way I figured, revenge is sweet, but a divafied scorn is a bitch.

  So, I squatted and waited patiently on our monthly fake-ass book club meeting, because it was more like girlfriends’ gossip hour. I made sure that this session was at Shannon’s house. After all, I couldn’t take the chance of Miz Thing reverting back to the playground days at Prospect Park and leaving tear stains on my three-hundred-dollar silk embroidered pillows. I figured since Shannon had a red Coach leather sofa with the pillows to match, what better place to lay it on the line?

  Angie and Lee walked in Shannon’s front door together, laughing and acting giddy.

  “Where are you two coming from?” I asked.

  “Short Hills Mall,” Angie said.

  “Correction,” Lee said. “The Mall of Short Hills. I picked James up a leather jacket from Wilson’s Leather.”

  Instantly, I shot Angie the evil eye. “Don’t be playing her like that!” I said, tight-lipped.

  “I tried to tell her not to buy it, but she insisted.”

  “Yeah, right!”

  An hour into Angie and Shannon’s lollygagging and making small talk about the weather, work, and the new Louie V. Sharon Stone bag, I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore. I slammed both my elbows on Shannon’s wicker trunk and said, “Look, don’t spend any more money on that mu’fuckin’ James. That mu’fucka is a damn snake! He’s married!”

  “And a pastor at Holy Rock Tabernacle,” Angie interjected.

  “What!” Lee exclaimed. “What are they talking about? Shannon, what are they saying?”

  Oh, no this bitch didn’t! What are they saying, Shannon? Like she was trying for a Daytime Emmy in melodrama. “Bitch, this ain’t the Young and the Restless. You heard what I said!”

  “It’s not as bad as it may seem,” Shannon said, lying her ass off.

  “That so-’n-so ain’t even a good piece of shit!” I insisted, waiving my hands in the air. “That nigga is the pimp of the pulpit, and it turns out you his bottom bitch!”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Shannon asked sarcastically.

  “Snoop Dog, Ice-T and shit? We don’t need yo’ pimped-out version of this. Take that shit down now. That’s enough! We need to discuss what we’re going to do about the man who thinks he can dis and dismiss one of the divafied Queens. Oh, no. I don’t think so!”

  “Well, I tell y’all what,” Lee said, while grabbing her jacket and car keys. “Jealousy will get you all nowhere.” Then she rolled her eyes and held her arm up as if she were saying, “Tell it to the hand!”

  As soon as the bitch did that, I started hearing sirens and shit, bells and whistles going off and screaming, “Dumb bitch alert!”

  “I know,” I turned to Lee and said, “that you don’t think I’m jealous of you ’cause you finally found a man that can tolerate, feed, and fuck yo’ fat ass?”

  “Oh, no you didn’t!” Lee rolled her eyes and said, “Everybody’s coochie can’t tolerate a thousand dicks at once, ho.”

  “Ho? You the trick bein’ played by a goddamn televangelist!”

  “Oh, no you didn’t go there!” she screamed.

  “Yes, I did!”

  See, let me tell y’all somethin’. The only reason I could stand her was because she was like a p
ain-in-the-ass sister, and we’d been friends since we were eight. Otherwise, I woulda cold-cocked her stank-ass the minute she stood up in my face and started runnin’ her mouth.

  I turned to her and said, “Here we are, looking out for you, and you talkin’ major shit.”

  “First of all, Miz Thang, y’all got issues with men, so can’t none of y’all open your mouth to tell me nothin’ about my man.”

  “Lee,” Shannon said, still trying to be calm, “you really need to be quiet, because we love you and would never tell you anything that would hurt you.”

  “Shannon,” I turned to her and said, “why are you trying to baby this ho? Lee is a big girl. If she wanna be the black version of Joann Buttafuoco, sit back, and bask in the essence of getting dogged, then by all means, let the bitch! ’Cause you know me, and my sympathy goes two places, to the starving kids in Ethiopia, and to Luther when he gains weight. That’s right, that’s the extent of it, so I don’t feel sorry for Lee.”

  I turned to Lee and said, “If you like it, I’m in love wit’ it.”

  “That ain’t right, Vera,” Angie chimed in.

  “You know Luther sick. He can’t help his situation. Somebody gonna fuck you up for that one. You need to apologize.”

  Oh, now they wanted to gang up on a sista. “Shut up, Angela! Luther ain’t even here. You need to be worried about dumb-dumb over there.”

  “Call me out my name again,” Lee said, dropping her things on the floor.

  I just looked at the heifer, ’cause it’s amazing what a good piece of dick will do to ya. This heifer ain’t never won a fight in her life, and now she wanted to fight me!

  “Excuse you?” I said, looking her up and down. “You wanna do something? If you don’t, sit yo’ ass down.”

  “Lee, you are way outta line!” Shannon said, jumping in between us.

  “I can’t believe this shit,” Angie said. “Maybe I need to go back to Alabama, ’cause y’all New York bitches are crazy. Now, Lee,” Angie said with a Southern twang, “I understand that you love James. I respect that. But the nigga is a pastor, and he’s dogging you. Nobody here is jealous. We’re just being honest with you.”