In the end, all I got from Joan was, “Yardley, you’ve put me in an uncomfortable position. I had sex with a child last night and for that, I could go to jail. Do you realize that? You put me in jeopardy. I’m a mother and I’m a responsible adult and I’d appreciate it if you’d never speak to me again or even look in my direction, for that matter.”
I respected Joan’s wishes and left her alone for the remaining few weeks that I worked in the hospital morgue that summer. I started dating this girl named Lori when school started back up. She attended our rival school, Paint Branch, and she was cute and very sweet. We had sex about once a month during our senior year. Then she’d left to attend Hampton University and I’d headed to North Carolina Central.
Being a member of a frat, especially my frat, meant that all the women wanted to offer you their sex. They thought it would make them popular or land them a husband; mostly all they ended up with was disrespect. I’d faltered a time or two and participated in the numerous orgies that went on in the frat house. Part of my initiation into the frat was to run a train on this one chick who loved thinking she was the ultimate piece of ass. Thinking back now, I realize that she suffered from low self-esteem—like many of the women attending the school—and we were dead wrong for taking advantage of her. She ended up dropping out of school after getting pregnant and having no clue who fathered the child. It was more than a year after I’d been with her or else I would’ve done the right thing and demanded a paternity test; even if it was only to be relieved by the process of elimination. I couldn’t live with myself if I thought a child was out there somewhere, fatherless because of my actions. That’s why I’d always practiced safe sex but even that isn’t foolproof.
Belford and the twelve other pledges went over during homecoming week at the end of October. We’d nicknamed the line the Tribe of Thirteen. Everything changed the night they went over. They went from being our objects of desecration to our brothers for eternity. I went all out for Belford, my protégé, and bought him a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue for several hundred bucks. He and I sat on the roof of the frat house and drank it shot by shot while people stormed the yard celebrating all the fraternities and sororities that had lines go over that night, and homecoming in general.
NCCU was known for partying, from full-blown parties in the cafeteria that were reminiscent of that lunchroom scene from the movie Fame to keg parties where everyone ended up completely smashed. Instead of getting laid like the rest of his line brothers that night, Belford chose to spend the time talking to me about life. I made sure he recognized that I was proud of him for being honored for his grades. He could’ve played the spoiled role and breezed through college simply because of his lineage. He had higher aspirations than that. In fact, he wanted to surpass his father and that was one hell of a goal to aspire to.
Belford became one of my best friends. He started coming home with me on holidays and I spent one summer with his family in Maine. Their compound—you couldn’t even refer to it as a house—was on more than two hundred acres and had more than half a mile of oceanfront. Belford, Sr. had a seventy-foot yacht that was out of this world. We used to go out on it early in the morning and not come back until the next morning, chilling in the entertainment room or crashing in one of the five bedrooms lined with cherrywood.
They had both an indoor and outdoor pool. The tile surrounding the outdoor pool was imported from Jerusalem and never got hot. They had a pool house worth more than most people’s houses and a showroom garage with a marble floor and more than two million dollars worth of automobiles housed inside.
Belford had an older sister who was hot and not remotely interested in me. That was a good thing because I’d never do anything to jeopardize our friendship. Contrary to what a lot of people assumed, I wasn’t his friend because he was wealthy. I was Belford’s friend because he was mine. We had a mutual respect for one another. When he came home with me to my parents’ three-bedroom house, there was no comparison to his world, but he fit right in. Dwayne, Mike, and Felix thought he was mad cool and we used to go clubbing every weekend.
Most of the sisters ignored Belford, preferring to date “bad boys” and thugs. For the same reason, I found it hard to find women to date. If I wasn’t doing something exciting like pushing smack or gun-running, they weren’t into me. I decided to worry about women later and further my education after college. I’d always been fascinated with chiropractors; how they could actually realign bones and relieve the pain that millions of Americans suffer through because of injury, birth defects, degenerative arthritis, or even improper posture.
Belford did follow in his father’s footsteps. He was in Hong Kong on business when he was murdered at the age of twenty-three for the money in his wallet and the gold chain his mother had presented to him on his eighteenth birthday with his initial on it.
I cried for three days when I heard the news directly from his father, who was so shaken up that he could barely get the words out over the phone. He told me, “All the money in the world can’t buy happiness, Yardley. Remember that.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and then heard the click on the other end of the phone. He was right. Happiness was a state of mind. All I wanted was someone special to share my life with. Ultimately, I was determined to find her.
True, we love life, not because we are used to living,
but because we are used to loving.
There is always some madness in love,
but there is also always some reason in madness.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Five
Rayne, Age 28, Bank Administrator
Washington, DC
October 2003
I should have known. I should have known. I should have known. The second Boom—short for Boomqueesha—opened her mouth exposing a mouthful of teeth with the remnants of Cheetos adhered to them, I should have known better.
“Rayne, girl, my brother wanna meet you sumptin’ terrible.” She blurted this out to me while she was ripping huge green rollers and bobby pins out of my hair faster than those chefs demonstrate Ginsu knives on infomercials.
I asked the obvious question, being that my only dealings with Boom were my weekly hair appointments. Every Thursday at 5:30 P.M. like clockwork. “How does he even know about me?”
“Girl, he saw you walkin’ up out this joint a few weeks ago. Lookin’ all good and shit ’cause I’d hooked your do up as usual. You know how I be handlin’ thangs.?
?
Boom scanned the salon right quick to make sure all eyes and ears were on her. Any time she so much as hinted about her styling skills, she wanted an audience. Most of the women were too busy watching the Ricki Lake Show on the fuzzy black and white television leaned forty-five degrees to the right so the picture would come in halfway clear. The show was about “metrosexual” men. I’d never heard of the term but apparently it was a recent label for men who spent large amounts of time primping in the mirror, making sure their clothes were wrinkle free, and even shaving their body hair. Three women on the show were pleading for assistance to determine whether or not their men were actually bisexual. It was off the chain. Ricki had some drag queens on as judges who were quite entertaining all by themselves. They showed videotapes of the questionable guys going about their daily routines and if they couldn’t tell those men were sweet—even though they all proclaimed innocence to be strictly about punany—then something was seriously wrong with them. One of the guys even hung out in gay clubs and admitted to being flattered when homosexuals tried to flirt with him. He claimed that “a compliment is a compliment” and he was elated that both sexes found him attractive. I shook my head at the nonsense. Some women can’t see the forest for the trees.
Boom was still waiting to make sure her comment had mad attention. A couple of the women sitting on the “pleather” chairs in the waiting area glanced up at her from the hairstyle magazines on their laps. One older woman, stranded in the hair dryer section even though her hair was already dry, stared at her. She let out a yawn, probably wondering when she would get into Boom’s chair so she could get her hair combed out and head home. Like most beauty salons, From Naps to Baps was like participating in a game of musical chairs.
Satisfied that enough sisters had overheard her self-compliment, Boom continued. “Soon as you pulled off in your ride, Conquesto came runnin’ in here, all up in my grill, sweatin’ me for info on you like I’m four-one-one. Like I know what color panties you wear and shit. I told him I don’t be sniffin’ no hoochie’s drawers. If I wanna sniff drawers, I’ll sniff my own.”
I had to give it to Boom. She sure had a way with words. “Conquesto? That’s his name?”