Dating Games Page 3

  Livvy sprang to her feet, wanting to feel mad, wanting to appear angry, but she couldn’t wipe the silly-ass grin that seemed to have a mind of its own off her face.

  She fluffed her hair with her fingers, ran a tongue over her teeth to make sure there was no lipstick on them, then hurried to the door, and placed her ear to it. She heard footsteps approaching. She took a step back and stood up straight. She would wait ’til he knocked at least three times before answering, so as not to seem as if she’d been doing exactly what she had been doing, waiting for him.

  Livvy took a deep breath in, the smile still glued to her face, anticipating his knock. But it never came. Instead the door just opened up, and Livvy was standing face to face with Alizé.

  For all the makeup Alizé was wearing, the hip-hugging jeans, the high heels, and the clingy cotton top with the low bustline, she and Livvy looked more like sisters standing there than mother and daughter.

  Alizé looked her mother up and down, disapproval on her face. She slammed the door without moving a step, then said, “All dressed up to get stood up again, hunh?”

  Livvy wanted to slap her face after that remark, but she walked away. Alizé always had a way of cutting right to the chase. Livvy didn’t like it, but she was right.

  Alizé clip-clopped across the floor into the kitchen, sunk her head into the fridge, and pulled out a diet soda.

  “Where have you been?” Livvy said, turning around to face her daughter.

  “So who is it? Carlos again?” Alizé responded, ignoring her mother’s question and sitting down on one of the dining room seats. The living room and kitchen made up one big open area. The space shared by the two rooms served as a dining room, where the table sat.

  “You didn’t answer my question. I asked—”

  “Out with my girls.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What we do. Mama, why you do this to yourself?” Alizé asked, a look of sympathy on her face now.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Livvy said, knowing full well what her daughter was asking her.

  “Puttin’ up with this nigga’s bullshit,” Alizé said, popping the top on her pop can.

  “Don’t talk that way in my house. I told you about that.”

  “All right, but it don’t change the question. Why?”

  Livvy smiled uncomfortably, squirming, looking for an answer. “He said he’d take me out. I can’t remember the last time I been out for a good time. I can’t accept an invitation to be taken out and treated like a lady, have some money spent on me?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ that, Mama, but you know he ain’t gonna show, and when he do, all he want to do is get in your panties.” Alizé stood up, waving a frustrated hand about the air. “I can’t stand niggas like that. Think because they got a little loot, that you should be all over they dick. Sorry,” Alizé apologized. “Penis,” she corrected, cutting a quick look at her mother. She walked over to Livvy, placed her hands on her shoulders.

  “Mama, I know you got history with him, and I know there’s probably some love stuff mixed up in there too, but you look good, and there’s too many fine men out there to sit around and get played by this fool.”

  “I’m not getting played by nobody. And he’s not a fool.” Livvy stepped back, causing Alizé’s hands to drop from off her shoulders. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Next time I speak to him, I’m gonna tell him that I’m tired of his games,” Livvy said, all of a sudden finding some heart.

  Just then, a knock came at the door.

  “Well, here’s your chance,” Alizé said, a smirk on her lips.

  Livvy reluctantly turned toward the door. She reached out and was about to grab the knob, but turned around to see Alizé still standing behind her.

  “What are you doing?” Livvy asked.

  “I’m’ makin’ sure you tell him off, do what you said you was gonna do so you can be done with him.”

  “Ally, get your behind in your room.”

  “Fine, but Mama, handle your business, all right?” Alizé turned to go to her room.

  Livvy waited ’til her daughter disappeared, fluffed her hair again, licked her teeth again, then opened the door. Carlos was standing outside of it, fine as ever, and all Livvy could do was smile.

  THREE

  ALIZÉ walked into the room she shared with Hennesey. Hennesey was lying on her stomach across her bed, reading some book, Alizé shook her head, walked over, and sat on her twin bed, across from her sister’s.

  “Damn, girl It’s almost midnight, and you still got your head in a book. You already got the damn scholarship. Relax, already.”

  “Maybe you ought to try it. Might learn something,” Hennesey said, not taking her eyes off the page.

  “All I need to know is right up here,” Alizé said, tapping the side of her head, while she walked to the full-length closet mirror and started to undress. “And all I need to show is right back here,” she said, as she slid the tight jeans off her round behind to expose a pink thong.

  “Whatever,” she heard her sister say. Henny wasn’t up on what was happening in the real world, what was going on in the streets, Alizé told herself. All she knew about was that false paper-and-print world that went on in them books she was always reading. She didn’t learn from firsthand experience like Ally did. Henny learned by reading stuff that other people wrote, from other people’s experiences. She was secondhand learning and didn’t even know it.

  If Henny was as smart as she thought she was, as smart as their mama thought she was, she would’ve come to Ally to school her on what really mattered, like how a woman is supposed to look. Ally pulled her top over her head, reached back, and undid her bra. It was a nightly ritual for her: standing in front of the mirror butt-ass naked and looking at herself with a critical eye, checking for flaws, and then after finding none, praising herself for how damn fine she was.

  Two perfect breasts bounced out of the garment and stood perky for her. The nipples were slightly erect, a result of the tiny bit of excitement Ally received from just looking at her own body. They weren’t huge breasts—actually, a little smaller than normal—but that was okay, she thought, turning slightly around. Her ass more than made up for it. And that wasn’t all she had. Some sistahs had ass and skinny little legs. Ally had ass, tight thighs that she worked, running or climbing stairs, and even had nice calves, which a lot of sistahs ain’t got.

  Her belly was flat, and beneath the thin layer of flesh was only slight evidence of a six-pack. That’s how she wanted it. She wanted to be soft, because she knew that’s how black men liked their women. She didn’t want her stomach to look like cracked pavement, hard as stone, like Janet Jackson’s. That’s what white men wanted. Brothas wanted cushion for the pushin’.

  On beautifully pedicured feet, she walked closer to the mirror, admiring her flawless berry-brown skin. She looked at her face, smooth as the surface of a puddle of still water. Her eyes were almond shape, lashes long, her nose a button (a diamond stud in her right nostril). Her lips were full, fat, juicy, and when she glossed them up, she knew brothas could damn near bust one just looking at them hard enough. She knew that every man who saw her had the fantasy of her lips around him, and she played that up to get whatever she wanted, knowing that it would never happen, had never happened, because some shit a sistah just couldn’t do ’til she found the right man.

  “Yes, I’m all of that,” Alizé said to the mirror and blew a kiss at herself before closing the closet door and slipping a huge T-shirt over her head. The sad thing was, her plain-ass sister Henny over there could look exactly like her, but men would’ve never known, because she never wore makeup. She always wore jeans that just fit, not hugged, and a huge sweatshirt with a college name on it. She was a nerd, for sure.

  “You done making love to yourself over there?” Hennesey said, closing her book.

  “Yeah, and it was the best I ever had,” Alizé said, pulling her b
lankets back and sitting on her bed.

  Hennesey put her book down on the floor next to her bed, then rolled over on her back, sliding under her covers. “You should’ve seen Mama tonight. She really looked good, and she was really happy.”

  “Well, she ain’t got no reason to be happy.”

  “Why you say that?” Henny wanted to know.

  “Some fool who plays games with her head, make her think he loves her when he don’t. She needs to get out and start playin’ some of them fools, see how they like it.”

  “Everybody ain’t like you. Running through men like paper towels. There’s feelings involved. Mama loves Carlos.”

  “He don’t love her.” Alizé was sure of that.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “If he did, he wouldn’t have stood her up for the third time in a row.”

  “What are you talking about? Mama was getting ready to leave when—”

  “Dude was just getting here after I walked in,” Alizé said, nodding her head toward the living room.

  “So he came.”

  “But comin’ ain’t enough, Henny. Coming at the time he said he was going to is what Mama got to demand. She’s too damn soft. I’m tired of seeing her get dogged. She let this Carlos dude walk all over her, just like she let Daddy get away without paying nothing for child support. I’m just glad I ain’t like her.” Alizé lay back in bed, crossing her arms under her head, and looking at the ceiling. She felt her sister’s eyes on her, then turned to see Henny looking in her direction.

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t say stuff like that. Mama’s a good woman.”

  “Ain’t say she was a bad woman. I just said I’m glad I’m not her—meaning weak.”

  “She’ll take care of that situation with Carlos when she’s had enough,” Henny said.

  “Well, when he knocked on the door, she said she was going to take care of it tonight.”

  “Then that’s what she’s going to do.”

  “Wanna’ bet?” asked Alizé.

  “Yeah. You don’t give Mama enough credit.”

  “You give her too much.”

  “I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”

  “Guess so.” Alizé reached over to turn off her bedside lamp, but before she clicked it off, both girls heard noise. It was the sound of voices, a man’s and a woman’s—their mother’s and Carlos’s—and they were both moaning in ecstasy. There was a single knock against the wall. The headboard, Alizé guessed. Then there was another, two more, then a constant rhythmic bump, bump, bump, bump.

  A look of sadness and disappointment covered Alizé’s face as she turned to Hennesey. “Don’t have to wait ’til morning. I win.” Alizé clicked off the lamp. Darkness.

  FOUR

  SLEEPING IN the bus station was worse than almost any night Raphiel Collins had spent in prison, he thought to himself. He was barely able to stand up straight after being roused awake by a police officer.

  “What’s your name, boy?” the bloated pink-faced officer said to him with a southern drawl.

  “Rafe Collins,” he said, then corrected himself. “I mean Raphiel.”

  “Which is it, boy?”

  “It’s Raphiel,” Rafe said, telling himself that if this cop referred to him as boy one more time, he would be all over him, showing him just who the boy was. “But people call me Rafe.”

  “Go to a shelter if you want to sleep, Rafe.” The cop said his name with sarcasm. He then eyed Rafe up and down as if looking for concealed weapons bulging from under his baggy T-shirt and jeans. “There’s one down the street.”

  “I ain’t homeless.”

  “Yeah, sure you aren’t. Just move it along.”

  Rafe pulled his sore, tired body from the bench and started across the bus station floor. The cop believed that Rafe was homeless, and he was half right. Rafe had gotten out of prison three nights ago, after spending his twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth birthdays inside. He had stood just outside that long, high, barb-wired prison gate with only a few dollars in his pockets, the clothes that he had been dragged into confinement wearing three years ago, and the realization that he could never go back home again after what he had done.

  His first night out of prison, he slept in the shelter among all those other men, dirty and smelling from days and weeks on the streets, their long hair clumping together with the same dirt that darkened and dusted their clothes. When he walked in, he had wanted to turn back around, fearing that being around those men would make him start to look more like them, be like them. It was bad enough his clothes were old, hanging off his lean, muscular frame like rags. He needed to do something with the thick afro atop his head, the stubble growing wild on his face. He would have to find a place soon, but for now, he thought, this would have to do.

  But Rafe couldn’t sleep, for the man lying on the cot next to his was overpowering. Rafe pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his face to try and filter out some of the funk, but when he saw one of the man’s hands drop beneath his blanket, saw the blanket rising and lowering as the man started to groan and call out a woman’s name, Rafe knew he couldn’t stay there. He left and slept in the doorway of a boarded-up convenience store.

  The following night, determined as he was not to, he ended up at his parents’ house. He had no intention of climbing those steps, of ringing that doorbell, because he knew the frigid reception he would get. He just stood out there, sometime after midnight, wondering what they were doing inside, wondering if they had even thought of him over the past three years. He slept in his old backyard, pushed up near the house, curled in a ball, his knees pulled into his chest for warmth.

  Now it was morning again. After the third night he had been out of prison, and after sleeping on that bus station bench, and running out of the little money he had spent on food, he knew he had to find a real home.

  Rafe thought about people’s houses he could crash at, thought about old friends, but there were very few of them, and he didn’t want them to know that he was out. He didn’t want to fall back into the circles he had been spinning around in, the ones that had ultimately landed him in prison.

  It all seemed hopeless, Rafe thought, as he stood out on Canal Street, watching cars speed past him, thankful that it was spring and not snowing. He reached deep into his mind, trying to think of anyone who would give him shelter, even if for only a few days. After a moment, someone came to mind, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of her sooner.

  Rafe begged for bus fare. It was beneath him, and he couldn’t even turn his face up to look in the eyes of the two people who gave him the money. He had asked only black people, because he couldn’t bear the idea of begging a white man, allowing him the opportunity to turn his nose up at Rafe and tell him to “get a job,” as he walked away, a disgusted scowl on his face.

  The ride took forty-five minutes, the majority of that time spent waiting for the transfer bus after getting off the El train. Some things never changed, Rafe thought, standing on the curb just under the bus stop beside a woman with a toddler in a stroller. It reminded him of when he was a child, when his whole life was in front of him, when he had the opportunity to be anything he wanted. But look where he was now.

  The bus eventually came, and he was let off about two blocks from his destination. He walked through the nice neighborhood, a place he could remember visiting when he was younger. He had always looked up with wide eyes at the large houses and the nice cars parked in front of them.

  It was Beverly Hills, a small, historic community in the city. In the seventies, no one but white people lived there, but in the late eighties and early nineties, blacks started moving in in droves. And as always, when blacks started moving in, whites started moving out.

  Now the community was mostly black folks, but the houses were still nice, and despite the myth that some white folks believed, the grass on the front lawns hadn’t started dying yet.

  Rafe knocked on the door, then straig
htened his T-shirt and jeans, smoothed down his long, wild afro with his palms, and waited, hoping that she’d be home.

  The door opened, and a large woman in her early fifties, wearing a brown wig, looked out. When she saw him, she almost stumbled backward with astonishment.

  “Raphiel?” she said, gasping, placing a hand on her chest. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Aunt Dorothy,” Rafe smiled.

  She reached out, and wrapped her heavy arms around his body, giving him a huge hug, rocking him back and forth.

  “It’s so good to see you, baby.”

  “SO I KNOW your mother must have been happy to see you. Tell me what she said.” Aunt Dorothy set some butter cookies and milk on the kitchen table for Rafe. She remembered that they were his favorite. As a child, he would stick cookies on each one of his five fingers, and nibble away at them until they were all gone.

  “She ain’t say nothin’, Auntie, ’cause I ain’t seen her or Pops. You know how they feel about me.”

  “I have to tell you that we don’t speak about it that often, hurts her too much. But you know she had to have gotten over that by now. You’re her son,” Aunt Dorothy said, sitting down in the chair next to her nephew.

  “I know, but so was Eric, and you know Mama. You’re her sister, and you know she ain’t lettin’ go of nothing once she get it set in her head.”

  Aunt Dorothy nodded her head, looking as though she knew what Rafe had said was true.

  “And that’s one of the reasons I’m here, Auntie.” Rafe looked down at his hands, as if ashamed by what he was about to say. “I ain’t got nowhere to stay, and I know you be renting rooms here. I was wondering—”

  “You know I only rent to men over fifty years old here. Less drama that way. And you know that I never have an open room. If anything, men waiting in line to be able to live in Beverly for $125 a week.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Rafe felt as though now he really had nowhere to turn to.