Playing the Hand You're Dealt Page 2

  CJ looked down at his feet, then back up at me. “I’m going downstairs with Gerti,” he said.“She’s cooking good food for Auntie Emee!”

  I watched my five-year-old son as he bolted downstairs, disregarding the fact that I’d just asked him to play in his room. Hell, I guess if I were him I’d rather be downstairs licking batter from the bowls of whatever Gerti was cooking than being stuck in my room.

  Gerti Taylor wasn’t just our housekeeper, she was family. And right now, she was busy preparing a small feast in honor of Emily’s arrival. Gerti loved my friend to death and was just as anxious to see her as CJ and I were. Hell, my whole family was psyched about Emily coming to town. Speaking of which, I didn’t have time to deal with Carl at the moment. Reluctantly, I unmuted my phone. “I have to go,” I huffed.

  “You gonna call me later?” he asked in a slightly demanding tone.

  “I’m going to be busy tonight, but I’ll see.” Where the hell did that come from? As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. I couldn’t believe I had actually opened up the door to the possibility of calling Carl back. I had to break free of him, and this wasn’t the way to do it.

  “A’ight. Later,” he said, and then hung up.

  I couldn’t see him, but I knew from the sound of Carl’s voice that his slick ass had been smiling on the other end. He knew he’d gotten to me.

  I prayed that he wasn’t up to his old tricks again. I was trying to end our dysfunctional relationship once and for all, but he refused to let go. Carl was a master at creating headaches and drama, but I had no idea how crazy he could be until four hours later . . . when he showed me face-to-face.

  Chapter 3

  Emily . . .

  The Real Reason I Had Waited Up

  According to my GPS, I was only a couple of miles away. I glanced at the ancient clock on my car’s dashboard and smiled. It was close to six o’clock, and I was right on target to reach my destination on time.

  As I drove through the city, I looked up at the houses and apartment buildings that were stacked so closely together that I could barely tell one from the other. Urban living was going to be a new challenge for me. I was born and raised in Atlanta, and until yesterday, I had lived there since the day I emerged naked and screaming into this world. Samantha had been trying to get me to move here for years, but relocating wasn’t an option because my mother needed me. We’d always been there for each other. But after her funeral, and with no family left, I couldn’t think of any good reason to stay in the Peach State. And ironically, my move to “the city” was part of a reading that Ms. Marabelle had prophesied to me many years ago, when I was just a little girl.

  At six on the dot, I finally reached my destination. As I parked in front of the beautifully manicured driveway, an intense feeling hugged my stomach that I couldn’t explain. Surprisingly, it wasn’t nerves or anxiety, but it made my hands shake just the same. And even though my rickety air conditioner was pumping full blast, tiny beads of sweat dotted my forehead. I took a deep breath, turned off the engine, and prepared myself.

  Looking at the impressive brick colonial in front of me, the house seemed much bigger than I remembered. I wondered if it was just my imagination or if they had built an addition to the five-thousand-square-foot dwelling. Then I realized that my mind had only made it seem larger because for the first time, I was keenly aware of the mountainous troubles that lay behind the stately walls.

  “Auntie Emee! Auntie Emee!” CJ shouted as he rushed out the front door, running toward me like a hurricane on two legs. I hopped out of my car and leaned down to pick him up as he ran into my arms. I smiled so hard my cheeks started to hurt. This five-year-old little boy was the absolute apple of my eye. We squeezed and hugged each other as he wrapped his arms and legs around me, hanging on like a life preserver.

  I missed CJ terribly. It had been a year since he left my care to come and live here with his grandparents. And even though it had torn me up inside to deliver him into the hands of Samantha’s mother and father, I knew it was for the best. My mother’s condition had deteriorated badly, and migraines had begun to take a toll on my own health. That, coupled with long work days, constant fights with the insurance company over Mom’s medical claims, trying to maintain a sinking relationship with my boyfriend, and juggling all of life’s other balls had left me with little time to care for an active, young child.

  I didn’t want to deprive CJ of the care and attention that he needed and deserved. After all, it was the reason why Samantha had given me legal guardianship of her son in the first place. Plus, I knew it was time for CJ to have a strong male figure in his life, and it was a role that Samantha’s father was more than happy to step up and claim.

  “Hey, Sweet Pea,” I cooed after giving CJ a million small kisses on his softly dimpled cheeks. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Here I am!” Samantha shouted, strutting over to greet me with her hands perched on her imaginary hips.

  I had predicted what her reaction to my new appearance would be, and judging from her wide-eyed expression, I’d been right.

  “Oh my God!” Samantha screamed as she came closer. “Girl, I can’t believe what you’ve done to your hair!”

  Hair was to black women what weight was to our white counterparts, and my hair had always been a topic of discussion. It had been the only bone of contention between my mother and me . . . well, that and the fact that she thought I should’ve been married a long time ago.

  My hair was a wild mixture of kinky, curly tendrils, in its natural state.When I was a little girl, my mother used to press my hair until it was bone straight. Every Saturday night, like clockwork, she’d separate my thick mane into tiny sections and then divide those into even smaller, more manageable pieces before coating my thick strands with coconut-scented pomade. Then she’d run the sizzling hot comb’s steel teeth through each curly clump until my unruly hair submitted into long sheets of black silk that gleamed down my back. The next day at church my mother would smile proudly, enjoying the compliments that her painstaking handiwork garnered. And I, too, benefitted from her diligence, as I became known as the pretty girl with the great hair.

  During my teenage years I rebelled against the hot comb and my much-coveted straight hair. It wasn’t just the unrelenting hours of heat-emblazoned misery that I rebuked, it was the notion that my thick, unapologetically wild hair wasn’t beautiful in its natural state. At the time, I wasn’t aiming for any kind of militant social statement, I just knew what I liked, and what made me feel most comfortable in my own skin.

  But my mother was old school, and she wasn’t having it. “At least let me take you to Ms. Emma’s shop so she can put a relaxer in your hair,” my mother had said during one of our knock-down-drag-outs one weekend. “It’ll look just like you had a good pressing, and it’ll even last longer,” she sighed, hoping I’d have the good sense to give in.

  Finally, she gave up, not having the energy to argue because her disease had started to progress. I went natural my junior year of high school, and it wasn’t until last week, sitting in Ms. Emma’s chair in Heavenly Hair Salon, that my mother got her long-held wish. I had enjoyed my natural hair, but now it was time for a change. I wanted a new look to go along with my new life, in a new city.The large bush of hair that had once rested at the bottom of my shoulders now hung down to the middle of my back. It had taken a little getting used to at first, but now I loved my new hairdo.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Samantha gasped. “I can’t believe you finally relaxed your hair!”

  She circled around me while CJ began to examine my hair, too, as if he’d just seen me for the first time. When he grinned, showing me one of his adorable dimples, I knew he approved. “Your son likes it.” I smiled.

  “And I love it!” she shouted. “Girl, your shit is fly!”

  I bristled at the sound of Samantha cursing in front of her son, but I let the uncomfortable feeling go because I didn’t want to spoil the hap
py moment. So instead of gently cautioning her about the importance of watching her language around an impressionable five-year-old, I reached one arm out and embraced her while I held on tight to CJ with the other. I saw that he liked the group hug because he started grinning even harder. As I watched CJ’s face light up, it struck me that men, even in their early stages of development, loved the company of more than one woman at a time. But for now, I appreciated that my little Sweet Pea’s enthusiasm was purely innocent. I constantly marveled at how Samantha and Carl could have created such a perfect little person.

  Don’t get me wrong, I loved Samantha dearly, and there was no one on this earth who could hold a candle to her as a loyal and trusted friend, but her life was filled with the kind of drama that could make the police officers on Cops take a pause. And Carl, her on-again, off-again boyfriend who happened to be CJ’s father . . . well, let’s just say he wasn’t the type of guy one would ever mistake for being a good catch.

  For someone who’d been raised around all the “right kind of people,” I never quite understood why Samantha always gravitated toward the lowest common denominator when it came to men. I could only assume it was a rebellion thing.

  It killed Samantha’s parents, especially her mother, that she made such poor relationship choices. But Samantha seemed to almost delight in it. We’d been best friends since our freshman year of college—that was eleven years and running—and in all that time I had never known her to date a man who was worth the breath it took to call his name.Well, there had been one, but it was years ago, and she’d messed up that relationship in a disastrous way.

  Samantha and I first met on move-in day at Spelman College. We were roommates and quickly became inseparable best friends, to the bewilderment of everyone around us, because with the exception of sharing the same birthday, and the same middle initial—my E was for Eloise, and her E was for Elise—we were polar opposites in almost every way.

  Samantha was born into a family of old money and privilege, raised in the prominent Gold Coast section of DC—the right side of the tracks. Her father, Ed, the love of my life, was a well-known plaintiff attorney whose courtroom victories were legendary in the DC metro area. Her mother, Brenda, docent and socialite extraordinaire, was a beautifully elegant drama queen whose antics could easily rival those of a soap opera diva. Together, they had raised Samantha and her older, estranged brother, Jeffery, to be cultured members of the Talented Tenth.

  I, on the other hand, was born into a lower-middle-class lot. My father, Roosevelt, was a janitor who took pride in a job well done. He was a strong, hardworking, God-fearing man with a gentle heart. My mother, Lucille, was a soft-spoken, but fiercely independent elementary school teacher who ran our home with the same efficiency and care that she demonstrated in her classroom. They’d met at the school where they both worked, and as my father had once said, “It was love at first sight.” They were the salt of the earth, truly two of the finest human beings I’d ever known. I missed them dearly.

  As I looked at Samantha, her face beaming with relief that I was finally here, I didn’t have the heart to tell her what I was really feeling—that I was scared out of my mind knowing I’d be sleeping under the same roof as her father.

  “Let’s go inside. I know you want to relax after your long drive,” Samantha said.

  “Are your parents home?” I didn’t know if their vehicles were parked out back in their three-car garage.

  “No,” she said, swatting a pesky fly that had invaded her space. “Mother’s over at the Corcoran Gallery, and Daddy’s probably knee-deep in paperwork at the office, as usual.”

  That information gave me the temporary relief I needed. We grabbed my bags out of the trunk of my beat-up but trusty 1985 Volvo, ready to head inside. Samantha stopped and looked at my car as if I’d driven up in a horse and buggy. “Emily, you need to get a new ride. I’m surprised you didn’t break down on your way up here. City driving is gonna beat the last bit of life out of ol’ Hazel.”

  Samantha was right, but there was a deep sentimental value attached to my four wheels. Hazel was the first brand-new vehicle that my father had ever owned. He’d always driven used contraptions that barely passed the lemon law. He bought Hazel when I was five years old, and was so proud that he’d worked hard enough to afford a fancy car for his family, especially on a janitor’s salary. He loved this car, and after he died my mother drove her. When I graduated from high school she handed Hazel down to me. This old car was one of my few material possessions that had been shared by the two people who meant everything to me.

  I looked at Samantha, and then toward Hazel. “I know, but she’s all I’ve got left.”

  Samantha nodded with understanding and rubbed my shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

  When we walked into the house, I found it largely unchanged from the last time I’d visited, a year ago when I brought CJ here to live. The living room was gorgeous; not my taste, but still beautiful. Samantha’s mother had many talents, and decorating was one of them. The color scheme was soft pastels and gentle neutrals, and the furniture was large and upscale. Everything went so well together, every piece in its proper place. It was so perfect, it was almost scary.

  “Mmm, something smells like heaven,” I said, breathing in the delicious aroma wafting through the air.

  “Gerti’s throwin’ down, making all of your favorites.” Samantha smiled.

  Just then, Gerti Taylor came out from the kitchen to greet us. At five feet eight inches and nearly two hundred pounds, she was a force of nature. “Well, ain’t you a sight! Come give Gerti some sugar.” She grinned as she walked toward me with outstretched arms.

  I loved Ms. Gerti. She was a good woman. She reminded me a lot of my mother. Only Ms. Gerti would curse you out quicker than a heartbeat and worse than a sailor. She lived in the guesthouse off the flower garden behind the main house. She had been a loyal employee, nursemaid, babysitter, chef, housekeeper, chauffeur, confidante, and psychologist to the Baldwin family for over thirty years.

  “Hey, Ms. Gerti!” I beamed as we embraced in a big hug.

  “Let me take a look at you!” Ms. Gerti exclaimed as she stared at my hair. “Well, I’ll be.” She smiled, pausing to inspect me as Samantha and CJ had just done. “Emily, you’re just beautiful, I tell ya.”

  I smiled appreciatively, giving my thanks for her approval. “Don’t tell me you’re cooking fried chicken?” I asked, inhaling the mouthwatering scent that could put KFC to utter shame.

  “Sure am, with collard greens, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, and sweet potato pie for dessert.”

  “Southern staples, my favorites!” I tossed my healthy eating habit out the window and gave her a kiss on her cheek for throwing in the sweet potato pie.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother,” Ms. Gerti said as she patted my shoulder. “I know you two were really close.There’s no hurt in this world like the kind that comes when you lose your mama.You just keep your head up, you hear?”

  I nodded because her words were so true. The hurt was indescribable. She could see the sadness in my eyes, so she cut the conversation short, giving me a small reprieve. “You all go on upstairs and clean up, dinner will be ready in a minute.”

  Samantha, CJ, and I lugged my bags up the stairs and headed to the end of the long hallway, entering my temporary living quarters. I walked over to the other side of the room and looked out of the window, admiring the backyard. It was nothing less than spectacular, especially for the city. Brenda had done an amazing job of turning it into a miniature Garden of Eden. I glanced toward the other side of the room, where I spotted a large wicker basket sitting atop the mahogany dresser. “For me?” I smiled as I looked back at Samantha, walking over to inspect it.

  “It’s your welcome gift. I put it together myself,” she said with a devilish grin before turning to her son. “CJ, go to your room and play while I catch up with Emily.”

  “But I wanna stay with Auntie Emee, too . . . pleeeaa
ase,” he begged as he walked over and latched on around my leg.

  “Sweet Pea, listen to your mother,” I told him gently but firmly. I had to be direct with him, reestablishing our rules of behavior, otherwise he’d end up running all over me like he did Samantha. CJ looked at me with doubting eyes at first, but then decided to obey. “I’ll read you a new bedtime story tonight,” I said, blowing him a kiss before he ran off to his room.

  Samantha flopped down on the bed. “My son loves him some Emily Snow. You should’ve heard him before you got here. Every five minutes it was, ‘When is Auntie Emee gonna be here? Is she here yet? How much longer till she gets here?’ I’m telling you, he almost drove me crazy.”

  “Well, I love my godson, too. I’ll start grammar lessons with him first thing next week,” I said, taking the basket of goodies from the dresser as I headed over to join Samantha on the other side of the queen-sized bed.

  “Damn, give yourself a break,” she said. “Just chill.You need to relax and unwind.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and untied the turquoise bow on my custom made gift. “Teaching helps me to relax and unwind.”

  “I don’t know how you can sit in a classroom full of screaming kids every day and say that it relaxes you.You’re weird, you know that, right?”

  I laughed. “Speaking of work, when are you headed back to New York? I know your customers must be in desperate need of lipstick and moisturizer,” I teased.

  Samantha had taken so much time off from her job, I was surprised she still had one. She was a senior account manager for Lancôme, and even though a career in sales afforded her flexibility, she stretched the boundaries worse than a rubber band.

  I remembered when she showed up at my door the morning after I called with the news that my mother had slipped away during the middle of the night. She must have packed her things and rushed straight to the airport at the crack of dawn.