“I’m gonna tell her. I’m gonna tell her.”
The place went up in guffaws. “Oh, shit!” said a cousin, as the rest did impressions of my dad’s frightened face.
When he finally got the nerve to tell his mother, shortly before the ceremony, Mama Helen’s solidarity with my mom was like Sister Souljah. It was fascinating because, mind you, this woman was never a fan of my mother’s. She called her “piss-colored” for the bulk of the marriage. But this whole deal didn’t sit right with her. Not at all.
She decided to speak her mind at the church. My soon-to-be stepmother had a family member who was the pastor. He went on and on about this blessed union. That’s when Mama Helen piped up from the front pew in her deaf-lady voice.
“She’s a whore,” she said to no one in particular, meaning the entire church. “Home-wrecker.”
NOW, OUR BOYS CALL TONI NANA, AND SHE IS A LOVELY GRANDMOTHER. She and my dad still take their trips to Hawaii. People move on.
After the divorce, Mom left Pleasanton to move back to Omaha. She was ready to start over. Instead of an easy retirement, she chose to help a relative who had a problem with drugs. This relative repeatedly got pregnant, and one by one, these babies came to live with my mother shortly after their births. This retirement-age woman adopted these children, now aged nine, eight, and six. Two beautiful girls and the youngest, a boy. My mother refused to let them be separated from each other.
She busts her ass to keep up with these kids. She has discovered emojis, this seventy-year-old woman, and she’ll send me a wineglass with an exclamation point. She is also queen of the wink-and-tongue-out face.
I see you, Mom. I see what you are doing for these kids, and how you keep them together. I give you respect, because nobody is going to give you praise for doing what black women have done forever, raising kids who are not their own.
Nowadays, I catch myself starting conversations the way she used to. I think back to when we Union girls confronted her about this need to connect with strangers. It was just that she is a decent human being with a genuine curiosity about other human beings. She already knew what made my father tick, and the people of Pleasanton for that matter. They held no surprise.
“There are so many more people than you realize,” she told us girls, “people who look up to the same sun and the moon and the stars. It’s your birthright to explore this world.”
It’s only as small as you make it.
six
WHO HATES YOU MOST?
The cast of Being Mary Jane was holed up in a conference room while the crew investigated a gas leak on our Atlanta soundstage. Eventually we each reached the end of memes and Snapchat filters on our phones, so to kill time we started trading stories.
“Okay, who in your life has hated you the most?” someone asked.
People talked about a costar they’d gotten fired, an ex they brazenly cheated on. Amateur hour. Basic stuff. I knew I had the winner: a girl from high school named Queeshaun.
Queeshaun was best friends with Angela Washington, who was dating Jason Kidd when I met him. This was my junior year of high school, while I was technically dating Tyrone Reed, a stoner rebel from a nearby town. Tyrone had gotten his arm broken by the police, so obviously his cast had FUCK THE POLICE written on it in huge block letters. He would lean the cast out of his convertible VW bug when he drove around town. So rebellious.
Jason Kidd was the best high school player in the country, six foot four as a junior, and already famous among sports fans and college recruiters alike. His high school, St. Joseph’s, could seat eight hundred in their gym. With Jason on the team, they were forced to move their games to a venue that seated five thousand, and people still got turned away.
I was in a Saturday afternoon girls’ basketball tournament, and I stayed to watch the guys play. I was performing a bit, throwing out tips to the players, even Jason. It worked. Jason sat at the end of the bench, a towel around his neck. He knew everyone in that place was watching him, but he suddenly lifted his eyes to look right at me. It wasn’t eye sex, just “I see you.”
At half time, I went to the bathroom and there was Angela. I knew her from playing ball, because she was a star player for Livermore High. Our teams often competed against each other. Standing at the sinks, we talked about the game.
“That Jason is amazing,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “he is.”
She walked out and went right over to Jason and I realized, Oh, she is totally his girlfriend. There went that idea.
At the end of the game, she left with Jason’s parents, and he went over to the team bus. He lingered behind so I could catch up, and when I did, he asked for my number. We then proceeded to talk all hours for the rest of the weekend, and made a pact that on Monday I would break up with Tyrone and he would break up with Angela. We did so, with a generous round of “It’s not you, it’s me” for everyone.
I got right into being Jason’s girlfriend and I wanted everyone to know it. I would go to my beloved Kim’s Nails in Oakland, getting the letters of his name spelled out with a heart on my nails. J-A-S-O-N-K-I-D-D-♥. Don’t judge me. I felt like a boss bitch.
The Friday before Christmas break, my school had a pep rally during lunchtime. My girlfriend Paige was a cheerleader, so I was right there, sitting with friends on a lunch table right at the front watching them perform. Fantasy Direct, a group of high-school-age DJs, was running the music. They were black and Latino, and from neighboring towns. But one, Hector, lived across the street from me.
Suddenly, this big black girl walked in with a determined stomp in her step. She had dookie braids, a pink ribbon woven into each one. She immediately stuck out to me, of course, because you know there were no other black girls around. Way across the room, I saw her go up to Hector, who then pointed in my direction. I looked behind me, thinking, Who could she possibly be looking for?
Then she started stalking through the crowd, about four or five people deep, around my lunch table. As she got closer, she lunged through a wall of people to get to me. But I still didn’t understand that I was the target.
This girl is just really angry, I thought. Somebody is going to get their ass kicked. Meanwhile, the white people were practically clearing a path for her, just assuming that the black girl was there for the other black girl.
“I’m gonna whoop yo’ ass, bitch!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, pointing right at me. “I’m gonna whoop yo’ ass!”
I swear, I looked around like, “This couldn’t possibly be about me.” Eventually, the school security dragged her off school grounds by the shoulders. “I’m gonna get you, Nickie Union!” she yelled as they pulled her out the door. “I’m gonna come back after school and kick your ass!”
I was shaking as if I’d had a near-death experience. I had no idea who in the world this bitch was, and now all these white girls were staring at me.
“Oh my God,” went the chorus. “Oh my God, are you okay? That was, like, so terrifying.”
So I marched over to Hector and asked him why he sent her over to me.
“Oh, Queeshaun?” he said. “You don’t know her?” He acted with total innocence. “She asked where you were. We thought you invited her.”