Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Read online

  PRAISE FOR PEARL CLEAGE AND

  Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do

  “Cleage writes with amazing grace and killer instinct.”

  —The New York Times

  “Pearl Cleage is one of America's finest young writers. We fall in love with her characters—but maybe ‘friends’ is a better description—all over again. We laugh and cry and get frustrated with and hope for and all the things you do when you realize that these may be characters on a page or… they could be you. Another triumph for the true black Pearl.”

  —NIKKI GIOVANNI

  “Pearl Cleage deftly balanc[es] complex social issues with a warm narrative voice … Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do won't disappoint.”

  —Essence

  “Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do is not only smart, sexy, magical, romantic, funny, nuanced, otherworldly, surprising, scary, and right on time, it's also political. And did I say a fabulous read? Pearl Cleage is historian, archaeologist, realist, lover, and a magnificent storyteller. Instead of offering escape from life, Cleage's words summon the possibility of life's wonders. You will know the women and men who populate her novel—or want to.”

  —JILL NELSON

  “[Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do] demonstrates [Cleage's] gift for engaging storytelling, identifiable characters, and sister-to-sister dialogue.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Witty, engaging, tender, and bittersweet … There's no better ‘praise song’ to love, living, and the wondrous imperfection of humanity than Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do. Laugh, cry, nod your head in recognition, for Ms. Cleage has captured life on the page.”

  —JEWELL PARKER RHODES

  “[Some Things …] sets the standard for fiction that not only entertains but raises important issues relevant in the real world.”

  —Black Issues Book Review

  “Cleage's follow-up to the bestselling What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day is both an offbeat love story and an inspirational portrait of a vibrant urban community worth fighting for.”

  —Book magazine

  Also by Pearl Cleage

  NOVELS

  Babylon Sisters

  Babylon Sisters

  I Wish I Had a Red Dress

  What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day…

  NONFICTION

  Mad at Miles: A Black Woman's Guide to Truth

  Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot

  We Speak Your Names: A Celebration

  (with Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.)

  Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  For Michael Jondré Pryor Lomax,

  who made me start thinking about grandsons in the first place;

  For Deignan Cleage Lomax,

  who allowed me to be there for the miracle;

  And for Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.,

  whose name should be on the cover.

  FREEDOM AND LOVE MAY BE THE MOST

  REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS AVAILABLE TO US.

  Robin D. G. Kelley

  I GUESS I'LL SEE YOU NEXT LIFETIME.

  Erykah Badu

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Kristin Cleage Williams and the other members of my expanding family for their love and support. Thanks also to my friends and neighbors, including Jondré Pryor, Karen and A. B. Spellman, Walt Huntley Jr., Cecelia Corbin Hunter, Ingrid Saunders Jones, the Honorable Shirley Franklin, Valerie Boyd, Michael L. Lomax, Zaron W. Burnett, Jr., Ray and Marilyn Cox, Lynette Lapeyrolerie, Tayari Jones, Meghan V. Underwood, Jill Nelson, Tina McElroy Ansa, Donald Stone, Jimmy Lee Tarver, Marc and Elaine Lawson, Debra Thurmond, Granville Edward Freeman Dennis, the Broadway and Burnett families, Bebe Moore Campbell, Don Bryan, Ouida and Andrew Collins, E. Lynn Harris, Travis Hunter, Carolyn Monteilh, Maria Broom, Curtis and Barbara Jackson, Watt Hackett, ROOTS International, the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Nia Damali and Medu Bookstore, and the hardworking brothers and sisters at the Post Office and the Publix who always find time to ask me how my work is going. As always, thanks to Denise Stinson, Howard Rosenstone, and Nancy Miller for taking care of business, and to Bill Bagwell, because a deal is a deal.

  1

  IHAVE REALLY SCREWED UP NOW. This man is actually sitting behind that great big desk telling me he's going to take my house. The house I was born in! The house my mother was born in! He must be crazy.

  I know I'm the one who borrowed against it. I know I'm the one who didn't make the payments on time. I know all that. That's the first thing they teach you in rehab, to accept responsibility for the stuff you did when you were a stomp-down dope fiend, and I do, but I never thought they would actually take the house. What good is trying to reform if you have to spend the rest of your life paying for the stupid things you did when you still got high and didn't give a damn?

  Of course, I don't say all that to this little weasel-faced white man who probably has no life at all outside of this windowless office where he gets to bring up your file on his computer and then swivel it around so you can see all those missed payments and bounced checks, daring you to deny them.

  He clearly does not want to hear my tale of woe. Having your heart broken and thinking cocaine can fix it does not qualify as an appropriate topic for discussion with your banker. I know this from experience, so I skip the explanations and start right in on the serious begging.

  Please, I say, I'm okay now. I just got a good job. I'll have enough to bring everything current if you can just give me a little more time.

  He ignores me. He's heard all this before. He knows the house has been in our family for three generations. He knows I was born there. He knows my grandparents got married there. He knows it is more than a house. That it is an essential part of our family history, our memories, our dreams. He knows it is a sacred trust passed from one woman in our family, to the next one, and the next one, and, finally, to me.

  He knows all this because I have told him many times. I want him to understand that losing this place is not an option. I'm not going to greet my mama in paradise and tell her I snorted up her mama's house because I wanted a man who didn't want me. If I tell her that, I'll have to tell her that during that same amazing eighteen months, I also lost my credibility as a journalist by sleeping with all the editors I wasn't doing drugs with, missing deadlines like it was a sport, and, in the last few months before I finally went into rehab, behaving badly at several important Washington social events, culminating in the unforgettable evening when I cussed out a congressman, spilled a drink on his wife, and wrecked my car all in one fortyfive-minute period.

  But that was then. This is now. I've been clean for almost six months, and as soon as I get paid from this new job, I'll pay the weasel what I owe and he can go swivel his screen at some other poor fool. All I need is a ninety-day extension. Just three months, I hear myself still begging. I'll be able to bring everything current. I promise!

  The weasel raises his eyebrows to let me know he doesn't buy it for one second. He glances down at the screen again, and I mentally prepare myself to segue from begging to groveling. I'm ready to roll around on the floor and tear my hair, if that's what it takes. I'm the one who messed everything up, but I'm also the one who is going to make it right. Starting with this house.

  The weasel is still staring at the screen. He better hope whatever he needs to see there to give me my ninety days shows up in the next sixty seconds because I am this close to dragging him across that desk and whipping his smug little ass until somebody comes to pull me off him. This close.


  Then he sighs deeply and looks up. Sixty days, he says, like it's killing him. I'll give you sixty days.

  And I want to say, It's not even your money, so why are you acting so shitty in a moment that is already shitty enough without your adding a single thing?

  But it's not his fault. I wouldn't even be sitting here if I hadn't done the things I did. The reason he's acting like he's doing me a favor is because he is doing me a favor. They could have taken the house two months ago, and no amount of world-class begging could have stopped them if the weasel hadn't let me slide. Being mad at him is a waste of time, and if I've learned anything, it's that time is all you've got.

  Thank you, I say, standing up to go before he can change his mind. He stands up and reluctantly shakes the hand I offer. He's giving me that disapproving stone face like he's Robert Young on Father Knows Best and I'm Kitten trying to hide a bad report card.

  I'm at the door when he calls my name, and my first reaction is to keep walking like I don't hear him, but that would be gutless, and courage is one of the things I'm supposed to be working on, so I stop and half turn back toward him. Yes?

  Good luck, he says with a smile that's almost human. Thanks, I say, smiling back, even if he is my banker. I'm going to need it.

  2

  AUNT ABBIE SAYS I DON'T NEED luck because I now have a visionary adviser. That's what she calls herself these days. A visionary adviser. She even had little blue cards printed up that say Abbie Allen Browning, V. A. Her long-range plan is to open her own salon where she can receive people and offer her visionary advice for a small fee.

  When she first told me this, I laughed and asked her if she was going to use a crystal ball or tarot cards, and she said I sure did have a smart mouth for somebody who just got out of rehab, and she was right. It was, after all, one of Aunt Abbie's visions that brought her here at the exact moment when I needed her the most.

  The day I got out of rehab, I caught a cab home, hoping I wouldn't find a padlock on the door and an overgrown yard with a for sale sign sticking up in the middle. Getting myself together had been my full-time job for the last few months. Now it was time to get my business straight, if I wasn't already too late. Figuring out how to get the house out of hock was the first item on the agenda.

  When the cab pulled up in front of the house, I started to tell the guy he'd made a mistake. The grass was neatly trimmed and the house itself looked freshly painted and generally spiffed up. I paid the driver, got out with my suitcase, and just stood there for a minute. Before I could come up with a plausible reason for the unexpected changes, the front door opened and my aunt Abbie walked out to meet me. She's sixty ifshe's a day, but she moves with the physical confidence ofa woman half that age.

  “Welcome home, dear,” she said, picking up my suitcase and giving me a quick hug. “Come inside before you catch your death.”

  I followed, literally speechless with amazement. I hadn't told anybody I was going into rehab, much less when I was coming out. Aunt Abbie and I had hardly communicated at all since my parents' funeral almost two years ago, and we had never been especially close. I always liked her, but she hadn't ever been around much. The youngest of my father's three sisters, she was the baby of the family, but by far the most independent one. She traveled a lot, got married a lot, divorced a lot, and always carried the scent of patchouli in the multiethnic clothing she invariably wore.

  She was fond of long skirts, silver bracelets, and those flat black Chinese shoes with flowers embroidered on the toes. She had never been an artist, but she had always looked like one. She liked the company of creative people and among her husbands had been a writer, a painter, and a cellist, who also played guitar. As far as I knew, at this point in her life she was traveling solo.

  She held the door open for me, and I stepped inside my own house like I was visiting. The place had been transformed. When I checked myself into rehab, I know I left the house a wreck from my unmade bed to a sink full of dirty dishes. I felt a wash of shame at anybody finding the place in the state in which I'd abandoned it, but I was running for my life. Neatening up was the last thing on my mind.

  But there was no hint of disorder here today. The place was spotless, smelling of furniture polish and patchouli. The rugs had been shampooed, the windows were sparkling, and the furniture had been brushed and plumped to within an inch of its life. There was a fire burning in the fireplace and fresh flowers in a huge vase in the center of the dining room table. The place looked better than it had in ages.

  I looked at Aunt Abbie. “Did you do all this?”

  She laughed. “Don't look so shocked. I had a couple of months and I did hire some guys to do the outside painting and the rugs, but otherwise, a little at a time was all it took. Nice, huh?”

  “It's beautiful. How did you know I was getting out today?”

  She shrugged and set my bag down at the foot of the stairs. “I just had a feeling.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since Christmas. I thought you might come home for the holidays.”

  That was a month ago! “How'd you get in?”

  She smiled. “Your mother gave me a key years ago. I had married a fool who was trying to be abusive and she was worried. She wanted me to have a place to go if I ever needed to leave in a hurry. Since they were on the road so much then, she just gave me my own key.”

  My parents hadn't been actively on the road for thirty years before they passed.

  “When was that?” I said, still trying to make sense of everything.

  She thought about it for a minute then shrugged again. “1972? '73? Somewhere around in there.”

  “Thirty years ago?”

  She looked surprised at my surprise. “At least. I never married a fool after I turned thirty. That's what your twenties are for.”

  My head was spinning, but I had to admit, it was a lovely homecoming, however she got here. It was good to come back to somebody who was glad to see me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Welcome home,” she said, and we hugged again. Family. “Now come on in here and let's have some lunch and catch up.”

  That was six weeks ago, and when I look back, I can't imagine how I would have made it without her. She listened to the story of how I got to rehab with a look of concern, but no censure. I had the feeling that she had had her share of broken hearts and bad judgments and that there was very little that went on between consenting adults that would shock or surprise her.

  She let me tell it all as we watched the fire die down to a pile of glowing orange coals. Then she looked at me and said calmly, “So what are we going to do now?”

  The fact that she said we almost made me burst into tears. We meant I wasn't alone in the world. That somebody was around to help me figure out how to undo the messiness I'd made. We meant she had my back. How she got here was beside the point. All I really needed to say was thank you.

  I understand that now. From encouraging me to go see the weasel and work something out, to convincing me I was strong enough to take the job Beth Davis was offering, to agreeing to house-sit while I was in Atlanta, Aunt Abbie had helped me play to my strengths by treating me like she was unaware of any weakness. If I was actually able to pull this off, go to Atlanta for a couple of months and make enough money to rescue the homestead, I had Aunt Abbie to thank for it.

  So I decided to stop by Union Station on my way home from my successful negotiation with the weasel and buy her a big bunch of flowers. The vendors outside the main entrance always have such a wonderful variety of brightly colored bouquets from which to choose. This used to be one of my regular stops in the old days when I was still working downtown. Money is going to be a little tight until I get my finances settled, but as impulse purchases go, flowers are always worth more than whatever you pay for them.

  Buying flowers is not just a way to bring home beauty. It's an expression of confidence that better days are coming. It's a defiant finger in the face
of those naysayers who would have you believe your fortunes will never improve. Well, this afternoon, I was flushed with enough confidence to justify not simply a mixed bouquet, but the tropical selection, heavy on purple, orange, and blossoming birds-of-paradise.

  The smiling vendor wrapped the flowers in pink tissue paper and tied them with a curling strip of white ribbon while I watched the travelers rushing into the big front doors of the train station, heading to their own adventures, oblivious to their fellow adventurers striding along beside them with equal fervor.

  I love trains. Overnight in a sleeper is, in fact, my favorite way to travel. Amtrak runs the Southern Crescent from D.C. to Atlanta seven nights a week, and I'd be booked on it for my trip if sleeper accommodations weren't so pricey. They're not as expensive as a first-class airline ticket, which is now about the cost of a year's tuition at a good junior college, but they're a lot more than I can afford right now.

  Coach seats are, of course, a lot cheaper, but also a different experience entirely. Spending twenty-seven consecutive hours, including the nighttime hours, with a bunch of people you just met is only romantic in the movies. In real life, it's crying babies, communal bath- rooms, and strange-smelling food somebody brought from home and wants to share.

  I hate to fly, especially these days when collective paranoia is booked on every flight along with the passengers, but ultimately, it gets down to a choice between two and a half hours of white knuckles or twenty-plus hours of hearing the snores of sleeping strangers. This time, flying won out, but I wasn't looking forward to it.