Playing Hard To Get Read online

  “I’m sorry, I mean was there something that happened here—at the bank—that you would like—”

  “Listen to me, right now,” Troy started. “I need you to get the manager. That’s all I need. That’s all I want. So pick up your little phone and call her up because someone is here to see her. Do you understand that?”

  The phone was in the receptionist’s hand and she’d pressed a button, but evidently the movement was still too slow for Troy’s racing heart. She charged past the woman and opened the door to Myrtle’s office.

  “You can’t go—” Troy heard the woman at the desk call.

  Myrtle was seated at her desk, eating a bagel and chatting on the phone.

  “Girl, you know I did, but I”—she stopped and looked up at Troy—“was so excited and thought maybe we should do it again.” Myrtle laughed and chatted easily as Troy stood there. “No, he didn’t; he is so—”

  Troy stepped to the side of the desk and tried to pull the phone from the wall. And while she didn’t quite disconnect the line, the set and receiver pulled from Myrtle’s hand.

  “Oh, shit,” the receptionist said, standing behind Troy.

  “You see me standing here?” Troy said.

  Myrtle stood calmly and stared past Troy.

  “That’ll be all, Cathy,” Myrtle said.

  “Do you want me to get security?”

  “That’ll be all.” Myrtle retrieved the phone from the floor and replaced the handset. “Have a seat.”

  “I don’t need a seat,” Troy said.

  “Well, fine. Stand there. But make sure—”

  “What was the shit you pulled at church yesterday?”

  “Shit? It was merely a testimony to something that I—”

  “Don’t pull that crap with me,” Troy said. “I’m new to this, but I’m not new to drama. I know what you’re trying to do. And if you think you’re gonna run me out of First Baptist with some public campaign against me you can forget it.”

  “Really?” Mrytle opened her drawer and produced a folded sheet of paper. She pitched it over to Troy.

  Troy didn’t move.

  “Read it!” Myrtle demanded.

  Troy opened the pages. It was a bank statement. A bank statement for First Baptist.

  “Now, I know you’re no financial wizard, so I’ll direct your eyes to transaction 31 for last month,” Myrtle said.

  Troy turned to the second page, where LOUIS VUITTON was posted beside a charge for $6,189.73.

  She didn’t say anything. She dropped the paper and sat down in the chair before Myrtle.

  “I thought so,” Myrtle said wickedly. “Now, we talk.”

  “What do you want?” Troy said, but this time her voice was fragile, broken. She’d planned to make the deposit into the account before anyone noticed or could complain about the purchase.

  “You know what I want. What I’ve always wanted. Your husband.”

  “And you think this is going to help you? A little charge from a store?” Troy tried to sound unmoved, but she knew the weight of what Myrtle was measuring. With so much already stacked against her, this could bury her, push her right into a grave and pour the dirt on top. Where she was from, the total in the margin wasn’t a big deal, but being the preacher’s wife, such a big charge at such a place for any reason was unacceptable. She’d pay for it. Kyle would pay for it. The church would pay for it.

  “Your little show is over, Troy Smith,” Myrtle said. “You’re no more fit to be a preacher’s wife than a pig. And now I have proof.”

  “So you’re going to show everyone this? You’d do that just to get rid of me?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t think it’s necessary to show everyone this little bank statement…just to get rid of you,” Myrtle explained coolly. “I know what something like this could do to Kyle, to the church. It would ruin everything. I can’t have that. Not over some silly little purchase.”

  Troy sat silently, her body shaking in fear as she waited for Myrtle to finish.

  “Leave him,” Myrtle said.

  “What?”

  “Leave him. If you love him. If you love the church and you don’t want to ruin everything he’s worked so hard for, leave him,” Myrtle said. “If you don’t I’ll take it to the board of trustees and you’ll lose him anyway. You ever see a man after you take his dream from him?”

  “This is ridiculous. This doesn’t make any sense,” Troy rambled. “I could just pay the money back, say it was a mistake. Say I—”

  “The record stands. It doesn’t matter what you do now,” Myrtle said. “I have the statement. I have the proof. Elizabeth knows. And it’ll only be a little itty-bitty bit of time before everyone else does.” Myrtle paused and looked out the window. “Now I know this is all sudden for you and you’re probably going to need some time to think about it. But I’m telling you now, there’s only one thing you can do. If you love that man like you claim you do, you’ll leave the church and leave him. You haven’t changed a bit. It’s been two years and you still continue with your old games. It’s time for you to make a new decision. You can’t save yourself, but you can save Kyle.”

  Troy looked down at entry 31 again. A tear fell and stained the page, blurring the black ink. How could she have been so stupid, she thought, remembering the afternoon when she’d handed the woman at the store the card. She knew people were watching her. She knew Myrtle was watching her. She couldn’t let anything happen to the church. To Kyle. And she knew in her heart Myrtle was right. This would ruin him.

  “How long do I have?” Troy asked.

  “I’ll call you,” Myrtle revealed, though inside she couldn’t believe Troy had given in so easily. She’d been working on Troy for months, waiting for her to slip up and step out of line. The bank statement, when Elizabeth had brought it to her, was a total surprise. She thought for sure Troy would know not to mess with the church’s money. “You’ll know,” Myrtle added.

  8

  I used to want the words “She tried” on my tombstone. Now I want “She did it.”

  —Katherine Dunham

  Baba beat on his drum. The Royal Anhk was shining brightly. The tree was surrounded with people. There were the regulars—the dreads, the dancers, the believers, the worshippers, and the women of the earth. But in the middle—something unexpected. Two who were quite the same. One was carrying her new Ferragamo-studded clutch and red devils; the other, a pair of actual, real tennis shoes (for playing tennis) and couture jeans. Shoulder to shoulder, Tasha and Troy were the odd ones. Yet, they looked around as if surrounded by oddness.

  “What the holy hell is this?” Tasha said. “She’s crazy. Worshipping the devil. All of them.”

  She pointed to a man who was tossing a stick of fire.

  “If they bring out a chicken, I’m leaving,” she added.

  “They are not devil worshippers,” Troy said. “Right?” She pulled her sleeve down to cover a pearl bracelet.

  “No need to cover up the bracelet,” Tasha said. “You need to cover up those sneakers.”

  “What’s wrong with my shoes? Tamia said to wear something comfortable. She said we’d be in the grass.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t end with advising you to wear something that was sure to get us jumped. If they decide to do a sacrifice, you’re up first.”

  The drumming became louder, more fierce. The crowd began to form a circle and soon Tamia and her sisters were facing the world as one. They’d come to the next stage of enlightenment and were ready to see the world.

  As the brothers had been just months ago, the sisters were dressed in white, their chosen symbols painted on their chest.

  Tamia was the Sankofa. The bird. The return to the Essence.

  “She looks beautiful, just beautiful,” Troy cried, waving to Tamia as she chanted now for guidance from the Creator.

  “She’s so thin,” Tasha remarked, looking at Tamia’s now-slender frame. “What kind of diet is she on?”

  “Yeeyeeeyeeye
e,” someone cried from the crowd and then Tamia and her sisters did a traditional West African dance that trailed around the base of a tree. It was in honor of the ancestors, of their journey and the sacrifices each of them had made so their daughters could be there.

  Though her feet were kicking up the loose earth beneath her bare feet, Tamia cried so many tears the white paint was streaking her cheeks. She was dancing for her mother and prayed that wherever she was in the universe, she could hear her daughter’s heart beating, wild and free.

  “You guys came!” Tamia said after being rushed by Tasha and Troy when the ceremony had ended.

  “Of course we did, baby,” Tasha said. “Where else would we be?”

  “You looked so amazing, Ms. Lovebird!” Troy said, grabbing a hug.

  “Now, we must know,” Tasha began, “who were those two other women?”

  “Are those your new 2Ts? Are you replacing us?” Troy grimaced playfully.

  “Well, those are my new sisters, but they’re one T and an F,” Tamia said, “and until ‘the 2Ts and 1F’ sounds cool, you guys can’t be replaced.”

  “So where’s Malcolm X?” Tasha asked.

  Tamia frowned. She’d seen Malik in the crowd when she came in, but when Kali came over to congratulate her after everything was done, she said Malik had left early with a headache.

  “He wasn’t feeling well,” Tamia said, wondering why he couldn’t have at least stayed to cheer for her. Maybe this was just his way of handling what had happened between the two of them in the library. He was right. If they continued to connect the way they had been, it could ruin everything.

  “Dang!” Troy said, feeling her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. “I was ready to take another picture.”

  “You and that phone!” Tamia teased.

  “Wait a sec,” Troy said, after pulling out her phone and seeing it was Kyle calling. “I have to get this.” She clicked into the call. “Hello?”

  “Hey, honey,” Kyle said, his voice tired and weak. “I was just calling you because Myrtle just called here.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Myrtle. She said something about the meeting you’re having. That she’s coming by the house next week.”

  “Oh,” Troy said and both Tamia and Tasha saw her face fold.

  “You want to call her back? She left her number.”

  “No,” Troy answered. “I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

  “Hey, I know I haven’t given you credit on this whole thing with her and I thought that after the scene at the church you two would have it out for sure,” Kyle said. “But I’m happy to see you’re trying. That you’re at least trying.”

  “Thanks,” Troy said weakly. “I’ll see you tonight when I get home.”

  “Tell the other Ts I said hello.”

  Troy hung up and looked up at Tamia.

  “What happened?” she asked, reaching out to Troy. “Is everything okay?”

  “I have to go home,” Troy said. “I have to go home now.”

  

  Sometimes, late in the dark night, when even the luminous moon is hidden among clumpy clouds and the wisest people are sleeping behind the silken curtains that keep the pains of the capital of the universe from entering the rectangular openings into their worlds, others aren’t quite so lucky. Awake and without any armor from the black all around, they willingly enter the darkness, and, so, it enters them.

  Ever since she was a little girl, Tamia feared the unknown—what she couldn’t understand, explain, and master. With no mother, no soft hand there to kiss her cheek and whisper in her little brown ear, “It’s okay, baby. Take your time” when the girl came across something she didn’t know, any new thing she couldn’t understand became like fire in her eyes. The girl from the prayer group in college, the unruly people on the subway, marriage, love…Anything without boundaries that couldn’t be understood. Altogether, they made her want to run away. Made her want to hide herself behind her own clumpy clouds and silken curtains.

  For a long time, Malik and his whole world had been the something new in Tamia’s life that she couldn’t understand or explain or master. He was different. Like fire in the middle of a river. New and strange like nighttime. And while the fearful little girl inside of her still wanted to run and hide away her heart, Tamia made a decision she’d never made before—she took her time and stayed to figure him out. To figure it out. So she could save her heart. And have a new brave heart.

  All of this had suddenly become clear to her when she rang Malik’s buzzer. He’d been her new, unknown thing and it was okay. She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t going anywhere. She just wanted him and didn’t care how long it would take her to understand that or if she never did.

  This, in a daytime Gotham, full of light and clarity, would’ve been of use. But, again, it was night, and Tamia had no clouds or curtains to shield her heart from the dark.

  Over a static-filled speaker, Malik wanted to know why she was downstairs. It was 2 o’clock in morning. He had a headache.

  “I want to talk to you,” Tamia said, holding the black button beneath the mesh callbox that connected their wobbly voices.

  “Talk…what?” was all she could make out from Malik’s end.

  “Yes,” Tamia laughed. “Talk about what happened in the library. I don’t care about the risks. I don’t care about losing everything. Not if I have you.”

  “I’ll be down there. Don’t come up. I’m coming downstairs”—this was the clearest message the fifty-year-old intercom system had relayed in years. Crystal clear. Like Malik was standing right beside Tamia. It was easy to understand. Even easier to follow. But when another resident with a resident’s key came crawling out of a cab and stumbled onto the doorstep where Tamia was standing, she quickly misheard every word. Into the building she came, helping a drunken stranger.

  No time to rewrap her falling head wrap, she pulled it from her head and wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl. She wanted him to see her. To really see what she’d become in his world. A beautiful African queen, she poked out her chest and held her head high. Instead of knocking on the door, she simply rapped one time.

  “My king,” she called playfully and gently to Malik. “I await.”

  Though she was looking high, like some empress basking in the sun over her empire, Tamia saw the door open through a side glance and poked her chest out a bit more. The inside of the apartment was dark and she couldn’t see Malik standing there.

  “Nice pose, Tamia,” she heard and turned quickly and ashamedly back to the door. It wasn’t Malik’s voice. It was a woman. One she knew. Her eyes adjusted to the dark before her, and Tamia saw that it was Ayo. Standing there, she was wearing only Malik’s military jacket.

  “Ayo?”

  “He told you to wait downstairs, didn’t he?” Her voice as placid as an iceberg.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “He took the stairs. I’m guessing you took the elevator.”

  “What are you doing here?” Tamia repeated as her shawl fell to the floor. “Answer me.”

  “I knew it would come to this. A strong man is so weak.” The urgency in Ayo’s words was empty in her stance. She leaned heavily against the door frame, making senseless circles on the floor with her nude foot. Suddenly the smell of frankincense and myrrh from Malik’s apartment made Tamia nauseous. She felt silly. So silly standing there in her pieces of patterned cloth, the wooden jewelry around her neck and arms, her head without covering. This was all a joke. She was a joke.

  “Malik is my soul mate. My sun,” Ayo continued. “Nothing can change—”

  “Tamia,” Malik called, running down the hallway. “I told you to wait—”

  “It’s too late,” Tamia screamed, tearing one of the beaded strands from her neck and throwing it to Malik’s feet. “I already see.”

  “I—”

  “No!” Tamia stopped Malik. “Don’t you dare say you can explain. You can’t. You can’t. You can�
��t fucking explain this!” She was hollering and tearing and throwing beads everywhere.

  “Stop it!” Malik grabbed her arm.

  “You were supposed to be different!” Tamia got ahold of a few of Malik’s locks with her free hand. “All of this and you’re a liar.”

  “It’s not like that,” Malik said and Tamia could feel his heart beating faster even though there was still space between them.

  “Then what is it like?” Tamia jumped back and pointed to Ayo. “What is it like? Because it looks pretty clear to me. You know what? Both of you are just common. You’re pretenders. You cover yourselves with all of this bullshit, when really there’s no difference between your shit and everyone else’s. You’re just the same.”

  

  As Tamia turned to go down the stairs, Tasha was trying to go in what used to be her front door. Only her key wasn’t working.

  “I told you not to come here,” Lionel’s voice said. Only it wasn’t through a decrepit buzzer in Harlem. On Tasha’s third try, he’d opened the door and was standing before her like a goliath.

  Like Tamia, Tasha said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “This ain’t no time to talk. It’s 2:30 in the morning.”

  “2:30 in the morning never stopped you before.” Tasha softened her voice a bit and smiled at the man she knew still loved her.

  “Tasha,” Lionel started calmly, “you think this is a game. That you’re just going to show up here and I’m going to let you into my house.”

  “Your house?”

  “You’re fucking right. You left before,” he said, “so leave now.” He tried to close the door, but Tasha pushed her $3,000 purse in the way.

  “Well, let me see the girls, then,” Tasha tried.

  “It’s the middle of the night. I’m not waking them up because you’ve been drinking and you suddenly want to have a moment.”

  “Open the damn door.” She pushed herself into her husband’s solid chest.

  “No. You wanted to leave.”

  “Lionel, this isn’t a fucking option. Let me into my house or I’ll burn this motherfucker down.” On her tippy-toes, she dug a pointed finger into his chest.