She had a point. “Okay. Okay. Okay. I wasn’tchasingyou at first. At first, I was contemplating chasing you.”
She giggled. “Liar.”
“I’m not lying. I was tryna figure out how to get next to you. I already knew you wasn’t fuckin’ with me from the way you used to turn your nose up at me.”
“And did,” she sassed me.
I shook my head and pretended to be annoyed. “The pretty ones are always so damn mouthy.”
She grabbed a pillow and weakly tossed it at me.
“Nah, for real.” I sat up on my elbows and made eye contact. “I’m tryna do whatever you’ll let me do. I introduced you to Shaunda and Joey as my girl. That’s my endgame—to make you mine. To be the man that’s not just worthy of you but ready for you. I’m a dude. I spend a lot of time around other dudes. I’m at the barbershop. I’m at the tattoo shop. I hear the shit men say. They bullshit their way into women’s lives, but then it’s not sustainable. The type of women they want aren’t the type of women they can handle. And the women tell them that. When the women are like, ‘you can’t handle me,’ they get defensive. I don’t wanna be that dude. I don’t wanna reach for you, knowing it’s a stretch, then resent you for not being able to pull me up. Does that make sense?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But can you do it? Can you be ready for me? Can you be on my level? Because I don’t have it in me to re-raise a grown man.”
“I’m on my shit. Now, I’m tryin’ to be on you.”
She smirked. “We’ll see.”
“We will. Now, stop stallin’, and tell me how you got the name Church.”
She went on to tell me the story of her mom having four girls by four different men, and how her mom felt like since the men wouldn’t give her their last name, she would give her daughters their last names. She and each of her sisters wore their father’s last name as a first name: Perkins, Collins, Bailey, and Church. “My mom had a lot of shame around never being chosen as more than a baby’s mama. For years, that shame colored everything she did, every choice she made. And I think some of that trickled down to my sisters and me.
“I mean, Perkins had three children by the same deadbeat ass dude who never married her. He broke her heart over and over again. I was just a teenager when they got together, but even Icould tell it was unhealthy. I’ve never known her to date anybody since him. I think Perkins’ biggest fear is falling into the same trap as our mom and having more kids by different men.
“Collins never dated seriously until she met Beck. She spent every minute of her life working on goals for her salon. Men weren’t on her radar until Beck. And Bailey was married to a nightmare ninja before she met Bright. He was a narcissistic asshole who threatened her with divorce any time he didn’t get his way. When she was finally ready to walk away, he tried to hold up the divorce by not signing the papers, . . . even though he asked for the divorce—because he got some chick pregnant. Bright has been a rainbow after the storm for my sister. Hell, all of the Strong men have been rainbows after the storm for my mother and sisters. I wish Brewer and Perkins were attracted to each other so they could go ahead and complete the circle.”
I chuckled. “What about you, lil’ mama. How did you internalize your mother’s choices?”
“I’m the youngest sibling. I’m the one who got to see everybody else make the mistakes, while I learned from them. I never had a crazy relationship at home in Chicago. I conducted myself veryI don’t love these hos.”
I cracked up because I could definitely see that in her.
“They got one strike, and I was out. Too many fish in Lake Michigan to be settling for one that wasn’t properly developed. I was throwing them nuccas back likeon to the next. But when I got to Jackson Falls, my entire mentality switched. Chicago is full of black people. It’s a black person on any and every street corner. Men galore. When I got to Jackson Falls, I could go days without seeing anybody black that wasn’t related to me in some way.
“I enrolled in college and met a guy. We dated for a little bit. But when we broke up, it was like there were no other suitors. I moved there with my mother and Collins. The two of them werevery much living real-life fairytales wrapped in these whirlwind romances with these really handsome and upstanding black men. Meanwhile, I’m at college, and all I’m seeing is black men cupcakin’ with white girls.
“After I had lived in Oregon for about a year, I met my ex. I had just watched both my mother and my sister have very quick, . . . I don’t know, courtships, that ended in marriage. Of course, I wanted that. I thought my ex could offer that.”
“That’s the relationship where you said you spent three years trying to love a self-absorbed asshole or something, right?”
“Yeah, Timi. Oluwarotimi. He’s American, but his family is originally from Nigeria. Both of his parents are very successful doctors and investors. He’s from money. He liked to throw that in my face.”
“But your dad has bread, right?”
Her eyes flew to my face. “Wow. You really listen to me.”
I sucked my teeth. “Come on, lil’ mama. Yeah, I like to fuck women. That doesn’t mean that I only see them as pussy. I talk to them. I listen when they talk to me. Give me some credit. Besides, when you talked to me, I was shocked as hell because I knew you didn’t really fuck with me. I hung on to your every word.”
She waved me off. “Whatever, Jonah. Anyway, Timi liked to continually throw up the fact that I was raised by my single mother, like I didn’t have a father, even when my father came into town . . . bearing gifts and making payments on our rent and our light bill. He would suck up to my father in person, then pretend like he didn’t exist the second he was gone. After a while, I realized that having a present and affluent daddy messed with Timi’s ability to gaslight me into thinking that I needed him. He could never hold his parents’ wealth over me quite the way he wanted to, because my father is wealthier than his parents.”
“Ahh, he let society convince him that he could buy control of a woman.”
“Exactly. He chose the wrong woman. When I finally had enough, I left. He was pissed when I bought my house. He wanted me to fail so bad. He wanted me to need him so bad and come crawling back. I thought that was dumb as hell. He knew I was raised by a single mother. That should’ve told him that I’d been watching a woman doing it by herself all my life. He should’ve known I would never feel like I needed a man to make it. I didn’t even know how to depend on a man when I was with him. We fought all the time because he thought I was too independent.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Bitch-ass dude.”
“Here’s a question. What was the deal with you moving around from state to state so much? You runnin’ from something?”