me and kept on using the b-word, f-this and f-that. No respect for adults at all.”
I jumped. Juanita was walking up behind me, shaking her head, talking to either me or herself. She had on a black pantsuit, similar to the olive one I had on. I tried to stuff the mail back in, but I nearly dropped half of the letters. Such a fool for spying. Finally I got them wedged in.
I stooped to get the mail. “Hello, Juanita.”
“Did you hear them cursing? The girls are worse than the boys. And I wished they would stop dropping paper in front of our property.”
Pro-black sisters with blonde hair, for some reason they look like oxymorons. But we came in all shapes, sizes, and shades of Miss Clairol.
She stopped to check her mailbox, which was empty, and out of nowhere, she asked, “Didn’t I see you at FAME last Sunday?”
“Probably. Didn’t know you went there.”
“Naiomi and I usually attend Agape. Did you enjoy the message?”
I was ashamed to admit that I couldn’t remember what the sermon was about, hell, who does, but I said, “It was cool.”
“I had a hard time with a portion of the sermon. Naiomi and I didn’t see eye to eye on the matter. Maybe I could get your opinion.”
“Oh.” I’d been sucked in. “Like what?”
“Following men wherever they lead, regardless if they are capable of leading. Propaganda like that is passed off as righteousness. It’s aimed at keeping men in charge and women in a role of subservience. We should be getting empowered, not devalued. We get fed bigoted indoctrination with a smile, and forget all about the push ahead for equality. That biblical attitude that propagates a one-sided slave mentality is truly outdated.”
“Did we hear the same sermon? Maybe we were at different churches.”
She went on, “The white man used the Bible to justify slavery, held us down for centuries with the spirit of his God. Now our own men are still using the Word to keep a woman in a submissive place.”
“Whoa. Submissive?”
“Yes, submissive. There is a lot of sexism in organized religion.”
I sidestepped just in case lightning was about to strike. I played the whole thing off with a smile, glanced at my watch as we headed up the stairs.
She smiled a strange smile as she took out her keys. “Maybe you would like to meet and discuss some issues that we as women should address in order to move forward and claim our rightful place in society. We have the numbers, statistics show that, but true power is in unity and knowledge.”
I blinked. Her voice had changed, softened up the way mine does when I’m talking to Vince. Couldn’t make up my mind if she was hitting on me, schooling me, or just keeping me from going to the bathroom.
I pretended I didn’t hear her last sentence. “I saw you out last weekend.”
“Saw me out . . .” Her smile went away. “Really? And where was this?”
“Yeah, last Friday night, me and a girlfriend dropped in at Duets. I was upstairs, leaning over the rail, and I looked down and saw you.”
She shifted.
“When ‘Back Dat Ass Up’ came on, you started backing that ass up.”
“That was not me.”
“I watched you dance with that girl for a good thirty minutes.”
“You’re mistaken.”
We stared. She was trying to do a Jedi mind trick and make me forget that I’d seen her wild side when she was clubbing on the DL. Hell, we all have wild sides, and Duets was the place everybody let theirs run free.
She went inside, left without saying adios senorita.
I rushed inside Vince’s apartment, danced out of my Enzos, wiggled to the rest room, did my biz. After that, I went to his nightstand, took out his box of condoms, counted them. Outside of the ones we’d used, none were missing. None were ever missing. Every other man I’ve dated has flunked the condom count at some point.
I took chicken and frozen veggies out, left that on the counter so it could thaw. Thought about Juanita. Yep, everybody has their wild side. I’m the leader of that pack.
The letter. I had forgot.
I grabbed my purse, my keys, hurried to the front door and got ready to satisfy my curiosity.
The mailman was at the foot of the stairwell, grabbing all the letters. That note to Joanne was getting stuffed in his mailbag.
That was the end of that.
When my errands were done, I rolled down Manchester into the bourgeois city of Westchester. So many