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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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“Mr. Williams,” Evan said, imposing his stately voice and public demeanor. “Everyone.” He waved quickly toward the middle of the room, but to no one in general. He looked in my direction and nodded at a few people seated around me, and then finally at me, smiling and winking quickly. We noticed a long time ago when Evan first got into office that in contrast to his mostly white colleagues downtown, our being married wasn't looked upon too positively by people at the school. Some argued favoritism, others put out rumors saying I made more than the principal, and many people blamed me for the fact that the school wasn't getting more money, claiming I should be able to convince Evan to get more funds into the system and directed at Black Warrior High. It was a barrel of ugly crabbiness, and to avoid it, Evan decided to keep things very simple in front of people.
“First, I want to thank you all for taking time out of your lunch break to meet with me. And second, I want to praise all of you personally for the fine job you've been doing, working with our students this year,” Evan said. “I know it's not an easy job, and I want you to know that your district supports you. Thank all of you. Go on and give yourselves a round of applause.” He smiled and led a mediocre, yet spirited, wave of claps.
“Now,” Evan went on, “I'll be quick with my reason for having Mr. Williams assemble you all today. I know everyone wants to get to lunch.” He paused and a few people snickered, but there were no outbursts as there had been with Mr. Williams. “I've been having some discussions with a former student of Black Warrior, a Mr. Damien Mitchell, who the world knows as Dame—and I know many of you have taught him. Basically, he's interested in coming to the school and bringing a crew from BET with him.”
“Dame is bringing BET here? To Tuscaloosa?” Ms. Lindsey called from the back of the room like one of the students.
“
Whore
,” Billie blurted out while coughing to cover up her outburst.
“Yes,” Evan responded to Ms. Lindsey. “Apparently, BET has a show where it features a day in the life of an artist. They're doing an episode featuring Dame and he'd like to bring the crew to our school—to Black Warrior High School—next Tuesday.”
“Next Tuesday?” Ms. Lindsey shrieked, touching her hair as if she was already planning a full makeover. “That's less than a week away.”
“I'm sorry ... but who's this Dame?” one of the older faculty members interrupted.
“He's a rapper,” Ms. Lindsey added enthusiastically, shaking enough in her seat so that her breasts bounced from one side to the other. “He's been number one on the charts since his new album,
The Same Dame
, dropped two months ago.”
“Is that heifer a rap groupie? Video ho?” Billie whispered to me, but the secretary sitting next to me heard her. I was sure that remark would soon get around the school.
“Well, it seems that those high sales have served him well,” Evan said, “because when he comes, he's presenting us with a check for one million dollars in front of the whole school.”
“A million?” Billie asked. “To Black Warrior?”
I looked on stunned. Nearly immediately, I, along with everyone else, looked around the outdated, pale green conference room that hadn't changed in one way since my own father called the building “school.” It was as if the mention alone of “one million dollars” in a room of desperate, tired teachers could make the place just change. The walls—pale green with speckled black and white nothingness—would become bright and clean; the table—an old oak, pitted and picked mass between us—would be mahogany; and instead of beat-up folding chairs, we'd be in leather swivels that turned and turned and comforted us as we taught the next generation of leaders. I could see, just as clearly as the woman next to me, but as I looked, I wondered what price we'd pay to get the pretty stuff. As my father always said, “Some things that are free cost you.”
“Yes, you all heard me right! He's giving us a million dollars and he wants to present it to”—Evan suddenly looked toward me—“his favorite music teacher, Mrs. DeLong.”
“Me?” I asked.
“Yes. He asked for you specifically. He wants you to give the tour of the school with the camera crew and accept the check in front of the student body.”
All eyes went from the walls, the table, the chairs, to me, falling around me like dominoes. Evan gave the rest of the details to a room of open mouths and internal thoughts so heavy I could hear them in their silence. I could even hear my father miles away: “Beware of those who don't sing for the Lord.”
“You know he probably suggested Dame visit his wife's classroom,” I heard one of the teachers in Ms. Martin's circle say when I walked past after the meeting.
“She ain't even a real teacher,” another said. “Music—shit, I can teach that.”
“Let her tell it, she's a damn college professor.”
This exchange was just loud enough for me to hear, but low enough so that if I asked what the problem was, they'd all look at me like I was crazy. I didn't bother to turn around. I'd faced these kinds of comments in barrels behind me and also to my face. When I was much younger, I'd tried to make women like Ms. Martin and the others like me. But it was no use and after teaching and policing all morning, my feet were hurting and my big toe was threatening a revolt through the top of my gray leather heels.
“We certainly can find positive things to do with that money,” I heard Mr. Williams say to Ms. Kenley and Evan when I reached the front of the room where they were still standing.
Evan was in the middle of excusing himself. He shook both of their hands very quickly and then nodded at me.
“I'll see you later,” Evan said evenly.
“Sure,” I replied, while I'd just rushed to the front to speak to him about Dame.
“Ms. Kenley, I want you to meet Mrs. DeLong,” Mr. Williams said when Evan departed with a few teachers hoping to talk to him following closely behind. “She's Dr. DeLong's wife.”
“Great to meet you,” she said as we shook hands.
“My pleasure,” I replied. “How are you settling into Alabama?”
“I'm fine. Just trying to get used to this heat. Got my hair all crazy-looking.”
Another group of teachers came over and pulled Mr. Williams to the side.
“Oh, just let it go. Put it in a bun.” I pointed to my hair.
“Good advice,” she said.
“Hey, Ms. Davis and I normally go out to eat after work on Wednesdays. You're welcome to join us tonight. Nothing big. Just a local place a lot of teachers go to on hump night.”
“That actually sounds great. My dinner date is working late tonight,” she said. “Now, I hope you don't mind if I have a few drinks. I know I'm in the South now and you all are supposed to be Southern belles.”
“Well, I don't know much about drinking,” I said, amused by her assumption about Southern women, “but I can tell you, if you're looking for some fierce drinking competition, you sit down at a bar next to a ‘Southern belle.' ”
We both laughed and walked out of the conference room together.
When we stepped into the hallway, I could see Billie and Clyde a few steps down talking. His body was pressed against the wall with one knee up toward Billie and she was standing in the middle of the hallway with her hands on her hips. Her head shook from side to side as she spoke. In the dim light the sun sent through the window at the head of the hallway, their shadows could have been fifteen or fifty-five. The argument was the same—someone had done something and the other person was upset. Both Ms. Kenley and I stopped. There was no need to explain the situation.
“You're taking some African dude all over town. I heard you even took him to my brother's barbershop yesterday,” I heard Clyde say loudly and agitated.
“He's not
some
African dude. His name is Mustafa and he needed a haircut,” she said. “And what I do with him is none of your business.” One of her hands fell from her hip. “You lost the right to that information a long time ago.”
“So you love him?”
“Why don't you ask your little girlfriend if I love him? She seems to know everything else. Better yet, don't ask her a damn thing about me, because I don't want my name in her mouth.”
“Jesus, Billie,” he said. “Why do you play so many games?”
“Games?” She flicked her hand at him. “Games are for children. I believe your girlfriend knows about games.” Billie flung her head around to seal her reading of Clyde and turned toward Ms. Kenley and me as she charged down the hall.
“There's one of our Southern belles now,” I said.
Chapter Seven
“S
o everyone comes here?” Ms. Kenley, who'd I'd started calling Kayla, said, looking around the dining room floor of Wilhagens at clusters of teachers leaning into the mouths of emptying glasses as they sipped from skinny black straws. Like the other teachers, Billie and I ate dinner at Wilhagens most Wednesdays. It gave us a chance to decompress and, most recently, rag on Ms. Lindsey and Clyde. But most weeks, we just complained about work and the kids—who was bad, who was worse, and who we wanted so dearly to choke.
And it wasn't because we hated teaching. There were good days when we got their rolling eyes to stop and shine. But the energy it took to even out those times called for dinner and a martini (or two—for Billie).
“Best hole-in-the-wall in town,” I said, pushing away from the table.
“Best cheap drinks in town.” Billie raised her glass. “Notice all of the poor teachers in here!”
We took a quick visual survey of all of the tables on the dining room floor. They were filled with teachers, laughing and drinking merrily as if tomorrow wouldn't come in just a few short hours. Way in the back near the bathroom was where Angie Martin sat with her cackling crew of idiots at their normal table. When I first got there and rushed to the back to go to the bathroom, I heard one of them say, “There's Ms. Tuscaloosa herself ! I wonder where her tiara is?” and they all laughed. And just as I opened the bathroom door, I heard Angie mention, “If only she knew her life wasn't as perfect as she thinks.” At first it bothered me, as I wondered what she was talking about, but then I remembered what Billie always called them—Big Little Girls, meaning they were grown women who still played school-yard games. We had a lot of those in our town. They were unhappily married and happily evil to other people. And I wasn't going to fall victim to their crap.
“I see,” Kayla said, looking around at everyone. “It looks like the entire staff is here. Aren't there other bars to go to?”
“If Tuscaloosa has anything, we have lots of bars. It's a basic requirement during football season,” I said.
“Roll Tide, baby!” Billie hollered and Kayla nearly jumped out of her seat. I laughed and thought she'd have to get used to that in Alabama territory.
“But you can't beat two-for-one martinis at Wilhagens on Wednesday night,” I said, still laughing.
“And they sure make them strong!” Kayla looked at her glass.
“But, Mrs. DeeeLong here, she can't partake.”
“Yes, I can.... I just can't overdo it.” I pushed my empty glass of iced tea to the center of the table. I'd skipped my one martini for the night, but hadn't told Billie why yet.
“Why?” Kayla asked.
“It's just a small-town thing,” I replied.
“If certain people see Journey drinking, they'll go reporting all over town how she's a drunkard and living life on the edge,” Billie added dramatically. “A life of sin!”
“My father's a pastor.”
“Of the biggest church in Alabama,” Billie chimed in.
“Oh, a preacher's kid!” Kayla said.
“Yep, a PK,” Billie continued. “And we have to be careful how Ms. Journey represents herself in public. She could hardly sip a glass of wine until she turned twenty-five without it being in the church newsletter ... and a part of her daddy's sermon.”
“Really? That must be difficult, living under a constant spotlight like that.”
I looked down at Kayla's black stilettos, hanging sexily from her feet where her naked, brown legs were swung out from beneath the table and crossed in a way I'd learned never to do. I bet she had red toenails inside those shoes and red shoes just like the ones she was wearing in her closet at home. And that no one had ever told Kayla that this was the sign of a “wild woman.” While these admonitions were now outdated and certainly overturned, having heard them time and again throughout my childhood made me do a double take each time I saw a red toenail, red shoes, or hoseless brown legs flung out from beneath the secrecy of a dinner table—even when they were my own.
“You get used to it. I'm so used to it, I hardly know any other way to live,” I said, thinking of how country and old-timey I must've seemed to her. Thirty-three and caring what other people thought of how much I drank? But this was how things were done with my family ... with my community. Image was everything. I was a Cash. I was a DeLong. And new times or not, everywhere I went, that went with me. Now being a PK wasn't easy. I always had eyes on me—eyes that judged and tended to hold me in a higher regard than it did other kids. Unlike other PKs I knew (including Jr), I fought not to let the trappings of other people's ideas rule my life or add to my circumstances. When I was just eight years old and discovered that Nana Jessie had Krazy-glued the clothes onto my Barbie and Ken dolls—for fear I'd ever see them naked—I decided that I had to discover the world on my own. I'd soon see that that was easier said than done.
“What do you do to really enjoy yourself ?” Kayla asked.
“Oh, we find ways,” Billie said mischievously.
“Yeah, Billie's been quite the understanding friend,” I said, petting her hand playfully on the table.
“Not like Ms. May,” Billie jumped in. “She's good and saved.”
“Who's that?” Kayla asked.
“That's my sister-in-law,” I responded. “She's a bit of a holy roller.”
“Jesus was her first boyfriend.” Billie giggled.
“You laugh, but he must've been, for her to put up with my brother!”
“Yeah, I saw her on Monday night at the gas station. She looked so sad,” Billie said.
“Really? You didn't tell me.”
“I forgot all about it. Mustafa and I were filling up and she pulled up and got out of the car.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yes. And I called her name, but she just kept on walking. So I didn't say anything. I figured she must've been coming from Monday night Bible study or something.”
“You guys have Monday night Bible study here?” Kayla asked.
“Please, we have Bible study every night around here,” Billie said. “We study the Bible so much down here that some pastors just be adding their own chapters. Talking about what Martin Luther King, Jr., did in the New Testament.”
“Stop playing,” I said, slapping Billie with my napkin as we all laughed. “But enough about us. What about you? What brings you to Tuscaloosa? And I know it wasn't to come teach at Black Warrior.”
“Love,” Kayla answered as if she'd anticipated my question.
“Love?” Billie and I said together.
“Love in Tuscaloosa?” Billie added. “Is he fifteen or fifty-nine?”
“No,” she laughed.
“Well, you must've left him in New York City with the Prada, because there are no single men down here,” Billie revealed.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“His name is Richard. Richard Holder.”
“Holder?” I repeated, running through faces and names in my head.
“Little Dickie?” Billie jumped in, taking her third martini from the waitress.
“Yeah. You two know him?”
“Know him?” we said again together as our eyes widened and we looked from Kayla to one another in amazement.
“Girl, please, Tuscaloosa's the size of a squirrel's nuts. Of course we
know
him,” Billie said matter-offactly but with a hint of a question surrounding the word “know.” Not only was Richard a traffic cop that led the way for me to the church every Sunday, but Little Dickie was also newly divorced from his wife of fifteen years. Without speaking, I knew that both Billie and I were wondering if the Kayla Kenley sipping blue liquor out of the martini glass at our table was the woman behind the rumored e-mails that split them up.
“I met him three months ago when I was up in Birmingham at my aunt's funeral,” Kayla said to eyes that I'm sure were wide and still on her. “I'd never been there before and he was in town for the day. He showed me everything there was to see. I fell in love with the place ... and then him. And here I am.”
“Here you are ...” Billie said, kicking me under the table and making the glasses shake so that Kayla knew what was happening.
“I know ... I know,” she started. “He's just gotten a divorce, and you two probably think I'm the Wicked Witch of the West. But the whole thing wasn't my idea. Richard was in Birmingham, trying to figure out a way to tell his wife it was over. Before we knew that we were anything more than a tour guide and a passenger, he told me that the whole marriage had been arranged.” Kayla looked up at the ceiling fan above our table, her head tossing almost unnoticeably with each turn and I could tell that the blue liquor was probably getting to her and making her tell more than she should, but I wasn't about to stop her.
“He got her pregnant on prom night and her father and his father said they had to get married, so Richard did it. Only she miscarried a few days after the wedding. He stayed anyway, thinking it was what a man should do. But after fifteen years of living with someone he wasn't in love with, he wanted out. He just had to tell her ...”
“Damn! That has got to be the saddest shit I've ever heard. More sad than hungry kids in Ethiopia and Hurricane Katrina combined.... Damn!”
“Shut up, Billie,” I said.
“No, she's right. It is sad. But the one thing happy that came from it is us.”
“But you have to be scared,” I said. “You left your whole life behind to move down here to be with a man who could be on the rebound?”
“Journey Lynn! Do you have to suck the life out of every dream?” Billie hollered, slamming her fist on the table jokingly. “Kayla, do you have a stun gun, because I need to put her down?”
We all laughed, but I was serious. Even if Richard knew he didn't love Deena, how could he know he loved Kayla in just three months?
“I know it sounds crazy,” Kayla said. “But not as crazy as it feels when I'm not with Richard. And even less crazy than it feels when I'm with him. So I figured I might as well do the least crazy thing and just move. I tried not to do it this fast. But he kept begging me to come. Said I didn't have to work or anything. ‘Leave everything behind,' he kept saying. And he had me wrapped around his finger with that Southern talk of his. These Southern men are something else. Strong and sweet. Real men, who just want to take care of you and love you. They don't make men like that up North anymore.”
“Oh, please,” Billie said with her voice as dry and bitter as mustard. “Stay a while!”
“I wanted to be with Richard so badly that I just woke up one day and packed my bags,” Kayla went on.
“But what if it doesn't work?” I asked.
“You know, I don't think I even care. I'm thirtyfour. I know how to pack my bags when I'm ready to go. I haven't even sublet my apartment yet—you don't let go of New York real estate. I'm in love, but I'm not crazy. I told Richard I need a marriage certificate before I do that. I'm a big girl.... I mean, haven't you ever felt this way? Like in love and like you were willing to do anything for it? Just to feel it?”
“Girl, you're preaching to the choir up in here,” Billie shouted, high-fiving Kayla over the table.
“It's like nothing else matters. Just you and him—that's how it is with me and Richard.”
“Yeah, I felt that way about someone once, too. Only thing was half the women in Tuscaloosa feel the same way about him,” Billie cut in, her eyes averted and sad. “Linda!” she called to the waitress, “I need another martini!”
Standing by the bar, Linda shook her head no and held up her hands like she was managing a steering wheel.
“What about you, Journey? I'm sure you feel that way about your husband,” Kayla said to me.
“Yes, I love Evan. But I just.... I'd never do anything that crazy.”
“You know, I think love should be crazy. Like that should be a basic requirement,” Kayla said. “That love should make you feel something. Like in those songs Luther used to sing—just yearn for somebody to come home. And feel sick if they don't. Love should be crazy like that.”
“Jalapeno pepper beneath your tongue crazy,” Billie announced.
“Headless chicken crazy!” Kayla added and I couldn't help but chuckle.
“Bobby and Whitney crazy!” Billie topped it off, slapping her hand on the table.
“Hell, yeah, that's it right there. Bobby and Whitney crazy love,” Kayla said emphatically.
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know, imagine how she must've felt when his ghetto behind came sniffing around her skirt? She had it going on. Probably had princes and sheiks and all that after her, but no, Bobby stepped in and laid it down,” Billie joked.

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