We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,30
as we slowly moved toward her. “I don’t care if your mama’s here. I’mma whip yo’ mama’s ass, too.”
As we reached bottom, Tyrone tried to drag Queeshaun away with his one good arm. I took the opportunity to run past them, but my mom stayed behind and got right in Queeshaun’s face. Once Queeshaun said “I’ll fight your mama,” my mother—who is absolutely not this person—started nodding like Clair Huxtable about to school Theo, right there in front of Mrs. Field’s Cookies. Mom wasn’t about to fight this girl, though Queeshaun certainly would have come to blows with my mother. As Tyrone held Queeshaun back, my mother stood as tall and straight as can be. She was trying to show me the importance of standing your ground. Meanwhile, I was halfway down to McDonald’s, yelling back, “Just come on!”
Finally, Mom relented and followed me. The whole car ride home I was shaking, but my mom had no sympathy whatsoever.
“That girl,” she said. “She’s got that fool bullet bra on. I can’t believe you would be afraid of a girl like that.”
“Mom. She came up to my school to kill me and she just tried again. Of course I’m scared.”
“You should never be afraid of anyone. Certainly not the likes of her.”
By the time we got home from the mall, Queeshaun had left a string of messages on our answering machine. This was one of those old-school answering machines, and my dad walked in to hear Queeshaun’s threats.
“We’ll just call her parents,” he said. He then made a big deal of looking her family up in the phone book and calling her mother.
Satan’s mom was not impressed.
“What are you gonna do? They’re kids,” she said. “Let our daughters handle it.”
He hung up and right away, Queeshaun started burning up our phone. Cully Union told her to stop, and when she wouldn’t, we just let her run out the answering machine tape. “Your monkey-ass dad is a snitch, bitch,” she said. “I’m gonna kick his ass, too.”
Dad being Dad, he decided to bring the whole answering machine to the police station. He played the tape for the all-white Pleasanton PD, and at first they were concerned. Then, as Queeshaun’s insults and craziness took on the feel of a stereotypical crazy black woman comedy sketch, they couldn’t stifle their laughter.
“Yo’ monkey-ass daddy is a motherfucking punk nigger snitch” put them over the edge.
“Wait,” a blond cop finally said, trying not to smile. “You don’t even know her?”
“No,” I said. “I swear.”
“Why would she do this?”
“Apparently I hurt her feelings, because I started dating her best friend’s boyfriend. Excuse me, ex-boyfriend.”
That did it. The whole station erupted into guffaws.
“Look,” said the blond guy. “This is not enough for us to go on. If she physically touches you, call us.”
If she physically touched me, I knew I’d be dead. I took a break from imagining my funeral, lavish with tears, and called Jason to ask him about Queeshaun. He told me Queeshaun was rich and had a huge house. That came as a shock. It made no sense that someone rich would have dookie braids and want to kill me. One or the other I guess I could have comprehended, but both were overkill. The irony is that my initial assessment of her was exactly that of my white peers: If she has dookie braids, she must be poor. If she is a big black girl, she must be angry. Although in this case, this bitch really did want to kill me.
Jason thought it was funny that she was acting so crazy. “She’s harmless,” he said.
“Say that at my funeral,” I told him. “This bitch is nuts.”
Jason and I were still dating right into league basketball season. My team was set to play Angela’s twice, and of course the first game was on her home turf of Livermore High. Angela stared at me on the court, and Queeshaun looked like she could barely contain herself in the stands, where she was sitting not so far from my “monkey-ass dad.” I had begged Jason to come, but he couldn’t because he also had a game. My sister was supposed to get off early from her job at the Limited so she could be there to protect me, but no such luck. My whole team was terrified, because everyone and her white mother had heard about Queeshaun.
I was a mess the whole game, unable to function as my hands shook in the layup line. Then I airballed