One
First of all, just for the record, I love me some me.
You heard right. And I’m not ashamed to say it either. I truly love Miss Queenisha Renae Sutton. The tall, well-endowed, fine honey-coated sistah that I be. Every inch of me is special, even if those inches are blown out to the fullest. Call it conceit if you want. Call it an overblown ego if you like. Call it what you want, but that’s just how it is.
See, that’s what’s wrong with a lot of folks nowadays. Specially my ebony sistahs on the prowl. The ones that be looking for the elusive “good black man.” Sistahs be tripping. Keep trying to love everybody else more than they love themselves. But not this amazon sistah. “If you can’t find somebody else to love you,” my mama always told me, “then you have to love your damn self.” Mama should know because she and God have a close and personal relationship, and because of this, God has blessed her with infinite wisdom.
“First, you have to love yourself, and others will follow.” She was always saying stuff like that, my mama, and some of it went straight over my head like a scent and mixed with the air. But some of it, the good parts, stuck to me like new skin. That’s why we women lacking in the ways of love have to listen to the wisdom of our mothers. True,there may be a few mothers who never found out the truth and wisdom about life and love themselves, but on the other hand, there are plenty of mothers who did. Those, I say, are the ones to listen to.
Good old “mother wisdom.” I listened as much as I could, but everything is everything with me, and my philosophy is what you see is what you just might get, but only if you play your cards right. Like me, for instance. Hmph. I can’t be worrying about why my nappy, reddish-brown hair don’t grow long and wavy down my ample back when a six-dollar box of relaxer and a nice laser-done weave will do just fine. And no way. You won’t find me sitting around feeling sorry for my tall, sweet, honey-brown self, all of six feet tall and a size sixteen, thank you very much, just because diets don’t like me and I don’t like diets.
Amazon diva that I am, when I dress to kill, I strut all my stuff with my head held high like a twenty-eight-year-old proud bird. Some eyes do see and appreciate, while others—well, heck, they don’t even matter. Some say I have a very pretty face, something about my almond-shaped eyes being filled to the brim with a light of hope, and all warm with mischievous brown. But that ain’t nothing, ’cause they’re only saying something that I already know. I don’t lay claim to being no professional prizefighter, but having big heavy limbs and heavy fists do have its advantage. The big and the bold, like myself, we don’t mind handling our business if the need arise. If I have to throw down, so be it, and may the best woman win.
I’m the oldest of two daughters born to Odessa and Clayton Sutton. My mama left my daddy in Money, Mississippi, and headed for California when I was three and my sister, Kellie, was age one and still pulling at her tit. My daddy, Clayton, knew that he couldn’t let a good black woman like my mama get away, so he tried putting his alcoholism on hold and followed suit within three months. My daddy. God rest his soul. Daddy probably would have been a professional California hoe-chaser by now if he hadn’t slipped back into old ways and drank himself to an early grave. And that old saying about it takes a village to raise a child? True, and not so true. Compton was the small village that helped my mama raise me and my sister, Kellie. Helicopters hovering—the sound of bullets flying and ambulances racingthrough the murky night was as normal as the air we breathe. People never forgot to lock their doors at night, and not many of the tiny, rotten-frame houses that lined our shabby street went without security bars. The mean streets of Compton—a place long steeped in bad reputation, true enough, but it’s not so bad as most folks imagine. And then again, some days it’s worse.
Compton was okay, but I wanted to get out, and I did. Keeping it real with a good college education, I now earn a living from nine to five as an executive buyer for a major department store. I don’t care to give the name right now. But I can say this much, though, they don’t hire a lot of African-American women in the kind of position I have—but for me, they pay a sistah well, so I can’t complain. Not when I’m buying my second condo in the upscale part of Cerritos, California. Not when my bank account would make the average working man wanna cry. And if I can’t get a baby Benz in the color I want, no sense in having one at all. That’s why I’m sporting a cold silver one equipped to the full.
I may not be the one who coined the saying that a little hard work never hurt nobody, but I know it’s true. Sometimes it breaks my heart to say it, but unlike some of my fellow sistahs of today, I have no plans to take care of a man. Nope. Sorry. Not this large and lovely sistah. Not to say that I wouldn’t buy my number-one squeeze a nice gift every now and then, but if he’s the kind of man that’s looking for a woman to pay for every date, wash his dirty drawers, buy his clothes, pay his car note, and dish out some spending cash on top—hmph!—then his eyes be bugging, and he’s looking at the wrong honey-brown woman.
Which brings me to why I’m having a big problem with this fool, Marcus, sitting up here now in my face telling me that he don’t have the money to pay for the cozy lunch we just ate. Ain’t this a trip. I feel like pulling a Tyson on him, reaching over and biting off his ear and spitting it out on the floor. But cool, I tell myself. I can be calm. For the last ten minutes he’s been sitting across and smirking at me, waiting for me to take my wallet out. And I’m waiting, too. Waiting for him to be joking with me about inviting me to lunch and having no money to pay.
“Marcus, you really got some nerve. You know that?”
“Aah, c’mon Miss Lady. Give a brother some slack. I’ll set you straight when my funds roll in. I promise.”
I’m making one of my faces, and I know it. Poetta swears that I always make faces when things don’t go my way. She’s probably right. If looks could kill, Marcus would be on the floor right now clutching his own throat.
“No, you hold on, now, Mr. Think-You-All-That Marcus. Let me hear it again so I can get this straight. I was all the way in Cerritos, relaxing at my own crib and minding my own business when you called me up. I didn’t call you. You called me, and asked me out for lunch. Right?” I could feel my pulse throbbing at the side of my temples. Sometimes when I get a little excited, I have a tendency to get a little loud, but I was making a point of keeping my voice down and leaning in over the small and quaint pink cloth-covered table where the bill for our meal lay waiting like a copy of the state deficit.
“I said I’ma take care of you next time, girl. Why you sweating me and making a big deal out of it?”
“A big deal? Marcus, perhaps you don’t understand the basic rules of dating. You ask the woman out, you pay. The woman ask you out, she pays.” I clucked my teeth and shook my head. I couldn’t believe that this was going to be the stumbling block of what could have been a nice relationship. Looks like I’ve been foolish enough to even think it was the beginning of something special when I should have known better. I hadn’t known the man but a good three weeks, but after a few phone sessions I thought there was hope for us—a budding seed of a relationship. Guess I was wrong. Dang. I hate when that happens. And I had it all planned out in my head, too, how I was gonna rock his world between the sheets after our date. Now the only thing I feel like rocking is a big rock upside his head. “Well, how much money do you have with you?” It’s the look on his face rubbing me the wrong way. That combination smirk-sneer.
“About two dollars and forty-five cents.” He pushed the bill holder over in my direction. “Stop making a big deal of it, and handle our business so we can go to the pad and get our freak on, woman. You know you wanna.”
“In your dreams. The only freaky thing that you and I could do right now is me struggling to remove my boot from your behind.”
“Ooh, aggressive. I like that in my woman. Aggressive and kinky.”
Copyright © 2003 by Debra Phillips
